The Next Chronicle (Book 2): Damage (19 page)

Reluctantly, she gave up swimming against those currents and let herself surface.

Her eyes opened along with her mouth, a scream choking off before it could escape. She looked down at her body, expecting to see burned skin if not open flame, every inch of her shrieking with the agony of being on fire.

She wasn't. Aside from being strapped into a heavy steel chair, Kit appeared unharmed.

“Here, allow me to help,” a voice said. Something cold touched her hand, followed by a familiar whine. The pain, all-consuming a second earlier, evaporated instantly.

“Sorry about that,” Nunez said as he stepped back. “I didn't know your body had begun to adapt that way. You absorbed much of the second shock, but your system couldn't handle the load.”

“What...” Kit coughed, her throat dry as any desert. “What did you do to me?”

Nunez sat across from her, leaning against his desk. Even standing still, his manner was plainly different. A dozen little things, from the way he held himself to the expression on his face, added up to a seemingly different person.

“First I hit you with two very high-powered taser blasts,” Nunez said, his accent and deliberately paced speech gone. “Then I locked you in that chair to keep you from taking my head off. The last bit was me hitting you with a pulse generator to knock your powers out, which forced your body to give up that extra energy.”

Kit looked down at herself again, this time absorbing what she was seeing. The chair was the type they used to interrogate Next with enhanced strength, essentially a throne made of thick steel with heavy, long cuffs that clamped over the forearms to hold them against the arms of the chair itself. It was designed to restrain people with far more power than she could muster, so Kit didn't bother struggling.

“Gonna torture me for information before you kill me?” Kit asked, staring daggers at Nunez.

He looked genuinely shocked. “Kill you? Torture? I don't plan on doing either of those things, Kitra. As for information,” he said, looking slightly amused, “there isn't much you could tell me about almost anything I'm not already aware of.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?” Kit growled. “If you aren't going to kill me, shouldn't you be running?”

Nunez shrugged. “I can assure you, no one will be looking for me until well after we're done here. I'm willing to take the time to speak with you because that was clearly your intention. You must have questions—though I'm sure your meeting with Robinson answered many of them—and I will answer what I can.”

Kit blinked. “How did you know about that? We weren't even in this hemisphere.”

“Several months ago you were kind enough to swallow some experimental nanotechnology,” Nunez said. “There was a compound of my own design mixed in, which allows me to track you by satellite. As I designed the satellites, accessing them is no problem. I can do it from my phone, even.”

“That was right after I got here,” Kit said. “You couldn't have known I would be onto you.
I
didn't even know until tonight.”

Nunez waved a hand. “It wasn't hard to predict. Robinson has spent more than a decade looking for a way to bring me to justice for Fairmont. As soon as the news spread that he was appointing someone from Helix as Director, I knew it would be someone with his same sense of morality. He aimed you like a missile at me, hoping you would either discover the truth on your own or decide to come after me once he told you what happened. How else do you think you got this job, lacking administrative experience as you do?”

Kit was unable to argue the logic. “So you admit to what you did at Fairmont.”

Nunez nodded, regret in his eyes. “I do. It was monstrous, but necessary, as I'm sure Robinson explained. A benefit of the act, of course, was to put me here. In charge of the largest collection of brilliant minds the world has ever seen.”

“Why the fuck does that even matter?” Kit asked, forgetting herself for a moment and angrily trying to yank her hands free.

“Be careful, or you'll injure yourself,” Nunez admonished. “To answer your question, it matters a great deal. What I did forced the world to act, to make plans and pool resources. I needed to lead the effort to address some of the many problems we face as a species. In short, Fairmont was necessary in order to avoid several catastrophic eventualities.”

Kit shook her head. “But you stopped all the Battery Next from doing what Ray did...”

“That was only the first—and smallest—of the problems in need of solving. I had hoped my time here would allow me the leeway to affect the necessary changes without resorting to more...extreme measures.”

Kit was reading him the entire time, cataloging his body language and other indicators. He, like Robinson, was telling the absolute truth, so far as she could determine. “You're crazy,” Kit said. “You sound like a Bond villain.”

“I'm not insane, Kitra,” Nunez said. “It's simply a matter of scope. Because of my unique ability, I can see and understand more than any thousand people could hope. I've been studying the world, every aspect of it, for more years than you might believe. I know more about
everything
than anyone else, and it all leads to one inescapable truth: if I don't act, the human race will go extinct. I have to save us.”

Kit snorted, unable to help herself. “No, you don't sound crazy at all,” she said. “How are you planning on going about that, if you don't mind me asking?”

Nunez sighed. “In order to set the proper variables where they need to be, I'll have to kill about seventy percent of the population.”

“We should get you out of here,” Agent Kovacs said, putting a hand on Graysen's arm.

“We can't,” she said, shaking her arm loose. “Go if you want, but I'm staying right here.”

Kovacs sighed loudly, then took a seat next to her and put his elbows on his knees. “I could just knock you out and take you anyway,” he said. “I'm an agent. You're a trainee. It's my job to make sure you're safe, you know.”

“If you do that, Ray will die,” Graysen said distractedly. “I'm still controlling his ascent. It's really hard from this distance, and I still might lose him anyway, so if you want him to fall into space and suffocate or come back to the ground and splatter on the pavement before he kills a hundred thousand people, go ahead. Otherwise, be quiet and let me work.”

She felt him stare at her, though whether it was a glare or a look of appreciation, Graysen didn't know. Nor did she particularly care, absorbed as she was in trying to make sure Ray Cassidy lived.

Distance manipulation of gravity was still something she struggled with. It was an aspect of her ability with incredible usefulness, even if it did require her to touch whatever she was influencing with her powers first.

Another wave of nausea threatened to break her concentration, brought forth by the nearly blinding headache caused by using her abilities this way. She fought it back, forcing herself to breathe evenly, and keeping her eye on Ray.

Not that she could literally see him from this far. He was still rapidly gaining altitude, miles away by now. But Graysen
could
see the thin tether of power connecting them, a vague green tendril flung into the sky. There was a brighter green dot at the end of the line, the focus of her efforts.

“How high is he, do you think?” Kovacs asked.

“Hopefully high enough,” Graysen said, noticing a marked increase in the small dot's brightness. “Oh, shit! Look away!”

Kovacs dropped his eyes, throwing a forearm over his face. Graysen had no such luxury, needing to keep Ray in sight if possible.

Far above them the deep black sky with its endless field of stars disappeared. The light grew from a pinprick into a sphere of incredible size between heartbeats, washing the world out in green.

The bottom edge of the sphere was far above the earth, nowhere near causing any harm. Even as she watched, the bubble of destructive force tracked upward, centered on the still-rising form of Ray Cassidy.

After a few seconds, the light winked out.

Fighting another wave of nausea, Graysen stood.

“What are you—”

Not trusting her strained control to continue manipulating Ray at such a vast distance, Graysen took the only option in front of her.

She fell into the sky toward him.

Kit stared at Nunez in complete disbelief for a long few seconds. It wasn't the sort of disbelief you felt when you saw something you thought impossible, a holding action designed to let your brain catch up. It was actual disbelief. She just didn't buy it. Not that he thought he had to do it—he clearly did—but that he could do it.

“Goddamn, you're like ten times crazier than I thought,” Kit finally said. “Are you even listening to yourself?”

Nunez let out an irritated breath. “Honestly, this is going to go a lot easier if you stop thinking I'm insane. Do I need to bore you with tens of thousands of pages of documentation? Need me to show you the trends I've discovered through decades of painstaking analysis? Would you believe me then?” He gave her a measuring look. “No, you probably wouldn't. You saw the papers in the vault with your own eyes—yes, I tracked you there. Caught me by surprise, I admit. You saw the proof, yet you gave Robinson a chance to explain. You had doubt.”

He tapped a finger on his chin. “You operate on instinct. You read people, yes? Then ask yourself right now if I seem unhinged. Really look at me and decide if even a moment of my mannerisms or thought processes appears to be that of a mentally ill person. Go on.”

Kit said nothing. He struck right to the heart of it; only the things he was saying sounded nuts. How he said them, how he acted, was without a hint of being unbalanced.

“I thought not,” Nunez said. “You may not believe I'm right, but having seen the things you've seen, you can't categorically say I'm wrong.”

“Well, I'm pretty solidly opposed to killing seven out of ten people on the planet, regardless of reason,” Kit snapped.

Nunez raised an eyebrow. “Even if it meant preserving our species? Preventing us from self-destructing within the next fifty years, if not sooner? You wouldn't make any sacrifice to ensure untold trillions of human beings could exist in the future, even if it meant killing most of those living now?”

Kit opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself. Her first instinct was to say no, of course. It was such an obscene, monstrous thought that the mind recoiled from even considering it. But in the moment between thought and action, the memories of her meetings with Dr. Otomo sprang to the front of her mind. She had made peace with the awful reality of causing Thomas Maggard's death because doing anything else would have guaranteed many more deaths.

Except...

“No,” Kit said. “The difference between what you're saying and what I did? The threat was right in front of me. It was immediate. You're making claims about something that might happen fifty years from now. You can't know.”

Nunez shook his head sadly. “No, Kitra. I'm telling you what has already begun. What has been happening for the last hundred years, and is only gaining momentum. I see the channel the boulder rolls down, and the inevitable crash at the end. I've been watching it happen, and trying to change it, since the early twentieth century.”

“Wait, what?” Kit said, completely thrown. “What do you mean? Can you time travel? Is that how you know what's supposed to happen?”

“Nothing as dangerous as that,” Nunez said. “There is so much you don't know about Next, things almost no one knows but me. Our genetic gifts come with many benefits, one of which is en extremely slow aging process.” He gestured toward the gray in his hair, the deep grooves around his mouth. “This is cosmetic. My actual appearance hasn't changed much since I turned thirty, which was in 1911. Five years after I emigrated from Mexico.”

“Bullshit,” Kit said.

Nunez shrugged. “Doesn't matter if you believe me. The facts remain the same either way.” He looked at his watch. “One second. I need to check something.”

“Got a hot date?” Kit asked.

“Not exactly,” Nunez said. “I enacted several contingency plans today, when I suspected you would be coming after me. The first one should have gone off a minute or so ago.”

A blade of ice stabbed Kit's insides. “What are you talking about?”

The wall behind the desk hummed as two segments moved apart to reveal a large screen. The news came on, showing a flare of green light powerful enough to temporarily overwhelm the camera. Nunez turned to Kit as the feed showed nothing but pale green light.

“I arranged a repeat performance from Ray Elliot this morning,” he explained, that note of regret sounding in his voice again. “For what I have in store to work, it was necessary to force another large increase in the local Surge levels.”

“That's the middle of the fucking city,” Kit screamed, thrashing against her restraints. “How many hundreds of thousands...”

Nunez slapped a hand to his desk. “I just told you what lengths I will go to,
must
go to, Kitra! This is not a game. It has to begin here.”

Behind him, the screen began to regain contrast. The voice of a newscaster echoed from the speakers, detailing the massive flash in the sky.

Kit saw the skyline, and laughed. “Looks like you fucked up the math again,” she said.

Nunez turned to look at the screen just as the reporter shared the good news.

“Officials are looking for an explanation for the light show far above the city this morning, which was bright enough to cause temporary blindness in an unlucky few, but has otherwise left the city unharmed.”

“Well,” Nunez said, gritting his teeth. “The Surge will still be affected. As for the rest, I did say I enacted more than one contingency.” He pulled a phone from his pocket, swiped it open, and tapped the screen.

Fifteen seconds later, the facility began to shake. At first Kit was frightened in the mindless way anyone would be during a quake, then she remembered certain facts about the facility's construction and abject terror took over.

The room was moving appreciably, objects falling off desks and skittering across the floor. The facility, huge though it was, had been engineered to negate the effects of all but the most powerful earthquakes. The outer shell, between the bedrock and the structure itself, housed hundreds of compression coils designed to absorb huge amounts of energy during a quake. That system, combined with the network of water cisterns set just below the surface which transferred the shake of the building into movement in the water to further reduce the impact of a quake, should have made it nearly impossible to notice within the facility.

Kit's enormous metal chair shook, too. She stared in horror at Nunez.

“What have you done?”

He looked at the screen once more, which now displayed a scene straight out of a nightmare. Buildings swayed and clouds of dust glimmered in shafts of weak predawn light. The sound of concrete snapping filled the dim morning air like popcorn cooking, all captured in horrifying detail by the news team.

“I think it's safe to assume no one will be worried about looking for us for a while,” Nunez said softly. “There are many facts you will want to hear—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Kit screamed, pushing every erg of power into her muscles and bones. She strained against the chair's heavy cuffs, tears of frustration streaming down her face. She collapsed back into the chair after a few moments, breathing hard. “I don't want to hear any more of your bullshit,” she snarled. “I don't care if you're crazy or not, if you're telling the truth about how old you are. All I want is for you to let me out of here so I can go help the people who survived that!”

Nunez nodded as if this was exactly what he had expected. “That's one of the things I've always admired about you, Kitra. Your dedication to using your gifts to help others. I didn't have any expectation I would sway you, to be honest. You're not morally inflexible, but you can't bend as far as I must, not without breaking.” He gestured toward the destruction on the screen behind him, which was becoming more clear by the second. “But as you can see, I have recruited others. Some even by their own choice. Speaking of which, please tell Archer I'm sorry for what happened to him this morning. It was unavoidable.”

Despite herself, Kit had to know. “What did you do? Is he alright? If you hurt him...”

“Please, Kitra. Spare me your threats. After today I'll discard this identity and take up another. I speak more languages than you've ever heard of. I'll vanish, and you'll never find me. Though I expect we will be in touch. As for Rowan, he's fine. I had one of my associates...borrow his body to get Ray Elliot where I needed him.”

Kit shook her head, wishing more than anything to suddenly wake up. This was too unreal, too bizarre.

“You wonder why I'd waste the breath to explain,” Nunez guessed, correctly. “It's because no matter what you may think of me, I'm not an evil man. I hold no personal malice toward anyone. In fact, I respect you a great deal. That's why I'm certain that even if you wanted to try to chase me down, you won't. You'll be too busy saving lives, because it's the right thing.”

“It won't take forever to do search and rescue,” Kit said. “Once that's done—”

Nunez smiled grimly. “I told you what I'm about to do, didn't I?” He waved at the screen again. “This is only the beginning, I'm afraid. The prelude to phase two.”

Kit watched the ticker on the bottom of the screen as reports came flooding in. There was too much chaos to allow for anything resembling accuracy, but the listings of destroyed structures and secondary emergencies grew even as she watched.

Nunez walked around his desk and tapped the embedded screen. A memory card popped out of the surface, which he deftly plucked.

“Here,” Nunez said, holding up the card. “There are documents on this that you will want to read.” He placed it on the edge of the desk. “I'll let someone know you're here after I leave.”

Nunez pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “I'm ready,” he said into it, then ended the call.

Five seconds later, Agent Christjansen appeared out of thin air. A brief hope flared in her, but died when she saw the man's face. The blank eyes and slack expression were all too familiar, signs of mental domination by a powerful telepath. Kit clenched her teeth.

“Goodbye, Kitra,” he said. “And good luck. You will certainly need it.”

A minute later her earpiece, which had been silent the entire time, squealed and cut in mid-sentence.

“—you there, Kit? Please answer if you are.”

“I'm here, James,” Kit said.

“What the hell?” James shouted. “I got the line to open just fine, but there wasn't any sound coming from your end.”

“I don't know, some kind of jamming device. Not important. You need to get down here and set me free.”

“Set you free? I don't—you're right, doesn't matter. Something's happened.”

“I know,” Kit said. “Nunez showed me. He's behind it. Come get me loose. We have to get to work.”