Caleb found it wrenchingly hard to let go of Maddie’s hand. They only had time for one long, strong embrace and a few words spoken in such a rush he did not actually remember what he said. Or how she responded. They stood between the truck and the middle building’s entrance and held hands for just a few short moments. Then Pablo called to him, and he had to let go.
Even so, their bond remained after their hands parted and she was no longer standing next to him. The sensation of her closeness was that intense.
There were a hundred things that required his urgent attention. Maddie’s group totaled thirty-seven adepts plus twice that many family members. About half those adepts were under ten years of age. They would never fit everyone into the two trucks.
Just as the families started pouring from the middle building, two truckloads of militia careened around the far corner and entered the otherwise empty lane.
Kevin shouted, “Pablo!”
Pablo had already stepped forward. The first truck slammed into the curb and then was struck from behind by the second vehicle. None of the occupants appeared to notice, however. They were too busy yelling and shrieking and spilling from every opening.
Pablo stopped and turned and waved to Kevin, who yelled a second time, “Mentats! Tell them to flee!”
The enemy did as they were told.
Caleb was grateful for how the others seemed to know what to do. Carla and Irene and Forrest served as a calming influence upon the tearful reunions that now filled the front lawn. Families were given a moment to embrace, to cry, to call to friends, and then were sent back indoors to pack. Only what they could carry, Caleb repeated over and over, his words carried by a dozen more voices.
Then Zeke stepped through the left-hand building. He offered Caleb a single wave before rushing over and embracing Hester. The young man’s reserve was gone now, stripped away by whatever had happened to them. The two made room for Enya when she appeared, then the trio walked over together.
Zeke said, “Sorry to have let you down.”
Caleb shook his head. He wanted to say something, offer assurance that this was the absolute last thing he felt. But Carla and Hank and three others asked if there was time to fashion a quick meal. He scanned the perimeter, saw how Forrest had three of his fellow adepts guarding the empty lane, and said, “Hurry.”
Hester then told Caleb, “We were arrested.”
Enya said, “The suits made a sweep of the plaza just after you left. They picked up Zeke.”
“I wanted to fight,” Zeke said. “I started to. But . . .”
“I told him not to,” Hester said. “There were militia by the university gates not twenty paces away. There was too much risk of harming others.”
“First thing they did was separate us,” Zeke said. “I knew you were coming. So I waited.”
Caleb struggled to fashion a decent reply but was halted from speaking at all by Maddie walking up, nodding a solemn hello to Zeke, and saying, “There’s my father.”
Caleb heard the sorrow and resignation in more than just her words. Maddie made no move to hold his hand again. Nor did she step toward the tousled man who peered confusedly about him. When he spotted Maddie, he hesitated a long moment. It seemed to Caleb that he started toward them with genuine reluctance.
At a nudge from Hester, the trio stepped away.
To Caleb’s eyes, Professor Frederick Constance appeared to have aged twenty years in the weeks since they had last met. He asked his daughter, “You arranged this escape?”
“Yes, Father. We all did.”
“You said you would.” He peered at Caleb. “I know you. You’re . . .”
“Caleb,” Maddie said. “He came for me. For all of us.”
The professor tried to straighten from his weary stoop, but failed. He was leaning over so far the spectacles tied about his neck with a piece of string dangled like a loose necktie. “You can’t possibly expect to break free.”
“You don’t need to come with us. I wish you would, but . . .” Maddie sounded sorrowfully resigned. “But if you’re staying, you should probably be leaving now.”
The professor looked askance at them both. “They will destroy you!”
“I will not be imprisoned,” Maddie said. The way she spoke, Caleb was certain she had said the words many times before. “I will not be manipulated. I will not be used as an instrument of someone else’s civil war.”
Professor Constance glared at Caleb, or tried to, but even his gaze lacked sufficient heat. “You’re one of them too. One of those—”
“Adepts,” Caleb supplied. “Yes. I am.”
The man dismissed Caleb with a boneless wave. He turned back to his daughter. “Maddie, it’s utterly futile to even think—”
“Goodbye, Father. I will send word when I can.”
The rest of his protest died unspoken. The professor sighed and shuffled away, headed down the empty lane.
Maddie did not watch him go. She wiped her face, took a hard breath, and dismissed the episode by saying to Caleb, “I knew you’d come. And I knew he’d stay. He would never accept me as one of the . . .”
“Adepts,” he repeated.
Maddie nodded, taking the word in deep. “Perhaps if Mother were still alive. But Father has always been . . .”
She went quiet again because Kevin came rushing over and said, “You’re Maddie.”
“This is my friend Kevin,” Caleb said.
“Thank you for being here,” Maddie said.
Kevin showed her the same feral grin he had displayed in the truck. He said to Caleb, “We’re ready to start loading. Pablo wants a word.”
He nodded, accepting the fact that they were looking to him as their leader. Waiting for him to direct, point their way to safety.
It was Maddie who finally said, “I’ll help with the little ones.”
Caleb watched her walk away, then said to Kevin, “I’m worried they haven’t counterattacked.”
Kevin’s grin only broadened. “You took the words right out of Pablo’s mouth.”
They walked over to where Pablo stood with Forrest and two mentats. Thunder growled in the east. Caleb watched a dark sheet of rain march toward them, flanked by lightning. Behind him, several voices called for the families to move faster.
A bolt smashed them all with noise and light. At that same moment, Caleb was impacted by yet another mental onslaught. Two images, both so brief they came and went in the span of a single heartbeat. They left him stunned in their aftermath, as if his vision was impaired by an overbright flash of light.
“Caleb?”
“I know what they’re going to do.” He also knew there was not time to explain. For even now the enemy was preparing to invade. Overwhelm. Imprison. And kill those responsible. He knew it so intensely he could feel the noose being fitted around his neck.
The rain began, a drenching downpour that blanketed those still outside the trucks.
Caleb said, “They’ve been waiting for us to collect in one space.”
Forrest’s unruly hair was plastered to his face like scraggly wires. “I don’t detect—”
“They’re here. They’ve been preparing for this.” Caleb halted further discussion by stabbing one finger into Pablo’s chest. “Take the ones who can attack. Climb to the roof of the farthest building.” When Pablo hesitated, Caleb shoved him hard. “Go now!”
Pablo’s entire demeanor underwent a drastic shift. He became a military subaltern who had just been handed an urgent order. He shouted for Barry, grabbed a young woman’s arm, and disappeared into the veiled half-light.
Kevin demanded, “What do we do?”
Caleb shook his head. There was no protection. No time for explaining. “The one you told me about. He pushed away the highway barricade—”
Kevin turned and bellowed, “Dale!”
“Here!”
The young man looked impossibly young to entrust with seventy-odd lives. He shivered in the chilling rain and winced at each stab of lightning.
Caleb gripped his arms and moved in so close that Dale had no choice but to focus entirely on him. Caleb yelled a few terse sentences, then demanded, “Can you do that?”
To his vast relief, Dale grinned and replied, “No problem.”
Caleb turned to Kevin. “Take him over to the boundary fence. Hurry!”
Kevin grabbed Dale where Caleb’s hand had been and plucked the younger man away. As he passed Forrest, Kevin reached out his free hand and hauled him away as well.
Caleb searched in all directions. The one thing he could think of, the only action that made sense now, was . . .
“Maddie!”
She stood by the lead truck, handing in a sack of food. Caleb rushed up, spun her about, and embraced her with all the strength he had in his body. “I need you to know—”
But he was too late.
The counterattack began as a moan.
There was no sound, or rather, nothing that anyone actually heard. Not that it mattered. To Caleb it felt as though the entire world groaned aloud.
The power was as unrelenting as it was massive. The moan gathered force, magnifying in strength until it rendered Caleb and all the others completely helpless. He collapsed onto the road, where the rain was so heavy he could have drowned in the wash beside the truck. He felt his nostrils fill and coughed feebly and managed to turn his head slightly up into the rain. Then his strength left him entirely.
The silent lament grew stronger still.
The mental attack was a cry of utter hopelessness. Caleb’s every thought was futile. He lay there with no space for anything save defeat. The easiest thing in the world was to give up entirely. Stop breathing. And perish.
Then the sound vanished.
Fast as it had arrived, it was gone. Caleb coughed and lifted his head and realized Maddie had fallen across his chest. Or perhaps her strength of will was more potent than his and she had managed to reach him before being overwhelmed. Caleb helped her rise to a seated position, then grabbed the truck’s rear gate and hauled himself to his feet.
He looked back behind him and knew Pablo had reached the roof in time.
Caleb helped Maddie to her feet, gripped her in a one-armed embrace, and watched as their own assault silenced the enemy.
Lightning fell in savage force. Caleb recalled Kevin describing how they had stolen the first truck using Barry’s ability to control electromagnetic force. Here was the next phase, turned into an awesome display of natural fireworks.
Though it was vital to their survival, still Caleb was held by the sheer wonder of what he witnessed. The lightning blasts were intensely brilliant, the sound deafening. And yet as the others gradually slipped from the trucks and witnessed it, none of the faces Caleb saw showed any fear.
Out where the militia trucks blocked off their lane, vehicles and buildings erupted. Debris rose in damp clouds before falling back to earth. An entire tree catapulted up above the rooflines, spiraling before disappearing once more.
The lightning stopped. It took a long moment for Caleb’s ears to stop ringing. When they did, he heard faint cries and numerous alarms and horns and shouts.
Then the rain pulled away from them.
Caleb could actually see the storm being redirected. The curtain drew back, slanting so that it formed a dark grey wall over by the lane’s end.
And turned to hail.
The air up ahead of him became filled with translucent rocks the size of cannonballs. They fell with such force, it sounded to Caleb like a hundred thousand drums began beating all at once. Trees shivered and wrenched and lost limbs. The militia trucks were flattened. Roofs in the distance were blasted open. Windows shattered.
Caleb had no idea how long the barrage continued. It seemed to him like hours, but he doubted it was more than a few minutes. When it ended, the rain resumed its course, falling upon them in natural waves.
From their attackers there was no sign. No sound. Nothing. Even the alarms had gone silent.
Caleb turned to where Pablo and his crew watched from a roofline. He waved both arms and shouted, “We have to go!”
Pablo waved back, called to his others, and vanished.
Caleb turned and signaled to Kevin. His friend’s wolfish grin was visible from where he and Dale stood by the city’s boundary fence. Kevin said something, the slender young man lifted his arms high, and directly ahead of where they stood . . .
The city’s boundary wall flattened to the earth.
The space was not more than twenty feet wide, little broader than the trucks. Kevin patted the younger man on the shoulder and ran back toward them.
Caleb yelled, “Everybody in the trucks!”
The first truck started and trundled forward. The second driver ground the gears terribly before lurching into line. Caleb had no idea who was behind the wheel, nor did he much care. Pablo and Kevin scrambled behind the wheel of the two militia trucks that had halted by the two they had stolen from the militia headquarters. Caleb helped pile the last remaining team and their family into the backs. The engines started, then Forrest yelled for Caleb to climb on board.
Pablo’s truck became stuck with two wheels on the curb and two others mired in the sodden grass. Kevin jammed his vehicle into the back of Pablo’s, shoving the truck across the rain-slick lawn and through the opening. Caleb was seated by the third truck’s rear gate and felt the jarring bumps as they crossed the flattened brush. The youngest children from Maddie’s group wailed a continuous note. He found he did not mind the noise. It formed a high-pitched testimony to the fact that they had survived thus far.
Once they were all through, they halted on the gravel road encircling the city’s perimeter fence. Kevin leapt down and yelled for Caleb to join him. Together they raced back through the barrier to where Dale stood groaning under the strain. His entire body shook like a tuning fork.
Caleb shouted, “Help me lift him!”
Kevin gripped Dale’s waist as Caleb took hold beneath the young man’s outstretched arms. Together they hauled Dale through the aperture. They lowered him to the earth, and Caleb told Dale, “Let go!”
With a groaning rustle, the boundary fence folded back into place.
They were free.