Blackout (18 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT

“DAMMIT,” JACK YELLED INTO THE
mic. “She fell. She’s in water.”

“Is she okay?” Rowley answered.

“She says she is, but the water is gross—there’s oil in it, and mud. I think it’s from broken pipes, and runoff from the street. She’s covered. I can’t smell the perfume.”

“I’m moving the team up to get ready to follow her in,” the captain said. “Keep me posted.”

Aubrey wheezed. “Jack, I don’t know how much more of this I can do. I’m getting really weak. I almost lost it there—I almost reappeared.”

Jack relayed the information to the captain.

“And Jack,” Aubrey said, her voice straining to be flippant. “I was really liking these jeans. They’re ruined.”

There was another noise in the basement—another set of breaths that were slower and calmer than Aubrey’s. It didn’t sound like a demon. Or maybe it did.

It was down there, with Aubrey, the two of them all alone.

“This is Cooper,” Jack said into his radio. “There’s another person down there. I can hear it breathing.”

“How big?”

“No idea. The breaths are small—smaller than Aubrey’s. I mean, smaller than Parsons’s.”

“Any idea where it is?”

“No,” Jack said, annoyed. “And I still can’t find her. She’s down there somewhere, and I think I can hear dripping from her clothes, but the whole place seems to be dripping.”

Aubrey spoke again, quieter this time. “There’s a bed here—just some dirty blankets. No one is in it. And—it’s warm.” Aubrey’s voice faltered. “I don’t know how to get out of here. I’m all turned around, and I can’t see.”

“Captain,” Jack said. “You’ve got to go in. It has to know Aubrey is there.”

“Has it seen her?”

Jack was panicked now, ready to run into the school himself.

“I don’t know. All I can hear is that low breathing. Aubrey’s trapped. She can’t see.”

“We’ll be there in less than one.”

Jack wished that he could relay the information to Aubrey, but there was nothing he could do. All he could hope for was that she could stay hidden.

“I know you’re here.” That wasn’t Aubrey’s voice. It was a girl’s. Young, quiet. But there was darkness in the voice—a kind of wicked playfulness.

“Jack,” Aubrey whispered. “I can’t see anything.”

THIRTY-NINE

THE BASEMENT WAS PITCH-BLACK, AND
the few bits of light—the flashlight beams coming through from the hole above—were blurred and unfocused.

Aubrey was dripping wet, soaked head to toe in filthy water. She could taste mud on her lips, and she knew she didn’t smell anything like Flowerbomb anymore. Her only consolation was that she was still invisible.

She couldn’t even get back out—she could barely see the hole, and it was in the ceiling twelve feet above her. She was trapped until the Green Berets showed up.

“Jack,” she said. “Send them in. I can’t do any more.”

She’d failed. She was supposed to give them important intelligence information, but all she could do was confirm that someone was in the basement. She’d failed her test. She’d probably get sent back to quarantine to live in one of those awful dorms.

She sat on the floor, next to the pile of blankets that was someone’s bed. Loose bricks were everywhere, and Aubrey couldn’t even get comfortable to rest.

“Come out and play,” the voice sounded, an odd mix of little girl and menacing monster.

“Jack,” she said, her hands balled into tight fists, her eyes closed. “You’ve got to help me.”

“You’re not the first, you know,” the little girl’s voice said. “Other people have come here, and they’ve done a whole lot better than you. But you can’t have me. I sent the SWAT team running like scared puppies with tails between their legs.”

Aubrey picked up a brick.

“And you think I’m not ready?” the girl asked. Her voice became muffled. “I’m ready. Ready and waiting.”

“Jack,” Aubrey said, her voice only a hoarse whisper. “If I don’t get out of here . . . just . . . I’m sorry. I tried.”

There was a sudden crash, and the room exploded with light and sound. The water burst upward and all around, like throwing dynamite in a pond, and all Aubrey could tell was that she was wet. She couldn’t see; she couldn’t hear.

In a daze, she rubbed at her ears, mashed her palms into her eyes. Things were happening all around her, but she couldn’t make out what.

Screams.

There were screams—that was the first thing to break through the mud in her head. But they weren’t the screams of the little girl; they were men, adult men.

She hadn’t heard sounds like this before. These screams were visceral, like the cries of men whose lives were ending. Like men who were being tortured. Men who had found out their wives and children were dead.

No one was shooting. Not one person was shooting at the demon. What had happened?

She cracked an eye and the room was still a blur of brilliant white light burned into her eyes. Flashlight beams danced all around the room as the men reeled and tried to regain their composure before reeling again.

And in the middle of everything was a tiny girl, certainly no older than thirteen. She wore a gas mask on her face, and every time a soldier made an effort to stand, she would lean toward him, shouting things too muffled by the mask to understand.

Aubrey’s eyes darted all around the room, looking for some other source of fear—some demon behind the little girl that she was using to mock the terrified Green Berets.

But there was nothing. Just a girl, just a gas mask, and six horrified grown men.

Aubrey struggled to stand, watching the girl to make sure that she hadn’t spotted Aubrey. But no, she was still hidden.

Aubrey stepped forward, staring mystified at the scene in front of her.

And then she smacked the girl in the head with the brick.

FORTY

IT WAS LATE—OR, EARLY. THEY’D
been up most of the night, with only a couple of hours back at Dugway to sleep and recover. But the entire dorm had been awakened for a mandatory meeting in another building. Some people said it would be
the
meeting. Where they found out what would happen to them.

Jack stood outside in the cold October morning, looking up at the stars. Training was over, but it was all too clear that he had a long way to go. He could barely do the lowest levels of the fitness test, and he’d only been given the very basics of how a special forces team worked.

They hadn’t gone through weapons training either, but at least that was one skill he felt he already had. He’d hunted deer every season—and then lived off the venison for the rest of the year. He’d owned his first .22 at eight years old and had a deer rifle by age twelve.

Still, he wasn’t ready for war. He wasn’t ready to be helping the Green Berets, for crying out loud. He wasn’t even a private. He was a Lambda, outranked by every grunt in any of the armed services. And he was still surrounded by barbed-wire fences in all directions. He still had a bomb strapped to his foot.

“You’re going to be late,” a voice said. Jack turned to see Aubrey.

“I was waiting for you.”

She slipped her hand into his. She’d been doing that lately. So had he. He wasn’t sure what it meant, if it meant anything at all.

“I wonder what my parents think,” Jack said. “I wonder what they’ve been told.”

“The quarantine camps have started sending people home,” she said. “I heard that a few of the camps on the West Coast are totally cleared out.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jack asked.

Without hesitation, she nodded. “It feels right.”

Jack wished that he felt so confident, but there were too many things holding him back. He still had a family who loved him, a town that he missed.

And then there was Aubrey.

She could do amazing things. He’d followed her every motion in the school, tracked her every step, and he’d been amazed at how much she’d changed. She acted like a soldier now, after just one week.

But she’d almost been caught. And she’d had to fight. And Jack wanted nothing more than to protect her.

He pointed up at the sky. “I wish you could see this,” he said. “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

Not just stars. He could discern the shadows on the rims of moon craters, the vague clouds of nebulae, the circular disk of Andromeda, the moons of Jupiter. The night sky seemed to be lit up with Christmas lights, and it filled everything around him with light.

He wondered how bright it really was—whether he should be able to see each of Aubrey’s eyelashes, the splashes of color in her irises. He used to think her eyes were gray, but they weren’t; they were blue and green and yellow and brown. They were like little impressionist paintings, filled with a hundred colors that created the illusion of gray.

“Hey,” she said.

“What?”

Aubrey grinned. “You’re staring at me.”

He felt his face flush. “Sorry. I was just . . . My eyes are so much better now.”

She laughed, and then put her hands to her face. “My pores must be enormous.”

“No! No, that’s not it at all.” He didn’t know what to say without sounding stupid. He used to be so comfortable with Aubrey, but that was because she was just one of the guys. The one time he had tried to change things, she’d said no. That had been months ago.

He took both her hands in his. Aubrey’s were cold and rough, from too many obstacle courses and push-ups in the dirt. But he didn’t care. They could be coarse as dried leather and he wouldn’t care.

He opened his mouth to talk, but she spoke first.

“Promise me something,” she said.

“Anything.”

“They’re going to assign us together,” she said.

“What? How do you know?”

She smiled wryly. “Because I spy on people.”

“You need to be careful.”

“I’m okay,” she said, turning his wrist and looking at his watch. “Just promise me something. They were worried about one thing—that I’d be in danger and that you’d come charging in, being stupid.”

“I’m not going to let you get hurt.”

“The Green Berets have our backs,” she said. “You give them info, and they’ll take care of me.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a grin. “If some thirty-year-old meathead comes rushing in to shoot the bad guys, I’m not going to fall for him.”

She let the words hang in the air for a minute, and he didn’t know what to say.
Don’t worry—I’m not going to fall for someone else. Was that
really
what she meant? Did that mean she’d already fallen for him?

There was a blare from the PA system, and it stung his ears.

“All Lambda recruits report to conference room A. All Lambda recruits report to conference room A.”

“Well,” he said, with a quick exhaled laugh. “That’s bad timing.”

Aubrey grinned, staring at him with those complex eyes. He could look at them forever.

She put a hand behind his neck and pulled him down to her, and before he could realize what was happening, their lips touched.

It was his first kiss, and he didn’t know what to do, but his brain let go and emotions took over. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, concentrating on the texture of her smooth, wet lips, and the smell of her skin, sweet with the lingering smells of the day—soap and toothpaste and fabric softener.

“All Lambda recruits please report to conference room A. All Lambda recruits please report to conference room A.”

She pulled back and grinned. “Time for a meeting, soldier.”

FORTY-ONE

LAURA SAT IN THE THIRD
row of folding chairs—close enough to look engaged but not so close as to be particularly noticeable. She planned nearly everything she did now, trying to anticipate the officers’ interpretations of her actions. It was exhausting, but she needed to fit in. This was a golden opportunity.

On the other hand, sometimes she wondered why she tried so hard. Looking around the room, she saw nothing but a bunch of kids. They’d all been drilled about military decorum, but they weren’t soldiers yet, not by a long shot. This meeting was obviously important—there were half a dozen observers—so most everyone sat up straight and did their best to look like they belonged in the army, but Laura wondered how the commanding officers had any faith in this group.

The grizzled sergeant major stood at the front of the room and looked out over the class. “It looks like not everyone made it through training. We started with thirty-four, and we’re down to twenty-six. I’d guess that if we put you through more rigorous training, that number would be cut in half, or even more. But as we don’t have time for more rigorous training, we’ll have to do with what we’ve got.

“You’ve all proven yourselves to be competent, and an asset to the special forces. We’ve been closely watching every aspect of your training, and a team of experts—psychologists, tacticians, doctors, veterans—has been evaluating how best to handle you.”

He paused, watching the faces as though he expected a reaction, but Laura didn’t give him one. She merely stared straight ahead as she’d been taught to, listening carefully, taking mental notes, not wanting to miss a word.

“As we mentioned last week, we’re fighting fire with fire. Some of you will be formed into the exact same kinds of teams that work so well for our terrorist friends. All of you, when you leave here today, will be given a bracelet that indicates you’ve been tested and found healthy. You haven’t been in the outside world for a couple of weeks, but these bracelets are more important than any driver’s license or passport. These bracelets tell the world that you’re clean—that you’re just regular old teenagers.”

There was a hand in the back of the room, and the sergeant major cleared his throat before calling on the boy—Gary, a kid Laura had gotten to know. She knew most of the Lambdas by now. She wished she could recruit a few of them, but that was too much to ask for.

“Aren’t we contagious? Should we really be back in the general population?”

The man turned to the FBI woman, who looked the same as she had a week ago, only with dark circles under her eyes.

“You’ll be under strict adult supervision the entire time, and you will have no contact with other children—other teenagers—who you could infect.”

“What if it mutates again?” Michelle asked.

“We have no idea what the long-term consequences of the virus are,” the woman answered. “All I can say is that we are looking at it from every possible angle. You’ve been out of communication with the outside world but—”

The sergeant major looked tired of being interrupted. “But that’s all a secondary concern at the moment. Right now, we have a job to do. I’m going to make this very clear, so that no one has a false impression. First of all, I’ve witnessed the training of each of you, and I can very clearly state that no one here is Superman. You may be able to do something very impressive, but you’re not invincible. Also, the Green Berets are known as one of the finest fighting organizations on God’s green earth—I’d go so far as to say they’re
the
finest—but we’re going to take you into combat, and in combat people die. We will not take unnecessary risks with you, but we won’t coddle you, either. If you have any reservations about that, speak now. There’s no dishonor in withdrawal.”

An aide handed him a clipboard, and the sergeant major looked down at the sheet. “I’m going to call out your assignments and point you in the right direction. Wolf, Henson, and Read—come over here and meet with Captain Garrett.” The three of them stood timidly, and then hurried to the waiting Green Beret. They were a team.

“Sola, over here.” Josi stood and walked to a woman at the side of the room. By now Laura could read insignias better, and the woman was from army intelligence. It seemed like a perfect fit for an ability like Josi’s.

“Samuelson,” the sergeant major called.

Laura turned to look at the tall blonde and wished for the hundredth time that she had Nicole’s power. It would make Laura’s plans so much easier. She missed having Alec’s mind-control abilities to cover up her schemes.

“Lambda Samuelson,” he said, “you’re in a different situation, but one I think you’re ideally suited for. Please come up here and meet with Mr. Morgan from the State Department.”

That seemed to make sense. Nicole’s powers wouldn’t be of any use on the battlefield, but she could be perfect in a diplomatic role. Or as a spy.

“Cooper, Parsons, and Hansen.”

Laura sighed inwardly but stood up and smiled. Aubrey Parsons and Jack Cooper had an intriguing pair of skills and Laura had just heard a few whispers about their midnight mission together in Salt Lake, fighting a Lambda who could terrify people with her mind. They seemed like a good team. But they were a pair—a couple, it seemed like—and that would only make it harder for Laura to work with them. She’d always be the third wheel, and that wasn’t good if Laura ever needed to manipulate one of them.

“The three of you come over and meet with Captain Rowley.” Aubrey and Jack moved toward the captain and Laura followed behind.

He led them into a small room with a table and four chairs. After closing the door, he turned to look at them.

“Welcome to the ODA,” the captain said, with a grim smile. Laura knew the designation by now—Operational Detachment Alpha. It was a Greet Beret unit.

Rowley spoke. “I’ll tell you right up front that we’ve got a challenge ahead of us. We’ve got Jack Cooper, the human telescope—”

“Among other things,” Jack said.

The captain stopped, as if he was about to say something, but then continued. “Then we have Aubrey Parsons, the Invisible Girl. And finally we have Laura Hansen, Supergirl, the only one of the three of you who can pass the army physical fitness test—and get a perfect score doing it.”

He sat on the edge of the table and looked at Laura. She tried not to grin too much at his assessment of her.

“Hansen, it’s a pity that women can’t serve in the special forces, because I have no doubt that you could show our best men a thing or two. I’ve watched your training. Parsons, after your demonstration last night you strike me as an asset that could be very valuable to our organization, so long as we utilize you effectively. If we had six months to train you, you could be one of the top tactical soldiers this army has ever seen. But we don’t have six months to train you. In fact, we have no time at all, and we’re going to have to rely on your current skill set.”

He looked at Jack.

“As for why we have you, it’s because you and Parsons seem to be ideally suited to work together—complementary powers. I don’t know how your brain works, but you’re better than any sensor package.”

As he spoke, Rowley gestured broadly with his hands. “Our team will be focused on special reconnaissance and Parsons, you’re going to be our primary asset. Cooper, you’re tasked with keeping track of anything and everything that she does. And Hansen, for now you’re the bodyguard. That may change, because you have a lot of potential.”

Laura nodded. It was fine, for now.

“What does special reconnaissance mean?” Aubrey asked.

“It means that we’re not a combat team, at least not primarily. It means that we—you—sneak in wherever we’re going and find what we’re looking for. It’ll be a lot like the mission at the school—you gather information and relay that to us so we can make decisions about what action to take.”

Laura finally spoke up, unable to control her curiosity any longer. “So, where are we going?”

The captain clapped his hands together. “We’re getting on a plane. And we’re doing it this morning.”