XGeneration (Book 4): Pressure Drop Read online

  XGeneration 4

  Pressure Drop

  Brad Magnarella

  © 2015

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Damonza.com

  Table of Contents

  XGeneration Series

  Description

  Recap

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

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  Mailing List

  Books by Brad Magnarella

  The XGeneration Series

  YOU DON’T KNOW ME

  THE WATCHERS

  SILENT GENERATION

  PRESSURE DROP

  CRY LITTLE SISTER

  GREATEST GOOD

  DEAD HAND

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  Description

  Director Kilmer can’t sleep. Convinced that the Scale, a shadowy group who destroyed the last generation of Champions, has resurfaced, Kilmer vows to shield his team of super-powered teens from the same fate.

  But is someone closing in on his strongest member anyway? Business cards left on his windshield … an enticing phone call … promises to reveal his origins … Even Jesse Hoag may have his breaking point.

  And just who is Mr. Shine? Janis and Scott will embark on their most daring operation to find out. But will pulling the mask off the aging yard man confirm their suspicions or blow them violently apart?

  Half a world away, meanwhile, a nuclear-armed Soviet army is on the move, its crazed leader, General Dementyev, swearing death to the West—and its Champions—once and for all.

  Recap of XGen 3

  (Advance to next chapter to skip)

  Silent Generation begins in the White House in 1961, at President Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation. A shape shifter named Reginald Perry is preparing to assassinate the president over a betrayal.

  In 1985 Gainesville, Florida, the teens of Oakwood are announcing their decision to either join the Champions Program or leave the neighborhood forever. Tyler, Creed, Jesse, and Margaret are yeses. But Janis wants to know what happened to the last team. Director Kilmer claims that the information is classified and above his clearance. Janis announces that her decision to join the Champions is conditional on how the summer training goes. In support of his girlfriend, Scott makes the same declaration.

  Two weeks prior to Eisenhower’s address, Reginald and his girlfriend, fellow Champion Madelyn Graves, meet with their director. Halstead informs them that the remaining Champions have been murdered. Reginald suspects the Soviets and wants to raid their embassy in D.C., but Halstead counsels patience. He needs to rule out an inside job. He orders Reginald and Madelyn to a safe house in the meantime.

  On the first day of Champions training, the teens meet their trainers. Jesse and Creed are introduced to Gus, the pool hall bouncer. Tyler is paired with Chad, a downtown record store clerk; Margaret with Mr. Giles, one of her managers at JC Penney; and Scott, who believes he is about to meet Mr. Shine, with a woman named Gabriella—an advanced-level hacker he knew online as “Goblin.” Finally, Janis meets Mrs. Fern, her English teacher from the year before.

  Back in 1961, Reginald leaves the safe house against Madelyn’s wishes to stake out the Soviet Embassy. After shaking his security detail, Reginald shape shifts into an embassy official to gain entry to the Soviet compound. The mission falls apart as the official he is impersonating returns, but Reginald has seen enough to doubt the Soviets are behind the murders. As he escapes the embassy in the guise of a secretary, he hears Madelyn scream through their psychic rapport.

  Midway through Champions training, Scott is concerned that he’s more invested in the Program than Janis, who continues to suspect the Program’s honesty. Scott shares his concerns with Gabriella, his trainer. For her part, Janis is mostly troubled by her tempestuous powers, which Mrs. Fern is training her to control. When Janis tries to restrain her abilities, however, they abandon her, like a petulant child and at the worst times.

  Tyler, meanwhile, only agreed to become a Champion because the Program knew about his role in his father’s death. To shake the Program’s control over him, he tries to relocate his father’s remains from the backyard, but they’re missing. In the act of refilling the hole, he remembers hearing his father’s voice that night three years before.

  Back in 1961, Reginald returns to the safe house to find Madelyn murdered, her throat cut. Days later, he attends Madelyn’s funeral. He has learned that her killer was hiding in a crouch space in the safe house’s basement. Though skin cells were recovered from Madelyn’s fingernails, the killer himself disappeared. Reginald concludes the hit was an inside job, but ordered by Director Halstead.

  Reginald shows up at Halstead’s office unannounced. Following a heated exchange, in which Reginald strikes Halstead with a pistol, they both drop bombshells. From Reginald we learn that Madelyn was pregnant, while Halstead reveals the skin cells found under Madelyn’s fingernails belonged to Reginald. The two conclude that Reginald is being set up. President Eisenhower, with his military connections, becomes a suspect in their minds, but while Halstead wants to look into it further, Reginald is already planning an assassination.

  During a meeting in the Grove, Scott and Janis clash over their differing opinions of the Champions Program. Unlike Scott, Janis believes the Program to be manipulating them into joining (such as pairing Scott with a sexy computer nerd), and she invokes Mr. Leonard’s warning. Scott, who has yet to tell Janis of his involvement in the former agent’s death, backs off. The last group of Champions was betrayed somehow, Janis tells him. Scott agrees to travel with her to Tallahassee to meet with Trips, a man with nightmarish powers, who Janis encountered in the spring and believes to be a surviving member of the previous group.

  In their first group training session of the summer, the teens learn that their team trainer is none other than Agent Steel, the woman they battled at the end of Book 2. After her men humiliate the teens in a game of capture the flag, Janis confronts Agent Steel over her motives for remaining involved with them. Steel responds that her “one and only objective” is to prepare them for what they will encounter in the real world, but Janis remains skeptical.

  Back in 1961, Reginald dreams that he’s five years old and on a poor farmstead in Georgia, with a horse named Ginger. A girl his age appears and tells him their father has killed their mother. When Reginald hears another gunshot, he understands his father has just killed himself. He also sees that the girl’s eyes are blue, like his.

  In his waking life, Reginald’s plans to assassinate Eisenhower are taking firmer shape. He has decided to impersonate a member of the camera crew that will be filming his farewell address in a few days’ time. Reginald has lunch with Wally Goldstein, a comedic young man who w
orks as the crew’s lighting operator, and convinces him to meet him at a jazz club the evening before the farewell address.

  Disguised as a black woman named Divinity Childs, Reginald intercepts Wally at the club and coaxes him back to his rented room. Before Reginald can inject him with a knock-out drug, Wally ambushes Reginald-as-Divinity and fastens him to the bed. As Wally threatens him with a knife, Reginald realizes the man is behind the recent disfiguring of several local prostitutes. Reginald gets Wally to release him by shape-shifting into a likeness of Wally’s mother, whereupon he injects him and can proceed with his plan.

  Janis meets with Director Kilmer and presses him about what happened to the last group of Champions. Kilmer confesses that the security around that program wasn’t airtight but assures her that he has made the necessary changes to protect the current group. When he denies knowledge of a surviving member, Janis tells him she’ll find the information on her own. To prevent this, Kilmer sends a message to Scott, suggesting that his leadership is being tested.

  When Janis visits Scott that night, she is confused when he backs out of their plans to travel to Tallahassee together. Scott soon realizes he is being manipulated, but before he can talk to Janis again, Director Kilmer makes him a deal: “You agree to forget this business with the last Champions team, and I’ll agree to forget the name of the person who gave up Agent Leonard.” Afraid of losing Janis’s trust, Scott finds it’s an offer he can’t refuse.

  At Eisenhower’s farewell address, Reginald is preparing to carry out the assassination when he realizes that, far from being a co-conspirator in the growth of the booming U.S. military industry, Eisenhower is calling for its restraint. The president wasn’t behind Madelyn’s and his fellow Champions’ deaths after all. Having eliminated everyone else with intimate knowledge of the Champions Program from suspicion, Reginald is left with one name: Assistant Director Kilmer. His suspicion deepens when he returns to his room and finds Wally murdered.

  In Gainesville, Tyler receives a surprise visit from Janis and learns that she shares his distrust of the Champions Program. For the first time, he confesses to killing his father. Janis hugs him, telling him “your powers did that, not you.” Tyler offers to drive her to Tallahassee that weekend to find and talk to Trips. En route, Janis is surprised to learn that Tyler writes poetry. Tyler lets her read his latest piece, about nuclear war, which moves her.

  At the hotel in Tallahassee, Janis and Tyler are confronted by the same vagrants she encountered in the spring. Following an attack by Wild Smile, in which Tyler is badly cut, Janis unleashes her powers to suppress the mob. She is barely able to regain control of herself. When she demands to see Trips, Split Lobe reveals that Trips and several other vagrants were picked up two weeks earlier by an armored team. Janis suspects Agent Steel’s involvement.

  On their ride back to Gainesville, Tyler shares with Janis that on the night he electrocuted his father, his father spoke, asking for his help. Terrified, Tyler proceeded to bury him—so, it wasn’t his powers that killed him.

  In 1961, Reginald meets with Director Halstead and Assistant Director Kilmer to clear himself from suspicion. In the course of their meeting, Halstead reveals that the appearance of enhanced humans like Reginald occurs every twenty-five years or so and may relate to cosmology. Kilmer muses that the future of the Champions Program will entail identifying Specials early and relocating them to a model community for protection and training. Reginald accepts a new identify that Halstead has created for him. He hopes to lure Kilmer—who he still believes to be behind the murders—into trying to finish the job.

  While Reginald is waiting in his hotel, Madelyn contacts him through what remains of their rapport. She tells him that the person who murdered her is a Special, like them. But she warns against his pursuing the killer. She asks that he instead protect the next generation of Champions from the same fate, referring, of course, to Janis, Scott, and their peers, who have yet to be born.

  The following day, Reginald confronts his former landlord and learns that whoever murdered Wally disguised himself to look like Reginald. When Reginald returns to his hotel room, he is shot by Director Kilmer.

  Fresh from her trip to Tallahassee, Janis meets with Director Kilmer. With the help of Tyler’s powers, she plans to probe his protected thoughts and learn the truth about the last group. The plan unravels, however, when Kilmer denies knowing who Trips is and has Tyler detained. Janis loses her temper and, with it, control of her powers. As his office comes apart around him, Kilmer pulls a gun.

  While in his bedroom, bemoaning his failure to accompany Janis to Tallahassee, Scott receives a level one alert. When Scott arrives at the training center, Kilmer informs him Janis isn’t there because “there was an incident.” Scott demands to know what happened to her.

  Back in 1961, Reginald manages to overcome his attacker, who isn’t Kilmer but a shape shifter—the same person who had been working as a secretary for the Champions: Mrs. Nance. When the shape shifter loses consciousness, she becomes a black woman who Reginald deduces to be the young girl he dreamed about, his twin sister. But before Reginald can speak to her, Henry “Titan” Tillman bursts through the door and, in the ensuing battle, breaks Reginald’s hip. Henry says that he faked his death and betrayed his former team in order to prevent nuclear war, but Reginald believes he’s working for someone as a contract killer. Reginald manages to shoot Henry through the eye to escape.

  At the level one meeting in Gainesville, Janis appears and explains that Kilmer subdued her with a stun gun, but for her own good. That settled, Kilmer announces that he summoned them because a group called the Scale has taken over a nuclear launch facility in Missouri. The group has reprogrammed the missiles to hit major U.S. cities. Trips, the Special who Janis and Tyler had failed to find in Tallahassee, is involved.

  The Champions-in-training are jetted to the nuclear launch facility. The advance team of Tyler, Janis, and Scott enter to find the facility’s guards dead from self-inflicted wounds—victims of Trips’s mind control. Tyler succumbs to Trips’s influence, believing one of the fallen guards to be his dead father, risen from the grave. By entering Tyler’s thoughts, Janis is able to return him to sanity.

  Upon subduing the lone surviving guard, who shot Tyler in the shoulder, Janis and Scott descend to the launch control center. On the ride down, Scott confesses to being the one to reveal the whereabouts of Mr. Leonard. Janis forgives him.

  When they arrive, the blast door is sealed, and they’re set upon by armored men with lasers. Scott’s helmet is destroyed in the battle. Janis is struggling to keep the enemy at bay when Jesse appears and mauls them. With Janis’s help, Jesse rips open the blast door. But upon entering the launch control center, Scott and Janis find that the launch sequence is already underway. Using his powers, Scott enters the system with the intent of blowing the computers on each of the ten missiles.

  Meanwhile, Tyler falls under Trips’s influence again and hits Janis with an electric bolt. Janis recovers and enters Tyler’s head. Once more, he has regressed to the twelve-year-old who believes his half-dead father is trying to strangle him. Janis is unable to restore his sanity this time. In a moment of intuition, she kisses him, which does the trick. As Janis is returning to the present, Trips chokes her from behind. She is on the verge of losing consciousness when Agent Steel appears and shoots Trips, killing him.

  Scott, meanwhile, has managed to disable all of the missiles except one—the largest. He and Janis rush outside to see the missile launching in the distance; its target is Denver. Using her powers, Janis struggles and eventually succeeds in preventing the missile’s reentry from space. The warheads detonate harmlessly, but Janis collapses, blood running from her nose.

  The next day, President Reagan congratulates the team for averting the nuclear strike. Kilmer and Steel announce that summer training is over and they’ve selected Creed, Jesse, Margaret, and Tyler to become Champions. Kilmer explains that, pursuant to their contracts, Janis’s and
Scott’s inclusion will depend on their own decisions. Janis elects to join the Champions but demands that the program become more transparent. Scott also joins.

  At the meeting’s conclusion, Kilmer pulls Tyler aside and explains that the Program removed his father’s remains so his death couldn’t be pinned on him. “You never have to worry about that again,” Kilmer assures him.

  At a Champions induction party in Mrs. Montgomery’s house that night, Janis tells Scott that, while she is better able to control her powers, they still have the potential to overwhelm her body. She will need to develop more capacity. Scott is relieved when she announces she is through obsessing over the former team. She believes Kilmer’s claim that he improved the Program to ensure their safety. She also has a feeling that someone is looking out for them. As she kisses Scott, she notices Tyler watching from the corner and has conflicted feelings.

  At a private meeting with Agent Steel, Director Kilmer reveals that the missiles weren’t programmed to hit major U.S. cities, after all, but to land in the ocean. Kilmer believes the Scale’s real intention was to get a close look at the new Champions team and their capabilities. He has evidence that Henry “Titan” Tillman and Reginald’s sister, Shadow, were involved, and he fears for the Champions’ safety.

  The book ends in 1961 New York City, where Reginald Perry is crippled but alive and has assumed a new identity. He broods over a message he received from Halstead telling him that the Champions Program has been shuttered, President Kennedy electing to reallocate the funding to missile systems. To protect Reginald, Halstead has reported him missing, likely dead. Reginald vows to himself to honor Madelyn by keeping his promise to find the next generation of Champions and protect them however he can. But he can’t help wondering about Madelyn’s killer—his twin sister—and when, if ever, he’ll see her again.

  Which brings us to XGeneration 4: Pressure Drop…