“Because I’m not sick.” Her eyes closed.
I looked at Ava. She shook her head. “Ruth said it was something Ella was born with, and that it would pass.”
“I’m a butterfly in my chrysalis,” Ella murmured, sounding like a crazy old lady.
“She’s delirious, “ I hissed to Ava.
“No, she really believes that.”
I knelt beside the bed, squeezed Ella’s arm.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m becoming like you.” She smiled and fell asleep.
Becoming like me. Empowered?
Ava and me left Ella smiling her sleeping smile and went outside. Ruth was supposed to be home soon. I’d better scram or else I’d start a huge fight with her.
Empowered? But that didn’t make any sense. You weren’t sick for weeks when you became Empowered. That’s not how it worked. And it wasn’t genetic. The odds of two sisters both becoming Empowered had to be astronomical.
Why had Ruth let Ella believe that?
“I don’t understand what the hell Ruth is doing,” I said when Ava and I were outside, on the sidewalk. You could just see the stars above the gathering mist.
“I’ve never seen her so certain she’s doing the right thing,” Ava said, suddenly sounding older. She wasn’t angry like me, she just seemed resigned.
I wanted to hug her, hold her close. But I didn’t.
The hell of it was, who could I talk to about Ella? Not Support. They didn’t have time for family stuff, and besides, Winterfield would rake me over the coals for seeing my family.
When my assignment finished, then things would be different.
Ava laid a hand on my shoulder. “Ella told me you were doing what you are doing to help us. That you are why we have this house, why Ruth has her treatment, why we are in the school we are in.”
Her eyes glistened.
I had to leave. Right away, before she said anything else.
I swallowed. “I have to go.” I turned and half ran down the sidewalk, away from my sister. Big, bad, angry Mat Brandt, scurrying off like a coward. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t let her say if she thought I wasn’t a crook.
I slammed the Dasher’s door so hard it stuck.
I drove off into the gathering fog.
Chapter 18
Two days later, Friday, my necklace vibrated softly against my skin, waking me up before dawn. Ashula loved to contact me before sunup.
She told me to meet at a place in North Portland, and come by myself.
I got up, being as quiet as I could, dressed, and was halfway out the door when Keisha came after me, still in her sweats and t-shirt, hair all frizzy.
“Where are you going so early?”
“Out.”
I turned to head down the walk. Her hand grabbed my shoulder.
“Not so fast, Mat. You’ve been keeping us out of the loop.”
“What makes you think it’s Scourge business?” I kept my voice low. Wouldn’t want her to worry that Grunge Dude Alex was listening. He probably wasn’t even in the other unit.
She followed me out to the curb.
“Damn right we know it’s Scourge business.”
I whirled around. Her eyes widened.
“Fine, it’s that,” I said.
Mushrooms, I was treating them just like I hated being treated.
“Listen. Be ready. I may need you guys on very short notice.”
She nodded, suddenly looking worried.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Stick around the place. Call Simon and have him join you.”
I didn’t look back when I drove off.
The meeting place was an old power station in north Portland. Looked like the kind of place you’d get murdered in when you weren’t looking. Ashula waited for me on the steps. There was no sign of Nefarious.
“You will recall he wanted more information,” she said. The sun was up, and everything was gray and gloomy as all hell.
“Yeah,” I said, “I remember.”
“Well, we are about to obtain it, and need your help.”
I listened as she told me the plan.
The private airstrip was east of Portland, a little stop for the rich and powerful, in the shadow of Mt. Hood.
There was a line of hangars, and a limousine waiting on the tarmac.
Security had been a cinch to take care of. Stunners were a criminal’s best friend. The hangar’s door was closed, but unlocked. Outside, I couldn’t hear the idling trucks, but they were inside, all three of them.
The limousine was a sleek Lincoln Imperator, with tinted windows. Must be waiting to pick up the Emerald Biologic vice president of operations.
I smiled to myself. Bastard wouldn’t know what hit him.
Across the tarmac, next to a maintenance shed, our fast helper crouched. He wore a fire retardant bodysuit. They didn’t tell me his name. There was an open crate next to him.
I’d asked Ashula what was in it. She’d just smiled and said, “Treats for our guests.”
Nefarious sat behind the wheel in the limousine. He was the last person the VP would expect to be driving the limo.
I kept having to keep myself from laughing. What can I say—the whole thing was hilarious. Finally, I was going to get my hands on one of these bastards.
It was twilight when the Learjet arrived, coming in low from the west, running lights on. It circled the field. The tower had another Scourge member whose power was to impersonate others. He couldn’t change his appearance, but he could take on their voice, attitude, and body language, so he’d seem familiar.
Perfect for a little job like this.
The plane dropped toward the runaway, wheels out. The wheel bumped against the tarmac. The plane’s engines revved as they reversed thrust, and the jet taxied toward us.
Ashula raised her wrist comm. “Now!”
The hangar door rolled up. Three huge dump trucks roared out onto the tarmac. One went behind the plane while the others boxed it in from the front.
“Gotcha!” I whispered.
Darkness came down over everything as Ashula brought the night early. As she did, the dump trucks raised their beds and sent tons of earth onto the tarmac.
The drivers’ doors on the dump trucks opened, and the hired wheelmen jumped down and sprinted away. Normals, paid do to a job, and they’d done it.
I reached out with my power into the earth, finding the seeds there and urging them to grow, burst forth from the soil. Vines stretched out and quickly covered the Learjet’s wings, pulling clods of earth up with them and getting sucked into the jet engines.
It was a long shot that the engines would die just because of dirt being sucked into them, along with some plant matter, but die they did, because we had someone who could increase the odds.
Nefarious.
I sent a vine, thick and ropey, along the plane’s fuselage until it reached the door, then had it snake into the inset handle, and pull. The odds were so long, but the door opened.
Someone stood there, someone in powered armor that gleamed silver in the darkness Ashula had created. The figure leapt out, landed by the nose, walked under the dump truck in front of the plane. The huge truck flipped backward, landing with a crash that shook my bones.
My breath froze. The armored figure—that was Dynamo, Karl Cooper.
The Karl Cooper I’d met back in the Support dungeon, the Karl Cooper who had been at the Sequoia building in Seattle when Mutter summoned a monster cyclone. The Karl Cooper who led the First Team. The handsome young hero, successor to the Drake twins, who went by an old fashioned Empowered nickname.
What was he doing here, aboard Emerald Biologic’s private jet?
Damn it. He threatened to stop our play to get information.
Cooper jumped on top of the overturned truck, strode to the Learjet. Security in body armor boiled out of the jet, jumping over to the truck. They were armed with rifles that were all angles. Stunners? Or something else.
I ordered the vines to grow and ensnare the guards. One guard went down tangled in vines, but the others aimed their rifles at the plants. The weapons’ muzzles glowed. Agony stabbed my brain as the vines screamed in my mind and shriveled.
I shook myself, sent my awareness into more seeds and grew them into fresh vines, but the guards killed those, too.
“They are using maser weapons,” Nefarious said in my ear over the comm. “Create more vines, but wait before sending them.”
“Acknowledged.” Bile filled my throat. My head felt like someone had hit it about ten times with ball-peen hammer. Cooper jumped from the jet, holding someone in his arms.
One guess. It was the VP of Ops for Emerald Biologic. Our target.
Dynamo was a bodyguard. And guards using some sort of energy rifle that only sanctioned normals were allowed, like UN peace keepers or Support security troops. All to protect Emerald Biologic.
All things a private company wasn’t supposed to have.
Something streaked up the overturned truck bed’s underside, flames covering his body.
Our speedster in the hole. I didn’t know his name, but he wore a fire retardant suit, flames from friction with the air covering it. He streaked past the guards from behind. The first toppled over, then the next and then next. Crowbar? Had to be.
Even so, at the speed and in the near dark, hitting them at just the right spot would be incredible luck. Unless you had Nefarious screwing with probability.
Silver flashed in the dark. Cooper must be jumping with the corporate goon.
I closed my eyes, losing myself in the contact with the vines, which were now a tangled carpet covering the tarmac.
There. A half ton of armor and men had landed.
Grow. Tighten. Close.
Vines grappled against metal. A vibrating, humming knife slashed the vines, but I grew more. Impossibly, the knife slipped from Cooper’s hand and clattered off into the darkness, brushing past my vines.
Nefarious again.
The vines tightened, and the two men were encased in green, living chains.
I opened my eyes and sprinted across the tarmac, Ashula running beside me, and Speed Guy working with a pry bar thing at the seam below Cooper’s helmet. Pop, it flew off.
Zap! Nefarious, in a chauffeur’s outfit, aimed his stunner at the bald guy in business casual.
A second zap! I uncoiled the vines, shrinking them and the two unconscious men slumped down. Speed Guy’s hands were blurs as he pried at the armor. Seconds later the armor was off, split in two, opening like a clam shell. I helped Nefarious pull the unconscious Karl out. He wore his Hero Council blue form-fitting jumpsuit.
Nefarious’s jaw tightened. Proof that Emerald Biologic had support from the Hero Council, or at least a faction. It hit me. What if Zhukova and Winterfield wanted me to think they were the good guys, and the other faction needed to be taken down? After all, they knew how angry I was at Ellis’s “horror show.” What if I were being played like a fiddle for their own ends? Pissed off as I was, I’d be the perfect sucker for their play.
Ashula snapped police cuffs on Cooper and the corporate goon. Her eyes glittered dangerously as she looked the two of them over. We hauled them into the limo, dumping the armor in the trunk, and then all piled inside, with Nefarious behind the wheel, and drove away from the airstrip. No one said anything.
We drove an hour to a garage on the east bank of the Willamette, in the dirty, greasy industrial area. The garage was under a bridge, next to an old office building.
We entered through a connecting door, like rats going into a maze, and then took a flight of stairs down to a basement level. Both the Scourge and Support loved holes in the ground. I must have looked surprised because Ashula smiled when we reached the basement level.
“Hidden in plain sight wasn’t what you expected, was it, Mat?”
I carried the corporate goon over my shoulder, while Speed Guy had Cooper in a fireman’s carry. Nefarious walked ahead of us, toward a closed door.
“No, it wasn’t. I figured we’d head out to the country, to some secret hideaway.”
Nefarious looked back from the door, smiled. It made him suddenly seem ten years younger. “A fine play on words. This is more convenient, and since we already had it, provided us with easy access.”
He unlocked the door with a key. I half-expected him to wave his wrist over a door pad to unlock the door, but there was no pad, and the door swung inside, rather than slide into the wall.
We walked into a room with old tiled walls, and big tables in the center. It looked like where you’d go to murder someone.
“Used to be a rum runners warehouse,” Nefarious said.
“Looks more like a slaughterhouse.”
There were open doors leading off the big room to small rooms that looked like cells.
They strapped Karl into a high-backed chair in one of the small rooms off the big room. “We try to plan for every contingency,” Ashula said.
These two were giving me a major case of the creeps. Plan for every contingency. Like torture, because it sure as hell looked like they were getting set to torture Karl.
Tools, pliers, screwdrivers, and a power drill hung on the wall. What looked like dentist stuff hung on the opposite wall, and there was a sink on the wall behind the high-backed chair they strapped Karl into.
I watched from the doorway, fighting to be stone-faced. What did I expect? Nefarious and Ashula weren’t about to mess around. This was deadly business.
My stomach was in knots as Nefarious and Speed Guy turned out the light and locked Karl in. We went up the stairs to the first level, and through a set of musty offices to a different set of stairs. We headed up three floors and into another maze of offices, until, finally, we reached a corner one.
No plants of course. This place had a layer of dust over everything. It had been closed up for a long time. The air was musty, dry. Made my eyes itch.
Corporate guy groaned. The sedative Ashula had given him was wearing off.
Nefarious turned, smiled again. This time there was no humor in his smile. He looked like a cat eyeballing a mouse. “Good timing,” he said to Ashula.
She smiled sweetly at him. My stomach churned.
There were obviously things going on between them, the way she brightened whenever he smiled at her, the way he always stood a bit taller whenever she talked to him. Too bad torturing people was part of their relationship.
Nefarious pointed at the big executive chair in the corner office, sitting on a plexiglass mat over very old style carpet, with a window behind it, blinds closed.
“You sure this is a good place to put him, with that window there?” I asked them.
“Don’t concern yourself,” Ashula said. She walked over and raised the blind.
I flinched, expecting street lighting to shine in. Instead, a faded poster of some desert island with palm trees covered what looked like a brick wall. The poster’s edges were curled.
“Leave it up. We want our guest to feel at ease,” Nefarious said.
I shuddered. That sounded like the sort of thing that asshole Mutter would have said.
Corporate goon groaned. He was a little guy, bald, with a sharp-looking suit, open-collared silk shirt, pressed wool slacks, and Gucci's. He wore a very expensive looking watch.
I leaned against the wall by the door, while Speed Guy left the room to go be on guard duty in the basement, keeping an eye on Karl.
Nefarious put the chauffeur’s hat on the fake wood desk that had been pushed to one side of the office. Ashula knelt in front of the Emerald Biologic VP and patted his hand until his eyes opened.
“Where—oh my god.” His head whipped around. He looked like a panicked owl.
“Hello, Mister Sullivan,” Nefarious said. “Duncan Sullivan, vice-president in charge of operations for Emerald Biologic.”
Sweat beaded on Sullivan’s forehead.
Nefarious glanced at Ashula. “We haven’t even b
egun and already he is sweating.”
“Perhaps he’s worried,” she said.
I ground my teeth. These two seemed to be enjoying this too much.
“How do you kn-know my name?” Sullivan stammered.
Nefarious held out an ID card. “Of course we would check your wallet and pockets.”
Sullivan paled.
Nefarious leaned down, face suddenly grave. “That’s right, Mister Sullivan, we also have your data chip.” He held up a little square of some sort of crystal. “This is the latest in biologic data storage. Living crystals.”
“We have analyzed the contents,” Ashula added.
Sullivan shook his head. “No way. You can’t have.”
Nefarious tilted his head. “Oh, but we have, Mister Sullivan.”
“That’s impossible. You don’t have the tech.”
Sullivan seemed so certain, despite his fear, that I wondered if Nefarious wasn’t bluffing.
“But of course we need to talk with you.”
He pulled out leather straps, tied Sullivan’s hands to the arm rests, and then gagged his mouth with a handkerchief.
“Just not yet,” Nefarious added. He motioned to Ashula and me and the three of us left Sullivan bound and gagged. Nefarious shut off the light as we left.
“Do you really know what’s on that crystal data chip thing?” I asked once the door was closed.
“I suspect a lot of sensitive data.”
“But you haven’t analyzed it yet-how could you?”
“We will analyze it. I have an expert coming.” He walked to the center of the maze of office cubbies. “We’ll need to clean this area up.”
“That’s going to take a while.” From looming torture to janitorial work, this was a fun bunch.
“We will have help. You’re going to contact your cell and get them here at once.”
Well, Keisha finally got what she wanted. To see the Inner Circle at work.
They came a half hour after I called, pulling into the garage next door, where I waited for them. It was dry and cold today, and I wished I had asked Keisha to bring my wool coat, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Sullivan upstairs and Karl Cooper in the basement. I hadn’t signed up for torture, but of course Nefarious would want to get information any way he could. Or would he? Maybe it was another bluff. If he really was Daniel Drake, once known as Halo, who could put the odds in your favor, then maybe there was still a hero inside.
Empowered: Traitor (The Empowered Series Book 2) Page 16
