The Empowered, page 70
It was just a projection, but I stepped up to it and hugged her, it, whatever. It was still part of Ella.
“I’m sorry.” The damn Dark-Net must have been blocking her ability to locate me. Again.
She pulled away, looked at me and Alex both. “That’s not the only reason I’m shook up. We just learned big news.”
Alex and I both raised our eyebrows.
“What news?” I asked.
“Titan was killed.” She twisted her hands. “We just got word of it last night.”
I blinked. Titan dead?
Titan was the only surviving founder of the Hero Council still active. He’d been a part of the world since Empowering began. He was ancient but didn’t look nearly as old as he should have been. His power had made him truly superhuman. Faster, better reflexes, stronger, larger, healthier, longer lived, smarter. Back in the Renegades the Professor had called Titan a superior man, an ultra-human. Other Empowered grew old. Other Empowered died. But Titan kept on being Titan.
He’d been involved, somehow, in Emerald Green’s horror show. I’d found evidence when my cell had infiltrated the secret Emerald Green lab on the Oregon coast, where experiments with monsters had been conducted. My jaw clenched. I’d never learned exactly what he’d been up to. I guess now I never would.
“How was he killed?” Alex asked.
Ella’s projection swallowed. “A bomb exploded at the Paris Arch. Yuri said it might have been a small nuclear device. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people died.” She choked on the words.
I took a deep breath. “You said Paris had been nuked.”
She shook her head. “The Paris Arch has been bombed. It might have been a very low-yield nuke.”
Dead was still dead for the people at the Arch.
“How many dead?” Alex asked.
“Yuri said at least hundreds, probably thousands,” she sobbed. Tears splashed on her gray catsuit.
I gasped, my stomach churning. “Who would do that?” The Scourge was gone. The other super villain groups still in existence were small time. “Why?”
“Yuri didn’t know. He didn’t have a lot of details.”
“That’s not much to go on,” Alex said. “Especially from a member of a group that specializes in information.”
“I know,” Ella’s projection replied, “but they’ve been on the run, too.”
Jesus, the hits just kept on coming.
“Wait, Yuri’s here?” Things were snowballing fast. Yuri was Bey’s right-hand man. Bey and Yuri had helped us when we were trying to find Ella in Persia.
“He came last night, bringing a package for you that Bey sent.”
The sun poked through the leaves. I shivered. Despite the heat, I felt ice cold. Hundreds, thousands of people killed.
Yuri coming here, that was worrying, too. He shouldn’t have left Bey like that. He was Yuri’s right-hand guy. It was especially since the Dark-Net seemed very unreliable, now. Bey needed him.
“What was in the package?” I asked, then held up a hand. “Forget it. Let’s head back to camp. Yuri can tell me in person.”
We tramped through the jungle in silence.
My focus drifted and the jumble of plant choruses rumbled in my head once more. I tried to put the wall back up, but I couldn’t. Back when we’d first arrived at the Amazon, a few weeks ago, I couldn’t think straight. I managed to deal with it until it was like old friends all talking at you at once, all happy to see you.
But today was a different story. Maybe it was because of what had happened back in Kerch.
The jungle sang of life in all its many songs. The plants—the tall trees, the ferns, the flowers, all of it—thrilled to be part of that chorus. I let myself relax into the songs.
They comforted me. I used to hate my power, but here at least, it was a friend. It let me forget about everything else, just for a bit. All the news Ella had unloaded, what had it been again? I couldn’t remember, thanks to the song. Suddenly I felt light, with no worries at all.
Someone called my name. I blinked.
“Mat, you okay?” Alex asked as he walked beside me, one hand on my arm.
“Sure. Why not?”
He pointed at a stream just past my left foot. “Because you nearly walked right into that.” He guided me along the bank.
Guess I’d been more immersed in the choruses than I’d realized.
I struggled to push up the barrier to the jungle choruses in my mind, pulling my power back. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want to tumble into a jungle stream, either. We rounded a bend, following the curve of the stream. The fallen log bridge waited for us. Bright orange flowers grew from the tree’s bark. A big insect buzzed by.
Nuked. Ella said Paris had been nuked. May have been, I reminded myself.
My stomach twisted in knots. The Scourge would have been thrilled at the thought of Titan and God only knew how many other members of the Hero Council being wiped off the face of the Earth, but the Scourge had been destroyed by the Hero Council and Support. Only Keisha and I were left. It seemed liked a century since the Scourge had been destroyed in Colorado Springs, instead of less than a year.
A gentle squeeze on my arm. Alex, concern filling his face, watched me. “Mat, you sure you’re okay?”
“Sorry, a lot on my mind.”
Something rustled in the ferns on the far side of the stream. The ferns parted and Keisha stepped through. “Didn’t think you had enough room in that head of yours to hold much,” she said.
I laughed. “Sometimes I do, girl,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t.”
She grinned. “This looks like one of those don’t times.”
“Funny,” I said, grinning like an idiot. I stepped onto the log.
She shook her head. “Now, just don’t fall off. You want me to help you across?”
“No, I’ll be fine.”
Keisha still limped a bit when she walked. Harris hadn’t been able to completely fix her wounds. Guilt settled like a lead weight in the pit of my stomach. An image of Keisha diving between me and those gun-toting goons of Loris’s back in Sanctuary popped up in my mind just then. My hands trembled. She’d taken bullets for me.
I pushed the memory away, like so many other things I kept pushing away, and stepped onto the log.
“You sure you’ll be okay?” Alex whispered behind me.
“Yup.” I walked onto the log. “Easy peesy.” The wall crumbled in my mind, and the jungles many voices broke back into my mind. The trees’ deep rumble. The ferns’ happy chirping, the flowers’ little voices, and others. Beyond it something else sang, a deep song far deeper than the trees, like the bedrock itself had come to life. Roots, deep in the earth. Their song was like a symphony, and swelled, louder. Roots. Another vision of the Earth flashed through my head. My brain was like vision central all of a sudden.
I swayed and my foot slipped. I tumbled off the log and into the stream. Water splashed around me and I went under. The water was warm, deeper than it looked. I thrashed around, heart pounding and broke the surface, spewing water.
Something metallic flashed and hit the water. I blinked, still coughing.
Keisha held a steaming steel pole in her hands, one end right next to me in the water.
“Grab this!” She yelled. I paddled my feet, struggling to keep my head above water.
There was another splash nearby. Was it a crocodile?
Strong arms lifted me up. I spat out water.
Alex held me.
I grabbed Keisha’s pole, and she began pulling it toward her, Alex swimming behind me, helping keep me steady. Alex was a damn good swimmer. I’d never seen him swim before. He pushed me up onto the stream bank and I collapsed on the dirt, gasping.
Stupid. I’d lost myself for the umpteenth time. I coughed again. My lungs hurt.
Keisha leaned on her pole, while Alex asked me again if I was okay.
I nodded. Suddenly I felt a jolt of panic.
The data Alex carried. “Is the info okay?” I croaked. That pain in the ass mission to the Crimea——had it all been for nothing?
Alex patted his shoulder slung bag. “Water proof.”
I relaxed.
“That would have sucked,” Keisha said. “Whatever you found, I hope it was worth it.”
“Me, too.”
Our camp was a collection of old shacks that had originally been part of a migrant worker camp that had been abandoned years ago. We’d cleaned up the shacks and Keisha created new metal roofs for them. The camp looked like a bunch of little kids’ playhouses beneath the giant trees.
When we neared the camp, Alex was obviously torn between wanting to make sure I’d be okay and starting in on the info we’d extracted at the Kerch station.
I told him to get to work, that Keisha would get me to Harris. I was fine, just needed to be checked out. Alex didn’t argue, even though he looked like he wanted to. Instead, he trotted off to the computer shack.
“That man’s so worried about you,” Keisha said. “That’s love for you.”
“Yeah,” I stammered. “Come on, let’s get to Harris.” We walked into camp.
People worked at cutting fruit and gourds, skinning and drying fish, getting them ready to put in the little metal ovens Keisha had created. We didn’t have big fires, we had little ones. We didn’t want to attract attention.
Just enough to cook over. We needed more insta-meals. That made things so much easier, but they were hard to come by here in the back of beyond.
“Welcome back, Mat,” Phillip said. He was one of the Imbued, a big guy. I’d first met him along with Renee back at Mossville in the Columbia River Gorge, before Alex and I went to Persia. “You okay?” Concern flickered in his eyes. My chest tightened. Who would have thought the guy that had wanted to K.O. me when we first met was now worried about me?
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to look alert and focused, and probably failing big time.
Other people looked up from what they were doing. They started calling out my name.
I managed a weak smile. “Hey, everyone.” My face reddened. People came over and asked me how I was, asked about Alex.
I tried to make my smile more confident. “I’m alive.”
“She needs some rest, people,” Keisha said. “We’re going to have Harris check her over.”
A ripple of “good,” and “you’ll be fine” ran through the crowd. I didn’t deserve it. I ducked my head, my chest still tight.
An older blonde woman sat cross-legged in a lotus-pose, her back against a tree, Phillip’s partner Renee. She had been the leader of the Mossville imbued, part of Loris’s Fellowship of Enlightenment crap. I didn’t hold that against Renee. Loris’s power of persuasion had convinced Renee and many others, including Ella, that it was a true fellowship, not a cult actually controlled by Loris for her own power. After Loris died and we fled Sanctuary, Renee had been meditating daily. Like she was now.
She opened her eyes and smiled at me. I nodded as Keisha and I walked past her. Renee was pretty quiet these days.
We reached Harris’s hut. It was some little ways from the other huts, near some huge leafy plants.
Before we reached it, the door opened and Harris stepped out.
His dark eyes were worried. He was a skinny guy, maybe five feet ten. Greasy black locks covered one side of his long, pale face. He was around thirty years old, but his eyes made him seem much older. He wore a faded camouflaged hunter’s jacket. He reminded me of an old friend who was now dead.
Gus.
“Mathilda,” he said. “Are you all right?” He ran his trembling gaze over me. Always the healer, no matter how twitchy or fearful he acted.
“Yeah, just managed to get wet.”
Keisha frowned. “You nearly drowned, Mat,” she said.
“But I didn’t.”
“Here, let me check you out,” Harris said. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers along my face and neck. “Mathilda, you took in some water,” he said. His brows drew together. Concerned. His eyes moved behind closed lids.
I let him call me by my full name. There would have been a time I’d have snarled at him for using it. But Harris made Mathilda sound, I don’t know, important. Not a stupid sounding name at all.
I smiled. “I’m okay, really.”
He opened his eyes. “You have bacteria from the stream in you. I’d like to purge that.”
“Purge?” My fingers tightened against my sides. “Is that necessary?”
Keisha grinned at me. “Throwing up never hurt anybody.”
“Very funny.”
Harris shook his head. His eyes were so serious. “You won’t vomit from this. You’ll just feel warm.”
My stomach knotted up at the thought, but I nodded. “We need to do this right now?”
Keisha nodded. “The sooner the better, Mat.”
“Everything always has to happen right now,” I groused.
Keisha crossed her arms. “So, what? This isn’t the time to be mulish.”
“At least I’m not an ass,” I retorted.
She snickered, but there was no humor in it. “She thinks she’s being funny.”
“Listen, don’t you have someplace else you should be?” I didn’t try and hide the irritation in my voice.
“I sure do,” she replied, and stomped off toward the main hall.
I rubbed at my eye. Why the hell did I have to act like that? I almost called out to her to come back but didn’t.
Harris ignored the exchange. He took me over to his “hospital,” an old U.S. Army tent twenty yards away, on the other side of a stand of banana trees.
Uli and Henrich were lounging outside on army camp chairs when we arrived. They jumped up when we got close and stood at attention. We’d scrounged up the tent and camp chairs when we’d been at that hideout in Austria, near the ancient node by the Danube. We’d only been there for a couple of days; just long enough to pick up a few more Imbued who’d crossed over from Germany and the Reclamation Zones. Which happened to include Uli and Henrich.
Uli was young, tall, and had straw-blond hair worn long, while Henrich was older, short, his brown hair in a buzz cut.
“Good morning,” Uli said. “How can we help?” Henrich just nodded. His English was pretty sketchy.
“Could you please fetch some water?” Harris asked them. “Two pails from the cauldron.”
“Ja,” Henrich said. They turned and strode in the direction of the iron cauldron, fifty yards or so away. Keisha had created it so that we could boil water.
Harris pulled back the tent flap and led me inside, snagging the solar powered lamp off the pole outside the tent. The inside was dark until he switched on the lamp. Handy.
I sat on a camp stool next to a steel table, another of Keisha’s creations.
Harris picked up a basket full of herbs I’d grown last week at his direction.
“You going to make me eat one of your magic mushrooms?”
“I’m going to make a tea,” he said. “No mushrooms, I promise.” His eyes reminded me of a basset hound’s. Sad. A pang ran through my chest, and I looked away for a second. He was just like Gus.
Gus, who my friend Tanya had called “Blender” back in the Renegades. I thought he’d ratted out on us back then. When I was paroled from Special Corrections I’d been ready to kill him on sight. I’d been wrong about Gus. He’d been loyal. Turned out he worked for Support, just like I did. He’d infiltrated that bastard Mutter’s cell way before me. Mutter murdered him when he found out what Gus had been up to.
I guess I felt protective of Harris because of Gus’ memory. I didn’t want to screw up again by misjudging someone.
I looked back at him. “I don’t feel like tea,” I said with a straight face.
“This will help.”
“I’m kidding, Harris.” I didn’t know if Harris was his first name or last. When he’d joined us, he said he was Harris, just Harris. One name.
We’d been lucky as hell to find him. An Empowered healer, like Medicos Red and Blue back in Support, sure came in handy. Especially when you couldn’t go to the hospital because even if there was a hospital, they’d tip off Support and the Hero Council. And where we lived these days, there weren’t any hospitals.
“The water that bad, Doc?” I asked him.
He nodded. “I’m afraid so, Mathilda. There’s all kinds of bacteria swimming in it.”
I should have known. We boiled all our water here. I would have remembered if I hadn’t been high on plant power.
“Is it okay if I touch you?” Harris asked.
“Sure, Doc. Do what you need to.”
“I’m a healer, not a doctor,” he said, for the umpteenth time. Just like Gus, no sense of humor. He ran his fingers across my stomach, his touch light. His fingertips tickled.
I shifted.
“Sorry,” he said and stopped.
“It’s okay. I’m just ticklish.”
“Sorry,” he repeated.
“It’s on me, Harris, not you. Please keep going.” I hoped he could take care of this bug fast. I had a ton of stuff to do.
He started up again, fingers brushing my stomach. Warmth spread out from his touch. My stomach spasmed and I winced.
“Sorry.” Just then the tent flap pulled back and Uli and Henrich entered, each carrying a pail with hot water.
“Put them on the table please,” Harris said.
The two Imbued did as he asked, then came to attention. I didn’t know much about them. The third member of their trio had died, so they couldn’t use their power. They said they’d been able to make the wind speak. Alex had thought that meant sound amplification from what they said, but it could have been something with the air pressure. Damned if I knew. But it had to hurt, they were like walking wounded.
Harris picked up a metal cup from the table, washed it in the first bucket, then went to his basket of magic herbs, picked up a cluster of long green grass, and ground it in a mortar and pestle.
He poured the mashed grass in the cup and dipped the cup in the second bucket, swirled the contents with a steel spoon.
“Drink this please,” he said, handing me the cup.
I sniffed at the brew. It smelled like licorice. I hated licorice.
