ONCE STARTED
REILLY, GRACE & CARDWELL
ACCRA, GHANA
Reilly Carroll, Grace Scott and Priscilla Adei-Cardwell had little trouble passing security at Accra's Kotoka International Airport. The three, plus Cardwell's enigmatic bodyguard, known only as The Ghanaian, had moved through astonishingly quickly. It was still early, and they'd been told the flight to Addis Ababa was only one fifth full. From there, they'd board a plane to Mumbai.
Reilly and Grace waited in the gate lounge, while Cardwell and The Ghanaian went to get a morning snack for the four of them. It had been a hard night; Grace had cried most of it, while Reilly had sat up drinking with The Ghanaian.
The story of the man in the village on the shores of Lake Volta had touched Reilly, and had devastated Grace.
She sat beside him now, sobbing dryly. Reilly looped his arm around her, and pulled her close. She pressed her face into his arm.
Finally, the boarding call came, soon after Cardwell and her mysterious sentinel returned. The four boarded, bound for Ethiopia, and from there to India. The next leg of their journey was about to begin.
ERIN EEDY
BERLIN, GERMANY
It was midday when Erin Eedy arrived at the train yard; the sun beat down upon Berlin, the cold of the night completely forgotten in the newfound warmth of day. Driving through the bustling, modern city, it had been hard to imagine it in the 1980s; run-down, dying under Soviet oppression.
She pulled her black Mercedes to a stop just in front of the rusted through chain-link gate of the yard, and took the keys from the ignition. She squinted into the sunlight, weed-covered, rusted-train studded expanse of gravel.
There was no sign of another car.
Erin popped the door, and slipped out into the sunshine. It wasn't as warm as it should have; the air still had a bitter, cold tang to it.
Erin walked to the gates, and she felt a shudder run through her body. Something was very wrong here. Her hand reached into her coat, and her hand clasped the pistol butt. She removed the weapon, and held it to her side as she entered.
The trains had not run for twenty years; the tracks on which they still lay had been built over by the developing of the New Berlin, so they were effectively trapped here.
"Erin?"
Erin already knew who it was. "Kristen," Erin said, turning towards the speaker. Kristen McQualter was Erin's opposite; shorter, paler-skin, straight black hair. Erin was far taller, over six feet, her hair waved and auburn. Their abilities, the manifestation of the Gene they carried, were also very different.
Kristen had the ability to spontaneously generate forcefields by mentally charging atmospheric particles, and forcing them together. Erin, however, had the ability of human flight; she could fly through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds, or hover across a room.
"It's good to see you," Kristen said, stepping out from behind one of the ancient, broken-down train engine. "It's good to see anyone."
Erin nodded. "I'm glad you're okay."
"I've been poking around the yard," Kristen said. Erin noted that her hands were dark with dirt from the 'poking around'. She gestured towards the depths of the yard. "There's a train over there. It looks like it's been ripped off the tracks and dumped there.""Show me," Erin said, and Kristen led her through the yard. Erin said "You say it looked like it was ripped off the tracks? Like telekinesis?"
"Hold on," Kristen answered.
They reached the area Kristen had described; a train had been pulled off the tracks, and thrown across the yard, leaving a trail of debris and rust, before landing on the gravel and shattering. Each of the broken pieces looked warped, as though had literally been twisted b some kind of ultra-powerful magnetic force.
"I found this," Kristen said, stepping over to Erin, extending her hand. She opened her fingers, revealing a small, folded scrap of paper.
Erin picked it up, opening it.
An address.
"You think we should go here?" Erin asked the woman beside her, who simply stared out at the remnants of the train, frowning as though trying to remember something. "Hello? Kristen?"
"Huh?" she said, snapping around. "What?"
"Do you want to go to this address?" Erin asked, her own brow crinkling. "Are you okay?"
"I think Julian Neave messed with my memory," Kristen answered. "But I'm not sure."
Erin nodded. "You're missing a few days. I think he did, too. I recognise the feeling. I remember it. S, do you wanna check out this address or not?"
"Definitely," Kristen answered. "It's our only lead."
"Well, then, let's go." Erin said, though she had known from the second she saw the scrap of paper that she'd be going there. Edith Fesckes was too important to forget about so quickly. Far too important. Allowing Kristen to make the 'choice' was just a way to let the woman still feel a part of the assignment.
Kristen turned to leave, but Erin reached into her coat pocket, removing a small digital camera. She snapped a few shots of the train, then of the piece of paper still in her hand.
Then she followed Kristen.
It took them twenty minutes to reach the address, an empty warehouse not far from the train yard, in the middle of an industrial development, The are was all concrete and corrugated steel and graffiti; an ugly realism of city living.
Kristen was the first out; she practically bounded out of the car towards the massive rolling doors of the warehouse, and Erin followed, snapping photographs of the exterior.
"It's not padlocked," Kristen shouted.
Erin took not of the address, and pulled out her Sidekick, punching in a message. She sent it as Kristen got a hold of the one the massive doors, and shoved it open.
With a rusty, teeth-shattering grinding, the door flew open, a loud bang echoing through the cool air as it came to a stop.
Kristen was the first in, a flashlight suddenly in hand. She swept the beam of light this way and that, illuminating the massive chamber within. With a concrete floor, towering cement walls and a high, steepled ceiling of iron, it seemed to be some industrial spectre of a grand cathedral.
"Nothing," Kristen muttered. It was entirely empty. Nonetheless, Erin snapped photos of the interior, and the tire marks on the floor.
"Wait." Erin said. "What's that?"
Kristen turned, and followed Erin's gaze to a shadowed corner. A single chair, wooden, with a wicker seat, sat there, in front of a pair of wooden crates, stacked on top of each other.
Chained to the legs of the chair were a pair of handcuffs.
They drew closer, Erin taking pictures, the flash briefly illuminating what Kristen's torch could not. Finally, Erin slipped the camera away.
That was when she first heard it.
A gentle beeping. Now she knew it was there, it was louder; echoing off the concrete surfaces. "Can you hear that?" Kristen said, echoing Erin's thoughts.
"I can," Erin said, and the two moved closer to the chair and the crates.
Kristen shone her flash light on a dark outline atop the crates, and her jaw fell open. "Mother of God."
It was a detonator, red numbers on the small screen counting down to zero. And it was almost there. Ten seconds to detonation.
"Erin..." Kristen said, warningly.
Erin grabbed the woman's elbow. "We must have activated it when we opened the door. Come on."
They turned to run, the beeping getting louder. Their footsteps echoed through the vast, empty chamber as the detonator passed five.
They were almost at the door when it reached one.
The explosion tore through the morning air, releasing a great plume of fire into the clear, blue sky over Berlin, belching a column of smoke and superheated ash into the atmosphere, as half a ton of high explosives vaporised the warehouse, and the car parked out the front investigating detectives would soon determine to be a Mercedes.
They did not, however, find any bodies in the rubble.
For, just as the shockwave from the explosion reached the retreating forms of Erin Eedy and Kristen McQualter, the former tackled the latter aside.
And, as the flames consumed the doorway and licked at the sky, a form shot like an arrow into the sky, a trail of smoke left hanging in the air after it.
BRENDAN & LAUREN WUNDERLICH
SIMI VALLEY, CA
Brendan Wunderlich had just gotten home when he entered his lounge room reached the lounge room, and that's where he found his wife, sprawled on the couch, immobile. Clearly unconscious. "Lauren!" he shouted, darting forward. He skidded along the carpet to her, and reached for her, drawing her unconscious frame to him.
Her eyes flickered open, briefly, and she said through parched lips "Julian."
Her eyes closed immediately. Brendan felt for a pulse, all the while shouting questions at her, trying to keep her conscious. "Julian? Julian Neave? What happened Lauren? Lauren? Can you hear me? Lauren!"
Finally, her eyes opened again, and it was as though she was waking from a deep slumber. She had a dozy smile on her face, and she yawned, and stretched, and sat up, looking around through sleep filled eyes. "What time is it?" she asked through another yawn.
Brendan recognised it in an instant. Julian Neave had been here, and he'd wiped Lauren's memory. That's when Brendan realised what they were after; his files.
That's when Brendan got scared.
He helped Lauren up, but, without saying a word, bolted towards the stairs up to the second level of their Spanish-style Simi Valley home, which he took two at a time, until he reached the top. He shouldered his way into the master bedroom, ignored the queen-sized bed, and ran to the bay window, pulling away the throw rugs and the cushions that sat on the small storage bin beneath the window. The bin had no external means of access; it was designed specifically for Brendan's ability.
His hand phased through the wood, and unhooked the latch. The bin fell open. Inside, Brendan kept paper back-ups of all his files, including information on every operative of his group, both past and present, accounted for and AWOL. One of them was missing.
Brendan knew whose it was immediately. He kept it to the far left of the bin. It was gone. The file pertained to four individuals; specifically, their current whereabouts. Sophie Freeman, the woman with the ability to draw images of the future. Kyle Smith, the orphaned teen with the potential to control the weather. Monica Wilkie, a girl with the power to mimic any physical action. Kristian Darroch, a New Orleans man capable of teleporting anywhere on the planet in the blink of an eye.
After the showdown with Chambers, the four of them had been furnished with new identities and set up in a beach house on picturesque Seventeen Mile Drive near Monterey, California.
They'd be kept safe, no matter what. They'd be allowed to live their lives in peace, security and anonymity. But someone had compromised the file. Someone, working with Julian Neave, had been able to locate Sophie.
"Brendan?" Lauren said from behind him. "Are you okay?"
Brendan closed the bin, mind racing. "I'm fine." He stood, and faced her. "I think you should get some rest. You don't look well."
Lauren smiled. "Always the charmer. I think you're right though."
As Lauren disappeared into their en suite to prepare for bed, Brendan sat on the bed, staring out the window. This was a big problem.
LOS ANGELES, CA
Brendan entered his office the next morning to find Elena Moskovski already waiting for him, standing in front of the massive desk. She, like Brendan, had an ability; she was able to generate sonic shockwaves with the power of her voice, strong enough to knock a man flying across the room. And, with Erin gone, she was Brendan's most trusted ally.
"Good morning," Brendan said, sauntering in. "Sorry I'm late. The I5 was murder."
Elena smiled knowledgeably, "I know. It's been like that all week. What can I do for the organisation today, sir?"
Brendan took his seat. "I need you in Monterey, ASAP."
"Monterey?" Elena asked. "Why?"
"There's been a serious security breach," Brendan explained. "I want you to take four non-Carriers to Monterey, and set up a security cordon for Sophie Freeman. Then I want you back here."
"No problem," Elena said. "I'll be back in three days."
Brendan leant back as she left. Sophie was not to be contacted unless it was a dire emergency; he didn't want to scare her unnecessarily. She was also not supposed to contact him unless one of her drawings pictured something pertaining to the future of the organisation, or Brendan himself.
He sighed. The second security slip in a matter of days; first Kristen in Berlin, now this. Things were looking bad.
AMY LAMOTTE
MARSEILLES, FRANCE
"Are you sure this is it?" a voice whispered through the darkness.
"Positive," Amy Lamotte whispered back, her flashlight sweeping the darkened office before her. "They're pretty serious about this stuff."
"I don't doubt it."
A second beam of light joined the one emanating from Amy's flashlight, illuminating more of the office. Louisa Rietdijk stepped into more appreciable light. She swung the light around in an arc, illuminating the whole western side of the office.
Their mission was simple; find the file relating to the mysterious 'Burak', a billionaire rumoured to live somewhere in Spain, high up in the Pyrenees. Amy crossed to a locked filing cabinet, one of half a dozen on that side of the room. She ran her eyes across the label, translating the French as she went. The label translated to 'Top Secret'.
"This looks like it," Amy said, and the freezing blow glow danced around the index finger of her right hand. She reached out, and touched the lock.
It froze instantly.
She tugged on the drawer's handle, and it opened with a teeth-chattering snap as the brittle lock snapped clean in half. The drawer was crammed with manila files; dozens upon dozens, overflowing with pages. By the far the largest was a file marked 'Personnes des particulier'.
Unique people.
"I've got it," Amy said, fishing it out.
She dumped it on the floor of the office, and held up her flashlight. She opened it finding herself at an index page. She ran her finger down the list of placements; all of them names. Only two stood out to her; L. Rietdijk and H. Burak. A third name, EFeckes, was also familiar, but Amy couldn't place it.
Amy smiled. "I've definitely got it."
"Then let's get the hell out of here," Louisa whispered. She was understandably nervous; breaking into chateaus was one thing; breaking into the office of the Director of the Marseilles branch of the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire was something else all together.
Louisa turned towards the door, but barely got three steps. Two men were standing in the doorway, both armed. One was medium height, with scruffy dark hair. The other was tall, gangly, with a thick, red-gold mop, who was staring intently at Louisa, as though trying to memorise her appearance, every detail.
Louisa audibly gasped with surprise, taking a stumbling step backwards. "Amy!" she shouted.
Amy whipped around, producing a gun, grabbing the file as she went.
The dark-haired man turned his gun on Amy, and she instantly recognised him, and his friend.
"Jordan Turley?" she said, eyes wide. "Lachlan Dickson?" She knew both of them, from her time working for Greenland. She knew them well enough to know they were most certainly working for Brendan. "Louisa, get out of here!"
Louisa didn't need a second warning. She melted away as the real Louisa broke the mental connection, deactivating her power of astral projection.
Jordan turned to his accomplice. "Have you got her?""Yes," Dickson replied.
"Go."
Dickson slipped out the door, into the darkened hall. It was then Amy remembered his ability; clairvoyance. He could located someone, no matter where they were, as long as he knew their appearance. And, having seen the astral projection of Louisa's mental self, he knew exactly where she was.
Amy took a step forward, holding her gun up in her right hand, her left swirling with the azure energy of her power manifesting.
Turley only smiled.
He reached out his old hand, and Amy felt the air around her suddenly drop in temperature as the moisture was sucked out of it. The blue glow died away. She could only stare at her hand in open-mouthed horror.
Turley had used his power of rapid dehydration to suck the water from the air.
"You can't freeze anything," he began, a wolfish grin stretching across his face, "if there's no water in the atmosphere."
He whipped the gun up and moved towards her, firing as he went.
Amy leapt over the desk in the centre of the room, knocking the objects on the surface flying. She banged her hand against a desk lamp. Pain shot through her wrist, and her gun fell away. Amy rolled over the wood, landing on the carpet, knocking over the swivel chair. She held her hand out, but only a few thin wisps of blue light drifted up from her palm. She wouldn't be able to freeze a snowflake, not with the complete lack of atmospheric moisture.
The bullets ricocheted off the wall before Amy, but not one struck the desk.
She heard footsteps as Jordan Turley grew closer. Unarmed, and with her power neutralised, she was useless against Turley. She tried to remember what she had heard about Jordan; that he had the ability to suck dry a glass of water, or deprive an entire room of moisture. He could also remove the water from living cells, in much the same way that Amy froze it. But what happened to the water after he dehydrated a room, or a person?
Then it hit her.
He stored it at the cellular level. All she needed to do was freeze him, as she had with Brendan's sniper two nights before. She heard his footsteps reach the desk. This was her only chance.
She shoved upwards, the desk flying backwards, knocking Turley off his feet. The gun went off, putting a round in the ceiling.
Amy jumped towards him, and managed to get a hold of wrist. She twisted, hard; bones broke, the gun fell. He screamed, and Amy pulled him close to her. "There may be no water left in the air, but there's plenty here."
Jordan screamed as the cold froze him from the inside out. He died within seconds. The corpse shattered, like so much glass.
TANGIER, MOROCCO
Lachlan Dickson moved slowly, economically, gun out, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of movement as she slowly pushed the apartment door open. It hadn't been hard to find Louisa Rietdijk once his power had gotten started.
He'd examined her features closely. Well, the features of her astral form. With that, his power of clairvoyance kicked in; he found her in Morocco, in a hotel not far from the ocean in Tangier. He'd left Jordan to deal with Lamotte; her power was useless; she'd be easy to kill. Booking passage on the first ferry across the Mediterranean to Northern Africa, Lachlan had found his way to Louisa's hotel easily enough.
As he entered the room, decorated in the unique Moorish-style, the long-barrelled silver gun in hand, he glanced around, keeping his ears pricked.
He heard running water from the shower.
There was a lap top on the room's coffee table, and few sheets of paper, mostly written in French. His power confirmed Louisa was in the next room.
A breeze blew in through the open arch windows, rustling the long, gossamer curtains. The hotel was expensive, housed in a building five hundred years old; most of the furnishings were just as old. The peeling green-and-gold fleur-de-lis wallpaper was starting to peel, but it merely added to the French colonial charm of the place.
The woman's shower was still going. Steam was pouring from the beneath the door to the bathroom. Lachlan poked around on the coffee table, but most of the documents were incomprehensible to him, in French, German, Italian, a few in Russian. Another in Greek.
He heard movement in the bathroom, but the steam was still was pouring out.
He hefted the gun, and crept towards the door to the hotel room's bedroom. There was another door to the bathroom through there.
He nudged the door open. Documents covered the bed, and he saw a small metal lock box on the bed, flung open, a padlock on the bed. There were some clothes on the ground, and the standalone wardrobe's left door hung open.
"Freeze!"
Lachlan spun as soon as he heard the voice and opened fire, squeezing off a pair of gunshots. Neither struck the bathrobe-clad woman standing in the bathroom doorframe, though she did flinch, her own shots, from a compact Heckler and Koch, going wide.
Lachlan leapt back into the lounge room, as Louisa Rietdijk appeared at the other bathroom doorway. Lachlan knew it was the real her; the clairvoyance would have told him if it wasn't.
He squeezed off another shot, and Louisa was forced to the ground. The gun went sprawling. She lunged for it, but Lachlan got to her first. He kicked away the gun, and lifted his, pointed directly at Louisa's head.
Her eyes widened in fear.
The room door was flung open, crashing loudly against the wall. Amy Lamotte bounded through, gun up.
Three shots pierced the air.
One shot found home, striking his shoulder, sending him reeling backwards; right out the room's third floor window. The curtains parted behind him, and he was gone, his boot the last visible part of him as he plunged towards the street below.
Amy was breathing heavily, her chest heaving. She turned to Louisa. "Are you okay?"
Louisa forced herself to her feet, nodding. "He caught me off-guard." Her voice was coming right through the nose; she had been shocked, forced to the limits of her training. "He shouldn't have. Are you okay? What happened in Marseilles after I left?"
"The other man is dead," Amy said. "His name was Jordan Turley. He could dehydrate objects, even the atmospheres of rooms." Amy shuddered. "He's dead."
"What's our next move?"
Amy reached into her coat, and dumped a thick file on the coffee table, marked 'Personnes des particulier'. "We go through this file, one entry at a time. Then we follow 'em up."
Deep down, Amy knew that Jordan's death meant only one thing. War.
LOS ANGELES, CA
Brendan shook with rage when he read the report from Lachlan Dickson. He had survived the fall in Tangier, landing on the canvas roof of a passing truck. He'd crawled to an internet cafe, and made his report online. Jordan dead, having failed to kill Amy. Louisa Rietdijk was also still alive.
Brendan put his face in his hands.
"Sir," came the bubbly voice of his new assistant from the desk intercom. "I have an urgent call for you from Sophie Freeman."
Brendan frowned. Why would Sophie call him? They'd already checked, and her location, though compromised, was being watched. Sophie was not supposed to have any idea. "Put her through," Brendan said, not allowing his confusion to seep into his voice.
There was a brief click.
"Sophie," Brendan said, amiably. "How are you? How are the kids?"
"I'm fine," Sophie Freeman's voice, with a slight Texan lilt, came over the intercom. "Monica and Kyle are as well. You said I was to contact you if I drew anything related ti you."
Brendan's breath caught in her throat. "I did."
"I've drawn something." Sophie said. Brendan immediately tapped a few buttons hidden under the desk; the inbuilt flat LCD screen rolled upwards on its silent motors, and Brendan opened a drawer, placing the streamlined wireless laptop and matching mouse on the mahogany surface. "Can I send it to you?"
"I'm just getting everything set up," Brendan said, as the computer cycled through its warm-up sequences. "Email it to me, as a file attachment."
"Right," Sophie answered, and she groaned slightly as she did what she had to do.
Brendan opened his email inbox just as the message arrived. He opened the attachment, and waited as it loaded. It was a large digital photograph of one of Sophie's prophetic lead pencil drawings.
"Did you get it?" Sophie asked, but Brendan was speechless. "Hello? Brendan? What is it?"
He ignored her. On the screen, before him, rendered in graphite, was his worst nightmare. Lauren was in his arms, her eyes staring sightlessly upwards. And, over her shoulder, stood a woman, smoking gun in hand. The woman's identity hit Brendan like a slap to the face. Amy Lamotte.
Amy Lamotte was going to kill his wife.
His mind, spinning rapidly through all the options, landed on one. War.