Fire and Thunder

by Bowen Greenwood

  “We learned as much from several of the people we’ve caught and interrogated. Overrunning that cave you lived in hauled in a treasure trove of information. Try harder.”

  “Well, you know Drake Tesla. You had him in custody once before, too. He hates me. I mean, he really, really hates me. And I’m just thinking, what if he wants to kill me so badly that he’s willing to die for it?”

  Maven Flake nodded slowly, chewed on her lower lip, and then opened her mouth to speak.

  Before she could get a word out, three girls around Pitch’s age materialized in the room.

  Flake swore. The two soldiers blinked a couple times before moving the carbines they held across their chests.

  Pitch recognized Kila’s curly brown hair as she swept her leg out low to catch one of the soldiers behind his calves. She drove an open palm into his chest at the same time and shoved, and he fell to the ground before he could get his hand on the pistol grip of his gun.

  “Get him out!” she yelled, then swept up the gun and pointed it at the other soldier before adding, “Move and I’ll shoot!”

  Kila knew nothing about guns, though. Her finger wasn’t even on the trigger when the other soldier used his barrel to bat hers to the side. He brought it back in to aim at her, but Kila ducked before he could aim and punched him hard in the groin. The soldier groaned and doubled over.

  Pitch watched her fight, remembering their Chojin Ken training together. He knew the way to beat her. Don’t think about your strikes at all. Don’t plan. Throw the punch or kick the moment it crosses your mind. If you tried to get out two or three steps ahead, her ability to see the future would show her what you planned to do.

  The soldiers couldn’t possibly know the same thing.

  As if to prove the point, Kila’s fist barely pulled back from the second soldier when she shouted, “Renee! Watch out!”

  Too late. Maven Flake had a pistol out and wrapped her arm around Renee’s neck. She held the gun to the young woman’s temple.

  “Everyone freeze, or I blow her head off!”

  Flake floated helplessly into the air.

  Her finger pulled involuntarily off the trigger of her gun, until she dropped it loudly to the steel floor. Both soldiers followed her into the air, flailing madly. Their M-4s stayed down on the ground.

  The restraints around Pitch’s arms and legs worked themselves loose and dropped to the floor. He stood up with a smile.

  As they all three hung helplessly in the air, floating and weaponless, he grinned up at them.

  “It’s just like you said, Ms. Flake. Holding a man who can move objects with his mind poses a challenge.”

  Her reply sparked with profanity, but the last two sentences were, “Don’t think this is over. I’ll find you again!”

  Instead of replying, Pitch walked over to Anna and said, “Can we leave?”

  She took his hand. Renee laid a hand on her shoulder, and Kila did the same thing while standing close enough to Pitch to give him a slight hug from the back. Anna began to pray, but Pitch interrupted her.

  “You’re wrong, Ms. Flake. People do change, with God’s help. If they didn’t, I’d knock the wall down as we left.”

  With that, Anna asked the Lord to take them out of the cell, and they disappeared. Since she hadn’t specified a destination, Anna felt mildly surprised when they wound up back in the parking lot at the Star of Fortune. Not very surprised, though. As she thought about it, everything seemed to revolve around this place. Whatever was going on, it was going on here.

  Outside the garage, the crowd at the coffee shop now included far fewer people. A few technicians from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office were still processing evidence. It looked like most of the AAA Agents were gone. Most of the civilian onlookers had moved on to more promising locales. The show was over. Or so they thought.

  Renee asked, “Pitch, what were you saying to Flake when we came in? Something about radioactivity?”

  He finished taking in the surroundings and answered, “Yeah. Flake says there’s someone new. Someone with a gift that’s like a nuclear bomb. She thinks he’s out there, waiting to go off and destroy the whole city of Las Vegas.”

  “What do you think? Do you believe her?”

  He met Renee’s eyes, and then looked over to Kila. He said, “I think it’s Drake.”

  Kila blurted out, “What? Drake? But Pitch! His power’s just fire; that’s not the same thing.”

  “I know, but you know how the Legion thinks. Want it bad enough. Be willing to sacrifice.”

  “But we’ve been over this before Pitch. That’s the old way of thinking. Gifts come from God, not from what Legion thinks they come from.”

  “I know, Kila. But Drake’s so angry. I mean, I knew he didn’t like me, but until I saw his face in the coffee shop today, I had no idea. He hates me Kila.”

  “Oh Pitch!” She walked over to him and took his hand in both of hers. She looked into his eyes. “You can’t be surprised.”

  He turned away, pulling his hand out of hers. “I know why he hates me. Better than you do.”

  The words stung, and she backed away. Pitch noticed and tried to undo it.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just can’t help wondering. What if he wants me dead so bad, he’s willing to die for it? A power like an atomic bomb would do that, wouldn’t it? What if his desire to kill me got so huge, his power to throw fire became a different, far worse kind of heat?”

  Pitch looked away from the girls before he continued.

  “Seeing Drake again brought it all back full force. I’ve never talked about it with you guys — all the stuff I did when I was in the Legion. Connor just invited me in without ever asking if I deserved it. Now I’m afraid to talk about it. I can’t stand what you girls will think of me if you know the truth.”

  “You know it won’t change my mind about being your friend, Aaron.” Kila spoke his name, as a way to remind him how close they were. She didn’t think anyone else in the Sons of Thunder even knew his name. Only someone who had been right there with him through everything that happened in the Legion days would know it.

  He nodded at Kila, but it was Anna who spoke next.

  “You don’t have to say a word, Pitch. Don’t share anything you don’t want to share. We love you. You’re one of us now. Whatever you did back then, it’s gone. Forgiven. That’s what God does.”

  He nodded again.

  Renee stepped up to him and took his hand. “Kila was the reason we came looking for you. She told us about Drake and that he hated you. Pitch, forgiveness heals relationships. Drake isn’t your enemy. Anger is. Revenge is.

  “You have the ultimate weapon against anger and revenge. We Christians, we like to hide behind big words, like repentance and confession. Sometimes, we act like the number of syllables tells you how powerful it is, but that’s not true. In reality, it’s very simple. Confessing means we face the truth about what happened. Repentance means we’re determined never to let it happen again. I will love you without regard to whatever you tell us about you and Drake — no matter how much or how little. But if you do want to talk about it, that’s an important part of facing the truth.”

  “I didn’t know what to do, way back then. Sebastian said kill her, and Sebastian was in charge of everything. He ruled the Legion; he made all the laws. I felt awful about the idea of killing her, but I was afraid to disobey.

  “That’s probably why I screwed it up. I kept looking over the cliff, trying to tell myself it would be OK. I was trying to convince myself that it wasn’t really high enough to kill her and maybe she’d hit the ground and live. Then I could tell Sebastian I did what he said but maybe I wouldn’t be a murderer.”

  All the girls watched him intently as Pitch talked. Renee, the oldest, stared hardest of all.

  “I was paying so much attention to the surroundings, I didn’t think about holding her hard enough. She got loose. We fought. And in the course of fighting, she fell over the e
dge. That’s not murder, right? She was trying as hard to kill me as I was trying to kill her. I know it’s my fault. I wish I hadn’t done it. I’d give anything to have it to do over again. But once it came down to it, I didn’t have time to think. That’s not unforgivable, is it?”

  Renee wrapped her arms around him and pulled his head down to her shoulder.

  “It’s not, Pitch. Nothing is unforgivable. Drake will have to make his own choice about forgiving you but for us it’s no choice at all. You’re forgiven.”

  Chapter 20

  Terri’s mind was a satellite in decaying orbit, spiraling in, pulled ever harder by the gravity of her professional life. She should have helped the agents arrest Drake, rather than helped him get away. She should have checked in, rather than remaining in hiding. She didn’t think Drake was the human atomic bomb, which meant that whoever really did have that power was still out there.

  The thoughts kept coming, but her actions refused to follow suit. Instead of returning to work, she sat here with a badly wounded man who just needed someone to care.

  “Why, Terri? What makes you think I can change? The feelings don’t change. Every time I think about him, I just feel this heat starting in my chest and radiating out all the way through me. I can’t stop getting so mad at him, and I just want to choke him.”

  Drake’s emotions poured out as though they’d been pent up behind a dam. Now that she’d started him talking, he showed no signs of stopping. That really was OK with her. His voice flowed like molasses, his eyes pulled her in, and the rest of him wasn’t bad either.

  She rationalized it: in talking to him, she was gaining an encyclopedia of knowledge about people with abnormal abilities. Terri held it up as a shield against the insistent mental pull of her duties.

  “Why didn’t you kill him back at the coffee shop, then?”

  “I tried to!”

  “Did you try your hardest? Maybe part of you wanted to fail.”

  “Believe me, I tried. I was so hot I was burning up inside as well as out. It’s that place, Terri. That cursed place. The Star of Fortune is where we had our final fight. It’s where I last saw Hope alive. I don’t understand why everything keeps pulling me back there now — the place that hurts the most in the world. When Sebastian told me going there was my chance for revenge against Pitch, at first I thought it was a bad joke. The Star of all places? He had to be just trying to hurt me. But no, we really went. And then you show up there, and Pitch shows up there, and Connor shows up there. What is it about that place? I’d give anything for all this to be happening somewhere else.”

  “That’s where the nuclear explosion is going to happen.”

  Drake coughed and looked at her with eyes stretched to their widest.

  “The what?”

  “The nuclear explosion. Drake, I came to Las Vegas because satellites were showing an unusual radiation signature right at what’s left of the Star of Fortune. The radiation wasn’t anything medical, and it didn’t track with any government shipments of nuclear material. It was completely unidentified.”

  Drake asked, “Like a nuclear bomb?”

  “A nuclear weapon would be one explanation, yes. Like terrorists smuggling a dirty bomb into the country. But this is my issue. It’s what I wanted to work on when I first started trying to become a federal agent. I know how radiation works. It doesn’t just mysteriously appear. There would be a trail from somewhere. If it were, say, radioactive dye for medical scanning, you could follow that signature from the company that manufactured it straight to the hospital that bought it. If it really was terrorists smuggling in a dirty bomb, you could trace the radiation back to the port they smuggled it through. Radiation doesn’t just appear out of nowhere.

  “But this signal did.”

  He nodded slowly. “What does that mean? I don’t want to sound dumb, but it sounds like you’re saying it’s probably not a nuclear weapon. So why are you so concerned about it?”

  “Drake, what if it’s someone new with abnormal abilities? What if it’s a new power?”

  He said, “What, like me but causing nuclear explosions instead of fire?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. Something like that.”

  “But how would they survive using that power? I mean, you’re the one who knows about this stuff. Wouldn’t an atomic bomb-like power blow up everyone for miles? If someone had that for a power, they’d die every time they used it.”

  “That’s part of why my agency sent me here. If there is a young person with some kind of nuclear power, they’re a danger to themselves and everyone around them. If it goes off, the entire city of Las Vegas could be destroyed. We’ll be OK up in our headquarters at Area 51 — believe me, everything there is hardened against nuclear weapons. But this town? Millions of people could die.”

  He looked away from her. “This is hard for me, Terri. I like you. I want to help you. But you work for Maven Flake. I don’t want to help you, only to find out that someone like me winds up in prison and ‘tested’ at the AAA facilities.”

  “Drake, please listen to me. I don’t know how I feel about my job anymore. I wanted to work for the CIA preventing terrorists from getting a nuclear bomb. Instead, I wound up working for the AAA. I didn’t want to have anything to do with testing people with abnormal abilities. I didn’t even know such a thing existed when I was job hunting. I’m not in this to hurt people like you, especially not since getting to know you.

  “But I am in this to prevent a nuclear disaster. That’s how I always wanted to spend my life. Preventing the use of nuclear weapons is one of the easiest moral decisions a person can make in this world. Stopping a nuclear explosion from happening — whether it’s a bomb or some poor high school kid who doesn’t even know what his power can do or what it means — that’s the right thing to do. That kid — if he’s really out there — he’s in as much danger as the city of Las Vegas. It’s not just a couple million innocent people who will die if his power turns out to be explosive. He will, too.

  “I don’t really know about Director Flake and the rest of the AAA. But for me, it’s not about locking up someone with powers and putting him through a practical application test. If this person with a nuclear abnormal ability exists, maybe AAA custody and some education about his ability can save his life.”

  He took her hand in both of his. He held it, made eye contact, and smiled. “Alright. I’ll help you. Let’s do this, Terri. Let’s find your mysterious radioactive emissions. I trust you.”

  “I’m way out of line professionally, Drake. I’m working with a subject with abnormal abilities when I should be turning you in and working with my fellow agents to find the subject with nuclear powers. I’m probably going to get fired when this is all over. But this is what I studied for all my adult life. And I feel like you probably know more about the world of kids with powers than I do — than any agent does. There’s more hope of finding him with your help than theirs.”

  “I don’t know why. I told you already there’s no one in the Legion like that. Maybe in this new group you spent the morning with, but not with Sebastian and company.”

  “Would you have heard about him, though? Or her? The way you told it, you’ve been imprisoned there for several months. Maybe they brought in new people and never told you.”

  “Oh, the Legion has taken in tons of new people while I’ve been on the outs with Sebastian, but the people who came to my room to check on me always chatted with me about it. ‘There’s a new guy whose skin stops bullets’ or ‘We found another water walker.’ No one ever mentioned a human atomic bomb.”

  “What if he had never used his power?”

  “Yeah, but then how would he be in the Legion?”

  Terri sighed. “This is getting us nowhere.”

  “I can think of two things about the Legion that might point us in the right direction.”

  She perked up and turned to him expectantly.

  “So there’s one guy — Lincoln Blunt. He came to Legion
with Connor. Only when Connor left, he didn’t.”

  “I’ve never heard that name before. I don’t think the AAA has a file on him.”

  “You wouldn’t. When he passed through the AAA’s hands, he didn’t have any kind of power at all. But he developed one while he was in the Legion: super speed. The guy hits and moves faster than you can blink.”

  Drake winced, remembering their brief scuffle that morning.

  “So what about him?” Terri asked.

  “Linc is an example of developing a new power. He had none, and then he had super speed. So if he can do it once, maybe he can do it again. Maybe he’s developed some kind of power having to do with nuclear energy and doesn’t know it yet.”

  “It’s thin, but it’s something. It’s worth checking out, anyway. What’s the other thing about the Legion you were going to tell me?”

  “We came to the Star of Fortune this morning because of you. One of us who has the power of just knowing the truth suddenly knew that we had to find you.”

  Terri rose from the couch and backed up, away from Drake. He angled his head to the side and peered at her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is the second time today I’ve heard about some kind of supernatural prophecy about me.”

  Now it was Drake’s turn for confusion. “Wait. Second time?”

  “The Sons of Thunder have some kind of prophecy about me, too.”

  “What’s theirs say?”

  “Millions die in fire unless you find Terri Jackson.”

  “We don’t think of ours as a prophecy, exactly. Spooky just knows the truth sometimes. This time she said ‘A chance for vengeance against Pitch for someone he wronged. Find Terri Jackson at the scene of Pitch’s crime.’”

  “It makes me feel really weird that all these people with abnormal abilities are having all these prophecies about me.”

  Drake said, “Sebastian, at first, took us to our old base — the one the government raided. That’s when Pitch ditched the Legion for Connor and, of course, to Sebastian that’s Pitch’s crime. That’s why he thought of himself as being the one who would get revenge against Pitch if we found you. But there was nothing there. No one. Just empty desert and memories. So I gave Sebastian a pretty cold stare and told him I could think of one other place where Pitch had committed a crime. That’s when we came to the Star of Fortune and found you — and Connor.”