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

  Twenty feet from the door I began to feel the redwoods. At first it felt like a tremor, but as we stepped closer, the tremor became a rumble and that, in turn, became a deep throated wordless chorus, a song to the sun and air, pulling me out of myself.

  “Mat!” Keisha hissed. “What are you doing?”

  Mutter and April looked back at me from the entrance. Mutter frowned. April wore her helmet, so her face was hidden.

  The low, rumbling song of the redwoods kept pulling at me. My awareness soared up to the crown of the nearest tree. All around me life sang.

  “Agent!” I heard Mutter say. I blinked. I was standing still. People were starting to stare.

  “Mat!” Keisha doubled down on Mutter’s insistence.

  “I’m okay,” I hissed back at her. We marched at the double to reach Mutter and April.

  “There was a problem with my lens array, but the system reset,” I said to Keisha in a loud voice.

  Mutter didn’t miss a beat. “Very good, agent. We need to have you on top of your game. That means using all the tools at your disposal.”

  Yeah, I caught his emphasis.

  He pivoted smartly and placed his palm against a handprint pad. He’d mentioned those in the briefing, but I’d never seen one before, not even in Special Corrections. More new tech.

  Drone cameras floated over to watch us.

  The door chimed, opened with a swishing sound and sealed behind us. We had to walk between banks of scanning equipment and stop.

  Seemed like we had to wait forever. The trees pulled at me again and I had to force myself to resist them.

  Keisha’s left hand tapped against her leg. Peep studied his hands. Wouldn’t do for him to try his power on someone inside now, and then miss a cue to get moving. That would be a dead giveaway. Mutter was talking to April in a low voice. She listened and nodded at his words. Quite the act those two had going.

  The door chimed, and slid open. The air inside felt like it did after a rainstorm. My spirits lifted and my feet seemed lighter as we walked into the dragon’s den.

  Mutter went to the nearest security station, and presented his badge.

  The Support operative regarded Mutter cooly.

  “Sir, I need an admittance code.”

  “Of course,” Mutter said smoothly. He handed over a data chip. The agent inserted it into a reader.

  The agent’s eyes narrowed with the look of a man who was suddenly not seeing what he’s supposed to see. “That’s odd,” he said. “Hey, Phelps, can you come over here?” Another agent came over, her face all business.

  “What is it, Felix?” the other agent asked.

  “I don’t know, the security systems suddenly went offline.” He looked confused.

  Alarms suddenly shrieked. Keisha, Peep and I jumped at the sound, looked frantically around. Agents began drawing weapons, looking around for whatever had tripped the alarm. The red lights blinked on over the airlock-like entrance.

  A robotic sounding voice boomed over the intercom. “Building is in lockdown mode, repeat, building is in lockdown mode.” Great, we were locked inside.

  Mutter raised his hand to his mouth. Agent Felix looked confused. Agent Felix and his partner reached for their stunners.

  Mutter was Mister Cool as chaos erupted around him.

  He pinched his fingertips around his mouth, sucked in air. Felix clutched his throat, eyes wide, flailed his arms and dropped his stunner. Mutter’s strangle move.

  The other agent drew her stunner.

  “Not so fast,” April said mildly, as if she were ordering coffee. Flame exploded from her hands and engulfed the other woman, who screamed in agony. The stink of charring flesh and burnt blood clogged the air. I wanted to vomit but somehow managed to not. Keisha’s face went hard, while Peep was looking away.

  More agents rushed toward us.

  Mutter chopped the air. There was an ear shattering boom and Support agents rushing us went flying backwards like bowling pins to crash into the far wall.

  I heard a humming sound and dropped to the floor. Stunners. Flames roared past me, followed by more screams. I couldn’t look. The firing stopped.

  Mutter reached down, and flipped a switch on the console.

  “Interior door override initiated,” the robotic voice boomed.

  Elevator doors opened in the central “stack” in front of us.

  “Move!” Mutter’s voice was finally urgent.

  Keisha stood frozen. I grabbed her arm. “Come on!”

  She shook herself and broke into a run.

  A flash of movement at the edge of my vision. I looked up. A thousand feet overhead and to the east, the blimp pivoted to face in our direction. Two figures appeared and dove toward us.

  We reached the elevators.

  The doors closed as something armored slammed into the Clearplex windows. The building shuddered. Incredibly the glass flexed but didn’t shatter.

  Mutter laughed as the elevator doors closed. “Blocked by their own defenses.”

  “We’re screwed!” Keisha was wild-eyed. “They’ve got us trapped. And all for what?”

  The elevator began descending. Peep looked nearly as panicked as Keisha did, while April pulled off her helmet, smirking. Damn Mutter. He had indeed trapped us, the nut-job. Rage filled me.

  “All going according to plan,” Mutter said. “Calm down.” He glanced at me. “Your anger is a waste of energy, Mathilda.”

  Screw him. At least I wasn’t panicking.

  Five floors down. We passed the first sub-basement.

  “Building defenses under assault,” the Intercom announced.

  “Why is the building announcing we are under attack?” Peep asked.

  “Because I ordered it to.” Mutter’s confidence was unbelievable. Was he that crazy? Or more stupid than I realized? He wore that smug, self-satisfied smirk. So sure of himself. So in control.

  Of course. Bastard. He wanted them to come after us. It was another part of his plan, another part he had kept from us because he was a control freak and a sadistic sociopath.

  The elevator stopped at the third basement level.

  “We need to take the stairs down from here on,” Mutter said. “Keisha, get ready.”

  She shook herself. “What?”

  “We will need you to cut through the barrier doors.

  “Shit.”

  “That’s all you talk about,” April said, and smirked again.

  I wanted to smash that smug smirk off her face.

  “Half the world is coming down on us,” I said. “And all you can do is smirk.”

  “Don’t you start,” April snapped. “It’s enough we’ve got your pal here panicked.”

  My face flushed. I turned to Mutter. “You wanted us trapped, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t flinch in the face of my anger. “Everything is going according to plan.”

  The elevator shuddered.

  The doors opened to a long hallway, all metal, with oval doorways like hatches in an old warship but without the wheel-style door cranks.

  Mutter blew a long stream of air into the hallway. It exploded into a gust of wind.

  “Invisible knock out gas,” Mutter said. “I always enjoy blowing it away. Literally.” His laugh ended in a high pitched giggle. April smirked at him.

  He led us out of the elevator. He behaved as if he was just out jogging or something, rather than breaking into the heart of a high security complex.

  He pointed at the far door. “Remove that obstacle.”

  Keisha raised her arms and walked toward the door. We followed slowly behind her. The door began to come apart like a puzzle, piece by piece, steam billowing.

  Holes began appearing in the door. Beyond was a Support detail in body armor.

  Keisha slammed her hand forward. Metal shards shot into body armor, ripping holes in the armor but not penetrating. They had brought up their guns, some kind of automatic rifle, when April raised her hands. Flame blasted the corridor and
the armored agents screamed.

  “Team work,” Mutter said. “It makes a difference.”

  We passed the charred bodies; the stench of burnt flesh filled the air. My stomach lurched. How many people would die today? All because of one crazy man. I glared at Mutter’s back. He could care less about lives.

  April staggered. Maybe throwing all that fire around had worn out Miss Co-Psycho.

  Keisha was stumbling as we got to the stairway. Exhausted.

  I slipped an arm under hers, helped her along. Mutter was going to use us all up. We’d have nothing left when First Team came down on us, which wouldn’t be long now. The whole thing was crazy beyond belief.

  “Touching,” Mutter said, noticing my arm under Keisha. “Not to worry, everyone will be rejuvenated when we reach the bottom level.”

  Really? Yet another secret he was holding close to his chest. I didn’t think I could hate him any more than I already did, but he had a knack for making me hate him.

  The building shuddered. First Team must be battering its way in.

  Mutter turned to Peep. “This is as far as you go,” he said.

  Peep’s face paled. “What do you mean?”

  “I need you on overwatch at this point, Lyle.”

  “What good will that do? I’ll see the First Team seeing me, if I’m lucky.”

  Peep’s power—being able to look through the eyes of another, came in handy when the job was theft, or spying, but defending? It didn’t make sense. Peep didn’t think so, either.

  “No way,” he said. Mutter raised a hand, pinched his fingers together and muttered a word under his breath. Peep clutched his throat, fighting to breathe.

  Mutter released him and he doubled over.

  “You’ll do as I direct,” Mutter said.

  Mutter wanted him out of the way. Peep once said he could see out of others eyes, and others could see out if his, if they had the same “Peep power.” Just like my dead friend Tanya. Someone else in the Scourge might possess the same ability, and be able to see what Mutter was up to.

  Or it was because Mutter just wanted him out of the way, and it was easier to let Support deal with him than kill him. To a sadist like Mutter, it might be interesting because it was different than just choking him to death. Who knew, maybe Peep would get in a lucky shot or two before they took him down.

  We left Peep looking forlorn at the top of the stairs, cradling a stun rifle Mutter had given him from one of the bodies, with another rifle propped up against the wall.

  No doubt, if he had the chance, Mutter would take care of Keisha and me in nasty fashion when the time came. If we gave him that chance.

  Keisha opened the steel door at the bottom of the stairs. The air felt electric, charged with a waterfall scent. Everything was lit in a shimmering golden light.

  I glanced up as we entered the chamber. The golden light came from crystalline lights set in a rock ceiling three stories up, and it washed over us like soft sunlight. The basement maps were wrong—the final three floors were actually just one, a huge vaulted cavern. Moss hung from the gigantic redwood trunks that rose through holes in the ceiling.

  Ash trees lined the room to our left, and off to our right were low firs. In the center was a marsh. Cattails swayed, dragonflies flitted from lily pad to lily pad. The earth surrounding the pond was covered in moss.

  It was all so very alive.

  Every nerve in my body trembled. It was like being drunk and high at the same time. The wet smell of life filled me.

  Mutter leaned into my field of view.

  “Drunk on the life here, aren’t you, Mathilda?” He pointed at the low island in the center of the marsh. A shore pine grew from the soil there, leaning to the left. “That’s where our prize lies.”

  Yeah, I remembered it from his crazy briefing. I shook off the groggy feeling. “Under that tree there, right?”

  “Yes. Hidden at the heart of this bio chamber.”

  Why would Van Cleeve bury secret tech beneath a shore pine in a hidden bio chamber? Hiding it inside of a Support facility

  I got to my feet. Shook my head, trying to clear it.

  Our comms came on.

  “First team is here,” Peep said.

  No kidding. I was surprised it had taken them this long. I actually felt sorry for Creepy Peep. Left to be taken out just because Mutter didn’t want any chance that the Scourge could spy on him, and he couldn't be bothered to kill the poor bastard himself.

  Mutter looked annoyed. “Thank you for the update, Lyle.”

  Peep must have left the channel open. His stunner buzzed in three short bursts, then went continuous.

  Mutter made a chopping motion. “Turn your comms off,” he ordered. He turned to Keisha.

  She leaned against the moss covered wall, taking deep breaths.

  “Keisha, we need you to create a steel wall in the stairwell.”

  She glanced at me, a question in her eyes. I nodded. She went through the open door.

  “That won’t hold them long,” I said.

  Mutter laughed. “It won’t have to.” He pointed at the shore pine. “I need you to topple that tree. Our prize is directly beneath it.”

  “Kill it?”

  “Yes.”

  This was it. I closed my eyes, extending my sense into the pine. It hummed in my mind, content, a quiet joy in the vibration of its wordless song. I reached deep inside, down into its roots.

  “Do it!” Mutter whispered in my ear. “Now.”

  Killing a tree. The bastard. It wasn’t that easy.

  Hot anger erupted from deep within me. My arms shook.

  “Excellent,” Mutter crowed. “This is what you need.”

  Putting what I did into words was damn hard. I flushed the pine with a blight, fed by the energy of this place, mold and rot from the roots on up. Steam rose from the tree. It shrieked in my mind, an iron fist of pain that squeezed at me. I cried out.

  Mutter clapped in admiration, smiling. He was loving this.

  A branch splintered and fell into the pond with a splash. The tree leaned after it. Earth erupted and the pine toppled, sending a wave of water that lapped against our feet. The tree bobbed in the water.

  Pain hammered my skull.

  My vision blurred, went red. Through my blurry vision I glimpsed a metal hatch inside the fresh crater torn up by the tree’s death.

  “How…how are you going to reach that?”

  Mutter pulled a folded rubber square from his coat, tugged at it. Air hissed and a rubber raft inflated. “Easily,” he said.

  He and April climbed into the raft. He pushed off.

  April stood, took off her coat and held it up, like a sail. Mutter gestured, and wind blew the raft across the pond to the little island.

  Keisha staggered from the stairway, slammed the door.

  “Is it sealed?” I yelled?

  “Yeah.” She looked around, stupidly.

  “Come on!” I called and waved at her to get moving. Now. It was now or never.

  She ran toward me, fell. Didn’t get up. She must have worn herself to the bone sealing the stairway. I ran to her, helped her up. She shook herself.

  “Time?” she asked.

  Mutter already had the hatch open. He pulled out a metallic harness thing attached to a pair of silver gauntlets. In the center of the harness was a silver disk. He slipped the harness on, then pulled the gauntlets over his hands.

  I wildly looked around for a plant, anything. The tree was in pieces, and my head still hurt like hell.

  A boom from the stair.

  I grabbed Keisha and we sprinted around the pond to the far side.

  Thunder boomed on the island. A shock wave slammed Keisha and me off our feet. Mutter rose up into the air, arms out, a joyful smile on his face.

  April kneeling, tugged on a second harness and gauntlets, shuddering as she did.

  An armored figure appeared in the doorway, silver and gold. Dynamo.

  He grabbed the door. The m
etal screamed as he ripped the door free. He flung it at Mutter, who slammed it away with a blast of air.

  “You cannot touch me!” Mutter shouted.

  April flexed her hands, flung a geyser of white-hot flame at Dynamo. Suit rockets blazing, Dynamo launched himself into the air. The superheated flame melted the wall behind where he had been.

  “We are in the shit now, Mat,” Keisha whispered.

  With the Amplifiers, Mutter and April would be invincible.

  April threw a ball of flame at Dynamo as Mutter hit him with a hurricane blast. Dynamo was hurled into the wall, high up. The fireball exploded against him. Silver and gold turned orange in the flame. He fell.

  The ceiling rumbled, opened in the center, dilating in a whorl of metal. A blue figure flew like a spear through the opening, grabbing Mutter. They fought in the air.

  Mutter knocked his opponent away and into the water. April jetted white-hot fire into the water. The pond exploded into steam, forcing Keisha and I against the wall.

  In the center of the pond the Empowered stood, uniform scalded away, his skin gone, showing muscles like one of those visible man models. He crumpled to the ground, lidless eyes staring through me. Dead.

  .

  The floors above dilated open until there was a column of space up to the ground level.

  The air rushed around us, a mad cyclone of wind. In the center, Mutter rose toward the upper levels. This is what he’d wanted all along. The air itself would be his weapon against the world.

  The tornado pulled ash trees from the earth, clods of dirt flying from the dangling roots.

  I held Keisha. We crouched in the corner, leaves whipping past us.

  The steam from the flash-fired pond disappeared, leaving a slick moat around the island.

  I pressed my lips against Keisha’s ear, in order to be heard over the unholy shriek of the cyclone Mutter had set spinning.

  “We have to get to April and take the Amplifier!”

  Keisha nodded. She seemed stronger now.

  “Can you help me?” I shouted over the roar of the wind.

  “Damn straight,” She shouted back.

  “For Gus,” I said

  “For Gus!” she shouted back.

  Ash trees flew up into the building, their trunks spinning like children’s toy tops.