Robison Wells - Blackout

He leaned a shoulder against the Dumpster and tried to focus on the remnants of her perfume that were left trailing in the air behind her. She headed back down between the buildings, and it seemed, though he couldn’t be sure, that she was stopping at the corner.

There was no more breathing from the roof. He tried to focus on the other roofs, where he knew the rest of the snipers were supposed to be, but it was too big of a plaza and he couldn’t be sure of anything. Sounds bounced back and forth.

Someone was running, their shoes smacking hard against the pavement. It couldn’t be Aubrey—she didn’t run when she was invisible because it made her so unsteady.

Jack moved out from the Dumpster and down the alley. He wasn’t walking in a straight line, and he knew that he wasn’t going to catch up with anyone.

Everything had fallen apart. This morning they’d been part of a team of Green Berets and now they were the enemy. They were terrorists. Laura had killed soldiers—she was defending Jack and Aubrey—and now no one would ever believe them. They were outlaws. They were exactly what Captain Rowley had thought they were when he pulled out that detonator. They were killers. It didn’t matter that Jack and Aubrey didn’t kill—he would have certainly killed Captain Rowley to save Aubrey’s life if he’d been able to do it. The fact that Laura did it instead didn’t make him any less complicit.

Something was burning as Jack reached the end of the alleyway. He could smell it. And he saw Aubrey’s bloody handprint on the wall where she had paused and waited.

The running feet were somewhere on the other side of Seattle Center, but they seemed to be coming toward him.

He shouldn’t be there. Those running feet could be a soldier—someone chasing after them, pounding across the cement to get revenge—and Jack was standing around like an idiot. He didn’t have a gun or even a rock. He was half-conscious.

And then the source of the footfalls appeared—Laura, running at full speed down toward the Children’s Museum. He wanted to shout, to get her attention, but he didn’t want any more attention for himself.

Where was Aubrey? There was too much for him to keep track of. Aubrey’s perfume wafted in the breezeless, humid air as she made her way toward the center of the—

What was that burning?

Bang!

Jack watched as Laura, running at full speed, stumbled a few more steps, and then plummeted forward, tumbling head over heels across the pavement. There, at the entrance of the Children’s Museum, was Sergeant Eschler with his pistol.

Jack ran. He didn’t know why. It made no sense, but the only thing going through his mind was the throb of blood and the terror of seeing his bodyguard get murdered right in front of him.

Eschler saw him coming, and raised his pistol.

But the sergeant flew into the glass doors of the building, as though pushed by an enormous gust of wind.

It wasn’t wind, Jack knew immediately. It was Aubrey. She wasn’t strong, and she’d only caught him off guard. The pistol was still in his hand, though Jack could tell that she was fighting him for it.

It only took a minute for the man to throw her off him, invisible or not. He swung the gun at empty space and fired.

“No,” Jack breathed. All he could tell was that she was there, somewhere. Her perfume was all over Eschler and the ground.

Eschler fired a second time and then a third.

Jack was racing wildly, knowing that he’d be just as ineffectual as Aubrey had been—worse, because he was visible.

Eschler turned, leveling the gun.

And then, as though launching from a cannon, Laura erupted from the ground and shot forward, tackling Eschler and smashing him into the cement wall of the front of the Children’s Museum.

The red-painted concrete crumbled around the impact, leaving a man-sized gash in the facade of the building. Laura stumbled backward, bleeding from her stomach.

Aubrey appeared, grabbing Laura as she fell.

That was three times Laura had saved him today.

Jack took the soldier’s bag and dumped the contents onto the pavement. With shaking, wet fingers, he picked through the first-aid gear and found a roll of gauze and an Ace bandage.

“What’s that smell?” Aubrey asked.

Lying on her back, with glazed eyes, Laura pointed upward. Black smoke was roiling from the Space Needle, about a third of the way up. And at the center of the smoke was a blinding white spot.

“Oh my . . .” Aubrey didn’t even finish—she just stared.

They’d failed. Everything had failed. They’d fought the very people that they’d come here to help—or, rather, those people had fought them—and the terrorists got to the target anyway.

There was no way to stop them, Jack thought as he stared at the brilliant glowing center of the smoke. Laura was the only one who could do anything like that, who could possibly climb to where the damage was being done, and she was lying on the concrete bleeding from her stomach.

“We have to get out of here,” Jack said, his eyes locking on Aubrey’s. Without another word, she began lifting Laura to her feet, and Jack scrambled to gather as much of the soldier’s gear as he could, throwing the first-aid kit, the flashlight, and the Beretta all into Aubrey’s bag. He pulled one of Laura’s arms over his shoulder, and Aubrey did the same on the other side. They hobbled as quickly as they could toward the alleyway, trying to put as much distance between them and the Space Needle as possible.

There was a metallic screech, and Jack hurried his steps. Laura was moving surprisingly well, but she’d always been tough. He hoped that she’d live long enough so they could thank her.

They moved down the side alley, which spread into a wider road, and a block later they reached a street. Jack didn’t care who was watching. He used the flashlight to smash in the window of a car, and then knelt on the ground to hot-wire it—a skill he’d used a dozen times to start the run-down tractors he worked with in Mount Pleasant. He took the driver’s seat, despite the blood that was still flowing from his head, and Aubrey helped Laura into the back and then sat with her, already applying first aid before Jack put the car into gear.

He pulled out into the empty street, and watched in his rearview mirror as the Space Needle fell.

ALEC COULDN’T BELIEVE HIS LUCK,nor could he stop the grin from covering his face.

Laura , he thought. The stupid little bitch.

She’d put up quite a fight, but he’d seen the final bullet, seen it hit her in the chest. Laura was tough, but she couldn’t take a bullet so close. He was sure of it.

His team hadn’t had trouble with the Green Berets. They were so predictable, so ridiculous.

As soon as Alec had heard that the army was trying to create superpowered military strike forces—teams like his—he’d known they’d be simple to defeat. If anything, adding untrained superpowered teenagers to an army team made it weaker, not stronger.

It was fear. No one trusted a kid with that kind of power. Even Alec’s own trainers—his “parents”—had trouble trusting him, and that was after years of working together, years of testing and training and teaching. They were afraid of him, because he had a weapon they could never take away. And he was young. Adults instinctively distrusted the young.

So it was easy to implant a memory to make the Green Berets detonate the bombs.

Alec hadn’t even had to approach the captain. One of Alec’s new team members had lifted him into position near one of the snipers, and minutes later that sniper was sending panicked radio calls that one of the Lambdas was planting bombs near the Space Needle.