When Janis reached the counter, she paused. Ahead of her, she heard a sound like crinkling paper — a sound she associated with cockroach nests. Something flapped overhead, and she grunted and waved an arm. Then she began to wriggle in her suit, convinced that roaches had gotten inside somehow. Her skin shuddered. She fought the urge to unzip herself and shed her protection, knowing that was exactly what someone wanted her to do.
It’s all in your mind, she told herself. There are no roaches here. I’m going to prove it to you.
She drew a steadying breath and peered around the counter.
The force of her scream fogged her visor.
35
Scott stood in the center of the security room and turned a slow circle, the moisture evaporating from his mouth. A console-like metal desk lined with phones and communication radios stood beyond the door he had just blown open. Behind the desk, he could see the closed door of the elevator that would take Jesse, Janis, and him down to the launch control center.
But he wasn’t thinking that far ahead.
He was thinking about the room’s two occupants. He ran his dried-out tongue over his braces. One guard had collapsed facedown near the far door. The second was propped against the wall to Scott’s right, his clean-shaven face marred by scratch marks around his staring eyes, as though someone had tried to gouge them.
Probably the guard himself, Scott thought. No telling what horrors Trips manifested for him.
Scott studied their carbines, wondering whether the men’s gunshot wounds were self-inflicted, too. He was just leaning toward the propped-up guard when a distant scream sounded.
He jerked around and, for one awful moment, he was back in the storm drain in Oakwood, Janis’s cry reverberating past him.
To your left. The scream came from the door to your left.
Scott threw the door open and sprinted down a short hallway. He emerged into what looked like a dining room. Tables and chairs were strewn over a blood-stained floor, as though there had been a recent brawl. He nearly collided into Janis, who was backing away from a kitchen area.
He took her by the shoulders. “Janis, it’s me.”
When she turned toward him, another scream sounded from inside her helmet, this one short and surprised. Beyond the visor, her eyes were huge, her pupils dilated with fear.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Shrinking against him, she pointed toward the plain counter separating the dining room and kitchen. Scott craned his neck over the countertop.
From inside a cellophane bag, a pale face stared back at him. The neck of the bag had been cinched around his neck with a belt — the guard’s belt. The cellophane was adhered to the man’s blue lips and staring eyes, his face afflicted by the same rictus as the faces of the guards Scott had observed in the last room.
Scott drew away, bile stinging his throat.
“He self-asphyxiated,” he said, swallowing. “There are two more guards in the security room. Their bodies, anyway.” Holding Janis at arm’s length, he stooped so he could see inside her helmet. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have screamed, but for a second, the inside of that bag was crawling with cockroaches. I keep seeing things, in my peripheral vision.” She darted a look to her right. “I know Trips is behind it. I know he’s tainted the atmosphere — the emotional atmosphere. But even though the helmet helps, I can’t seem to keep him out of my head.”
“We’ll stick together from now on,” Scott said. “Anything one of us sees, the other can verify.” And when we agree we’re both seeing Trips, I’ll have a nice little blast waiting for him.
The speaker in Scott’s helmet crackled on. “What’s your status, advance team?”
“We’re inside,” Scott said upon activating his microphone. “Three guards down. Apparent suicides.”
“Find the other two,” Agent Steel said. “Once the support building is clear, I’ll send in the second team. Tyler, run a diagnostic on your helmet. You’re no longer showing up on our comm system.”
“Get away from me!” a muffled voice called from the next room. “I said get the hell away from me!”
“Tyler,” Janis said, springing toward the far door.
Scott followed, darting around toppled tables and chairs, broken dishware exploding underfoot. He narrowed his gaze toward the door. The pulse that shot from his visor blew the lock to pieces.
Janis didn’t break stride as she shouldered through the maimed door and into the next room. Scott caught up to her, sidestepping between a pool and a foosball table, kicking fallen billiard balls out of the way. Ahead of them, lavender couches formed a horseshoe shape around a magazine-strewn coffee table. A tall cabinet with a television stood against the far wall.
“Tyler!” Janis cried.
Their teammate had collapsed against the wall between the room’s far corner and a kicked-open door to the outside. Beyond his visor, Tyler’s eyes looked stunned. He was aiming his crackling hands toward the couch where a fourth guard was sprawled, dead. Another victim of his own rifle.
“Tyler, what’s wrong?” Janis asked.
He jerked toward her voice but without seeming to see her. His eyes wandered blindly. “Stay back.”
From behind her, Scott clasped Janis’s shoulders. “He doesn’t recognize us. And he’s gathered enough charge in his hands to power this facility. If he decides to unleash that on us, it’s not gonna be pretty.”
As if on cue, Tyler aimed one of his white-crackling hands toward them. A sickly electromagnetic wave swept over Scott.
“His helmet’s out,” Janis said, “which means there’s nothing standing between Trips and his mind. If we don’t do something, he’s going to end up like one of these guards.” She stepped from Scott’s protective hold.
“Tyler, it’s us. Janis and Scott.”
Tyler’s eyes flinched and then narrowed.
“Whatever you’re seeing, Tyler,” she said, taking another careful step toward him. “It’s not real.”
Tyler’s gaze cut back to the couch. “Keep him away from me,” he said. “I-I didn’t mean to.” He sounded younger to Scott, and Scott realized he had never heard him scared before. Tyler always seemed so unflappable. But he was beyond scared now. He was verging on insane.
“There’s no one here, Tyler,” Janis said, stepping nearer. “Just your friends. Just the three of us.”
Tears leaked from the corners of Tyler’s eyelids when he clenched them closed. His body shook. “You know I didn’t mean to, Janis.” He stared past her again. “Tell him. Tell him I didn’t mean to.”
She crouched in front of him. “I know you didn’t, Tyler. But he’s not here.”
Who are they talking about? Scott eased up behind her. The amount of charge in the air made him feel foggy, on the verge of illness. “Careful, Janis. You so much as brush him with that charge he’s holding and…” He trailed off, not wanting to think about the and.
When Janis’s helmet pivoted up toward Scott, her eyes were glowing green.
“I’m going to try something,” she said.
She edged another inch closer to Tyler.
36
Tyler watched the blackened corpse rise from the couch, that horrible grin growing a fissure to include the black hole of his septum. A chunk of charred tissue fell from his teeth. Yellow fluid slid from his ear holes.
It’s not him, he thought. It’s not Dad. It doesn’t make sense.
But trying to reclaim his reason was like trying to shinny up a greased pole. The more desperately Tyler worked, the faster and farther he slid down. And now a smell of human rot was seeping inside his helmet.
“I buried you,” he said.
The corpse continued to grin and stare.
Tyler’s heart slammed feverishly. “I buried you, goddammit!”
But had he? Through a rising static of terror, he remembered how he had tried to excavate his father’s remains the month before but had come up empty. He assume
d the Program had beaten him to it, but what if they hadn’t? What if his father had … excavated himself?
What are you talking about?
But the last vestiges of reason were slipping away. A fog was growing around him. The only thing that mattered was survival. Especially as his father took a lurching step behind the couch, meaning to come around it.
Tyler staggered back and lost his footing. His helmet slammed against the wall. The world beyond his visor blurred. He was hardly aware of the quick flash of numbers on the display inside his visor before the display dimmed out entirely. Something wriggled in his head, and, for a moment, Tyler was convinced his father was pressing one of his rotten fingers into his ear.
“Get away from me!” Tyler writhed and raised his gloved hands.
His father took another lurching step around the couch.
“I said get the hell away from me!”
A door slammed open to Tyler’s right, but he was no longer in the entertainment room of a launch control support building. He was in his backyard, and he was twelve, and he was on his bare back, and his faded black-checked Vans were shoving at the ground in front of him, trying to distance himself from that awful figure rising from the hole.
He made one final appeal to his own reason: But that’s not how it happened. He never stood. You buried him that night.
“Tyler, what’s wrong?” someone asked.
He turned toward the voice, but a ring of fog separated him from the speaker. The voice was familiar. For a second he knew who it belonged to — he had her name, her face — but then came another wet wriggle inside his head, and he heard Agent Steel’s monotone voice from his old nightmares: An eye for an eye, and a fry for a fry.
“Stay back,” he warned.
With one hand aimed toward his father, Tyler swung the other toward the bank of fog. He squinted, trying to make out the looming shapes, the source of the low voices. Electrical energy spat and popped around his charged gloves.
“Whatever you’re seeing, Tyler,” someone said, “it’s not real.”
Janis, he thought. It’s Janis.
He clung to that thought, even as a more primitive part of his mind tried to superimpose the voice of Agent Steel over Janis’s again. He cut his eyes back to his father. He had stepped from the hole. The rotting car cover was sliding from his body in a slow hiss.
“Keep him away from me,” Tyler said. “I didn’t mean to.”
He watched his father’s arms extend, the charred remains of his flannel shirt fused with blackened muscles. A low sound gargled from his father’s throat: “Ain’t nothin’ comes for free.”
He’s going to strangle me, Tyler thought. He’s going to strangle me for what I did to him.
“There’s no one here, Tyler,” Janis said gently. “Just your friends. Just the three of us.”
“Ain’t nothin’ comes for free,” his father repeated, closer now. “Nothin’ in my world.”
Tyler squeezed his eyes closed, a part of him wanting it just to end, wanting to feel his father’s fingers wrapping around his windpipe, squeezing the terror from him. “You know I didn’t mean to, Janis,” he whimpered. “Tell him. Tell him I didn’t mean to.”
“I know you didn’t, Tyler,” she said. “But he’s not here.”
She sounded close enough to touch. But why was he calling her Janis? Something wriggled in his head again. The person talking to him was Agent Steel, and she was saying, An eye for an eye, and a fry for a fry. He ventured a look from his advancing father toward the source of her voice.
You want a fry? he thought, summoning more electricity to him. I’ll give you a motherfucking fry.
A pair of green eyes blazed through the fog.
And then Janis was standing over him. She was wearing a purple collared shirt and white shorts and long white socks — an outfit he remembered from middle school. He only ever saw her in the halls and cafeteria, though. She was the smart girl, the one who took honors courses and won year-end awards while he was stuck with the other losers on the remedial wing and in after-school detention.
So what was Janis doing in his backyard in the middle of the night?
Tyler looked from her to his father and back. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
Janis didn’t speak. Her green eyes continued to fixate on his. And for a flickering moment, Tyler was indoors, and the man he was staring at, wearing olive-colored military clothes and a helmet, was not his father — he wasn’t even standing, but sprawled across a couch.
In another flicker, Tyler was in his backyard again, and the man was his father. Tyler felt his mind straining between the two worlds, trying to nail down something — anything — that made sense. A whimper crawled from his mouth.
Tyler wrenched his gaze from his father and stared into Janis’s green-glowing irises. Despite the screaming deep in his mind, he refused to shift his eyes from hers. Something moved inside his head, and Tyler braced himself. But it was not the cold, wriggling finger from earlier. This movement was soft and soothing, the sensation of sliding into a warm bath.
Tyler exhaled his terror, and a room grew back around them.
Janis withdrew from him, her eyes dimming. She was in a charcoal-gray Champions suit, Scott standing behind her. Tyler looked down at his own suit, then over at the couch where the dead guard lay.
Not his father. Never his father.
“Man,” Tyler muttered. “I could’ve sworn that was all real.”
He flattened his palms against the floor and performed a controlled discharge. Clasping Janis and Scott’s offered hands, he let them haul him to his feet. “Thanks, guys,” he said. Then to Janis, “That’s twice today you’ve bailed me out and put me back together.”
Smile lines appeared beneath her eyes. “The important thing is you’re all right.”
“Yeah, welcome back,” Scott said. He peered around. “This makes guard number four. There’s one more to locate before we can—”
“Get down!” Janis cried.
A door off the entertainment room banged open. Something crack!-crack!-cracked! Glass exploded. Bright red pain ripped through Tyler’s right shoulder, and he felt himself falling again.
37
Janis dove behind the near couch, the reverberations of rifle cracks seeming to chase her. Her precognition had shown her a silhouette filling the door space to the back room, but what Janis had seen most clearly was the pointed barrel.
Two of Scott’s blasts sounded from behind the adjacent couch.
The rifle cracked again, puffs of couch stuffing blowing out over Janis’s helmet.
“I see your freaking lizard head!” a man’s voice screamed.
Lizard head? And then Janis realized that this was the final guard, probably the same one who had shot at the soldiers outside. His terror hadn’t made him suicidal, but homicidal.
Great, she thought.
Still, he was under Trips’s control. Beneath the fear-induced insanity, he was innocent.
Scott ripped off another blast. “Can’t get a clean shot,” he said. “He keeps ducking into that room. Is everyone all right?”
“Good here,” Janis shouted. For now.
She waited for Tyler to answer and when he didn’t she looked behind her. Oh God. He had fallen on his back, one hand clamped over his suit where it had blown open at the shoulder.
“Tyler’s hit,” she said.
Using her powers, she dragged him toward her.
“I’m turning into a damned liability,” he groaned.
“Hush now,” she said.
Scott’s next blast was answered by more rifle cracks.
“And stay down,” she added. With Scott drawing fire, she ventured a peek over the top of the couch. The guard crouched in the doorway looked like a clean-shaven Mr. T, his jaw clenched around gritted teeth. His next series of shots mowed away the top of Scott’s couch.
“You’re not enslaving me in your sugar mines, you freaking lizards!”
Be
fore the guard could withdraw into the room to reload, Janis willed the door closed. He seized the door handle and shook. Janis pushed the far couch against him, pinning him.
“Now!” she shouted to Scott.
Scott’s helmet appeared above the torn-up couch, and he released a blast. The guard’s upper body slapped against the door then slumped to one side, the rifle falling from his grasp.
Keeping the couch against him, Janis rose to her feet. Scott, who had already emerged from behind his couch, kicked the rifle out of the guard’s reach, then craned his neck to the guard’s face.
“He’s stunned but breathing,” Scott said over his shoulder.
Janis withdrew the couch, and she and Scott helped the guard to the floor. Scott searched the room the guard had appeared from, a small dormitory with bunk beds, reemerging to say the room was empty. He activated his microphone. “Advance team reporting,” he said.
“Go,” Agent Steel answered.
“The support building is clear. All guards accounted for — four dead, the fifth incapacitated.” He returned to Janis’s couch. “And Tyler’s hit. Bullet to the right shoulder. It looks serious.”
“We’re sending in the second team and support.”
“Copy that,” Scott said.
“Hold a moment,” Agent Steel said. “I’m receiving an update.”
Agent Steel had barely uttered the final syllable when Creed streaked into the room. He searched around, his gaze pausing on the two downed guards. Upon understanding there was no one left to attack, he sheathed his finger blades and stood over Tyler. Blood seeped between Tyler’s gloved fingers.
“Jesus, embryo,” Creed said. “What’d you do to get someone so pissed at you?”
“Told him I was your brother,” Tyler muttered.
Margaret appeared next. Janis filled her in, then watched her sister — who had changed so much in the last two months — kneel beside the mumbling guard and begin speaking softly but assertively. She was restoring his sanity. Janis thought it was the first time she had seen her sister exercise her abilities for something other than advancing her own agenda. And in that single observation, something told Janis they were going to be all right.
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 84
