Marked (5 page)

"Yes,
I've met Samantha Graves and Alec didn't 'get me into anything,' Mom.
Like I said, I chose this. Alec isn't doing anything wrong. The
danger I'm in—that we are in—is because Alec is trying to
stop some very bad people from doing terrible things."

"Then
he should call the police, that's what they are there for, Adri.
Don't let him drag you into some kind of vigilante-inspired quest for
glory."

I
wanted to yell at her, but I forced myself to keep my voice under
control. My mother was older and more experienced than I was, but she
wasn't ready for the world I'd been living in since we'd arrived in
Sanctuary. She was obsessing about my situation as a way of denying
the seriousness of her own circumstances.

"The
police can't help us, Mom. They can't do anything until after a law
has been broken, and even then, sometimes there are criminals they
aren't qualified to deal with. You're in the same situation now. The
police aren't going to be able to save you—you need to take
steps of your own to make sure that you're not a soft target."

I
opened the door to my room and looked out at the rest of the RV, but
rather than the calm, ordered environment I'd grown to expect from
our time on the road, I found the desperate motion of a group of
people who were one step away from disaster. Alec was talking on the
phone and the hand holding his cell had gone white from the effort of
not crushing the device.

"What
do you mean you don't have eyes on them? I specifically told you to
keep their compound under observation. Buildings don't just
disappear. If the satellite is still working then you should be able
to see the compound and be able to confirm whether or not they've
started evacuating."

Alec
turned towards Donovan and pointed at the laptop the butler was
working on. "Fine, send the feed to Donovan's machine. I want to
see what you're talking about for myself."

Donovan's
inbox chimed as an email arrived, and then his screen flickered as he
clicked on a link and a video feed started playing. It took me
several seconds to realize what I was seeing. There was so much smoke
filling the center of the screen that it was only the large fountain
on the bottom left-hand corner that made it possible to tell that we
were looking at an overhead view of the Bishop Compound in Chicago.

A
heartbeat after I finally registered what was going on all of the
phones in the RV started ringing at the same time.

"Mom,
I'm sorry, but I have to go. I'll call you back as soon as I can, but
in the meantime make sure that you get those bodyguards."

Adriana Paige
Interstate 15
Western Montana

It would have been impossible to adequately describe the chaos of the
next few hours as call after call came in from our people letting us
know that they had somehow picked up Coun'hij tails and that they
needed help.

It
wasn't surprising to find out that our RV had been set up with
advanced communications equipment—that was exactly the kind of
foresight I'd come to expect out of Alec and Donovan. What was
surprising was the fact that we came frighteningly close to exceeding
its capabilities and it was the only thing keeping our people from
being cornered and defeated in detail.

None
of us knew how it had happened, but somehow the Coun'hij had managed
to track most of our people from the time that we'd split up. To be
honest, most of us didn't have the time to think about the bigger
picture. We left that to Alec and just focused on our little piece of
the puzzle. Everyone was pressed into service in some capacity or
another—even Vik, the hulking Tonopah hybrid who was currently
serving as my bodyguard, ended up manning a headset.

Somewhere
along the way both RV's started moving again, but I was too busy to
notice. My world narrowed down to the laptop in front of me and the
procession of voices coming through my headset. I never had time to
change out of my pajamas—I barely even had time to understand
what I was supposed to be doing.

All
of the calls into Alec's personal cellphone were routed into the main
switchboard and from there sent out to Vik or me for verification.
Once the caller's identity was established I ran through a checklist
of questions and entered their responses into my laptop.

"Are
there any indications that you're being followed?" "Are you
currently in motion?" "Where are you right now and where
are you headed?" "How long do you have before you'll run
out of gas?"

The
questions were the kind of straightforward thing that I should have
been able to memorize after my first time through them, but the sheer
terror in their voices made it hard to type in their responses—I
was pretty sure that I wasn't physically capable of anything more
complicated than that.

As
bad as the terror was, in some ways the ones who weren't alarmed were
even worse. They were confident that Alec would find a way to save
them, which made it easier to get the information I needed out of
them, but it was hard not to disabuse them of their faith considering
that I could turn my head and see the flurry of activity taking place
around Donovan's desk.

Alec
had a big map of the Western United States up on the giant
touchscreen mounted on the wall and he was desperately trying to
create a plan that would allow our people to survive what was coming
next.

Yellow
dots popped into existence every time a new call came into the
switchboard. As I finished inputting the information from my current
caller, a middle-aged woman from the Las Cruces pack named Daphne, a
dotted line appeared around her location in Southern Utah.

The
dotted line formed a circle that represented how much further she
thought she could drive before she would run out of fuel. The single
black dot orbiting her position on the map meant that she was being
followed by only one Coun'hij vehicle.

"You'll
send help, right?"

I
tore my eyes away from the screen and forced a smile on my face,
hoping the old adage about people being able to hear the smile in
your voice was true. "Yes, we've had a few calls like yours come
in today, so Alec is just tracking down which of our people are best
placed to intercept the group that is currently following you. For
now, turn back north the first chance you get. It looks like Cedar
City is probably your best bet, but give me a call once you're headed
north so I can confirm your location and the amount of fuel you have
left."

"Thank
you, Mistress Paige. I swear I've been careful ever since I left the
main group in Nevada. I don't know how they managed to find me like
this."

"Given
the circumstances, I think it would be just fine for you to address
me as Adriana, Daphne. I'm sure that you were careful, but we'll
worry about how they found you after you're safe. For now you just
concentrate on driving and Alec or I will get back to you as soon as
he's arranged for someone to meet up with you."

"Thank
you, Mistr…Adriana. Thank you very much. I knew that your
fiancé wasn't the kind to leave his people hanging in the
wind. That's why I was so willing to swear fealty to him when I
arrived at the estate. Oh dear, listen to me go on. I'll let you go
take care of your other duties."

It
nearly broke my heart to hear such trust in her voice. She was old
enough to be my great-grandmother and she was in an incredible amount
of danger while I sat in a comfortable, climate-controlled RV and
made promises I wasn't sure I was going to be able to keep.

I
looked at the monitor at the top of my screen and confirmed that
there wasn't anyone else in the queue. I flashed Vik a 'stay there'
gesture and stood so I could walk over to Alec and Donovan.

"How
many of our people are still unaccounted for, Donovan?"

Alec's
voice was starting to sound a little strained, but Donovan didn't
seem to notice. "We've had roughly seventy percent report in on
their own. I've managed to get through to another ten percent and per
your instructions I've instructed them to fill up their vehicles and
prepare for some kind of rescue operation, but our connection to the
outside world is becoming less and less reliable."

I
shook my head. "What do you mean? It's been nonstop calls in for
Vik and me. We haven't had anyone disconnect on us."

Alec
nodded, but he didn't look away from the screen. "Donovan
diverted most of our hacking resources toward keeping the incoming
lines open, but it looks like the Coun'hij has finally entered the
computer age. They are keeping constant pressure on our
communications. It doesn't really matter at this point whether they
are hoping to track us down or if it's simply an attempt to stop us
from mustering any kind of coordinated response to the attack on our
physical assets. At some point we're going to have to address their
growing capabilities."

"Those
are people out there, Alec. They aren't just assets."

Alec's
knuckles went white and I realized that I'd pushed too hard. He was
too much of a gentleman to say so, but he didn't need me jostling his
elbow at a time like this.

"I'm
sorry, Alec. I guess the pressure is getting to me. The calls keep
coming in and I can't offer them anything solid. I feel like I'm just
lulling them into a state of complacency rather than letting them
know just how bad things are.
I
don't even know how bad things are."

"Bad.
Really bad, but you don't need to apologize. You're right, I need to
make sure I don't get so caught up in playing a giant game of chess
that I forget that those are real people out there."

Alec
turned toward Donovan, rewarding me with a smile in the process, and
for the first time I realized how tired Alec looked. His eyes were
bloodshot and he had dark circles under them. It seemed impossible
that he was the same person I'd been cuddling with such a short time
ago. He was under even more stress than I'd realized if he'd gone
downhill so quickly and I suddenly felt even more guilty for my
recrimination.

Alec
hadn't ever forgotten that he was dealing with real people, not if he
looked like that.

"Donovan,
please add back in the location information for the ten percent of
our people who aren't currently being followed. Color us, Grayson and
Jaclyn red so I can decide where exactly I want to position the
interceptions."

A
dozen blue dots materialized on the map. The blue dots were just as
scattered as the yellow dots, but they were still surprisingly
comforting despite the fact that they were so few in number. I
started to feel better about our situation right up until I realized
that there was only one red dot on the map.

"I'm
sorry, Master Alec; it looks like we've still been unable to contact
Jaclyn or Grayson."

Alec
closed his eyes as though momentarily unable to face the reality we
found ourselves in. "That's going to make this a lot harder.
Even if we manage to get ahold of the other twenty percent of our
people we're still going to be looking at something like six-to-one
odds."

"Indeed,
sir. I'll divert some of the IT assets to establishing a secure line
out now that the calls in have started to taper off and I'll
personally try to get ahold of both of them."

Alec
nodded absently as he started selecting blue and yellow dots. "Sync
these seven up and then calculate a least-time intercept here on
I-70. Try to bring the ones without tails together with whoever is
the furthest east with enough time that they can fight the first
round and still have time to get set before the next batch shows up."

It
was like watching a special kind of symphony, one that used space,
time and numbers in place of woods, brass and strings. We were too
outnumbered to get away with just throwing all of our people into one
big fight. Instead Alec wove a complex ballet of movement that
resulted in our people coming together in ways that gave them
sufficient numbers to have a chance of beating the opposition.

It
felt like I stood there watching Alec for hours, but the truth was
that the whole process took less than five minutes. At the end, Alec
stepped back from the board and surveyed the results with a worried
look.

"That
takes care of the first round. I'm not sure it's wise to try to lock
anything else in at this point. Too much will depend on how the first
set of fights go."

"What
about those two groups in the center? You've diverted almost everyone
else who could help out away from those groups."

Alec
nodded. "It was never going to work to try and cherry-pick them
off anywhere but on the fringes. Donovan, are we still headed back
the way we came?"

"Yes,
Master Alec. I'm sorry to say though that I've still been unable to
reach Grayson or Jaclyn."

"Fine.
If we speed up just a little bit we'll be in a position to bail out
this group here about the time the first of them runs out of gas."

Alec
picked up a headset and keyed in a number from memory. It was obvious
after the first second or two that he was going to go through to
voicemail.

"Tasha,
it's me. Look, I know you're not particularly happy about everything
that has happened over the last couple of months, but this is bigger
than you or me. We've had some kind of massive security breach. More
than two-thirds of our people are being tailed right now by what we
have to assume are Coun'hij forces. I've redeployed my remaining
people, but there's simply not enough of us to deal with this problem
by throwing bodies at it. I need you and Grayson in Nephi, Utah
within the next hour and fifty minutes. Faster if you can manage it,
but you absolutely have to be there by then or a lot of people are
going to die, including a few from your pack."