Gone Series Complete Collection (77 page)

“What was that?” Panda cried.

“What was what?”

“I saw it, too,” Diana said.

“Saw what?” Caine demanded.

“Like a blur. Like something shooting past us.”

There was silence. Then, Caine cursed. “Brianna. Faster, Panda!”

“I don’t want to run off—”

“Faster,” Caine hissed.

The walkie-talkie crackled. Drake’s voice. “You guys see that?”

Caine keyed his own set. “Yeah. Brianna. Either that or a tornado.”

“She’ll get there before us,” Diana said.

“She’s already there,” Caine agreed.

“Don’t you think maybe we should do this some other time?” Diana asked.

Caine laughed. “Just because Brianna is zipping around? I’m not worried about that girl.” It was phony bravado. Brianna “zipping around” could mean that an ambush was waiting. Or it could mean that Sam had been alerted and was already on his way.

He keyed the walkie-talkie. “Drake. They may be ready when we get there.”

“Good. I’m in the mood for a fight,” Drake answered.

Caine twisted halfway in his seat to see Diana. Her nearly bald head was distracting. It had the strange effect of focusing his attention on her eyes and lips. He winked at her. “Drake’s not worried.”

Diana said nothing.

“You worried, Panda?” Caine asked. Panda was too terrified to answer. His fingers were white from gripping the wheel.

“Nobody’s worried but you, Diana,” Caine said.

Caine hadn’t asked Jack. He was going to be careful with Jack for a while. At least until the computer genius had given him what he needed.

“Coming up on the gate,” Bug said.

There was a brick guardhouse beside a tall chain-link fence. Lights were blazing everywhere. Spotlights atop the guardhouse, trained down along the fence line in both directions. And beyond the gate the vast bulk of the power plant itself, humming, vibrating, a sinister presence in the night. It was bigger than Caine had imagined, and was comprised of several buildings, the largest of which looked like a prison. It could almost be a small city of its own. The parking lot was half full of cars, glittering in the glow.

“There’s Brianna!” Caine cried, and pointed at the girl, doubled over, clutching the fence, tugging ineffectually at it. She glanced back fearfully at them, face blue-white in the headlights. She shouted something that Caine did not hear.

In obvious frustration she rattled the chain link, unable to open it, unable, it seemed, to get the attention of anyone in the guardhouse. If anyone even
was
in the guardhouse.

Panda slammed on the brakes and the car skidded.

Caine leaped out and raised his hands toward Brianna. But in a blur she was gone only to reappear halfway up the hill to the right.

“Hello, Brianna, long time no see,” Caine called to her.

“Hello, Caine. How’s that leg where Sam burned your skin off?”

Caine smiled at her. “Everyone out of the car,” he said in a whisper. “Now!”

Panda, Jack, and Diana piled out. Bug may have piled out or not, Caine didn’t see him, but with Bug, that didn’t mean much.

“Whatcha up to?” Brianna asked. She was chewing gum, trying to act nonchalant. But Caine could see that she had not yet recovered from the exertion. She would be tired. Hungry, too, no doubt. He wished he had some food to offer her. Like a bone for a dog. Test her loyalty.

But they had not brought any food.

“Oh, not much, Brianna,” Caine answered. He dropped his hands to his waist, arms crossed over his chest, and turned his palms toward the car behind him. Then, in a swift motion he rotated his arms up over his head and brought them down.

The car jumped up off the ground. It was yanked into the sky like it was a giant’s yo-yo that had run out its string.

The car inscribed a tight arc, twenty, thirty feet in the air, and hurtled down toward Brianna.

The car smashed the dirt with shocking violence. The windshield and all the other windows shattered into a million glittering pieces. Like someone had set off a hand grenade inside. Two of the tires blew out. The hood popped clear off, twirled in the air, and crashed.

Brianna was standing twenty feet away from the impact.

“Wow. That was cool, Caine,” Brianna mocked. “I’ll bet that seemed really fast to you, huh? Car flying through the air all lightning quick? Why don’t you try again?”

“She’s baiting you, Caine,” Diana said, stepping up beside him. “She’s stalling. Not to mention that whoever is on guard inside may have heard that.”

Drake’s car had come to a stop just behind theirs. He leaped from the car and went racing toward Brianna, unspooling his whip hand as he went.

Brianna laughed and gave Drake the finger. “Come on, Drake, you can catch me.” Drake lunged at her, but suddenly she was behind him.

“Knock it off, Drake,” Caine yelled. “You can’t catch her. And all we’re doing is making noise and wasting time.”

“The gate’s locked,” Brianna taunted, suddenly just out of arm’s reach in front of Caine. When she came to a stop she quivered like an arrow hitting a target.

“Gate?” Caine said. He aimed his hands at the shattered car. It came up off the ground and flew, tumbling, through the air, spraying bits of glass like a comet’s tail.

The car smashed into the gate, ripped the gate from its mooring, wrapping chain link around itself, and carried the twisted mess for forty feet before hitting the parking lot and skidding into a parked minivan.

It made enough noise to wake a deaf person.

“And now,” Caine said, “it’s open. Good-bye, Brianna.”

The girl glared at him and was gone.

“Drake, leave two guys in the guardhouse,” Caine ordered. “Let’s go get this over with.”

Edilio pulled the Jeep into Zil, Hunter, Lance, and Harry’s driveway. Sam and Dekka jumped out. The front door of the house was ajar.

“Edilio? Go. Find Lana. Maybe pick up Taylor on the way, huh, if she’s in the plaza still? She could help you search.”

“You sure you don’t want me to—”

“Get Lana.” He slapped his hand on the hood, a signal to hurry. Edilio gunned it into reverse and then took off down the street.

“How do we play this?” Dekka asked.

“We see what’s what. If Hunter’s gone nuts, lift him off the ground, keep him from running away. Bounce him off the ceiling, if you need to. I’m not looking to hurt him, just talk to him,” Sam said. He knocked on the open door, which swung away from him. “Hunter. You in there?”

No answer.

“Okay, it’s Sam, and I’m coming in.” He purposely did not mention Dekka. Dekka was a weapon he’d as soon keep in reserve. “I’m hoping there won’t be any kind of problem.”

Sam took a deep breath and stepped inside.

A painting of an attractive but serious-looking woman with luxuriant red hair hung in the entryway. Someone, presumably one of the current residents, had defaced the painting with a mustache carefully drawn on with a black Sharpie.

The hallway was a mess—a Frisbee on the side table, a dirty gym sock hanging from a chandelier, a mirror badly out of alignment and cracked. Not much different from most of the residences in a FAYZ without parents.

The first room, on the left, was a formal dining room, dark. The kitchen was ahead, down the hall, past the stairs. The family room was ahead and to the right. Dekka poked her head into the dining room, peered under the table, and whispered, “Clear.”

Sam advanced to the family room.

The family room was an even bigger mess than the hallway: DVDs strewn here and there, long-emptied soda cans, some sort of bright yellow Nerf projectiles, family photos—the red-haired woman again, and what was probably her husband—knocked over on the mantel, dust thick on bookshelves.

At first Sam didn’t see Harry. He had fallen between the couch and a heavy coffee table. But one step closer, and he came into view.

Harry was lying facedown. There was a deflating blister on the back of his neck. It reminded Sam of a balloon three days after a party.

Sam pushed the table aside, but it was wedged. “Dekka?”

Dekka raised one hand, and the table lifted off the floor. Sam gave it a shove. It floated aside till it was out of Dekka’s field, then it crashed to the floor.

Sam knelt beside Harry. Carefully avoiding the blister, he pressed two fingers against Harry’s neck. “I’m not feeling anything,” Sam said. “You try.”

Dekka glanced around, searching for what she needed, and came up with a small, mirrored box. She twisted Harry’s head to the side and held the mirrored surface close to the boy’s nostrils.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked.

“If he’s breathing, you’d see it. Condensation.”

“I think he’s dead,” Sam said.

They both stood up then and took a couple of steps back. Dekka set the box aside, careful, like Harry was asleep and she didn’t want to wake him.

“What do we do about this?” Dekka wondered.

“That’s a very good question,” Sam said. “I wish I had a very good answer.”

“If Hunter killed him . . .”

“Yeah.”

“The freak-versus-normal thing . . .”

“We can’t let it get like that,” Sam said forcefully. “If Hunter did this . . . I mean, I guess we have to hear what he says about it.”

“Maybe talk to Astrid, huh?” Dekka suggested.

Sam laughed mirthlessly. “She’ll say we should have a trial.”

“We could, you know, just make this go away,” Dekka said.

Sam didn’t answer.

“You know what I’m saying,” Dekka said.

Sam nodded. “Yes. I do. We’re trying to keep from starving. Trying to stay ready in case Caine starts something. The last thing we need is some big argument between freaks and normals.”

“Of course Zil won’t shut up about it, no matter what we do,” Dekka pointed out. “We could say we got here, Harry wasn’t here, we found nothing. But Zil would never believe it, and a lot of kids would go along with him.”

“Yep,” Sam said. “We are stuck with this.”

They stood side-by-side, staring down at Harry. The blister still slowly, slowly deflating.

Then Sam led the way back out to the driveway. Edilio roared up ten minutes later with Dahra Baidoo in the passenger seat.

“Hey, Dahra,” Sam said. “Thanks for coming.”

“I couldn’t find Lana,” Edilio said. “She’s not in her room at Clifftop. Her dog was gone, too. I got Taylor bouncing around, looking for her everywhere. The rest are still hanging out in the plaza in case we need them.”

Sam nodded. He was used to Lana’s strange and sudden relocations. The Healer was a restless girl. “Dahra, take a look, huh? Inside. On the floor.”

Edilio looked quizzically at Sam. Sam shook his head and avoided making eye contact.

Dahra was back in less than a minute. “I’m not Lana, but even she couldn’t do anything here. She’s not Jesus,” she snapped. “She doesn’t raise the dead.”

“We were hoping he wasn’t dead,” Dekka said.

“He’s dead, all right,” Dahra said. “Did either of you notice that the skin on his neck wasn’t burned? The hair around it wasn’t singed? The blister must have welled up from inside. Which means something cooked him from the inside out. That leaves you out as a suspect, Sam: I’ve seen your handiwork. You leave people looking like marshmallows that got dropped in the coals.”

“Hey,” Edilio blurted angrily. “You got no reason to be harshing on Sam.”

“It’s okay, Edilio,” Sam said mildly.

“No. He’s right,” Dahra said. She touched Sam’s shoulder. “Sorry, Sam. I’m tired and I don’t like seeing dead bodies, okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam acknowledged. “Head on home. Sorry to drag you out.”

She peered quizzically at Sam. “What are you guys going to do about this?”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know, but whatever I do, it’ll probably make everyone mad. Edilio can drive you home.”

“No reason, it’s a five-minute walk.” Dahra patted his shoulder again and took off.

When she was gone, Sam said, “I guess we’re going to talk to Hunter.”

“You guess? Man, this ain’t something can be let slide,” Edilio said. “This is killing.”

“Orc killed Betty,” Sam pointed out. “And Orc’s still free.”

“You weren’t in charge then,” Edilio said. “We didn’t have a system.”

“We still don’t have a system, Edilio. We have me being pestered by everyone with a problem,” Sam said. “That’s not a system. You see a Supreme Court around here, somewhere? I see me and you and about a dozen others even giving a damn.”

“You saying we’re going to have it where kids can kill someone and that’s okay?”

Sam slumped. “No. No. Of course not. I’m just . . . Nothing.”

“I’ll get my guys, go look for Hunter,” Edilio said. “But I gotta know: What if he won’t come? Or what if he tries to hurt one of my guys?”

“Come get me if that happens,” Sam said.

Edilio did not look happy about that instruction. But he nodded and left.

Dekka watched him go. “Edilio’s a good guy,” she said.

“But?”

“But, he’s a normal.”

“There aren’t going to be lines like that, between freak and normal,” Sam said firmly.

Dekka almost, but didn’t quite, laugh. “Sam, that’s a great concept. And maybe you believe it. But I’m black and I’m a lesbian, so let me tell you: From what I know? Personal experience? There are always lines.”

NINETEEN

18
HOURS
, 35
MINUTES

THEY DROVE
THE
SUV through the hole in the fence, veered around the twisted mess of chain link, and raced to a skidding halt in the parking lot of the power plant.

The sheer size of the power plant was intimidating. The containment towers were as tall as skyscrapers. The big turbine building was blank and hostile, like a giant windowless prison.

A door, almost insignificantly small, stood open. No light shone from inside, but Caine could make out a shape crouching within.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” a young voice challenged.

Caine didn’t recognize the kid, couldn’t really see him. The plant was very loud, so Caine pretended he couldn’t hear. He cupped a hand to his ear and yelled, “What?”