37

  Janis dove behind the near couch, the reverberations of rifle cracks seeming to chase her. Her precognition had shown her a silhouette filling the door space to the back room, but what Janis had seen most clearly was the pointed barrel.

  Two of Scott’s blasts sounded from behind the adjacent couch.

  The rifle cracked again, puffs of couch stuffing blowing out over Janis’s helmet.

  “I see your freaking lizard head!” a man’s voice screamed.

  Lizard head? And then Janis realized that this was the final guard, probably the same one who had shot at the soldiers outside. His terror hadn’t made him suicidal, but homicidal.

  Great, she thought.

  Still, he was under Trips’s control. Beneath the fear-induced insanity, he was innocent.

  Scott ripped off another blast. “Can’t get a clean shot,” he said. “He keeps ducking into that room. Is everyone all right?”

  “Good here,” Janis shouted. For now.

  She waited for Tyler to answer and when he didn’t she looked behind her. Oh God. He had fallen on his back, one hand clamped over his suit where it had blown open at the shoulder.

  “Tyler’s hit,” she said.

  Using her powers, she dragged him toward her.

  “I’m turning into a damned liability,” he groaned.

  “Hush now,” she said.

  Scott’s next blast was answered by more rifle cracks.

  “And stay down,” she added. With Scott drawing fire, she ventured a peek over the top of the couch. The guard crouched in the doorway looked like a clean-shaven Mr. T, his jaw clenched around gritted teeth. His next series of shots mowed away the top of Scott’s couch.

  “You’re not enslaving me in your sugar caves, you freaking lizards!”

  Before the guard could withdraw into the room to reload, Janis willed the door closed. He seized the door handle and shook. Janis pushed the far couch against him, pinning him.

  “Now!” she shouted to Scott.

  Scott’s helmet appeared above the torn-up couch, and he released a blast. The guard’s upper body slapped against the door then slumped to one side, the rifle falling from his grasp.

  Keeping the couch against him, Janis rose to her feet. Scott, who had already emerged from behind his couch, kicked the rifle out of the guard’s reach, then craned his neck to the guard’s face.

  “He’s stunned but breathing,” Scott said over his shoulder.

  Janis withdrew the couch, and she and Scott helped the guard to the floor. Scott searched the room the guard had appeared from, a small dormitory with bunk beds, reemerging to say the room was empty. He activated his microphone. “Advance team reporting,” he said.

  “Go,” Agent Steel answered.

  “The support building is clear. All guards accounted for—four dead, the fifth incapacitated.” He returned to Janis’s couch. “And Tyler’s hit. Bullet to the right shoulder. It looks serious.”

  “We’re sending in the second team and support.”

  “Copy that,” Scott said.

  “Hold a moment,” Agent Steel said. “I’m receiving an update.”

  Agent Steel had barely uttered the final syllable when Creed streaked into the room. He searched around, his gaze pausing on the two downed guards. Upon understanding there was no one left to attack, he sheathed his finger blades and stood over Tyler. Blood seeped between Tyler’s gloved fingers.

  “Jesus, embryo,” Creed said. “What’d you do to get someone so pissed at you?”

  “Told him I was your brother,” Tyler muttered.

  Margaret appeared next. Janis filled her in, then watched her sister—who had changed so much in the last two months—kneel beside the mumbling guard and begin speaking softly but assertively. She was restoring his sanity. Janis thought it was the first time she had seen her sister exercise her abilities for something other than advancing her own agenda. And in that single observation, something told Janis they were going to be all right.

  “Update,” Agent Steel said sharply. “The Scale knows you’re in the facility. They are demanding you leave or they will move to an immediate launch.”

  “So we’re … aborting?” Janis asked.

  “No. The president wants us to proceed to the second phase. There’s no time to waste. Go to the elevator immediately. Access the launch control center and disable those missiles.”

  The color drained from around Scott’s eyes. “How much time do we have?” he asked.

  A new countdown appeared in Janis’s visor. That can’t be right, she thought, her heart thudding. She ticked off the digits to make sure she was reading the display correctly. She was.

  “Four minutes,” Agent Steel answered.

  Scott drew the steel door open on the elevator and ushered Janis inside. Jesse hadn’t arrived yet, but the elevator would have been too small for the three of them anyway. They’d have to send it back up for him.

  “Small problem,” Janis said after he had drawn the door closed behind them. Scott looked over to find her thumbing the Down button while the elevator remained stubbornly still.

  Nice, he thought.

  He stole a look at his countdown display before closing his eyes. More than ten percent of their allotted time already gone, and the elevator—their only access to the lower level—was jammed.

  “All right, just give me a sec,” he said.

  He visualized the elevator’s control panel. Following a sensation of compression, he was inside. Within seconds, he found the issue: a tripped circuit breaker. Not blown, thank God. He reset it, then reemerged from the system in a flash, thanks to his helmet.

  If only the launch computers are this easy, he thought, knowing they wouldn’t be.

  He signaled for Janis to give it another go. When she pressed the button this time, the elevator jerked into a slow descent. An agonizingly slow descent. Scott imagined the inches creeping by.

  Janis nudged his shoulder. “A little different than breaking into houses, huh?”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  He thought back to picking the lock on the Leonards’ shed door in December, deactivating the magnetic seal, opening the hatch, descending the rebar rungs into darkness. He remembered his terror and exhilaration. Now he only felt terror. There, failure meant getting caught. Here, failure would mean the total annihilation of a dozen U.S. cities.

  He sighed, trying not to look at the time display inside his helmet.

  “We can do this, Scott.”

  “I’m the one who told Agent Steel about Mr. Leonard.” It just came out.

  Janis’s eyes stared from her visor.

  “That night she interrogated me, after the dance, I must have sang. That’s why they were waiting the next day when you went to meet him in the woods. I didn’t figure it out in time to warn you. And then I just didn’t tell you.”

  The elevator hummed around them.

  “Why not?”

  “Computer geek and social outcast Scott Spruel finally—and I mean, finally, by some miracle—manages to reconnect with this mind-blowingly amazing girl he’s been watching for three years. That happened because we knew each other, trusted each other. And then there I was, smashing that trust to pieces. I just… I didn’t want to lose you again. Especially not after the dance.”

  “Is that what Director Kilmer was using to keep you from helping me?” she asked.

  He glanced over at her, then down. “Yes.”

  “And just when I was starting to come around to the Program,” she said, more to herself than to him. “You’re not just telling me this because we’re on the brink of a nuclear apocalypse?”

  “Huh? No, of course not.”

  But he could see by her eye lines that she was smirking. Gallows humor—a good sign. “Look, I’m really sorry. I’ll never keep anything from you again. Lesson learned.”

  “Good.” She punched one of his shoulders. And then, almost as an afterthought: “And don’t worry. I still love you.”

  Scott stammered, blood rushing to his cheeks. Wait, did she just say…?

  “Look sharp, Champion,” she said. “We’re here.”

  The elevator had stopped. Janis checked to make sure Scott was ready, then drew the door open. They stepped into a small corridor, ten feet long, no more, and sent the elevator back up. Two huge square metal doors bookended the corridor, both of them sealed.

  “This is the one we want,” Scott said.

  Janis stood beside him and studied the blast door to the launch control center. It featured a huge wheel where a knob might have been. Interlocking segments made up a hinge. She’d seen a door like it when she had gone on an elementary school field trip to Empire Bank, but—with all due respect to Empire—she doubted the door to their vault had been designed to withstand a nuclear strike.

  “Think Jesse can handle it?” she asked, concentrating into the door’s dense matrix of threads.

  “He handled it in simulation.”

  Janis watched Scott’s eyes cross slightly, checking the countdown display. She did the same, catching it just as it ticked past two and a half minutes.

  We’re running out of time.

  She raised her arm toward the door and tested it, pushing and pulling the threads. No chance. Not by herself.

  Scott raised his own arm toward the door—and knocked. Rap, rap, rap. Thanks to the door’s density and thickness, the sound was minuscule, almost nonexistent. Scott shrugged as though to say, It was worth a shot, then looked to the elevator for Jesse’s arrival.

  Something clunked.

  Janis wheeled toward the blast door. A second clunk sounded.

  “Behind you!” Scott cried.

  She spun in time to see the opposite door sliding open. A red light pulsed beyond like a slow, throbbing heart. With the next pulse of light, she could make out a crowd of people in armored suits.

  Janis crouched toward the wall as a laser streaked past, singeing the air.

  Scott returned a blast into the opening door space, catching the shooter in the chest. The clatter of gear sounded as he was knocked somewhere beyond the pulsing light. Others crowded into his place.

  There’s too many of them, Janis thought, and we’re out in the open.

  She altered the threads of space as two more lasers ripped out. Their bright trajectories curved into the ceiling, showering sparks over Scott. Janis focused on their door now, willing it to a groaning halt. Perspiration stung her eyes. Shuddering, the door began to reverse along its tracks.

  Scott released a series of blasts into the shrinking space.

  Thanks, hon, ’cause I can’t deflect laser fire and handle this door at the same time.

  She blinked away another trickle of perspiration. Pain, diffuse and aching, grew behind her forehead. With everything she could muster, she sealed the door. But not before a final streak of laser lanced out. Scott shouted as the shot glanced from his head, spraying white sparks.

  The side of his helmet burst into flames.

  “Scott!” she cried.

  The door shuddered open an inch, requiring all of Janis’s energy to seal it again. She watched helplessly as Scott removed the plug from the back of his helmet and fumbled over the helmet’s release valves.

  You don’t do something, and he’s going to be cooked alive.

  One arm outstretched toward the door, Janis scooted along the hard floor on her knees. She could feel the mechanics of the huge door straining against her, determined to re-impose its multi-ton will.

  Scott had given up trying to disengage the helmet, it appeared, and was now slapping at the flames. With her free hand, Janis attempted to thumb one of the valves from Scott’s collar. No good. She needed both hands.

  Scott shouted something she couldn’t make out.

  She eyed the door, then released it. Bending to Scott’s helmet, she began working her way around his collar with both sets of fingers. In her peripheral vision, she watched the door move.

  Blood-red light throbbed into the corridor, ever stronger.

  A white starburst exploded over Scott’s vision, and he knew immediately that the circuits over his helmet had blown. Blinking but still not seeing, he reached back and yanked the plug to his battery pack. Then he felt along his collar for the release valves. Something erupted over his right temple, searing the flesh of his ear.

  All right, he thought, that actually hurt.

  Meanwhile, the heat around his head was becoming intense. When he released the second valve, cool air streamed in.

  And flames.

  I’m on fire?

  Scott shrugged his shoulder to seal the opening, the stench of burning hair filling his nostrils. He let go of the next valve and began slapping where the heat felt most intense. When his chest ached with his next breath, he realized he was inhaling smoke.

  God, I don’t know that I’m gonna make it, he thought dimly. What a way to go out.

  A tug on his collar. He squinted against the heat. Through his burned visor, he made out someone beside him. Someone trying to help him. And he knew who that someone was.

  “Don’t burn yourself,” he shouted.

  One by one, the valves popped open. The helmet yanked away. Cold, wonderful air bathed his sweat-soaked head. The right side of his face stung as if he’d been out in the sun too long. He turned and found Janis with an arm raised, struggling to reseal the door to the equipment building. A grimy hand appeared against the inside of the door. And then a rifle barrel.

  Scott concentrated into another shot before remembering his helmet was fried, no longer on his head.

  The door shuddered open another inch.

  Janis grunted. “It’s too heavy.”

  Scott stood, searching around for something, anything, to use as a weapon, but the corridor was empty.

  “I-I can’t hold it closed,” she said.

  “You don’t have to,” a familiar voice boomed.

  Jesse ducked from the elevator into the corridor, his hands clenching into wrecking balls.

  “Let me at ’em.”

  38

  “Man oh man,” Scott said, his head swimming with relief. “I could kiss you.”

  “I wouldn’t try it,” Jesse warned.

  He edged past Janis, who looked from him to Scott, her eyebrows raised in question. Scott nodded for her to release the door. Dropping her arm, she staggered back toward him.

  “Be careful,” she called to Jesse.

  Scott rubbed her shoulder. “How much time do we have?” he whispered.

  “Just under two minutes.”

  Two minutes, Scott repeated to himself. Two minutes to deal with these goons, open the blast door, and disable the launch program. Oh, and I’m going to be attempting the last without my helmet.

  Blood roared in his ears.

  Janis clutched his arm. He followed her gaze to where his former nemesis—the boy-man who had broken his arm not once, but twice—filled the far end of the corridor. Scott listened in trepidation as the door rumbled open. Surprised shouts and the sound of laser fire burst forth.

  Jesse waded inside and began swinging his fists.

  Chaos ensued. Scott glanced over once and saw that Janis was as riveted by what was happening inside the supply room as he was. Each strobe of the red light framed Jesse’s hulking body like an action shot. Here, lifting one of the goons by the throat. There, felling two more with a haymaker, laser fire lancing the air around him. All Jesse needed was a contract with Marvel comics.

  Seconds passed. Smoke and the stench of ozone leaked into the corridor.

  At last, only Jesse remained standing. He lumbered from the supply room, his suit singed but otherwise not much worse for the wear. Bodies lay in a groaning sprawl behind him.

  “Guess they won’t be giving us anymore trouble,” Scott whispered.

  Jesse’s pitted gray eyes touched on Scott and Janis before shifting past them.

  “Is that the door?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Scott moved out of his way. “But we don’t have much time.”

  Jesse stood with his fists on his hip and looked it over. He widened his stance, each of his legs as thick as the trunk of a healthy oak tree, and planted his booted feet. Curling the fingers of one hand behind the hinge, he seized the great wheel with the other. Roaring, he arched his back.

  Scott backed Janis to the other end of the corridor. Jesse’s arms and giant thighs began to shudder, his roar thinning to a low, straining moan. Scott imagined his face turning pink, then violet.

  “We’re down to a minute,” Janis said near Scott’s ear.

  She narrowed her gaze toward the door, and Scott sensed that she was probing it, assessing it for weak points. Discovering something, apparently, she extended an arm. Her brows clenched.

  C’mon guys, Scott thought with a fresh surge of hope. You get me inside there, and I promise I’ll do everything I can to— The right side of the door released from the wall in an explosion of concrete. Jesse staggered backward, then replanted his feet. Using his weight, he pivoted the ten-ton door from the blown frame, plowing up a furrow of concrete from the floor. The hinge on the door’s other end collapsed in on itself.

  He gave the door a final wrench.

  Amid dust and the tangled ends of reinforced steel bars, a two-foot-wide opening appeared.

  “Two people are inside,” Janis said from behind Scott. “But I sense they’re not themselves.”

  Scott clapped Jesse’s arm in thanks and edged his way through the opening to the launch control center, Janis following closely.

  He emerged into a capsule-shaped room. Lights flashed over stacked panels similar to the ones Gabriella had had Scott practice on. Beneath the panels, two men in blue jumpsuits hunched over a pair of computer consoles, their heads bristling with fresh crew cuts. Patches of the American flag and insignias for the U.S. Air Force shone from their sleeves.

  “Abort the launch!” Scott cried.