Blackout (16 page)

THIRTY-TWO

AUBREY WAS IN THE ROOM
for three days, and it slowly filled with people. On the first day she was handcuffed to a desk while she took a full day’s worth of handwritten exams. She wasn’t sure what the tests indicated, but on the second day a soldier unchained her and let her roam freely around the room.

She didn’t know anyone there, but they were all like her. They all took the same tests, they all were looked on with the same level of suspicion. Some tried to be studious and alert. There was a boy at the end of the row who acted like he was in the army—saluting and standing at attention and calling everyone “sir.” A girl told Aubrey that he could superheat his body, whatever that meant. She never saw him do it. On the other hand, there was a girl who lay in bed all day and cried. She never got up for announcements or for meals or for anything, and on the third day an army medic came in and gave her an IV. Aubrey didn’t know what that girl’s power was.

It was nearly evening; there were no windows in this room, but there was a big clock on the far wall. The door opened, but instead of dinner, it was an officer in a full dress uniform. He was young, maybe only a few years older than Aubrey, and he held a clipboard.

“May I have your attention,” he said, his voice shaking the tiniest bit.

Everyone in the room quieted down. Aubrey sat up on the edge of her bed.

“The following people are requested to attend a meeting with Colonel Jensen. If your name is on this list we ask that you please exit this room in an orderly manner. There is no need to bring anything with you.”

There were a few murmurs but he ignored them and began to read the names.

“Joel Read, Lambda 5M,” the man said, and the boy at the end of the row shouted out a “Sir, yes sir!”

“That’s not necessary,” the man said, and gestured toward the door. The boy pulled on his shoes quickly and hurried out.

“Michelle Wolf, Lambda 3L?”

A tall girl on the far side of the room stood timidly, hugged a friend, and then left.

“Gary Henson, Lambda 5D?”

“Where are we going?” asked a boy who didn’t stand.

“You’re Gary?”

“Where are you taking us?”

The man looked back down at his clipboard. “You’ll see. Next on the list, Aubrey Parsons, Lambda 4T.”

Aubrey’s chest tightened, but she tried to ignore it. “Here.” She hurried to the door.

There were a lot more teens in the hall than the ones who had just left her room—at least thirty—and they were all heading to the right down a long white corridor.

She was overwhelmed with a strong, terrified desire to disappear. She was in a crowd, surrounded by other kids. She could get away so easily.

Until she ran into another camera. She couldn’t go anywhere.

She was breathing rapidly now, wondering what new fate awaited her, and terrified it would be more of the same: more drugs, more danger, more deception.

A hand grabbed her arm, and she spun.

Jack. He looked like he’d lost weight, and the skin around his eyes was dark and sallow. She grabbed him in a bear hug.

“You’re okay,” she said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to get you,” she said, pulling away from him enough to look into his eyes. “They caught me.”

A voice from the back of the line shouted to keep moving, and Jack let go of her. He took her hand in his, though.

They both tried to speak, talking over each other. Finally, he told her to go ahead.

“They said you really are a Positive—a Lambda, I guess.”

“Yep,” he said. “I had no idea. It’s nothing flashy—not like you—but I have, like, supersenses, or something. I can hear everything, and see for miles, like I’m looking through a telescope. Other stuff, too. It’s nuts. How did you get caught?”

Ahead of them, the crowd was leaving the hallway and entering a room through thick steel double doors.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, squeezing his hand.

They took seats in the second row, on metal folding chairs that faced a podium and a large TV. Four military personnel stood near the front, and three more who looked like civilians. Or, more likely, FBI or CIA. Or doctors. They were all very serious.

Nicole came in, surrounded by half a dozen boys. Aubrey’s stomach immediately turned. She couldn’t believe that they’d been so close, and Nicole had never told her. She’d made Aubrey think she was alone, the only freak.

But Nicole could never be a freak. She could be different. She could be infected—a Lambda—but she’d never be a freak. She’d never have people look at her like she wasn’t good enough.

Nicole broke through the ring of boys that surrounded her and hurried over to Aubrey.

“Aubs!” she said, excited. “You’re here! And with Jack, too.”

“Hey, Nicole,” Aubrey said. “Looks like you have friends wherever you go.”

THIRTY-THREE

THE OFFICER AT THE FRONT
cleared his throat loudly and Laura sat up a little straighter in her chair.

“Please settle down,” the man said as he waited for the stragglers to find their seats. He didn’t look like the type of person who was used to having to ask twice.

“My name is Colonel Jensen. You undoubtedly have questions. In time, they will all be answered. For now, I just want you to know that you’ve made a very short list. Here in this temporary facility, we’re housing more than twenty-six thousand persons between the ages of thirteen and twenty. This is just one of many facilities around Utah, and there are facilities like this all across the nation now. And this virus, which you’re all very familiar with, is not limited to just the United States. Countries all across the world are dealing with similar testing regimens. This operation is trying the world’s manpower more than any crisis in recent human history.

“This is to say nothing of the war that we’re waging here on our own soil against a threat the likes of which the world has never known.”

It was all Laura could do not to smile, and she began biting the fingernail on her pinkie to keep her mouth occupied.
The likes of which the world has never known.
She’d been part of it. She’d been in the middle. It was her, and they were all completely oblivious.

If only Alec could see me now.

The officer stepped back from the podium and fiddled for a moment with the TV remote.

“You’ve been shielded from the news for the past several days. I don’t have time to list all of the battles we’ve been engaged in, but let me illustrate briefly what we’re dealing with.”

He clicked a button and an image of a bridge, twisted and collapsed, appeared on the screen.

“The Hernando de Soto Bridge,” he said. “Where Interstate 40 crosses the Mississippi. The steel beams were melted right off their piers on Tuesday. I’m told that takes 2,600 degrees.”

Laura marveled at the thought. None of the teams ever met each other, but she wished she’d been able to see that one in action. Did they create fire? Some kind of energy beam?

He clicked the button again and a picture of a flooding stairwell appeared. “A coordinated attack took place on the pump stations in the New York City subway system. The cause of the damage here is less well understood, but the pumps themselves seem to have deformed in some way.”

She bit down harder on her finger.
Deformed.
Deformed was good.

He clicked another. An enormous industrial pier was burning, next to a partially sinking ship. “We don’t know what the hell happened here, but it was four days ago, and the fires are still burning.”

He turned off the TV and stepped back to the podium. “There are dozens of other photos to show you, but I think you get the idea. This country is under attack. It’s coordinated and planned. This week it was the destruction of key transportation hubs. Last week, it was power facilities. Before that it was the commercial sector—shopping malls and restaurants and theme parks.”

Someone in the back row raised his hand, and the colonel pointed to him.

“Why would their attacks be coordinated, but so different from week to week?”

Laura stopped chewing on her finger and clenched her jaw.

The colonel nodded for several seconds, as if mulling over the question. “This is just conjecture,” he said, “but I think part of it is because it spreads our forces. They attack dams, so we guard dams; then they attack ports, so we defend ports. We’re spreading ourselves thin. Second—this is terrorism. Their goal is to hit targets that create terror and cripple the country.”

Laura wondered if that really was all they knew, or if it was all he wanted to tell a group of kids. Surely they had to know how the teams operated, how they got their orders. Had things gone to chaos when Alec was killed in the avalanche?

A tall girl raised her hand. “What does this have to do with us?”

Someone else—a woman in a civilian business suit—stepped forward. “The terrorists who are carrying out these attacks are people your age—usually in their late teens, and—”

A guy stood. “Are you accusing us?”

“No,” the woman said emphatically, motioning him to sit. “We’re not accusing you. I’m with the FBI, and have been working closely with the Centers for Disease Control. Here’s their latest information: The terrorists are usually ages seventeen to twenty-one. And they all—everyone we can identify—have the Erebus virus. This virus, unfortunately for you, can attack anyone but will only infect a host during certain stages of brain development. I could spend the day in this room with you, and touch you and share your dishes, and I’ll never become infected—the brain is fully developed during the late teen years and early adulthood, so the virus won’t affect me. But at some point in your recent past, the virus infected all of you, and altered the growth of your brains.”

She held up her hands, as though to stop an inevitable question.

“You might hate me for saying this, but you’re the lucky ones. Everyone in this room has symptoms that can be beneficial and lack symptoms that are too detrimental to function. There are people out there who are so debilitated by this virus that they are only surviving in a hospital.”

Jack—the boy who had sat in the cell across from Laura’s—raised his hand. “I don’t get it. You’re saying we’re not to blame, we’re the healthiest ones—so why do you have us here?”

Another man stepped forward. Judging by the sheer number of pins on his chest, he looked to be the highest-ranking person in the room. He strode to the podium and took it with both hands.

“Because it’s time to fight fire with fire. What’s your name, son?”

“Jack Cooper.”

“Oh, yes. Jack, you’ve been designated as having hypersensitivity. I’m told that you can see in the dark, can hear through soundproof glass, can read a book from a hundred feet away, and can hear a heartbeat from fifty yards, through a brick wall. Is that correct?”

“More or less,” Jack said.

Laura was impressed. That was something that would have been useful on their team.

“Well, imagine the other team has someone like you. Don’t you think we’d want to even the odds?”

Jack sat down and the girl next to him leaned into him a little bit.

Laura felt an unexpected pang of loneliness. She’d had friends. Well, Dan had been a friend. Alec had been an arrogant boss. Still, it’d be nice to have someone to talk to.

“Here’s the deal,” the man said. “You all have a bracelet attached to your legs. That’s because, despite our best efforts, we can’t confirm one hundred percent that you’re not terrorists—or that you won’t become terrorists. You are living weapons and our intel suggests the real terrorists are all American citizens—kids, just like you. On the other hand, you can be extremely helpful to our cause.

“So, if you want in, we’ll take you. We train you the best we can, but our priority will be getting you out on the battlefield as quickly as possible. This is not because we don’t care what happens to you. It’s because every day that goes by we are losing this war. We need to get things back under control.

“We can’t guarantee your safety, nor can we guarantee you’ll even make it out of training and into combat. If you sign up, you’ll be treated as a soldier—a special soldier, but a soldier nonetheless. You may or may not have weapons, depending on how much time we have to train you and what role you’re assigned. You’ll be a part of a team, and not just any team. You’ll be a part of the army special forces—the Green Berets.

“Anyone who chooses to be part of this, stand up now. This isn’t a draft. If you don’t want in, you’ll be returned to the rooms you just came from and you’ll be under guard until this war is over and we can figure out how best to treat this virus.”

There was a long pause, and Laura realized that he was waiting.

A boy near the front stood up, and then the guy next to him. In a moment, five more followed.

She joined them, and even let her smile show through a tiny bit. It was exactly what she’d wanted. She was on the inside.

A few more got to their feet. Others talked.

After a moment, Jack stood, and then the girl beside him did as well.

THIRTY-FOUR

JACK KNELT ON A DARK
hillside, watching the broad field in front of him. He was getting better every day, and his eyes almost felt like machines now—like he could tweak the settings, zoom, focus, adjust for lighting, filter through smoke. He was no longer Jack the high school janitor; he was Jack the human telescope, the human microphone, the human sensor.

They were all stupid powers, really. They’d make a terrible comic book. But it was so incredible, so different. So not him.

Beside him on the hillside was a spotter with a headset and a scope, and behind him was an officer. Somewhere in the field a sniper was approaching. The sniper was a Green Beret, among the highest-trained soldiers in the United States Army, yet Jack knew exactly where he was, had been tracking him for the better part of three hours.

It had taken a while to find him. There was a light breeze that made all the brush sway in the desert wind, and Jack had to struggle to pick the camouflaged man out of the background. Still, he’d done it without binoculars and without night-vision goggles.

Jack was supposed to report the sniper as soon as he saw him, but he was holding out now, just for fun. It was nearing the end of his training.

“Anything?” the spotter beside him finally said. “Time’s almost up.”

“Are we done?” Jack asked.

“Only if you’ve found him,” the spotter said. “Wait. Are your eyes closed?”

Jack smiled, and cracked open one eye to see the spotter. “Yep. But not to show off.”

Jack opened both eyes and clambered to his feet. He was sore from crouching. He was sore from a week of training that he had been completely unprepared for.

“
This
is to show off, though. Sorry.” Jack pointed across the desert. “He started somewhere near that small hill. He scooted, facedown, for a good two hundred yards in a south, southeast direction. When he reached that taller brush, he crawled on his hands and knees. He paused for several minutes—I almost thought I’d lost him; you guys are good at controlling your breathing—and then took a lateral course over to that dry creek bed. He ate something there, or maybe just started chewing gum. He also drank, probably a fourth of his canteen. Then he headed up the creek bed on his stomach for a long time, at least an hour. Then he came out, and he’s trying to get into position now to take the shot.”

The spotter looked stunned. “You did that with your eyes closed?”

“There was too much movement out there in the wind. Every bush and little tree looked like a strobe light each time a gust of wind shook their leaves. So, I closed my eyes and listened and smelled. Our sniper has a pretty strong deodorant, and I think he’s got moleskin on some blisters—some kind of foot ointment.”

The officer, who had been quiet up to this point, stepped forward. “You’re not supposed to be playing games. You were supposed to identify him as soon as you saw—smelled—him.”

“I told you when I first found him. Besides, I’m not going to get any better if you keep giving me easy tasks like ‘find the guy in the bushes.’”

“Well, Lambda, your training is almost over. You’ve been an exemplary recruit but I’m concerned about your abilities to follow orders.”

“It was just a—”

“You’re impressive, Lambda,” the officer said, “but there’s a hell of a lot more to soldiering than finding enemy snipers. I’d advise you to get your head together. Start calling your commanders ‘sir’ and learn a little bit of decorum. Otherwise, you’re going to get yourself or someone else killed. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said.

“Good. We have one final test for you. No showing off this time. It’s important.”