Rachel Caine - Unknown

It didn’t work quite that way. Instead, the gun gave a dry click. Klein blinked and immediately tried again. Another click. The sound was joined by a brittle chatter of clicks, as every FBI agent in the room attempted to fire.

I batted away Sanders’s attempt to punch me and grabbed him by the throat, slamming him backward and down on one of the folding tables, which teetered dangerously and looked ready to collapse. Then it did collapse, in a sudden rush, metal legs splaying out unnaturally, and the table thumped down to the ground, taking Sanders with it. I followed him down, sinking into a crouch, never releasing his throat.

I let the Djinn show on my features, shine in my eyes, and I said, “I will not be controlled by the likes of you, Special Agent Adrian Sanders.” I almost purred. “There is a reason the Wardens have never bent to government control. The Wardens are beyond nations, beyond administrations, beyond the rules and boundaries of your society. They must be, to accomplish their work. They police their own, and they do not need your particular brand of oversight.” Behind me, I heard Luis take on another agent who was rushing to the rescue—possibly Agent Klein. Earth Wardens had the ability to alter gravity. This was probably news to Agent Klein, who let out a startled yelp as the area around him suddenly took on three times the normal gravity at the Earth’s surface, stopping his rush in midstride and sending him crashing heavily— very heavily—face-first to the ground. A position from which he could not, without great and sustained effort, rise.

Luis flicked a look at the other agents, still standing near their computers, weapons in hand. They exchanged a look. “Relax,” he said. “We’re not going to hurt anybody. Chill out.”

I was fairly certain, from the look on Sanders’s face, that he didn’t altogether believe that. I couldn’t really blame him. The way I felt, I couldn’t guarantee him anything on the not-hurting-anyone front. Especially him.

I leaned closer, pale hair drifting around my face like smoke, and whispered, “If you ever try to put those handcuffs on me again, Mr. Sanders, we will have this conversation again, but it won’t end so nicely.” Then I let go, stood up, and offered him a hand. My left. The metal one.

Sanders stared at my face, then the hand, and for a long moment I wasn’t sure he’d accept the implied apology. Then he took my bronze fingers and pulled himself to his feet against my strength.

“We need to work together,” I said. Behind me, Luis stepped up alongside me. “The Wardens are few right now. The Djinn are . . . largely uninvolved. But this fight is yours, too. Human children, Warden or not, are being hurt and killed. You must help us.” I held his dark eyes, and put all my sincerity into the moment. “You must. Think of your own children, and help us. ”

He’d been holding on to my hand, and I saw that he held concealed, on his other side, the power- disrupting handcuffs. With one move—no doubt a move he had practiced and performed many times—he could have those on me in seconds, possibly before Luis could interfere.

He didn’t move. After a moment, he let go of me and took a step back. The handcuffs were slipped back into a case at his belt, under his Windbreaker.

“Don’t screw me,” he said. “Because I’m willing to go on a little faith, here. But not much, and not for long. You do anything that makes me doubt you’re all in on this—”

“Oh, we’re all in,” Luis said, and winced a little as he sagged into a chair. He looked tired, and in some pain. “Jesus, how much more ‘all in’ could we be? I’ve lost my brother, my sister- in-law, my niece is somewhere out there in the hands of these assholes. We’ve had half a dozen serious attempts to kill us. You’ve hurt me, done stuff to her—and we didn’t take it out of your ass, man. So shut the hell up, okay?”

Sanders didn’t look particularly offended. “Okay,” he said. “You want to let Klein up now?”

Luis didn’t glance at the other agent, who was still straining to lift himself off of the ground against the increased pull of gravity. “Sure.” Suddenly, the agent’s arms powered him up from the dirt, and he scrambled to his feet, red-faced and chagrined. He retrieved his gun from the ground, checked it, and holstered it, cheeks still burning, eyes still angry. When he saw me watching him, he recovered his composure and tried to look indifferent to the whole turn of events.

Not very successfully.

Sanders took the chair across from Luis. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I believe you. What the hell do you want out of me? I’ve got an FBI team, sure. I’ve got all the surveillance you could want. I’ve got eyes in the sky and boots on the ground. You think this place is going to fall to some kind of frontal assault?”

I poured Luis a cup of coffee from the pot nearby, and took it to him. He drank part of it gratefully before answering. “Show us what you know.”

“You first.”

“That’s easy,” Luis said. “Damn near nothing. Whatever Cass already told you, that’s it. I wasn’t even there. She’s your only eyewitness. Your turn.”

“Follow me,” Sanders said, and led us out of the tent. I dropped back to stay next to Luis, discreetly monitoring his fitness.

He knew what I was doing, and frowned at me. “What?”

“You’re in pain.”

“I’m fine. It’s a side effect of rapid healing for me. Nothing wrong with me.” He nodded to Agent Sanders. “So you’re what, alpha dog now?”

I smiled. “Humans do tend to run in packs. Dominate the leader, and you dominate the others.”

“Cynical.”

“Useful.”

Sanders didn’t hear, because we were both murmuring very quietly. He led us down the hillside to yet another tent, this one with its entrance pulled shut. He slapped it aside and entered. As we followed, I realized that it was filled with more computers, more people, and rolling bulletin boards filled with images. Some were sharply rendered satellite images, showing the area of Rose Canyon where we were; I recognized the dark slash of the chasm first, and then the manicured park of Pearl’s encampment on the opposite side. The FBI tents were visible only as smudges, but they’d been marked in red to make them more visible.

The white, rounded building that I’d seen was like a moon set into the green, carefully empty expanse. Nothing around it—unlike Colorado, which had had barracks, buildings, even an elaborate playground for the children.

This was more . . . alien.

I scanned the photos one by one, looking at each in detail, surveying the entire expanse of the surface of the billboards. It took time. Luis finished before I did, but I doubt he saw as much.

He was tired.

“So?” Sanders asked. He folded his arms. “Insights from your side of the street?”

“It’s not like Colorado,” I said. “Not at all. That felt as if it had been built by human hands.”

“That’s because it was,” Sanders replied. “Built by the Church of the New World. Their training-slash-inspirational camp, preaching and war games all rolled into one. Thing is, the CNW wasn’t one of those apocalypse cults, originally; it was built by a bunch of hippies who wanted to do the peace and love thing. Gradually got taken over by more and more extreme elements. But even so, we never expected them to ramp up to industrial crazy. They were—” He shrugged. “Normal. As such things go.”

“Until last year,” I said. He nodded. “And when did this structure appear?” I touched the white bubble shown in the pictures.

“About eight months ago,” he said. Same in Colorado. Same in two other places we know of. Same damn structure. This one’s the largest, though. It’s about the size of a football stadium, though it’s not very tall. We figure all their facilities are inside, including whatever training they’re doing.”