For disclaimers, please see chapter 1.
"Emma, can you hear me?" Shalimar called out into the darkness.
"Shal, I'm over here."
Shalimar swung her head towards the voice, her feral eyes gleaming. "I can't see you. Stay where you are, I'll come to you."
She cautiously crept through the nearly pitch black warehouse. Her heart still pounded fiercely in her chest. She kept an eye out for agents, but she guessed that any that had survived… well, survived Brennan, would have left already. Her keen sense of smell burdened her more than it helped in this instance; the stench of roasted flesh wafted through the building in waves.
I can't believe we're even alive after that. Brennan must have controlled it somehow, at least enough to save us.
Shalimar felt the sobs rising in her chest, threatening to overtake her. She couldn't let that happen though, not now. She needed to get Emma back to safety, and she needed to recover Brennan's body. Mason Eckhardt wouldn't get a chance to study Brennan, even in death.
Her eyes watered at the thought, and she blinked away the tears savagely. She let her feral nature emerge more, her human emotions taking a back seat to the clearer thoughts of her animal side. She needed to save what remained of her family. Nothing else mattered more.
"Emma?" she queried, reaching the approximate place she had heard the psionic's voice.
"I'm here, Shal," Emma replied, feeling her way out from behind a crate in the darkness. "Are the agents gone?"
"I can't sense any, none alive, anyway."
"Okay." Suddenly a glow suffused the area, radiating out from a spot in front of Emma's forehead. "It's not much," she said, looking at Shalimar, "but it should help us a little."
Shalimar nodded. "We need to find Bren and take him back to Sanctuary."
Emma wiped a few tears from her face. "I can't sense him, Shal. I think he's gone."
"I know," she replied, wrapping her arms around the younger woman, "but we need to get out of here."
Emma sniffled and then nodded over to a wall. "I think he fell over there," her last sight of Brennan branded into her eyes.
"Shal! Em! Get out of here, I can't control this!"
Emma wanted to run, but she couldn't move. A thick knot of electrical energy headed towards Brennan, his face strained and distorted with the effort of trying to control his power.
She watched helplessly as the knot engulfed him, electrical currents streaking across his body faster and faster, building a greater and greater charge. His whole body began to take on a bluish white glow, thousands of sparks swarming him like a plague of fireflies.
"Brennan!" she screamed, seeing him writhe in pain. More than anything, she wanted to rush to his side and help him, but she couldn't move.
She looked over at Shalimar briefly, but back again at Brennan as the light pulsed slowly a few times, and then more with increasing frequency.
Without any warning, a combination of light and electricity exploded from Brennan, and Emma had a brief glimpse of him flying back towards a wall, but the light blinded her. When it faded, everything went dark.
"Emma, check your ring. Is it working?"
Emma glanced down at her hand. "Jesse? Adam? Can you hear me?"
"It's no good, Em. It's just like mine – it's dead. See, the design is gone."
Emma took a better look at her ring, and saw what Shalimar had noticed. The design on the ring, coded to respond only to their individual DNA sequences, did not display on the ring. Instead, it looked like a simple silver ring.
"How's that possible? If one of Brennan's coils had hit me, I'd be dead, or at least singed pretty bad."
"Whatever happened to Brennan took out all the electrical equipment in here. Wait! There he is!" Shal rushed over to where Brennan lay, crumpled against the wall. She quickly reached down and pressed her fingers to his throat. "He's still alive!"
"Shal, we've got to get him back to Adam."
Shal reached down and picked Brennan up, slinging him over her shoulder. "Bren, I really hope this isn't hurting you, but I don't have a choice. The GSA could be back any minute."
She turned and looked at a GSA agent about 20 feet from them. "Em, grab that guy's gear. He's got a handheld computer, a stunner, and some communications equipment. Maybe it'll help Adam figure out what happened."
"I'm on it."
Minutes later, Shalimar and Emma exited the warehouse, Brennan still slung across the feral's shoulder. They stopped for a moment, looking around at the darkness that surrounded them.
"Oh God. How big an area do you think he took out?" Emma twisted and looked the other way. "I think I see some lights that way."
The sound of sirens filled the air.
"Let's hope not more than a couple of blocks. Anything more than that and the Helix will be fried, too. Let's go."
"Shalimar! Emma! Can you hear me? Brennan? Are you there?" Jesse waited for a response impatiently, his fingers racing across the keyboard in front of him.
"It's no good, Adam. They're not responding."
"Is something blocking the signal?"
"No, it's like it just went dead. Wait, I'm seeing reports of fire engines being dispatched to their area. There are reports of a sudden black out."
The screen if front of Jesse flipped, displaying an aerial view of the city. "Satellite imaging shows several blocks around the warehouse without power."
The screen wavered. "I'm bringing up the archive. I've had the area under surveillance, like we always do, but didn't expect to get much since they were inside a building. Okay, got it."
On the screen the normal lighting in the warehouse district showed. Suddenly, the whole area lit up in a flash and then went dark.
"What was that?" Adam demanded, looking at the monitor.
"Brennan," Jesse breathed, not wanting to voice his fear, but dread forcing it out anyway. "It had to have been Brennan."
"That's impossible, not even Brennan could have generated that much power. It would have…" Adam trailed off.
"…killed him," Jesse whispered. "And Shal and Em."
Adam shook himself. "We don't know that yet. We need to go check. Let's go!" Adam rushed to the door, and Jesse stood up shakily from the desk, turning to follow.
"Please let Brennan be alright," he prayed aloud. "Let all of them be alright." Then he rushed to follow Adam.
"Thank God," Shal groaned as she sighted the Helix, still cloaked and functional. She reached into to where the door should be and groped by the access control port. She found it and quickly typed in the code, and a door whooshed open in front of her, out of nothingness.
She entered quickly and slid Brennan from her shoulder down into a chair. "Em, strap him in. I'm going to fire up the engines."
"Right."
Shalimar reached the pilots seat and sat down, panels lighting up in front of her. She hit a few buttons, including one to open up communications to Sanctuary.
"Adam? Jesse? Can you hear me?"
"Shalimar!" she heard Adam and Jesse answer as one. "Are you okay? And Emma and Brennan?" Adam asked.
"Emma and I are fine. Brennan… Brennan isn't so good. He overloaded or something, Adam. He had this huge power spike. It knocked out power for a couple of blocks." She pulled up on the stick, and the helix soared into the air, turning to head back to Sanctuary.
"We saw, Shalimar. I'll prep the lab for you arrival. Emma…"
"I'm setting up the emergency medical scanner now, Adam," Emma broke in. "I'll feed the results directly to you."
"We'll be ready."
"Emma?" Jesse asked, his actual question unspoken.
"I don't know, Jess. I can't feel him right now," she said, choking up a little. "I don't know."
Adam exited the lab to find them outside waiting for him. He sighed. "It's still to soon to be sure, but I think he'll be okay."
Shalimar, Emma and Jesse grabbed each other, smiles breaking out on their faces.
"His mutant electrical charge was almost non-existent – this overload or whatever happened almost killed him. But he's recharging quickly, far more quickly than I would have expected. I running a work up on him now, but I'd say that his powers are mutating again, hopefully not out of control."
"I looked at the equipment Emma brought back, Adam," Jesse interrupted. "I think that's a safe bet. The equipment isn't just fried from an overload of electricity. It isn't just blown fuses. The computer chips are dead. There's only one thing that would cause this, and that's an EM pulse."
Shalimar and Emma looked at him.
"Electromagnetic pulse. It fries all computer equipment. During a nuclear blast, an EM pulse is generated, far in excess of the actual blast area. We're talking Nerds to Amish in one blow. If harnessed, it's one of the most devastating weapons possible." Jesse looked around, seeing that they didn't understand. "Think the stock market, international banking, air traffic control, e-commerce, medical records – everything is online. With an EMP pulse, say goodbye to all that, down to traffic signals, and your car for that matter."
"I had no idea," Shal said. "Wait, so you are saying that's what Brennan is now?"
Jesse shrugged. "I don't know – all I know is that an EM pulsed killed all this equipment, including your comm rings. Adam, I don't want to be an alarmist, but we need to be aware of the risk to Sanctuary, should this happen again."
"I understand, Jesse. See if there's anything you can do to shield the core memory on the system." Adam turned to Shalimar. "If Eckhardt comes to the same conclusion, Brennan will become his number one target. Check security and see how we look."
Adam turned his focus onto the three of them. "In the meantime, let me know if you are experiencing any changes with your own power. The last time this happened you all showed symptoms within hours of each other. Have any of you noticed anything?"
Jesse stayed silent, as did the others.
"Okay, but if you see or feel anything, let me know right away. I'm going to go back in with Brennan. Jesse? You're sure? Nothing?"
"Nope, everything's normal," Jesse lied. "Let's just focus on Brennan."
Author's Notes:
Just for clarity, in Chapter 4 when Brennan stepped out from behind the crate and exposed himself to the agents… that wasn't the full monty type of exposure. We can't make the GSA happy now, can we
Yay! More Pringles! Lady Lenna, Marie Crosby and KoalaRed – thanks for feeding my review addiction!