Reluctantly, Connor held out his arm. In the flimsy greenish-blue hospital gown, there was hardly any sleeve to push up before the dye was injected.
Next, Connor was led to the MRI machine itself. Connor allowed himself to be inserted into an extremely narrow tube, barely wider than his body. A brace was fitted around his head, immobilizing it. Connor was surprised; the brace didn’t hurt nearly as bad as it looked. He was grateful that he had never suffered from claustrophobia, since between the brace and the extreme narrowness of the machine, it was essentially impossible to move. A loud clanging or banging noise surrounded him as the magnetic resonance imaging was completed.
Afterward, Connor sat through the drawing of quite a bit of blood for tests. Finally, they returned him to the same interrogation chamber where he had begun. The doctor left him there alone. His street clothes were gone from the table where he’d left them; in their place were khaki pants and a shirt, with some heavy, ugly black shoes. He put them on.
Once again, Connor had no way of knowing how much time passed while he waited. Eventually, Flake’s big-nosed face reappeared.
“Mr. Merritt, Doctor Kale has gone through your test results with me.”
Connor remained silent.
Flake continued, “Your MRI shows super high activity in the frontal lobes.”
Connor asked, “What does that mean, exactly?”
Flake said, “It's one of the main commonalities in all the subjects we've tested with abnormal properties.”
“Wait… I knew I wasn't the only one! You keep letting stuff slip about other cases like this,” Connor said.
She nodded. “Correct. I'm the lead investigator for a special unit created to study this phenomenon. You are the fifth subject we've tested. In all cases, in addition to some abnormalities that show up in blood tests, you all demonstrate frontal lobe activity so high it's off the charts.”
Connor asked, “Five?”
She nodded. “They don't all have the same abnormal property as you, obviously. We have one who can walk on water, one who seems to exert some kind of influence over the weather, one who has some kind of ability to heal people, and we never did find a way to hold the girl who teleports. She's out there somewhere but how are you supposed to keep a person like that in one place?”
The girl who teleports… Connor's mind immediately went to the beautiful redheaded girl – Ms. Wales - who had mysteriously appeared in his cell with the old man.
But of course he said nothing of that. Instead he asked, “And they're all here? In this facility I mean?”
“Indeed, Mr. Merritt. Except Anna, as I said.”
She has a first name!
Flake was still talking. “We don't understand what's going on, but the federal government is determined to find out. Every time we get word of a new abnormal occurrence like this, my unit responds and brings the person involved here. That, of course, is how we found you. And all of you show the same MRI results.”
“There's one more test we need to run on you,” Flake concluded.
Connor looked at her suspiciously and asked, “What's that?”
“We're going to shoot you.”
He stared at her. Her sense of humor was obviously underdeveloped if she thought that was a funny joke.
He said, “Yeah, right.”
Flake said, “Well, technically it's not like Doctor Kale or I will pull the trigger. We'll have a machine do that.”
“Lady, this joke isn't funny.”
“It's no joke, Mr. Merritt. The MRI and blood tests showed exactly what we've seen in other cases like yours. The last step necessary to be sure is to test the abnormal property in practical application. In your case, the way to do that is to shoot you.”
“What?”
“We believe there's something about your skin that repels bullets. This is the only way to be sure,” Flake replied.
Connor's eyes were so wide it hurt as he yelled, “Are you crazy? Shoot me? This is nuts!”
“We've calibrated the test rig very carefully. This won't be a fatal wound even if we're wrong about you. Relax, Mr. Merritt. You're in a very advanced medical facility here.”
He backed up against the far wall of the room, a wild look in his eyes. Connor held his hands up in front him.
He said “You can't really be serious!”
Flake said, “Mr. Merritt, please calm down. Don't you remember the night at the convenience store? You've been through this once before and didn't suffer any ill effects at all. In every single other subject, when we did the practical application test, their abnormal property functioned exactly as expected. And even if we're wrong, more than 80 percent of people who get shot with handguns survive, and we're going to control the situation better than most. There's no need to fly off the handle.”
“You just told me you want to shoot me, and then you tell me not to go off the handle? No way. No way! I don't care what I signed; I'm not letting you shoot me.”
She held her hands open, as if to show she had nothing to hide. “Be reasonable, Mr. Merritt. You signed a consent form for this. And even if you didn't, Executive Order 15303 gives us the authority to test all subjects with abnormal abilities with or without their permission. We're going to run the test.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it!”
Flake sighed. “Very well.” She got up and opened the door to the interrogation room, waving.
Three soldiers entered. At least, Connor assumed they were soldiers from the camouflage fatigues, the bulky bulletproof armor, and the velcroed-on badges all over their chests and arms. They made right for him, and the lead one reached for Connor's shoulder.
That was a mistake.
Connor blocked the hand away, kicked twice to the groin with his right leg, stepped to the right and drove another solid kick with his left leg into the soldier's ribs. Any normal man would have been bent over and vomiting, but the body armor protected his target's groin and torso, so the soldier just fell backwards.
The other two soldiers immediately rushed him. Having seen that their armor made them immune to the normal soft targets on a human body, Connor threw a high crescent kick at one's head, knocking him down.
The third soldier tackled Connor and dragged him down to the ground. On his back, wedged against the wall, it was hard to move his arms. Connor managed to get the left one free to poke the soldier in the throat hard enough to make him draw back, but it was too late. The other two were back on their feet and dog-piling on to hold him down.
One got him in a chokehold while another one bent his wrist backwards and up to immobilize his arm while they put on the cuffs. And if Connor had thought the “bulletproof” theory was crazy before, his immobilization by the soldiers gave him plenty of confirmation that he was right. That hold on his wrist hurt just as bad as he would have expected.
Flake no longer spoke to Connor. She simply gave directions to the soldiers.
“Take him to range number nine,” she said. “It’s been prepared for this.”
Connor jerked and struggled against the soldiers as much as he could. But handcuffed, the amount of resistance he could muster wasn’t very much. They got tired of listening to him shout and duct-taped his mouth.
Range number nine turned out to be an indoor place, with bright florescent lights along the ceiling and a giant fan and air circulation system along the roof. At the far end of the room, the ceiling sloped down and the floor sloped up into a catch designed to control the ricochet of bullets to make sure they didn’t come back in the wrong direction.
Dr. Kale and several other people in white lab coats and scrubs stood nearby. They had a gurney ready for him, with a cooler underneath it. An IV frame stood at the ready.
There was a steel frame in front of the catch. After dragging him to it, the soldiers began to strap Connor in very tightly. His arms were held hanging down at his sides, and a massive steel bucket – almost like a medieval knight’s helmet, but with no eye slot – was lowere
d into place over his head. Through it, Connor could still hear Maven Flake’s voice.
“I’m sorry to have to strap you down so tight, Mr. Merritt,” she said, “but you seem to be determined to struggle. This really would be easier if you’d cooperate. We want to be very precise in the point we aim for, to avoid damaging any organs or major arteries in case this doesn’t go as I expect. We could have more certainty about where the bullet would hit if you would stand still.”
Connor tried to shout, “Are you insane?” but the duct tape and the helmet made sure nothing more than formless noises came out. The idea of holding perfectly still while he knew someone was preparing to shoot him was completely inconceivable to him. Even if he was completely cooperating with their insane test, he didn’t think his body’s instinctive response would allow him to stop struggling.
And then, looking out of the open base of the helmet, he saw a tiny little point of laser light appear on his chest. It was a laser site.
His scream of terror was muffled but still loud.
The dot shifted over toward his right side and out of the field of vision where he could easily see it.
“We’re aiming for your upper arm, Mr. Merritt. This weapon is sighted in very precisely for this distance, and it’s not being operated by a human, so there’s no probability of the point of aim wobbling. It’s locked in a stand with a machine to set off the trigger: one single shot at a point on your body where we can shoot you without serious injury.”
He tried to shout, “Stop!”
Flake replied, “Mr. Merritt, you need to remember that you are immune to bullets. I have performed practical application tests on five different subjects with frontal lobe MRI and blood test results like yours and in all five cases the test has worked exactly as expected. I threw a young man who couldn’t swim into a pool and watched him walk across it. I locked a girl who could teleport into a cell, just like you’ve been in for most of the day, and came back to find her gone. I’m telling you, I know what I’m doing. Relax. I’m not a murderer. If I thought there was any chance that you would die from this test I would not perform it.”
After she said that, Connor heard Flake and the soldiers walking away.
He kept shouting and struggling. If there was any rational case that would persuade a man to stand still and take a bullet, Connor didn’t know what it was but it certainly didn’t begin with, “You are immune to bullets.” That just wasn’t rational.
“Range is clear,” Flake announced her voice projected over a loudspeaker.
Connor pulled desperately at his restraints, trying to get free.
“Firing in three,” she began.
“Please!” was audible from Connor.
“Two!”
As it had the last time he faced a gun, the barely-remembered process of prayer from his middle school days came back to Connor. Though he couldn’t make himself heard aloud, in his head he kept repeating, “Help me God. Help me God.”
The ripping sound of automatic weapons fire was nothing at all like the single, precision shot that Flake had described.
CHAPTER FOUR
Connor’s ears were filled with shouting, the gunshots, and the wounded cries of a pitched battle. He gave an involuntary scream, muffled under the gag over his mouth. His muscles jerked in panicked spasms at the restraints as the shooting went on and on and on.
One voice yelled, “Who the–”
Gunshots interrupted.
Another voice yelled, “Stop them!”
Connor recognized the sounds of physical combat, interspersed with an occasional weapon discharging. Men were fighting. Guns were being fired. People were obviously being hurt very bad, based on the screams. Just when he thought fear would overwhelm him completely, Connor heard the most encouraging sound he could imagine.
“There he is!”
Connor almost cried when he heard that. Linc! His precious, wonderful roommate Lincoln Blunt. In all this madness, finally something normal.
“I told you he was here!” Lincoln shouted.
The sounds of combat gradually died down. Soon all that was left were moans and cries of wounded men.
“He’s the last one,” said an unknown voice. “Let’s get him and get out.”
Connor felt his restraints being untied. The helmet was lifted off his head. The gag removed. Blinking at the sudden exposure to light again, he immediately saw Linc.
“Thank God you’re here man.”
His roommate replied, “Don’t thank God. Thank Sebastian.”
He pointed at a blond man a few years older, wearing the stubble of a beard on his strong jaw. There was a crowd of people around Connor, most of them in their late teens or early 20s. Some were looking at Connor, others were undoing his restraints. Some of them carried guns and of those some even still had wisps of gunpowder smoke lingering around the barrel.
Behind them, several soldiers and other government personnel lay on the ground, bleeding. Some were groaning and still moving, others weren’t. Some young people moved among the wounded and dead soldiers, collecting weapons. Maven Flake was lying there, one of those still alive. She held a hand over her thigh, which was bleeding. Connor looked away from her when he saw her eyes. She was expressing a lot of anger without speaking a word.
One girl from the crowd turned to walk toward one of the wounded. She knelt down beside him and was about to touch him with her outstretched arm.
The man Linc had identified as Sebastian shouted, “Stop!”
The girl looked back at him, confused. Her hair was somewhere between brown and red. She was tall and muscular, like someone who could have done well at basketball or volleyball.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I can–”
“Are you a Healer?” the young man asked.
“A hea… well, yes, I guess. I can touch people, and…”
“And their wounds are healed, yes. You’re not the only one. But think about this: that man is a soldier. His job is to use force to ensure that you don’t leave here. Why do you want to get him back up?”
She blinked in surprise. “Well, I mean… he’s hurt. Look at him.”
Indeed, the soldier was grimacing as he squeezed his right hand over his left bicep.
“Of course he is. But this is an American military base. Once we leave, he’ll have access to the best of modern medicine. He’ll be fine. But if you heal him now, he’ll try to stop us from leaving. We can’t have that. Don’t touch him.”
Reluctantly, the girl stood up, her gaze flitting back and forth between the wounded man and Sebastian.
As the crowd of people around him finished untying him, Connor turned his head away from the battlefield. Whatever had happened here had been violent and tragic. He sympathized with the girl – the one who said she could heal people. He was glad to be rescued but was there not some gentler way?
As soon as Connor’s right hand was free from the restraints, the blond man offered to shake hands.
“Sebastian Crest,” he said, with a smile that looked more like a smirk. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Once before, Connor had turned down an offer to leave this facility, and as a result he had nearly been shot. He was not about to make the same mistake twice. As Sebastian turned and strode briskly for the door out of range number nine, the whole group of young people followed him. Some, like Connor, were dressed in government-issued khaki uniforms. Others wore black fatigues and black boots. Connor went with them, falling in toward the back of the group.
But he wasn’t at the very back. Behind him came the girl with the auburn hair.
Connor heard her whisper “Please don’t prove me wrong.”
She whispered something else, but Connor couldn’t make out the words.
He looked back just in time to see her rising from a kneeling position, and the soldier staring in amazement at his arm.
Connor snapped his eyes forward again, not wanting to get in the middle of the conflict.
&nbs
p; Sebastian was a scrawny man. Connor thought he had never seen the inside of a gym. He wore boots that should have thudded as he walked, except that the young man walked with a grace that made hardly any sound. Like the others in his group, he wore a facsimile of military fatigues except that they were all black. His blonde hair was cut short into a flat top. Sebastian pulled the door to the range open so softly that someone else had to grab it and open it wider for the rest of the party to get through.
As they went out, Connor recognized the facility’s main hall from when he had been led up and down it for tests. Powder burns and some stains that looked like blood showed that a battle had gone on here as Sebastian and his people had barged in to set him free. Sebastian spoke as they walked.
“We call ourselves The Legion,” he said. “We’re people who have something radically different about us. The feds call it ‘abnormal abilities.’ The rest of the world would say ‘powers’ or something like that. We don’t have a real name for it. We’re still trying to learn how it works. We just know that more and more people like us are turning up. Most of them are in the last of their teen years or are in their early twenties. You’re one of them.”
Sebastian went on, “Obviously, you’re locked in this federal facility because you’ve developed unusual abilities or powers. The government is trying to round up everyone like that. They hunt us. They track us. But now the tables have turned. This was our first counterstrike. Now we hunt them. It’s not one-sided anymore. Now it’s real war.”
He went on, “They're afraid of us. They're afraid of power they can't control. Rightly so. People who can do what we can do can’t be governed by fools who call themselves leaders in Washington D.C. It’s the other way around. People who have abilities like this will rule the world.
“If I were them, I’d try to round me up too. If they don’t, I’ll be the one rounding them up. The Legion are the ones who refuse to be rounded up.”
Connor thought of the red-haired girl – Anna Wales – and the old man who was with her. But you’re not quite the only ones…
Sons of Thunder Page 3
