She looked at her hand as if seeing it for the first time. A heavy touch descended on her shoulder. She jumped and swung her elbow backward. Rome caught it just before it hit his throat.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice breathy.
“I’m fine,” she answered, realizing it was true. Her vision was clear, and she didn’t have the detached wobbly sensation. Honestly, she felt invigorated.
He kept ahold of her elbow and pulled her over to the three prone men in a cautious approach. Blood seeped out of the bullet holes in their thick black vests. Harper bent down with Rome as he removed one of the garments from the closest body. Amazed, she gawked at the damage as Rome held it up for inspection. The bullets had penetrated the armored vest, killing him instantly.
“I’m sure there’re more of them,” Rome said tightly, dropping the vest onto the ground. “We need to move. Now.”
“Rome,” Harper pleaded, gripping his shaking hand from her kneeling position. “Please don’t be scared of me.” She shook her head sadly.
“Harper…” He gave her a crooked smile and twisted his hand to grip hers back. “I won’t leave you again.” He tugged her up to face him and grabbed her other hand as well. “I won’t leave you.” He leaned forward and planted a feathery kiss on her forehead. “But we do need to leave. Before more of these guys come.”
“They’re already here,” she said dryly, peering past him to see a group of similarly equipped men pacing toward them with definite purpose. Rome turned to see them just as they broke into a jog, aiming their guns.
“Shit!” He pulled out his gun and dragged her to the nearest cover, behind another warehouse. “Can you stop them again?”
“I think so,” she answered slowly, giving him a look she hoped conveyed a confidence she wasn’t sure she had. He nodded at her.
She stepped out from behind the wall to face the on
coming group, noticing they were a bit bigger and bulkier than the other three. Like the men she’d escaped from at the facility. Uh-oh. They probably had powers, too. That could make things interesting. She moved forward a few more steps into the last rays of the setting sun and extended her arms.
The heat cascaded over her. Reliving the rush of power in her mind, she called upon it once more and pitched the energy toward them.
The lead man raised his hand, shooting a murky barrier ahead of him. He ran through her wave of energy unscathed. But two of the men behind him were knocked to the ground. She couldn’t tell whether they were unconscious or dead, but they were still. Only four more to go.
She sent another pulse of power their way. One more down. The other three ran through it like going through a waterfall, slowed but ultimately unharmed. She peppered them again and again, cutting up the air as if sending harsh ripples through a serene pond.
Just before the leader reached her, he was attacked by a different power source: Rome.
But before she could do anything to help Rome as he grappled with their attacker on the concrete ground, the air was knocked from her lungs. She hit the ground hard right next to Rome. Another body piled onto the one already on top of her. The harsh ramming forced a grunt from her lips as she struggled to breathe.
The tussling to her left paused for a moment, then resumed.
A strange sensation flushed over her, a weight heavier than the two men, as though a solid screen pressed against her. Trying to crush her.
Her body strained against the unseen force. After unsuccessfully shoving against the obstruction with all
her strength, she suddenly recognized what was happening. These two men were propelling an energy force at her, just like she had at them. Her breath came in strained spurts as panic and anger invaded her senses. Every wrenching intake was tinged with dusty asphalt.
Tilting her head, she saw Rome fighting two men now. They had him pinned and were delivering vicious blows to his body while he flailed and kicked at them.
No. She couldn’t let them take Rome. He’d sacrificed too much for her. She had to do something.
She focused her energy while the men who held her captive tried to force her to turn over, facedown. Molten heat roared through her body, blazing in her blood. Prickles of fire danced under her skin and flashes of gleaming white light sparkled in her vision. An inferno of force swelled from every corner of her mind, racing to her limbs and surging outward, heaving her enemies off her.
They landed several feet away, against the wall of an adjacent warehouse, stunned but not out for the count. Harper shot to her feet and stalked toward them. Angry. Primitive. Hating them with every fiber of her fiery being.
One of the dazed men reached behind his back and pulled out a gun. A cracking sound reached her just before the bullet snapped into the muscles of her shoulder. Harper flinched from the sharp contact but ignored it, continuing to close in on the shooter and his woozy partner.
Stopping mere feet from the two of them, she held out her hand and channeled the power once again without hesitation. She wanted this. Wanted them dead. Surprise was the last look on their faces as the pure energy from her mind crested and tore through their cloudy shield of resistance, killing them easily.
Harper spared them one last glance; then she whipped
around, cutting the distance between her and Rome with determined strides. His assailants had frozen momentarily to follow her approach.
The two men shoved away from Rome and stood to face her, obviously regarding her as the bigger threat. Good. She was.
They raised their hands and she felt the displacement of air as their combined power rushed toward her. Unlike her clear wave, theirs was definitely visible. Curious. Spreading her arms palms out, Harper met their energy head-on with her own. A moment of forces colliding, creasing the space between them in nearly invisible wrinkles—then hers ripped through theirs, decimating the two men in an instant.
Blinking the stinging sweat out of her eyes, she tried to take a deep breath of the light evening breeze into her heaving lungs. Looking up, she saw the sun had set and the clear sky behind the trees was daubed in brilliant pink hues.
Her strength drained and she bent over, resting her arms on her thighs. The fierce exertion had finally caught up with her.
A slight pain in her shoulder claimed her attention. She peered at the spot, seeing a small bloodstained hole in the gray sweatshirt.
Harper tugged at the neck of the shirt, exposing the wound, wincing at the pinching sensation that crawled over her shoulder. Her bloodied skin started to itch something fierce. As she scratched it, a tiny object spurted out and dropped on the concrete with a light
clink
.
It was the bullet. The shell was stained with a rusty liquid. Her blood.
Harper took a closer look at where she’d been shot.
Though a tiny red spot marked her skin, the entry hole was very shallow. Poking at it with her index finger, she felt the tingling under her flesh seep away. After a moment, the tissue wasn’t even tender and the skin was almost whole again.
She shook her head, lacking the energy to even try to process this newest development.
Rome lay on the ground. Blood ran from his nose and a mean cut across his forehead. “Thanks,” he rasped, splaying his hand across his right ribs as he tried to roll over. “Again.”
She gave him a crooked smile in answer, relieved not to see any censure in his eyes. Though fully exhausted, a curious sensation of exhilaration coursed through her, prickling her muscles. Their attackers had the same kind of powers she had, but hers were somehow stronger. And purer. Dominant. She felt empowered. Invincible. And she liked it.
Rome grunted and leaned on his side in an attempt to get up. Harper straightened and took the last couple of steps to his side. She bent down, placing her hands under his arms to help scoop him upright. His grunt turned into a deep groan as he stood, a bit wobbly. She leaned close, allowing him to slide his left arm across her broad shoulders to steady himself. Their glances brushed over the bodies that scattered the warehouse site like driftwood on the beach.
He reached over to touch the red splotch on her sweatshirt. She watched him stare at the fabric, examining it from every angle with a frown.
“This shot wasn’t meant to kill,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not good.”
That wasn’t a good thing? They weren’t trying to kill her anymore?
Wait, she knew what that meant now. They didn’t want her dead because they wanted to do more experiments on her.
“I think you’re right,” she agreed.
Big bullies.
Well, it wouldn’t be long before she turned the tables. She had Bobby’s data now. Soon she’d have the information she needed to take down her enemies. And with Rome’s help, they’d be darn near unstoppable.
“Let’s get these guys taken care of,” Rome said with a sigh, and broke away from her, walking to the nearest body. “Then we need to see what’s on that flash drive.”
“Good idea,” Harper agreed, walking toward the two slumped forms by the warehouse entrance.
She and Rome needed those answers now more than ever. Obviously she wasn’t alone in her powers. But she was finding out she really was different from the others and needed to find out why in order to command the power and get her revenge.
And the more she was able to control it, the more that revenge was becoming a reality. A smile broke out across her face. Harper couldn’t wait.
It was almost ten o’clock when Harper set down her mug of foamy hot chocolate, her gaze fixated on the bright screen of the laptop.
After taking care of their attackers’ bodies, they had collected a few necessities, laptop and flash drive included, and hit the road. They drove a few hours away from the bright lights of Portland, then circled back near the city’s suburbs to cover their tracks.
She and Rome had taken turns in getting some muchneeded sleep. They made a quick stop at a rest station for some food and to clean up a bit. But most of the drive had been silent, save for the rattling of her fingertips on the keyboard. Eventually, the battery started to run low, and they pulled over at a quaint café where she could plug it in.
Knowing how well Bobby understood her hacking capabilities, she had to be careful and meticulous when collapsing each level of convoluted code. Most likely, he had created frequent fail-safes along the way in case anyone else attempted to unravel the data. She imagined that it would automatically corrupt everything if there was any tampering other than the precise decoding executed by her own hands.
She stopped for a moment when the figures on the
screen started to blur. Rubbing her eyes, she glanced away from the screen to peer around the friendly café.
The café wasn’t too crowded, being just near ten at night. A few patrons sat at their own laptops, taking advantage of the free wireless Internet while having steaming cups of coffee and home-style food.
Two other tables were pushed together, surrounded by a group of teenage girls who seemed to be gossiping their young hearts out. She overheard that Emily was going to break up with Josh because she saw him kissing Felicia.
A wistful smile broke across Harper’s face at their simple problems. No doubt the girls thought it was the most complicated thing ever. She’d trade for Emily’s boy troubles in less than a heartbeat.
Speaking of kissing boys, her tired gaze wandered over to Rome, who was standing patiently at the marbled counter while he waited for the matronly server to make another iced tea. He appeared to be mindlessly studying the chalkboard menu, but she knew he was hair-triggered for danger. She was beginning to recognize that he always had an aura of tension surrounding him.
But you wouldn’t know it unless you were looking for it. His fingers were in a half fist. Knees slightly bent. Shoulders hunched slightly. Clear eyes that saw everything.
He turned his head and locked that clear gaze with hers. The blue in his eyes sparkled as he turned one corner of his captivating mouth up in a half smile. She swore she could almost feel a current of desire radiate from him and reach out to her.
Or maybe it was her wishful thinking slapping her upside the head.
He shifted to pick up the full tray that held his glass of iced tea along with two heaping plates and a glass of ice water. It was difficult to decide which looked more appetizing: Rome’s muscular bulk or the plates of delicious-smelling food.
As he set the plates down on the table with a small clattering thud, Harper noticed the conversation at the gossip table had stopped. All the teens, gaping, were watching Rome’s every movement.
Yep, she knew exactly what they were thinking, because she was thinking it, too. Only she would bet all her gold medals that her thoughts were well past the Rrated version.
“What have we here?” she asked, shifting her glance back to their table as the clanking and shuffling sounds of the café receded with his presence.
“Club sandwiches,” he answered as he removed a plate from the tray and set it down in front of her beside the laptop.
Her stomach growled at the mouthwatering smell of toast and turkey. She pushed away the laptop and pulled the plate closer, picking up half of the sandwich. Biting into it, she closed her eyes and moaned at the luscious burst of taste filling her mouth. Swallowing, she grabbed a napkin and wiped her lips.
“Have I told you how much I love you?” Harper said absently as she took another hearty bite and looked across the table at him, moaning, savoring the sandwich. She forgot the napkin this time and just licked the crumbs off her lips.
Rome’s sandwich was frozen in midair, just in front of his mouth. He was staring at her with a peculiar look on his face and a twinkle in his eyes, but it disappeared just as quickly as she saw it.
What was that all about? Did her voracious appetite scare him, too? Maybe his usual dates were the sidesalad type and never actually ate.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said after he took a big bite of his own sandwich.
“What can I say? I like to eat.” She tried to guess what he was thinking. Impossible. He shook his head at her and went back to his sandwich.
Being an athlete for most of her life, she knew the importance of the energy food provided to keep her body healthy. Nutrition was just as important as physical training. Moderation was the key, and she had been careful not to overindulge her chocolate tooth, but she was never one for abstinence when it came to good food.
After practically inhaling her sandwich, she placed the empty plate back on the tray and dragged the laptop back in front of her as she sipped through the bendy straw in her glass of ice water. It took less than a minute for her to get back into decoding mode, her mind and body now replenished.
“How much longer?” Rome asked.
“Not much,” she answered, keeping her focus on the display. She could tell she was very close to unraveling the data by the way the level of complexity had skyrocketed with her last directive.
After ten more minutes, Harper sat back and ran her fingers through her hair. She stared at the blank screen, which was blinking a solitary cursor back at her.
One more command.
With her next move, she and Rome would know whether she’d deconstructed the code correctly. If she had, Bobby’s data would be accessible. If not, it would be gone forever.
Harper was confident in her programming and deprogramming skills, but she’d had little sleep and her stress levels were beyond measurable. She’d gotten this far, but any single wrong command along the way could still destroy it all. She knew Bobby masked lines of code and she wouldn’t know for sure whether she’d unmasked them properly until this last entry.
“All done?” Rome’s deep voice broke into her thoughts. She glanced over the laptop at him. He was watching her closely but with an encouraging smile. He scooted his chair around the table to sit right next to her and glance at the screen.
She was afraid. Afraid that she’d screwed up the decoding. Above all, she was afraid that even if she had cracked Bobby’s code correctly, it wouldn’t contain the information she desperately hoped was there. Information that could sort this all out.
But Bobby had stashed this flash drive for her. His last dying words were for her to get it. The answers had to be there.
And then there was Rome, sitting quietly next to her, his warm thigh resting snugly against hers, looking at her with all the confidence in the world. This man who’d chosen to stand by her and help her, risking his own life and career in the process. She just hoped she hadn’t let either of them down.
“I guess we’ll find out,” she said ruefully, and typed in the last command. Her finger hovered over the Enter key in a moment of tight hesitation. The she pressed it and held her breath.
The screen went blank.
No cursor. No data stream. Nothing but a black void.
Harper silently counted to sixty and still nothing.
She let her breath out and shook her head slowly. She couldn’t even find the words to describe the misery threatening to overtake her; she felt as if she were underwater, unable to break the surface.
She chanced a sideways peek at Rome. His intense blue gaze was glued to the screen. Watching. Waiting.
“I guess I messed up,” Harper said quietly after another eternal minute passed. Rome reached over and pulled her hand onto his thigh. Enveloping it in his grip, he gave it a comforting squeeze and let out a long breath.
A flicker.
Both she and Rome straightened, gawking at the monitor.
A cursor began to dance among the blackness like a frenzied shooting star. The display went black again. Then they watched in sheer fascination as manic data streamed down the screen, drizzling characters like the northwest rain.
And it stopped abruptly once more.
Once again, the empty black screen flashed bright characters and then morphed back to the original innocuous blue desktop.
With a new yellow folder in the bottom right corner, simply titled
Harpie
.
Harper dragged her finger over the keyboard’s touchpad to open the folder. With a click, the folder opened and showed two subfolders. One named Research and the other generically named New Folder.
Harper clicked on the Research folder first to open it. The screen lit up with subfolders of various natures. They were organized by type and date, all with titles that included dates. She randomly clicked on one, opening a document inside.
Trial 1517.5.
Vegetation subjects 6-7 under incandescent light fail to respond to serum. Dosage immaterial. Vegetation subjects 15-17 under fluorescent light fail to respond to serum. Dosage immaterial. Vegetation subjects 4-5 under simulated sunlight respond to serum. Dosage immaterial.
Harper narrowed her eyes. Vegetation subjects responding? What was that all about? She closed the document without reading further and opened one dated later.
Trial 2761.5
Vegetation subjects 3-6 survive deep freeze. 4 of 25 branches frozen. Deep freeze duration 361 hours. Survival span 167 hours current. 3 of 4 frozen branches fully regenerated.
“These are Bobby’s research notes,” she explained, her mind in turmoil. “Considering the number of files, it must be everything he was working on. The serum mentioned here must be what’s inside me.”
“I’m sure it is,” Rome agreed, deep in thought. “We’re going to have to read through all those to figure out just exactly what he was doing.”
“Thank goodness Bobby’s notes are concise.” Harper sighed, but cracked a smile.
She was happy for the first time in a while. Actual for-real happy. The information about the mysterious serum that flowed through her blood, that was now part of her essence, surging in her mind, was all there. It was just going to take some time to read through it all.
“Open the other folder,” Rome suggested. She closed
the Research folder and opened the nonspecific New Folder.
Inside was a single document. She started to read from the beginning.
Lower Interior Five Watch facility Section 21-244. Witness to testing on human subjects. Using serum derivatives.
A crash made them both jump, startling them out of their reading trance. A young server had knocked over a mug while clearing the two tables that had seated the group of teenage girls. Its white shards, among dark droplets, sprinkled the hardwood floor. The matronly woman strolled out from behind the counter with a dustpan and broom, calmly bending to sweep it up.
Harper rubbed her weary eyes and stared back at the screen. The typed words were in Bobby’s crisp voice, but uncharacteristically rushed and clipped. She wanted to keep reading, but as she turned to watch the unhurried cleanup, she realized they needed to get somewhere private to go through it all as carefully as they needed to. She didn’t want to miss a single detail.
“Maybe we should take this somewhere else,” Rome suggested, reading her mind.
“Sounds like a plan.” Harper closed the files after protecting them with several encrypted passwords. She saved the Harpie folder to the flash drive and erased any remnants of it from the computer. Then she pulled out the drive and slipped it into her jeans pocket. She shut down the computer and stood, smiling at Rome. “Let’s go.”
“Drive safely, kids,” the elder woman called out to them as they reached the door, giving them a hearty
wave with the broom. “Have a nice honeymoon,” she added with an exaggerated wink.
Rome gave her a friendly wave back. Harper stopped abruptly in alarm, but was shoved out the door by his strong hand at her back.
“H-h-honeymoon,” Harper sputtered as they reached the car, almost stumbling over her own feet. “What was that all about?”
“She asked about us,” Rome answered as he held the Bug door open for her and then slammed it shut. She watched him get into the driver’s side and then turn to face her. He took a deep breath that sounded a tad strained. “I couldn’t very well tell her that I’m a covert government agent hired to hunt you down because you suddenly have superhero-like mind power that came from a mysterious serum that your secret scientist brother developed and was then murdered for. But now we’re working together and on the run to find out what it’s all about, how it works, and how to stop the bad guys who keep trying to kill us.”
A moment of silence.
“You could’ve just said we’re friends on a road trip,” she suggested quietly. That sounded simple enough to her. The idea of that kind of commitment almost made her want to forget this all and run away into the night.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I guess I could’ve just said that.” She saw his grip tighten on the steering wheel before he reached to shove the keys in the ignition and start the car. The Bug rumbled to life and he pulled out of the newly paved parking lot onto the street just as raindrops started to splash against the flat windshield.