The Escape (6 page)

After a few sharp turns, Ava pulled into an alley and came to a stop. Ritter stepped out the back, meeting Cort who’d jumped from a brown van, followed by Marco Collins, one of our mortal security men. Cort handed off something to Ritter before hurrying toward us. Dimitri was already jumping down and pulling the gurney after him.

“Erin,” he said to me, “grab my bag and as many of those supplies as you can carry.”

“How is he?” Cort’s voice was tense, and I could feel the sorrow emanating from him as he stared down into his brother’s face. Keene had taken years to follow Cort’s defection from the Emporium, and the brothers often didn’t agree on issues, but their loyalty to each other ran deep. Cort had lived five hundred years, and he’d seen numerous mortal half-siblings die, but Keene was different. Everyone who knew Keene understood that. He lived by his own rules, regardless of the consequences, even while working for others. He saw things no one else saw, and he wasn’t afraid of making tough choices.

Filling my arms with medical supplies, I glanced through the window to the front of the ambulance and saw Ava talking to the police officer. His words cut off as Ritter opened the door and fired a tranquilizer into his neck. The man struggled for a few seconds, his hand going to his gun before slumping over.

Ava and Ritter came to help us move Keene over to the van. “I’ll take the ambulance back,” she said, her gray eyes like steel. “I’ll have to remove the officer’s memory of the tranquilizer and tell someone in the emergency room that he became ill. Hopefully it will be enough so he won’t lose his job.”

“Should I go with you?” Ritter asked. “Or Jace?”

She shook her head. “Marco and I can handle it. The Emporium doesn’t know where we’re heading, and if I sense anyone nearby, we know how to avoid them.” Her sensing ability might not be evolving as mine was, but she had three centuries of experience that I envied.

Marco was already walking to the front of the ambulance, his dark hair and olive skin blending into the night. He looked to either side as he moved, his eyes constantly roving. He might be mortal, but his time in black ops with the government had made him as tough as they came.

“Will Stella be able to get a hold of that video recording from the hotel?” I asked. “If not, our faces will probably be plastered on the late evening news.” Whatever happened at the hospital, there were going to be questions at our disappearance.

Ava gave a short laugh. “I’m betting the Emporium will get to it before we do. They have just as much at stake and a lot more plants in the police department.” She turned and strode after Marco.

“We can’t wait any longer,” Dimitri said as I climbed into the back of the van. He was slathering his arms with antiseptic, his jaw twitching in exactly the same way mine did when I was forced to confront something I wanted to reject. “I’ll have to put a clamp on that artery. We’re lucky it was only partially severed or he’d be dead already. Erin, help me take off his shirt. Cort, I’ll need some of your blood. You’re the same type, right? You others, stand guard. If they come on us now, we’re sitting ducks.”

“Jace, get ready to start the van on my signal.” Ritter pulled an automatic rifle from the back of the van and stalked to the end of the street. Jace grabbed another gun and went to stand halfway between the van and Ritter.

I couldn’t sense anything suspicious nearby, so I dropped my blanket and grabbed a pair of scissors from my supplies and began cutting Keene’s shirt, keeping pressure with one hand on the cloth over his wound. A sort of desperateness crept over me. I felt guilty that he might die of a wound that in the rest of us would eventually heal by itself. Removing the shirt revealed an ugly scar curving from Keene’s left kidney to the middle of his chest. I’d seen it once before, but I hadn’t learned the details of what had happened, only that it had occurred in a fight with the Renegades when he’d worked for the Emporium. It was a wonder he’d survived. After tonight he’d have more scars to add to his collection.

Cort had grabbed two needles from the supplies I’d brought. In seconds, he had a makeshift infusion taking blood from his arm into a bag, which in turn filtered down to Keene.

Dimitri injected Keene with a sedative before removing my hands and the cloth from his wound. “Dab away as much blood as you can,” he told me, “but don’t be too concerned. I’ll be working mostly through my gift not sight. For now I’ll clamp it off and stitch it up once we arrive. Get ready to let the others know when to go. This shouldn’t take long.”

He cut the wound open another two inches and sank his fingers inside. He wasn’t wearing gloves and I remembered that he needed direct contact for his gift to work best. I understood because my ability was enhanced the same way. I watched in gruesome fascination as he delved inside Keene’s stomach, at one point closing his eyes.

“There it is. Hand me that clamp.”

I ripped open the top of the package and held it out on my palm. The clamp disappeared inside Keene’s body.

“Let’s go,” Dimitri said, his bloodied hands spread over the wound. “Put the blanket on him and tell the others. Jace needs to turn up the van heater as high as it will go.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Cort’s worry seemed to deepen his physical resemblance to his brother, though his hair was shorter and his eyes a piercing blue instead of green. He was also a little on the nerdy side in his demeanor and dress, an oddity when his assurance rivaled that of any other Unbounded.

Dimitri’s face was grim. “I’m doing everything I can.”

If Cort made a response to Dimitri, I didn’t hear it as I jumped from the van and called to Jace. As with many Unbounded abilities, healers had limits. They couldn’t repair mortal organs damaged beyond repair, though they could often keep the person alive until a replacement organ was found. They couldn’t heal instantly or bring back the dead, but they could slow bleeding, immediately pinpoint a problem, and repair damage in the most efficient way. Most healers chose to become medical doctors, their talent enhanced further by study. I hoped tonight all of it together would be enough.

Moments later, we were once again careening through the streets, this time with Jace at the wheel. What had the night accomplished? For the moment it all seemed useless. I knew we’d uncovered some important information, but was it worth Keene’s life?

Not to me it wasn’t.

But we had a duty to humanity, as Keene would be the first to remind me. I placed my hand on his cheek.
Live,
I told him.
Please.

T
HE SAFE HOUSE WAS AN
older building located at the north edge of Midtown Manhattan and was one the New York Renegades had renovated. As this had been accomplished after one of our own had leaked information about our other safe houses to the Emporium and betrayed us during a worldwide gathering of Renegades, we were fairly certain the Emporium had no hint of our presence here.

The Emporium had slaughtered twenty of our people in the aftermath of that devastating betrayal. They’d had a sensing Unbounded with them to identify their victims’ natures because the eleven dead mortals had been shot or stabbed through the heart, but each of the nine murdered Unbounded had been cut so that their focus points were severed from each other: the brain, the heart, and the reproductive organs. That was the most efficient way to permanently kill Unbounded. It had been an inconceivable horror, a bloodbath the New York police had no way of explaining. One that still haunted me—haunted us all.

That the betrayer had been a member of our small group and Dimitri’s direct descendent made us all feel responsible for the loss. Five other Unbounded Renegades had gone missing at the time of the slaughter, prisoners to the Emporium. Two had belonged to the New York group and three from other groups in Europe. To help the depleted New York group recover the prisoners was the primary reason we were here now. Their location wasn’t the only information on the thumb drive we’d stolen in Mexico, but it was the most urgent.

Jace drove into a driveway leading to a garage under the building and punched in a code on a small panel. Everyone remained tense and alert until the doors closed behind us. We screeched to a stop near the elevators, and Ritter had the back doors of the van open before the sound of the engine died. Holding my blanket once more around my shoulders, I jumped down. Pain radiated from my wounded arm, but it would heal soon enough.

Stella emerged from the elevators as we approached, her neural headset blinking, though the eyepiece on the headset was twisted upward so both her dark eyes were visible. She was also wearing the wireless booster and the small power pack, a signal that she was still connected to her computers on the next floor. The slender, delicately boned woman was our link to the outside world, her ability as a technopath allowing her to compute and sort data at a rate I could only begin to comprehend. Most of the monitoring we did of the world’s communication systems we accomplished through her and several other Renegade technopaths living in Europe. They warned us of possible Emporium activity, researched leads, created false IDs and backgrounds, and were currently dissecting the rest of the information from the stolen thumb drive. Stella was half Japanese and half Italian, the Japanese side considerably more prominent, and the third great-aunt and fifth great-aunt of our two newest Unbounded. She was also the most incredibly beautiful woman I had ever personally known. That her beauty was enhanced by nanites she, as a technopath, used to constantly adjust her appearance was nothing short of miraculous.

“The infirmary is ready,” she said.

“I’m going to need an assistant.” Dimitri walked beside the gurney, his hand under the blanket near Keene’s wound. “Cort?”

“Of course.” His scientific ability to decipher patterns at the atomic level made him the best choice, regardless of his relationship to Keene.

“I’ll come, too.” This from Ritter, and his concern for Keene surprised me.

“Ava’s on her way,” Stella told us as we squeezed into the elevator. “She called Tenika so we can talk about where to go from here. We have to figure out what the Emporium is planning. I can’t believe Patrick Mann is Unbounded. How did we miss that?”

“Because Washington has been under Tenika’s group,” Dimitri said, “and they don’t have a sensing Unbounded.”

“But still.” Stella shook her head.

“We’ll have to take him out,” Jace said. For once no one corrected him.

The elevator opened on the second floor, where Dimitri, Ritter, and Cort wheeled Keene into the hallway. I started to follow, but Stella put her hand on my arm. “Let them go. You’re upset, and I think Keene will do better if you aren’t there telegraphing your worry.”

Jace nodded. “She’s right. They’ll let us know when the surgery is over.”

I had my shield up, so I didn’t think my feelings would bother Keene or anyone else, but there was nothing I could do in the infirmary that the others couldn’t do better. “Okay, fine.”

We rode down to the first floor and headed to the conference room. “I just heard from your brother,” Stella said to us, seating herself at the long table in front of four computers. One was a laptop, two were personal computers, and the fourth was a hard drive hooked up to a large new monitor on the wall, a state-of-the-art gift from a local mortal ally. The computers were linked so Stella could interface with them all at once using the neural headset.

“Oh, what did Chris have to say?” Jace sat beside her but almost immediately bounced up again to pace. Energy seeped from him like steam from a pressure cooker. He’d need to work off some of that energy tonight or his combat ability would drive him insane. Normally I’d take him up to the gym on the fourth floor and spar with him, but I felt exhausted. Besides, I wanted to think about what I’d learned tonight and what it meant for the Renegades. Sinking onto the nearest chair opposite Stella, I upped my absorption rate. Unbounded didn’t need to eat, but I seemed to be craving something.

“He was just reporting on the refurbishing of the safe house.” Stella glanced at her computers longingly but sat back in her chair and folded her arms over her stomach. “Actually, I think he called to make sure you two got out of the hotel safely.”

Jace laughed. “Sounds like our big brother.”

“Anyway, now that Benito’s back on his feet,” Stella continued, “they’re moving right along, especially in mapping the underground tunnels. The more Chris tells me about it, the more I’m sure this will be a good move for all of us.”

I hoped so. After our last safe house had been compromised, we’d made a pact to create someplace safe for Chris’s two young children. The house in San Diego was one Ava and the others had abandoned over fifty years ago when the Emporium had stepped up activity in the area. Now, with modern technology and surveillance methods, we’d all agreed it was our best option for a permanent residence. The Emporium might eventually discover its location, but by then the safe house would be impenetrable by anything short of bombing—and that would attract worldwide notice.