The Empowered, page 15
Keisha raised her hands and the knives floated up, spinning. I wasn’t about to get sliced by those knives.
I charged down the stairs. Knives thunked into the wall at the bottom of the stairs, missing me by inches. I reached the bottom of the stairs, rounded the corner and found myself in what looked like a darkened family room.
Gus yelled something upstairs but I couldn’t make it out.
I ran to the patio door, fumbled at the latch in the darkness, flung open the door and stumbled across the cement and onto the grass. I hated fleeing, but I had to get outside where there were plants for me to use.
Rhododendrons grew along the back of the house. I pushed a big surge of energy into them. Their branches lunged forward, some extending into the ducts in the foundation, others shattering the cracked glass of the patio door.
Light came on in the den. Keisha stood at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the light switch, bits of metal circling her. On the wall beside her was an old red and yellow pachinko machine. The machine exploded and dozens of metal balls hurled toward me. I crouched down, covering my head with my arms. The metal balls struck me in a dozen places. Hurt like hell but the armor I still wore from the job absorbed most of the force and protected my flesh.
Did I say it hurt like hell? It really hurt like hell.
Damn her. Rage tightened my jaw. I’d show Keisha real anger.
I stood, commanded the rhododendron branches beneath the house to press skyward. Wood snapped and cracked like rifle shots.
Keisha staggered as the house began to sway.
Three lodge pole pines loomed behind me, their granite-like presence heavy in my mind. I reached into one with my power, pulled the roots closest to me down with a savage command. My gut twisted. Only my anger kept me going. The pine’s roar of pain almost drowned out my own thoughts. I ground my teeth, and killed the pine tree’s roots. The tree trumpeted its final agony. My head felt like I was having a stroke. I exhaled sharply. I had to focus. I wasn’t finished with the pine yet.
Keisha had a cloud of metal shards around her, once more a spinning steel cyclone, faster and faster.
Gus ran around the corner of the house, waving his arms.
“Stop, Mat! Don’t do this.”
I ignored him.
Die, I ordered the pine, turning its sap into toxins. The tree leaned over me, a drunken giant, and fell with a slam into the house, crumpled the roof, crashing through the shattered frame and the first floor, down onto Keisha. The ceiling light went out.
I wasn’t done with her yet.
I reached out to the second pine towering behind me with my power, sending my essence into the tree.
Gus’s hand tugged frantically on my arm. “Stop it, Mat, please.” He tightened his grip, hanging on as I fought to pull at the second pine, beginning to turn its sap into toxins like the first.
“Mat, stop.”
My face was twisted in a grimace. My lungs ached for oxygen. I took in a ragged breath, and fatigue slammed into me. I staggered, released the pine. Gus caught me before I could fall.
The world swayed, grew dark.
I lay on the ground. A siren blared far away. Grew closer.
Gus helped me to my feet.
“How long?” I asked him.
“Only a few minutes. Someone must have called 911.
The house was dark. The pine’s fall must have knocked out the power.
Keisha. I ran to the house. She lay beneath the tree bole, a limb the size of an axe handle punching down through her chest.
God damn her. She’d made me do that. I felt my stomach heave.
Why did she have to be such a nasty bitch, and make me kill her? Gus knelt beside her. Pushed tree branches out of the way. Listened.
He looked up at me, his face slick with sweat. “She’s breathing. Just.”
The pine moaned faintly in my mind. Just like Keisha the tree hadn’t died yet.
My chest felt hollow. The tree had just enough life left in it that I could interact with it, and thus kill it.
I hoped. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the tree. I felt hollow, numb.
I urged the trees limbs around Keisha’s body to curl.
“Get her out of there,” I gasped.
Gus scrambled and pulled her out.
The limb impaling her had separated at my command from the tree.
I lifted her up in my arms, Gus took her legs and we hurried up the slope around the house to the truck. Peep’s van was gone. Coward. I swore. His courage this afternoon had been a fluke. I swore I’d kill him if we met again.
The sirens grew closer.
We laid Keisha in the bed of the truck. Had to get her help, somehow.
“Stay with her, Gus,” I ordered. I got behind the wheel, turned around and slid open the dividing window between the cabin and the canopied truck bed, so I could talk with Gus while I drove.
I started the truck, reversed into the street and drove toward Division as the fire truck and EMT screamed past heading toward the house.
“Where are we going?” Gus asked.
“My place.” Where else was there to go? I didn’t have anything there, but maybe Alex could help. But if I called him, I’d break my cover.
I tasted copper. My lip was bleeding. Too bad. As I drove I kept glancing in the rearview mirror at Gus kneeling beside Keisha, but I couldn’t tell how she was doing. Pretty badly I guessed.
I had nearly killed her. Maybe I had killed her. She’d been trying to kill me, so I fought back, and went all out.
Because I gave in to my anger. Anger drove everything I did these days.
I shook my head and concentrated on driving.
“Mat, she’s dying,” Gus said as I turned onto Division.
A police car flashed by, sirens wailing.
“I know, I know,” I replied, my eyes fixed on the road. We stopped at the intersection with 39th, the pavement slick with rain.
“What do we do?” Gus was panicking. Again.
“I don’t know, Gus.”
Keisha needed medical aid fast.
We couldn’t take her to the ER or even an urgent care clinic. They’d figure out she was an Empowered and call the authorities. Then the police, Support, or worse, the Hero Council, would swoop down on her. I squeezed the steering wheel until my hands ached and leaned my aching head against the cool plastic. Think.
My chance of doing this damn assignment and getting help for my family would be over. I’d be back in prison.
And Keisha would be dead.
There was no place to turn for help.
Except an old contact from the Renegades. I lifted my head.
Doctor Silverly.
Professor Insight had called him our secret physician. The Professor loved his clever expressions. Back then, when one of us was badly injured or having trouble healing despite our power, the Professor would contact his old friend, Silverly. I don’t know what the Prof and the Doc had that bound them together, but Silverly would drop whatever he was doing to help if one of us were injured.
But that had been five years ago. I didn’t know if Silverly was still in Portland, or if he were even alive.
I turned right onto 39th, and drove faster.
Gus must have sensed a change in my attitude.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
I was careful to keep at the speed limit even as I longed to floor it.
“A place we can get her help.”
Silverly’s place was a three-story house, sitting back from the street behind an ivy-covered brick wall. Must be nice to have that kind of money. I parked in the turnaround drive beneath a weeping willow. My hyper-attuned plant sense picked up the tree’s gentle murmurs and I let myself float in the sensation for a moment before jumping from the truck, sprinting to the big oak door, and banging the knocker.
A light winked on above me in a third floor window. I knocked again, four more times, each time harder.
The door opened, and Doctor Silverly peered up at me, silver hair tousled, silk bathrobe loose around him. He was barefoot.
His eyes widened in recognition. “Mat? It’s you?”
“Yeah, Doc, it’s me. I’m out of Special Corrections.”
“I’m finished helping criminals, Mat.”
“How do you know I’m a criminal, Doctor Silverly?”
He raised his eyebrows, still black despite the rest of his hair having gone as silver as his name. “Really, Mat? You show up in the middle of the night with a wounded person in the truck bed, and you brought that person here rather than the ER?” He shook his head. “It’s all on camera.”
My stomach twisted. Were the police already on their way? But Silverly didn’t seem afraid.
“Cameras?”
“Sure. My security system. I thought the driver looked familiar, but it was hard to tell. But the camera picked up a prone body accompanied by a kneeling figure in the back of your truck.”
“That must be some security system.”
“It is.”
“My, uh, companion got impaled by a tree branch, and she’s lost a lot of blood.”
“How did she get impaled?”
“My fault. We got in a fight.”
Silverly shook his head, suddenly looking a hundred years old. “Mat, I had hoped that if you ever were released from prison, you’d choose a different path.”
Gee, thanks, Doc. Silverly had no idea what my life was like now. And it wasn’t like I could tell him I was actually an infiltrator for Support.
“Doctor Silverly, she’ll die if you don’t help.”
The indecision on his face vanished. “All right.” He disappeared inside the house, returned carrying a black medical bag, and followed me to the rear of the truck.
I lowered the truck’s gate. Keisha lay on her back. She was no longer moaning, but her chest still rose and fell. Gus looked up from where he knelt beside her and wiped his eyes.
“Gus, you remember the Doc.”
“Hi, Doc.”
Silverly nodded, scrambled up onto the truck’s gate without asking for help, spryer than I would have thought for a man who had to be past seventy. He crawled over to Keisha and began examining her. He unzipped his medical bag and I heard the hiss of a hypo.
“Adrenalin,” he said over his shoulder.
“Can you save her?” The words felt heavy in my mouth.
“Not here.” Silverly put some sort of flexible bandage around the wound. “She needs a hospital.”
“Yeah, but won’t they get suspicious.”
He scooted out and jumped down, brushing at his bathrobe.
“Not if we sneak her in the back way.”
The gurney’s left front wheel vibrated loudly as I pushed it. Keisha lay under a space blanket, head elevated. My borrowed hospital scrubs were too tight.
Gus walked beside me. Silverly had had one spare pair of scrubs and, incredibly, a gurney (I didn’t ask), so Gus was still dressed in his jacket, t-shirt and jeans, and tennis shoes. He was rubbing his hands nervously. We’d dropped the Doc at the front of the hospital. I’d wanted to keep him with us to help us get inside, but he insisted he had to go in separately and prep the room. Whatever. I smelled coward, but we were asking a lot of Silverly.
We crossed the parking lot. I half expected police to suddenly surround us, guns drawn. That would complicate things royally. I kept rubbing my sweaty hands against my scrubs and glancing nervously at Keisha, unconscious on the gurney.
My phone vibrated, three times. Stopped. I didn’t glance at it. When it began buzzing again a few moments later I knew it was Mutter. Wasn't gonna answer that, not now. I’d have to face the music eventually, but not now.
Silverly had told us to meet him in Room 1C. But without him to talk our way past anyone we ran into, our chances sucked. Sure enough, just as we reached the side door, a security guard appeared.
Gus jumped away from me. The little weasel was going to disappear and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. A second later he had vanished, blending into the shadowy parking lot.
I swear, if Keisha lived I would kill Gus for leaving me in the lurch.
The security guard strolled toward me. “Can I help you, orderly?” He was a large, dark skinned man, with a holstered pistol on his hip, what looked like a pepper spray canister, and handcuffs.
I wore the generic badge Silverly had given me—the one you had to sign out for if you forgot your real one, he said. He kept that and the scrubs at home. He must still do some unauthorized medical work at the hospital. Lucky for Keisha.
“This patient has experienced a trauma and blood loss.” I searched my memory for the right words.
“Why didn’t you go in the front?”
This was where things went south.
I shifted my stance. Suspicion started to creep across his face.
Gus appeared right in front of the guard.
“Because I told her to come back here,” he said.
The guard jumped back, yanking at his gun.
Gus vanished again.
“Shit, one of them!” The guard’s eyes were wide and he jerked around, looking for Gus.
Think fast, Mat, I told myself. Keisha was dying.
“Protect me, sir,” I said. The door was only twenty feet away. “Get us inside.”
He nodded. “Go.” He drew his gun and assumed a firing stance, scanning around us. Thank God, the guard had reacted without thinking. Hopefully his adrenalin would keep him from doing that until after all this. I pushed the gurney up to the door, the guard backing up to cover me.
A rock landed nearby and the guard pointed the gun where it landed.
“He’s trying to draw you off!” I said. It wasn’t hard to put fear into my voice.
I reached the building. The guard backed up next to me as I opened the door and pulled the gurney inside behind me.
The guard followed, pulling out his radio. “Central, this is Kyle. We have a situation on the north end of the ER building, Door 3B.”
In moments the place would be crawling with guards.
The guard motioned down the narrow hallway. “Go ahead and take her to the ER. I’ll be right behind you.”
I nodded and pushed the gurney down the hall. The gurney’s left wheel kept squealing in protest. I pushed past the intersection and the sign for ER that pointed left.
“Hey, that’s not the way.” The guard’s shout made me jump.
Gus was in between the guard and me, at the intersection. “Boo!” he shouted at the guard.
What the hell? Gus was suddenly fearless.
The guard pointed his gun at Gus. “Freeze!”
“Careful. Miss me and you hit her,” Gus said. He vanished.
Blending in with a brightly lit, white hospital corridor must have been hard for Gus to pull off. It was going to eat him up doing that. The guard ran toward me, skidding to a stop at the intersection. “Down here,” we heard Gus call from the direction of the ER.
“Shit!” The guard lifted his radio. “Central, we have a rogue intruder, headed toward the ER. He ran down the corridor after Gus.
Gus was being fearless. No, make that freaking crazy. I didn’t know what had gotten into him.
I pushed the gurney onto another juncture. So far the intercom had remained silent. No other guards appeared. Yet.
There it was. Room 1C. I pushed open the door.
Silverly waited inside, beside banks of medical equipment. It was an operating room.
“Security has been alerted,” I told him. “Gus is playing hide and seek, but things are going to get noisy real fast.”
Silverly laid out scalpels on a tray, along with a hypo and motioned for me to bring the gurney over beside the operating table. “We aren’t going to move her.”
“Did you hear me?” I demanded. Why wasn’t he more concerned?
“I heard you.” He thought for a moment, nodded to himself and went to wall a phone. He was turning us in. I took a step toward him.
He put a finger up to his lips, dialed a number. “I have one favor I had been saving.” He looked at me sourly. “This wasn’t how I wanted to spend it.”
He talked into the phone. “Greg, its Rance. Sorry to bother you, but I need to call in that favor. Contact hospital security and tell them the present alert is a training exercise. Have the guard that made the initial call report to you. Have him give you a rundown.”
Words from the other side I couldn’t make out.
“Yes, I know. Now I owe you. Thanks.” Silverly hung up. He frowned at me, shook his head.
“Hey, thanks for doing this,” I said.
He lifted the sheet. Keisha’s bandages were wet with blood and my stomach lurched. The anger was gone from her face, she looked smaller somehow and so very vulnerable.
“Steady, Mat,” Silverly told me.
I swallowed bile. “I’ll be okay.” Focus, I told myself, but it was tough. A tree packed more power than I'd realized. My stomach was in knots and my shoulders felt like rocks.
The room’s antiseptic smell made me want to gag. I wiped my mouth.
Silverly cut away her shirt. I winced as the clotting blood made the shirt stick to Keisha’s skin. The bandages were soaked with it. I couldn’t watch.
“Oxygen!” Silverly’s command focused me. Had to stay focused. Keisha depended on it
I fitted the mask over Keisha, checked the airflow.
He hung a plastic bag of blood on a pole, and inserted an IV into her arm, then gave her another shot of adrenalin and got to work.
I kept my eyes on the readouts, passed him instruments when he asked. He really should have a nurse helping him. Hell, he should have a whole staff assisting instead of just me. But it was just me. So no way could I pass out. I forced myself to go numb, not feel anything, just be there, helping the Doc.
“Mat?” His voice pulled at me. “I’m going to pull out the branch, be ready with bandages.
I nodded stiffly.
He lifted the limb. Blood oozed from the cavity and I pressed down the bandages.
“Mat, Mat, not so hard.”
He pushed my hand aside, got to work in the bloody cavity. I didn't look; I just focused on handing him whatever he asked for. Zombie me.
