The Takeover

by Teyla Branton

  Apparently satisfied with his examination of Shadrach, Dimitri shook out earbuds from a container in his medical bag and handed one to each of us. They looked like replacement tips for his stethoscope but in reality would connect us to Oliver, who was outside waiting for us in the van. I didn’t actually need the earbud because I could use my ability to communicate directly to his mind, but Oliver hated me in his head, and I had to admit that his self-centered mental world was not one I had the least interest in visiting. Besides, if the Emporium happened to be near, it paid to keep our mental shields in place.

  “This is the plan,” Ritter continued for Shadrach’s benefit. “There’s a ventilation shaft in the hallway off the kitchen here, so we just have to make it there and follow the path to the roof. We’ve already dropped equipment there that will allow us to rappel down the building. Then it’s only a matter of making it to the breach in the fence that we prepared last night. With Stella controlling the cameras, it should be easy to avoid being spotted. Your door lock is completely self-contained, but we have plans for that.”

  There was a touch of frustration in Ritter’s manner at the simplicity of the plan, though he’d been responsible for the details. The Unbounded gene in our bodies made it so we preferred a head-on confrontation, and for someone with the combat ability like Ritter, skulking around in ventilation shafts went against all instinct. But he’d stick to the plan. Because getting Shadrach to safety and finding out what he knew was the most important thing. We might still run into problems, even with Ritter’s close attention to detail, and that’s why there were three of us—in case something went wrong.

  “No,” Shadrach said, his sharp tone stopping Ritter in mid-stride to the locked door. “We can’t. Not yet.”

  I arched a brow. “Hey, you’re the one who contacted us. Remember that cryptic email sent to our bogus chat group?”

  “I meant we can’t leave without the others,” he said, coming to his feet.

  We all stared. “You mean the Emporium agents? The people who tried to kill us in Morocco?” The people who murdered your son. But I didn’t say that last part aloud.

  “We can’t leave them.” Shadrach shook his head, his face looking suddenly ill. “You don’t know what it’s like here. They cut off my arm last week just to see how long it took to grow back. They put out one guy’s eye. Oh, they’re kind enough to give us morphine. Except for the guy they electrocuted to death. Yes, electrocuted. The guy they froze also didn’t have any painkillers. They wanted to test his tolerance for cold.” Shadrach swallowed noisily in the abrupt silence. “Those are only the highlights. They’re far worse than the Moroccans—and they were nasty enough.”

  “Their people will come for them.” Ritter’s jaw clenched and unclenched like his fists.

  “That’s right. They will—and they’ll murder every mortal here. But the doctors and staff are only under orders, for the most part, and they don’t deserve that.” Shadrach’s dark eyes went to Dimitri in appeal. “In the past three months since the explosion on that rooftop, I’ve done what I can to help the Emporium agents heal, to ease their pain. They trust me, and since the announcement, they’re different. They want to live in peace. They don’t want to return to the Emporium.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Ritter said. “Maybe you have some other reason to want us to help them.”

  Shadrach grimaced. “I know what you think of me, and maybe I was wrong in Morocco—”

  “You almost got us killed!” Ritter didn’t take a step toward him, but the fury in his face made Shadrach step back until his calves hit the couch.

  “I know,” Shadrach said, his voice strangled. “But you’re going to have to trust me on this one. Because you’re not going to leave me here, so either you drag me kicking and screaming or you take them too.”

  The veins in Ritter’s neck bulged. “Believe me, I won’t have to take you screaming.” For an instant, I thought Ritter was going to punch the healer out and throw him over his shoulder. I’d probably help him.

  Dimitri stepped in. “Let’s hear him out.”

  “Okay,” I answered for Ritter, giving him time to calm down. “We’ll listen. But we’re going to make the final decision, Shadrach. Not you.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  Ritter’s fists relaxed. “This could be a plan on their part. Did you think of that?”

  Shadrach scrubbed a hand over his face and into his black hair, causing it to fall out of place. “If so, it’s an elaborate plan that started back in Morocco. Two of these agents hate the Emporium as much as I do, and the other has listened to us. I won’t pretend that their courage doesn’t come mostly from knowing Delia Vesey is dead. The fact that she can’t hurt them or their families anymore if they don’t do what she orders was a huge factor in their decision.” He paused before adding, “Vesey caused some damages—perhaps permanent—in one man’s mind, the one who took convincing. I fixed what I could, but he’s not all there in the logic department. Reality is hard for him to understand. But the others, I’m sure of.”

  Now he made a direct appeal to Ritter. “They know where the Emporium strongholds are, at least five of them. The major ones. They’re willing to share that information with us.”

  Ritter’s head swung toward Dimitri and they shared a long, silent stare. I knew what it would mean to locate Emporium headquarters. They’d recently relocated many of their safe houses after we’d obtained intel on the locations from a thumb drive recovered in Mexico, and since then we’d made little headway on tracking their whereabouts. This intel could prove invaluable.

  Shadrach’s eyes fixed on me. “Erin can see that I’m telling the truth.” The shield around his mind dropped—an invitation I immediately accepted. In the representation I created of his conscious mind, I stood on a sort of stage, and his thoughts fell from the darkness above me in a stream of what looked like sand, curving downward and disappearing again into the darkness at hip level. Each grain of sand represented a thought or memory, past or present. I would only see thoughts he was currently pondering or memories he recalled as I studied him, but it would be enough to get a feel about his truthfulness.

  I stared deeper, more interested in searching for Emporium traps—the mental constructs Delia Vesey, a former Emporium Triad leader, had been so good at placing in people’s minds. Mental traps could be fatal for the person carrying them and for any sensing Unbounded attempting to repair the damage. Delia’s assistant had survived the encounter in Morocco, so he could have planted something in Shadrach’s mind, and the Emporium had at least a few other sensing Unbounded, if the rumors were true. But Shadrach’s mind was clean. Not a hint of Emporium meddling—or prefabrication on Shadrach’s part. He believed what he was saying.

  “He’s telling the truth,” I said, “and I don’t see any Emporium constructs in his mind.”

  Ritter nodded once, his face grim. “Then we’ll do it.” His surface emotions radiated determination, but his mental shield was otherwise strong.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Oliver said in my earbud. “Are you guys sure about this? Because that’s going to take longer, and I kind of feel like a sitting duck all alone out here in the van.”

  “Aren’t you masking it?” I asked. His ability of illusion was the reason we’d let him come with us at all. Because while Oliver was a genius, his arrogance made us all pretty much want to kill him.

  “Well, it was a fruit stand for a while, but people stopped and tried to buy some.” He groaned. “I had to make the fruit appear moldy to get them to leave.”

  I bit my lip “So put up a closed sign!”

  “Right.”

  Trust Oliver to take such pride in his illusions that his fake fruits looked and smelled great enough to make people stop to buy them even in this manufacturing area.

  I caught a glimpse of irritation on Ritter’s face before he said to Oliver, “We may need a distraction at the front of the building. Something with a lot of fireworks. Be prepare
d. And have Stella extend her satellite surveillance to a radius of three streets in case the Emporium decides to join our party. I want to know if there’s anything unusual.”

  “Will do,” Oliver said, sounding chastised. He didn’t have a lot of respect for the rest of us, but his admiration of Ritter was almost as irritating as his know-it-all attitude. “The satellite we tasked here did go down for a few minutes. Could have been someone hacking our feed, but it’s back up and running perfectly now, and we’ve detected no unusual activity so far.”

  “No other fruit stands?” Dimitri asked, a hint of a smile in his voice.

  Oliver took offense at his gentle jibe. “As a matter of fact, there is a defunct one. That’s what gave me the idea. There’s an orchard only two miles from here, so it’s completely logical for a fruit stand to be in this area.”

  “I was sure you had a reason, but that’s good to know.” Dimitri had more patience with Oliver than the rest of us. Probably because he considered himself the father of our cell.

  Biologically speaking, Dimitri was my father, but I’d only known him since my Change just over seven months ago. I’d come to terms with my uncertain beginning, and while I still considered the man who raised me to be my real father, Dimitri and I were closer in many ways.

  Shadrach shifted nervously, his eyes going to the door. “So what now?”

  Ritter’s eyes narrowed at the healer. “Now we try not to get killed.”

  “DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE other men are located?” Ritter strode to the computer and brought up a map of the facility.

  “Yes.” Shadrach hurried over to Ritter, but his movements were regal, and I could easily imagine him in bright ceremonial robes, surrounded by women wearing burkas.

  Shadrach showed us all the rooms where the other prisoners should be located. Two were in this corridor, but the third was apparently kept near the common rooms where they ate meals and conversed until the guards forced them back to their solitary quarters. That is, if the doctors’ experiments permitted them to leave their rooms at all.

  “We haven’t seen one guy—Bedřich—for three days,” Shadrach said. “Usually, that’s as long as they keep us away.”

  Dimitri nodded. “Most casual regenerations can be completed in that time. Are they using a form of curequick?” That was our name for a mixture containing a heavy amount of sugar and proteins reduced to their most usable form. This mixture gave our bodies enough nutrition to speed up recovery by as much as five times. It was also addictive to us.

  “Oh, yeah. Someone spilled that little piece of information the first week in Morocco.” Shadrach made a face. “Can’t blame them, though. We thought we were helping ourselves recover. We had no idea the doctors there would use the information to increase the frequency of their experiments. The supervising doctor here is even worse.”

  Dimitri stared at the screen, the tightening of his lips the only sign of his disapproval at the treatment. “We could stall until dinner and they’re all in the common room.”

  “They have a guard there for each of us and a couple extra in the hall,” Shadrach said. “It’d be a mess.”

  Ritter studied the map a few more seconds, committing it to memory. Combat Unbounded could remember plans and layouts and maps better than the average Unbounded. Unless I channeled his ability, I couldn’t begin to approach his accuracy.

  Ritter began typing on the keys. “Stella can control the feed from the security cameras, and there’s only the one guard in this corridor, so getting to the first two prisoners without being seen won’t be a problem. Unfortunately, Stella just sent a message saying that the corridors near the commons room have at least a half dozen people wandering around.” He glanced at Dimitri. “You’ll have to get the first two Emporium agents and Shadrach into the ventilation shaft while Erin and I go after the third one.”

  As Dimitri nodded, Ritter added, “We’ll try to join you, but we might have to find another way out. I’ll let you know if we need Oliver’s distraction. You may have to coordinate that.”

  “He’ll be ready.” Dimitri sounded sure.

  “Hey, guys, I’m still here,” came Oliver’s voice through the earbuds. “I can hear you. Of course I’ll be ready.” Everyone ignored him.

  “Let’s go.” Ritter tapped a few more keys. “Once they come in here and someone presses a key on this computer, we’ll have only two minutes before it self-destructs. Then we’ll be live to the cameras again. It’ll send a beep to our earbuds if we’re in range when that happens.”

  Dimitri took out what appeared to be two inhalers from his medical bag and started toward the door. Several long sprays from each covered the lock in frost. Ritter put a hand in his pocket, and a surprisingly loud explosion sent the pieces of the doorknob to the floor. The next instant, Ritter pulled the door open and dragged the guard into the room.

  “W-wha—” The guard struggled to reach his gun, but Ritter held him too tightly. The guard’s confusion ended as Dimitri jabbed the end of a sleep dart into his neck. Ritter lowered the limp man to the carpet and then relieved him of his weapon and holster.

  “All clear,” I said, peering into the hallway.

  We hurried, sprinting to the next door where the first Emporium agent was being held. Ritter flattened the last of his explosive on the control pad, a thin wire sticking out of the gray material.

  “Only one person inside?” Ritter asked me.

  “Yes.” My ability to sense life forces wasn’t fettered by walls. I couldn’t tell if the person was Unbounded unless I could actually see him with my eyes, but the life force behind the door was blocking thoughts, which made the glow dimmer than the mortals we’d met here so far. Mortals could learn to block, but until they knew about our abilities, those here wouldn’t have reason to. I was almost certain the person behind the door was Unbounded.

  Dimitri used the rest of the spray in the small bottles to aid the destruction, but even after the detonation, Ritter still had to slam his foot into the door to force it open.

  Inside, the Emporium agent was standing in a room identical to Shadrach’s. He held a lamp in his hand, a frozen expression of dread etched on his face. Big as Ritter, but blond and pale, he looked vaguely familiar to me from Morocco, though far less imposing holding a lamp instead of a gun.

  Shadrach pushed past us. “Come, Fenton,” he said. “Now is your chance. We’re leaving.”

  “Wait.” I forced my mind against the Emporium agent’s shield. “You know what this means, leaving with us this way, don’t you?” Betraying the Emporium, I meant.

  “Oh, I know.” The man’s jaw worked as he carefully set down the lamp.

  Ah, there was the emotional crack I’d been waiting for. So much easier than breaking down a shield with no flaw. Gathering my energy, I forced my way inside his mind—just in time to see the hatred there. Not toward us but hatred of the Emporium who had ruled him for over a hundred years. Always promising advancements yet never quite delivering. Telling him he was a god to the lowly mortals, then treating him the same as the mortal guards.

  His thoughts rushed at me, and I took them in as if they were my own. He didn’t love the Renegades or mortals, but he was tired of working for the Emporium, of being their pawn in a war he no longer believed in. He wanted to find his own path—away from the killing and the intrigue.

  I didn’t blame him one bit. I longed for peace myself. For things to settle down. For Ritter and me to think about our future. Maybe even to consider that family he wanted so badly.

  I nodded at Ritter, meeting his intent gaze, and the tension in his body eased. “Move,” he said to Fenton. “If you try anything, I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

  Fenton sneered in response. “I would expect no less from you.”

  Ritter smirked, apparently finding it amusing Fenton had seen through his disguise and that his reputation had preceded him. Of course, most Emporium agents we ran into knew exactly who our prominent Renegades were—they studied us every bi
t as much as we studied them, and there were far fewer of us.

  “Nobody is going to kill anyone!” Shadrach insisted.

  Ritter took the lead, and I kept close to him. Shadrach and Fenton were in the middle, with Dimitri bringing up the rear, presumably to watch out for guards but more to keep an eye on Fenton.

  “One life force,” I confirmed for Ritter as we reached the next door. “How are we getting inside this one?”

  His smile was almost tender. “Acid.”

  Dimitri was already taking out two more bottles. He handed one to Ritter, and they began spraying. The plastic buttons melted instantly, the metal soon beginning to run. These weren’t ordinary acids, I knew, but something our scientist, Cort Bagley, had concocted.

  Even after the bottles were emptied, it still wasn’t enough. “What now?” Shadrach asked.

  Ritter’s hand went briefly to the guard’s gun, but it didn’t have a silencer, and we needed to save it as a last resort, especially since we had one more door to get through. “We do it the old-fashioned way.” Taking several steps back, he ran at the door, slamming his shoulder into it. The door buckled slightly, but it didn’t give. One more thrust and something in the weakened lock shattered. The door banged opened.

  A woman jumped at us, a knife in her hand. Ritter sidestepped, his ability warning him of danger as the blade plunged toward him. He spun around, the guard’s pistol in his hand.

  “Eden, stop!” Shadrach ordered. “They’re with me.”

  Her hand was already in motion, almost a blur that told me her ability was combat like Ritter, like most Emporium agents, but she stopped every bit as fast. Her breath left in a whoosh. She looked at us with wild eyes, her many freckles standing out in her pale face.

  I’d used her distraction to push past her shields—not that much effort was required in her case. Eden was a beaten woman, one who’d lost nearly everyone she’d ever loved, including the grown daughter who hadn’t Changed and who had been sent on a mission by the Emporium last year to seduce an intern at a hospital and steal their records. Her mission had supposedly ended in a shootout with police, but Eden learned her death had actually been caused by an Emporium sniper. She had another daughter growing up in an adoptive family where Eden had erroneously thought to place her out of Delia’s reach. Instead, the child had been threatened and her existence used to coerce Eden. Oh, yes, she had good reason to hate the Emporium. Now, with Delia no longer threatening the child’s safety, Eden wanted her freedom from all Unbounded. Her biggest hope was not that her daughter would Change, but that she would never know of her Unbounded connection.