Kelly Meding: Chimera

Virginia State Police had already called and officially asked for assistance in stopping the spreading fires. The disaster, they said, could cause long-term harm to the area if the blaze wasn’t controlled before it hit certain areas of Stratfield. And through it all, we’d had no word from Teresa or anyone else with her.

I headed inside. I was officially in charge of the island and its handful of occupants. I’d asked Sasha to keep her friends in their room for now, and she’d agreed. One less thing to worry about. Jessica Lam went with the teams in case medical assistance was needed, leaving Kinsey to oversee the infirmary and its patients. They’d apparently had a pretty epic argument about who would go; I don’t even want to know how she won that coin toss.

Only two other island residents still had Green designations, and they were just too new to take out into the field. The twenty-somethings had come to us only a week ago, and I’d ordered them to stay in their rooms until further notice. They hadn’t argued. This was their first major emergency, and they trusted us to know what we were doing.

I just hoped we did know what we were doing.

I stopped by to check on Sasha and the kids. They were tense but fine, still playing chess to pass the time. Their need to help was written all over their faces. I totally sympathized with that feeling of helplessness in the face of imminent disaster.

My next stop on the way to the conference room was the infirmary to visit Double Trouble.

Noah was dozing in one of the private rooms, and I did a double-take at his appearance. It had been two days since I’d last seen him, and he’d gotten so much worse. His skin was a sickly yellow color, like old dried paste. The dark smudges under his eyes had deepened and widened like a pair of fight-worthy shiners. His T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, and when he opened his eyes, they lacked any real color. Not Dahlia’s baby blues and not Noah’s vivid emerald green. They were as worn and washed out as the rest of him.

“I’m sorry I let this slip to Ethan,” I said.

He lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Probably good you did. They said good-bye, her and Ethan. I think Dal’s ready to go.”

Tears stung my eyes at the helpless fatigue in his voice. “I hate that we can’t fix this.”

“Me, too. So what’s the emergency? Dad won’t say.”

I gave him the basics of our identifying Uncle/Switch/Nancy Bennett, as well as the fire our people were going to fight. Disappointment sank him deeper into the pillows.

“Wish we were there,” he said. “Our powers can do so much together.”

“I know, but we have a lot of people on the ground fighting.” We all had family out there, people we loved. “I’ll keep you posted, okay?”

I headed back to the conference room to monitor the news. Gage sent a message that they were twenty minutes out from the fire’s location. I passed along the little information I’d collected from various news sources—not much for him to use when they got there. Moments later, the bottom corner of one news helicopter’s screen flashed with purple light. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

The reporter zoomed in on the area. A building in the south quadrant of the property, its perimeter in flames, had a small patch of exposed lawn near the fence between it and another medical center. Seconds after the flash, a familiar purple-haired figure appeared with several other people.

I admit it. I whooped out loud.

Before I could tell Gage that I’d seen Teresa, I was distracted by our perimeter alarm beeping at me. Because of the size of the island, we couldn’t keep visual guards at all times. Marco had rigged something similar to the sensors we’d had at Hill House, only these were modified to react to very specific things crossing. We couldn’t have an alarm every time a seagull got curious. We did, however, get one whenever an inanimate object larger than a coffee cup made it on to the island.

The security camera facing the observation tower blinked to life. One of the puddle-jumpers was heading toward the landing pad, which was both alarming and not. The puddle-jumpers had two fail-safes—a security code required to open the doors and to fly the thing, and a switch hidden near the com that sent a signal to our perimeter sensors authorizing entry.

Whoever was flying the puddle-jumper hadn’t activated the switch, which meant they were either too panicked to remember, or they didn’t know about it.

I checked the designation, then opened the com. “HQ to Jumper Two, identify yourself.”

Nothing. I repeated, but still nothing.

The puddle-jumper dropped down to land. I ran with only one thought in my head: Identify the intruders. I didn’t have my Coltson, and I didn’t have backup. All I had with me was a niggling sense of something very big about to happen. The jumper engine was still on when I got there, the blades just slowing down. Both doors were shut, the interior completely empty.

Had it been flown over telekinetically? It was possible. The copter that crashed into Central Park had been operated by a telekinetic. But why land it? Why not send it crashing into the building? I didn’t know enough about explosives to guess what might be rigged or not, so I backed off. Back right inside and into the conference room.

I brought up our security system with the hope of using it to scan the puddle-jumper for threats. The security program blinked open with a grid of the entire island. The feature allowed us to track the number of Metas on the grounds by identifying each person’s individual power signature. The technology that made it work was way beyond me, so I simply trusted it. Dr. Kinsey was the only white dot on-screen, because he was the only non-Meta here. Everyone else showed up as a blue dot.

Seventeen blue dots. Five of those dots had a yellow ring around them, indicating they were unidentified powers.

Eleven of us had stayed behind.

Six unknowns were on our island.

The main HQ phone rang. My brain was racing with the discovery of six intruders, and I almost didn’t answer.

“HQ, and make it fast,” I snapped into the phone.

“This is Joe Meade, one of the guards at the tower,” a deep male voice said. “I was coming on shift and found your friend Simon Hewitt unconscious near your parking lot.”

Well, that explains how the intruders got the puddle-jumper code.

“Is he alive?”

“Yeah. What’s—”

“We have a small situation over here. No one gets near our parking lot until you hear from me, do you understand?”

Maybe Joe Meade thought he was talking to Trance, because he piped in with a strong, “Yes, ma’am,” and then hung up. I had no clue how I’d call him back later, but at least no one else was coming over the harbor. I had enough to deal with.

The cluster of six dots was inside the building. I dashed to the secured weapons locker at the rear of the room and helped myself to a Coltson. By the time I got back to the computer, the dots had broken up. Two were moving toward the room where I’d left Sasha and the others. Four (including the mind-boggling identified blue dot) were heading for the infirmary.

I opened the loudspeaker. “Heads up, folks, we have intruders. Two heading your way, Sasha.”

My voice echoed down the hall of the mostly empty building and gave me an odd sense of comfort. Whoever these assholes were, they had fewer targets, and those targets still packed a hell of a power punch. Trusting Sasha to take care of half those targets, I made tracks for the infirmary.

The waiting area was empty. I took slow, careful steps toward the door into the private area, straining to hear something. Anything to indicate—