by Jena Leigh
As Brandt’s footsteps faded down the hallway, Declan fixed Grayson with an accusing glare.
“With all due respect, sir,” Declan growled, “what the hell was he talking about?”
Resting his elbow on his desk, Grayson reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. His earlier anger dissolved before Declan’s eyes, replaced by a look of utter exhaustion.
“Close the door, Declan,” he said in resignation.
Declan kept his gaze fixed on Grayson, slamming the door closed using telekinesis and a quick flick of his wrist.
Grayson cringed slightly at the noise, then fixed him with a tired stare.
“Well?” Declan prompted.
A sigh. “The intel Linus brought us… He claims to have stumbled across confidential Agency files outlining a plan to trick Alex into using her abilities in a public forum. A plan suggesting that they intend to use her in order to out the existence of Variants to the norms.”
“He claims?” Declan echoed. “Are you saying you don’t believe the intel Linus offered up is legit?”
Grayson shook his head. “There was something odd about the way he obtained the information… Carter would never be so reckless. I’m not saying the Agency doesn’t intend to use Alex for something. They’ve wanted to get their hands on the girl practically from day one. I’m just not certain that this is the objective they ultimately had in mind. It’s entirely possible that Carter used Linus to feed us this line of misinformation in the hopes of forcing us to act preemptively.”
“Do you think we can trust him?” asked Declan. “Linus, I mean.”
Grayson shook his head. “I can’t be certain of anything, now that our well of inside information has run dry.” He sighed. “Even still. From everything I’ve seen… So long as Alex remains here, safe at the compound, we should have nothing to worry about.”
Crap.
No sooner were Grayson’s words out of his mouth than his face twisted in pain, his eyes closed, and his right hand reached up to press against his forehead.
“I see fire…” he whispered. Grayson’s eyes flew open and his head jerked up, fear etched into the lines of his face. “Declan, what have you done?”
His mouth went dry.
“Yeah. About that, boss. We, uh…” Declan swallowed hard. “We might have a problem.”
* * *
Declan landed on the small patch of dirt at the base of The Corner Pocket’s back staircase.
Something was wrong. It was just before two a.m. in New York, but even for it to be so close to closing time, the bar was eerily silent.
Except… that wasn’t what had him so unsettled.
For as far as he could sense in every direction, the area was completely devoid of electricity. Either there’d been one hell of a blackout, or someone had set off an EMP nearby.
Then he heard it. The siren’s song of a fire roaring in the front right corner of the bar, growing larger and more powerful by the second.
Declan tensed at the foot of the stairs, sending out a telepathic sweep in an attempt to find Alex… and also to get a headcount on how many agents—or innocent bystanders—he might encounter once he made it inside.
A chill carried through him as he finished the sweep.
Only one signature awaited him inside the building. Otherwise, the bar was empty.
Declan jumped, intending to reappear in the hallway that led from the bar toward the handful of rooms at the rear of the building. Instead he was pushed a few feet forward, reappearing just inside the main room near the pool tables.
He stumbled, then righted himself in the low light, too distracted by the fast-growing inferno across the room to turn and see what had obstructed his path.
Instead he focused on the raging fire. Glass bottles filled with spirits exploded behind the bar as the conflagration expanded outward and engulfed the walls and floor nearby. Raising a hand, Declan rallied his focus and fought back against the intoxicating pull of the flames, drawing them away from their alcohol-fueled ignition source and high into the air, gradually shrinking the blaze until he had nearly forced it out of existence.
Someone laughed behind him. It was a wet, wheezing sound—but still recognizable.
Declan spun around, drawing the last of the meager fire toward him and then sending it aloft, using it to illuminate the darkened room… only to blanch at what was revealed to him in the flickering light.
Bodies. Everywhere, there were bodies.
At least two dozen people were scattered across the room like discarded rag dolls, many with limbs turned at impossible angles. A great mass of them were piled by the front exit, as though they were slaughtered while trying to escape.
“Learn a new trick, O’Connell?” Benji’s voice wheezed from the far corner. “Really could’a used that half an hour ago, kid. Whole bar full of jumpers… and none of us worth shit after that damn pulse.”
Declan turned toward the voice.
His old boss sat on the floor looking haggard, his back propped against the wall and his legs sprawled out in front of him. His arms rested uselessly in his lap, his clothes and face drenched with fresh blood.
“Jesus,” Declan muttered, moving to kneel next to him as he looked Benji over for injuries. A broken glass bottle was half-buried in his left side. “We gotta get you to a hospital. Hang on, old man, and I’ll—”
Benji waved him off, though it clearly pained him to do so. “No point, kid. I’d never…”—he grimaced—“…never survive the jump.”
“Dammit, Benji, we should at least try to—”
“You always were a bit hardheaded, O’Connell.” Benji endured another wet, racking cough.
“What happened here, Benji?”
The man shook his head slowly, his joking demeanor falling away, replaced by a look of shame.
“I’m sorry, kid,” Benji said quietly. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Declan rocked back on his heels.
“Somehow they found out about our deal. Agents have been staking out the bar, just waiting on you to show.” Benji swallowed, then shook his head. “I tried to warn you, but you’d gone off the grid. I never… I never thought it’d be your girl that would come for it, O’Connell.”
Declan turned to look over his shoulder, raking his gaze over the few upturned faces he could discern in the low light.
“Is she… Did they…?”
“They didn’t kill her,” he said. “Shot her full of tranqs while she was”—another slow wheeze—“still trying to protect our sorry asses. They just started slaughtering us and she…”
Benji shook his head again, closing his eyes.
“Hey now, old man.” Declan gripped Benji’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Open your eyes. Stay with me. I’m gonna get you some help, okay?”
He fished the phone out of his pocket and dialed 911.
“Damnedest thing I ever saw, that girl.” Benji’s voice grew faint. “You find her, Declan. You find her and you don’t let her go… You hear me? She’s… Damn. She’s really something…”
Benji’s voice trailed off and Declan glanced up in time to see the man’s head loll to the side, his gaze unseeing.
Declan dropped the phone.
“Benji!”
He lurched forward, grabbed hold of the larger man’s shoulders, and eased him down until he was flat on his back. With trembling fingers he reached forward and checked for a pulse. Not finding one, Declan reeled back and looked him over, frantically trying to remember the few pieces of information he’d gleaned from his sister over the years about resuscitating someone after they’d stopped breathing.
“Don’t do this to me, old man!”
A small voice in the back of his mind was telling him that his movements were pointless. That his friend was gone.
He ignored it.
On the floor, he could hear the tinny voice of a 911 operator asking what the nature of his emergency was.
Declan’s mind raced. There was a glass bottle in h
is side. Possibly a punctured lung. Chest compressions seemed out of the question.
A memory came to him then. One of himself and Alex crouching behind a small hill in the woods outside an Agency black site, staring up at the watchtower and the guard within. Alex had jumped inside the tower and knocked the man unconscious by sending a concentrated pulse of electricity through his chest.
“Hang on, old man…” said Declan. “Hang on…”
He reached forward and placed his shaking palms on either side of Benji’s chest, sending a pulse of energy radiating through his hands. Benji’s body jerked, then lay still once more.
Desperate and unthinking, Declan tried again.
And then again.
“Dammit, Benji!” Declan shouted. He sank back on his haunches and ran a hand over his face, the blood on his palm mingling with the warm tracks of his tears.
“Come on, old man,” he whispered. “Not like this.”
The bar was silent. Benji continued to stare unseeing at the ceiling above.
Reaching down, Declan gently ran his fingertips over his former mentor’s eyes and closed them for the final time.
Nineteen
The future was going up in flames—and it was all Brian Grayson’s fault.
This is wrong, he thought. I did everything I was supposed to, but this is all wrong!
“Why is this happening?” he whimpered, watching as the blaze slowly expanded, devouring everything in its path and sending great plumes of black smoke toward the rippling inferno that was the cabin’s ceiling. “What did I miss? This isn’t the right path…”
Brian surrendered to another coughing fit, then berated himself for wasting his breath by giving voice to his thoughts. Speaking aloud was a pointless use of his remaining oxygen. It also caused his aching throat to burn and the acrid smoke to scratch painfully against his strained vocal cords.
For the last five minutes he’d been shouting in vain for someone—anyone—to please come help him. Judging from the sounds of utter chaos unfolding outside the cabin, none of the others were in any position to come to his rescue.
Two minutes earlier, the noises outside tapered off… and that’s when Brian’s terror truly kicked into high gear. He abandoned his cries for help after that. It seemed obvious that there was no one left to hear him.
The heat buffeted his skin, rolling over him like an ocean wave breaking upon the shore, growing more painful and suffocating by the second.
Death was creeping ever closer and all Brian could do was watch on dumbly and wonder how?
How was this happening?
He’d played this potential path—this potential future—out dozens of times over in his head. He’d taken every right action, spoken every necessary word. Led them purposely toward the outcome that would save everyone.
Nowhere on that path was Brian meant to wake from a dead sleep in the middle of the night to find the cabin he shared with Ozzie and Jian Liu burning down around his ears.
So what the heck did I miss?
Because he must have missed something. Dying alone in a four-alarm fire was nowhere in the cards he’d been working with.
It wasn’t even in the deck!
None of the potential futures Brian envisioned could have led to this moment. So how had he gotten there?
How?
Brian hugged his knees tightly, trying in vain to make himself smaller as he pressed further into the corner. His chest constricted, tightening as much from his own mounting fear as from the increasing lack of breathable air.
The fire was getting closer. It wouldn’t be long now.
He closed his eyes, unable to bear the heat.
“Brian!” Nate’s voice rang out over roar of the flames. “Dammit, I can’t even see him from here. Brian! … Are you sure he’s back there, Red?”
“I’m positive. Can’t you just use your TK and blast a hole in the far wall? Make an exit for him?”
“Not without destabilizing the roof,” said Nate. “And without him in my line of sight, I wouldn’t be able to protect him from falling debris.”
Kenzie? Brian called out in his thoughts, not trusting the ragged remnants of his voice to carry that far. Is that you?
It’s me, Bri. We’re going to help you, just… stay where you are.
“Was that a joke?” Brian mumbled, then coughed.
He could hear two men arguing pointedly on the other side of the fiery barricade, but their voices were just low enough that he couldn’t make out the words.
“Shit!” Kenzie shouted, followed by the panicked projection: Take cover and hold your breath, Bri!
His sister’s warning came roughly half a second too late.
As he attempted to draw his next inhalation, all of the air was rapidly sucked from the room—and from his smoke-filled lungs, causing his chest to spasm painfully.
The towering flames expanded exponentially for a fraction of an instant, blinding in their intensity and scalding hot against his skin… and then every last spark went out.
Brian clutched at his singed T-shirt, fingers clawing into his chest as air gradually returned to the room, gasping and choking as he struggled to recapture his stolen breath.
His vision began to tunnel.
The next thing he knew, Nate was towering over him, asking him a series of questions Brian could barely hear over the sound of his own ragged breathing.
“Fine,” Brian eventually managed to reply. “I’m okay… I’ll be okay.”
His exposed skin felt flushed, but he was miraculously uninjured in spite of that final blast of heat and flame.
Nate took him by the elbows and hauled him onto his feet. “Can you walk?”
Brian nodded and Nate led him step by step around the charred and smoking remnants of the cabin’s furniture to where the front door had once stood. Now there existed only a collapsed husk of the burned out wall. Thanks to Brian’s bare feet, Nate was forced to carry him the last few steps piggyback as they picked their way carefully over the smoldering remains and exited the building.
There was no point searching for any of Brian’s shoes. They’d all burned along with the rest of the contents in the suitcase that held his belongings. He’d be sporting pajama pants and a soot-stained T-shirt for the foreseeable future.
Carson Brandt stood just outside, sweating profusely and looking haggard.
“Sorry for blowing up the room and hoovering all the air from your lungs, young Grayson,” said Brandt. “Unfortunately, I was a bit tapped out from all the other fires I’ve been battling tonight.” He sent a pointed glare at Nathaniel. “Creating a vacuum was the only option left at my disposal for putting out a fire that size as quickly as needed doing.”
Kenzie rushed forward and pulled Brian into a bear hug, before pushing him back to arm’s length and inspecting him from head to toe.
“You’re okay!” she said, then with less confidence, “You are okay, right?”
Brian was struck by the similarity to another moment where he’d found himself covered in ash, lungs brimming with smoke, being checked over by his sister as she made sure he was in one piece.
That time, Masterson had just sent Aiden’s apartment up in flames.
This time, however, Brian didn’t bother to answer his sister.
He couldn’t. He was too busy taking in the flaming wreckage of the compound that had formerly been their refuge. The main house was blazing brightly, the fire having already consumed most of the building. Two of the cabins were still alight, although his cabin and two others had seemingly been put out before they could be fully razed. At the far end, cabin five dripped with water.
Cabin five. Aiden’s cabin. He must have used his ability to douse the flames with water before they could spread.
Where was Aiden? For that matter, where was anyone?
“What happened?” Brian asked quietly.
“Agents,” Nate replied. “Their fire-wielders torched most of the buildings seconds after they arrived.”
<
br /> “But what about the others?!” Brian asked, unable to keep the panic from seeping into his words. “Where is everyone?”
Nate shook his head. “Scattered. We’re the only ones still here. I’ll explain, but right now we need to move. Kenzie?”
His sister closed her eyes. “Damn. You were right, Nate. They came back. I count three agents in the courtyard.” Her eyes flew open. “They’re headed our way.”
“And how, exactly, do you intend for us to make this miraculous escape?” Brandt asked. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a bit short on jumpers at the moment.”
“We may be short on jumpers,” Nate replied, “but we’re not lacking for horsepower. Come on. Let’s go.”
Nate took hold of Brian’s elbow, pulling him along as he broke into a run.
Brian struggled to keep up with his brother’s loping strides, running flat out and trying not to yelp from the pain of his bare feet slamming into the jagged gravel path with each heavy footfall.
They'd just crested the hill and started toward the stables when something whizzed through the air above their heads. A giant block of ice collided with the stable’s wood-paneled siding, exploding with a crack and a shower of falling shards.
The four of them came to a skidding halt on the path. Nate released his hold on Brian’s arm as they all spun around, hoping to catch sight of their pursuers.
“Keep going!” Brandt ordered as he took a step back toward their attackers. He pulled a silver lighter from his pocket, flicked it open, and drew a flame into his palm. “I’ll try to hold them off.”
Kenzie didn’t need convincing. She reached down and grabbed Brian’s hand, dragging him forward.
They were around the side of the building and stumbling to a halt beside the Charger before Brian realized that their brother wasn’t with them.
A loud thud echoed from where they’d just fled and a scattering of rocks and dirt rained down in the distance.
Kenzie approached the Charger’s passenger side door. Nate had parked the muscle car in the field just in front of the stables, next to the dirt path that wound its way across the property and out onto the nearest road.
