Chimera

Nineteen Dark Tunnel Bluff

Thanks to Tate’s choice to claim the area near the front door as his sleeping spot, Sledgehammer tripped over the blanket-wrapped boy and face-planted in the middle of his own small pile of wood shards and debris. The bottles of water on the stairs cracked and exploded. Balls of ice shot around the room like marbles, slamming into the plaster and wood molding. Nicolas shouted. Tate rolled out of the doorway as a blur burst inside and made invisible tracks upstairs.

Bethany was up there.

“Everyone outside!” I yelled. At least three of the four identified clones were here, and close quarters for a fight was a bad idea. We hadn’t seen her since the fight in Los Angeles, but the ice balls suggested the clone of Black Ice was out and about, and Jasper had already raced upstairs.

Glass shattered above us, followed by a heavy thud. Bethany screamed. A man, probably Rick, shouted for help.

Barry grew to about eight feet, the maximum he could manage indoors without stooping. With a snarl, he charged Sledgehammer and sent them both through the thin wall into the kitchen. More ice balls flew around. I ducked one that was on a collision course with my face. Three slammed into Tate’s shoulder with enough force to knock him down. Blood streamed from the wounds, and he stared at them, so stunned that I stumbled across the room to help him before he got killed.

Nicolas charged through the front door, carrying a blast of wind from his wings outside with him. A woman screamed, and I hoped it was Black Ice getting her ass hammered by a pissed-off teenager with wings. The building creaked and groaned. Rick stumbled down the stairs, blood leaking from the side of his face. He tripped halfway down.

“Where’s Bethany?” I asked as I gave Tate a shove toward the front door. We had to get our asses outdoors before our powers collapsed the house on top of us.

Rick shook his head—either he didn’t know or he didn’t understand the question. I caught him before he fell off the bottom step. He twisted hard and we hit the floor anyway. In time for a big wad of ice to crash into the banister where my head had been. He raised his right hand and threw a blue firework out into the front yard.

“Where’s Bethany?” I asked again. She was the only one I’d lost track of. They weren’t mine, but I was the oldest and the most experienced. I had to keep them safe and I couldn’t do that if I didn’t know where the hell they were.

“Outside,” Rick replied. The horror in his eyes told me enough about how she’d ended up outside—unwillingly.

“Front or back?”

“Back.”

“Come on.”

We got to our feet and stumbled through the destroyed kitchen. Barry and Sledgehammer weren’t there, but a huge hole next to the back door was better than a flashing neon arrow. The tall grass in the backyard was nearly flattened, and Barry lay near the steps in a pile of debris. He’d shrunk back to normal size and wasn’t moving. Sledgehammer’s back was to us, his massive body bent over something that he was pounding away at with his fists.

Rick snarled and sent three fireworks that hit between his shoulder blades. Sledgehammer hollered and cursed, and then Rick went flying sideways. The blur of color and snap of wind said Jasper even before the clone slowed enough for me to make him out.

I had no weapons. I had no plan. But I did have five kids who, despite my better judgment, I kind of liked and wanted to protect from these bastards of science trying to hurt them.

My Flex powers still worked somewhat in my left hand, and without really thinking about it I reached for Jasper. He was close enough for me to wrap my wrist around his neck twice and squeeze the fuck out of him. He jerked and tried to dislodge, but I held on like a fucking tick, fast and hard, and he dropped to his knees, his cheeks going bright red.

“You son of a bitch,” I said. The house rattled behind me, and more shouting came from out front.

“Let him go, Flex.”

The voice startled me. I hadn’t heard it since last month on the roof of our old HQ, and before that, it had been fifteen years. The clone of Hinder, Teresa’s father, stepped through the bent gate into the backyard. He stopped next to Sledgehammer, who was stunned from Rick’s shots.

Instead of complying, I yanked Jasper closer to me, reveling in Flex powers being useful in a fight for a change. I tried to take in my surroundings without actually breaking eye contact—a trick Teresa was really good at and I was still practicing. Rick and Barry were both down. Jasper was on his knees now, his face going purple. Somewhere in the house or out front, Tate and Nicolas were occupied with Black Ice.

“We aren’t here to kill you, Flex, or the two boys at your feet,” Hinder said. “Don’t force me to go against my orders.”

“Like the orders you assholes were following on the turnpike on Sunday?” I shot back.

“That was a message. This is the follow-through. Let him go.”

“I think I want to keep him.”

“You know I won’t allow that.”

Damn, he’d moved closer without my even realizing it. He was in the middle of the yard now, halfway between me and Sledgehammer. Hinder was strong, with a nearly invulnerable exterior and incredibly good reflexes. A hit from him would seriously hurt.

“Another step, and we see if purple is the only color your boy here can turn,” I said.

Hinder’s face went deadly furious, almost feral. “Make me count to three and I will ensure every person you care about dies slowly and painfully, preferably at the mercy of my bare hands.”

He wasn’t kidding, and that fact tore through me like a ripple of ice water. I hated letting the clones go, but we were outmatched tonight. The kids I’d spent the day with had incredible powers but no real training to use them in a fight, or as a group. We all had to live for them to get that training so they could kick serious ass next time.

We’d encounter the clones again, I had no doubt.

“I let him go and you guys leave,” I said. “No more hits, no more powers, you just leave.”

“We leave,” Hinder said.

I unwrapped my wrist from Jasper’s neck. He pitched forward with a raspy wheeze. Then Hinder—the deceiving bastard—was in my face. Rather, his fist was in my face and I was eating grass.

The world spun around a little. Voices helped me focus. Someone shook my shoulder and I blinked up at Nicolas. His nose was bleeding and he had a couple of bruises forming on his face and throat. “How’d we do?” I asked.

He shook his head, a little glassy-eyed, shock starting to set in. “Everyone’s right here except Bethany.”

I sat up and blinked at the shadowed yard. Tate was helping Rick and Barry. My heart seized when I remembered Sledgehammer pounding something I couldn’t see. I looked up, and sure enough a window on the second floor was busted out completely. I lurched to my feet and stumbled across the yard.

“Oh, shit.”

Bethany’s eyes were open, but I wasn’t immediately sure she was still alive. Her face was coated with blood from dozens of small cuts. She was on her back, but her left leg was twisted beneath her body. She wore only her underwear and bra, and every bit of exposed skin was bruised, broken, or about to bruise. The ribs on her left side didn’t look right. In my entire life, I’d never seen someone beaten so badly.

I dropped to my knees beside her, my throat tight, eyes stinging with tears for her pain. Her eyes rolled toward me, the only movement she seemed capable of making.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered.

“We have to get out of here,” Nicolas said. “Someone will have called the police by now.”

“Bethany needs a hospital.”

Her eyes widened with terror and she gave the smallest head shake.

“Honey, you need a doctor or you’re going to die,” I said.

“What about your doctor?” Tate asked.

“Unless someone here has as a cell phone I don’t know about, I can’t exactly call him for a consult.

“I’ll go,” Nicolas said. “I fly fast.”

“How close to HQ are we?”

“We’re in Philadelphia.”

Not super-close, but not horribly far away. “Okay, look, the rest of us will get into the car and start driving. We’ll stick to the New Jersey Turnpike and head toward the rest stop where I met with Sasha and Rick. Teresa will know the place.”

“Okay.”

I gave Nicolas a hard look. “How wounded are you? Are you sure—?”

“I can make it,” he said. “I promise.”

“Okay.”

Moving Bethany was horrific, even with supersized Barry’s help. She made the most awful noises while we got her into the car, finally passing out as she was settled in with blankets from the living room. Nicolas hit the sky right after. The other boys gathered the medical bag and a few other things they couldn’t bear to leave behind. Barry shrank down so he could sit on the floor in the backseat and keep an eye on Bethany. I drove with Rick and Tate squashed into the front seat with me.

We got out of the alley just as emergency sirens split the silence of the night. Either no one bothered to call in the noise right away or the police around here didn’t make Meta disturbances a priority. I didn’t know Philadelphia well, but Rick seemed to, and he helped me navigate my way east.

Lack of traffic—and it being the middle of the night—helped us get to the rest stop fast. It also meant we had to wait for help to arrive, and waiting wasn’t my strong suit. Barry had already given Bethany the few painkillers and antibiotics he’d found in the bag. She stared at the roof of the car, the occasional tear slipping down one cheek. He stayed close while the rest of us got out of the car. Rick moved around to open the door near her head, then perched there and started talking.

I walked away, unwilling to intrude on the trio. With my adrenaline wearing off, everything was starting to hurt. My hands shook and my stomach rolled with the need to vomit up whatever was left inside. My face ached from Hinder’s punch. I knew I should help the kids patch up their wounds—all of us were bleeding from somewhere—but I couldn’t stop shaking.

The clones found Bethany. They had come damn close to killing her—assuming she survived the next few hours. They knocked us around to prove a point, and then I let them go. I literally had Jasper by the throat, and I let him go. Hinder lied to me, the fuckwad, proving once again just how unlike the real Hinder this clone was.

Reinforcements arrived in two different Sports. Bethany, bless her, was a fighter, and she held on hard as things happened around her and to her. I didn’t have to ask Dr. Kinsey what he thought after he first examined Bethany—it was all over his face. He didn’t want her moved again, so we piled into different vehicles and hit the road. I told the story to Teresa through a developing haze of shock and pain, and soon we were waiting our turn to take a puddle-jumper over to the island.

Everything happened in a blur. My friends kept trying to talk to me, to comfort me, and all I saw was Bethany’s broken body in that stamped-down grass. I’d failed her.

We were in the infirmary waiting area, the kids getting guerilla doctoring from Sasha and Teresa while Kinsey and Jessica were busy with Bethany. Of the others, Tate had the worst wounds courtesy of the three ice balls that ripped into his shoulder. The bleeding had stopped, but I heard someone say he’d need stitches.

Time passed.

At some point I was hustled into Kinsey’s office with him and Teresa. His face was grim, his surgical scrubs stained red in too many places.

“How bad?” Teresa asked.

“I’m sorry,” Kinsey replied, his voice hollow. “Her injuries were catastrophic. She crashed twice. We were able to get her heart beating both times. She’s on a ventilator now, but our tests are not detecting any brain activity at all.”

I grabbed the edge of his desk as the world tilted slightly. “She’s a vegetable?”

The tactless question was on point, because he nodded. “She’s brain-dead. Our machines are the only things keeping her body alive at this point.”

“Goddammit,” Teresa said.

“There’s nothing we can do?” I asked. “You know scientists and specialists. Can’t they—?”

“I’m sorry, Renee,” Kinsey said. “I wish there was more to be done for her.”

Catastrophic injuries. Sledgehammer. Fuck.

“Where’s Thatcher?” Teresa asked.

I blinked at her. “Why?”

“Because Landon needs to know, and his father should tell him, don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

“He’s with Landon the last I checked,” Kinsey replied.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t watch this. I hid in Dr. Kinsey’s office with the door mostly shut and listened. Listened to Teresa go down the hall and beckon Thatcher into the corridor. Heard muffled voices as she told him what was going on. A minute later, Landon’s cries of disbelief echoed down to my hiding place. I covered my face with my hands and cried.