Legacy (30 page)

“Maddie’s conscious, but she…Isaiah tried to kill her. And Zack—we don’t know how badly he’s hurt. But right now, you need to know that someone there at Ganzfield’s been shooting videos and sending them to Isaiah. They’re up on a website with a lot of information about us…and a bunch of people just got an email with a link to them.”

Tell him about the camera in the infirmary ceiling. That’s probably the first one he can find.

“Infirmary ceiling, probably right above the exam table.” A fresh burst of anguish hit Trevor as he recalled the images of Archer. “Fireball and other spark stuff, some of my ability, and the healers. No charms or minders, at least that we saw. No RVs.”

Did that mean that the traitor was a charm or an RV? Maybe it was simply that minder, charm, and RV abilities were harder to document on video.

It wasn’t Zack.

Trevor solemnly met my eyes.
No, it wasn’t.
“Jon, I just talked to Coleman. He’s trying to get the website down, but I think we have a major problem.”

Maybe it was Belinda.

“Maddie thinks it might’ve been Belinda.”

The frown in Williamson’s voice came through. “I’ve known her for nearly a decade, and she’s always been on our side. I know Maddie has cause to dislike her, but that’s not a valid reason to accuse her of something like this.”

My stomach heaved, and got a nasty retaste of the energy bars I’d eaten for dinner as they came back up. I twisted to the side to avoid splattering myself.

Trevor held my hair back with invisible fingers. Boulders of concern piled up in his gut.
You’re not okay.

I’m breathing. I’m conscious. I’m not bleeding
. I wasn’t bleeding, was I? Isaiah hadn’t given me another stroke, right? I started running some basic neurological tests, wiggling my toes and sticking out my tongue to see if it went straight out. Could I remember today’s date? The president’s name?

Trevor looked over to where Hannah had her hands on Zack’s temples. In his head he understood Zack probably needed her attention more, but a big, emotional part of him wanted to yank her over to my side and make her take care of me.

I took Isaiah’s phone from Trevor’s other hand. After spending a minute figuring it out and getting my hands steady enough to hit the right buttons, I forwarded the dead-man-switch email to my own account, along with all of the addresses. The list included a sickening combination of news-dot-com, dot-gov, and dot-mil accounts. The media, government, and military would soon know about G-positives. Some might already know, if they’d checked their email in the past few minutes.

The text of Isaiah’s last message read like Sons of Adam propaganda:

People with dangerous abilities live among you. They can manipulate you, deceive you, and kill you with a touch. I don’t know if the evidence I have compiled will convince you, but I hope that you will conduct your own investigation. If this message has reached you, then they have murdered me.

He’d signed it with his real name.

I took a breath. Okay. This was bad, but it wasn’t beyond hope. First off, Isaiah had faked his own death years ago, so signing his own name wasn’t going to give him great credibility. Dead men don’t send a lot of email, and the message made him sound like a ranting loon. But all of what he’d written must’ve seemed reasonable to him—probably because it was all basically true.

Maybe we could discount the videos by claiming that an amateur special-effects club at the Ganzfield “school” had made them. YouTube had more than a few clips featuring special- effects fakery. It wasn’t even that hard to do anymore. But what would happen if people did as he suggested and launched their own investigations?

I looked back at the group clustered around Zack’s still-prone body. Hannah had her hands on his head, feeling for injuries. Zack was still alive. Pent-up breath released from my chest.

Alive.

But how much damage had Isaiah done to him?

The effort of isolating Hannah’s thoughts from the jumble of other anxious minds made me start shaking again. Ann’s minder-loud, keening panic drowned out most of the others’ thoughts.

—
ZACK HAS TO BE OKAY—

—
another brain bleed—

—
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, GOD DON’T—

—
repair the damage to the—

—
NEVER GOT A CHANCE TO TELL HIM—

Hannah’s calm, professional focus was at odds with her erratically pounding heart. She knew what she was doing, but she worried she was missing something. Zack wasn’t regaining consciousness.

Not again.

I started to roll my eyes but stopped because it hurt.
What good are frikkin’ SUPERPOWERS if we keep overloading our fancy brains and ending up in these stupid comas?
I knew most people lost consciousness if intense pain overloaded their brains. Did dodecamine make G-positives conk out when our abilities were pushed too far?
They never put THAT warning label on the bottle.

Just…SHUT UP!
Ann flashed wordless anger at me from where she knelt by Zack’s head, holding his hand. Her mind jangled with unspoken fears and tear-tracks streaked her cheeks. When our eyes met, another wave of dizziness hit me and the lawn tilted as though trying to spill me off. I tried to shield my mind, but that made the sick, whirling feeling even stronger.

It’s okay. I’ve got you.
Trevor lifted me from the grass and walked back toward the fenced compound. The intensity of the others’ emotions faded with his every step.

“Where are you going?” Dave McFee followed us. His agitation made a spot on his shirt smolder before he thought it out.
Are they leaving the rest of us to clean up this mess?

“I’ve got to get Maddie away from…there are too many people here. Ask Hannah to come find us when…when she’s done with Zack.”

“What about the car?” Dave fiddled with some kind of earpiece; I guessed they must’ve used them to communicate among the different hidey-holes.

But how had they shielded their thoughts? I hadn’t known they were there—and neither had Isaiah.

Get gloves from one of the labs. If the paperwork’s in the car, take it back to the rental drop-off up at the airport. Someone else can follow in the van and bring you back. No missing car; no ties to us.
I’d have to get rid of Isaiah’s phone later, but we still might need some information from it.

Dave nodded. “Good idea. Hey, Drew! Get the van.”

Jonah moved in to finish with Isaiah’s remains. As he focused, the still-burning corpse lifted suddenly—like a horror-movie monster that refused to die—and slid into one of the open manholes in the lawn. Flames flitted out of the hole for a moment, and then the circle flared bright white as Jonah poured power into reducing our former enemy to ash. The other sparks replaced the covers on the other holes, and I felt them weld the metal in place as we moved out of range.

This is far enough.
I couldn’t hear Ann anymore.

Trevor dropped us down onto the grass at the edge of the driveway. He took my face in his hands and examined me in the fading evening light.
What did Isaiah do to you? Are you all right?

My fingers encircled his wrists.
Pretty sure I will be. Give me a few minutes.
With just Trevor’s thoughts in my head, I might even be telling the truth. The other minds felt like they’d been picking at my mental scabs. I lowered myself down until I lay on the ground with my head resting against Trevor’s leg. Invisible fingers stroked my hair as I watched the others in the distance. Their movements threw wild shadows in the headlights of the rental car.

With the sod-covered lids in place, the holes were nearly undetectable. The trampled grass should be unnoticeable after a day or two, but there was nothing we could do about the black scorch marks on the driveway where the body had burned.

Drew drove the van past us. Dave fiddled with the gatehouse controls until the barriers lifted, and then got into Isaiah’s car. The evening seemed to close in as the headlights rolled away, leaving a line of yellow-gold on the western horizon as the only light. The others moved through the gloom as blue-tinted silhouettes until my eyes adjusted.

Hannah stood up slowly, dusting off the knees of her jeans. The others picked up Zack and started carrying him back up the driveway toward us—a funereal procession with a living body. Their thoughts grew louder as they approached. I pulled myself up to sit, and the world settled back without too much tilting this time.

Ann met my eyes and her pain-filled thoughts hit me like bullets.
He wasn’t supposed to be targeted! He was supposed to be safe! Isaiah was supposed to—
She stopped her mental voice, but I’d heard the thought behind it.
Isaiah was supposed to come after you.

I shielded—at least I could do that again. So, it was okay with Ann if Trevor and I were attacked? Why hadn’t Zack been where he’d told us he’d be? Why hadn’t anyone thought about how Isaiah’s physical pain from the spark attack would slow Trevor and me down?

She’s hurting. Don’t say those things.

I met Trevor’s eyes and took a deep breath.
I’m shielding so I don’t say them
.

I know. I’m proud of you.

Trevor kept one arm around my waist as we trailed behind the ragged group. I leaned against him. I still felt so weak! A hot ache pressed against the inside of my forehead. Hannah approached with concern and put her hands on my temples, but her assessment only confirmed what I’d suspected—my problems weren’t from physical injuries.

“We need to pack up and get back to Ganzfield.” Trevor’s voice cut through the silent group.

“What’s the rush?” Ellen helped carry Zack, and she glanced down at his pale, vulnerable face.
Should we really be moving him?

“Our secret might be out.” He explained how the rest of the world might wake up tomorrow to cable news shows featuring video clips of Fireball, instant healing, and flying teenagers.

Holy crap
seemed to be the dominant reaction.

We got our gear together as we waited for Dave and Drew to return with the van.

The cell phone rang and I passed it to Trevor. “The website’s down,” Coleman told him. “I know a judge who has issued an injunction. The web hosting company pulled it for us a few minutes ago.”

“Over the phone?” Trevor’s brows crinkled in confusion.

“I’ve had previous discussions with this judge, and…um…prepared him for telephone requests from me.”

Oh.

I was so glad Coleman was on our side. He was one
terrifying charm lawyer.

“I just got back to the city a few minutes ago. The bad news is that eight people had already viewed the site, and some of them have downloaded the material. It’s out there.”

“A ch—another person like me currently works at the Pentagon. He’s going to see what he can do, but there may be a problem with these last two. Given the special security protocols, we might not be able to trace them, so there’s a chance we’ve been exposed to some very powerful people. I’m not sure who they are or what they could do to us.”

Even dead, Isaiah still threatened us.

It was after 10 p.m. by the time we got on the road. I’d recovered a bit, but I still felt weak and achy, like I’d had the flu. Dave drove with Claire beside him, RVing for speed traps…and the U.S. Army. A visceral, protective pull had me by the gut—we had to get everyone back to Ganzfield as quickly as possible.
Circle the wagons.
We planned to drive through the night. The media might not be a problem after Coleman and his L.A. counterpart got through with them, but what about the military people who now had those files? What would they do with them? We needed to get our people to a safe place.

If there even WAS a safe place for people like us anymore.

Zack lay across the middle bench of the van. Ann cradled his head in her lap and gently touched his unconscious mind.

My brows shot up. How was she doing that? He was doubly invisible to me—both unconscious and a natural shielder. Was it part of their connection, or was she simply a more sensitive telepath than I was? She ached to feel him respond to her, but he was simply…there. An empty vessel. No response.

With Zack lying across the bench, we didn’t even have enough seats. The rest of us squeezed onto the other benches, and the air in the packed vehicle seemed stale and over-breathed, even with the AC vents drawing in the cool of the surrounding night. The gear in the back added a slightly funky camping smell, as well. I sat on Trevor’s lap, my back against the side of the van. The seatbelt Trevor had pulled around both of us tugged against my side. I kept my mind shielded with Trevor’s—I didn’t want to draw any more of Ann’s desperate anger. Exhaustion simmered through the assembled minds and I felt a small stab of jealousy that most of the others could sleep. Jonah was taking the first watch among the sparks, keeping his mind alert for flare-ups from the sleepers.

Next to us, Drew started snoring. On his other side, Ellen’s head hung loosely down to her chest in a way I thought might give her a sore neck when she woke up. Despite the exhaustion that pulled at my mind, I didn’t want to share nightmares.