Outlaw Page 7

  I gagged. The cultists still standing bent over and hurled.

  “Damn,” Keisha said. She stepped, back, holding her nose, face puckering. “That’s one foul stink.”

  Renee’s face puckered up, too. She covered her mouth, squeezed her eyes shut.

  I winced in sympathy, but kept the moss spewing the stink.

  She vomited onto the floor. “Please, stop,” she groaned. “I’ll tell you where your sister is.”

  “Damn it, you can’t,” the big guy groaned from the floor, Keisha’s chains squeezing him.

  “This fight is over,” Renee groaned, and then bent over and vomited again.

  My stomach clenched and I almost retched. Frantically ordered the moss to stop spewing the stink and it obeyed. My arms trembled. It felt like it had the two times I’d used the Amplifier. My muscles jerked on their own, like lightning shot through me.

  “All right, show us,” I gritted through clenched teeth. “And no tricks this time.” I wiped my sweating forehead.

  Renee nodded. She took me into a small tunnel that opened in the far side of the cave.

  I figured we’d have to traipse through miles of tunnels or go back topside. But no.

  Renee led me maybe ten yards further, to an alcove carved from the rock, pulled out an old, beat up chest, the kind with a padlock. She fished a key from a pocket, and unlocked it.

  That was easy. Too easy in my book.

  Inside were stacks of books. Rolled paper—maps. Lots of maps. The books and maps looked ancient.

  “What is this?”

  Renee knelt beside me. “Knowledge,” she said. “Ancient truths buried by those who want to keep humanity in chains.”

  “Crazy talk,” blurted Keisha behind me. I looked up at her. “Fools believe conspiracy shit.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Stuff I got fed after I became Empowered.”

  An old wound, still aching—that was pretty obvious. For an instant, regret flashed through me. Keisha never talked about herself, but I didn’t ask about her past, either. After all this, I would, finally, I promised myself.

  “Why are you keeping this stuff here?” I asked Renee. A moldy old mine was the last place I’d stash something that important.

  “Best place we had. Besides, this is a temporary place.”

  “Temporary? What are you all up to?”

  She looked at me and Keisha. Obviously thinking how much she wanted to tell us.

  “Well?” I asked.

  Renee stood straighter when she answered me. “This is about freeing humanity, so that all can potentially share in the gifts given to us.”

  “By who?” I asked

  Shouting broke out back in the cave. Sounded like someone new had arrived.

  “Renee, it’s Philip!” New guy called out. “Damn, what happened here?”

  Keisha leaned out into the side tunnel. “We did. Now, what do you want?”

  “Is Renee there?”

  Renee pushed past me and Keisha. “What is it?”

  “Support is here,” I heard Philip say.

  She stood up, her attitude suddenly sharp, decisive. “That is unfortunate,” she said.

  I frowned. “You said you were evacuating. You must have known.”

  She shook her head. “That wasn’t why we were leaving this place.”

  “But how do you know it’s Support?” I asked.

  “We have monitoring.”

  “I don’t see any security system,” Keisha said, face hardening. “You bullshitting us again?” The air began to steam.

  “We have monitors,” Renee said. “Imbued who can sense intruders.”

  “Imbued? What is that?” I asked.

  A distant thud echoed down the tunnels and then an instant later, the rock shook, and bits of the ceiling fell. The moss screeched in my head, its agony rolling over me like a wave. I fell to my knees. My kneecaps banged against the rock, but it barely registered. I twisted, pain stabbing behind my eyes.

  More thudding, and bits of rock sprinkled down from the ceiling.

  I took a deep breath, fighting to push the agony away. I could feel the rock vibrating. “That must be Support!” I shouted over a series of thundering booms.

  “They are hitting us with the heavy stuff!” Keisha shouted.

  I forced myself up. I reached out with my power deeper into the moss, calming it by pulling in water from the rock. The tunnel’s blue was tinged with red now.

  I staggered over to the nearest rock wall and pressed myself against the moss, letting it caress me, losing my pain in the contact. The moss calmed. My head cleared.

  The next breath I took was like drinking cool water, like sucking in a lung-full of air after a rainstorm.

  I blinked. It felt like time had stood still, but it must have been only a couple of minutes I’d spent centering myself.

  Swords and iron axes spun in the tunnel about thirty yards back toward the entrance, surrounded by a cloud of razorblades.

  The others looked shocked, and seemed frozen compared to my friend, who balanced on the balls of her feet, looking dangerously toward the tunnel entrance.

  “Is there a back way out of here?” I barked the question at Renee.

  She shook herself, looked at me. “Yes. It’s back up a ways, at the galleries.”

  “Well, then we’d better move.”

  “We’re dead,” one of the cultists said. They sure panicked easy. Panicking was a quick way to end up captured, or dead. Fear came with the territory, but you couldn’t respond by losing it.

  “Screw that,” I shot back. “I’m not dying here.” I sure as hell wasn’t going back to Special Corrections, either.

  Wait, I told myself. The chest. I rushed over to it, and scooped up rolled maps and books into my backpack. Then I charged out into the tunnel.

  Keisha was shaking her head. “Stupid chick,” I heard her say to herself. She raised her arms, and the chains evaporated from the guys on the ground. “Haul your asses,” she yelled.

  “We might as well surrender,” Chloe said. Maybe our last fight had beaten the fire out of her, but it seemed too early to throw the towel in. The others stood there, unsure what to do. Damn it.

  Renee waved at them. “We have to go,” she urged.

  “There’s no point,” Chloe said, panic filling her voice. “We’ll just die. Might as well surrender.”

  “Believe me, you don’t want to surrender,” I said. I gave the others a hard look. “We’re not giving up.” I slung my backpack over my right shoulder. “Okay, let’s get of here.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Keisha said. She ran toward the tunnel, the way we had come, her collection of nasty steel spinning in front of her.

  “Come on!” I yelled, for the second time in a few minutes, but this time at the idiots.

  The others stared at me.

  “You don’t want to get caught,” I said. “Trust me.”

  That did it. They finally began moving their asses.

  “I hope you are ready with your powers. We might need them.”

  “Imbued power takes time to come back,” Renee said, in a quiet voice.

  Now she tells me. “Imbued” power wasn’t exactly a superpower, I got that. They weren’t Empowereds, they were something else; something that seemed new. Still, we could use all we could get against Support. The main thing was not to be spotted. Not exactly a short order.

  I sprinted out of the cave into the tunnel. I heard sounds behind me, feet on the rock but didn’t look back.

  Keisha was twenty yards ahead of me, her collection of metal death glinting around her now. She glanced back at me. Her face promised murder to anyone who got in our way.

  But Support would have come prepared. Stunners, nullifiers, gas grenades. Automatic weapons, too. They wouldn’t fuck around. They’d be aiming to capture or kill us. Either way, they’d neutralize rogues. Us.

  My heart pounded. They still might not know Keisha and I were alive. They migh
t be here because of the cultists, but there was no way to know for sure. Not until we were captured, and maybe not even then, not that it would matter at all by then.

  I sprinted up beside Keisha. “You might want to ease up.”

  Her neck muscles were hard. “They won’t.”

  “But we don’t know where they are. Wouldn’t do to deplete your power.”

  She smiled coldly. “Mat, I could do this all day.”

  Renee caught up with us. Keisha shifted the spinning weapons until they hovered at the tunnel right where it curved off to the left.

  “Where’s the side tunnel?” I asked Renee.

  She mopped her forehead with the back of her arm. “Past your friend.”

  That sucked. We didn’t want to move closer to Support.

  “How far past?” I asked her.

  “Maybe a hundred yards.”

  Then we didn’t have a choice. “Keisha, we need to move forward,” I said.

  She nodded and strode down the tunnel, her collection of spinning death glinting in the low blue light.

  “Does the vein stuff always shine blue?” I asked Renee as we followed Keisha.

  “No. It comes and goes.” She looked at the rock as we walked, pointed out a particularly large vein with a gesture. “That one’s been here the longest. Two weeks.”

  “What is it?” I blurted out, suddenly feeling thirsty to find out. Renee wasn’t stalling or bullshitting me.

  Renee glanced at me. “Magic.”

  Magic? “So, you don’t know,” I said.

  She smiled faintly. “Faith doesn’t require knowledge.”

  That was where faith and me parted ways. I didn’t do things on faith.

  “So, it’s just like being Empowered,” I said, trying to keep her talking even though it sounded like she had no idea of the origin of the blue stuff. I sighed.

  Her eyebrows went up. Keisha continued walking ahead of us. Couldn’t be much longer now.

  “Yes. We can all possess these special gifts,” Renee said, her voice soft. “Every human has the ability to become Imbued, if not Empowered.”

  “Why do you say Imbued?”

  “Because it’s what happens when so-called ordinary people are connected to the Source. They become imbued with its energy.”

  “What do you mean that every human has the ability?”

  She looked at me patiently, like she was explaining the ways of the world to a child. “Because they do. Imbued or Empowered, they are really just degrees of the same thing.

  But it’s wasn’t the same thing at all. My power was mine, I didn’t share it with anybody else. Mine was strong, theirs seemed very short term. Related maybe, but I didn’t think it was the same thing.

  “You need a group to use your power,” I pointed out. “And you need a special place.”

  Renee hesitated, started to reply, but Keisha’s loud whisper cut her off.

  “Found the damn side passage!”

  Renee smiled. “We’ve reached it.” We joined Keisha, the others filing in behind us.

  There was old timber shoring up the place where the side passage met the main tunnel. I brushed my fingers against the timber, and the dead wood called out, a dusty muttering in my mind. Sure the stuff was dead. But I could sense impressions from dead wood. Like the time in the house in North Portland. Just flashes of the past.

  But this time was different. It was like a chasm opened up underneath me, and I toppled on the edge, ready to fall into the blackness. Only there was something in there.

  My fingers hurt. My nails had dug into my palms until I bled.

  The wood was dead, and yet something wound through it. An echo of life.

  I yanked my hand away.

  “Down the side passage,” I yelled, my shout echoing down the main tunnel.

  “What the fuck!” Keisha said in a low voice. “Why did you do that?”

  The big guy’s face scrunched up in suspicion. “You trying to give us away?”

  The energy was rushing through me again, that strange energy that surged from the soles of my feet up through my body and into my head. “Screw you,” I muttered.

  Keisha cocked her head. “You don’t look so good,” she said.

  Something zipped past me. I flattened myself against the wall. Keisha did likewise.

  The others stood there, frozen for a second. The zipping sound again, and one of them clutched his neck and slumped.

  Knockout darts. Had to be. Shit.

  Support was here.

  6

  The unconscious man sprawled on the rocky tunnel floor, head back, eyes shut.

  “Take out that corner,” I told the other two. “Use your power.”

  I was reaching inside the walls with mine, trying to find plants here to grow. We had to block this.

  Trapped in an old mine. That wasn’t how I thought I’d go out.

  The two I ordered just stood there. “Use your power,” I repeated, in a low hiss.

  The blonde shook her head. “Can’t. We need him.” The third person knelt by his companion, but didn’t try to revive him.

  This was nuts.

  We didn’t have time.

  Renee and her two companions were maybe ten feet down the side corridor, looking at Keisha and me like deer caught in headlights.

  Couldn’t let Support see us, because if there was even a chance they still believed Keisha and I were dead, we could get on with finding Ella, if we made it out of here alive. But if they spotted us that would be out the window. I had to do something.

  There were roots of trees, I could sense them, but they weren’t that close. It was like trying to connect with someone a mile away by yelling at them.

  But above us the old timbers held up the roof.

  I reached up, grasped a knot in the wood. I’m sorry, I thought. Stupid. The timber was dead. What was I apologizing for? This place kept messing with my head.

  Never done what I was about to try. First time for everything.

  I took a long, deep breath, and as I did, I pulled at the power surging around me, in the rock, welling from up within the earth.

  My eyes widened. Sharp pain stabbed me, spreading out until every fiber of me screamed. It was like a million volts of electricity shot through me. I gritted my teeth. Wake up! I commanded the wood. I pressed harder with my power. Awaken!

  The dead wood shuddered. It creaked and groaned in my head. The very rock shook.

  “What the hell was that?” Keisha looked around frantically.

  Grow. Live! The timber swelled against the rock, which cracked, sounding like gunshots.

  The cultists dragged their unconscious friend past me, just as dark-suited figures, appeared around the bend in the tunnel. They wore combat suits, with masks and night vision goggles.

  Blind them! I ordered the living vein-things in the walls. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Even with my eyes shut the blue glow from the walls flared like the sun. Now. I pushed into the timber, power rushing like a wave as the wood came to life, sending roots down to meet the tunnel floor, and the rock cracked as the roots dug into it, impossibly fast.

  A loud crack boomed from the rocky ceiling. I back-pedaled, eyes still the hell shut, stumbling. Rock crashed and thundered, cascading onto the ground. Dim! I ordered the walls. I opened my eyes, in time to see huge slabs of rock slam into the floor, blocking off the passage in a huge shower of grit.

  I staggered backwards, throwing up my arms.

  Strong hands braced my back. “Got you, Mat,” Keisha said.

  I coughed. “Can you make the metal in the rock fall melt and reform?”

  “I can do better than that—I can put up a metal barrier.”

  “No, no, don’t. I hope they still think we’re dead.” At least, I hoped Support did. Why make it any easier for them to learn otherwise?

  “Okay.” She reached out with her hands, closed her eyes. The rock hissed and popped. “I’ll try and make it look like some other kind of pow
er, heat power, worked here,” she said.

  The wood trumpeted in my mind. It was still growing, even in the middle of the rockfall.

  If it didn’t stop, Support would figure out that someone who could grow and manipulate plant life had been here. Namely, me.

  Just killing the timber wasn’t enough. I made it rot. The ancient wood screamed in my head, the sound forcing me onto my knees. The timber shored up the tunnel, and the rot spread quickly. The rock overhead began to groan.

  “You’re gonna bury us alive,” Keisha said.

  The others had already scrambled away, disappeared down the side corridor.

  “Let’s get the hell out of Dodge,” Keisha said, pulling me up and half-dragging me along. “Come on, Mat, beat feet!” She gave me a hot glare. “We’re not ending up buried alive.”

  I started running then. A muscle screamed in my thigh. I stumbled, but Keisha helped me along.

  Rumbling behind us grew until it was a booming din that drowned out everything else.

  We tramped along for what felt like hours. The side tunnel narrowed.

  “I could use a drink of water right now,” I croaked.

  Keisha squeezed my shoulder. “I could use a drink, period.”

  We kept on walking. The others had disappeared ahead of us, not slowing down. I was too exhausted to be even annoyed at them for not slowing down. Besides, I’d been the one urging them to keep going. Nice to know they’d listened.

  “No turnouts?” I mumbled. Or whatever they would be called. Nothing.

  The blue veins in the wall grew dim, then brightened again, dimmed, brightened. Finally, the light faded away. Power still surged through me. We reached the others, clustered in front of another rockfall, flashlight beams waving over the rock.

  Big dude gave me a nasty look. “Took the whole bring-the-house-down thing a bit too far, didn’t you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not something you can finesse,” I said. I was too tired to be angry with the idiot.

  An explosion boomed back the way we had come. The walls shook.