Blaze of Glory (13 page)

“Guess it wasn’t going to be that easy.” Hunter’s smile was forced, the worry lines on his forehead deepening.

“Stairs.” I pointed at the clearly marked door. “One by one until we get it done.” Sparks leapt from my fingers as I flung open the door and led the team down the stairwell.

“Time is not on our side.” Hunter tapped his watch. “Maybe another ten minutes before they raise the alarm, max. And that’s if they don’t answer their check-in call from the nearest Agency center, probably in Buffalo.”

“Pretty lax security,” Limox groused, moving past me into the empty hallway. “I wouldn’t hire these guys to watch my plants.”

“Not really,” Hunter replied. “They’re not expecting an attack so they’ll take a few minutes to realize what’s going on. And we’re not standing in the front daring them to take us on. Still, less chat more splat would be good.”

A very girly shriek from Limox signaled the end of the plan. We burst through the door, spotting him at the business end of a taser, staring down at the electrodes imbedded in his chest as the electrical shock ran through his body. The guard holding the business end looked at us as if we had appeared out of nowhere, his mouth dropping open at the sight.

“No.” I slammed him back against the wall with a double blast, knocking him and his weapon out. May knelt by the semiconscious super, cradling his head in her lap. Limox was drooling, his eyes unfocused and his fingers twitching every few seconds. I knew what a taser would do to a normal person—hell, I
was
a taser—but Limox wasn’t normal. For all I knew he was about to go into a seizure that could kill him or turn his powers on and melt us all into goo.

“Take care of him.” I sprinted towards the first door and tossed it open. “Get him up and moving as fast as you can.”

I skidded to a stop just inside the darkened room, my senses on overload from the amount of electrical energy snapping around me. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting I saw what we had been looking for, no doubt.

And it was fucking scary.

The transparent map hung on the wall, different red and blue lights spotting all over the continent. Some faded in and out, some were steady colors—probably the attempt of other supers to block the GPS locators. There couldn’t have been more than forty, maybe fifty at the most on the map.

Last time I had gotten a straight answer out of Mike he had claimed there were more than five hundred supers in North America.

The computer screens were littered with code sprawling back and forth, across, up and down. A few unconscious technicians lay on the floor. After making sure they didn’t have any weapons I sat down at the nearest terminal and pulled out the flash drive Jessie had given me.

“This should shut down the system.” He had plucked the small black oval box free from the USB port on the computer and handed it to me. “I’ve programmed in a virus that’ll not only delete the detonation sequence but also scramble your codes to the point that no one will ever be able to use them again.” He eyeballed Hunter, who was sitting on the couch with May as she expounded on how nice he would look with black hair. “Better warn him that he won’t be able to threaten her anymore.”

“Like he ever has.” I smiled as the younger man laid his hand on her arm, reacting to something the senior said. “Makes you wonder who’s really in charge.”

“Yeah, well…guess they don’t check Guardians as much as they should, eh?” Jessie stopped, seeing the pained expression on my face. “Sorry about Mike, again.”

“Yeah.” I slipped the flash drive into my pocket. “Just keep an eye on the skies.”

The flash drive slid cleanly into the USB port and started doing its thing without me prompting it, sending a spiral of words and letters and numbers across the first screen in front of me and then spreading to the other monitors in the room. The map began to flash and shift, the red dots flickering with the blue ones disappearing totally. Finally the entire map went blank, nothing left at all.

“It can’t be that easy.” I let my breath out slowly, feeling a familiar ache in the pit of my stomach. “It can’t be that easy.”

“It’s not.” The unfamiliar voice had me spinning around in my chair, palms raised.

A woman stood in the doorway, her long white hair falling down past her waist. She shuffled towards me using a walker, the floral print on her dress faded and worn, the hem dragging on the floor. Her face had a cheerful look about it as if she had just won the church bingo without spending too much money on the cards. But there was an air of relief as well.

“There’s a backup system one floor down that you’ll have to physically destroy.” One shriveled hand waved towards the hallway. “Your friend can do that much while we talk.”

“Who are…?” I lowered my hands. “Jenny?” The whisper caught in my throat. “Are you Jenny?”

She smiled a faint wispy smile that faded away before I had even registered it in my mind. “Welcome to the Agency, Jo. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Hunter came out of the darkness and skidded to a stop behind her, breathless. “Limox is okay,” he choked out as he stared at the woman. “Jenny?” The word was tinged with more than a little shock and fear.

“Hunter.” She nodded at him and then gestured past him down the hallway with one pale finger. “May and Harris can get down to the next floor without any trouble. The guards are all unconscious. Just tell them to be careful and not to blow up too much stuff. There’s always a chance something’s going to give them a bigger blast than they can handle.” She gave Hunter a pat on the shoulder as the startled man stood there. “Been a long time, Hunt. You’ve gained weight.”

“Yeah,” he whispered. Then he turned around and shouted behind him, “One more floor down. Destroy the computer banks.” Hunter looked at the woman in front of him. “Will that do it? Will that take out all the plugs?” He exhaled as if he’d been running a marathon.

“For now. You go keep an eye on the kids, Jo and I need to have a talk.” She shooed him out the door as if he were a wayward child seeking a cookie before dinner. He hesitated only a second, glancing back at me before disappearing into the hallway. In the distance I heard him berating Limox for setting fire to something and May’s voice calming him down even as she repeated her earlier diatribe to Limox about his language.

“So. You’re the one causing all the fuss, I hear.” She took hold of the rolling office chair I pushed towards her and settled into the black cushions. “These make my back hurt so. Darned people. Make it hard for an old woman to get around. And they took away my wheelchair a month ago, so…”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Glad I’m making a pain in the ass of myself.”

“Oh, yes. You will be. Or you are. I’m never quite sure how to say these things. One of the problems with being a precog, it all gets messed up.” Pushing the walker to one side, she pursed her lips, the faint hint of lipstick still on the faded skin. “So, I guess you want to know a few things.”

“I guess.” My mind was a total blank, all of the questions I had so meticulously prepared gone in a haze of confusion and battle fatigue. Mike would be furious.

She cocked her head to one side as if listening to something or someone and smiled. “You’ve got a few minutes to spare for me then?”

“You’re one of the reasons we came here. Well, that and shutting down the plugs. Not that you didn’t know that already. I mean, about me. And the plugs,” I stammered, suddenly very self-aware. “I guess I have to ask you, I mean, what was, I think, ah…” My mind was more scrambled than a dozen dropped eggs.

She reached over and patted one gloved hand. “I have that effect on people. Not as dramatic as May, but still it tends to make people unfocused. So let me make this easier for you.” Jenny placed her hands in her lap and sat up ramrod straight. “You’ll win over enemies. You’ll lose some allies. And someone you care about is going to die.”

I moved closer, my voice an angry whisper. “Can you be a bit more specific?” A stabbing pain began behind my left eye, signaling the onset of yet another migraine.

The woman leaned forward until our foreheads were touching, her cool skin a startling contrast to my own. “Do you want me to be?”

Chapter Eleven

“I’d like it.” I felt as if I’d fallen down the rabbit hole yet again.

Jenny bent away from me, wincing as she settled back into the chair. “These things aren’t really built for comfort. Those sneaky salesmen may say so, but it’s not true. Always something to get you to shell out the cash without giving you anything of value. And then it breaks if you turn the wrong way or push it too hard.” Her deep blue eyes met mine again. “Sorry, I tend to babble.”

“Understandable under the circumstances.” I squeaked like a teenage boy on his first date.

“We’ve found the room.” May’s voice intruded on the surreal scene, the link transmitting the words from underneath us. “Mr. Limox is doing his thing with the burning and the fire and stuff.”

A series of lights flashed on and off on a panel near us, and a siren went off somewhere in the distance in short, measured beeps and bursts of panic. Jenny smiled. “That’s the backup system they just destroyed. Just to be sure.”

“Just to be sure,” I echoed her, a low buzzing in the back of my mind. Maybe it was May being nervous, maybe not—but it wasn’t helping at all. I tried to sound casual. “So, who dies?”

She let out a soft giggle, so faint I thought I had imagined it for a second. “I can’t tell you that. Those are the rules.”

Now at this point I have to confess that I have always tried to be polite, sometimes to the point of excess. My mother raised me to say please, thank you and to be nice no matter what the circumstances. Heck, she taught me which fork to use in case I was ever invited to have tea with the Queen.

She was probably cursing me in Heaven when I jumped to my feet, screaming at the old lady in front of me.

“What the fuck are you jerking me around for? I’m trying to save you, May and all the other supers out there from getting their damned heads blown off, not to mention stop an alien invasion, and you’re jacking me off with some story about rules?” The sweat on my forehead started trickling down my nose, causing it to itch something horrible. “I don’t care about the rules—the rules are what got me into this mess. Got all of us into this mess.” The static began building both in my head and in my hands as I roared at the top of my lungs. “You’re the one who got us fucked up, telling the Agency where to find us.”

Jenny didn’t move an inch, just sat and watched me. I slumped to the ground, kneeling not far from her chair, the tears pouring down my face and mixing with the sweat. I looked up at her, my voice almost gone. “What do I need to do?”

“What you’re doing is what you’re going to do.” She smiled as if I hadn’t had a nervous breakdown right in front of her. “And Mike would be proud of you.”

It was like a string snapped inside of me, releasing all that anger and pain that had been forced into a small box. Mike, the fight, everything. I buried my face in my hands, feeling the waves cover me like a warm blanket.

“I did screw up.” The small voice came to me from a long way away. “I didn’t think it would happen for years yet. Plenty of time to train you, get you ready. Maybe even a second generation.” A note of sadness crept into the words. “It would have been nice to see children here. Not those teenagers who figure they know it all. Young ’uns.” She sighed. “I could tell you I’ve felt every death, every scream and moan of those who’ve died. But that doesn’t matter now, does it?”

I shook my head, afraid to open my eyes.

“What you’re doing is exactly what the Agency hoped would happen—a super taking charge. Declaring their independence and throwing off the chains of slavery we forced you into. They just didn’t think it’d happen for years and years yet. Give you all a chance to really become comfortable with what and who you are. Maybe even get married and see if the powers passed down to your children.” Her voice took on a dreamy tone. “That would be something to see.”

“How did all this get started?” It shouldn’t have been a priority in my mind, but it was. “How the hell did we get here?”

The white-haired senior rocked from side to side, a pained look on her face. “I could lie to you, but there’s no time for that.” She paused for a second before continuing. “It was about ten years ago. My husband, Harry, and I were driving back from our anniversary dinner. We didn’t drink at all, we worried about driving drunk.” She let out a sigh. “Unfortunately the fellow who smashed into us wasn’t so considerate. I woke up a widow. And I could tell the nurses what they had to worry about, which patients were likely to code in the next day or so. That’s when the government got involved.”

“And they created the Agency.” I exhaled the words.

“And they created the Agency,” Jenny repeated. “But don’t be too hard on them, dear…I told them about the attacks and they freaked, for loss of a better word.”

“Hrmph,” I snorted. “So you told them where to find us, all of us?”

“One by one.” She nodded. “There’s other precogs, of course, all around the world. And the governments all had the same problem, how to recruit you supers to the cause without causing a worldwide panic or having you refuse. It wasn’t really an option.”

“Whatever.” I waved my hand in the air, cutting her off. “Tell me about the aliens. Tell me something I need to know now.” I sniffled, still wrapped in my cocoon.

“You’re right—they’re here to fight us. They’re all…as you would say, fucked up as well. Go to Pittsburgh and save the city and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

“Jo?” Hunter’s voice intruded, soft and low. “We’re on our way back up. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Pushing myself to my feet, I groaned. Mentally and physically, I was a wreck. I stared at the old woman still sitting in her chair. “Tell May to be ready to send another psychic blast out if we need it. We’re cutting it close with these guards, and I don’t really want to keep knocking them out unless we have to.”

“Right. Be there in a minute. Tell Jenny to get ready to leave.”

She gave a sharp shake of her head, one hand reaching for her walker. “Thank you, but no thanks.” Her finger tapped the side of her face. “I have a destiny as well.”