The Empowered, page 75
He shrugged. “The Support installation is connected to the warehouse. Beneath it.”
A memory stabbed me. “Don’t tell me it’s in a converted old fallout shelter?”
“How did you know?” He looked even more surprised.
“Just a wild guess.” Damn.
Alex gave me a sympathetic look. The Renegades had been in a converted fallout shelter. The weird thing was, after the Three Days war in 1962, people kept on building fallout shelters for a few years, even though the old Soviet Union and China had largely been destroyed. Apparently, they became “survival shelters.”
Just like that, we were going to Tacoma and an old secret Scourge bolt-hole. I should’ve had my head examined for heading into the lion’s den like that and dragging Keisha and Alex along. The surprising thing was Harris—he seemed too jumpy to go along, but he forced himself. Stronger-willed than I’d given him credit for.
I looked at Keisha and Alex. “Do we roll the dice with this one?”
Keisha chewed a lip. “Seems like a stretch.” She stared at Harris. He cringed, dropped his gaze. She shrugged. “Going right into a major city is crazy, but if there still is a Scourge hidey-hole there, it would sure come in handy.”
“It would,” Alex agreed.
“Okay, then I guess we’re going,” I said.
Getting there would be the first challenge.
The next morning Keisha found an ancient Ford pickup truck rusting beside another rotting building a quarter-mile away from our temporary roach motel.
The problem was, the truck was so rusted the rust had rust, and birds nested in the open hood.
The four of us stood around the hulk. “If this is the best we can do, we’re up the creek,” I said.
Alex stared at the engine and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m afraid so.”
Harris didn’t say anything, just walked around the truck, looking sad.
Keisha shook her head. “Come on, I can rework metal.”
“I wish that were enough,” Alex said. “We need rubber for gaskets, tires. The wiring has been chewed through.”
“Looks like we need to walk,” I said.
Keisha looked around. “That’s going to be a real long walk.”
I shrugged. “Guess we’d better get started.” The wind stirred for a moment and the sage rustled. My special sense brushed against it. I could see into the plants, see the water circulating inside, feel what they were like. I’d been able to rework plants. If only… my thoughts drifted away. Then it came to me.
“Mat?” Alex stood close by, but he kept from touching me. Still afraid.
I blinked. “I think we can fix the truck,” I said.
“How?” Harris asked.
I looked at Alex and smiled “By working together. I can create that rubber for gaskets, the plastics for wiring.
Keisha furrowed her brow. “What, from plants?”
“Sure as hell not from rocks,” I teased. “Yes, plants. While you rework the metal. And we’ll need to weave it all together. But we’re going to need power.” I nodded at Alex. “I turned to Harris. “We need you to help keep us in the game.”
He gulped air. “Er, okay.”
Keisha shook her head. “Crazy.”
I shrugged again. “What else is new?”
She snorted. “Nothing.”
“Okay, make the magic happen,” I said.
Keisha got to work, with Alex helping. The engine block steamed as she reworked the metal. She couldn’t just slap something together. This was tricky. I started to step away, but a hand tugged at my arm. Alex.
“Stay close,” he said.
I nodded. I pushed the memory of yesterday out of my head. I closed my eyes so that I could concentrate. Reached with my power out into the sage, dipping down into a nearby clump of plants. Rubber. I poured my power into them and thought of rubber. Rubber gaskets. Rubber tires. I changed the plants until they were like rubber. I went over, picked up the warm pieces and brought them back to the truck. My arms ached. I must have been gesturing something fierce.
Alex’s eyes narrowed in worry. “I’m fine,” I said.
Keisha wiped her forehead. “Whew! That’s work.” We then spent twenty minutes trying to get my gaskets and other parts on the truck but kept fumbling.
“Can I make a suggestion?” Harris asked.
“Sure,” I replied.
“Make your wires, and then let’s get the whole thing together, at once.”
“It’s not like we can work as one,” Alex said.
Harris looked away, twisting his hands. Worried.
“Why do you think we can?” I asked.
He raised his head. “Just thinking. Alex can boost power. That’s a connection. If he can boost my healing power while also boosting each of yours, we’ll be linked.” He glanced at Alex
Alex chewed his lip, lost in thought. “I’ve never tried that.” He smiled. “Now’s a good time.”
“Let me create plastic first,” I said.
Keisha shook her head. “That’s going to be something if you can pull it off.”
“Just watch.” I winked, trying to act confident. I reached into a new group of sage brush and went to work.
A while later there was a pile of plastic-like plant threads.
“You need to put wire through them,” I told Keisha.
She started twiddling her fingers, and I switched my awareness back into the plastic-wire-like plant threads I’d made. The plastic hummed happily in my head, then began laughing when Keisha conjured wire. I shuddered. My muscles began burning from the strain.
A hand brushed my shoulder, and my muscles relaxed.
“You’re not alone,” Harris said.
“Thanks.”
More time passed. Alex gave me more power, and Harris healing.
“Let’s put this all together,” I said.
“Yes,” the others said in unison.
It was like putting together a puzzle without having to think about it.
I opened my eyes. The truck sat on repaired tires that looked like new. The engine gleamed, and wires, gaskets etc. filled the engine compartment.
“We still need gas,” Alex said.
“On it,” I replied, and went to work with yet another set of sage brush. Harris had to keep brushing my shoulder, keeping my body on the up and up. I felt like I could eat a horse.
I managed to turn sagebrush into a version of wheat. We poured the husks into the tank, and then I linked with the grain, and imagined alcohol. Ruth had told me stories growing up of making grain alcohol on the side when she was stationed in Europe, back in the Army, decades ago.
The grain moaned. The moans faded. I took a depth breath. I’d done what I’d had to do with the plants and tried to ignore the guilt I suddenly felt. I’d used plants plenty of times before, why did I suddenly feel guilty about it? Was it my heightened sensitivity? Or just time? Ruth used to say that a person could bear stress until they couldn’t any longer, that everyone had a limit. This wasn’t the time to reach mine.
I opened my eyes. The truck didn’t look like new, but it didn’t look like a rusting hulk any longer. It looked drivable.
Harris’s eyes shone as he gazed at me. I fidgeted.
“What is it?” I asked him.
He blinked. “Sorry, I just realized that we combined our power to accomplish something extraordinary. Thanks to you.”
“Nah, it was a group effort.” I shifted my feet. “We got a truck running again. It’s not like we’re gods or anything.”
“Even the most powerful Empowered on the Hero Council couldn’t have done this,” he said.
I looked away, desperate to change the subject. We had done what we needed to do. “I think we’re ready to go,” I said. We grabbed our gear and faced the truck.
“What about tags,” I realized suddenly.
Alex nodded at the ancient plates. I bent down. Current Oregon tags were both on the front and back.
“How’d you manage that.”
He smiled and patted his shoulder bag. “Another piece of handy Support tech.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t mentioned that before.”
“A man needs to keep a few secrets,” he dead-panned.
I smacked his arm, making him grin.
The four of us wouldn’t all be able to fit in the cab together.
“Look, I’ll hang in the bed,” Keisha said.
“I’ll take turns with you,” I said.
“If you want.” She scrambled into the bed. Alex started up the truck and it rumbled off.
“We’re going to need gas real soon. What’s in the tank won’t be good for the engine.”
The truck shuddered as Alex accelerated.
A gas station turned out to be just ten miles down the road, not long after the highway curved away from the river.
There was a beat-up newspaper stand in the parking lot. Alex went over to it, while I filled the tank, and Keisha stretched her legs. Harris stood by the truck, watching everything with his sad-eyed gaze.
Even unshaved and dirty, Alex looked fine. He bent over the news stand. He certainly filled out his jeans nicely.
He froze, staring at the newspaper through the dirty plastic. He pushed change into the coin slot, then yanked open the door and grabbed a paper, staring at the front page.
What the hell had he seen?
I finished filling the tank and put away the hose. Alex stood holding the newspaper.
“What’s up with him?” Keisha asked.
I went over to him. “Hey, Sanchez, what is it?” I asked, trying to make my voice easy going.
“This paper is dated a year from now.” He rubbed his eyes, handing me the paper.
The headline screamed “Ultimate Makes New Demands,” with a story next to it that said “Titan not what he seemed,” and a story below that entitled “Tenth month without rain in the Pacific Northwest.”
The date at the top of the paper was a year after the last date on the little calendar we kept in the Community hall of the Amazon camp.
“What the hell,” I whispered. The Dark-Net had stuck us in holding again. Alex and I had been inside for six months last year. No, the year before. Fuck.
I smacked my palm against my thigh. “Shit!”
Without thinking, I reached over and hugged Alex. He stiffened.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, but nothing happened inside me. No surge of power. The world didn’t tilt sideways.
I hugged him harder. “I’m fine,” I said.
He relaxed. “Really?”
I kissed him.
Alex kissed me back.
“Hey, hate to bring this up, but you lovebirds dropped your paper,” Keisha said from nearby.
I forced myself to pull away from Alex.
Keisha smoothed out the newspaper. She gasped.
“Fuck, a year?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Now you know how Alex and I felt when we showed up in Persia.”
She gave a hard-edged laugh. “I’d rather not know.” She lifted her head, stared at the sky. “Fuck, a whole year!”
What else had happened in that time. Were Ella and the others still in the Outback? Why couldn’t Ella’s projection materialize? Had something changed? I shivered. How had the world changed? We needed to find out.
I had to drop those worries for now. One thing at a time.
We needed food. Lucky for us, as usual Alex had a stash of cash. I went into the gas station’s little store, and bought peanuts, jerky, and a dozen candy bars. Yeah, lunch of champions. We’d eaten the last of Alex’s protein bars for breakfast.
This would hold us over until we found a diner.
I walked back to the truck. Keisha was in the bed.
“My turn,” I said.
“No, I want to think. The bed is fine.” She was distant all of a sudden. I couldn’t blame her. A whole year, gone, just like that.
“Suit yourself.” I got in on the passenger side.
Alex glanced at my bag as I closed the door, Harris sitting between us.
“Yeah, it’s junk food,” I said. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Harris stared off at the distant horizon half-shrouded in haze. His face was hard. I shivered.
“Hey,” I said to him. “We’re still in this.”
“A year.” None of the fear, none of the sadness in his voice. He just said it in a matter-of-fact way.
“Afraid so.” God, I sounded lame to myself. “Can’t change time.”
He turned to me. His eyes seemed ancient all of a sudden, and his gaze reached deep into me.
I shivered. He seemed like someone else.
“No, we can’t.” Then, like wiping a window, he was back to being sad-eyed Harris the Gus wannabe.
We drove down the highway in silence.
I read the paper. Ultimate—some sort of new rogue Empowered group that believed Empowered were naturally superior.
“Can you believe this crap?” I blurted out. “This Ultimate group thinks Empowered are naturally superior and should be running everything.
“Don’t they already?” Harris pointed out quietly, then went back to staring at the distant horizon. The haze had thickened. “I mean, like it or not, Empowered run things,” he said. “The Hero Council sets the rules. The nations of the world comply.”
“Well, it sounds like that isn’t good enough for this Ultimate outfit,” I pointed out. “They want to run everything directly.”
Alex shook his head. “They’re going to have to deal with Support first,” he said. “They are there as a go-between.”
“Support’s the master, you mean,” Harris said, turning to Alex. “It calls the shots and the Hero Council does as they are told.” Bitterness in his words.
Alex kept his eyes on the road. “No. Support’s mission is to aid and protect.”
“Sure,” Harris said. “But it’s the “protect” part that’s a license to run everything.”
“We’re still flying blind here,” I said. “We don’t have enough info on what is going on.”
Alex laughed. There was no humor in it. “Listen to you, Mat. You used to just say you were a mushroom.”
“Fed shit and kept in the dark,” I retorted. “Yeah, I remember. But this is different. We’ve been gone for a fucking year.” I wrapped the newspaper, making it rustle loudly. “Apparently the weather has gone freaking crazy, too.”
“Unrest and rumors of war,” Alex muttered. He glanced at me. “What else does the paper say?”
I leafed through it. “The U.S. and France squaring off over an African crisis. Japan is staying out of it, but is beefing up its forces in Taiwan, helping the government there with something called the ‘Marauder’ problem. Oh, and Japan sent more soldiers to help deal with horrendous flooding on the Chinese coast. Brazil and Argentina are ready to go to war over some place called the Malvina islands. The Hero Council has ordered both to stand down and go to U.N. mediation. So far, both are blowing the U.N. off.”
“I like the way you interpret the news.” Alex winked at me when I looked up.
“Just telling it like I read it,” I said.
“I love that about you.” He grinned.
Harris pretended not to see our little back-and forth.
I coughed and went back to the paper.
“There’s a one-year anniversary of Titan’s death story. Apparently, there are new details about activities before he was assassinated,” I said. “Says he was on the outs with the rest of the council.”
“Lies!” Harris snapped.
“Excuse me?” I snapped back. “How do you know?”
He cringed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I meant we have to figure out what are lies and what aren’t.”
“But why get all pissy about it?” I demanded. “What do you care about Titan?”
Alex glanced over at me. “Hey, Mat. We’re all rattled.” Always the peacemaker.
“Sorry,” I told Harris.
“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “I used to admire Titan.” He laughed at my surprised face. “I know, pretty strange to think that I would, but I did. He was the last of the founding Hero Council members. He understood what it meant to be Empowered.” His voice trailed off.
I never saw his admiration for a sanctioned Empowered coming, but, whatever. “Yeah, it’s hard when you hear things that don’t jibe with what you believe,” I said.
We fell back into silence.
A year gone by, just like that. The Fairy Road, the Dark-Net, had screwed me over again.
What had happened to Ella and the others while the world spiraled into chaos?
What about Ruth and Ava? How were they doing?
I closed my eyes, wishing Ella would show up.
10
But Ella didn’t show up. Not at the greasy spoon diner in the nowhere-town we stopped in for an early dinner. Not at the rest stop before we headed up into the mountains. Not in the bed next to Keisha. Not even by the side of the road, waving at us to stop. No sign of my sister.
The sky ahead of us was now dark with smoke. The radio talked about the latest wildfire, burning hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. And we had to drive right through it. Keisha lay in the truck bed, a wet bandana over her nose and mouth.
The road was open, just, as we drove through at dusk.
The worse part was the wails of the dying trees. I sat huddled in the cab, eyes squeezed shut, trying to keep the fucking screams out of my head.
But it sure as hell wasn’t easy.
Alex played some crappy country western music on the radio, trying to distract me. It didn’t help.
My head hurt like hell. My shoulders ached.
Harris squeezed my shoulder. My muscles unclenched. “I hope this is okay,” he said, and stroked my temples. The headache stopped.
I wiped my face. I’d been crying. I nodded.
“Thanks.”
The mountains were shadows behind the black smoke. We reached a hill, then started down.
“Through it,” Alex said. “Should get better after this.”
After leaving the mountains, we pulled into a rest stop to catch some sleep. Harris checked out Keisha, who, despite saying she was fine, kept coughing. After he was finished, she had stopped coughing.
