The Feros (Vindico)

by Wesley King

  “Why?”

  “I think he has ulterior motives. Don’t you?”

  Veridus was silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” she conceded. “He does speak highly of you, which is a rarity. It is possible he has truly become fond of you and wants you to join his organization. I can’t see what else it would accomplish.”

  “But he must assume I would remain loyal to my friends,” Emily said. “He would just be making me more powerful and more liable to escape. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Perhaps he’s relying on your gratitude. But you’re right, it isn’t wise. He’s making a mistake, and I’m not sure why. But we must take advantage. He might be giving us the weapon to beat him.”

  “What about Thunderbolt? Has he been found?”

  She nodded. “There was an attack last night. Your friends and the rest of the League managed to fight off my brother’s men, though they took injuries.”

  “Were my friends hurt?” Emily asked urgently.

  “No, he thinks they’re fine. But several League members may have been killed.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Not Thunderbolt, I know that much.”

  “Is he going to attack again? Where are the Vindico?”

  “He may, if the League doesn’t move somewhere else. I’m guessing they will. As for the Vindico, they haven’t attacked for some reason. He said he had a guess where they’ve gone, and I think he went to see if he was right.”

  “We need to contact Thunderbolt,” Emily whispered.

  “How?” she asked, shaking her head. “He’s probably on the run again with the others. And even if I knew where he was, there’s no chance I could get a message there without my brother knowing. I think we’re on our own.”

  Emily stared at her. “You think I should do the transformation.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do. But if we can kill him, then I would be in charge. I could disband this organization and release the prisoners. The League could choose what to do with my brother’s soldiers.”

  “They’ll follow you even if you kill him?” Emily asked skeptically.

  “No,” she said. “But they will if you do.”

  Emily looked away, feeling the weight of that statement settle in. Despite everything Dolus was doing, Emily wondered if she could actually kill him.

  “I need to think about it,” Emily said. “When will he come back?”

  “Later today.” She reached out and put her hand on Emily’s arm. “I know it won’t be easy. It’s not fair to ask this of you. But it might be the only way to stop him and the only way to save your friends.” She glanced at the door. “I’d better go. I’ll try and get back as soon as I can. Just remember, we may not have much time.”

  She hurried out of the cell and shut the door behind her.

  “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” a quiet voice asked.

  Emily turned around. “You were awake.”

  Blue nodded, though her eyes were still closed. “I thought it might be better just to listen. Since they only seem to want to speak to you anyway.”

  Emily caught the slightest hint of bitterness in the League member’s voice. But she knew it wasn’t directed at her. It was just bitterness that she was never quite involved.

  “What do you think I should do?” Emily asked.

  Blue was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. If they offered me the chance, I would take it. But it just seems too convenient. I don’t trust either of them.”

  “Neither do I,” Emily agreed. “But we don’t have a lot of options.”

  Emily thought about stepping out of the chamber, her skin tingling. Strength coursing through her body.

  Then she could defeat the Wraiths, capture Dolus, and save the League.

  It all made perfect sense.

  “You’ll make the right decision,” Blue murmured, and then curled up tighter.

  Emily stood for a long time, watching the light flickering through the small window in the door. Something was wrong here, she knew that. But time was running out for her friends, and Emily had to do something. There really was no choice. She had to accept Dolus’s offer, and then she had to kill him.

  30

  HAYDEN STUDIED THE GRIM, BLACKENED FACES SITTING AROUND THE TABLE. They were all gathered in the meeting room of the Defender, which was parked in the field beside the ruined farmhouse. Thunderbolt sat at the far end, staring at the gleaming table.

  The Flame, Ceri, and Talia were all in critical condition and lying unconscious in the ship’s small medical facility. A few others had broken limbs, cracked ribs, or deep gashes. Most were stained with ash and soot, and everyone looked exhausted.

  Hayden glanced at his friends. They had gotten out relatively easy, though James had a nasty scorch mark, Lana was severely bruised, and Sam had a mild concussion. Hayden felt like he might have sprained his wrist, but he knew it could have been much worse.

  “We’ve been bested again,” Thunderbolt said. “We captured four of the attackers, but we’ve temporarily lost three of our own, and many of us are now injured. It’s obvious that someone else has figured out how to grant superpowers. Who knows how many more of these men are out there.”

  He paused. “It seems this new enemy is just as dangerous as the Vindico, if not more so. And we must guess that they are working together. It is possible that the Vindico gave them our location, though we cannot know for sure.”

  “We shouldn’t have been caught off guard,” Gali said gruffly, turning to Sinio. “Why didn’t you detect them?”

  “They can’t be detected.” Sam spoke up before Sinio had the chance. “They’re immune to us.”

  Thunderbolt frowned. “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s true,” Deanna said. Her arm was wrapped in a sling and she had a bloodstained bandage tied around her forehead. “I tried to get at them too, but nothing.”

  “It wasn’t even like a blocked mind,” Sinio added. “It was as if they weren’t there at all.”

  “Great,” Thunderbolt muttered, staring at the wall. “I take responsibility for this. We underestimated our foes. We should have gotten in the ships and left.”

  “So what do we do now?” James asked.

  “We need to get to better medical facilities,” Thunderbolt said, getting to his feet. “Those three need attention, and soon. The facilities at headquarters are the best we can do right now.”

  “The headquarters is in shambles,” Gali argued.

  “And so are we,” Thunderbolt said. “It’s time we fix both.”

  He marched toward the cockpit as quiet conversations filled the room.

  Hayden turned to Lana. “I told you this was going to be a long night.”

  She nodded. “We’re in trouble.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “Something’s still bothering me about all this.”

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t the Vindico attack too?” Hayden said. “And why didn’t they just fire ten missiles at the house and blow us to pieces? It seemed like a halfhearted attack.”

  “You call that halfhearted?” Lana said incredulously. “We were almost killed.”

  “I don’t know, it just seems like they could have done more. James told me he saw one peek in the kitchen. But it was empty. So why fire there? The living room was full.” He shook his head. “We need Emily. She’d have this figured out by now.”

  “And after everything, we’re no closer to finding her either,” Lana said. “My mom must be frantic. She would have seen us on the news. I had to beg her to let me go to your house, you know that. I told her it would be perfectly safe.”

  “She’s not going to like me, is she?” Hayden asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, when this is done, we’ll go for a visit, and I’ll bring some flowers.”

  “That should do it,” Lana replied sarcastically.

  “Well, that, and my irresistible charm—”

  He
was cut off as Thunderbolt walked back into the room. “There was a message left at headquarters,” he said. His eyes fell on the four of them, and then he activated a control panel on the wall. Leni’s mocking voice filled the room. “You had the right idea: you should be hiding. But our former protégés forgot something very important. If you’re going to hide, you have to make sure everyone you love is hidden as well.”

  “No,” Lana whispered.

  Thunderbolt looked at her. “I’m afraid they’ve gone after your families.”

  * * *

  Lana’s eyes blurred with tears as she walked down the front hallway of her house, listening to the heavy silence. The table by the front door had been cast aside, and flowers lay strewn across the carpet, their petals just now beginning to wilt.

  She knelt down and picked up the phone. She imagined her mother snatching if off the base before the phone went careening from her hands. Her father and brother yanked off their feet by some invisible force, clutching at the table as it tipped, the flowers spilling over their hands. All of them exhausted and confused, wearing their pajamas, rudely awoken in the middle of the night.

  The tears poured down her cheeks, and she saw little droplets fall onto the phone. A hand landed on her back.

  “We have to get to the others,” Hayden said, sounding hesitant. “We might be able to catch up with them.”

  Lana nodded and gingerly placed the phone back on the base. Composing herself, she turned around and saw James and Sam watching her. Thunderbolt stood behind them with Deanna and Lyle—they all wore sympathetic expressions.

  “He’s right,” Thunderbolt said. “I’m sorry, Lana.”

  Lana roughly wiped her eyes. “How long do you think they’ve been gone?”

  “Not long. I imagine it’s only been a few hours. The carpet is still damp from the flowers.”

  “They would have had time to get to my house,” Sam whispered. “I’m the closest to Lana. My family is probably already gone.”

  “Which means they’re heading for mine,” James said.

  “Likely,” Thunderbolt agreed. “We’ll go straight there.”

  He hurried outside, and Deanna and Lyle followed.

  Lana held back for a moment, staring at the open door. I did this to them, she thought. I brought this on my family.

  Hayden wrapped her in a hug. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Yeah,” Lana said quietly. “We better go.”

  The Defender sat in the middle of Lana’s street, its white hull gleaming in the early morning sun. She spotted lights in several windows as curious neighbors watched the proceedings. Mrs. Frosia was watching out of her bedroom directly across the street, but as soon as Lana met her gaze, she quickly swung the curtains shut.

  Thunderbolt stood at the base of the ramp, watching her as she hurried onto the ship and sat down on one of the stiff benches with the others.

  “We’ll get them back,” Thunderbolt told her, closing the ramp. “Set course for Cambilsford!” he called, his voice echoing down the corridor.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” Lana whispered.

  They sat in silence for the entire flight.

  * * *

  James thumped the kitchen wall and little flakes of paint and dust dropped to the floor. His family was gone too.

  A half-finished bowl of cereal sat on the counter, and there was bread in the toaster. They’d obviously been taken right in the middle of breakfast.

  “How could we have been so stupid?” he said.

  Lana put her hand on his arm. “I don’t know.”

  Thunderbolt walked into the kitchen, holding a small piece of white paper. “I found this on the front table.” He crumpled the note. “‘Lesson learned. Come and find us.’”

  “That’s Leni,” Hayden muttered. “I can hear him gloating.”

  “That means my family is definitely gone too,” Sam said, and he slowly sat down at the table.

  “We can check,” Thunderbolt replied. “But I’m sure they are.”

  “Where would they go?” Lyle asked.

  “I’m not sure. But we have to be careful,” Thunderbolt said. “We can’t just go blindly searching. Obviously they’ve laid a trap.”

  “We can’t just leave our families with them either,” James argued.

  “No, we can’t,” he sighed, pacing around the kitchen. “At least they’re easy to understand. They want to kill us, plain and simple. They’ve taken your families as bait to make sure you come to them. But then why make us guess?”

  “I agree. They must have gone somewhere we would expect then,” James said. “Like the Baron’s mansion.”

  “Like the mansion,” Thunderbolt agreed. “That would be my best guess too.”

  “I’m sick of that place,” Hayden muttered.

  “We’ll have to go in on foot,” Thunderbolt said, ignoring him. “They’ll have the air defenses up and ready. But they know we have to do that, so they might be waiting in the woods.”

  “And Leni likes to beat people with trees,” Hayden warned.

  “We’ll just have to be ready,” Lyle said. “There are still more of us than them.”

  Thunderbolt scowled. “If only we hadn’t lost the others, we would have easily overwhelmed them. We’re missing seven members now.”

  “And yet it was the other group that kept picking them off,” Hayden said.

  “Leveling the playing field,” Lyle said. “Like when they attacked us earlier. Five of them retreated, even though they might have collapsed the house and finished some more of us off.”

  Lana glanced at Hayden. “Just like you said earlier.”

  “So these other guys just wanted us to face the Vindico on even terms?” James asked. “Why?”

  “To make sure we finish each other off,” Hayden replied. “Or at least weaken both groups to the brink of destruction.”

  “Well, there’s only one thing we can do,” Thunderbolt said. “Attack the mansion and defeat the Vindico as quickly as possible. Sam, Deanna, we have the amplifier, so you might be able to knock them out again. If we can take out the antiaircraft guns on the perimeter, we can get the Defender in, and we’ll have a heavy arsenal at our disposal.”

  He scanned over the kids.

  “We’ll go in as one group. Hayden and Lyle, you’re going to have to contain Leni. You’ve done it before, you can do it again. Sam and Deanna, you need to knock Sliver out of the battle quickly. If you four can win your battles fast enough, the fight will be over. We all know Avaria and the Torturer can do real damage, and the rest of us need to deal with them. We’ll leave someone on the Defender, and I’ll assign Septer and Jada to take out Rono and the Baron.”

  Thunderbolt paused.

  “We have to win this battle as efficiently as we can. If we’re correct, we’ll be attacked again soon after. We’ve taken enough hits. We’ve had family and friends stolen from us, and it’s time to get them back. You are the new League of Heroes, and it’s up to you now.”

  James felt the weight of his words sink in and looked around at the young faces in his kitchen. They were covered in soot and ash, their clothes were filthy, and dark rings circled their eyes from days with little to no sleep. They really looked like the Feros now.

  We’re just a bunch of kids, he thought.

  But he saw the anger and resilience burning in their eyes, and he knew he looked the same. They were ready, and they weren’t going to go down without a fight.

  31

  SAM STEPPED OVER A FALLEN LOG AND SPARED A QUICK GLANCE AT DEANNA. She had the amplifier slung on her back and held a rifle a bit awkwardly with her right hand. Her left arm was still in a sling. She looked at him, and they exchanged a brief nod.

  They had set the Defender down a few kilometers from the mansion, out of range of the antiaircraft guns. Sam and Deanna could immediately sense the terrified minds of the captured families, but nothing else. Either the Vindico weren’t there, or they’d found a way to block themsel
ves from the amplifier.

  Thunderbolt was visible up ahead, picking his way through the dense trees that surrounded the property. Shafts of sunlight spilled in from the sparse winter canopy, but shadows still lay among them, giving the woods an ominous feel. James, Hayden, Lyle, and Lana were all hurrying along behind Thunderbolt, while Meirna, Jada, and Septer were taking the rear. Gali and Noran were guarding the injured members back at headquarters, while Sinio was still in the Defender, awaiting the signal that the guns had been knocked out.

  A branch snapped, and everyone came to a sudden halt.

  “Sorry,” James mumbled.

  The procession continued, and Sam kept his range extended as far as he could, trying to locate the guarded minds of the Vindico. He felt Deanna doing the same. His eyes darted back and forth with every step, looking for any signs of movement.

  Quiet conversation filtered back from the front of the group, and Sam spotted the first antiaircraft gun ahead in the trees. A small clearing was carved out of the forest, and the cannon rose out of the grass. It had a circular, steel-plated base, and the enormous barrel jutted out of the top, sitting on what looked like a swivel mount.

  The group stepped into the clearing and spread out around the weapon.

  “Hayden and Lyle,” Thunderbolt said quietly.

  They both stepped forward and extended their hands. The massive, reinforced barrel wrenched to the side, and the sound of shrieking metal echoed off into the distance. Sam nervously hoisted his rifle and stared into the trees, expecting the Vindico to burst out at any moment.

  “One down,” Thunderbolt said. “One more on this side and the Defender can get in safely.”

  They plunged back into the forest and picked up their pace. Sam broke into a light jog to keep up and almost stumbled into a divot. Careful now, Deanna said. Sam smiled and continued on. After a few more minutes of weaving through the trees, they emerged into another grassy clearing, where a second massive cannon was pointed at the sky.

  Hayden and Lyle again twisted the barrel, and Thunderbolt took a small device off his belt. “Thunderbolt to the Defender. All clear.” He waited for a moment, but there was no response. Frowning, he put it to his mouth again. “Come in, Defender.”