Robert Crane - Family

“Wait, what?” Scott looked up in surprise. “I thought the Directorate had six campuses in the U.S.”

“They do,” Kurt responded, sounding like he was educating this snot-nosed punk, “but ours is the training center. All the young metas we’re harboring, M-Squad, you kids – there are almost a hundred on the campus. You oughta know that. The other campuses act as feeders and locations for mostly human agents and retrievers to work out of. Once they identify a prospect, they get sent here. Unless they’re a threat,” he said. “Then it’s off to—”

“Arizona,” I finished for him. “How many metas are there in North America?”

“More than you’d think,” Kurt answered, looking at me across the darkened compartment. “We estimate no less than five hundred.”

“Is that…a lot?” Scott asked.

“Considering there were probably only five hundred or so in India and China, yes,” Kurt said with calm uncaring.

“Why is that?” Scott asked as my mind hummed along, wondering what we were about to walk into.

“If you’ve got abilities that unbalance the scales of life,” Zack said, “wouldn’t you use your advantage to put you in the most prosperous place you could? Metas come to America and western Europe in higher numbers from everywhere else in the world. Plus, with longer lifespans, they have a higher likelihood of making it here eventually.”

One of the two agents who had stood with Ariadne was rummaging in a duffel bag. He came out with an HK MP5 submachine gun and handed it to me with a smile. I nodded at him in thanks, and realized it was Jackson, the guy we’d found when my mother kidnapped Kat. He was dark haired, and had a tactical vest over a white dress shirt. He handed me a tactical vest of my own and I unstrapped myself to put it on while he gave the same to Scott, then Kurt and Zack. I checked my submachine gun to make sure a round was chambered and then made sure the safety was on. I kept it pointed down and right, toward the door, the way Parks had drilled it into my head.

“What are we looking at here?” I asked.

“Chopper went down near Prescott after a tightband mayday that went direct to us,” Zack said. “It was thin on specifics, but it could have been a conventional weapon attack or a meta,” he finished, brusque.

“So we have no idea what we’re dealing with,” I said. I slid a palm along the stock of my weapon, taking a deep breath and smelling the gun oil and the other confined scents of the helicopter; Scott’s cologne was overpowering as always, as though he had an Abercrombie and Fitch store hidden under his clothes. Zack had toned his down since we had started dating months ago, for which I was still thankful. Kurt, as always, could have stood to go the opposite direction, but I suspected that they had gotten him released from the Medical unit solely for this action. The Directorate’s cupboard of resources for a rescue was near-empty if they were sending two newly recovered agents and a suspected traitor on this mission.

The helicopter flew smoothly through the night, the tension inside giving way to an uneasy silence. I looked over at Zack, caught him looking back at me over Jackson, who had taken the seat to my left, and we broke eye contact. Well, I broke eye contact. I wasn’t sure what I could say to him other than that I was sorry, and that seemed inadequate given what I had done.

We crossed a river as I looked out the window and saw the half-moon reflected on the water, broken up by the waves running across the surface. We began to descend and I caught sight of cliffs rising out of the water below, hilly terrain on the opposite bank that looked nothing like the smooth fields and woods that surrounded the Directorate. Trees stood out on the edge of the embankments, rough shapes in the dark, shadowed boughs reaching up for us as the pilot took us down a little at a time.

We continued about five minutes past the river to a site where flames were visible in a clearing below us. The helicopter circled, bringing us around for another look before the pilot began a steep descent toward the clearing.

“How many helicopters does the Directorate have, anyway?” Scott asked as we approached the ground, crosswinds causing the whole chopper to buck. I felt the press of my restraints and the chop the closer we got to the ground. Jackson got up and stepped past me, clinging to handles mounted on the ceiling as he slid open the door. I felt one of the wheels touch the ground and Jackson was out, on the ground, sweeping ahead with his weapon. Kurt followed, next out of the chopper while Scott, Zack and the other agent went out the other door.

I unfastened my restraints, realizing I was behind, and stepped off the side of the chopper, nearly wiping out; it was higher off the ground than I thought it would be. I recovered and landed as nimbly as I could given the circumstances, and was on my feet a second later. Helicopter wreckage surrounded us, and trees were visible in all directions, rising up on the sloped ground. We stood in a hilly clearing, underbrush and smaller trees dotting the rocky landscape. The chopper’s landing lights were active but not a lot of help for distance vision. A couple small fires remained on the outline of Reed’s crashed chopper, but they were dying down.

The area was calm save for the rushing wind around us. My gun was up, the safety off, and I minded my footing as I followed along behind Kurt and Jackson as we wended our way toward the front of the helicopter. A spotlight turned on, giving us a better view of the crash site, casting illumination over the wreckage of the downed helo and forcing me to squint my eyes while they adjusted to the brightness of the spotlight.

The chopper was the older Huey model, smaller than the Black Hawk we had arrived in. The tail was snapped off, the broken remainder a segment only a couple feet long that was sticking into the air at a forty-five degree angle from the fuselage. The nose was buried, caught in rocks; from where I stood I could look through the door on one side and out the other onto the ground behind it. No bodies were visible in the passenger compartment, the light playing off the dull gray paint job.

“What the hell happened here?” I heard Scott say in my earpiece. I snugged the butt of the gun against my shoulder, felt it push, like the touch of an old friend. It was comforting in the dark. I felt a chill unrelated to temperature; something about being in the woods after midnight, holding a gun, made me tense. I was waiting for something to happen, and I didn’t know what. Also, my last experience in the woods hadn’t gone so well, and that was in the middle of the day. Night was worse.

“Gonna guess the tail rotor went out,” Kurt said, his head swiveling around. “Looks like they spun in.”

“What are you, a crash expert?” Scott said, looking in disbelief at the wreckage. “How do you know that?”

“He’s right, sir,” Jackson said to Scott, more deference in his voice than I would have bothered with. “Looks like they skidded sideways into where it’s lodged.”

“What does that tell us?” I asked. “If the tail rotor went out, we’re not betting it was a mechanical failure, are we?”

“Not unless we’re stupid,” Zack said under his breath, but his mic picked it up. He cleared his throat when he heard Kurt chuckle and realized what he’d done. “I mean, it seems unlikely.” His eyes scanned the site. “Especially since Parks and Reed are missing.”

“Looks like the pilots aren’t missing…” Scott said, craning his neck to look in the cockpit. “Urk. I take that back; they’re missing…some things…”

“Like a head,” Zack said, causing me to keep my distance from the wreck. I didn’t even bother to make the excuse that I was watching the perimeter; if they’d asked, I would have told them flat out I didn’t need to see any more dead bodies for a good long time. “And a neck in the co-pilot’s case.”