Sketches

by Teyla Branton

  Jaxon dodged behind the first black shuttle. There, he found a young boy, struggling for breath, with an obvious stomach wound. What was this child doing here?

  “Hang on,” Jaxon muttered. He took the boy’s hands, pressing them over his stomach.

  Peering around the back of the shuttle, Jaxon saw that he had a clear shot at Summers. Their gazes locked for the briefest moment that seemed to freeze time. Somewhere, Jaxon had stared at him like this before. But when?

  As Jaxon started to aim, a sob from the boy made him hesitate. He glanced down, tightening his free hand over the boy’s. “It’s going to be okay,” Jaxon murmured. The boy’s eyes shut and he sighed his last breath.

  Renewed anger flooded Jaxon. Summers was diving into his car now, followed closely by the thin woman enforcer. Jaxon fired, an instant too late, and the bullets slammed into the window. Summers smirked at him as more of Jaxon’s bullets bounced off the car, barely making a dent.

  Armored, Jaxon thought.

  The engine roared and the next second, Summers careened through the yard and through the gate, clipping a man in street clothes and leaving the rest of his Special Forces behind.

  Jaxon hurried back to Reese, who was standing next to Eagle, her gaze focused on a big man across the yard. Jaxon followed the stare to see a thinly disguised Hammer sauntering toward them with a group of a dozen rag-tag men of all ages. A grin broke Jaxon’s face, and he started forward, relieved at seeing his friend. Somehow Hammer and his motley crew had saved them from whatever end Summers had planned for them.

  Hammer wasn’t wearing his enforcer blues, but armor showed under a rip in his dark street clothes where he’d been hit by at least one round in the chest. Jaxon winced for him; he had to be in pain. Hammer also wore a black beanie and a cloth band around his forehead—in fact, all the young men with him wore a similar black headband. Jaxon had seen that somewhere before.

  Hammer reached him, but instead of shaking his hand and explaining, he pointed his gun at Jaxon’s chest. “They’re going to take your gun now.”

  Shock pounded through Jaxon as his gun was ripped from his hands and his body patted down, though the Special Forces had already removed anything of interest. Behind him, Reese and Eagle were enduring the same treatment.

  “What are you—?” The words died on Jaxon’s lips as another figure in black appeared near the gate behind Hammer, one he recognized from the C on his cheek: El Cerebro. “You work for him?” Horror filled his voice, and every part of his body revolted at the idea. “Hammer—Evan—we’re friends. I can’t believe . . . so this is why your friend suddenly can’t give us the program we need to find the blind spots. He wasn’t transferred, was he? You just sold out!”

  Lines furrowed Hammer’s brow. “You’ll understand soon enough. Come on.”

  Hammer marched them at gunpoint across the yard to a silver shuttle waiting just outside the gate. Escape ideas flooded Jaxon’s mind. He could make a run for it and trust that Hammer wouldn’t let him be shot in the back, or he could wait and see if Garrett made an appearance and then act. But the rigid lines of Hammer’s face and body told him he wasn’t likely to allow any escape, and Garrett hadn’t shown up yet, so he was probably dead.

  He caught Reese’s gaze and nodded, flipping his stare beyond the shuttle. If they caused a commotion, maybe one of them could get away. She blinked but showed no other sign before she stumbled, catching herself on the guard between them.

  Jaxon exploded into motion, jabbing his fist into the face of a guard. He was pleased to see Eagle punching at the gun held to his back, sending it flying. Eagle’s next blow hit a guard in the face. Jaxon started to run, but two men tackled him onto his back. One pummeled his face and blood spurted from his lips. Jaxon lashed out, but another guard grabbed his fist, pinning it roughly to the blacktop.

  At that moment, Reese bolted, wrenching away from a guard and slipping between the gate and the shuttle. One of the young guards followed her, raising his gun to fire.

  “Don’t shoot!” El Cerebro’s voice was thunderous.

  Jaxon struggled to get away from the three men holding him, but it was impossible. One of them forced Jaxon’s hands together near his abdomen and cuffed him.

  Hammer grabbed something from the shuttle, tossing it to another man. “Follow her with this. She has a tracker. Bring her back unharmed.”

  A tracker? Jaxon’s betrayal was complete. This man wasn’t his friend—had probably never been his friend.

  Eagle’s fight had been as short as Jaxon’s own, and together they were thrown into the open space of the shuttle, where they found Lyssa sprawled on the carpet, unconscious. She didn’t seem to be hurt, and she was breathing, so for that Jaxon was grateful. But it was his fault she was here, and whatever happened to her was on his head.

  His desperate hope that Reese would escape was short-lived. Already she was being dragged into the shuttle, hands cuffed, by three men who seemed scarcely old enough to shave. They pushed her inside and climbed in after, keeping their distance, their rifles aimed and ready to fire. The boy who’d died behind the truck—he’d probably been their friend.

  “Check the building,” El Cerebro said. The mask over his skin showed no emotion.

  Hammer gave a sharp nod. “Already sent them inside.”

  A commotion at the door to the building made them turn, and Jaxon craned his neck to see Garrett being dragged outside between a couple of older guards. His face was bleeding and bruised.

  El Cerebro let out a sigh and motioned them over. “Put him in here with the others.”

  Eagle was taking the change in their abductors stoically, but not Reese. Even with her hands cuffed, her fingers were touching as if each hand held a pencil.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Her fingers clenched and unclenched as she whispered, “Yes.” But he didn’t like the beads of sweat on her forehead or the red flush on her face. “I would have gotten away, but they had a tracker in me. When did they do that? How?”

  “We’ll get it out.”

  “You might have to leave me behind. Promise.”

  “No. We’ll get out together.” For all he knew he had a tracker inside him too. But the most likely place for Reese’s tracker to have been inserted was at the hospital after the accident. Nova had seen the attack, and that meant El Cerebro would have been informed. If he had someone on the inside at division, why not the hospital?

  When El Cerebro’s guards reached the shuttle with Garrett, they shoved him inside and said, “More enforcers in the basement. Knocked out. You want them too?”

  El Cerebro shook his head. “Leave them. They’ll only be replaced by others.” He turned back toward Hammer. “Get them there safely. I’ll meet you after I finish up here.” Still no emotion showed through the stupid mask, and Jaxon vowed that if it was the last thing he did, he was going to rip it off the man.

  “May I ask what you want with us?” This from Eagle, as practical as ever.

  Jaxon was wondering the same thing. Since Summers was responsible for their attempted abduction two nights ago, that meant El Cerebro wasn’t behind the attack. He might even have known Special Forces was responsible. But why had he sent them into this trap, only to save them? Surely there were safer ways to abduct them.

  “We won’t help you,” Jaxon said. “Ever.”

  El Cerebro’s dark eyes landed on Jaxon, his mouth twisted upward in an unsettling plastic smile. “Be patient, Jaxon. You will need a lot of patience for what comes next.” The man was using a voice modulator on his throat, but somehow the cadence, the delivery, was familiar. He was probably another CORE Elite pus bag like Summers, pulling the strings of these uneducated punks.

  Jaxon answered El Cerebro’s thinly veiled threat with a confident sneer—a confidence he was far from feeling. Whatever El Cerebro’s game, Jaxon would play by his own rules.

  AS EL CEREBRO pulled the shuttle door closed, Reese tried to hold her fingers still, but the images crowd
ing in on her were more than she could bear. The sketch of a dead boy from Jaxon, one of Nova from El Cerebro, and an image of Captain Brogan from Hammer, who was obviously torn about his participation in this action. Then there was the older but still pressing dead man from the enforcer at the factory, and the supervisor of the enforcer she’d locked inside the second-floor room. Various other sketches from the young guards in the shuttle added to her panic.

  So many sketches, flashes of the past, and she couldn’t block any of them.

  The shuttle rocked into movement, and Reese was thrown against another person. Her hands were shaking now with the compulsion. She had to draw the sketches. Get them out. Only then would they leave her alone.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Hammer’s voice came from far away.

  Someone nudged up against her face. Jaxon. She pushed against him, their faces slipping a little with the tears that were somehow on her cheek. His hands gripped hers, poorly because of the cuffs, but calming. She took a deep breath, and the images receded slightly.

  “You got paper?” Jaxon asked Hammer. “A pencil?”

  Hammer snorted. “So you can stab me with it?”

  “She has a notepad in one of her pockets,” a younger guard said.

  “Please,” Jaxon begged. “She needs to draw.”

  “Sorry.” Hammer sounded regretful. “We can find something in the Underground.”

  “I’m okay,” Reese managed to say. She was getting a handle on it now. Relaxation helped when drawing wasn’t possible. But if she didn’t learn how to control this, she might end up a recluse. Of course, none of that really mattered right now. By morning, they might all be dead.

  “How long have you worked for him?” Jaxon spat, his stare gouging into Hammer.

  “Shut up!” Hammer pulled a stunner. “Or I’ll make you shut up.”

  Jaxon’s nostrils flared and his eyes promised all kinds of pain, but he obeyed.

  Reese’s side was aching again from her fight with the enforcer back at the factory, but not nearly as much as it hurt on the sky train from the Coop. She closed her eyes and scooted closer to Jaxon, the feel of his leg and hip against hers taking her back almost to their childhood. As bad as this situation seemed, she had this much.

  The drive to their destination was short, but inside the windowless back section of the shuttle, they saw nothing. Upon arrival, they were pushed and prodded out into what appeared to be an abandoned parking garage. Hammer tossed the unconscious Lyssa over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing and led them through a door to an elevator that went slowly down, down, down for far too long. Finally, it jerked to a stop.

  “What’s this place?” Jaxon asked. “Is it pre-Breakdown?”

  Hammer laughed. “It’s so far pre-Breakdown that our great-grandfathers didn’t know it existed. It predates sky trains, even.”

  “A subway,” Eagle said. “I always wondered if any remains existed. I wish I had my glasses so I could see it.”

  In silence, they trudged down an empty tunnel with two sets of metal tracks running along it. The dank smell was unpleasant, but the pressing dark was comforting to Reese. The pictures in her mind were still vivid but the urge to draw them hurt less.

  Partway down the tunnel they hit a wide area with a platform that they reached by climbing a few cement steps. From there, they went inside a large room that had been divided into a lounge and eating area. The place was deserted, but scattered belongings made it look lived in. They walked through this to another door, their footsteps loud in the quiet. Then they were shoved inside a smaller room with a couch and a desk. Reese was vaguely aware of Hammer laying Lyssa on one end of the couch, her legs tucked in a fetal position.

  On the desk sat a cup with pens and pencils, relics of the past. Only artists and a few others used writing utensils these days, and Reese suspected the pens would be long dry, but maybe the pencils worked. She stumbled twice on the way, tripping on a piece of loose rug. Guards rushed forward to stop her, but at a barked command from Hammer, they left Reese alone.

  No paper on the desk, but her little pad—barely larger than the size of her palm—would do. She fumbled, drawing it from her calf pocket. The first pencil she tried had no tip. Neither did the second or the third. When the fourth and last had barely enough for one sketch, a strangled sob escaped her throat.

  Hammer hurried forward, knife in hand. She was startled until he took the pencil and sharpened the end. He also uncuffed her, and she began to sketch, the images forming like magic under her hand. The shaking ceased as her gift kicked into control.

  Hammer unlocked Eagle’s handcuffs, Garrett’s, and then approached Jaxon. “Don’t do anything stupid,” Hammer warned him. “Their guns are real, not stunners.”

  Jaxon’s face, raw and bloody from the fight at the factory, was threatening. “Traitor,” he spat, stepping close to Hammer.

  “Hey, I saved your ass back there,” Hammer retorted. “You would be in a lab right now if not for me. Or dead.”

  So Hammer knew about their abilities. “Why are you involved in this? What did El Cerebro give you to make you betray the CORE?”

  Hammer raised a hand to stop El Cerebro’s men, one of whom was closing on Jaxon with his gun. “The real question here,” Hammer said, “is how you can continue to support an organization that enslaves and gluts itself on the labor of three hundred thousand people in the colonies? A society that kills or cuts out the minds of those who disagree with it. I know you grew up in a colony and that it’s better out here, but you are still a slave. They tell you what to read, how to think. They control all the Teev feeds, they track your every movement with your CivID. They decide who can have babies and who lives or dies in the hospitals. Is this the future you want for your children? Oh, wait, you probably won’t be able to have any because they want to kill you now that their experiment in Colony 6 went sideways. You know as well as I do that this precious CORE is broken. If we don’t fix it now, we might as well surrender to the crazy fringers.”

  Reese stopped drawing at the venom in Hammer’s voice. Jaxon’s face was furious, his hands clenched at his sides, but he didn’t lash out as Reese expected. Seconds ticked by as the former friends glared at each other. Then Jaxon suddenly stepped back, his chin dropping to his chest and his hands coming up to grab his head.

  A premonition, Reese thought.

  In an instant, it was over. Jaxon turned his head to stare at Garrett, who was slumped on the far end of the couch, holding a cloth someone had given him over the cut in his forehead. Jaxon’s eyes held a horror that Reese recognized only too well—the same horror she’d seen on his face the day his mother was murdered. He saw something happen to Garrett, she guessed.

  She wanted to go to him, but at the same time, she really didn’t want to draw whatever he’d experienced. Even now she could feel the emotion leaping from him, reaching for her. She held her breath, dreading the moment she would see the sketch.

  Jaxon walked over and sat down heavily on the arm of the couch by Garrett. Their partner didn’t move but remained staring at the floor in a daze. Reese relaxed. Whatever Jaxon had seen was gone now, and she didn’t have to draw it after all.

  Hammer studied Jaxon for several seconds, curiosity and sorrow etched on his face. Then, without speaking, he turned and walked to the door, motioning to the guards to follow him through. A soft hum told them it had been sealed from the outside.

  Reese finished her drawings—all rough, but enough to satiate the urge inside her. The most confusing one was of herself as a young child that must have come from either Jaxon or Eagle. It was hard to say which with the jumble that had been in her mind. The hit she’d taken with the stunner still seemed to be affecting her movements and her memory. She remembered only her arms weighing more than she could lift, and the shot from the stunner filling her with pain. Or had it been the other way around? The stun should have come first.

  She stood, still gripping the notepad, and went to the couch to st
and by Jaxon. “You okay?” she asked.

  His gaze slid to Garrett and back to her before he nodded. “Yeah. You?”

  “Fine now.”

  “Good, then let’s figure out how we’re going to get out of here.”

  Leaning against the wall near an empty bookshelf, Eagle shook his head. “What we need is some way to contact the captain. Too bad Lyssa isn’t awake. She could—” He broke off, glancing once more at Garrett. “She might be able to figure out some way to communicate with division.”

  Reese understood that he referred to Lyssa’s traveling ability, hoping she could communicate with Lyra, who could then report to the captain. At the moment, Garrett didn’t seem to be aware of any of them, but if he was going to be a part of their inner circle, they’d need to let him in on the secret regarding their abilities. Even if Reese hated the idea of trusting any more people.

  “Why isn’t Lyssa waking?” Jaxon said. “I’d think anything mild would have worn off by now.”

  Reese went to check on Lyssa. Whatever they’d given her, she was still out cold, almost as if El Cerebro’s people had known about her ability. But how? There was only one way she could think of.

  “Maybe that listening device wasn’t put under my couch by Nova,” she said.

  Jaxon’s head whipped toward the door. “Hammer?”

  “He was there. Just before we all talked.” About their abilities, she meant.

  Jaxon’s jaw clenched and unclenched, as if he struggled for words. “How could I be so stupid?”

  “No use beating yourself up about it,” Eagle said. “I doubt they hurt her. Yet.” Falling silent, he began to walk slowly around the room, his hands roaming over everything. How odd he looked now without his glasses; somewhere along this terrible day, Reese had grown accustomed to them. She hoped he’d find something to help them.

  Reese gently shook Lyssa, and when there was no response, she tried with more force. “Lyssa, wake up!”