Robison Wells - Blackout

Alec didn’t know what happened after that. The army team was in complete disarray, Laura managing to escape with another Lambda, only to be shot in the chest.

And while all of that was happening below, the other two members of Alec’s team launched up to the center of the Space Needle. Lee—a Lambda like Alec had never imagined—superheated his body into a white-hot ball of flame and melted through the steel supports.

It was all perfect. Better than perfect. They’d taken the thing down in front of a team of Green Berets, a team of Lambdas, and Laura had been shot.

He had more important targets to focus on now, but he’d never forget this success.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” AUBREY SHOUTED, LOOKINGout the back window.

Laura didn’t care—her side was screaming with pain as she lay awkwardly in the backseat. Blood was soaking the makeshift bandages.

Jack was driving the car, bleeding from his head, and Aubrey was trying to treat the bullet wound to Laura’s torso.

Laura took a gasping breath and then gritted her teeth.

It had come down. Whatever team had been attacking, they’d succeeded, and Laura couldn’t help but be pleased. And she’d even killed a few Green Berets while she was at it.

But her side—her rib, her whole body—felt like it was on fire.

Aubrey had saved Laura’s life, and if she could have breathed better she might have found it funny. Aubrey, a loyal soldier, saving the life of her enemy. If Aubrey hadn’t slammed into Sergeant Eschler and knocked him back Laura would have been dead. And if Laura was dead, Jack would have been dead. The three of them were on their own, and Laura needed to keep herself together and stay in control.

Jack kept wiping blood from his face as he moved through the mostly empty Seattle streets, flying well over the speed limit. The Space Needle had come down, after all—who would care about a speeder?

“They turned on us,” Laura said, and dug in her pocket, wincing in severe pain as she did so. At last she pulled out the detonator, now a crumpled mass of electronics, smashed apart in Laura’s brutal hands.

“But why?” Aubrey asked, trying to inspect Laura’s wound in the bouncing car. “What did we do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Laura answered. “We did exactly what they wanted.” It wasn’t even a lie. Laura hadn’t done anything to prompt the detonator, and neither had Jack—she’d been right next to him. And Laura was sure that Aubrey hadn’t; she was a complainer, not a rebel.

Aubrey looked to Jack for an answer. “What do you think?”

Laura had to keep that in mind, too. Aubrey and Jack were totally devoted to each other. She couldn’t play one against the other. They’d always pick each other over her.

Jack glanced back at them. His face looked awful, like something from a horror movie. Aubrey’s hands shook even harder. Head wounds bleed a lot. Laura had heard it forever. Head wounds bleed—they look worse than they are.

“We didn’t do anything,” he finally said.

Aubrey had pulled up Laura’s shirt to expose the bullet hole in her second-to-bottom rib. Blood was seeping from the wound, but not like the bright red gush from Jack’s head. It was just a simple hole, not the violent tear above Jack’s ear—Laura could even see the butt of the bullet. It looked like it had hit a rib and just stopped, flattened.

There weren’t any tweezers in the first-aid kit, but Aubrey found some in her purse. She tore open a packet of antibiotic ointment and squirted it liberally all over the tweezers, and then positioned them on the bullet.

“This will probably hurt,” she said.

Laura strained to smile. “I’ve already been shot. How much worse can it get?”

“Jack,” Aubrey said. “Slow down for just a minute.”

Jack slowed and pulled to the curb, turning to watch the surgery.

Aubrey wiped the exposed bullet with gauze to dry it. She positioned the tweezers and pulled.

It didn’t come—the tweezers slipped off and Laura let out a little gasp.

It felt like a drill was boring down into her—even now, even with the bullet motionless.

“Hang on,” Aubrey said, whispering something to herself and repositioning the tweezers. They weren’t made for surgery. They were for plucking eyebrows. They barely fit around the bullet.

Aubrey pulled again, the tweezers hanging on a second longer this time, but eventually sliding off.

“Dammit,” Laura wheezed, and brushed Aubrey’s hands away. She grabbed the bullet between her thumb and two fingers, dug deep into the skin with a guttural groan, spit curse words through gritted teeth, and yanked the bullet free. She gasped and exhaled, and threw the bullet at the window, cracking it.

Bright red blood bubbled from Laura’s chest, and Aubrey immediately placed a heavy gauze pad over it, and affixed it in place with surgical tape.

The immediate pressure was gone, but the burning, searing pain remained.

Aubrey sat back in the car, plainly exhausted. She looked at Jack. “We need to find a place to get you cleaned up.”

“And then we need to get out of this car,” Jack said. “It looks like a murder scene.”

Laura tried to sit up more in the seat, wincing as she did but not stopping. “We need to figure out where we’re going to go, too.”

“We have these bracelets,” Aubrey said, pointing to her wrist. Her bracelet was splattered with a little blood, and she wiped it clean. “They’re supposed to be like a free pass, right? They say we’re healthy.”

“They’re a free pass assuming our faces don’t show up on any wanted posters,” Laura said. “The only reason the captain would have used that detonator is if he thought we were terrorists. And nothing happened back there, so the only reason he would have thought we were terrorists is if someone radioed it to him. Someone whispered in his ear that he needed to disable all of us.”

“Speaking of,” Aubrey said, “we still have these things on our ankles. I assume they’re tamperproof.”

“I destroyed the detonator.”

Jack spoke. “Do we know if that’s the only one? Can they be detonated by someone else? More remotely?”

“Listen,” Laura said, pointing ahead and talking through gritted teeth. “Look at that neighborhood. What do you bet that half those houses are empty? Let’s go get cleaned up.”

“What if they have alarms?” Aubrey asked.

“The freaking Space Needle just collapsed. I don’t think police are going to care about a burglary.”

User: SusieMusie

Mood: Whatever

It’s time to talk about the military, I guess. I was lucky, too young to go. But now they’re talking about kids my age having to go there, too. Be fearless, everybody. They say there’s a virus or something.

JACK LET AUBREY DRIVE THErest of the way. Her eyes were much worse than his, but he felt too light-headed to stay behind the wheel.

They picked a road off a major street, and searched for houses that looked empty, unprotected. It seemed like no one had cars here. Rowley’d said that Seattle had been hit harder than many cities, but would that make everyone flee? Maybe it was just because these houses were more expensive—these people could afford to run for the mountains, or Canada, or the little islands in Puget Sound.

Aubrey checked several houses—invisibly peering in windows—before they broke into one.

There didn’t seem to be an alarm—there were no keypads anywhere—and they took turns in the shower.

It was the first time that Jack had looked at himself in the mirror, and he was horrified. The grazing wound over his ear had mostly stopped bleeding, but his hair was matted and tangled in dark patches, and his entire left side was soaked, from his shirt to his shoes.