Empowered: Traitor (The Empowered Series Book 2) Read online

  “The rest of us need to get inside, now,” I told the others.

  But the big doors had no way to be opened. There were no handles. No locks. Maybe they were opened remotely. I took the electronic lock pick off my belt. It looked like an electric toothbrush. I thumbed it on. The thing was magic as far as I was concerned, but science wasn’t my thing. What mattered was it could open keycard-controlled doors, keypad-controlled ones, remotely-operated doors, you name it.

  “It isn’t going to work,” Keisha said.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  The lock pick had a simple green light for unlock, red for still locked. I waved it over the nearest door, trying to detect an electronic lock. The indicators stayed dark.

  “Step aside.” Keisha made a show of pushing past me. She ran her hands over the door. It looked like your run-of-the-mill warehouse door, without any handles. Guess it wouldn’t have been a secure warehouse if it had easy access. Keisha should be able to get through it easy. She closed her eyes, still running her hands over it. She paused, tapped the door. Slid her palms slowly down, her fingers fluttering against the surface.

  “Open it, not make love to it,” I said.

  She scowled. “Funny.”

  “Then what’s the deal?”

  Keisha opened her eyes. “Those doors aren’t metal.”

  “Aren’t metal?” That didn’t make any kind of sense. “Then what are they made of?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not metal, so I can’t do the can opener thing.”

  “Let’s try the employee entrance.” At least I figured that’s what it was. I ran along the building to the normal-looking door. There was a keypad next to the entrance.

  No surprise there. Of course it would be locked.

  Keisha touched the door like she was reaching for a pan on a hot stove, real carefully. Then she stroked the door and smiled. “Metal. This I can work with.”

  She stretched out her fingers, and closed her eyes, concentrating. “Titanium,” she said, sounding surprised. The metal began to glow. Steam rose from the door.

  Titanium wasn’t cheap. Someone really wanted this place secured.

  More steam rose. Sweat beaded on Keisha’s forehead. “That’s twice in an hour I’ve had to bust my butt using my power,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “You love it,” I said.

  Eyes still closed, she stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth, in my direction.

  The door finally came apart. Strips of metal floated past Keisha, dropped to the pavement, clinking as they hit the asphalt.

  A living smell rushed out of the warehouse, something like growing plant life, but with something else in it too, something I didn’t have words for, but that made me sick to my stomach.

  “God damn!” Keisha swore. She and the others looked like they wanted to puke.

  Funny, but we’d been given filtration masks. Maybe we should use them. I slapped mine on.

  I waved my hands at the rest of the team. “Don’t throw up, put on your masks.”

  Coldie retched, then pulled hers on, as did the others.

  I clenched my jaw and stepped through the door. It wasn’t what I expected. It was like walking into a hangar. The space inside was huge. In the middle, what looked like cradles, black cradles were bathed in a sickening puke-green light.

  I went to the nearest cradle and looked inside. There was a tangle of cables attached to pod-things, that looked like avocados only smooth.

  I opened my hand over the pod-things, and reached out with my power.

  A thrumming in my mind like the kind I’d get from a field of berries, but with no emotion in it, no joy, or worry. Plant-like but not plants. I stretched my fingers until I almost brushed one of the pod’s. The air tingled with static electricity. These pods must be the “experimental batteries” Ashula had told me about when she handed me this job.

  “Are they alive?” I heard Keisha ask.

  “Sort of. Not really.” There was life of a kind inside of some sort of plastic, with chemical blood moving. Alien life, more walls of glass, pressing at my mind. The room began to spin around me, and I pulled my power back in, took a deep breath.

  My face hardened. “Let’s grab what we’re supposed to grab and get the hell out of here.” I stumbled over a cable on the floor. Couldn’t see worth shit in this place.

  “If only we had better lighting.”

  Overhead lights flickered on, and the room was suddenly bathed in blinding white light. Damn. I rubbed my eyes.

  I blinked and the room came back into focus.

  Simon stood next to a light panel. “It turns out that we do.”

  “You could have given us some warning. And weren’t you supposed to be guarding the guard shack?”

  “It was empty.”

  “What about the security cameras?”

  “I discovered an amazing piece of technology there,” he said, straight-faced. “An off switch.”

  “Ha-ha,” Keisha said. “For a limey, you are hilarious.”

  He ignored her

  Hundreds of cradles filled the warehouse. Cables snaked from the cradles across the floor to a crazy concrete pillbox-like structure in the center of the huge space.

  Simon walked over to me, while Coldie craned her neck to look around the warehouse, her eyes wide.

  Keisha snickered. “You’re gonna sprain your neck,” she said, and laughed.

  Coldie frowned. “You act all tough, but you’re freaking out inside,” she said. Her eyes were lit with her usual pissy fire. She had to be feeling better. Which meant we were stuck with Miss Bitchy. Great. Couldn’t win for losing.

  “You know what that is?” Simon pointed at the blocky pillbox-like structure.

  The cables all snaked into ports on the side of the little building. “Must be a power plant, but it’s not big enough.”

  “My guess is that is a mini-nuclear reactor, or even a tokamak fusion reactor.”

  “Here?”

  Simon tilted his head. “I am surprised you know what that is.”

  “Funny. I was in Special Corrections, remember?”

  There was a fusion reactor that powered the force field at Special Corrections in San Diego. Thanks to that I spent my five years in prison with the sky all distorted. But here, in the back of beyond? “Those things are freaking expensive.”

  Simon didn’t answer.

  I glanced at my wrist communicator. The South Americans should be nearly done at the factory. Why hadn’t they sent a message already? They were supposed to comm us when they reached their target.

  I looked at my team. “Check your wrist comms—anyone get a message from the other cell?”

  Head shakes all around.

  Shit.

  “Perhaps this building is blocking the signal,” Simon said.

  Of course. “Look for a way to haul these charging cradle things out. There’s like a million of them.”

  “I’m guessing under a thousand,” Simon said.

  I laughed.

  He smiled out of one corner of his mouth. He didn’t smile often.

  “That’s still a ton,” I said.

  “I think you mean a lot.”

  We needed the truck that was supposedly parked nearby. The briefing said there was a truck, but we hadn’t seen one when we arrived. We’d grab as many of the charging cradles as we could.

  I pointed at Simon. “Go see if you can’t find that truck while I check for messages.” I looked at Keisha and Coldie. “Go find a cart, or a hand truck or even a big bag.”

  Keisha sighed. “I always get to fetch and carry.” She headed outside.

  Coldie sniffed but followed Keisha. Even princesses would need to get their hands dirty here.

  Simon and me went outside. He headed down the front of the building. There was what looked like a garage maybe two hundred yards away, half-hidden by trees.

  I didn’t have to order Simon; he was already jogging toward the garage.<
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  I lifted my wrist, pressed the sync button on the comm. Waited.

  No messages. What the hell? The South Americans had been cocky and sure of themselves. They still went by Empowered names down here. Their cell leader had called herself the Red Witch, probably because she was a flame warden. Go figure. She mocked Keisha because Keisha used to call herself the Steel Witch.

  “Witches and steel don’t mix,” Red Witch had said. Then she’d laughed. I had to hold Keisha back from slugging her.

  I wasn’t supposed to call them, because it might give away our location. But now that they were overdue to comm us? Screw that. Besides, the cameras would have seen us, even if only for a moment.

  “Azul, this is Indigo.” Stupid code names.

  No response.

  I pressed the emergency call. “Azule, Indigo here. What’s your status?” I’d gotten a lecture from the Scourge tech Empowered back in L.A. before we took our private plane. Skyler was his name. Skyler had run me through using the call band, and how to say stuff like checking for status. At least I didn’t have to say “over.”

  Received flashed on my wrist comm’s screen. That only told me a wrist comm had received my message, not that it had been read. Annoying.

  Simon had opened the garage door. There was a truck inside, white, with high sides. A typical panel truck.

  “Azule, please respond.”

  The comm’s display flashed reply in blue.

  The Red Witch sounded in pain. “Indigo, Azule here. Under attack. Evacuate at once.”

  Shit. “Security?”

  “Si.” She shouted something in Spanish. There was a loud crackle, like a super loud version of a stunner, and a scream.

  “Are there other Empowered at your location?” My muscles tightened at the thought.

  “No!” she gasped. There was a high-pitched shriek, and someone screamed. The Red Witch’s next words ran together. “We found information. This all belongs to a company called Emerald Biologic. It is part of Ellis Corporation. Make sure the Inner Circle knows. Understood?”

  “Got it.”

  I heard flame crackling.

  “Pull out!” she shouted, and then the comm ended.

  Red Witch was a flame warden—she could create and throw fire. Would take a lot to beat her by herself, and she had three other Empowereds, including a speedster.

  There weren’t supposed to be any Empowereds here. No sanctioned ones for sure. But something was creaming them. I went cold. Maybe more of those killer tree-things.

  Red Witch was in charge. My cell was junior to hers, so technically we had to follow her orders.

  Funny thing about being Empowered, even sanctioned stuck-ups like the Hero Council: you wanted to do your own thing. That was a big reason why normals were scared of us—yeah, our powers were the main thing, but our powers made us want to do whatever we wanted to do, if that makes any sense.

  So, yeah, following orders wasn’t our strong suit. But the Scourge had way more discipline than rogue gangs. The Inner Circle ran things tight.

  Emerald Biologic. Ellis Corporation. I memorized those names.

  The factory wasn’t far from here, like maybe two miles, so we needed to get away fast, especially if there were sanctioned Empowered there.

  The panel truck roared up beside me, stopped, and Simon hopped down.

  “Good timing,” I said. “We have to go, now. The South Americans are getting their asses handed to them. Red Witch ordered us to evacuate pronto.”

  Simon was always cool and collected, mister professional. But he hesitated when I told him the news. “She didn’t say what was attacking them, other than it included security?”

  I shook my head. “I heard a weapon. It sounded like a big-ass version of a stunner. Then a scream.”

  But you didn’t scream when you were stunned, you just dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  Simon glanced at the warehouse and those big, sealed doors. “Unless we can figure out how to unlock those, we will need to use the front door.”

  “You’ve got two minutes.” I ran through the people door back inside the warehouse.

  Keisha and Coldie had found a cart, a big metal thing with racks. Looked like you plugged the power pods into it. I didn’t know much about tech, but that seemed like a good guess.

  Simon was fiddling with a display panel on a stand, his fingers dancing across the screen. He swore under his breath. That was twice in just a couple of minutes. Before this job I’d never heard Simon swear, no matter how much shit we got into, which was often. The life of rogue Empowereds was usually neck deep in crap. But Simon was always cool.

  Something flashed blue on the display panel. The wall in front of him opened like an eyelid, wide enough to drive a truck through. Even though I’d pulled my power’s sense back inside me, walled off in my mind, I felt a ripple of something plant-like when the wall opened. Crap. Was the entire building made of this stuff?

  The sliding doors on the outside must have been just for appearances. This place was getting crazier by the second.

  Keep it together, Mat, I told myself. It would have helped if Ashula had bothered to mention that the building was living. We were gonna have words when I got back.

  I turned and gestured at the others. “No time for screwing around. We gotta go, now.”

  “Hey, we were just waiting for you to tell us what the fuck to do, boss.” Keisha spat the words out.

  Never apologize, but I had fucked up by not giving them any details at all. “The other cell is under attack. Red Witch wants us out of here. At once.” Coldie and Keisha both looked like I’d just thrown ice water in their faces. “So we grab what we can take in five minutes,” I said.

  Simon backed the truck into the warehouse.

  I helped push the cart over to the nearest cradle, reached inside, and touched one of the power pods, feeling a very slight charge on the tips of my fingers. A skinny cable was attached like an umbilical cord to the pod. I picked up the pod and pulled on the cord. It wouldn’t budge.

  I yanked hard on it, turning my face away in case the thing exploded.

  Nothing.

  “Damn that thing’s on tight,” Keisha said.

  “No shit.” I held up the pod, the cable trailing beneath it and waved the pod at Simon. “I can’t pull the cable off.” Our time was running out. I still couldn’t figure how Lucalla’s cell got whacked by security. They had a speedster, a flyer, a fire warden, and, a peeper. And they were packing stunners and a jammer—there had only been one to hand out, so they got it.

  None of that mattered right now, so I stopped thinking about it and focused on our little problem.

  Simon ran over, took the power pod and tried pulling the cable off. He twisted it, tried again, and then did something fast with it, his hands almost a blur. Nothing.

  “There must be a signal, probably chemical.” He closed his eyes. Simon was our cell’s techie, he took it personally when he missed something. “Those cables aren’t to charge the pods.” He opened his eyes, and ran a finger up the cable to the pod. “It’s a chemical lock.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but I’d take his word for it.

  “Okay, so how do we unlock it?”

  “Could be the signal is set remotely.”

  “We have to take at least some of these battery pod things,” I said.

  Simon looked around, gaze scouring the room. “We should try to find where the cables join.”

  The cables all ran into a big fire hydrant-like thing in the center of the room. A pipe then ran from the hub to the pill-box.

  We sprinted over to the hub, but there wasn’t any control panel on it.

  “Damn,” Simon said, voice low.

  “What?” I asked him.

  He looked at me, his face serious. “An idea just occurred to me, but you won’t like it.”

  “Not when you put it like that, but tell me anyway.”

  “Those things are some sort of artificial plant life, rig
ht?”

  I nodded, slowly. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Then see if you can merge with what is inside the cable, and pull it back. Send the signal.”

  “You’re nuts. I wasn’t able to back in the field with those crazy killer tree-things.”

  “Maybe it will go easier with these not-killer battery pods.”

  “Funny.”

  “It’s either that or leave, unless you want to give me an hour to see if I can get into the reactor room there and find out if there’s a control computer or something.”

  God, I hate it when someone is right about something that’s going to hurt like hell. Fine.

  I yanked the cable out of his hand, held it tight. I closed my eyes, and pushed my sense into the cable. It felt like there was a trickle of ice inside the cable. Holding the cable was like holding something that was almost a vine. It echoed the feel of the real thing, but it wasn’t. It was so cold.

  Cold.

  That was it.

  I pushed myself into the ice trickle. I could see the fluid now. Had to make it warm. The ice trickle must keep the thing cool enough, along with being locked.

  But I couldn’t make the fluid move any faster. I could barely grasp it with my power. The living bits were scattered throughout the unliving bits, if that makes any sense. My eyes widened. Suddenly I could feel the life inside the unlife or whatever it was. There was plant stuff in there. And in the pod.

  That was the key.

  I put the pod back in its cradle, and ran to the “hub”, put my hands on it. Yes. Alive. It hummed in my mind like a machine, but inside that hum I felt the living bits of plant. There was more of it here. Maybe this was different than those killer trees. I didn’t know.

  My teeth chattered. The hub was so freaking cold. I reached into the living particles swirling among the unliving ones and urged them to move faster, to pull from the fluid what they needed, which included C02. That was what made it so cold.

  That made it move faster. Now I could push my power through the fluid to all the pods connected to the hub. But there were too many pods.

  Time was running out. I could barely feel my hands. Freaking ice cold wasn’t going to stop me. I pushed my power through one set of cables to the cradle where the rest of my team was. I pulled the living bits back, felt the cables detach from the pods.