by Jade Kerrion
Light conceded to shadow as hulking figures loomed over Danyael. Fighting to stay conscious, Danyael struggled up on one elbow and glanced over his shoulder. They're shielding me.
Scar roared, the sound reverberating through the arena. Emotions transformed in mid-breath. The roar shredded the innocent playfulness and turned children into animals. A super soldier clambered onto the shoulders of one of his comrades and then leapt high. He snagged the wings of a passing drone and dragged it down. Others jumped in. With bare hands and brute strength, they pounded the drone into the dust, denting steel, ripping panels, and shredding wires. The enemy smashed, they howled their victory and vengeance, their protruding jaws jutting toward the ceiling.
Dazed, Danyael sat up. Beyond the wall of armored super soldiers surrounding him, the play date morphed into mass destruction. One after another, drones were dragged from the air and mangled.
Before Danyael could catch his breath, the fight was over. Only then did Scar uncoil from his protective crouch over Danyael. The super soldier stalked across the arena to another soldier who, uncharacteristically, cowered. Danyael recognized the latter as the soldier who had collided with him, inadvertently throwing Danyael into the line of fire.
Scar's heavy arm swung back.
"No!" Danyael shouted.
Scar looked over his shoulder at Danyael.
With help from another super soldier, Danyael pushed to his feet. His back felt as though it were on fire. He gritted his teeth and fought to maintain an even tone. "It's all right. I'm fine."
Scar's eyes narrowed. Danyael recognized his derisive snort as mocking disbelief. Scar pulled his arm back further, prepared to swing.
Danyael had enough violence for one day. His empathic powers flashed, drenching the scalding anger and extinguishing its flame.
As one, the super soldiers exhaled slowly and heavily. Their broad shoulders relaxed, and the scowls on their faces faded. Scar lowered his arm and stepped away from the still-cringing soldier.
Crisis averted. Damn, that was too close. Danyael looked around at the crushed metal and wondered if he was not still faced with a disaster. Didn't those drones cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each?
The general's voice came over the intercom. "Danyael, send them back to their barracks."
"We're done for the day." Danyael pointed at the door that led to the barracks. "Go get some rest."
The soldiers turned away from him and strode to the door. Scar was the last to leave after a lingering backward glance at Danyael.
No sooner had the door closed than Danyael dropped to his hands and knees, succumbing to the pain he had not dared to reveal to the super soldiers. He sucked in jagged gasps of air, trying to breathe through the burning sensation that swamped his upper body. Dimly he heard another door open and the sound of others running toward him.
"Relax, I've got you." Carson helped Danyael to his feet and to a chair. He turned the chair around so that Danyael could straddle it and rest his arms across its back. "Let's get your shirt off."
With effort, Danyael shrugged off his shirt. He hissed when Carson touched his back.
Carson grunted. "You're lucky, the pellets didn't break skin, but your back muscles are already starting to swell. You'll be black and blue by tomorrow. I'll get some ice packs, see if we can keep the inflammation down. Do you want something for the pain?"
"No." His head felt heavy, and he slumped forward, dropping his head to rest on his arms.
The general's voice cut through the haze of pain. "What the hell happened out there?"
Danyael looked up, an apology on his lips, but then realized that the general was not addressing him.
General Howard paced among the ruined drones and spun around to glare at his two aides. "Whoever calculated the margin of error on those drones was wrong. Double it. Triple it. I don't want any of those drones firing on anything when Danyael is within its sight." His bright blue gaze fell on Danyael. "How are you doing? Those pellets were designed for the super soldiers; we wanted them to feel the impact through their body armor and thick hides. The pellets certainly weren't intended for people."
"I'll be all right. I...just need to catch my breath."
"You're getting fitted for body armor tomorrow," the general said. "Not open to negotiation," he added as Danyael opened his mouth to point out that he was awkward enough on a crutch; body armor would only hamper his movement further.
"Does he even need to be in the middle of it all?" Reyes asked. "It's crazy. You can't send a cripple into battle. If there's a problem, he can't even run away."
The general locked his hands behind his back and turned so that he could look at both Reyes and Danyael. He looked pleased with himself. "The 'cripple' part won't be an issue for much longer, isn't that right, Carson?"
The doctor nodded. "That's right. In fact, Danyael, I'll need fresh x-rays of your leg. I have old ones on file, but Brian Porter---he's an orthopedic surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital, probably one of the top in the country---has asked for current x-rays, and photographs too."
Danyael's brow furrowed in confusion. "What for?"
"Surgery." Carson's thin lips pressed into a smile. "The general managed to squeeze enough out of his budget to set up a operating room. The equipment arrived yesterday."
"Wait." Danyael shook his head. "What do you mean by surgery? For whom? Me?"
"Do you know anyone else around here who needs surgery? Of course, you."
"But I thought---"
"We still can't take you to the Army Medical Center, but the general called in a few favors, and Brian Porter finally agreed to come down to operate on your leg. Of course, we needed to set up an operating room for him to work in, and that effort posed its own set of hurdles. Anyway, we're all set, and your surgery is scheduled for a week from today."
"Why?"
Carson rolled his eyes. "You ask the strangest questions. Because you need surgery; is that a good enough answer?"
"No, I meant why..." Danyael's gaze shifted to the general. "Why are you going through all this trouble?"
The general said nothing, deferring to the doctor with an arched brow.
Carson sighed heavily. "Look, you're pretty adept with that crutch, so don't take this personally, but Reyes is right. There is no place on the battlefield for a cripple. Sometimes, you're just going to have to move fast, even if you're surrounded by an army of super soldiers. The general said he wouldn't let you get anywhere near a real battle until your leg was fixed; it would be too dangerous for you."
"When did he say this?"
"Two months ago, shortly after you started working with the super soldiers. It's just taken a while to find the money we needed for the operating room. Budget issues, you know."
Danyael looked back at the general. "But you never said anything to me."
The general spoke up. "We didn't want to get your hopes up. There were too many unknowns. Porter didn't even confirm until yesterday."
"At any rate, next Tuesday, you'll be as good as new," Carson continued. "You'll still need a few months of physical therapy to rebuild your strength and agility, but we can burn the crutch. Maybe have a celebratory Fourth of July bonfire, eh? Roast some marshmallows over it."
Danyael turned his face away and blinked back the tears. He would walk again, without pain. When he thought he could keep his voice steady, he looked up at the general. "Thank you."
"My pleasure," the general said, acknowledging Danyael's gratitude as simply as Danyael had expressed it. His gaze flashed around the arena, littered with damaged drones. "Now this I did not expect. What changed?"
"I got hurt."
"And you lost control of them?"
Danyael shook his head. "I didn't try to control them. I wanted to see what they would do without any empathic redirection. They were playing."
The general chuckled without humor. "It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt?"
"Apparently. The pellets didn't do enough again
st them to escalate the stakes. I was the weak link in the chain, and when I went down---"
"But why did they care? Do they consider you one of them?"
That was the question at the heart of the matter. Danyael looked away, said nothing.
The general shook his head. "It can't possibly be that simple, Danyael."
Danyael laughed, the sound low and bitter. "It isn't simple. Try living with the guilt of emotionally connecting with children so that they'll follow you without question and fight to the death for you. Trust me, it isn't easy."
Reyes looked troubled. "Did you know they would fight to protect you?"
"No, I came into the arena hoping to find an answer on how to direct them in a battle. I think we have it."
Reyes frowned. "Putting yourself directly in harm's way is not the answer."
"There is no other way. They're not going to listen to orders." Danyael turned to the general. "If you're trying to minimize the cost of human lives in battle, it doesn't get cheaper than this."
The general dragged his hand over his face. "I didn't expect you to turn that argument against me."
Reyes grabbed Danyael's arm. "I can't accept that you're prepared to die for this."
Danyael pushed to his feet, clenching his teeth against the gasp of pain. "The time to hesitate is before setting things in motion, and I spent months agonizing over my decision. I promised to train the super soldier army. The cost is whatever it is; I can't help that."
Reyes shook his head. He looked pained; his brown eyes were anguished. "You're not part of the military. No one can make you risk your life for your country, let alone for some crazy experimental program."
"I'm not part of the military, but my future is tied to the assault group." He glanced up when Amanda entered the arena. She stood near the entryway and did not close the distance. Her expression was deliberately blank; he could recognize injured professional pride.
He limped toward her. "I'm sorry."
She cast a quick glance at the general, as if trying to assess her superior officer's mood, and then she lifted her chin. "I could have handled it."
"You have too many memories from your past encounters with the super soldiers. They'll respond to your emotions, to your fear. I can't let you take that risk."
"Can't? I'm part of the assault group. It is my duty to take risks for this country, not yours."
"Enough." The general's voice was quiet but firm. "Danyael is a member of the assault group and---"
One of the general's aides burst into the arena. He skidded to a stop, breathing hard. "General, Sakti is attacking Pelican Bay State Prison."
The general looked up sharply. "Right now?"
"Yes. The media's got a live feed. This way."
The general hurried out with Amanda and his aides. Danyael followed slowly, hampered by his crutch and his aching back. Reyes hovered close. "Go ahead," Danyael told Reyes. "I'll catch up."
Reyes's face was pale, his eyes stricken. "I'll keep you company."
Danyael subtly probed the depths of Reyes's emotions. The older man's usually formidable psychic shields were in tatters, and his initial distress over Danyael's willingness to put himself in harm's way had been surpassed by fear of something else, something Danyael could not define.
By the time they arrived at the command center, soldiers had crowded around a large screen. Danyael could hardly make out anything on the screen. Smoke and dust obscured most of the live camera footage. Shouts and screams were unintelligible. "Is this the footage from the prison?" Danyael asked.
"Yes." A soldier nodded, his attention focused on the screen. Admiration and respect infused his voice. "It's a live media feed from the supermax mutant sector at the Pelican Bay State Prison. They're doing it again. They're freeing mutants."
For a brief moment, two figures appeared on the screen, scuffling. One wore the uniform of a prison guard, the other a pair of black pants and a shirt emblazoned with a blood-red imprint of the all-seeing eye, Sakti's emblem. Faces were scarcely visible, but the desperate ferocity of their struggle spoke for itself. Several bricks swept into view, under the apparent control of a telekinetic, and smashed into the prison guard. Danyael winced when he heard bones snap under the impact. The quiet cheer that rose around the room was abruptly hushed when the general looked around.
The general looked back at the screen. Suddenly his emotions flared. Shock, dismay, and anger raced in quick succession across his emotional spectrum, but his face betrayed nothing. Danyael turned to the screen. What had triggered the general's extreme reaction? The scuffle over, the triumphant Sakti terrorist had moved on, quickly disappearing out of the limited camera range.
As far as Danyael could tell, there had been nothing extraordinary or even interesting in the camera footage. He had expected the outcome. Mutants proliferated Sakti's ranks; a human prison guard would not have been able to win that fight under any circumstances, so why had the general reacted the way he did, and why were Reyes's emotions pulsing with nervous guilt?
~*~
Later that evening, in the privacy of his suite, Danyael picked up the computer tablet the Mutant Assault Group had given him. The tablet allowed him to watch network and cable media channels, access the Internet, and---security clearance permitting---search the Mutant Assault Group mainframe.
He did not have the required security clearance, but he had no intention of accessing the mainframe. Instead he searched the Internet for the media clip of the live footage of Sakti's attack on Pelican Bay State Prison.
Something captured in the live footage had upset the general. Danyael had to find it. He found the media clip easily and played it, but several passes through the media clip yielded nothing. Frustrated, Danyael tried again, viewing the media clip frame by frame. Two men fought. In the tussle, the prison guard ripped the terrorist's facemask, before the terrorist, presumably a telekinetic, disabled the prison guard with a hail of bricks and then walked away.
No, wait.
Danyael leaned forward. For a split second, the smoke wafted away to present an unobstructed view of the man's face. Danyael frowned. He recognized that face. It was not a face he knew well and could not put a name to it, but he had seen it once before. Where?
He closed his eyes and drove his emotions down. In the silence of his mind, memories surfaced. Images and sounds emerged with crystal clarity. The four walls of his suite faded into the moonlit woods in Lucien's Aspen estate. He could feel the icy fingers of the night air against his face and the wet chill of the snow seeping through his sneakers. In his memories, Reyes stood beside him, but the old man's face was obscured in shadows as men emerged out of the darkness of the woods.
The spotlight in his memories focused on the face of a young man in military fatigues. "I'm glad we got to you in time," the man had said to Danyael. The soldier raised his voice slightly as he issued orders to his team. "Fan out. There are at least three teams of enforcers in the area. I want you to misdirect them and keep them disoriented until we can get Danyael to safety."
Danyael blinked hard. The images of the forest rushed away, and he was once again in his suite, physically safe and warm, but mentally in turmoil. He sank into the couch and closed his eyes but could not dismiss the memory of the man's face.
The young man, the leader of the Mutant Assault Group team who had saved him from the enforcers, was the same man who had worn Sakti's emblem to storm the mutant sector at the Pelican Bay State Prison.
~*~
Miriya raced barefoot down the corridors of the Mutant Affairs Council headquarters and flung open the door of Xin's suite.
The clone looked up from her ever-present computers and arched an eyebrow. "Is something the matter?"
"Danyael---" Miriya gasped, a hand pressed against her chest. "Damn, I am out of shape. Danyael's blocking me. Deliberately."
"What?"
"Something's upset him, and he's trying to keep it from me."
"Really?" Xin uncoiled from her chai
r. "Come in and close the door, Miriya. I think you need something to steady your nerves. I'll get---"
Miriya slammed the door shut. "I am not nervous, damn it. Will you just listen to me? Something's very wrong. There's this face he keeps seeing---"
Xin pulled something out of the mini-fridge and turned to face Miriya. "Mint chocolate chip or cookies and cream?"
In spite of herself, Miriya laughed. "Other people offer alcohol. You offer ice cream?"
"I'm not much of a drinker. Ancient Chinese women aren't necessarily any better than modern Chinese women at processing alcohol. Which one do you want?"
"Mint chocolate chip."
Miriya managed to snag the flying spoon, but the pint-sized carton of ice cream hit the carpet. "Damn it."
"There's a reason I didn't take the cover off. Your reflexes aren't that hot." Xin rejoined Miriya in the living room. She sat across from the telepath and dug into her own carton of ice cream. "So, you were saying something about a face. Can you sketch it out?"
Miriya rolled her eyes. "I can't draw a stick figure, but I can do this." She tossed the image directly into Xin's mind.
Xin shrugged. "I've never seen him before. Danyael's hard to upset...and coincidentally or perhaps not, Sakti attacked Pelican Bay State Prison today." She set aside her carton of ice cream and reached for her tablet. "I'll bet Danyael saw this person on the live footage taken at Pelican Bay." Talking as she worked, she tapped a few keys to project the screen of her tablet onto the large screen in the living room. "Here is the media clip from Pelican Bay. This facial recognition program will identify all frames where faces are visible and then match those faces against federal databases."
Miriya leaned forward, watching in silence as the screen sectioned to accommodate several small images of visible faces in the media clip. The images were grainy. Faces were contorted with fear and panic and frequently obscured by smoke from the burning prison. "Those pictures are crap," Miriya complained. "You're not going to get anything out of them."
