Authors: Adrian Howell
I hadn’t even known that there were such guns protecting the sky around NH-1. Or a UPS system, or anything about the Knights’ security measures. I had left every detail of our safety in the hands of total strangers. Now I was paying the price of my disinterest.
I mumbled, “I should have gone to Mr. Koontz sooner.”
“Yes, Adrian,” Terry said emotionlessly, “you should have. The Angel mind-writer didn’t want to risk damaging your brain, so it was only a very shallow implant. I was always wondering when you would break through it.”
“Terry, please don’t do this,” I begged.
Terry shook her head. She was no longer shaking, and her voice was completely steady as she looked into my eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Adrian, but it is already done. The power is about to be cut, and–”
I threw my arms forward, releasing the strongest telekinetic blast I could. Terry nimbly sidestepped it, and my blast hit the wall-mounted television, shattering the screen.
Alia was still clinging to me, but I managed to turn toward Riles, who had already leveled his pistol on me.
“No!” I heard Terry shout as I was knocked forwards. Alia released me, and a second later Terry had my back pinned to the floor.
Terry shouted up at Riles, “Don’t shoot him! Please! Go get the handcuffs on my desk.”
I struggled under Terry’s hold, but it was no use.
“I didn’t want to involve you in this, Adrian,” said Terry, keeping a firm grip on me. “I was hoping you and Alia wouldn’t find out. I wanted to remain your friend and help you after Ms. Gifford was gone. But that’s not going to happen now. Alia is too young for memory alteration.”
“So you’re taking us with you?” I yelled madly. “We’re all going to be Angels together?!”
“No! You’re not going anywhere. I’m leaving New Haven. I’m the only one who can’t stay, now that you know what I’ve done. I’ve prepared for this too.”
I couldn’t make a powerful blast without focusing it through an outstretched arm, but even so, I wasn’t entirely helpless. I screamed and, without using my arms at all, I created an unfocused telekinetic blast between us, hitting Terry in the stomach.
“Stop it, Adrian!” shouted Terry, wincing in pain but keeping her hold on me. “You’re going to get shot!”
“Get off me!” I roared, blasting her again and again. Terry refused to let go.
“Here you go, Terry,” said Riles.
I felt cold steel touching my skin, and my psionics quickly faded away. Still no expert at power balance, I felt dizzy and stopped struggling. Terry gently lifted me to my feet, turned me around, and handcuffed my wrists together behind my back.
“No, Alia,” said Terry, turning toward my sister, “I’m not going to hurt him. Or you.”
There was a loud knocking on the front door. I heard Mr. Baker’s voice shout from outside, “Cindy? Terry? Adrian? Are you alright? What’s going on?”
Mr. Koontz had called Mr. Baker early! Draining no longer weakened me to the point where I couldn’t even shout.
“Help!” I called out at the top of my lungs. “Angels!”
“Break it down!” shouted Mr. Baker, and I guessed he had brought his Knights.
Riles yelled back, “That door opens and Cynthia Gifford dies!”
Suddenly the living room became darker. Glancing out the window, I realized that all of the buildings around us had been plunged into darkness. The entire city block had lost power, and New Haven One with it. The Angels were coming.
Alia let out a loud shriek as Riles grabbed her by her arm. Terry pushed me along as the four of us filed through the library and into the greenhouse. Cindy was lying on the floor, her mouth gagged with packaging tape, her wrists and ankles bound tightly together with thin rope. She looked up at us, her eyes red with tears.
“I already promised that I’m not going to hurt your children, Ms. Gifford,” Terry said quietly. “They’re just here to see us off.”
Looking out of the greenhouse windows, Riles said, “They’re here.”
Releasing Alia and taking a step back, Riles pointed Terry’s pistol at one of the giant windowpanes. He fired several rounds in rapid succession, and the windowpane shattered into tiny pieces. The wind rushed in, swirling through the greenhouse and sending dust, leaves and flower petals everywhere.
A tall, muscular woman entered through the broken window, followed quickly by a skinny, frail-looking man, and I felt both of their formidable telekinetic powers up close.
Even in the dark, I could see that the telekinetic man was actually fairly young, probably not much older than twenty-five. He nevertheless looked frighteningly skeletal, with sunken eyes and bony limbs. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realized numbly that I was looking at a person with such terrible psionic power balance that his physical body had almost completely decayed. This was the fate that Terry had saved me from when she taught me to balance my power, but all I felt for my instructor now was hatred.
The telekinetic woman had brought in a dark green backpack, which she quickly removed and dropped at Riles’s feet. Then, without a word, the two telekinetics grabbed Cindy by the ropes binding her and jumped back through the window.
Even as a flight-capable telekinetic, I couldn’t stay airborne for more than a few minutes, and I certainly couldn’t lift someone else along with me. These telekinetics apparently couldn’t either, but between them, they had just enough power for a controlled descent, drifting diagonally away from the tower.
As I watched them disappear into the darkness, I heard Terry shout at Riles, “What about my brother?!”
“You’ve done well, Terry!” Riles shouted over the wind. “The Angels are not unreasonable. What’s left of your brother will be released intact as soon as Gifford is safely converted.”
Even over the howling of the wind, I heard a distant pounding sound from the living room. The Knights were breaking down our front door.
Riles shouldered the dark green backpack that the telekinetic woman had left behind, which I guessed was a parachute. Clipping the straps around his chest and waist, the Angel said, “But if I recall correctly, Terry, there was no agreement for you.”
Riles pointed his gun at Terry as he picked up another backpack from the floor and threw it out the window: Terry’s parachute.
“Whoops!” he shouted, laughing. “I guess you’re going to have to stay here and deal with the Knights for us.”
“You bastard!” Terry shouted furiously.
“No agreement for them, either,” said Riles, grinning at Alia and me. “I’m guessing the healer is light enough to come with me.”
My wrists were still cuffed behind my back, but I threw myself forward, ramming my shoulder into Riles’s stomach. Riles was twice my size and I was being drained by the cuffs. But he hadn’t been expecting me, and he was already standing right in front of the broken window. The Angel lost his balance and I pushed harder until I felt his body give way.
“You come with me then!” he screamed as he grabbed my shirt and pulled me over the ledge.
I felt my stomach turn over, and suddenly I was face to face with Riles, dangling upside down over the edge of the broken window. I heard Terry screaming. An instant later, Riles had released me and was falling away into the night. I saw his rectangular parasail snap open and glide away.
Turning my head upwards, I saw why I hadn’t fallen to my death. Terry had her hands around my ankles and was carefully pulling me back into the greenhouse.
As soon as Terry managed to drag me to safety, Alia threw her arms around my neck. I didn’t look at Terry. The lights in the greenhouse came on, and I sensed the Knights surrounding us, but I ignored them too. As Alia and I sat slumped down on the floor, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the darkness around the tower.
Chapter 15: A Guardian’s Choice
“I want to see her,” I said at the door of 3901.
“Absolutely not!” Mr. Baker replied sternly, standing in the doorway and looking down at me irritably.
Looking past him, I could see that Mr. Baker already had numerous emergency guests inside his condo. He didn’t invite me in.
“But she can help us!” I insisted. “Just let me talk to her.”
“Out of the question,” said Mr. Baker. “We have professionals for this kind of thing, Adrian. You will have to leave it to us.”
The Knights had taken Terry down to the holding block. It had been almost half an hour since Cindy was kidnapped, and the Guardians were planning to probe Terry with a delver to extract Cindy’s whereabouts. I stamped my feet impatiently. There wasn’t time for this. Every second lost meant there was less chance of recovering Cindy.
Mr. Baker continued harshly, “Even if I did let you talk to her, nothing she says can be trusted. We need the truth, not a wild-goose chase. Terry hasn’t been specifically trained to block delving, but nevertheless she has a strong will. We must start quickly. It could take several hours before we can extract any useful information.”
“Several hours?!” I cried. “By then Cindy could be long gone!”
“Then stop wasting my time and let me do my job, Adrian!”
“At least let me try talking to her. Please, Mr. Baker!” I begged. “Your delver isn’t here yet. What do we have to lose?”
Mr. Baker paused, thinking silently for a moment before he replied, “Nothing, Adrian. There is nothing more we can lose tonight. Alright, I will let you speak with her, but only until our interrogators arrive. And anything she tells you freely will still have to be verified with the delver.”
“Fine,” I said. Right now, that Mr. Baker was planning to torture Cindy’s location out of Terry didn’t bother me in the least. But I needed answers, and I couldn’t be waiting on the Guardians.
Mr. Baker scribbled me a memo to get me into the holding block. Taking it, I sprinted back up the stairs to the penthouse. I had told Alia to stay there with Mr. Koontz, who had come up with the Knights when they raided our home.
I found Mr. Koontz sitting on one of the living-room sofas. My sister was standing by the window, staring out at the night sky. She didn’t turn around when I entered.
“Adrian–” began Mr. Koontz.
But I cut across him, saying quickly, “I’m sorry, Mr. Koontz, but I need some time alone with Alia.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Koontz. “I will retreat to your library, then.”
As soon as Mr. Koontz was out of earshot, I said, “Ali, get dressed. I’m going to need you for this.”
My sister continued to stare out the window. She didn’t answer.
“Ali,” I said again. “Alia!”
Finally she turned around and faced me, but her eyes were dazed and out of focus. I heard her voice in my head say faintly,
“Cindy’s gone.”
I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Yes, Alia, Cindy’s gone! But she’s alive and we’re going to find her!”
Alia silently looked down at the floor.
“Alia,” I said as patiently as I could, “we’ve been through worse than this together, and I need you to be brave now. We’re going to get her back, just like she saved us. Please.”
Ever so slowly, Alia raised her head again. She looked at me and nodded. When I saw her eyes, I almost gasped in surprise. They were not the eyes of a sad or frightened child, but calm and determined. They were almost scary.
“What do you want me to do?”
she asked, her telepathic voice completely steady.
“Come with me,” I said.
I led my sister back to our room, and we quickly changed into our outdoor clothes. Slapping my tracer band onto my left wrist, I looked at it in frustration. If only I had been wearing this earlier, Cindy might not have been taken.
“Addy?”
Alia’s voice snapped me out of my anger. This wasn’t the time to be upset at myself or anybody else. Grabbing my sister’s hand, I pulled her out of the penthouse, shouting thanks to Mr. Koontz as we left.
Taking the elevator down to the subbasement, I headed straight for the holding block. One lone Knight, an unarmed but powerful pyroid, was standing outside the heavy steel door. I wondered for a moment why there weren’t more guards down here. But then I remembered that Terry was just a fifteen-year-old girl, and not even psionic. The Guardians, and the Angels for that matter, had underestimated her before. They just didn’t learn. I showed Mr. Baker’s note to the guard.