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Fifteen minutes later, unkempt lawns stretched opposite the street, punctuated by uneven driveways with snow seeping through the ruts. Cracks ran along the discolored siding of a couple houses, and one house had a rip marring the window screen. An evergreen wreath hung from a chain-link fence. They would get fined for the yard decorations if they weren’t careful. The whole idea of keeping the yards and houses the same was to prevent jealousy, thus making the Community a safer place to live.
Even more out of place was the fire hydrant with black words sprayed over it in Russian: Where’s our children? Blatant graffiti, a reference to the students who vanished upon failing the Health Scan.
“They’re rebelling,” Lance whispered.
“I see that.” The fact that they used Russian instead of the Community’s preferred English made that clear. But Community citizens couldn’t stop the scans.
Maybe that was why Anna signaled us out.
Tall buildings obscured the overhead sunlight and dropped the temperature between a row of tenements. I stepped closer to Lance. His height blocked the whistling wind. On the corner of the street, a door slammed shut and the lock clicked loud in the crisp air. Pops’ cane tapped faster as he pressed forward. He stepped onto the doorstep, dusted himself of snow, and then rapped his knuckles on the gray door.
“I’ve already told security all I know!” a voice snapped from inside the house.
Pops closed his hands around his cane. “We’re not with security. We’re with the Community’s Efficiency Loss Prevention Program. You are familiar with CELPP, aren’t you?”
I frowned. Why wasn’t Pops using the code Anna gave us?
“Of course I’m familiar with CELPP,” the man said, “but what do you want with me?”
Pops cleared his throat. “With the onset of winter, we’ve noticed a few houses on the outside of town are drawing more electricity than necessary. As part of the program, we need to examine possible causes so they can be fixed.”
I stepped onto the single concrete step. “We just want to have a look around.”
A pause. Then... “I don’t want to be any trouble. I’ll open the door.”
“Do so then.” Pops’ voice betrayed irritation. He tapped his fingers along the handle of his cane, and I urged my armband’s vines to slither to my wrists. I didn’t want to be left in the snow if guards were waiting inside.
The lock clicked. The door creaked open. A short man with thinning hair—Mr. Pete Sokolov—peered out. “Come in,” he croaked, and we entered a small room with only a simple table and two chairs. He looked us over. “You don’t look Community.”
“Where the mind wanders, another child dies,” Pops said solemnly. I shuddered. The passphrase was all too clear in its reference to theophrenia.
The man’s eyes widened. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if you’re here to check the thermostat—”
“Are you sure the mind doesn’t wander?” Pops repeated. The man shook his head vigorously, but from the way his eyes darted across the room, he must have known something.
Pops sighed. “We don’t have time to wait. There is a man in danger, and we need information to save him. Do you know someone who can help us?”
Lance closed his fingers around the hilt of his sword. The poor guy backed against the bare dining table. I bit my lip. What if we had the wrong man? What if that was why he didn’t answer the passphrase? I turned to him and raised my wrists, allowing the vines to grow out from under my coat sleeves. They twisted once and flowered. “We aren’t Community,” I explained, “but we’re not here to hurt you. We’re trying to find a man named Ron Nickleson. We have to. If he gets captured, he’ll probably be killed, or worse, turned into a beast.”
Dad was shielded, and I didn’t know what powers he had, but I inherited my powers from his side of the family. That made him a prime candidate for beastie transformation.
The man stared at me as if I’d grown two heads. Well... two vines.
“I don’t know anything!”
Lance revealed a few centimeters of his metal blade.
The man swallowed hard. “I’m not telling you! You’re—you’re not Community.”
“But you do know,” I insisted. “Anna—”
He sprinted for a phone on the table. I leapt after him using my enhanced speed power to propel myself and I grabbed the phone before he could call for help.
Mr. Sokolov closed his eyes, breathing hard. “Please don’t kill me.”
I flinched. This was not helping us look like good guys. I took a deep breath. “If you know Ron Nickleson, I should look familiar.” I raised my chin. If nothing else, he might have heard that I’d caught theophrenia. “Do you know where my father is?”
His lips moved as if he couldn’t figure out what to say, and he gazed hopelessly at my grandfather. The door shuddered with incessant pounding. “Security! Drop your weapons and come outside!”
Pops cursed. I stared at the door, nerves buzzing. How had we been discovered now, after all those times the guards almost caught us but didn’t?
“I’m sorry,” the man whispered. “I’m bugged.”
For the love of efficiency...
That explained why he refused to acknowledge the code. My blood drained to my feet. Security now had the first part of the passphrase. I shoved Mr. Sokolov into Lance’s grasp and tossed the man his phone. “Pretend he’s a hostage?” I asked, glancing to Pops for confirmation. Pops nodded once and backed into a corner. Lance dug his fingers into the man’s shoulders.
“Don’t actually hurt the poor guy!” I scrambled to the door, growing my vines out with long thorns and—
The room was huge and metal. I stood over a slender agility beast as I wrapped my vines around its feet and lashed it to the metal grid below. The beastie struggled, terrified.
“Stay!” I commanded, bringing the vine across its back. A blistering whelp raised on its skin and the beast cowered—
“Drop your weapons!” a guard shouted. I blinked, glancing between the front door of the sparse house and our hostage.
“Is there another exit?” Lance asked.
Our “hostage” shook his head.
Great.
“You are under arrest for violation of International Community law,” the guard continued from outside.
“Give us a minute!” I turned to Pops. “Any ideas?”
He removed a long-range radio from his pocket. Lance had the dull edge of his curved sword to the man’s throat. The man paled. My stomach twisted. “Lance...”
He fidgeted, squaring his stance and holding the man tighter. “I’ve got to be convincing.”
Pops trained his eyes on the door, the radio to his lips. “Inese, what’s going on out there?”
The radio crackled. “Trouble already?”
Inese’s current job was to keep tabs on the situation from the flying “car.” Technically, it was a prototype anti-gravity vehicle with an invisibility generator, but we called it the car for short. “I’m almost there— What the bloody hell did you guys do?”
“Walked into a trap,” I grumbled.
“Never mind that.” Pops removed the gun from his hip with his free hand. “What are we facing?”
The radio crackled. “Seven security guards with weapons drawn.”
A chill ran down my spine. Lance looked dazed, and Pops didn’t say anything for a long moment.
“This is your final warning. We will fire if necessary. Now come out!”
They would shoot at us even with a civilian hostage. I took a deep breath. Of course it would be more efficient to kill three rebels and one civilian than risk the town’s safety.
But that logic didn’t protect individual citizens.
A gun fired and our hostage scrabbled against Lance. I ducked from the door. A bullet shattered the window. Someone screamed outside, offset by the cackling of flames.
Pops clicked the radio. “Report!”
“Someone threw a fireball. Four guards checking that.”
The door splintered open and a guard stepped inside. She started toward me, rifle raised, her finger on the trigger, ready to fire, but she cried out as Lance swept a large gash through her torso. She crumpled, blood pooling around her.
“Don’t kill them!” I protested. Our hostage fainted. Lance shot me a “what-do-you-want-me-to-do?” glare. Two more guards aimed rifles at us from the door. I whipped out my vines and curled them around the guards’ calves. They grimaced at the thorns. I yanked the vines toward me. The guards lost their balance. Their heads cracked sickeningly against the edge of the concrete step outside the door, their bodies straddling the entrance.
My blood ran cold. I stared at the bright red liquid—stark against the white, powdery snow.
“Jenna, come on!” Pops hurried through the door, staggering to avoid the bodies. Lance roughly shook the hostage awake.
I didn’t move. The guards hadn’t known about the beasties or the Camaraderie. I’d only wanted to incapacitate them, not kill them.
“Jenna!” Pops snapped, louder.
I plucked two flowers from my vines—cringing as their cell walls separated—and placed the flowers on the guards’ bodies. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and then chased after Pops and Lance.
Before I reached them, a short woman—the mercenary from earlier—barreled from the alley, her long braid trailing behind her. I skidded on the slick pavement, but we collided in a tangled mess. The woman grunted. I struggled to push myself up. She hopped to her feet, drew her pistol, then looked me over, her dark eyes skeptical. She frowned, but when she caught sight of Lance and Mr. Sokolov, her eyes widened.
“That’s my guy!” She took off running toward them. I cast my vine around her leg, holding her ankle in place as she sprawled to the pavement. I was not letting her find my father before I did. She caught herself on her hands and knees and then spun around, trying to pull my vine free.
Her pistol was just a meter away. I scrambled for the gun and snatched it before she had my vine untangled. “Hey!” She tumbled over her feet in her haste. Her hand brushed my shoulder. I pushed it aside, only to be pinned to the ground with her knee in my back. “Give me the gun,” she demanded, forcing me down. The ice felt painfully cold to my knees where my pants had torn. “Now.”
“What do you want with him?” I tried to use her weight against her like Jack taught me, but she lightly evaded me and pushed my cheek against the pavement. Ice stung my bare skin.
“Bounty, duh.”
I glanced at her from the corner of my eye, trying to see if there was anything about her that I could use to my advantage. She couldn’t be much older than me. No make-up, no nail polish, and her hand had a light pink scar running from the knuckles to the wrist. Except for her tunic and the braid, which was longer than Community standard, she could have easily been Community.
Too bad she was a merc.
My vines were still free, and I doubted she could see their ends. One vine crawled toward her neck. With a burst of speed, the vine latched around her throat and yanked her backward. She shrieked, grasping at the rope-like plant. I stood again and aimed her pistol at her chest.
I still wasn’t sure if I was aiming correctly, but hopefully she wouldn’t know that.
“Who do you work for?” I demanded. My hands were freezing. Snow had snuck beneath my wrists and my gloves and was starting to melt into icy water.
“That’s a dumb question,” she muttered, coughing. I loosened the vines a bit, not wanting to accidently strangle her before I got my answers.
“Humor me.”
“Santa’s elves,” she said, but her tone made me suspect that whoever Santa was, she wasn’t one of them.
“I thought elves were fantasy,” I snapped back.
The woman eyed me, and then the gun, suspiciously. “Let me guess, you’re with Saint Nick over there?”
“His name is Nickolai, not Saint. And for your information, I’m with the Coalition.”
“Oh.” She rolled her eyes. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why the safety’s still on.”
I glanced down at the pistol, suddenly remembering what Inese said about turning off the safety, and then hit the ground, my feet knocked out from under me. I stared at the gray sky, dazed.
Had she really just done that?
Yep. And now she had her gun back.
“Move!” She shrieked. She grabbed my arm and yanked.
Crack!
Shards of ice splintered against my face and the woman cursed, shielding her eyes. A security guard raised his rifle, checked the scope, and took aim.
I sprang to my feet, using my speed to push me toward a stack of boxes in front of a rundown catering business. Normally the boxes would have been carted away within an hour of being set out, but the slums must’ve been different. Not that I was complaining; the boxes acted as a nice impromptu shelter.
The woman took a shot at the guard before ducking behind the other side of the boxes. She glared at me. “Thanks. Now Special Forces will probably find my target before I do.”
I curled my vines around myself. She didn’t need to be trying to capture my dad, but right now, avoiding being shot was more important than arguing. Here, the boxes were tall enough to provide cover and made from sturdy plastic. Sturdy for hauling food items. Not so sturdy for keeping bullets out. I peeked above the box in time to see Lance and Pops disappear around the corner of a building with our hostage. The guard moved closer, followed by another guard in black. They were close enough to reveal the red COE—Camaraderie of Evil—letters on the second guard’s shoulders, the one with the rising sun cog.
He wasn’t a security guard—he was a Special Forces agent.
“There!” the guard pointed at me with his gun. I ducked as the rifle cracked, stone chipping from the building behind us. Another shot, and the box in front of the woman rocked with a newly formed hole.
“What are they shooting at me for?” she protested, prepping her pistol and taking aim over the box. “I’m on their side!”
I snorted. “You shot at them... duh.”
She scowled at me, then ducked again at the sound of splintering plastic. “Before now. The guard shot first.”
“He was probably aiming for me.” I scooted closer to the wall. The security forces were too far away for me to use my vines, and the nearby grass was dead from winter. Speed might get me around the corner to Lance and Pops, but that power wasn’t the most reliable of options with ice on the sidewalk.
“Figures,” she muttered, glancing back at me. She blinked, her eyes growing wide. “Wait a minute. You’re that Jenna kid. You killed Brainmaster.”
“That wasn’t me!”
“Doesn’t matter.” She rubbed her chin, whistling between her teeth. “If I can get you out of here alive, the Camaraderie might not mind if I don’t get your father.”
Anger burned inside my chest. The Camaraderie would hold Dad against me, not just Pops. I flinched as another shot from the Special Forces agent splintered the plastic of the crate I’d been sitting behind.
We didn’t have much time before these crates were worthless.
Another gunshot knocked the upper crate onto us. The woman lunged forward on the box, fired her pistol, and then ducked again.
I glared at her. “Don’t hurt them! They’re just doing their job.”
She stared at me. “They’re shooting at us!”
“At least you won’t be able to capture anyone.”
She scooted away and pointed her pistol at me. “I’ve got to make a living somehow.”
I cocked my head. “So you capture innocent people?”
She locked her eyes with mine. “You’re not innocent.”
“My dad is.”
“Get ready to use your vines.”
I blinked. “What?”
The surrounding area had gone eerily silent, save for the ringing in my ears—
The woman fired behind me. I jumped. The security guard she shot collapsed to the ground, bleeding from his throat. My heart pounded double-time. I whipped around, sending my vines spiraling outward, and it distracted the Special Forces agent behind him long enough for the woman to wrestle away his rifle and smash it against the side of his head.
He went down and she took off running. I chased after her, the buildings turning to gray streaks as I used my speed power and bypassed her. I stumbled down a short set of stairs and around the corner of a windowless building. “What took you so long?” Lance hissed, catching me.
“Guards and a Special Forces agent.”
Lance motioned to the woman skidding to a halt under the brick archway. “What about her?”
She had saved my life, but then, she wanted to capture me for a bounty. Still... “She might be helpful,” I said, but I scowled at her so she’d know I didn’t trust her.
Lance raised his sword. He stood between her and Pops, who had our “hostage” at gunpoint. The safety lock was still on, but in Pops’ case, I suspected the gesture was intentional.
The woman raised her gun and pointed it at us, her black braid swaying defensively. “Either give me the man, or give me the money for my bounty.” Pops shifted the position of his gun and clicked off the safety. She eyed his weapon before looking to me. “Alternatively, you could come with me and I’ll call it even. Make a decision before the other agents get here.”
“You really think I’d hand over my dad?”
She shrugged. “No, but you might take his place.”
Quin stepped into the open square behind us, followed by the remaining two mercenaries. “What’s going on?”
The woman snorted. “Negotiating an exchange.” She turned to me. “The only way I’m getting out of this stupid merc business is if I get the Camaraderie’s attention and get paid. That means capturing someone important.”
The bearded fire-guy crossed his arms over his chest while the elderly mercenary raised his head, his eyes narrowed. Neither looked particularly thrilled at having their livelihood insulted.
“Impressing the Camaraderie isn’t an effective way to leave the mercenary business,” Pops said calmly.
The woman cocked her head, about to respond when the older guy, the one who passed me in the grocery store, gestured at us. “What are you waiting for? Take them down!” He let out a high pitched scream that smashed my eardrums. I clapped my hands over my ears, but now I was staring at the sky, dazed.
What in the Community happened?
He started toward me while a fireball blasted from the bearded guy’s hands, missing Pops and flaming down the street. Mr. Sokolov tried to break free, but I grabbed him with my vines and pulled him back.
“Behind you!” Quin snapped. The woman spun at his warning and dodged as a Special Forces agent fired at her. The bearded guy threw a fireball. The agent ducked, wheeled on his heel, and shot at the bearded guy.
“Is there a safe place for us to go?” I asked our hostage. He nodded fiercely. The woman’s fingers twitched. She glanced between the fire mercenary sparring with the Special Forces agent, and the hostages she wanted—including me. “Why don’t we discuss this in a safer spot?” I suggested. “Over a sandwich or something?”
“Sounds good,” she agreed.
“I’ll distract them.” Quin said. “Go.” He pulled an oddly shaped weapon from his pocket—two black, foot-length rods held together by a decent-sized chain, and then disappeared down the street. A loud crack of broken bones sounded a moment later.
In the meantime, the bearded guy threw an orange wave of fire at the agent, who merely stood there, his expression hidden behind his dark visor. The fire dissipated around him, swirling in eddies. He slung his rifle over his back. Without warning, the bearded guy slammed against the nearby wall. The agent drew his pistol. The bearded guy scratched at the air, choking as if he couldn’t breathe.
“Come on!” The woman grabbed my arm. “He’s going to come after us next!”
Our hostage was already racing through the alley, followed by Pops and Lance. I chased after them. We rounded the corner and a solitary shot echoed behind us.
We finally stopped behind a rundown building. Mr. Sokolov kicked aside a plastic crate, scattering snow across the jagged pavement. “Here,” he croaked, motioning to a piece of painted black wood.
The woman grasped the plank in both hands and scooted it aside, revealing a long, dark hole. She glared at the hostage. “We don’t take kindly to traps.”
“No traps!” He rubbed his hands, shaking, and dropped into the darkness. I scooted in after him. My stomach rose to my throat before my knees crashed against dirt. I pushed myself away from the hole to avoid being landed on. I closed my eyes, still crouching to keep my balance.
Once I opened my eyes again, we were in a large, underground cavern.
