The Empowered, page 98
An Ella projection popped into existence beside me. “Don’t be an idiot, Mat, we need to get out of here. Now!”
A chorus of air horns blared from the main compound. “That’s our cue!” I yelled at the crowd. But only a few people turned and began running toward the trucks.
I began gesturing, reaching out with my special sense. I could wall off the other directions.
My arm got yanked, hard, and I lost my concentration. “What the hell?” I shouted.
The Ella projection pulled on my arm again. “Don’t waste your power. That’s an order from mom.” From Mom. Ella called her mom now.
I stood there for a second longer. The ones that ignored me were running off to the west and south.
“Five minutes away,” Live Wire’s voice said from my comm. “VTOL assault craft, with fighter escort.” Crap.
8
I ran hard for the tractor trailers. They were moving out. I ended up catching the last one.
My comm came to life. It was Alex. “Mat, you in a truck?” Worry filled his voice.
“Yeah, caught the last ride out of here.”
Lightning flashed off to the west. We still had the storm summoners. They should be able to slow down the incoming enemy. I hoped.
The truck shuddered, went up a gear and began speeding up.
The driver was a Hispanic man I didn’t recognize. “Thanks for giving me a lift,” I said.
He kept his eyes on the truck in front of us as he drove. “Can’t leave one behind who wants to go,” he said.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Rafael.” He looked about thirty. His long black hair fell to his shoulders. He wore a blue jumpsuit like the rest of us. “What’s your power?” I asked him.
“Driving trucks.”
I did a double-take.
A smile quirked at one corner of his mouth. “Okay, so I can summon water.” He shrugged. “Not the most useful skill. Unless you want a puddle or a cold shower on demand.”
“You’d be surprised. My power is control over plants.”
“For starters,” he said. “I know about you, Senorita Brandt.” His English was excellent, way better than my lousy Spanish. I’d had a year in high school, then I ended up being sent to Special Corrections. “You have a genuine power, capable of changing the world.”
Not so much lately, but I didn’t tell him that. “I didn’t start out with a world-beating power. I could hear plants. Make them grow a little. How long have you had your power?”
The trucks rattled across a railroad crossing.
“Nine or ten months now. My wife got hers a year earlier. She was one of the first ones.” His face grew sad. “They killed her for it, the militias.”
A gigantic flash lit up the sky behind us. I glimpsed it in the side mirror. The sky to the west had turned into a wall of lightning.
“Approaching enemy down,” Live Wire said.
Rafael wiped his forehead. I did likewise.
“That’s a relief,” I said. “About the enemy,” I added. “I’m so sorry about your wife.”
“I got lucky when my turn came. There was a band of Empowered who found me and we hid near the Pecos. I had family there once, but they left when the troubles started. When fire rained down from the sky. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses and thought the world was ending.”
He kept his eyes on the road ahead of us, but they misted up at the memory. “The thing was, they were right, in a way. The world had ended. But a new one had been born. That was the part they missed.”
He had that right. “So, what happened next?” I asked.
He shrugged. “We hid in the mountains, hunted, learned about our powers, and then the messenger came. He told us that Liberation was being born, and we would be part of it. We could save our brethren. Your mother spoke to us.”
“What? How?”
“One of us was, I guess you’d call it a transmitter, and relayed her message. They gave us a route to the far side of the mountains, and to a closed air force base, long empty, where others met us and began training us in secret.”
I leaned toward him. “When was this?”
He thought for a moment, while I burned to hear his answer. “It was about three months after I’d become Empowered. That’s right, I became Empowered in the spring, and it was late summer. So seven months ago.” Seven months ago, in the world’s time, we were stranded in the Dark-Net.
Seven months ago, she’d spoken.
“It really made a difference. She told us to meet with Zarathustra’s people. This was a year after the attack in Africa that wiped out the Hero Council.”
They’d already been in contact with each other. My jaw tensed. My mother, she’d been in touch with Zarathustra, probably for far longer than that. They must have organized this some time ago, because from what Rafael said, there’d already been a path to freedom.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I blinked. I’d been staring out the window, I guess, trying to figure this out. The convoy had picked up speed now, roaring down the highway into the hills, toward the node. We were heading west. The sky ahead of us was still black, and lightning flashed. For the moment, it protected us. At least, from that direction.
“I’m fine. I’m glad you got help, Rafael. It’s wrong that they hunted you.”
He brightened. “It’s okay, really. It worked out, so I guess it could have been worse.” He smiled. “What counts is that we’ll fix the world.”
“Fix? How do you mean?”
“Well, you know better than me, I don’t mean to sound like I know more than you, because I don’t.”
“We’re evacuating into the Dark-Net, but that’s not what you mean.”
He gave me a questioning glance. “You mean you don’t know? I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have said. But Madre Brandt is your mother, so I assumed you know. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything.”
“It’s okay, I just wanted to see what you know.”
He smiled. “Ah, I see, a kind of test. My cell leader briefed us. She’s from Colombia. Beautiful woman. If I weren’t heartbroken, I’d be chasing her. Anyhow, Alejandra said that Mother Earth was on our side, and that, while you,” he nodded at me, “had freed her, her Heart was still in chains. Madre Brandt and Wise Zarathustra would lead us to the sacred heart, where all will be made better. We wouldn’t have to worry about the normals anymore.”
Wouldn’t have to worry about the normals? I shivered. What did that mean? It was something my mother and Zarathustra had kept from me. Why seemed obvious. It was something Lenore said in Special Corrections, and that Ashula had said later, in the Scourge, when I’d reached the inner circle. “If someone doesn’t tell you something, it’s because they don’t think you need to know, or, because they don’t want you to know.”
My mother didn't want me to know about this plan. So, she treated me like a mushroom and kept me in the dark, just like all the others had.
Innocent Rafael had done me a second favor after giving me a lift, tipping me off to what was really going on without realizing it. Michelle and Zarathustra had things buttoned down tight if they kept me and the others in the dark.
Though, I was no longer so sure about Ella.
We neared the node. The trucks lined a mile-long stretch of two-lane highway. The rough, boulder-strewn hillside had been transformed into a giant set of stairs, a hundred feet wide, heading up to a freshly created notch at the top of the hill that led to the node. It looked like we could evacuate through the node with little trouble. That was when trouble found us.
The comm came to life. “There’s a rapid reaction force from Spokane,” Live Wire said, “ETA ten minutes. Forty vehicles, including Cougar attack vehicles, and close helicopter gunships escorting the convoy. We also have another flight of enemy aircraft coming from the south, also ETA of ten minutes.”
Ten minutes would not cut it. It would take much longer to get fifteen thousand people evacuated.
Alex and Keisha ran up to me, breathless. “Glad… glad… you made it… Mat,” Keisha gasped.
Alex recovered faster, gave me a hug. “Live Wire told us you’d been picked up, but it looked like the convoy rear had been attacked.”
“They tried,” I said.
“Not sure why they don’t just lob a nuke at us,” Keisha said, scanning the horizon.
Now, there was a nasty thought.
“We took care of that possibility,” Alex said. “We took over their defense satellite network.”
Rafael watched us worriedly.
“Join the line,” I told Rafael, nodding toward the stairs. “And thanks again.”
He bobbed his head and then jogged over to the crowd climbing the stairs.
“We can’t let the reaction force reach them,” I said to Keisha and Alex. “I need your help. Keisha, I need you to give the forest I’m creating an iron coating, or a stronger metal, if you can.” I laid my hand on Alex’s arm. “Sorry to ask you, again, but I will need as much power as you can pour into me.”
“Not a problem for me, but I don’t want to hurt you.”
I made myself smile, trying to relax. My heart thudded away in my chest. I rolled my neck, trying to loosen my tight muscles. Alex’s fingers pressed gently into my shoulder and neck muscles. My muscles loosened. Plus, it felt damn good.
“Rent a room, you two,” Keisha said, but she was grinning.
“Sorry,” I said, my face reddening.
She slapped me on the arm and winked at Alex. “Don’t be. I wouldn’t.”
I hugged her close.
“Hey,” she said, “what’s with the sudden feels?” But, after a second, she hugged me back.
I pulled away. The crowd was still filing up the stairs. Thank God we had stone and earth sculptors.
There wasn’t much time. I needed a vantage point. There was another hill on the opposite side of the highway from the stairs. We climbed that, weaving around sage brush. A while ago the three of us had clambered around here among the boulders. Another mission, but the same desperate "all-is-lost" moment. Damn.
I wanted to end this constant, dangerous life and start a fresh one. But first, like always, we needed to escape. And that meant stopping the bad guys.
There was a lone, stunted tree at the top of the little hill. We could see down the highway, in the direction the reaction force was racing from.
“How long?” I asked Live Wire.
“Six minutes.”
Alex squeezed my arm. “We’re almost away.”
I hadn’t told Alex that Zarathustra had forbidden me from entering the node. I’d kept from thinking about it until now, but right then, with him and Keisha beside me, I wanted to be selfish and join them.
I had the right to try. I closed my eyes, extended my sense into the rocky ground and moved it toward a riverbed that had a trickle of water running through it. I took a deep breath, pushed my awareness down into the ground, down, down, down, like always when I literally dug my power deep, down into the depths of the Earth, seeking the ancient roots and seeds there. I found them in a layer of ancient mud. A huge flood had happened here a very long time ago.
I found what I sought—desiccated husks of pine cones and dead roots. My muscles pulsed with power, but it wasn’t enough.
“I need more, please,” I asked Alex. He closed his eyes, concentrating. Energy surged through me.
“Live!” I commanded the seeds. An instant later they exploded into life, sending shoots skyward. My mind expanded again, and I felt like I had back in the Olympic Rainforest, as though I spanned the Earth. My heart pounded faster and faster. I took in huge gulps of air.
My bones and teeth rattled as more energy flowed through me. I’d been through this before, but this time, we were literally backed into a corner, and if I didn’t stop the enemy, thousands of people would die, because there was no way in my mind that this “reaction force” intended to capture us.
The problem was, we were in an arid land. I sent roots in quest of water, but it was hard. Worse than hard.
Impossible. Nothing. I felt as dry as a bone, but the ground was like the moon. Arid beyond belief.
The roots writhed through the soil.
“I need water,” I muttered, eyes still closed. But there wasn’t any.
“We can get water,” I thought I heard someone say, but it was like I’d fallen into a dep well, a dry well, and the voice echoed down the stone walls. I strained to hear it.
“You can? How?”
Murmuring. I couldn’t understand it.
I pushed hard, but it was like trying to turn granite to life. How do I get you to live?
Two minutes, a voice said. Two minutes. Damn, we would die.
I stretched, trying to hear the plants—if I could hear the plants. Ancient, dead trees. Why had I been so confident I could easily revive them? The last time, there had been a water source; at least, I thought there’d been a water source. It became hard to remember. It all blurred together. Water. No water. There is water now, a voice said, or did I just imagine it?
Was that a low song in my head, a quiet tune of plants, or had I just imagined it?
My body felt ice cold. The song rose and grew in volume until a chorus of trees sang their happiness.
Now they lived once more. I imagined a huge cathedral of trees, like the Olympic rainforest. Water flooded me. Cool wetness caressed me.
I floated in a sudden desert lake, eyes still closed. Creaks and groans exploded around me. The ancient forest unfolded before my mind.
Gasping for air, I forced my eyes open, grabbing on to Alex like I was drowning.
Brown and green trees towered above the high desert, like something out of dinosaur times. The trees were a mixture of giant junipers, pine, and something that looked like it came from an illustration in my childhood’s favorite dinosaur book.
Gigantic cracks appeared in the highway, and a huge geyser of water shot up. More trees followed an instant later, unfurling like flags.
Keisha began gesturing. Steam rose in huge, wet clouds, and when it cleared a moment later, the trees wore metal armor.
Gunfire erupted, explosions stitching across the far side of the forest. I saw flashes between the tree limbs, but also, I felt it, deep down inside.
The trees sang a deep, funeral-sounding song. Bullets ricocheted off the dura-steel armor that covered the tree trunks. The world groaned around me and shifted. Pebbles rattled past me.
“Earthquake!” someone screamed.
“Earthquakes are bad,” I replied, head muzzy and confused.
Firm hands held me. Alex. It must have been.
Distant screams. Not the people I’d been trying to rescue, that I’d been fighting for - please, God, not them.
I forced myself to turn around. The hill still rose behind us. The stone steps, though cracked, still led to the notch. People lay on the ground.
A voice called down to them. I couldn’t see where it came from, but the huddled empowered rose in ranks and went up the steps and through the notch.
“They’re free,” I muttered.
“Time for us to go, Mat,” Keisha said.
Time to go. Yes. Zarathustra had told me I couldn’t go, but fuck him. I was going.
We stumbled down the hillside, reaching the road and then up the cracked stairs. The roar of jets echoed across the hills. An instant later, a pair of VTOL jets, escorted by fighters, hurled into view. A volley of spinning steel went up to greet them.
The planes tumbled in fire. Moments later, roiling clouds of red flame and black smoke rose from beyond a hill.
Alex led me through the notch and then we were on the far side. The node inside a cave, a stunted tree growing above the entrance.
“That’s the node,” I croaked. The node. We could escape.
Alex helped me inside.
The cave was small. A gigantic set of roots covered the far wall. That must be the node.
So, Zarathustra told me I couldn’t enter it. I would roll the dice and see what happened. No more of this fooling around.
I pressed against the node.
Nothing. I pressed harder. Still nothing.
“What’s the matter, Mat?” Keisha asked.
“I can’t get through. I’m sorry. They must be blocking me.”
“What do you mean,” demanded Keisha, “blocking you? How does that even work?”
“Who is blocking you?” Alex asked.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s Zarathustra. He had ordered me not to go into the node.”
“That’s fucked,” spat Keisha. “Why would he order you to do that?”
“He said that I caused the time delay inside the Dark-Net, and, if I went in again, it would delay things even more.”
“But how can he be so sure?” Alex asked.
“He claims that’s the cause.” I pressed on the node. Still nothing. “You two go, I’ll stay behind.”
They both shook their heads now.
I couldn’t let them not escape, but I didn’t want them to leave.
I laid my hand on the surface of the node. Normally, all I’d have to do was just gently press the surface, and I’d be through.
Nothing this time. I tried again. Again, nothing. Sprig was never there when I wanted her. I laid my head against the surface, pressing my forehead against the ancient whorls of the rock in the cave.
Sprig, why won’t you speak to me? Why won’t you come? Silence. Come on, I begged, enough of this silence. I need your help, now.
“Mathilda Brandt!” An amplified voice boomed from outside. “Please exit the cave with your associates.” I jerked back from the node. Alex, Keisha and I stared at each other, our eyes wide.
“Crap,” Keisha said. “That was fast.”
“I’m thinking it isn’t an enemy,” Alex said, eyes narrowing. “They would have just attacked.”
I let out my breath. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Mathilda Brandt, please exit the cave with your associates,” the voice repeated.
“They also wouldn’t say please,” Alex pointed out.
