Mind Storm (37 page)

“Fucking hell,” Jason said as he hauled Quinton over to the nearest seat, refusing to let that crazy empath within reach of either of them.

Quinton tried to fight him, but the pain blocks were gone and there was no moving if a telekinetic didn't want you to move. Jason strapped him down and left him to Kerr's tender mercies even as Matron took them into the air again. Jason telekinetically anchored himself to the deck so that he didn't go slamming into the side of the shuttle. He kept Kerr upright as well. Lucas wasn't moving, neither was Kristen, the pair of them anchored around Threnody's too still body. But he could see her chest moving, albeit out of rhythm and far, far too slowly.

“What happened?” Jason asked again.

“She jump-started the electrical grid before the power plant came online,” Lucas said without looking up from whatever he was doing. “She was the only one who could.”

Because she was the only electrokinetic they had in their group. Jason swallowed, not sure how she could still be
alive
after that stunt. So much of Threnody's skin was bubbled up red and black, following the lines of her damaged nervous system beneath her uniform like burned circuitry.

“I'm keeping her alive, but just barely,” Lucas said even as he ripped the sterile plastic off a med-kit item and withdrew a hypospray full of viscous gray matter. “Her mind wants to shut down.”

“Is it my turn?” Kristen asked, tugging on the sleeve of Lucas's shirt. “Is it?”

The shuttle gave another violent shake as Matron guided them back into the storm, everyone in the cargo bay held steady by telekinetic anchors. Lucas looked at where Jason was standing over them and held up the hypospray for him to see.

“You're the only one that can save her,” Lucas said, dark blue eyes bloodshot in a too pale face, blood dripping out of his nose, trickling from his ears.

“I'm not a medic,” Jason said.

“Shut up and listen to me. You're a microtelekinetic behind those shields of yours. At
minimum,
a Class I psion. Your power has the potential to work on the atomic level. This hypospray holds a regulated amount of nanites that I stole sixteen months ago. We don't have a biotank on this shuttle, which means you're going to have to be the driving force behind getting this stuff to work on Threnody.”

Jason stared at him. “I don't understand.”

“You will soon enough. Kris?”

Lucas's sister perked up.
“Finally.”

The empath reached for Jason, but he shoved her away telekinetically. Kristen stuck her tongue out at him. “Don't touch me,” he said hoarsely. “Lucas—what the
hell
?”

Lucas reached out with his own shaky telekinesis, dragging Jason close enough for him to look the other man straight in the eye.

“Listen to me, you fucking selfish piece of shit,” Lucas snarled. “Threnody still has a part to play. If she dies here, then it was all for nothing. Everything I've given up and risked—it's all worth
nothing
if she dies, do you understand? You're no one's messiah, Jason. You're just a weapon, and I'm taking the safety switch off of you. You're the only one who can save her, and Kris is the only one who can break through your shields. We don't have
time
for this bullshit!”

Behind them, Quinton said, “Jason.
Please
.”

In the end, it didn't come down to Lucas ordering him or Quinton begging him. It came down to Jason owing them all as much as they owed him. Loyalty could be bought and it could be sold, but the only kind that mattered was the sort gained by way of blood.

Kristen's hands, when she touched him, were cold.

Her mind, as it entered his, was not.

“You taste so good,” she whispered into his ear as her empathic power started to eat through Jason's thick natal shields.

Jason screamed with the first bite she took out of his defenses and didn't stop for a long, long time.

[
THIRTY-FOUR
]

AUGUST 2379
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

The last cartel drug lord—mindwiped to within a synapse of a new personality—was escorted out of Nathan's office in a city tower of Brasília. Nathan leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes against the pain of too many psi surgeries in too short a time. Promises were easily broken and wiped away, but it had taken more effort than he would have liked. He'd had to hunt through old memories and thoughts for every last person who could possibly have been involved in holding oil stolen from the government for the Warhounds. The cartels had been useful, and still were, but Nathan had never intended to give them berths on the
Ark
.

Removing every last shred of detail about the Serca Syndicate had taken a toll on him. Coming off the delicate psi surgery he had performed on Elion, adding in all the ones he'd done in Brasília, Nathan knew he had probably lost another year or two of life. Not exactly what he wanted, but so long as he lived to see Mars, these instances when he relied on himself and not his children would continue to happen.

Nathan opened his eyes and got to his feet, the night sky outside the windows dark. The door to the office opened again and Dalia walked in, still in her identity as an executive assistant.

“The shuttle is ready,” she told him, hands clasped behind her back.

“We're done here,” Nathan said.

They took the human way to the landing docks that lined the length of the city tower, walking out of the Serca Syndicate branch with a group of Warhounds that doubled as bodyguards to human eyes. Nathan didn't bother to hide his departure, even if he had hidden the arrival and departure of the cartel lords. He was known as a hands-on CEO, which meant surprise visits were inflicted on his subordinants.

When they came to the docking area, the computer guided them down the walkway to the correct shuttle, where their pilot was waiting. Teleportation would have been quicker; however, it wasn't an option at the moment. Nathan hated the veneer of humanity he had to keep up at all times, to pretend to be something he wasn't, but the survival of his company required it.

It also required that he have a successor, a position that never seemed to stay filled.

Sir,
a telepathic voice said sometime later into his mind when they were halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, heading for London. He recognized Victoria's psi signature immediately.
We have a problem.

What now?

The report was dumped straight into his public mind, the woman's tension making her thoughts sharp-edged. Nathan jerked up straight in his seat as he realized what had happened.

“Sir?” Dalia asked.

Nathan ignored her, teleporting straight out of the shuttle and into the tense atmosphere of the Warhounds' command center at the top of a city tower, ignoring the warning twinge in his mind from the effort. Nathan had been receiving field reports over the past few hours, but the emergency evacuation was just starting. The wounded coming off the field required Victoria's specialized skills in the arrival room used for teleportation. That's where Nathan found her working on his son. Victoria looked up at Nathan from where she was kneeling on the floor, both hands cupped over Gideon's temples.

“They found him in the power plant,” Victoria said as medics worked to stabilize Gideon's vitals, a hover-gurney waiting close by to transport him to medical.

Retrieval teams were bringing back the living and the dead. Nathan's gaze swept the large arrival room with cold precision. Everything must have gone straight to hell and worse in Buffalo in a short time, otherwise he would have been informed earlier of the problem. Nathan cataloged the dead, his eyes coming to rest at last on a charred husk of a human-shaped body, the only thing identifiable about it.

Victoria noticed where he was staring. “Jin Li,” she said quietly, looking away. “A nurse ID'd him through a biometrics scan using dental records. There wasn't enough viable tissue left for the process.”

This was not how Nathan thought he would lose his best soldier.

His rage coated every thought that crossed his mind as he stepped closer to his one remaining son. Nathan wasn't gentle as he slid his mind past Victoria's and into Gideon's, into those of all the Warhounds that had returned to headquarters. He wanted—
required
—answers.

Samantha and Kristen were not in any of the returning groups. Warhound coming back knew where they were and reported such to Nathan's demands. Only when Nathan pried open Gideon's damaged mind did he find the answers he was missing.

She did this to me, she did this to me
was the repeating, wounded mantra that spun through Gideon's thoughts, a memory of Samantha's betrayal of the Syndicate, of her twin, the most prominent thing in his mind.

Nathan did not take the betrayal well.

As Nathan retreated out of the mind of the only child left to him, he felt the mental grid bend in a way it never before had, a precursor to something terrible. He instantly raised his shields, as did every psion in the Warhound ranks. Everyone felt the novalike explosion that ripped through the mental grid. Such power was in that blast, a psionic strength that Nathan had never before encountered, that it scorched across every psion's mind the world over. A person he hadn't known existed—and somehow Lucas
must
have known.

You deceiving little bastard,
Nathan thought, something that resembled disgusted awe coursing through his mind as he reached out with his telepathy, struggling to follow that stranger's mind back to its core.
You knew this power existed, didn't you, Lucas?

The mind winked out on the mental grid before he could reach it, sucked back into a hole that was impossible to find, no matter how hard he searched. Nathan eventually drew back his power, raising all his formidable mental shields once again. He doubted that unknown psion was dead. Lucas took after Nathan too much, whether he liked to admit it or not, and Lucas never took a risk unless he knew he would win. Losing had never been an option for Nathan's eldest child.

Nathan was only now beginning to realize that.

[
THIRTY-FIVE
]

AUGUST 2379
CANADIAN SHIELD, CANADA

The world opened up in layers, bright filaments of energy, atoms, the connectivity of a living system that nearly broke him.

Jason found it almost impossible to breathe as Kristen ate through his shields with a ferocity that no one else could have matched. She was insane, with a power that operated through murder, and she almost killed him during that psi surgery monitored by Lucas as Matron flew them through the stormy night sky. Kristen tore down every last piece of that mental block, pulling Jason's mind apart to create a hole for all the power he hadn't known existed to come pouring out.

Every single synapse in Jason's brain turned
on
at once when that power connected with the rest of his mind, the overload having no place else to go except down the bond, the psi link that tied him to Kerr. A bridge that Lucas desperately kept blocked with what was left of his telepathic strength while Kerr screamed at him,
Get out of the fucking way
.

It can't be you,
Lucas said in a strained mental voice.
It can't be you, Kerr. It has to be Quinton.

Jason's the only family I've got,
Kerr yelled, his Scottish accent getting deeper with every telepathic word he slammed into Lucas's mind.
I'm not going to abandon him!

You will, eventually. Just not yet.

Enough with your cryptic
bullshit,
Lucas! You're
killing
him!

No. You are.
Lucas pulled at the other telepath through the last shreds of the merge that existed between them, gaining just a little bit of mental traction.
You don't need him anymore. Not like this. And he can't need you. Let it go, Kerr. Let
him
go.

Fuck you if you think—

You'll kill them both if you don't break the bond and let me attach it to Quinton's mind. You'll kill us all. I can't break it, not right now, but I can keep him from bleeding into you, and then we're all fucked. This is how it's supposed to be, so let it fucking
be.

Kerr was silent for a heartbeat, his mind a ball of tension and agony, a swirl of emotion that leaked through his shields into Lucas's ragged thoughts.

Blame me for it when he wakes up,
Lucas said.

Oh, I will,
Kerr said in a quiet, deadly voice.
Fucking count on it.

It won't make you feel better.

Fuck you, Lucas. Fuck you.

Carefully, unflinchingly, Kerr severed the bond that had linked him for so long to his partner, to his brother, to the only family the Strykers had ever allowed him to have beneath the shadow of the government. The link had saved his life, his mind, his
sanity,
for so many years. That he had lived this long was a testament to Jason's strength. That it felt as if he were cutting off his own arm told Kerr how much he had grown to rely on the telekinetic, a reliance he would never regret and would always, always miss.

Kerr broke the bond on his side, unable to get past Lucas and into Jason's mind. It left a gaping, raw hole in his mind where Jason had once resided, the ragged ends of the bond unraveling too fast for him to keep hold of. Left him feeling empty and alone, completely bereft.

Let me,
Lucas said.
Just—hold on.

He was holding back an immense amount of power. Kerr could feel that, could feel the surge in Jason's mind that was burning through the layers of telepathic shields that Lucas had placed around the telekinetic's mind, the protective casings simply being eaten away. Kristen was somewhere inside that mess, steadily taking down Jason's shields, the only one who could do it and survive the overload. Lucas was right, they were running out of time, but that didn't make the transfer any easier.