The Empowered, page 31
Winterfield’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s that, Brandt?”
“Support thinks I’m a rat. That’s why I’m told jack squat.” After all I’d done and risked working my way into the Scourge, Support still distrusted me.
Winterfield leaned back. “Trust has to be earned. Besides, you heard Zhukova—you can’t reveal what you don’t know.”
It still sucked.
“Okay, we’ll give you a crumb,” Winterfield said. He looked at Alex. “Bring up the incidents list.”
Alex fiddled with his wrist comm. The wall display came on, ran a graph and lots of numbers. Rogue Empowered Incidents. Even I could tell they were increasing in the past couple of years.
“Okay, so more knuckleheads with a power are causing problems.” Not a huge surprise. I’d heard there were more Empowereds showing up lately. Usually Empowering happened when you were a young teen, but sometimes adults suddenly got powers, too.
Data scrolled by, something about correlations and coordination. I couldn’t really make sense of it. Alex tapped his comm and the display went to a map of the US. There were a lot of black dots.
“Those are incidents involving rogue Empowereds.”
“As opposed to what else?”
Winterfield snorted. “You don’t need to know.”
“I’m still a mushroom,” I griped. “That wasn’t much of a crumb.”
Alex stepped in, easy as you please. “We don’t want to distract you with things you can’t change.”
“So why show me this then?”
“Deep breath, Brandt,” Winterfield said. “We’re not done yet.”
Fine. I took a deep breath, tried to unkink my neck which was suddenly all in knots.
Red dots began replacing black ones on the display.
“Red are incidents we connect with the Scourge.”
More and more black dots became red, until most were red.
Shit. That was a lot of dots. Dozens and dozens of incidents.
Alex went on. “We estimate at least seventy percent of the incidents in the past three and half years are from Scourge activity. In the past eighteen months the number is eighty three percent.”
What had the Scourge been up to?
“You want specifics?” Winterfield asked me. “In the past six months in the United States alone there have been a half dozen thefts of high grade military equipment traced to the Scourge. Four bank robberies.” His gaze hardened. “Eight Support agents killed by the Scourge, along with twenty seven members of law enforcement. And just in case you might be thinking, that’s all part of the job description, try this one on for size—fifteen private citizens killed by the Scourge simply because they had something the Scourge wanted, or were connected to a company that the Scourge wanted to hit.”
He stood. “We’ve got to stop them.” He got a slightly disgusted look on his face. “Like it or not, that makes you very important. Which means you, Agent Sanchez and myself have to be focused on taking them down. Do you understand?”
It was annoying when he had facts on his side. The problem for me was, he usually did, so I was annoyed a lot.
“Yeah, I get it.” I knew the Scourge was ruthless, killing fifty people in six months, shit. I swallowed. The guards in Colombia couldn’t be on Winterfield’s list, and we hadn’t killed anyone. Seriously injured a few people, I couldn’t pull punches, but we weren’t out to kill people. But the same wasn’t true of the rest of the Scourge. Shit.
Alex looked at me sympathetically. My surprise at what Winterfield had told me must be written all over my face. “We should let you get some rest,” Alex said. “It’s after midnight.”
“I’m doing another sleepover in wherever this is?”
Winterfield gave me a thin smile. “Got it in one, Brandt.” He unlocked the door with his wrist. I’d never stop finding that weird.
He glanced back, Alex beside him. “Get some sleep. You are going to need it.”
Mister Sunshine and his partner left.
How was I supposed to sleep after that?
A loud chiming sound woke me from another fucking nightmare about kids covered in green living slime and zombie-like people shuffling in a field, collecting sunlight with the green leaves that had sprouted from their arms while Ashula and some Empowered I didn’t recognize killed farmers because they were in the wrong place.
I sat up, tossed off the blanket and rubbed my eyes.
Overhead lights came on with a soft glow. The door chimed, opened. Alex came in.
No sign of buzzkill Winterfield.
I had slept in shorts and a tank top. I could see Alex trying not to look me over.
He was dressed in his man-in-black outfit.
“Let me guess, I’m still locked up,” I groused.
“Good morning, Mat, how are you?” He winked. “This is what we call a greeting.”
I put on a fake, perky expression. “Hi, Alex. Sleep well?”
A smile played around the edges of his mouth. “Better stick to glowering,” he said.
“Funny. You aren’t locked up, so you can joke all you want.”
“Mat, you’re not locked up. You’re in a secure location.”
“Oh, is that what you call this?”
He shook his head, grinning. I told the butterflies in my stomach to go bug someone else. Maybe Zhukova. But it was impossible to imagine anyone giving her butterflies.
“Better get dressed, Mat. We have stuff to do.”
“That the official Support designation?” I stretched and noticed Alex studying the wall behind me.
I went to the closet. My clothes hung there, along with a gray jumpsuit. I had a sneaking, nasty suspicion what was next on my schedule.
“Let me guess, the jumpsuit for me today?”
Alex nodded. “Don’t want to get your clothes dirty.”
I pulled the jumpsuit off the hanger, and went into the tiny bathroom to change. It would have been so much easier if Agent Cute had waited out in the hall, so there was room to move my freaking elbows and not bang my hands pulling on the jumpsuit. Being six foot one in a toilet with no standing room was no fun at all.
The jumpsuit was tighter than I would have liked. Alex tried not to show it, but when I came out of the bathroom I could see him take in my curves. He wasn’t leering, just sneaking a glance.
The last time someone had leered at me it had ended with me constricting him and his minions in blackberry vines I’d grown to monster size.
I wouldn’t have minded if Alex had leered, even a little. He stayed professional, unlocked the door with a swipe of his wrist.
“You are not going to tell me where we are going, are you?”
“That would spoil the surprise.”
Support loved surprises. That harshed my buzz big time.
He led me through the maze of identical looking corridors.
“This is the most boring dungeon ever,” I said when we’d reached another intersection. I’d lost track of how many.
“Dungeon?” Alex asked, puzzled.
“Sure seems like one to me.”
He laughed. “I suppose you could call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
He tapped his nose. “That’s on a need-to-know basis.” He winked.
I scowled. “Yeah, and I don’t need to know, is that it?” I stepped away from him. “Must be pretty hilarious to you?” I don’t know why I’d found him attractive, he was a jerk like all the rest of them.
“Hey, I was only trying to lighten the mood.”
“Being ignorant of what is going on isn’t funny to me,” I said. Crossed my arms and turned my back on him.
He stepped in front of me. “Listen, I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. Can we get on with this?” I wouldn’t meet his gaze. I was sick and tired of being kept in the dark.
He started to say something else, then must have thought better of it, and went back to leading me through this endless maze.
9
We reached a room with a big set of double doors. Could have been the briefing room from yesterday.
My skin tingled.
An Empowered was in that room. Alex did the wrist swipe thing, and the doors swished open.
I went in. The doors swished shut behind me.
A familiar woman waited for me. She looked Chinese, wore a black jumpsuit, and her long black hair fell in a braid to her waist. She smiled at me.
It was “Flick,” who had tested me the first time I had been here, right after being recruited by Support. It wasn’t really her fault that during the last test I’d nearly killed us both, but I still blamed her. She had pissed me off.
Next to her was a garden of sorts, dirt piled inside of some kind of giant enclosed planter thing. There were no plants in the soil, but it looked watered.
“Long time no see.”
“Hello, Mat.”
I walked up to her. She did a little half bow as I joined her that made me feel like a clumsy ox.
I tapped the rim of the metal planter. It made a ringing sound that stopped quickly, because of all the dirt piled on it.
“Let me guess,” I said. “This is a test.”
Her lips curved up in amusement. “Perceptive.”
“Yeah, that’s me. Little Miss Obvious.” I nodded at the soil. “I need to grow plants?”
“There is a certain straightforward quality to this exam, isn’t there?”
“Any particular sort of plants?”
Her dimples crinkled and her face took on a playful look.
“Now, wouldn’t that be interesting. Perhaps I should have you grow a rare orchid or an alpine flower of a sort you’ve never seen before.”
Funny. I didn’t smile, and didn’t speak up. I wasn’t about to agree to anything.
She shook her head. “No, Mat, we will keep this test simple, but not too simple.”
Something about that bugged me.
“You may create whatever you’d like to create, and grow it, while following my verbal instructions.”
The doors opened behind us. I turned, half-expecting to see Winterfield and Alex walk in.
No such luck. Instead, my new least favorite person in the whole wide world, Zhukova, entered. She wore a black jumpsuit, identical to Flick’s. Great, I got to put on a show for the new boss. Just what I lived for.
“Carry on, Ms. Brandt,” Zhukova said. She stood by the wall, arms folded.
Fine, I’d do my best to ignore her.
I rubbed my hands together, trying to wake myself up. They’d gotten me up at Zero Dark-Whatever-The-Hell-Time-This-Was on purpose. Manipulative jerks.
I closed my eyes. If there were no seeds, no “organic material,” if these bastards had sterilized the soil, I’d be up the proverbial shit creek without a proverbial paddle. I stretched out my hands, and sent my power into the “garden."
The soil teemed with life. Worms, bugs, seeds of all kinds. Grass seed. Lots of grass seed. I smiled. Blackberry seeds. Someone knew my go-to vine.
I slipped my sense into the blackberry seeds, urged them to grow, put my life essence into them. Pulled nutrients and moisture in from the soil. The seeds sprouted roots, then vines, slithering through the dirt like snakes. Upward, I urged the vines.
Something pelleted my face, and I lost my connection. My eyes snapped open. I put a hand to where the skin stung. More tiny things stung my face and my hands.
Damn it.
I crouched down, trying to avoid being targeted. Flick gestured and a shower of BBs smacked into my chest and groin. It was like being stung by a swarm of bees. Ow ow ow.
She was grinning, too.
Fuck. I hate it when assholes use their power against me, and I hate it even more when they are smiling like sadistic freaks.
I darted to the far side of the giant flat planter, urging the vines up. Bolt shaped objects smacked into my back. God that hurt.
I wheeled around, dropped flat. Vines broke the soil, sprouted leaves. I pushed them harder, but they stopped growing and drooped less than a half a foot above the soil. More freaking ball bearings and bolts bounced off me, a pain-making iron rain. I covered my head with my arms, which meant my arms got a royal going over.
“God damn it!” I yelled. The pelting stopped.
“This was all part of the test, Ms. Brandt,” Zhukova said behind me. She was smug. “You failed.”
“No kidding.”
My hands were covered in red welts. I winced as I pushed myself up.
Flick looked sorry, but Zhukova didn’t. “Not a very impressive display.” Zhukova pursed her lips.
Screw her.
The door opened. A figure entered, swathed in blood-red medical scrubs, wearing a red helmet with a full-face mask made to look like an angel’s face. The figure walked toward me, hips swaying. Female.
“Shouldn’t you be wearing blue?” I asked her.
“You are thinking of my sister, Medico Blue.” Her accent was English, and in fact sounded exactly like I remembered Medico Blue. “I am Medico Red.”
Medico sisters. “How many of you are there?” I asked Medico Red.
“At least two,” she replied. What kind of answer was that? But it was all I got.
Zhukova took Flick across the room. Probably to talk about how easy it was to get me to screw up.
Medico Red ran her gloved fingers over the lobster-red backs of my hands. As she did, my skin stopped screaming, and the stinging went away. The welts paled and shrunk until they vanished all together. She ran her fingers down my chest and legs. I trembled as her fingers passed my belly, which had felt on fire, like someone had run me through with a hot poker. She stepped behind me, and did the same thing down my back. The pain went away.
“Thanks.”
“Certainly.” She bowed.
I shifted uneasily. “Listen, I have a question for you.”
“If I can answer it, I will.”
I hesitated. Screw it. “Can you cure disease?”
The masked face looked at me for a long moment.
“If I could, I would.” Her voice was thick with regret. “I would give anything to be able to do that. I would devote my life, as would my sisters, to that cause.”
Sisters. How many Medicos were there?
Zhukova and Flick returned. Zhukova tilted her head. “What happened during the test?”
“Cross examination already? I haven’t even had my coffee yet.” This was bullshit.
“I can see you aren’t taking this seriously, Ms. Brandt.”
I glared at Flick. “I had trouble concentrating for some reason.”
Flick winked at me.
Zhukova cocked her head, suddenly reminding me of a blond raven, if one of the raven’s eyes was a big black insectile camera eye, finding something shiny. “This is precisely why you need more practice. You can’t let a little discomfort prevent you from using your power.”
“Those BBs hurt like hell. I’m not used to getting worked over like that.”
“Precisely why you will undertake this test again. Repeated exposure will improve your ability to wield your power while experiencing discomfort.”
I unkinked my neck. “All right, let’s get on with it. I want breakfast.”
Zhukova gave me a disapproving look. “Your bravado is pointless. You either pass the test or don’t. The pain is just an obstacle.”
I was surprised with such a big stick up her ass she could walk straight.
I reached into the withered vines and pushed them to pull nitrogen and nutrients from the dirt, water from the air. Grow. Grow.
And they did grow, rising like cobras from baskets at a snake charmers convention. Hah! Take that new boss.
Something was in my eye. A bunch of somethings. Grit. And I knew the source. I whirled around. Flick gestured at me. I closed my eyes. I could do this without seeing. I sent the blackberry vines snaking toward her, they stretched out, unspooling, singing their joy in my mind.
Stings against my face. Damn it.
More BBs.
I turned away, opened my eyes. Now there was a cloud of what looked like pillow down clogging the air. I coughed. How much crap was Flick throwing at me? I hated her power. Telekinetics was annoying as hell.
Flick had moved to the far side of the planter. I reached back into the vines to push them to grow toward her, but it was like reaching into nothing. I couldn’t feel them. Their singing had stopped.
I clenched my fists. I wasn’t going to fail this time.
The dirt, and the life teeming inside. I suddenly could feel it, like I was in the ground, or even eating it. Touched the roots of the blackberry vines, and throw them, the plants. I sent the vines arcing up, growing madly. Their thorns became two-inch long shivs.
Flick backed up, sent a circular saw blade spinning at the vines. It sliced through one, but I ignored the plant’s screaming and pushed harder, and the blade was entangled in vines. More vines loomed over Flick and fell on her like an avalanche. I gritted my teeth. Stop me from using my power, will you?
“Cease!” Zhukova’s voice boomed through the hall.
I shook my head, let go of the plants.
Flick was ensnared in vines. Her jumpsuit was ripped in a dozen places, and blood dripped onto the leaves. Her eyes were closed, but she didn’t cry out.
I reached back into the vines, and, without thinking, killed them. Withered them until they grew brittle and snapped. Flick dropped to the floor.
Medico Red rushed to her side and began examining her.
“Damn you,” I yelled at Zhukova. “I could have killed her!”
Zhukova didn’t flinch from my anger. “But you didn’t, did you, Ms. Brandt? You ceased when I ordered you to cease.”
“This isn’t a game.”
Her right eye stared at me, and she stepped up close to me. Her head barely came to my shoulder, but I suddenly felt small in the face of her certainty. Her cybernetic eye watched me, I could see a faint reflection of my face in it.
“No, it is not.” She put her hands on her hips. “It would be well for you to never forget that.”
Bitch supreme, that was her.
“Yeah, I get it. You were the ones who set this up. Not me.”
