by Pen
“Don’t ask me to explain Nighthawk. That’s not even possible.” Rion placed his other hand on the other side of Jenna’s chair.
“What about being a Falconer? What can you tell me about that?”
“What is it you need? What knowledge do you seek” Rion felt it now. The two of them had connected. He could feel his psi shield generate inside Jenna’s psionic maze.
“Sit back, Mr. Guard. You’ll make my associates nervous.” Jenna stood then. She moved behind her chair, creating a barrier between them. “What was it like to be a part of a psionic terrorist cell like the Falconers as a child, Mr. Guard?” Jenna’s demeanor chilled. Rion felt it as the connection he’d established vanished before him.
* * *
Rion was getting better at diminishing Jenna’s influence over his mind. He bounced back to the present much faster each time. The pilot with the grey goatee fired at him. He adjusted his psi shield yet again to augment his natural biological senses, fine-tuning his hearing and factoring out the wind. He changed his vision to filter out the rain. He closed his physical eyes as he directed his vision and all his senses through his psionic shield. For an instant Rion could see, hear, feel, and smell everything in triplicate as he generated his psibordinate.
Rion kept his body tightly wedged up against the roof perimeter wall. His psionic shield took on an even more life sized shape as it stepped away from his body, leaving him with only a thin layer of psionic energy, barely enough to repel the rain. He sent the psibordinate across the roof, directing it into the belly of the jet like a missile. The psibordinate didn’t need to open doors or watch its step. It made a bee line to the pilot and dove directly into the man’s physical body and vanished. Rion took a second to adjust to the full use of his powers. His psionic shield waivered around him as Rion supercharged the invisible umbilical between his psibordinate and himself for controlling another human being with it. He sent calm pulses of energy through the umbilical and directed the pilot to drop his weapon and lower the jet’s loading ramp.
* * *
Pamela Madison’s eyes flew open to see Rion standing over her. Pelting rain drenched her hair and body and she lay awkwardly on the rooftop. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Rescuing you.” Rion lifted her in his arms and ran toward the jet’s loading ramp.
“Put me down! I won’t be carried like this. Where are my men?”
“Already aboard.” Rion obliged and set her down where she wobbled like a newborn foal. He offered her his hand. Pamela smacked his hand away and stood on her own power. She climbed the loading ramp on her own.
Rion adjusted his vision, focusing it through the thin energy shield that surrounded him. He could see the entire space as though he were wearing night vision goggles through his psi shield. Benches and jump seats lined the rear wall with cupboards below the seating and lockers above the seating. The two security guards were already strapped safely into seats. “Strap yourself in, Ms. Madison.”
Madison found a seat. Her chest heaved with ragged hitches as she tried to regain her breath.
“Kestrel, do you read me? I could use a little help here.” Rion fished for a first aid kit in one of the lockers above the seats.
“Copy that, Gemini. Looks like you’re finally back on line.” Kestrel commed in his ear from her location in Austringer city. “What is your status? You’ve been out of comms for seventy-five minutes now.”
“Hey!” Madison shouted. “Hey, freak!”
“Wait,” said Rion, although he wasn’t sure if it was directed at Kestrel or at Madison. He located a first aid kit in one of the lockers and started treated the wounds each of the unconscious security guards had sustained.
“Are you going to answer me, goddamn it? God, I’m soaked. Don’t you look at me, you son of a bitch.” Madison unstrapped herself and started to remove her drenched outer layer of clothing. It piled up in a heap on the metal floor in front of her.
“Gemini are you receiving me? Over.” Kestrel commed, sounding a little perplexed this time.
“Both of you shut up.” Rion pulled a towel from the first aid locker and threw it at Madison. It smacked her in the face.
The world broke apart around Rion as he fell back into Jenna Strong’s psychic construct.
* * *
“No more games, Miss Strong. We’re out of time.” Rion felt her psionic maze was different this time. There was a crack he could exploit. Something had happened in the real world to affect her psionic self.
“Oh, you have all the time in the world, Mr. Guard. You’ll be joining my program here in the Psi Laboratory. After what you did, you’re lucky they didn’t throw you in—”
“Now.” Able to move freely for the first time in the construct without inhibitions, Rion knocked the data pad from Jenna’s hand and took both of her hands into his.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Jenna protested.
“You have one chance to leave here with me alive and that’s now.”
“You’re delusional!”
Rion stood and pulled Jenna up off of her seat. “The building is collapsing around you. If you want to live, you’ll come with me.”
“Security!” Jenna shouted.
* * *
“Wake up! Wake up or you’re fired!” Madison stood over one of her security officers and tried to shake him awake.
“They can’t hear you,” Rion said, knowing they’d received a stronger shot of his psionic attack than the executive had.
“Shut up, freak!” Pamela shouted back without even looking at Rion.
Rion’s comm chirped in his ear. He ignored it. Kestrel would need to wait a bit longer yet.
“Wake up!” Pamela shouted at the top of her lungs.
Rion touched Madison on the back of the head. His psi shield flared at the connection and she collapsed into his arms.
“Kestrel, you read me?” Rion carried Madison over to a cargo bench and laid her down.
“Affirmative, Gemini. What have you gotten yourself into?”
“You wouldn’t even believe me.” Rion smiled at the sound of a friendly voice.
“What do you need from me?”
“What’s this jet I’m on, Kestrel?”
“You’re aboard a modified Brigade Scimitar.”
Rion had thought the jet design looked familiar. He smiled, feeling he was due for some good luck. “Can you tap into the scimitars computer core?” Rion lifted Madison once more.
“Roger that. What do you need?”
Rion carried his burden to the cockpit. “Use the scanners to check for survivors. They should be approximately one hundred and seventy yards south west of this location.”
“Copy. I’m on it, Gemini.”
“Roger that.” Rion opened the cockpit door. The pilot, whose uniform was embroidered with the name Hughes, looked back at Rion and gave a nod. He was still fully under the control of Rion’s psibordinate.
“Were ready up here, sir.” Hughes’ voice was raspy, as if he smoked too much.
Rion set Madison down in one of the rear cockpit seats and strapped in her unconscious form.
“Gemini, come in. I’ve found your survivors,” Kestrel commed. “Can’t tell how many from here. Sending data to the jet’s computer.”
“Receiving coordinates now,” Hughes confirmed.
“How far out is the worst part of the Psi Storm, Kestrel?” Rion took the co-pilot seat and plotted a trajectory that would allow him to land the jet as close to her position as possible.
“I make it between ten and fifteen minutes, Gemini. Don’t stop for lunch.”
“I’m taking over the stick,” Rion said to Hughes.
“Roger that.” Hughes put up no resistance.
“I need you by the winch.”
“Copy that.” Hughes nodded and exited the cockpit.
“I hope you remember how to program the autopilot on those,” said Kestrel. “I’ll do what I can from here.”
“Copy, Kestrel
.”
Rion located what he thought was the most secure entry point. The eastern compound was made up of three large structures with a triangular courtyard between them. The top of the easternmost tower had crumbled under the weight of all the rain and debris collected at its apex. This had sent the structure tumbling sideways to pierce the westernmost tower, which had fractured and fallen over to pierce the southern tower like giant dominoes. Rain collected at the breaking point of each tower and flowed into the center courtyard like a raging waterfall.
Rion set the autopilot to keep the jet stable and hovering as best as it could despite the howling winds, and ran to the cargo bay where Hughes had already opened the jump doors. Wind and rain blew inward, drenching Hughes as he coiled a long thick cable that snaked out of its box on the floor next to the jump doors.
“After I touch down, wind the line and secure it. After that, get this jet out of here,” Rion shouted close to the man’s ear. He released his psibordinate, leaving Hughes uncontrolled. The man wavered for a moment, then his jaw grew resolute as he understood Rion was not his enemy.
“There’s a garage down there,” Hughes shouted over the noise as he secured the line around Rion. “In the Eastern building. There are always a couple of cars and a utility jeep in there. You can use one of them to get to safety, sir.”
Rion leaped out of the jet and dove toward the surface, the line playing out behind him. The pooled flood waters at the base of the triangular courtyard rushed toward him faster than he’d expected. He twisted, using his power to nudge himself toward the sloped surface of one of the fallen buildings. Despite his psi shield, the impact jarred every bone in his body. He slid down the slanted concrete tower wall. A fast current of water surged by on either side of him and threatened to take him right down to the bottom of the pool of rain.
He managed to sit up as he slid and went to work on the bent and rusted strap that kept him connected to it. The wind and rain increased in intensity at an almost exponential pace. He was afraid Kestrel’s time estimate may have been generous. He didn’t look at the approaching open black maw of the building that would swallow him whole. He focused on the strap. Rion decided he couldn’t get it and would have to cut it when his booted feet slammed into a crop of rebar that grew from the crumbled building like stalagmites.
Water, wind, and debris crashed against his back. He generated his psibordinate. The energy being pulled the knife from Rion’s boot and cut the strap. He started to move but lost his balance and knew he was going to go over the edge into the darkness. His psibordinate recoiled back into him, energizing him. He generated a strong psi shield and modulated it so that the rain current evaporated as it touched him. He got to his feet. The water sizzled and steamed a good three inches away from his body. He chose his steps carefully as he made his way through the fast-paced current over to the broken edge where one tower had penetrated another. Not daring to hesitate a moment longer, he found a way inside and took it.
Rion chose a path that led down one crumbled floor in the tilted structure. Fluorescent light bulbs, connected only at one end, had fallen from their sockets and dangled toward the slanted floor. Wires and ceiling tiles also hung down in the wide open space that had been cleared by impact crashes. The floor was mostly clear, as all the broken shards of glass, splinters of wood, and crumbled bits of concrete had slid down to one end when the building tilted.
“That building is barely holding together,” Kestrel commed Rion. “When the main storm hits, you’d better be far away from it.”
“Thanks for the update.” Rion refactored his psi shield to maximum illumination. “Where are those survivors?”
“I have a life sign. Two floors down in the east stairwell.”
“Copy that. What about the jet?” Rion ran across the tilted floor as fast as he could.
“Evacuating safely.”
Rion reached the stairwell and found it filled with dank and dusty crumbled concrete. He factored his psi shield so that he could repel the smaller pieces and crush the larger pieces to dust. As he leaped onto a new concrete chunk, his shield disposed of it right from under his feat. He repeated the process again and again, breaking debris into dust and pushing dust aside as he advanced.
“Try not to break any load-bearing structures,” Kestrel warned.
“At this angle, that could be anything. Still, good point.” Rion didn’t want any new debris to crash down on him. He split his psi shield and used half to backfill the space he’d created behind him with each maneuver with a psionic force field.
“Hello? Hello is anyone there?” Rion heard a voice call out from below him, amid the rubble.
“Hold on I’m coming!”
“Help us, please! You have to help us!” the voice shouted back.
“Get back. Get away from the stairwell,” Rion called.
“You’re clear to proceed, Gemini. They have evacuated the stairwell,” said Kestrel. “If they were even in it in the first place. I’m getting some awfully strange readings from that part of the building.”
“Can you tell how many people are down there?” Rion wedged himself into a tight space and forced his psi shield to expand, converting the last bit of rubble and debris into dust.
“Negative, Gemini. Something is causing a lot of interference on multiple frequencies.”
Rion refactored his psi shield once more as the dust in the stairwell settled. He made the force field filled the entire open space in the misshapen tilted stairwell, then dropped to the floor and manipulated the psi shield to pop the hinges of the door. He relaxed the energy field by twenty percent to test the stairwell’s structural integrity. Everything held. Rion pulled his energy shield back an additional thirty percent and held it. Nothing moved. Rion allowed the entire energy field to dissipate and held his breath. The building seemed to groan and settle around him, but the stairwell held. He went through the door.
Unlike the other two floors he’d been on in this building the roof was covered in woven metallic tiles, the overlapping hexagonal shapes looking like scales of a fish.
“Kestrel are you seeing any of this?”
“Negative, Gemini I’m unable to keep a video connection live but the sonar is active. It’s like no other room in the building.”
“What can you tell me about the floors below this?”
“Nothing Gemini. There is strong white noise scatter coming from your position. Whatever is down there, they don’t want anyone knowing about it.”
Rion advanced toward the only thing in the room, a round pit sunk into the center of the floor. “This level of the building wasn’t damaged at all, either from the storm or from tipping. It’s reinforced like nothing I’ve ever seen. You could probably ride out a nuclear holocaust in here. I don’t see any sign of who was calling me just a moment ago.”
“Maybe it was all in your head, Gemini. I hate to steal your thunder, but the rest of the compound is crumbling around you.”
It occurred to Rion that perhaps Kestrel had hit the nail exactly on the head. Maybe there was only one survivor and she had called out to him . . . psionically. He found there Jenna Strong strapped down to a surgical chair in the pit, while he was in an observation gallery over it. He could look down upon her but couldn’t reach her. Cables and wires connected to her body cascaded down the chair and snaked all over the floor. The chair had shifted when the building slanted, and most of the wires were no longer connected to anything. There didn’t seem to be a way into or out of the room.
“I’ve located our target.”
“Alive?”
“Well, she’s breathing.”
“Then get out of there. The Storm is on you now. Hughes was right about a small motor pool on the other side of the building and there are at least two different vehicles still located inside.”
“Roger that.”
A thunderous explosion echoed throughout the building over his head, and it shuddered like a living thing.
“The south tower j
ust collapsed, Gemini. There’s a whole lake’s worth of water headed your way in a hurry.” Kestrels voice chirped and distorted in the comm. Her signal barely penetrated the white noise.
“Copy that.” Rion was out of time.
He closed his eyes and released his psibordinate. It stepped through the heavy glass wall into the secure chamber below where Jenna was immobilized.
The moment his psibordinate entered the chamber Rion felt the unique connection he had established with Jenna Strong materialize. The psibordinate merged with Jenna the way it had with Hughes. Rion opened his eyes and saw that Jenna had opened hers. Her gaze met his.
I thought you’d never get here. Jenna spoke through the psi link directly into Rion’s mind.
We’re not done yet. I can’t find a door to come in and set you free, Rion responded.
The access is in here. I can reach it if you help me disconnect. Rion used his psi shield to disconnect wires and cables from Jenna’s body.
Jenna stood and steadied herself before she dropped to the floor and staggered to the door control panel. As the hidden door opened, Rion flashed over to it. Jenna stood there in a dingy white medical smock.
“Thank you.” Jenna fell into Rion’s arms.
“You can rest all you want later, but now we have to go.”
“I can’t. I’ve been strapped to that chair for I don’t know how long. I can’t walk anymore.” Jenna slid out of Rion’s grip and fell to the floor. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“You’re stronger than you know.” Rion kneeled beside her and placed his hand on her shoulder. His healing energy traveled through the psi shield connection to her. “Better?”
Jenna nodded and wiped her face on the shoulder of her smock. “Where are we going?”
“Follow me.” Rion helped her up and the two of them ran around the room back to the stairwell. Rion led his target up a flight of stairs to the next level. Water was filling the stairwell already almost faster than they could climb.
