Wharff leans against the railing on his side, just as casual, mirroring my posture. “It’s good to meet you again. I knew your caring heart would bring you here.” He indicates the smoke and fire and bedlam beneath us. “I didn’t quite count on you bringing so much backup, but…” He winks. “It makes it more fun, doesn’t it?”
“This is bad,” Seppie says. “This is tremendously bad. Do you know him?”
“We’ve met,” he answers for me, and suddenly the distance feels too close. To be fair, a hundred miles would be too close.
He was the person the crystal showed me a few times—at least it was the back of the head. I can tell now even though he’s facing me. That was him. Why?
Finally, I fight through the shock and find my voice. “So, I’m guessing you weren’t driving a truck on a highway in Maine and didn’t have a happy abduction story?”
“Hardly.” He raises an eyebrow. It’s a calculated move and is meant to make me worry about how casual he is. “There are no happy abduction stories. You two should know that. But to be fair, we tried to be as noninvasive as possible with your friend September here.”
I whirl around. “What did they do to you?”
Something zings through the air behind me and I smash down to the grate, yanking September with me.
“Lesson one is to never turn your back on an enemy, Mana,” he calls from across the hangar/garage/whatever the hell this is.
I lift up my head. “So you’re the enemy?”
“He kidnapped me and shot a freaking dart at us,” September grumbles. “I’d say he’s the enemy. We need to get out of here.”
“One sec.” I stand up even though I know it makes me a bigger target, but if September is right and it was a dart he shot at us, it seems he doesn’t want me dead. He wants me weak and docile and captured, but not dead. At least not yet. I bellow across the room, “What do you want from me?”
“Everything. Nothing.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Your power. I want your power.”
“To do what?”
“To fight the aliens.” Mrs. Sweet is the one who answers this time and she is wearing her patented You Are Not a Worthy Student look. She must have been the one to clean up the dead bodies in the bathroom. She must have been trying to get to the crystal but it was too late. She glares at me.
“Shouldn’t that make us friends?” I ask. “We’re on the same side. My friends and I like to call it Team Earth.”
Seppie mumbles something, but I don’t hear her, which is probably good. Seppie hates cute code names. Mrs. Sweet coughs and mumbles something, but I can’t hear what she says.
“I know it’s not the best name,” I babble, “but it’s a pretty descriptive one. It means we are in favor of continuing the human population of earth without any genocidal destruction of alien or human species. You like it?”
Wharff eyes me. “Do you have the crystal?”
“What crystal?” I hedge.
“The crystal that shows where the rest of us are.”
“What do you mean, ‘rest of us’?” I ask.
“The Enhanced.”
Seppie leans up toward me. “Mana, this is all a trap to get you and get the crystal. Mostly the crystal. Whatever the crystal is. Is it like the chip thing?”
“I know,” I mumble back to her. “I mean, I know now. I mean, I know now about the trap part.”
Another dart flies through the air. I yank Seppie down to duck out of the way.
She gives me big, horrified eyes and ignores my question. “We need to get out of here.”
“Who is he, though? What does he want?”
And then Wharff is soaring, flying through the air, leaving Mrs. Sweet behind. He lands right next to us. Seppie tries to kick him, but staggers, weak and off balance. I step in front of her and she falls against the railing.
He is too close, blocking our way forward with his formidable physique. “Are you listening, Mana? I like you. I don’t want to have to kill you. And I only want to have to tell you this once before we duel or agree to work together or whatever it is that we do.”
“Got it.”
His breath is rancid and hot and I feel it in the air between us.
I hate him.
Hate is a strong word, but it’s totally appropriate.
I appraise him. He has no gun, but I doubt he needs one. He’s obviously aware of his powers and knows how to use them, which puts him a few steps ahead of me. Even without his powers, he is a mass of muscles. My fighting skills are not that impressive. I’m not trained. I could never win a fight.
“What is the Enhanced?” I ask.
“You. Me. People with special enhancements.” He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t make any aggressive movements. He seems so casual, as if the stakes are not unfathomably high. I am so out of my league.
“Wharff. Is that really your name?’ I ask.
“It is.”
“Okay. Listen, I get where you’re coming from. Really, I do, but this whole setting off a bomb at the diner, kidnapping my friend, having the principal try to shoot me approach is not making me trust you much. You know?”
“So, what should I have done? Just asked you for your help?” He snickers.
“Pretty much.”
“And you would have trusted me?”
“I would have trusted you more than I do right now.”
His lip moves, just the tiniest of bits, and I wonder if it’s some sort of tell for him, if it means that he’s going to attack or if it means that he has self-doubt, or if it means he is trying to control his anger or his frustration. I don’t know him well enough to read him.
He hurt Seppie. Honestly, that’s all I need to know.
“What did you do to Seppie?” I ask. “You obviously didn’t just abduct her.”
“I gave her what they gave us, a few enhancements, although not quite so radical. We don’t have the expertise here, just some of the technology.”
“You gave her enhancements?” I almost vomit.
“She’s a lucky girl,” Mrs. Sweet yells.
“Yes. If they take.” Wharff doesn’t acknowledge that Mrs. Sweet spoke.
“You played god with her? With Seppie?”
“Technically I played alien. Pretty much the same thing.”
I want to smash his brain in. I want to scream with rage. But even more than that, I want to hug Seppie and try to comfort her somehow, but there’s no time.
“Seppie was fine and brilliant and perfect just the way she was,” I sputter. “You don’t have the right. Nobody has the right to change another person. What even are you? Who are you?”
“I am a man, an Enhanced, who escaped from aliens, who ran and learned and recruited. I am a man who is going to save this world from their threat by whatever means possible.” He is angry now. It is obvious in the clenching and unclenching of his hands.
I don’t care. I just want information. I just want Seppie safe. And I have to stay calm to do that, to push my anger down and ask the right questions. That’s what China always does. I can do that, too. “What’s the big deal about the crystal?”
“The crystal will arm a weapon that will kill all life encoded with a certain variant of DNA.” He cocks his head to the side as if he’s listening to something we can’t hear.
“The genocide machine?” Seppie asks and I know she’s just asking to keep him talking. The longer we can keep him talking, the better.
“Pretty much. The DNA can be alien or human, but it has to be installed into the crystal and then activated by two of the Enhanced. Originally, it was created to kill off all humans, but the chip that was meant to activate it was harmed. That was the chip your mother had. The Enhanced were scattered throughout the world, waiting for the machine’s activation, some unknowing, some knowing. I have killed most of them.”
“You killed them?” I think about that sweet-looking Australian guy, the panic in his voice the last time I saw him through the crys
tal.
“They couldn’t be controlled.” He cocks an eyebrow as if saying I should make sure I can be controlled or I’ll have the same fate. I get the message.
Seppie’s hand touches my arm, but I don’t trust Wharff enough to turn away and look at her to see what she wants.
“So you want to use the crystal to kill off the aliens? Even the good ones?” I ask.
“They don’t belong here,” Mrs. Sweet yells. “Can’t you see that?”
“Why did the aliens even need a crystal? Why not some flood, or just kill everyone with lasers or something?” Seppie blurts from behind me.
“They want the planet and its ecosystems intact. Who wouldn’t? It’s beautiful and bountiful, this Earth. Part of the heightened response and urgency is because humans are having such a horrible impact on the environment. We’re a nuisance. A nuisance that is hurting that ecosystem with bombs and pollution, radiation.” Wharff’s lip twitches as he talks.
“If they are so advanced, can’t they just fix that?” Seppie asks.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I imagine it’s a lot of work compared to this.”
“And they haven’t used the crystal yet because?” I ask.
“They were biding their time, hoping the humans would straighten themselves out. We are failing their expectations. And it was stolen from them recently, thankfully.”
“Well, maybe a nice chat would have been a good idea. Why does nobody just talk things through?” I blurt.
“We are.”
“After you kidnapped me,” Seppie says.
“And you killed that waitress,” I add.
“She was annoying. And I didn’t mean to. It just happened. It’s no great loss.”
And that is it. That is when I realize that no matter how much benefit of the doubt I would want to give him, this guy does not care about individual people. He has no remorse about Seppie, about the waitress (who was annoying). He just wants to have his ends achieved. He is a psychopath or a sociopath. I can never remember the difference, but he is definitely one of them.
“Can’t we just destroy the crystal?” I ask.
“It is indestructible.”
“Indestructible,” I repeat.
“It means it can’t be destroyed.”
I swear people think I’m an idiot. I ignore this and say, “So, everyone wants it. China’s bosses want it to destroy the aliens. You want it to destroy the aliens. The original aliens—”
“The Nephils, also known as the Nephilim, or the Nihilim, or the Nefs—you can spell that last one with a ph instead of an f,” he interjects in a show-off way.
“They want it to destroy the humans so that they can have the planet intact and free to use.”
“Actually it isn’t the Nephils who want it. It is the Samyaza. You met one of them. Dakota Dunphy,” he corrects me.
“Wow,” Seppie whispers. “You’re bleeding a lot, Mana.”
“Why does everything always have to be about destruction?” I yell, ignoring her, and my body pumps full of rage and adrenaline at how incredibly horrible our species can be. “Why can’t everyone just work things through?”
I am a dog with bared teeth. I am a tsunami wave heading toward a shore. I am anger bundled up and focused.
“Mana…” Seppie’s voice is behind me, a prayer and a warning.
And then something hits my leg and the world fades into darkness, followed by bright, horrible, burning light and I lash out, blindly. The crystal is in my pocket. I can’t let him find it. I can’t let him use it. I can’t.
I’ve fallen and hit my head, and I’m not sure why. I just know that Enoch, my sweet dog, is twenty times her normal size, and she’s in front of me growling and barking. Wharff fires at her and I scream but the bullets just bounce off her furry chest. One rebounds back into Wharff’s leg and he screams in pain. He jumps down onto the grass. One leap more and he’s out of our sight lines.
“Holy.…” Seppie swears up a mother lode of curses that probably could enter the Guinness World Records and ends with her yanking me backward with her. “What is that.…? What is that thing?”
Enoch turns and stands above us, large and drooling, a monster of a dog. Her teeth are easily as long as my forearm.
“Enoch?” my voice whispers. “You okay, baby? Good dog … Good dog…”
“Is that the dog you saw outside of world history?” Seppie is still pulling me backward, but I brace myself. My head pounds. It’s hard to orient myself.
“Yes.” I reach my hand up and out to Enoch. She sniffs it and licks it and starts trying to wag her tail. Her tail wallops the side of the building and creates a breeze. “Thank you, honey. Is he gone? Should I go catch him?”
Enoch cocks her head and leaps off the catwalk, rushing down and out of the building. I spring to life after her and mutter, “Crap,” because I’m not up to leaping and running and springing.
Seppie is by my side, instantly. “She’ll be okay. She’ll come back.”
“What if she doesn’t?” My heart breaks just thinking about it.
“She will. Let’s get out of here and try to find Lyle and the others, okay?” she asks.
“Okay.”
Seppie makes a noise that sounds like a sob caught in her throat.
“I’m sorry he hit you,” she says.
“What did he even hit me with?” I ask.
“Energy.” She pauses. “I think.”
I would nod, but my head hurts and my arm hurts and I just want to get out of the bunker and find the Futures and make sure everyone is okay, to get Seppie to the hospital and checked out, and maybe to call China. But first things first. I have to get us out of here.
CHAPTER 16
We limp out of the building. There are people tied up and restrained by the Futures. Gunfire continues to the right. There is a dead woman and a dead student, Caleb. I think his name was Caleb. My heart feels like it might explode in sorrow. Above us, something zooms into action, loud and fierce. A helicopter, but not like any I have seen before. It’s sleek and dark with no symbols on the sides. It blots out the sky for a moment and heads away.
“Crap. Is that him?” I ask Seppie as we track the helicopter southwest.
“I bet. He’s a calculating bastard with a lot of resources.” She spits blood out of her mouth. “I have no doubt he had an escape route.”
Her blood terrifies me. “You need to get to a hospital.”
“So do you.”
I tap my pocket, searching for the soda bottle, which would make me feel better, I think, and then realize it—something is missing. Not the soda, but the crystal.
“Holy…”
“What?”
I don’t even know how to explain. “The crystal. He took the crystal. He must have pickpocketed it or something when I fell.”
“You had it on you? You didn’t fall. He hit you with some kind of blue light thing. It came out of his mouth. It was nasty. It smelled like scotch mixed with spaghetti sauce.”
“Crap.” I am panicked. Absolutely panicked. “We have to stop him.”
“He is in a helicopter.”
I shake my head. “There’s got to be a way. Some way…”
Just then, the trainees march our principal out of the bunker. She’s bloody but alive. Her hair is no longer a perfect helmet befitting a senator, but a bedraggled mess. I launch toward her, grab her by the shoulders in an angry Shatner move, and demand, “Is there another helicopter?”
She laughs. “Like you could fly it.”
This is truth. But it means there is one.
Janeice bangs forward. “I can fly it. I’ve been taking lessons for forever. Where is it?”
Principal Sweet does not answer. I resist the urge to kill her.
Seppie points. “The other one came from the roof. There’s a secret roof beneath the earth. It retracts. The ground retracts, I mean, to reveal it. When it’s closed it just looks like woods. There are helicopter landing pads up there.”
; Blood drips out of her mouth again. I point at Abony. “Get Seppie to the hospital. Please.”
Abony marches right over and grabs Seppie, who is too weak to protest much.
As she half drags Seppie away, I gulp down some soda. Power courses through me. I grab Janeice by the waist and say, “Well, let’s hope you can fly this one. Anyone know about Lyle?”
“He’s fine. He was fine—” Janeice’s sentence dissolves into screams as I tighten my hold on her waist and leap up about six stories to land on what is clearly a helicopter pad, which is amazing both because I guessed accurately where it would be and because it is so fancy. Everything about this place is stunning—how it remained hidden for so long, despite it being so big. How it uses the natural environment to mask its true nature. I’m glad Wharff didn’t take the time to retract the roof and hide the pad again.
“Warn me next time,” she demands as we stare at the helicopter, which is black and sleek and military-style all at once.
“Are those guns under there?” I ask. Power buzzes through me. It feels good, almost too good.
“Get in before we lose him, but yes.” She jumps into the pilot seat and immediately starts flicking switches. “Okay … Okay … Hold on … Let me figure all this out … It’s not the same as the one I’ve been … Okay … Yep … This features a coaxial rotor design with counter-rotating ridge blades.”
“English?”
“It is a sweet, sweet machine that lets us go vertical and forward, and in the back is a kick-butt pusher propeller for high speeds and it is so pretty, such a clean sheet design. Buckle up.”
I have no idea how to buckle up and by the time I have figured it out we are already lifting up and away. Someone shoots at us, but it just pings off the sides of the helicopter. Who did that? One of Wharff’s cronies, I guess. The fake ground begins to retract over the landing pad, but we easily clear it.
“I see him,” she says, pointing. I can barely hear her. She grabs headphones and so do I. There’s a switch I have to turn on but then it’s just like telepathy. “He’s up there. Holy—What’s that? At your six?”
“The government,” I say as I make out what I assume is the Northeast Saucer. I shudder thinking of the whole event at the diner. “They are coming to wipe everyone’s memory. Do they teach you guys to hold your breath?”