ANOM: Awakening (The ANOM Series Book 1) (20 page)

Jeremy
looked over. “What? What was it?”

Langer
turned the screen so Jeremy could see for himself. “That last punch came in at
a plus eight, G. It basically means you turned your fist into a block of steel,
which is awesome!”

The
scientist turned the screen back and typed at the keyboard. “Let’s do it again.
Time to go to work, G. I want you to hit the bag again, and try to keep your
gravity at plus eight.”

Jeremy
snapped another right cross into the bag.

“Just
missed that time with a plus ten. Go again. Try to keep your gravity at plus
eight,” Langer said.

Jeremy
punched again.

Langer
clapped his hands. “There it is! Plus eight, right on the money. Do that again,
G. Keep it right there.”

Jeremy
threw another right cross into the bag.

“Miss.
That one was plus nine. Try it again.”

Jeremy
punched again.

Jeremy’s
shirt was soaked through with sweat, and his hair was dripping. He sat in a
chair at the side of the room, his head hanging down almost to his chest, and
he wiped a small towel back and forth across his neck.

He
had been training for the better part of two hours, throwing punch after punch
into the bag at the center of the room. Langer would read off the gravity
number from his computer, and then Jeremy would punch again. And again. And
again.

He
looked down at his right hand. From the knuckles back to his wrist, his hand
was wrapped in white gauze and tape. Fifteen minutes into training he had
opened a small cut on the top of his middle finger, and now he could see where
the outside of the gauze was stained pink. He would need to wrap it again after
the break.

For
a while he was counting every punch. Then, when he cut his hand, he lost track.
After that he only cared about the plus eights. His record was sixteen in a
row. On the seventeenth punch he just missed with a plus seven. Still, it was a
miss. His highest score was a plus thirteen. That one felt
really
good.

Jeremy
sat up in his chair, leaning the back of his head against the wall.

“Hey,
how you feeling, champ?” Langer looked over from his computer.

Jeremy
forced a smile. “I feel like a plus eight.”

“Yeah?
You’re looking like a plus eight. It’s almost like you’re a different person up
there. Not bad for your second day. How are you doing physically? Any nausea
yet? Dizziness?”

“No,
none of that.” Jeremy looked over at Langer. “Why not?”

Every
other time he had used his powers, Jeremy felt like he was close to blacking
out, or worse, he would actually lose consciousness. But today he was fine. He
probably wouldn’t have even thought about it if Langer hadn’t brought it up.

“Yeah!
You see that? We’re already getting you all figured out,” Langer said. “We
looked at the data from the other night, when you punched your way through the
door. Turns out there’s a simple reason for a simple problem. You keep blacking
out because you aren’t getting any air.”

Jeremy’s
face twisted.

Langer
said, “Your lungs are like a balloon, right? You breathe in and the balloon
expands. You breathe out and it shrinks again.”

Jeremy
nodded. That much he understood.

 “But
when you increase your gravitational field, your lungs
can’t
expand.
There’s too much pressure on the outside. It’s like… It’s like you stuck the
balloon in a bottle. There’s nowhere for it to go. It can’t expand, so it can’t
fill up. That’s why if you gravity up for too long, you suffer from oxygen
deprivation. Then you’re done—you blackout—but not today. Why not? Because
today I have you working in waves. First we jack your gravity up and you hit
the bag. Then we drop your gravity back down and you take a breath. See how
that works?”

It
was a lot to follow, but Jeremy could understand the gist. “Waves are good.
Constant means I’m dead.”

Langer
turned back to his laptop. “That’s about right. So, what do you say? Ready to
try it again?”

Jeremy
stood up. “Yeah. I need to re-wrap my—”

Suddenly,
red flashing lights filled the room, and a loud siren sounded over the
speakers. Jeremy and Langer both froze in place, looking up at the lights.

Then
the siren stopped, and a quick voice came over the speaker. “Base security is
now set to level orange. I repeat, base security is now set to level orange.
All personnel should report to designated areas. I repeat, base security is now
set to level orange.”

Jeremy
yelled over the speakers, “What does that mean? Is this a drill?”

Langer
yelled back, “We don’t have drills.”

A
nauseous panic settled at the bottom of Jeremy’s gut. He looked back at Langer.
The scientist slammed shut his laptop, pulled the wires out of the back, and
picked it up to his chest, as if it were some kind of shield. Jeremy could tell
the man was just as panicked as he was, and that only made things worse.

Jeremy
yelled again, “Where’s my designated area?”

Langer
was already moving for the door. “I don’t know. Downstairs, maybe.”

The
door opened, and Langer stepped out. Jeremy followed. In the hallway, a dozen
men and women wearing white lab coats were quickly walking to their right,
streaming out of open doors. Langer fell into line with these others and
hurried off.

Jeremy
looked to his left. He could see the back of Gauntlet’s armored head bobbing
above the crowd, pushing ahead in the opposite direction. Jeremy stepped into
the hallway; he shouldered his way past another scientist to reach the far
wall, and then he hurried after Gauntlet. He reached the elevator just as
Gauntlet was stepping inside. Nyx and Talon were already waiting. Jeremy
stepped in, and Nyx pressed the button. The doors closed, and the elevator
started to drop.

Jeremy
tried to slow his breathing—to stop himself from shaking—but it was no use.
There was too much adrenaline already in his system. He would have to wait it
out. At least it was quiet in the elevator. No flashing lights or sirens or
voices. Just the dull whoosh of descent.

Jeremy
looked at the others. Were they all feeling the same thing—that heady cocktail
of excitement, confusion, and the stale taste of vomit sitting at the back of
their throats? If they were, none of them showed it.

The
elevator stopped and the doors opened. They stepped out into the Rec Room. Just
like in the elevator, it was quiet down here—calm.

Jeremy
spoke first. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Do
whatever you want,” Nyx answered, walking in the direction of her room.

Jeremy
looked over to his left. Gauntlet had stepped away too, and he was halfway back
to his own door. That left Talon and Jeremy standing in front of the elevator.

Talon
shrugged. “I don’t know either. We’ve never gone to level orange before. Guess
we have to wait and see.”

Talon
turned his head to look at the television at the far end of the room. “We can
turn on the TV. Can’t get anything live, but they probably loaded the games
from last night.”

Jeremy
shook his head. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. You go ahead.”

Then,
like the others, he walked into his room. The door closed behind him, and for
the first time since the siren, Jeremy felt like he could breathe. It was good
to be in his own space, alone with his thoughts. If security level orange was
the real signal for a real emergency, Jeremy didn’t want to waste his time
watching a rerun of a basketball game.

He
looked over the room and saw his Penn State sweatshirt draped over the back of
his chair. It was odd to see something so familiar when so much else had
changed. Then, for the first time in the last two days, Jeremy thought about
home and his mom.

It
wasn’t right how he left her—he knew that. He should have said more. Hell,
maybe he should have just stayed in the first place. But now…

Jeremy
pulled out the chair, sat down in front of the computer, and opened a new
document on the screen. He started typing:
Dear Mom

Nothing
else. How do you write that letter? How can you try and say everything that
you’ll ever have to say again—just in case?

Jeremy’s
thoughts drifted to his dad. Did he know, driving to the hospital, what could
happen? What would he have said in a letter? What piece of himself could he
leave behind?

Jeremy
looked up at the screen—at the flashing cursor. There was nothing to say—at
least nothing worth putting in a letter. He closed the document and stood up.
In the end, people would know what he wanted to say whether the words were
spoken or not. He had to trust that. He had to believe they would know.

“Anoms!
Report for your briefing,” Major Ellison’s voice thundered from the other room,
muted by the heavy door, but still unmistakably clear.

Jeremy
closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The waiting was over. It didn’t matter
what came next. Whatever it was, it was here. Jeremy thought about his dad, and
his dreams in the hospital, and his dad’s warning: You need to leave. Today.

It
was too late for that now.

Jeremy
opened his eyes and stepped out into the Rec Room.

Most
of the chairs around the conference table were already taken when Jeremy
stepped into the room, and at first he was surprised. He assumed, for whatever
reason, that this briefing would be like all the others with Ellison and Lara
presenting a rundown of things to come. Now, seeing the crowd gathered at the
table and even more people still standing just behind it, Jeremy realized how
foolish that first idea was.

Colonel
McCann sat on the opposite side of the table, his mouth held in a thin line and
his eyes focused straight ahead. Major Ellison sat just to McCann’s right, and
a man that Jeremy had never seen before sat on the other side of the colonel.
This new man was thin and pale with his stringy blonde hair pulled back in a
ponytail. He sat at the table and yawned, and Jeremy thought he would look
exactly the same if they were pulling up chairs for a Sunday dinner.

On
this man’s other side sat Lara. Like the colonel, she sat perfectly still, but
where McCann’s demeanor projected an air of confidence, the crease in Lara’s
brow showed otherwise. Jeremy could see she was worried.

Behind
the colonel, a dozen scientists stood in a rough line, all of them wearing
their white lab coats, and all of them waiting for what would come next. Dr.
Langer was standing among them. Jeremy saw him right away, and he thought the
doctor looked just as panicked now as when they had split up in the hallway.

Jeremy
walked toward the table, and he could feel everyone watching him. Then he
realized—they were all waiting for him. Talon was already seated on the near
side directly across from Lara, and Gauntlet stood in his familiar corner,
watching them all. Nyx was just sitting down across from the colonel, and that
left one open space for Jeremy—an empty seat across from Ellison. Where else?
Jeremy pulled out the chair and sat down. It was a signal for the colonel to
begin.

McCann
rose to his feet. “At approximately 0800 hours this morning, I ordered Fort
Blaney to initiate Security Level Orange protocols. This action was taken in
direct response to a present and ongoing threat against American lives and
interests. Shortly thereafter I was contacted by NORTHCOM. We have now been
ordered to intervene, using all necessary and appropriate force to end this
threat against our country. Special Agent Hayden, our liaison with the CIA,
will tell you more."

At
this, Colonel McCann sat down and the man with the stringy ponytail climbed to
his feet. "Right. It seems a group of fifty armed men entered the Sears
Tower in Chicago. Ten minutes later, we got this."

Agent
Hayden nodded his head toward the television screen on the far wall. Jeremy
turned in his chair to get a better look. At first, the screen was still black,
but in the next second it flashed to life.

It
showed a picture of a man with short white hair and olive skin creased with a
thousand tiny wrinkles. The man's eyes were pale, and his beard of fine white
whiskers was cropped close to his skin. He wore a navy blue suit and a white
dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He wore no tie. The face was familiar.

“That
man on the screen is named Jericho Caine," Hayden said.

Jeremy
already knew the name. He felt his stomach go tight.

Hayden
continued. "Caine is the leader of the Red Moon terrorist group, so when
he sticks up his head and makes a public address like this, we tend to
listen."

The
video on the television started to play; Caine was speaking in a low voice,
"Brothers and sisters of the world, today, in the American city of
Chicago, a new revolution is underway. Like all such times throughout history,
this action is both regrettable and necessary. It is regrettable for what must
be sacrificed. It is necessary because we can no longer continue under this
Western oppression.”

Caine
rubbed his hand back and forth across his whiskered jaw as he spoke. "We
are only asking for what every man is entitled: our freedom. It is the one
ideal treasured above all others in Western culture, and yet it is the basic
human right which we are denied. And so we ask again, in Chicago, for our
freedom. It is a simple request, and yet it is also impossible. Simple, because
we only seek the freedom to live our lives in peace. Impossible, because the
imperial powers of the Western world cannot fathom the lives we would choose
for ourselves. They judge us as barbarians. And so they come with their guns
and with their bombs to save us from our own ignorance—to save us from
ourselves."

Caine
rubbed his hand back and forth again across his whiskered chin. “For years we
have fought the West for our freedom. We have lost husbands and wives to this
bloodshed. Brothers and sisters. Grandchildren. And still we fight, always
without hope for victory, for what hope remains when mortal men war against the
gods of America? Like the heroes of ancient Greece, we needed a champion to
rise. We needed a Prometheus to stand with us against those gods. And then, we
were delivered.”

The
camera pulled back, and sitting next to Caine was another man, but he was
unlike anything Jeremy had ever seen before. This new man was huge. His
shoulders crested above the top of Caine’s head, and they seemed impossibly
broad. His face, just now coming into focus, looked almost shapeless. Jeremy
could see a ridge where the man’s nose should have been and two shallow
depressions in place of his eyes, but there was no mouth. Then, most striking
of all, the man’s skin looked like polished bronze. Jeremy could see the light
from the camera bouncing off the man’s chest, and the distorted image of Caine
bending obtuse around the man’s shoulder. It was like he was forged from metal.

The
video on the screen paused, and Hayden said, “That second man next to Caine is
the reason we got called. He’s a suspected Anom designated by the code name
Titan. I would pay extra attention to what comes next.”

The
video resumed, but the image cut to a different scene. It seemed to be
pre-recorded video now, granier than the original. At first it was a picture of
Titan, sitting in a chair in front of a brown, sandstone wall. In the
foreground, three men aimed their rifles at his bronze chest.

Caine
continued speaking in a voiceover, his words rising to a fevered pitch. “The
pleas of men may be ignored by the gods, forgotten in their cruelty, but you
won’t ignore us now!”

As
he spoke, the three men opened fire with their machine guns. Jeremy watched as
bright orange sparks danced across the Anom’s chest. Then Titan rose and
started advancing toward the men. The three soldiers dropped out their
magazines, reloaded, and fired again. Titan still came forward. He didn’t stagger
back against the storm of bullets. He looked like he could have been crossing a
street.

Caine’s
voice was louder now, “We will never stop. We will never rest. America will run
out of bullets, and still we’ll come—still we’ll fight.”

The
image on the screen changed again. It was a close-up of Titan as he stood
facing the sandstone wall. He pulled back his right fist and punched. His whole
hand disappeared inside the wall. He pulled his arm back, and Jeremy could see
a hole the size of a cantaloupe in the sandstone. Titan punched again. Another
hole. Again. Another hole. He may as well have been punching through paper. He
punched again, and now the camera zoomed into the crater, and Jeremy could see
the blue sky from the other side of the wall.

Caine
was screaming, “We will fight as men and women with hope! We will make America
bleed as we have bled! We will fight until the cost of your tyranny is more
than you can pay!”

The
picture on the screen changed again. Titan was standing far away in the desert
now, his arms outstretched on either side of his body. The camera panned to the
right to show a man dressed in all black, kneeling in the sand with an outdated
RPG launcher propped over his shoulder. The camera panned back to Titan. Then
there was a loud roar, and an explosion where Titan was standing. For a second,
a dark cloud of smoke and sand filled the screen, but as it fell away, Titan
still stood, his arms still outstretched. Then, slowly, he raised both his
fists above his head and pumped his arms up and down. Loud cheers could be
heard off-camera.

Then
the image changed again, back to the picture of Caine sitting beside his
champion. His voice became low and measured. “A list of 100 names is being
delivered as we speak to the Embassy of the United States in Amman. They are
the names of our brothers and sisters held captive by your empire. You have six
hours to release them—to grant them their freedom—or American lives will
suffer.”

The
image on the screen went black, and Hayden spoke again. “Fifty of their men
entered the Sears Tower, including their man Titan. Half of them locked down
the lobby, and shut down the elevators. The other half went up with Titan and
took hostages on the Skydeck. Somewhere in the middle, they dropped off a bunch
of explosives. When the clock strikes one, the tower comes down. Hickory,
dickory, dock.” Hayden looked over at McCann and raised his eyebrows. “That
sound about right to you, Colonel?”

McCann
stood again. “To be more specific, we know there are five thermobaric explosive
devices positioned on the sixty-eighth floor of the tower. They are triggered
by remote so the Red Moon can improvise on the fly if they need to detonate
early. When those bombs go off, the structural integrity of the tower will be
compromised, and the weight of the floors above should do the rest. The damage
and loss of human life would be nothing short of catastrophic, which is why
we’re going to stop it from happening. Major Ellison, take them through our
plan.”