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

  The elevators had all gone down to the 1st floor. Two were now coming back up.

  I wrenched at the plants with my power, pushing past their pain and fear. I trembled. In the past when I had sensed a plant’s fear, it had always been a very distant thing. Not this time. It felt like a chasm had opened up in my stomach.

  I pushed past the fear, pushed my power harder until palm trees and bonsai, now huge, filled the space in front of me. Ivy snaked from tree to tree, from palm fronds to bonsai branches until a thick mass of vines clogged the hall. The air was now thick with the smell of jungle.

  I bent over, breathing hard. I needed to rest, but there was no time.

  I staggered into the archive. Keisha was yanking open a filing drawer at the far end, a dozen others were open, their contents dumped on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “Shut up, bitch,” she yelled at me.

  “There’s not time for that,” I growled back at her, but she continued dumping filing drawers, frantic. She was acting like a panicked idiot.

  Peep wasn’t in the room. “Where’s Peep?”

  “The damn computer room,” she yelled without looking at me.

  I staggered to the blue door marked “Computer Closet.” Banged on it.

  The door opened. Peep was a disheveled mess, drenched in sweat, wire cutters in his hand. He stood in front of an open electrical panel, a tangle of cut cables and cut wires hanging out. He looked at me when I entered, his eyes wide with fear.

  “I don’t know how to shut down the security system." No kidding. Support wouldn’t make it that easy—that panel might have been a dummy system for all I knew.

  “We have to go,” I told him. “The police are storming this floor.”

  “I don’t understand,” Peep said. “The Scrambler should have knocked out communications, prevented the alarm from sounding.” He looked back at the open panel. “None of these wires seem to do anything.

  “We have to get out of here.” I grabbed his arm, pulled him after me into the archive room.

  Keisha slammed a filing drawer hard. “Where the hell is it?”

  Peep was still going on about the Scrambler not going off.

  Keisha made a face. “Asshole probably panicked.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. If Gus had panicked—damn it. Mutter would kill him, if Keisha didn’t first.

  “You found the files yet?” Peep said, panicking. Great, now he was losing it.

  “Does it look like I found it, fool?” Keisha shouted. Files were scattered all over the floor.

  “Mutter said it had a red binder,” I said.

  “Damn it, I forgot!” Keisha raised her arms, gestured, and a file drawer fragmented into shards. She hurled the shards into another cabinet, pulled her hands toward her chest, and that cabinet exploded in a shower of metal and paper. Peep and I ducked, shielding our faces with our arms. Hot steam from the shattered metal cabinets filled the room.

  “This isn’t going to help!” I yelled. She ignored me.

  I grabbed Peep’s arm. “Pull the index drive.” That was what Mutter had called it.

  Peep didn’t argue. He must be in shock now.

  A paper index—there must be one in this mess, too. It was all I could think of. Pointless probably, but what else could we do? There was no time for anything else.

  God only knew where it was.

  Wait, Mutter’s briefing. First cabinet to the left of the drawer.

  Found it. Mutter said the target was a file called “Dorado.” Flipped to the Index—“Dorado was cross listed under Sandeer. What the hell?”

  “S’s,” I shouted to Keisha, but she was deep in fugue state now, her power possessing her, gesturing madly. I ducked below a metallic cyclone, my hair plastered by the gust from the flying metal fragments. This was getting deadly.

  I did a quick count—okay, second to last cabinet, which still miraculously stood. I hit my knees and rifled through the file drawers. Sandeer. A slender file. It wasn’t red.

  I brandished it at Keisha. “Got it. Let’s haul ass.”

  “It’s not red!”

  It wasn’t, but it said “Sandeer,” and that was good enough for me.

  A chainsaw started up and a pain spiked into my head. They were sawing through the palm trees and vines. My head pounded. I couldn’t think through the chorus of screaming and dying plants

  “Peep, lead me to the back door.”

  He looked confused. “Lead me out of here. The plants are dying and it’s taking all I have to stay focused.”

  He nodded, snapped out of his shock. Took my hand. I was too filled with the cries of the dying bonsai and palm to shudder. Keisha still wouldn’t leave.

  “Come on Keisha!” I gasped. My head felt squeezed by a giant's hand. The chainsaw revved higher.

  Peep dragged me out of the room. I caught a last glimpse of Keisha in the center of a hurricane of metal.

  Down a flight of emergency stairs. After a long descent we stopped, and Peep peered around a corner.

  “Two guards,” he said. “Hold on.” His eyes seemed to grow larger, becoming unfocused. Gave me the creeps, but I wasn’t about to complain, not if it got us out of here.

  “Okay, I have a viewing chain,” he said. He was suddenly all business. “SWAT is at the front entrance. No sign of Empowered or Support agents yet.” His eyes twitched. “Wait, I see the surveillance blimp.”

  The door below us started to open.

  “Peep,” I hissed at him. “I don’t have any plants to work with.” I was weak from my exertion upstairs, too. The world began to spin.

  Peep’s eyes snapped back into focus.

  “But I have a stunner.” He palmed what looked like a flip phone, a heavy plastic oval. Thumbed the device. A quiet hum started up.

  Where the hell did he come off having a stunner?

  “That’s banned tech,” I said. The prison guards used them.

  Two police appeared in the doorway below.

  “I always have banned tech,” Peep said, and fired twice.

  I heard the thud of falling bodies and then we were out in the street and racing toward a parked truck. Peep’s.

  “Damn you, Keisha,” Peep said as he pushed me inside.

  The police must all be around the front.

  “What about the blimp?” I mumbled.

  “Gus?” I heard Peep call on the radio

  I couldn’t see very well.

  “If he can’t get out, he isn’t worthy of his name,” Peep replied. He did a U-turn and we drove off.

  What had happened to Gus and Keisha?

  CHAPTER 12

  I coughed. My throat was so damn dry.

  “We’re almost there,” Peep said.

  I opened my eyes. We were driving somewhere southeast. I sat up and groaned. “Thanks,” I told Peep. Thought I’d never be thanking him for anything, but he’d gotten us away.

  He shrugged. “I wanted out of there, too.”

  I felt like someone had worked me over with a sledgehammer.

  The safe house turned out to be a rambling two-story split-level, the kind popular in the 1970s and 80s. Ruth’s old house had been one of those.

  I staggered inside after Peep and collapsed on a couch in the living room, where I fell into an exhausted sleep.

  When I woke it was dark outside. A microwave chimed. Peep appeared from the kitchen.

  “You hungry?”

  I sat up. “Yes.” I could eat a horse.

  We ate TV dinners at the dining room table. Oil paintings of seascapes hung on the wall, and knick-knacks filled a curio cabinet. The shag rug was chocolate colored. Yuck. The safe house was like some sort of sick time capsule.

  Headlights shone into the living room as a van pulled into the driveway. Mutter, at last?

  I recognized my delivery van. It stopped. The Headlights went off. A moment later the driver's side door opened, and Keisha got out.

  She marched to the front do
or and pounded loudly on it.

  “She’s pissed,” Peep said. The understatement of the century.

  He unlocked the door and Keisha stormed in.

  “You!” She launched herself at me, charging into the dining room. I jumped up.

  She got right up in my face. “Cut and run. You screwed up.”

  “I covered our asses.” If I hadn’t used those plants, we’d be in jail. I wasn’t the one that wouldn’t lead.

  “That’s coward talk. We would have done just fine. Instead, you ran off with Peep.” She glared at him.

  He edged away, hands out. “I was just following Mathilda.”

  Coward. “I thought Gus was the weasel in this group,” I told Peep. “And what the hell happened with Mutter?”

  Keisha gestured at me. “I don’t care—you are the one that caused this.”

  “I didn't see Mutter’s van.”

  “So what?” Keisha's eyes narrowed. “We follow his orders. Maybe he held off Hero Council Empowered.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” There was no sign of an HC team there. We would have known.

  She shoved a fist in my face. “Don’t push this off on somebody else. You cut and ran.”

  “You wouldn’t leave.”

  “You left me, asshole.”

  We glared at each other. The front door opened again and Gus entered.

  “Glad you are in one piece, man,” Peep told him. Gus slunk over to the couch, but seeing Keisha and I doing the death stare at each other, he stopped and edged toward the kitchen.

  “What happened with the Scrambler?” I demanded.

  Gus gestured wildly. “I don’t know. I deployed it, but it didn’t work. I mean, it did work, but it didn’t go off like it should have. As soon as you guys got into the archive, the alarms went off. The cops were there in five minutes, tons of them. It was like they were waiting.

  Keisha shot me an ugly look. “Or were tipped off.”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  We circled each other like two lionesses, staring at the other.

  “Someone had to tell them,” Keisha said.

  “It wasn’t me. Why the hell would I do that?”

  “How do I know that?”

  “What the hell reason would I have for turning us in?” My hands were claws, we were practically bumping chests we were so close. She couldn’t know I was an infiltrator. And if she didn’t know, then she was just bullying me again. Either way, I couldn’t back down.

  “Hey, let’s just all chill,” Gus said, his voice cracking.

  Peep had disappeared. The front door was open.

  “Stay out of this, Blender.” Keisha scowled. Her scowl became a sneer.

  “Face it, Mathilda, you ran, just like you did back when you were in your precious, special Renegades.”

  “Shut up.” I raised my hands, flexed the fingers

  “And what? You going to make that African violet on the windowsill come get me? Your power is weak, just like you.”

  Knives floated from the kitchen and began orbiting around her.

  “I told you I wasn’t going to kick your ass,” she said. “Tilly.” The knives began to twirl. “I’m going to cut it. That’s what we do to snitches.”

  Shit, she had no evidence, she was just out to get me. For some reason that made me even angrier, the random bullying and her making fun of my name. She’d hated me from the start.

  A shallow ceramic planter hung from the ceiling over our heads, ivy spilling over the rim. I felt the trembling of its tendrils.

  I pushed my power into the ivy, pushed past the plant’s screams and the hot pain slicing into me and forced the ivy into a new form, pouring my anger into it. The ivy’s slender tendrils thickened and grew into jungle vines.

  The writhing green rope looped around her neck. She thrashed as the vine constricted. The knives flew into her open hands and she slashed at the vine. The ivy screamed louder in my mind as it parted, and died. My head throbbed.

  Keisha raised her hands and the knives floated up, spinning. I wasn’t about to get sliced by those knives.

  I charged down the stairs. Knives thunked into the wall at the bottom of the stairs, missing me by inches. I reached the bottom of the stairs, rounded the corner and found myself in what looked like a darkened family room.

  Gus yelled something upstairs but I couldn’t make it out.

  I ran to the patio door, fumbled at the latch in the darkness, flung open the door and stumbled across the cement and onto the grass. I hated fleeing, but I had to get outside where there were plants for me to use.

  Rhododendrons grew along the back of the house. I pushed a big surge of energy into them. Their branches lunged forward, some extending into the ducts in the foundation, others shattering the cracked glass of the patio door.

  Light came on in the den. Keisha stood at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the light switch, bits of metal circling her. On the wall beside her was an old red and yellow pachinko machine. The machine exploded and dozens of metal balls hurled toward me. I crouched down, covering my head with my arms. The metal balls struck me in a dozen places. Hurt like hell but the armor I still wore from the job absorbed most of the force and protected my flesh.

  Did I say it hurt like hell? It really hurt like hell.

  Damn her. Rage tightened my jaw. I’d show Keisha real anger.

  I stood, commanded the rhododendron branches beneath the house to press skyward. Wood snapped and cracked like rifle shots.

  Keisha staggered as the house began to sway.

  Three lodge pole pines loomed behind me, their granite-like presence heavy in my mind. I reached into one with my power, pulled the roots closest to me down with a savage command. My gut twisted. Only my anger kept me going. The pine’s roar of pain almost drowned out my own thoughts. I ground my teeth, and killed the pine tree’s roots. The tree trumpeted its final agony. My head felt like I was having a stroke. I exhaled sharply. I had to focus. I wasn’t finished with the pine yet.

  Keisha had a cloud of metal shards around her, once more a spinning steel cyclone, faster and faster.

  Gus ran around the corner of the house, waving his arms.

  “Stop, Mat! Don’t do this.”

  I ignored him.

  Die, I ordered the pine, turning its sap into toxins. The tree leaned over me, a drunken giant, and fell with a slam into the house, crumpled the roof, crashing through the shattered frame and the first floor, down onto Keisha. The ceiling light went out.

  I wasn’t done with her yet.

  I reached out to the second pine towering behind me with my power, sending my essence into the tree.

  Gus’s hand tugged frantically on my arm. “Stop it, Mat, please.” He tightened his grip, hanging on as I fought to pull at the second pine, beginning to turn its sap into toxins like the first.

  “Mat, stop.”

  My face was twisted in a grimace. My lungs ached for oxygen. I took in a ragged breath, and fatigue slammed into me. I staggered, released the pine. Gus caught me before I could fall.

  The world swayed, grew dark.

  I lay on the ground. A siren blared far away. Grew closer.

  Gus helped me to my feet.

  “How long?” I asked him.

  “Only a few minutes. Someone must have called 911.

  The house was dark. The pine’s fall must have knocked out the power.

  Keisha. I ran to the house. She lay beneath the tree bole, a limb the size of an axe handle punching down through her chest.

  God damn her. She’d made me do that. I felt my stomach heave.

  Why did she have to be such a nasty bitch, and make me kill her? Gus knelt beside her. Pushed tree branches out of the way. Listened.

  He looked up at me, his face slick with sweat. “She’s breathing. Just.”

  The pine moaned faintly in my mind. Just like Keisha the tree hadn’t died yet.

  My chest felt hollow. The tree had just enough life left in it that I c
ould interact with it, and thus kill it.

  I hoped. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the tree. I felt hollow, numb.

  I urged the trees limbs around Keisha’s body to curl.

  “Get her out of there,” I gasped.

  Gus scrambled and pulled her out.

  The limb impaling her had separated at my command from the tree.

  I lifted her up in my arms, Gus took her legs and we hurried up the slope around the house to the truck. Peep’s van was gone. Coward. I swore. His courage this afternoon had been a fluke. I swore I’d kill him if we met again.

  The sirens grew closer.

  We laid Keisha in the bed of the truck. Had to get her help, somehow.

  “Stay with her, Gus,” I ordered. I got behind the wheel, turned around and slid open the dividing window between the cabin and the canopied truck bed, so I could talk with Gus while I drove.

  I started the truck, reversed into the street and drove toward Division as the fire truck and EMT screamed past heading toward the house.

  “Where are we going?” Gus asked.

  “My place.” Where else was there to go? I didn’t have anything there, but maybe Alex could help. But if I called him, I’d break my cover.

  I tasted copper. My lip was bleeding. Too bad. As I drove I kept glancing in the rearview mirror at Gus kneeling beside Keisha, but I couldn’t tell how she was doing. Pretty badly I guessed.

  I had nearly killed her. Maybe I had killed her. She’d been trying to kill me, so I fought back, and went all out.

  Because I gave in to my anger. Anger drove everything I did these days.

  I shook my head and concentrated on driving.

  “Mat, she’s dying,” Gus said as I turned onto Division.

  A police car flashed by, sirens wailing.

  “I know, I know,” I replied, my eyes fixed on the road. We stopped at the intersection with 39th, the pavement slick with rain.

  “What do we do?” Gus was panicking. Again.

  “I don’t know, Gus.”

  Keisha needed medical aid fast.