Chapter 18
Sienna Nealon
We rolled down the driveway of the next potential base for Omega, this one an old factory. We’d turned off the road almost a half-mile back, and were surrounded by tall trees and heavy underbrush. I was trying to keep an eye out for whatever might cross our path next, but I kept getting distracted by movement in the forest. After the third time, I chalked it up to sunlight coming through the trees in the distance, but I couldn’t quite go along with that explanation, not wholeheartedly anyway. We came up on a gatehouse, with a fence that was at least ten feet high and ran as far as I could see in either direction.
“It would appear they’re serious about keeping us out,” Reed said from the backseat. “Of course, we could almost jump over the fence...”
“I don’t know that I could jump that,” Scott said, staring straight ahead.
“Well, some of us could jump it,” Reed said, prompting Scott to turn and shake his head, amused. “I’m kidding. I could help you clear it.”
Scott raised an eyebrow. “And my landing on the other side?”
“As gentle as being tossed over a fence by a tornado.”
I watched out the windshield. The gatehouse was in bad shape, looked to have gone years without painting, but the windows were tinted and I couldn’t see anything inside. “Something’s different about this place.”
“It looks pretty abandoned to me,” Scott said.
“No, she’s right.” Reed was leaning between the seats, looking forward. “There are fresh tire tracks leading up the drive, the fence looks like it’s in pretty damned good repair, and some parts of that gatehouse look like they’ve been artificially aged.” He pointed at the windows. “Look at those. If the rest of the place is cracked and peeling, why do those windows look new? They’re tinted so dark you can’t see in them.” He squinted. “I think I see some really small security cameras, too. Why wouldn’t they remove those if the place is abandoned?”
We had come to a stop about a hundred feet from the gate, just looking. “Well,” Scott said, a little tense, “if we want, we can go check it out nice and slow, or we can start our trespassing with a little breaking and entering.”
I caught movement off the path behind the gate, but I couldn’t tell what, just a black blur. “I think we’re gonna need to start with a bang.”
Scott looked across at me, then back to the windshield. “Okay. You might wanna brace yourself.”
I heard Reed buckle his seatbelt in the back as Scott gunned the engine with his foot still on the brake, the sound of gravel hitting the back of the SUV drowning out any possibility of further conversation. He let loose the brakes and we surged forward, racing toward the gate. I saw it get larger, saw a head peek out of the gatehouse and then dodge back in as we collided with the chain link fencing. I heard the smash of metal on the hood, and the top of the gate whipsawed down and hit the roof of our car with a clash so loud I ducked in fear that it would buckle.
We continued to drive, the gate lodged on our car. I saw men in black uniforms on either side of us, diving for cover. I watched as two of them were hit by the edges of the gate and flew through the air as Scott continued to push the car forward, his teeth gritted and his hands clenching the wheel as he tried to steer.
We came around a bend and I had to catch my breath. At least a dozen guards were in the road in front of us, but that wasn’t what got me. It was one of them, with a long tube slung over his shoulder, down on one knee, the tube being fiddled with by one of the other guards as the man stuffed something onto the tip – a roughly potato-sized object. I watched him start to pull his hand away, his task completed. I yelled and my hand flew to my seatbelt, unfastening it. I could hear Reed in the backseat, already moving, doing the same.
“RPG!” I shouted and reached over to Scott, slapping the release on his seatbelt. “BAIL OUT!” I waited a half-second to see him grab the door handle and start to open it before I did the same. I saw Reed going out the back on the same side I was, and I hit the ground at a roll. There was an explosion as the car was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade as it sped forward, the chain-link gate still on the hood.
The explosion was loud and it felt like my hearing cut out when it happened. I felt the sting of rocks and sticks stabbing through my blouse as I rolled across the dirt sideways, a fern catching me in the face and blinding me. When I came to a stop I spit out leaves and pushed to my feet. The first time I had decided to roll up my sleeves and not wear gloves, I had to bail out of a vehicle into the woods at high speed. Ouch.
“You okay?” I heard Reed’s voice and nodded, still trying to get my bearings. We were slightly down from the road and I could hear distant shouting.
“Yeah,” I said, ignoring the ringing in my ears, “but we need to get to Scott.”
“And cross the open road where the men with guns have a clear line of sight on us?” Reed looked at me in disbelief.
“We’ll be careful,” I said, moving toward the embankment that led to the road. I bent over and climbed, poking my head up and looking the direction the car had gone. I hoped that it had wiped out the roadblock of guys they’d left for us, but when I looked I realized we weren’t that lucky. I saw guys swarming all over the SUV. It was still mostly intact, though it was burning, a small fire on the hood keeping the guards from going into the front seat, which looked to be filled with smoke.
The gate hung off the front about four feet on either side, but it had bent badly upon impact and mangled it further. One of the guards was barking orders at another, but my hearing had suffered from the explosion and my ears were ringing enough that I couldn’t tell what he was saying. I watched three of them point in our direction, and I heard the whistle of gunshots over my head.
I reached down and drew my pistol, firing two quick shots, more to discourage them than anything; I wasn’t likely to hit them at this range. Something big moved to my left and I realized with a shock it was Scott, running across the road. He jumped, sliding down the embankment next to me and I was following him a second later, running away from the road, Reed just behind me.
By unspoken agreement, we cut a ninety degree path away from the road for a couple hundred yards before halting. None of us were breathing heavy, and I stopped to listen. Behind us, I could hear the shouts of guards; with our superior speed, we had left them behind. Also, I could have sworn there were some coming from our right, toward the perimeter fencing. “We need to head this way,” I said, pointing away from the fence.
“You don’t think maybe we should get out of here for now?” Reed’s head was swiveling around and suddenly his eyes widened. “Never mind, I hear it now. Guard squad coming from that direction.”
“Yeah,” I said. “If we’re gonna escape we’ll need to run parallel to the fence for a while. But I don’t want to try and get out of here until we know a little more about this place.”
“This place has some stiff security,” Reed said, pointing back the way we came. “That’s not just a sweep team; they don’t get armed with rocket launchers. This is a serious installation, and they clearly mean to keep whatever’s here protected. We may want to retreat and come back with more forces because with just the three of us, this could get really ugly.”
I heard the logic behind his words, knew he had a good point, but I heard Ariadne’s words echo in my head, about Omega and fighting blind, and as I thought about it, something occurred to me. “If M-Squad is stuck down in Kansas, our only backup will be human agents. Not good enough to assault this place without a lot of casualties.”
“Yeah,” Reed said, “but it would be us plus them. Right now, it’s just us.”
I thought hard about what he said. “But it’s our responsibility.”
He let out a long sigh. “I get the feeling you’ll be the death of me, Nealon.”
“There are worse reasons to go,” I said to him with a wink. He grimaced and I shrugged; guess I can’t pull it off like Charlie can.
“You got your gun?” I asked Scott, who stood behind me, looking dazed. He nodded, reaching under his jacket to pull out his Beretta. “You might be able to take them out at range with your powers; I can’t.”
“Gun’s gonna be more effective than a blast of water at the range we’re dealing with,” Scott said. “But they look like they’re carrying submachine guns and rifles, so they’ve got the advantage over us.”
“Yes, let’s all not get shot,” Reed said. “That sounds like a winning strategy.”
“I have a backup gun.” I looked at Reed. “Do you want it?”
“Nah,” he said. “I’ve never used one; I’d probably end up shooting one of you. Besides, I’m gonna see if I can make things a little more hostile in here for gunplay, maybe level the playing field.” He closed his eyes for a moment and the wind picked up around us, howling through the trees. I heard the branches stir and bend, and a strong gale nearly knocked me over. Reed’s eyes opened. “Sorry about that,” he said to me. “I can control it well enough if I’m paying full attention, but since we’re gonna be running, you might get hit by a few unintended breezes.”
The wind was roaring now, I heard branches cracking and falling through the forest, and the shouts of the guards were inaudible under the rushing of the tempest. “This way,” I said, struggling to be heard as we headed away from the fence. The rattling of the trees and force of the winds blowing past us was an absolute contradiction to the blue, sunny skies above us and the sweltering heat that pressed in as tightly as the countless turtleneck sweaters I’d worn since discovering my powers. It was almost otherworldly, being in the midst of a veritable hurricane in the middle of a hot summer’s day.
I could feel the sweat running down to the tip of my nose and rubbed it against my shoulder, trying to dry it. The heat was intense, the humidity drowning me. The beads of salty liquid were springing out on my forehead more from the weather than the exertion. The winds that Reed had stirred were hot, like the breath of hell itself was chasing us through the woods.
The smell of the greenery was carried on the wind. I could taste the salt from the sweat that was dripping onto my lips as we tore through the woods, three metas outpacing the humans that were pursuing us. I hoped that there weren’t any of our own kind hunting us; that would suck. A break in the trees ahead of me gave way to a view of a concrete wall. As we emerged from the trees, I saw that the wall was part of a sprawling building in front of us. It was two or three stories tall, though it was hard to tell because there were no windows. There was a loading dock to our left, pavement running all the way around it. To our right, a smooth, empty wall was unbroken by anything but a small, square vent cover.
“There,” I said, pointing to the vent cover. “Entry point.”
“So in we go?” Scott asked as the wind howled around us. “Maybe we should contact HQ and wait for reinforcements.”
“Whatever this Andromeda project is,” Reed said, “it’s sensitive. Omega will either evacuate it from here or destroy it by the time we get back. Hell, they may already have started to do so.” He wore the look of a man doing something he desperately didn’t want to. “This is it. We do it now or it’ll be gone.”
“I guess it’s now, then,” I said. “But we do this as a team and stick together, coordinating our attacks.”
Before they could respond, I heard the squeal of tires and a Jeep came to a halt about a hundred feet away from us, not far from the loading docks. I counted four guys that jumped out, every one of them carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. The winds around us started to whip harder and I looked over at Reed, who was deep in concentration. Rather than powerful, straight line winds, I watched the dust on the pavement begin to swirl in circles, gathering power as it made its way toward the Jeep.
The twisting currents of wind formed a funnel cloud just in front of the Jeep, catching it and swirling it around within. I watched the vehicle buck and twist, hitting two of the men taking cover behind it, hard. One pitched over, blood splattering on the ground next to him. The other went flying, landing on his neck. The other two seemed to be holding onto the sides of the Jeep as it spun into the air, higher and higher, cresting at almost a hundred and fifty feet before the tornado dissipated and the car came crashing to the ground with joint screams from the men holding onto it. I didn’t watch.
I looked back to where it had landed and saw red on the pavement, then turned away and started toward the vent. I heard tires squealing in the distance and hesitated.
“Go!” Reed gave me a gentle push. “We’re committed now, we can’t go back!”
“At some point we have to deal with all this security,” I said, my feet pounding against the asphalt. “They’re not just gonna assume we left, they’re gonna keep looking until they find us.”
“Or until we kill every single one of them,” Scott said, exchanging a look with Reed. “And it seems like you don’t have much problem with that option.”
“Omega’s at war with you guys,” Reed said as we came to a halt in front of the vent, which was a rectangular solid metal panel that fit into the wall flush. “They’ve been at war with Alpha for years, so I’ve learned not to show a lot of mercy, because they’re not renowned for showing it to us.” He held out his hand and the panel started to rattle, then burst from its mounting. “Ladies first,” he said with a cocky smile.
“Ass,” I said, but didn’t argue. “I’ll go first because the range of my powers is limited, not because I’m a lady.” I bent nearly double and stopped. A long metal duct ran in front of me, and off to my left. I felt a flash of familiarity, looking down the metal tunnel, and my breath caught in my throat. It was like the box.
But it wasn’t, not really. I could feel air circulating through, and over it I heard more tires squeal and looked back to see two big trucks full of guards, unloading on the pavement about a hundred feet in front of the panel. “Let’s go!” I called to Reed and Scott.
“Shall we hold them off?” Reed said to Scott, who had his gun in one hand and his other fist extended.
Scott fired a couple shots. “Seems the gentlemanly thing to do. Got any ideas for that?”
“Elementally, dear Watson,” Reed said, another tornado forming in front of him. “Elementally.”
I heard Scott give off a cackle and I started to say something smartass and join them, my gun drawn. I stopped when I saw one of the guards on the truck aim an RPG launcher right at me.
“GO!” Scott shouted, launching himself to the left. I saw Reed go right, leaving the RPG pointed at me. I saw the flare of the tube as I dived into the duct, running as fast as I could whilst bent double.
The RPG exploded behind me, the force of it yanking me off my feet. The ductwork took an abrupt, ninety degree right turn that I couldn’t quite make as the explosive force drove me forward into the metal. I burst through the soft aluminum, my head ringing, and realized I was hanging, suspended in mid-air for almost a second before gravity caught me. I fell, dropping, down, down, down into the darkness of the room below me.