Terminal Point (37 page)

The crack of displaced air from a teleport broke his tenuous concentration, and Lucas spiraled downward into a fraying merge that Nathan was taking apart one mind at a time with lethal, focused intent.

At the bottom of that tangled mess, Lucas found a way out.

 

FORTY-ONE

SEPTEMBER 2379
PARIS, FRANCE

With the help of a telepath, Gideon used the eyes of a dying Stryker for his visual and teleported in behind the Strykers' defensive line. Quinton never saw him arrive, but he felt it when Jason got shot. The crack of the gun going off drowned out the sound of the teleport. The bullet slammed into Jason's chest at close range with telekinetic help. The sudden agony was shared between them. Quinton doubled over screaming as Jason's mind exploded through his own, the trauma nearly incapacitating him.

Jason, tied deeply in the merge, was forcibly yanked out of that connection, his mind ripped away from the collective whole. His eyes snapped open, the world spinning around him with a suddenness that made him sick. He choked back the bile that crawled up his throat, not wanting to vomit inside his helmet. He thought he heard Quinton yell a name, maybe his, as he struggled to breathe.

Blood bubbled past his lips. The hand that suddenly pressed down on his chest pulled a scream out of him that showed up in sound waves and light, in the blood that rushed through Quinton's face and veins and skin. Jason blinked, his power fluctuating in ways it wasn't supposed to—or maybe it was. Around him, he could see a glittering blanket of light, of energy, that flowed back in a connecting line to a body of cells and bones and breath. The connection hummed in his ears, against his skin.

Is this what our powers look like?
Jason thought in some distant corner of his mind.
Do we all burn like this?

His telekinetic shields went down beneath his shattered concentration. Everything hurt, the pain worse than when Kristen ripped open his natal shields. The world was shifting, Quinton pulling him back into the spectrum that they lived in, his mind impossible to ignore through the bond. Jason blinked, and blinked some more, until he was looking up into Quinton's pale face behind his helmet. Quinton's eyes were wide from shock and fear, blood leaking from his nose and ears. The pyrokinetic was leaning over Lucas in order to reach Jason.

“Jason,” Quinton said, voice breaking on the name. “Damn it, Jason. You need to hold on.”

“I am,” Jason gasped out. He lifted a hand to Quinton's shoulder, fingers skittering over rough synthfabric. Jason left streaks of blood behind where he touched, the shape of hemoglobin in his sight swallowing him whole. “I am.”

Jason felt the tug of foreign telekinesis pull at his body, like the shock of a defib machine on a heart. Gideon was trying to teleport him off the field. Jason closed his eyes and anchored his power in the only thing that mattered if he was going to survive—Quinton. Jason held on to the pyrokinetic through the teleport, forcing Gideon to bear the extra weight.

They landed hard on a cold metal floor, in a room filled with shouting voices and the steady hum of machines. Jason choked on blood, Quinton's hands yanking at the flak jacket strapped over his uniform to get to the wound beneath. Neither man cared about the guns trained on their bodies; Quinton only cared about Jason, because if Jason died, then so would he, along with the rest of the world. With shaking fingers, Quinton undid the helmet of Jason's skinsuit, pulling it off.

He fumbled at his own, communication lost with the comm link wired into the helmets. He tossed both aside, pressing his hands down harder over the sucking wound in Jason's chest, fingers digging against synthfabric and torn flesh, blood slicking his own skin.

“I wanted him alive, Gideon,” Nathan said from somewhere behind them.

With Jason slipping away beneath his hands, Quinton ignored everyone. “Don't do this, Jays,” Quinton said raggedly as he leaned his weight against the wound, eyes riveted on Jason's bloodless face. “Don't you fucking die on me. Threnody and Kerr would never forgive you.”

Lashes flickered over Jason's eyes.

“That's it. Come on, do what you did for Threnody. Fix yourself.”

“No nanites” came the near voiceless reply.

Quinton shook his head fiercely, one hand moving to slap Jason's face lightly to keep him awake. “You don't need it. You never needed it. They were just a goddamn crutch. Now fucking
look
at me and fix yourself.”

Jason's protest was soundless, blood bubbling bright and red from his lips. The bubbles popped on a wet breath, and Jason jerked beneath Quinton's hands, still drowning.

“Please,” Quinton begged, feeling the bond begin to fray in the back of his mind, starting to give way. He could feel cracks in his own mind at that anchor point, the painful stretch of his thoughts beginning to unravel. “
Please
. Goddamn it, don't do this.”

Jason forced his eyes open, black pupils having swallowed the hazel of his irises. He struggled to bring the face above him into focus, Quinton's expression frantic.

“Okay,” Jason said, lips barely moving.

He closed his eyes, forced his power to sink into his own body. Down, down, until he saw his own cellular makeup against the back of his eyelids, all the possibility of life held in the double-helix coil of a DNA strand. No need for nanites and a biotank, just the code that defined his body. Just the power found in the genetic makeup of a Class 0 psion.

Jason dragged his power through his veins, through muscle and tissue, the fragile sponginess of his lungs, looking for what needed to be fixed. Tear by tear he healed himself from the inside out, fixing the hole the bullet had torn through him. The blood loss was something he would have to fix later. He didn't have time to remake pints of the stuff by coaxing at his bone marrow, not when Warhounds wanted to peel him off the ground and take him into space.

Jason hacked up sticky globules of blood, spitting until nothing was left in his lungs but air. A metallic taste saturated his mouth as he gripped Quinton's arms, needing an anchor. The bond between them shuddered in their minds. It couldn't block the headache pounding through Jason's head or the shaky weakness in his limbs. Pain burned through his nerves, impossible to ignore.

“Oh, man,” he gasped. “I feel like shit.”

Quinton was abruptly wrenched away, the pyrokinetic slammed down to the floor beside him. Jason felt that same telekinesis pin his own body to the floor. Weakly, he tried to fight it, but his mind hadn't stabilized yet, even if his body mostly had. He needed time to focus.

Nathan wasn't going to give him that.

Kerr did.

The telepath slid into Jason's mind with an ease that came from a lifetime of living in each other's head. Jason didn't fight him as Kerr focused through his eyes. Kerr soaked up the details of the room and used that visual to teleport in by way of merged Stryker telekinetics, mind cutting through Jason's bruised and battered thoughts without apology.

Jason—shield!

 

FORTY-TWO

SEPTEMBER 2379
PARIS, FRANCE

The pilot landed the shuttle hard, one of the last civilian shuttles allowed to come to ground. The Command Center had ordered everyone else to stay clear of Paris until the current problem was dealt with.

“Could he not get us killed prematurely?” Threnody said as she glanced at Kerr. “That's the worst landing I've gone through in months. Matron is a better pilot than he is.”

Kerr undid his harness before grabbing his helmet and putting it on. “Let's just be happy we got here at all and get the hell off this shuttle.”

Threnody stood up. “Couldn't agree more.”

The fifty-person shuttle was packed to the bulkheads, the pilot having ignored weight restrictions. They didn't have enough fuel to make it back to London, which was the only reason the Command Center allowed them to land. Kerr mindwiped every passenger and crew member on their way out, erasing their memories of himself and Threnody.

“Maintenance hatch is in the galley,” Kerr said. “Let's get below.”

They reached the galley and knelt on the floor. The latch was embedded in the decking; Kerr undid it and the hatch dropped down. First Threnody, then Kerr slid into the cargo bay of the shuttle. He locked the hatch behind them.

The space was full of cargo trunks. Heavy-duty straps kept everything held down, with a small aisle between the two sides of the cargo bay. They found the carrying case still secured where they'd left it with their bags. They freed their bags first and stripped out of their clothes in favor of the nondescript workers' uniforms and tool belts Samantha had stolen for them. Then they freed the carrying case from the anchor straps.

“Two options,” Kerr said, pointing at the dimly glowing signs bolted to the side of the shuttle at the rear from where they stood and farther ahead. “Loading hatches, or another maintenance hatch.”

“Where's the maintenance hatch down here?”

“Decking.”

“We'll come out beneath the shuttle?”

“Yes.”

“Then we want that one.”

It took them five minutes to find it. The wide floor hatch was cordoned off near the rear of the shuttle. They got it open and found themselves staring at the smooth metal launchpad. It was a good four-meter drop, an impossible descent with what they carried.

Threnody lifted her head and looked at Kerr. “Trunks?”

He nodded. “Trunks.”

They worked quickly to undo the safety harnesses and ropes that kept the nearest cargo trunks in place, pushing several onto the platform. The noise the trunks made was drowned out by the noise of dozens of transport shuttles sitting with their engines running.

Kerr jumped down to stack the trunks, arms straining to move them. Once they were stable, he climbed on top and waited as Threnody carefully pushed the carrying case over the edge. She grunted as the weight swung from the end of her arms, joints aching, but she didn't let go. She saw Kerr get his shoulders beneath it and some of the tension eased in her arms as he took most of the weight. Threnody quickly pitched herself out of the shuttle and onto the platform.

She landed loosely, letting her body absorb the impact, and steadied herself with her hands. Then she moved to help Kerr. From beneath the body of the transport shuttle, they could see the rear of the Command Center, the squat building taking up most of the view. Technicians raced about, most heading for an emergency exit. Whatever their orders, Threnody and Kerr couldn't hear them. They weren't tapped into the comm channel being used, so they couldn't eavesdrop on the chatter.

“Shit,” Threnody said as she stared out at the launch area. “This place is bigger than I thought.”

“Let's head for those doors.”

They ran as fast as they could, trying not to jostle the dangerous contents of the carrying case. A brief touch of telepathic power on unsuspecting human minds caused the workers to ignore them. They couldn't do anything about the security feed, but hopefully the bioware on the recognition points of their faces would trip up the computers long enough for them to get inside.

The supervisor on duty let workers through the emergency exit in small groups. Threnody and Kerr made it inside within five minutes, the door closing behind them. They waited impatiently inside a small decontamination chamber, the process agonizingly slow to them. Once they were cleared to proceed, a second door slid open and they walked into a hallway crowded with workers. Threnody and Kerr paused only long enough to unlock their helmets and take them off. They breathed in recycled air that stung their noses. The emergency alarm going off hurt their ears; the strobe lights nearly blinded them.

Best place to put it would be on one of the upper levels,
Threnody said as they pushed their way through the crowd.
Setting it up in one of the support columns would effectively put it belowground, and that's not going to help us.

The further up we go, the more Warhounds we're going to encounter,
Kerr warned
. I can feel them on the mental grid. They're merged with Nathan and it's not pretty. Their attention might be outside this place, but I can guarantee you that if we're spotted, they'll turn all that power on this building to try to find us.

We need to stay aboveground.

Then let's find somewhere on the next level. It's the safest place we can use.

They took an access stairwell up, and appropriated the first empty room they came across. The pair set the heavy carrying case down once inside. After locking the door, they tossed their helmets aside. Threnody looked around the storage room at the half-empty shelves and dented walls.

“Let's figure out where to put the bomb,” she said.

They wrestled the carrying case to the rear of the storage room before opening it. Strapped securely inside was a second, smaller case that, when opened, revealed the components of a nuclear bomb. Wires protruded from it, connecting to an external receiver, the remote detonator strapped securely beside it. Threnody pried the remote detonator free and set it down on a nearby metal shelf.

“Okay,” she said, letting Kerr take her spot. “Let's hope Novak did this right.”

Kerr removed the flashlight hanging from his tool belt and propped it up at an angle on the open carrying case to get more light. He then carefully slipped the receiver out of the case and set it down on a shelf. Having grown up with a hacker for a partner, he knew what to do better than Threnody, but that didn't mean he was an expert. Halfway through the setup, Kerr let out a sharp gasp.

“Tell me you didn't just set the timer,” Threnody said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. “We're not ready, Kerr. Everyone's not off the field yet.”