The bastard.
“Of course it’s a trap,” Jenica snaps, her human eye rolling in exasperation. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to leave them there in the hands of the Enforcers. We need to think of a way to draw the M.P.s away long enough for us to get them out of there.”
“Why not focus on the refugees already captured by the Enforcers?” Gage asks.
“Because it’s exactly what they’ll be expecting,” I answer. “It’s too obvious.”
Gage smiles and I lower my eyes to my half-eaten toast and blush.
“Then let’s do something way less obvious and way more daring,” he says.
Jenica frowns. “I don’t think I like the sound of that, but perhaps you should elaborate Mister Bronson.”
Gage stands, bracing himself against the table with his large fists. He turns his head slowly, looking every one in our group in the eye as he speaks.
“It’s simple, really. We go out in two teams: one to Memphis and the other to Stonehead.”
Jenica gasps. “A double mission? Infiltrating Stonehead and the Memphis hideout on the same day?”
“Not just on the same day,” Gage answers, “but at the exact same time as well.”
“Impossible,” Dax snorts. “We don’t have that kind of firepower and we don’t have that many people.”
“The way I see it, you wouldn’t need that many people if one of your groups carried a walking EMP,” Professor Neville interjects, his voice barely above a whisper.
“An EMP?” Gage asks. “What is that?”
“Electromagnetic pulse,” Jenica answers her brow knit with bewilderment as she studies the Professor. “But, Sir, that would render us all helpless. Every member of our team would be stuck in the field with malfunctioning apparatuses.”
“Can someone please explain—real-people speak—what the hell an electromagnetic pulse is and why it’s a problem?” Gage asks, pacing toward the monitors near Jenica and studying the virtual layouts of the two places we need to infiltrate.
“An EMP is a burst of electromagnetic radiation,” the Professor says, standing as he goes into what I like to call ‘teacher mode’. “Basically, it is a wave of particles, both electric and magnetic that usually results from a high energy explosion, like a nuclear bomb. It is capable of coupling with electrical systems and producing damaging voltage surges. In short, it can cause a breakdown of an entire network of computerized hardware, rendering it useless. As Jenica and everyone else in this room are fully aware, centuries ago, we discovered that an electromagnetic pulse could be created without the harmful effects of nuclear explosion, enabling a person to harness the same side effects.”
“Meaning, if an EMP goes off anywhere near any person with bionic equipment, their gear is going to crap out on them,” I say between sips of coffee.
“I don’t get it,” Gage says to the Professor. “If the EMP is dangerous to pretty much everyone in this room, why would you suggest us bringing in a portable one?”
“Because it would disable M.P. armor, weapons and vehicles,” Olivia supplies with a shrug.
“The playing field would be even then, but I’d rather have the advantage,” Jenica says.
The Professor clears his throat. “I’ll clear all that up if you would just follow me to the lab. I want to show you all something.”
***
Through the plate glass window separating us from the pristine, white room on the other side we see Agata seated in a comfortable chair, surrounded by electronic devices. Televisions blast various programs in a symphony of noise that would drive me nuts if I were her. Robotic children’s toys walk across the floor with a chorus of beeps and flashes of flickering light. Music blares from several stereos. I’m grateful that the thick glass blocks out most of the irritating sound and I wonder how the little girl can stand it.
“What’s she doing in there?” Gage asks. His stance is a protective one, his face full of concern for the little girl. “Haven’t you studied her enough?”
The Professor nodded. “Our session last night was eye-opening, to put it mildly. Agata passed every test put to her with perfection and excelled in every area of reason, logic, and mathematics she was quizzed in. Her grasp of the subject matter surpasses that of many of my colleagues and subordinates. It really is quite fascinating the way her mind works. The robotic left-brain works side by side with the human right-brain in a way that increases her thinking power to ten times that of a normal human being. She thinks faster and better than anyone in this building and is able to compute even the most difficult of equations in less than one minute. And that’s not all.”
“Her left brain can emit an EMP?” Jenica guessed, her human eye wide with shock. “How is that possible?”
“The technology that was used to build the bionic cerebrum makes it possible,” he answers. “Agata is able to emit the energy pulse, but—and this is the best part—she can control it, direct it where she wants it to go with a single thought.”
“Watch,” he adds, pressing the intercom button that allows him to communicate with Agata from outside of the room. “Agata, how are you this morning? I trust you enjoyed your breakfast?”
The little girl smiles at us from her side of the glass and nods. “It was wonderful, thank you.”
“Excellent,” the Professor answers with a smile of his own. His eyes crinkle at the corners and I can tell by the softness in the pale blue depths that he’s already in love with the child. Perhaps because she is a walking, talking miracle that he had a hand in. Perhaps it’s because she is a symbol to him, proof that all is not lost in this war we fight against the government.
“Agata, would you please demonstrate for everyone what you showed me last night?”
She nods again. “Certainly. Which of the devices would you like me to focus on?”
“The two flat screens to your left, please.”
We all look on in awe as Agata turns to the two screens blaring newscasts into the room. In the blink of an eye, they have gone dead with no more than a look from her. Agata smiles at our shocked expressions and decides to give us a show. One by one, she shuts down every piece of technology in the room. Thankfully, the thick wall and plate glass between us and her protect us from the pulse she’s sending out. Once the stereos fall silent and the robotic toys stop their dancing and chirping, she sits back in her chair, folding her hands primly in her lap.
“Wonderful,” the Professor says through the intercom. He turns to the lab aide standing at the back of our group. “Tess, would you please escort Agata back to Hexley Hall?”
“Yes, Sir,” the aide responds. She enters the room, her gait uneven because of one bionic leg. After a few moments of chatter and smiles, she leads Agata from the room and down the hall—but not before the little girl had shot Gage her megawatt, gap-toothed smile and waved. Gage waved back and put on a smile for the girl’s benefit, but once she was gone, he turned his stony glare on the Professor.
“No,” he says from between clenched teeth. “Absolutely not. I will not allow my niece to be used as a weapon.”
The Professor removes his specs and wipes them with the bottom of his lap coat. “I expected this reaction from you, although when I thought of the idea, I didn’t realize that your family bond with her was so close.”
“She’s my sister’s daughter and I promised I’d keep her safe.”
“She would be safe,” Jenica says softly, and it is the first time I’ve ever heard compassion in her voice. “In order to focus her EMP signal on a target, she only needs to be able to see it. Am I right Professor? She should be able to do that from the hovercraft.”
The Professor nods. “You are correct, Miss Swan, but we will not try to force Mister Bronson to do something he’d rather not do. If he says no we have to respect that.”
“Like hell we do,” Dax hisses, turning toward Gage, his lips curled in a sneer. “Look, you bulldozed your way in here and forced your way onto our team. Everyone here has to mak
e sacrifices for the good of the Resistance, and that means you too. No matter how rich and snooty you may have been before you came here, you’re now a refugee and—because of Blythe and the Professor—a member of this team. Attacking two places at once was your bright idea. The least you can do is contribute.”
Gage meets Dax head on, and the two look like jungle cats ready to pounce on each other. I can’t say that the sight is all that bad. It’s actually kind of stimulating.
“I have sacrificed more than you will ever know to keep Agata safe,” Gage says, his jaw clenching in fury. “I will give everything I have to the Resistance, but not her. Agata is off limits.”
Dax snorts. “Spoken like a truly spoiled, rich kid. Do you have any idea what the people in this room have been through? What those prisoners at Stonehead will be put through if we don’t save them?”
“That’s enough!”
I can’t believe the sharpness of my tone but, really, I’ve had enough of the bickering. Dax is being an asshole and the Professor is asking the impossible of a guy who just risked his neck to save a girl we want to use as a piece of equipment. I force myself between the two large men and push them apart, one hand on each broad, muscled chest.
“Dax, Gage is right. We can’t ask him to risk his niece for us. You know how valuable a piece of collateral like Agata would be to the government. She is dangerous to them and they would stop at nothing to use her to get at the rest of us if they had to. If they captured her, she could even be used as a weapon against us. If someone asked you to risk my life, or Olivia’s or Jenica’s, would you do it?”
Dax looks like he wants to strangle me, but the hardness around his mouth is slowly starting to soften.
“Of course not,” he says, his voice clipped.
“Exactly. We are your family. Gage and Agata are now a part of that family and we have to treat them as such. If Gage says no, that means no.”
I look to Gage as I drop my hands from their chests, satisfied that they’re calm and not ready to leap over me to get at each other.
“Gage, I know that you don’t know us very well and you may not trust us. I get it, okay? But, if you would just think about it…”
My voice trails off as Gage brushes past me, stomping angrily for the exit. Without a word he is gone and I’m left looking like an idiot in front of everybody.
That does it.
Now I’m pissed.
Six
Blythe Sol and Gage Bronson
The Green at Restoration Resistance Headquarters
August 16, 2012
9:00 a.m.
“Hey!”
He keeps walking like he doesn’t hear me and that only fuels my anger. I try not to think too much about the sway of his narrow hips or the ripple of his back muscles beneath his fitted, black t-shirt, or even the cool air that is whipping through those blond strands of hair that make me want to run my fingers through them.
Because those thoughts are completely inappropriate.
“I’m not kidding, Gage, I will smack the shit out of you with my titanium hand and you’ll wake up tomorrow with a concussion!”
That stops him right in his tracks and I wonder if it’s because he thinks I’ll do it, or if he’s calling my bluff. Either way, I’ll take it. We’re alone on The Green, a patch of synthetic grass dotted with trees, flowers and benches. The kids’ playground is a few feet away, but the little ones are probably at the schoolhouse the Professor built for them and no one’s here. Just because we’re in hiding, doesn’t mean we don’t want our kids to get a good education. One day, when we’ve righted the wrongs of our country and are able to become productive members of society again, we want the kids to be ready.
“What do you want from me, Blythe?”
The question catches me off guard, even though what I wanted to do at first was convince him to let us use Agata. Now, looking at him and seeing pain wrapped in mystery flashing in his eyes, I am not sure exactly what it is he’s asking. Does he need to know what I want from him right this second, or are we talking about something deeper?
“You came to me yesterday and acted like you wanted friendship, you kissed me—”
“I believe it was you who did the kissing,” I interject, my face going hot despite the cold air whipping around us at the thought of his lips on mine.
Gage lifts a blond brow and snorts sarcastically. “Yeah, and it only takes one to tango. Give me a break, Blythe. If your boyfriend hadn’t come in and ruined it, I could have had you on your back.”
Part of me wants to be mad, but the other part of me wants so badly to retort by telling him that I would have preferred it if he were on his back.
Instead, I defend myself with, “Dax is not my boyfriend.”
“Are you sure about that? The way I see it, he’s awfully possessive of you and not shy about marking his territory. He’s a lot like that dog of yours…he might as well have pulled out his pecker and pissed around you!”
“Are you trying to make a point, or are you being obnoxious on purpose?”
“My point, Blythe, is that you’re a taker. You are willing to take whatever I give you and look at me with those big, beautiful eyes of yours and talk to me about trust. With those same eyes, you close yourself off to me and refuse to answer me when I ask you where you’ve been. How am I supposed to trust you with my niece, with her life, my life, when you won’t do the same for me? That family bullshit you were spouting back there doesn’t mean shit to me if you’re going to take from me without giving back. I don’t know about you, but where I’m from people in a family don’t do that.”
The howling of the wind picks up and for awhile it’s the only sound that can be heard on the green. Someone has let Dog out of the dorm—everyone at Mosley Hall helps me look after him—and he’s now loping toward us across the grass, his pink tongue hanging sideways out of his mouth. He jumps up and nudges my hand with his head; his way of telling me that he wants to be scratched behind the ears. I oblige him in an effort at distraction, but it only works for so long. Gage has taken my silence to mean that I’m indifferent and he turns on his heels to walk away.
“That’s what I thought,” he shoots over his shoulder as he disappears back toward Hexley Hall.
***
A few hours later I find him in his room with little Agata. The two are lying on the bed together, her head on his chest, and he is telling her a story about a fairy princess. I stand in the doorway and watch them, something familiar tugging on my insides as I remember being in a similar position with my father. A smile is pulling at the corners of my lips as I watch them, silently waiting for Gage to finish.
“And the princess, her prince, and the unicorn robot all moved into the pink castle together. And…”
“They lived happily ever after,” Agata supplied with a grin. “You tell the best stories Uncle Gage.”
Gage looks up from his place on the bed, his eyes flashing in annoyance as they lock with mine. Agata, oblivious to his anger toward me, jumps up and runs over to where I stand in the doorway.
“Hi! I know you, you’re Blythe. Your arm is cool.”
I hold the bionic limb up and twist it around, flexing the metal fingers. “You think so? Yours sounds much cooler.”
She shrugs and grabs the hand, pulling me into the room. “You know my Uncle Gage, right?”
I glance over at Gage, but he’s avoiding looking at me now, so I turn my attention back to Agata.
“Yes, I do. He’s a great guy, isn’t he?”
She pulls me down on the bed, and with Gage’s bulky frame stretched across one side of the mattress it’s awful crowded. Agata doesn’t seem to mind as she crosses her legs and bounces excitedly, talking a mile a minute.
“Oh, he’s the best. He brought me here to get me away from the bad people. Is that why you’re here? Did someone bring you here to get you away from the bad people?”
I nod and smile, finding her innocence and sweetness endearing. “Yeah. My best fr
iend, Dax—the really big guy I was with earlier—he saved me from some bad people too. They wanted to arrest me for being different.”
“Different like me.”
“Yes, that’s right. He told me about this place and the Professor. He told me that I would be safe here and that we could be a family.”
Agata frowned, her pale eyebrows scrunching adorably over wide doe eyes. “Don’t you have your own family?”
My heart is beating in double time and my eye responds by filling my vision with my stats and vitals. Anxiety claws at me as the details of my past flicker through my mind like a slow motion film. The little girl inside of me wants to fall to the floor and curl up into the fetal position and cry. The brittle part of my personality wants to shove this girl across the bed and snarl at her to mind her own business. Another part of me feels Gage’s eyes on my face and I know he’s waiting for the answer too. And before I can stop myself, the words are coming out and as I speak them, I am looking into Gage’s eyes, not Agata’s.
“I had a family,” I say, practically choking on the lump in my throat. “They died.”
“All of them?” she asks her rose-petal pink mouth parted in disbelief.
I nod. “Yes. The Military Police killed them trying to get to me. You see, my father didn’t want to turn me over to the government. Just like I’m sure your mom didn’t want to hand you over.”
Agata shakes her head with conviction. “No. That’s why Uncle Gage hid me.”
“Well, I didn’t have an uncle to help me get away. I just had my parents and little sister, who risked their lives to keep me hidden in the basement. Someone found out I was there and told on us. The bad men took me from my family and burned our house down with them still inside it.”
Agata is crying and as she reaches out toward my face and as her chubby fingers come away wet, I realize that her tears are mirrored on my face.
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