Carrie Vaughn - Dreams of the Golden Age

Sonic, eager, bounced in preparation of running. “We’ll go see—”

“No. Shark, you go see. Call me when you know something. After that, we let the traps take care of it. When— if —they get within range of Mindwall’s blocks, then we’ll finish them.”

“What is the range of Mindwall’s blocks?” Celia asked casually. Just to see if they would brag.

They didn’t. And the guy in green stayed quiet and out of sight. If all he could do was jump real high, he couldn’t really help anyway.

The waiting was the hardest part of being kidnapped. Especially when she knew something was happening and she couldn’t do a thing about it, tied to a chair. She sweated under her suit jacket and couldn’t scratch. Just fidget to get the kinks out of her muscles and wiggle her fingers and toes to keep them from falling asleep. The moment had the feeling of a chess game, about three moves before checkmate. The pieces all slipping into place and nothing left to do but regret the moves you didn’t make.

“You can stop this all right now,” Danton Majors said, stepping around to the front of her chair, leaning over her. “I’ve got the documents ready to go, all you have to do is sign, and you can walk out of here and stop this.”

His leaning over her was an obvious dominance posture that was meant to leave her cowering, cringing away from him, ducking her face to avoid him breathing on her. She let him breathe on her and never blinked.

“I don’t sign anything without having my lawyers examine it first.”

“Your lawyers don’t need to examine this.”

She clicked her tongue. “It’s always the fucking con artists who say that. Blow up the whole building around me if you want, I’m not signing.”

Majors’s phone beeped, and he answered it, stepping away from Celia. Listened for what seemed a long time. He glanced sidelong at Celia. “Right. You’ve got a look at the surveillance? Holding the ground floor was a long shot anyway … so they’re in the stairwell now … How many of them? Cops? Okay. And kids? The teenagers—how many of them?” His grin was evil. “Anna West-Mentis is there, too? And Dr. Mentis? All right, then. Just watch, and keep me updated.”

He put the phone away. “They won’t make it this far. They’ll probably be hurt in the process. Badly hurt. You can stop that.”

The nausea in her gut choked her. What were Arthur and Anna even doing, walking into a combat zone where their powers wouldn’t do any good? They should know better than that. Celia kept her smile smug, her gaze terror-free. “You’re the one with your finger on the trigger.”

“You’ve lost, Celia West.” He rounded on her, fist clenched. “You’ve lost !”

At this point, not saying anything would enrage him more than any snippy comeback. So she sat there, silent, gazing on him with as much pity as she could muster.

ANNAquickly located Teddy, sprawled out asleep on the bottom step in the emergency stairwell behind the elevators. When Dr. Mentis psychically knocked out everybody on the ground floor, he really knocked out everybody.

“He should wake up easily. Just shake him a bit,” her father said.

“Teddy, wake up, come on, we don’t have time for this.” It seemed cruel, but she grabbed his chin and shook, and was about to move on to a good solid slap when he groaned and brushed her away.

“Wassit?” he mumbled.

Lew got to his other side and the two helped him sit up.

“Ow,” he said, resting his head in his hands. “What happened?”

“Sorry about the headache,” Arthur said, though the faint smile he wore didn’t seem very apologetic. “I’ve never been able to reduce the side effects.”

Paulson’s men arrested and cleared out the hired thugs. There’d been some argument about what they could be arrested for; they hadn’t made any attacks, the building was private property so technically they couldn’t be subject to any weapons charges. Paulson decided on obstruction of justice with more charges pending and had them all arrested on principle. Mentis examined a couple of them, but all any of them seemed to know was that they’d been hired to protect the building—not by whom, and not why. So that didn’t help much. They knew there were further security measures upstairs, but again they didn’t know exactly what.

Anna tried getting Bethy on the headset, but the thing had gone dead. On a hunch, she ran back outside. “Bethy?”

“Anna? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

“The radio went dead inside the building, away from the doors. I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep in touch with you.” She wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with anyone else, either.

“So I really am freaking useless,” she muttered.

“No, you’re not,” Anna said. “Go to the hospital and stay with Grandma, she needs you. Take your cell phone, I’ll call when I can.”

“Have you found Mom yet?”

“No. But soon, I think.” The building was so well defended, Mom had to be here.

Bethy swallowed hard, and her voice trembled. “I love you, Anna.”

This was no time to be tearing up; Anna scrubbed her eyes. “I love you, too. I’ll call you soon.” She hoped she’d call her soon.

They gathered around the elevators and looked up at the ceiling, as if they had X-ray vision and could see through solid matter to better plan their next moves.

“May I suggest that we not take the elevators?” Arthur said.

They started climbing the stairs, along with a handful of Paulson’s SWAT team. They almost had an army. The stairs were concrete, and steel railings crawled upward around a tall shaft, a tower that felt simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive. The walls felt like they were closing in, but just a few floors up she could lean over the railing, spit, and watch the glob sail downward forever.

“We still don’t know where exactly in the building Celia is, do we?” Analise said. They were strung out, curving around to the third landing. Anna didn’t know how she felt about Teia and Lew’s mom tagging along. But when she thought about Typhoon tagging along—well, that was different.

“Anna,” her father said, “can you sense her or are you still blocked?”

She paused, leaned against the railing, and focused that inner, unerring compass on her mother. Celia still showed as a blank. More than absent. As an afterthought, she tried to find Eliot—and he’d vanished from her awareness as well. Farther up the building was a psychic bubble keeping her locked out. This must be driving her father bananas.

“Nothing,” she said with a sigh. “But I think we should start with the thirtieth floor. That’s where we scouted before.”

Teddy looked at her. “You scouted here already? When?”

“Over the weekend, we had to get some information—”

“What we?” Understanding dawned, and he scowled. “You went out with the Green Gizzard, didn’t you? Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped—

She glared. “Green Gizzard? What does that even mean ?”

Paulson snorted suppressed laugher. “We’ve been calling him the Weasel.”

Arthur said, “As in ‘Pop Goes the’? That’s inspired.”

Eliot was going to hate that. Anna had a feeling this was the name that was going to stick. Well, that was what he got for not coming up with his own.

Arthur said, “Captain, what are we likely to find as we move on?”

“Anything. Everything. I don’t know. Automatic firing mechanisms, explosives, trapdoors. Think of the worst the old Olympiad faced and ratchet it up a few notches? This is someone who knows your MO after all, to be blocking your power.”