The Empowered Series (Book 1): Empowered (Agent) Read online

  I woke up to my phone vibrating in my coat pocket.

  Fumbled it open, put the receiver close to my ear. “Hello?”

  Alex. “What’s up?” He sounded laid back, like he was calling to see about a movie or something.

  I struggled to clear my foggy head. “Not much.” I swigged some water from a bottle I’d been rationing to cut down on pee runs. “I’m doing a job as requested by contact in order to prove value as requirement for admittance.” The words came out awkwardly, the briefing had stressed the need for phone conversations to be circumspect.

  “The man is concerned about elapsed time.” The man? Had to be Winterfield. Probably irritated I hadn’t made more progress. Too bad. I was back to being a crook, and that means crookish ways, sleeping in late, and focusing on the task at hand, namely pulling off the heist.

  “Necessary in order to be accepted.”

  Silence. Finally, “Got it. How much longer?”

  I glanced at my watch. “If not within the next four or five hours, cycle begins again late tomorrow.” Listen to me, I sounded like posted rules in Special Corrections. Yuck.

  “Okay. Take it easy.” Still so casual sounding, just like he should, in case God only knew was listening in. Not that anyone was, but at some point they might be. Better get in the habit now.

  “Later.” Alex hung up. Hearing his voice had been nice. Now it was back to the sound of the rain spattering the windshield and roof.

  I drifted off to sleep again.

  I woke to the glare of headlights illuminating the interior of the Dasher. I sat up, blinking, in time to see two black sedans turn into the abandoned factory’s parking lot.

  Showtime.

  I didn't know if it was the dealers or the middlemen. I slipped silently out of the Dasher and ran at a crouch to the side of the abandoned factory.

  My watch showed 5:06 AM. The night sky was still black.

  By the time I reached the derelict building there was a sharp stitch in my side. I bent over, had to stop to catch my breath.

  The factory’s windows are six feet off the ground. Below the windows, it was just concrete, scrawled with graffiti. On this side of the building a window had been broken, leaving only a few shards of glass around the edges, like broken teeth. A wild rose bush grew below it, just starting to bud. That was lucky. For me, maybe not so much for the rose. My jaw tightened, I couldn’t waste time feeling sorry for a dumb plant.

  I ached already. I would be expending a lot of energy. I pulled a stim drink from my pack, a twenty-ounce can of “Voltage.” Chugged it.

  I put my hand on the plant, prodded it gently with my essence through my outstretched fingers. I felt the rose shiver. I sucked in air, pushed farther into the rose bush, urging the roots to grow deeper, to drink deeply of the nutrients and water in the soil.

  The bush trembled, began growing, sending barbed branches up to the window.

  My nerves felt like hot wires. Now came the hard part. My muscles screamed as I twisted the rose into something nature had never intended. It shrieked in my mind. I pushed past the pain and reshaped the plant, flattening the thorns and using the material to thicken the branches until they could support my weight.

  I blinked away hot tears. There hadn’t been a choice.

  I pulled myself up onto the bush. Sharp pricks against my flesh. Ouch. I had forgotten about the thorns on the lower branches. I wriggled higher up and then, hand over hand climbed up to the window.

  I flashed my penlight down, and saw a concrete ledge maybe four feet below me. I swung from the branch and dropped onto the concrete with a soft thud.

  I squatted on the ledge. A low murmur of voices echoed from the far side of the factory floor. Clumps of crabgrass and thistle poked up from cracks in the cement. Flashlights waved around in the darkness on the far side of the factory.

  I crept toward the voices, staying low. I urged the weeds to grow and spread until the lines of crabgrass and thistle rose to shoulder height.

  I was over halfway across the factory floor when bright white lights flicked on ahead of me. I ducked down into the weeds, shading my eyes.

  The two black sedans had parked side by side near the back wall, facing the entrance. Battery-powered lanterns set on the cars’ roofs pushed back the darkness with bright white light. One of the sedan’s trunks was open, and two figures wrestled a boxy object onto the floor, while more men with automatic weapons watched. All were dressed in sharp business suits and leather shoes. They looked Chinese—must be one of the refugee Tong syndicates.

  Right then a white paneled truck drove up to the entrance, turned around, and killed its headlights. The truck’s back door rolled up. The interior light was on. A half dozen men were inside, standing around what looked like a money box. Five were tattooed, holding pump shotguns. The sixth was actually a skinny teen boy. His hair was flame red—probably dyed. He kept looking around nervously.

  A strikingly handsome Chinese man in a brown suit emerged from one of the sedans and walked into the light. He wasn’t carrying a gun. He walked easy, arms at his sides.

  “Where is Parker?” he asked the goons in the truck.

  The driver's side cab door opened, and a giant dude with a crewcut got out. He had a big, bowie-style knife in a scabbard on his leather belt.

  “Greetings, Parker,” the handsome Chinese in the brown suit said to the giant guy. His voice was confident, in control.

  “Wong. Thought you might make this run.”

  Wong nodded. “We have your goods, assuming you have our cash.”

  Parker stepped around to the back of the truck and pointed at the strong box. “We have cash. Fifty thousand.” He said it casually, like it was no big deal.

  But apparently it was a big deal.

  Wong scowled. “One hundred thousand was the agreed on price.”

  Parker spread his hands. “Hey, the market has gone soft.” He wasn’t apologetic.

  “Don’t waste our time. We have other buyers further north who are happy to pay full price. In fact, they are desperate enough it will be more like one hundred and fifty thousand.”

  Parker drew the bowie knife, ran a finger along its edge, and stared thoughtfully at the edge. “You know us, you don’t know them. They’ll stab you in the back.”

  A drop of sweat slithered down my spine. This was about to turn ugly. I’d have to move damn fast.

  “Whereas you, Parker, will stab us from the front.” Wong spat the words.

  “Fifty thousand, Wong. It’s a fair offer.”

  One of Wong’s men turned to his boss and said something in Chinese. Wong answered.

  Parker cocked his head. “Speak English.”

  Another of Wong’s men said something in Chinese and the others laughed.

  “I said English.”

  Wong smiled. “They agree your price is ridiculous.”

  I crept closer to the truck, and my skin started to tingle. Another Empowered was here.

  Parker turned and jerked a finger at the kid, who jumped down from the truck’s gate. The tingling got more intense. The kid was Empowered. Had to be.

  “Last chance, Wong. Take the fifty grand and count yourself lucky.”

  “We are finished here, Parker,” Wong replied. More Chinese.

  I tensed. This was where things got ugly, really ugly. I’d seen and been in enough fights to know a boiling point when I saw one.

  “Not so fast, pal.” Parker gestured at the kid. The boy grinned and raised his hands. Flames erupted in the air before him. He shoved his palms forward and the flame turned into a geyser. He aimed at a clump of thistle weeds on the far side of the building. The weeds vanished in a whoosh of flame.

  Shit! A flame thrower! Nasty. I hunched down.

  Both sides pointed automatic weapons at each other.

  “This doesn’t have to get any nastier, Wong.” Parker's voice was thick with glee.

  A Tong guy moved behind the far side of the second sedan, out of the giant's line o
f sight, next to a metal box. He was across from me, where I hid in the tall grass. A cable ran from the box to connect to what looked like a megaphone in the man’s hand. He pointed it at the kid, who idly let fire dance ceilingward from his fingertips.

  Parker and his gangers were fixed on Wong and the other Tong members, didn’t see the man point the strange weapon at the Empowered teenager.

  The air suddenly hummed and my stomach lurched. The megaphone-like weapon was a nullifier, functioning like the cuffs we wore in Special Corrections. Portable nullifiers were outlawed, unless you ran a prison. They took a huge amount of power, and burned out fast.

  I felt the familiar nausea I’d lived with for five years. The kid needed to run, get out of the nullifier’s cone of effect, now. Even off to the side like I was, I wanted to vomit. The flames dancing from the kid’s hands winked out. He bent over and threw up.

  “What the hell!” yelled Parker.

  “An advantage,” Wong replied. “I suggest you either pay up now or get out of our way.”

  Parker’s face twisted in anger.

  One of his men on the far side of the standoff edged slowly toward the nullifier. The damn thing’s humming changed to a loud screech, sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard. It was going to burn out soon.

  I wondered if Parker was smart enough to know that?

  The kid tried to stand up, but failed and dry heaved over the ground.

  His goon at the far side palmed a pistol. Wong and his men were still facing Parker and his thugs.

  The goon fired a round into the nullifier’s power case. Sparks exploded from the case and the damn thing died. The man holding the nullifier gun dropped it, sprang back, drawing a pistol from his coast.

  Everything went to hell. Both sides opened up.

  Wong took a shotgun blast in the face and fell. The briefcase tumbled from his hands onto the ground.

  I needed that case.

  Wong’s men returned fire with their machine pistols, spraying bullets into the truck. Two of Parker’s gangers, riddled with bullets, toppled out the truck’s cargo area and sprawled on the ground.

  The kid straightened up. He should have run then, gotten away. We Empowered weren’t indestructible. But his face turned nasty. He spewed fire from his outstretched hands at two of the Tong, who screamed and dropped to the ground, rolling. The kid followed their movements, spewing more fire on the rolling bodies until the men’s shrieking stopped. A Tong guy fired a burst from his machine pistol into the kid, who flopped backwards. Another Tong ganger fired a second burst into the kid’s body.

  The kid wouldn’t be able to heal from that, even if his power hadn’t been nullified.

  I swallowed. Stupid.

  I crouched down and sent vines coiling around the briefcase that lay on the ground beside Wong’s body. I pulled the briefcase across the floor by ordering the vines to shrink toward me and sent more vines writhing into the van.

  Men were still firing at each other, but Parker saw me.

  He charged, knife out. I dropped and spin-kicked his legs. Tripped him. I engulfed him in monster stalks of spiked thistle. He tried to get up, but the thistles’ three-inch long super-sized needles pierced him. He screamed, and one of the surviving Tong members shot him.

  I ducked back down, commanded vines to pull both cases to me, while men continued killing each other. My head hurt like hell from pushing my power, like someone was driving nails right behind my eyes.

  I grabbed the briefcases by their handles, turned, jumped up, and started to sprint. Gun shots banged out behind me, and I heard bullets whizz by, but I was already hidden in the tall grass and shadows.

  The firing continued, more sporadic now.

  I reached the ledge, flung the briefcases out the open window, hauled myself up and then over the rose branches, thorns tearing my hands. I tried to urge the rose bush to pull its thorns back in but I couldn’t. My hands were a bloody mess by the time I reached the window.

  I dropped down and rolled, my ankle twisting. Damn it. Hoped I hadn’t broken it.

  I snatched up the briefcases and ran across the parking lot.

  Behind me the firing stopped and the night was suddenly still again, with only the rain’s pitter patter, and the echo in my head of the kid’s dying scream.

  CHAPTER 8

  My hands still hurt like hell as I drove back to Portland. They had stopped bleeding, but the healing took time, and would take even longer because of the way I’d spent my power.

  I couldn’t shake images of the firefight out of my head. Bullets ripping through bodies. The kid grinning like a maniac as he burned two men to death. The sounds of their screams. Mutter hadn’t said squat about gangers having a nullifier. Where the hell had they gotten such an illegal weapon?

  I shuddered at the thought that maybe someone had wanted them to have it.

  The nullifier was military grade hardware. You needed special power packs, and the things burned themselves out damn fast. They had short range, and they had to be aimed right at an Empowered to work, and even then, it was tough. Unless you were a stupid kid who was high on his power.

  The whole thing had been an idiotic bloodbath.

  And the flamethrower kid, maybe he called himself Firestarter, or maybe he had thought of himself as one of those stupid mystical “flame warden” types. Whatever. It didn’t matter now. He was dead.

  The kid couldn’t have been older than sixteen, might have been fifteen. He’d been a tool, just like the rest of Parker’s gangers, and the Tong as well. Parker and Wong had been in charge. The rest paid for being tools with their lives.

  I got off the Interstate and headed toward a gas station just as the sun was coming up. The gas station had to have a pay phone.

  I eased my foot off the accelerator. Just in time. A police car waited at the first side street. I passed him and turned into the gas station’s parking lot. A phone booth stood at one corner. I parked the car.

  I rubbed my eyes. Exhaustion hung on me like chains. My clothes smelled like roasting meat, but there was no time to change. Mutter had emphasized the need for a prompt check-in, clearly that was part of the test.

  The phone booth’s glass was spiderwebbed with cracks, while the phone itself was covered in handwritten numbers and graffiti. I lifted the receiver and heard a dial tone.

  I dropped in a quarter and dialed the number Mutter had given me. Let it ring three times, then hung up. Dropped the quarter back in, dialed again.

  Mutter picked up after the fourth ring.

  “Did you accomplish the assignment, Miss Brandt?” Mutter sounded like the cat who had caught the canary.

  I swallowed my anger at not being told about the Empowered kid or the nullifier. Maybe Mutter didn’t know about either, but I doubted that. It didn’t matter now

  “I have both,” I said.

  “Were there any complications?” Apparently he liked to twist the knife.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “Are you certain?”

  I nearly yelled into the receiver but caught myself in time. “Yes.” I hated myself right then. “Yeah, I’m sure. Now where do you want to meet?”

  “Columbia Park in Vancouver. At 9AM sharp. Do not be early.”

  I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “Don’t be early?” What the hell?

  “Exactly. Be there at 9AM.”

  “Understood.” It had to be another part of his crazy test.

  I hung up the phone.

  No doubt here who was in control.

  I didn’t want to eat breakfast, but I couldn’t let all the death I’d seen stop me from recharging. I couldn’t.

  I stopped at a greasy spoon and forced myself to eat a stack of pancakes. I snapped at the waitress when she brought bacon along with eggs to go with the pancakes. The smell of meat made me want to throw up. I drank about a gallon of coffee.

  Then I headed to Vancouver. Columbia Way Park faced the ancient Interstate Brid
ge, a big green monster of a bridge. There was a line of homeless people on the sidewalk as I drove up to the park.

  A new model Cadillac Monarch with tinted windows sat sideways to the river in the parking lot. It was the other car from last night.

  Across the river, a dark cloud dumped rain on North Portland, but here the sky was a patchwork of fluffy white clouds and blue. Thank God for small favors.

  A bag lady pushing a shopping cart stuffed with cardboard and plastic blocked the entrance. She looked at the Cadillac. A tinted window rolled down and a long-fingered hand gestured at her. She nodded, then pushed her cart out of the way. Creepy. That had to be Mutter.

  I drove into the parking lot. Gus stood on the curb kitty-corner across the lot from where the Cadillac was parked. He pointed at the pavement in front of him.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled under my breath. I could take a hint. I parked the car.

  An old guy with a face so wrinkled he looked like a basset hound in a torn parka stared at me from underneath a tree. On the sidewalk another old guy in a rain poncho pushed his own shopping cart piled with cardboard. The homeless convention was here for a reason, which probably spelled Mutter.

  Just as I got out of the car the sky got dark and rain began smacking the ground. Geez, that was fast.

  I pulled the collar up on my coat.

  I ran over to the tree where Gus now waited. The rain fell in hard sheets. Shit, it was really coming down.

  I jerked a thumb at the rainstorm. “This Mutter’s doing, too?” I tried to sound confident, but fear coiled like a snake at the bottom of my spine. Just how strong was Mutter? His power had a lot of range to be able to pull a thunderstorm over here that fast.

  One thing was for sure. No way the Hero Council surveillance blimp was going to spot us during this monsoon. The same went for any local cops. Visibility was down to a dozen yards. The homeless people clustered on the sidewalk ran to the shelter of the trees that lined the road.

  “It is.” Gus looked past me toward where the Cadillac was parked, raised an arm.