XGeneration 7: Dead Hand (XGeneration Series) Read online

  XGeneration 7

  Dead Hand

  Brad Magnarella

  © 2016

  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

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  From the Author

  Available Now

  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

  Be sure to sign up to the XGeneration mailing list to stay up to date on new releases:

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  Description

  A deranged leader self-chosen to propel the Soviet Union to sole superpower.

  A cunning kingpin determined to revive a perilous global arms race.

  A Champions Program in its final days—and harboring a traitor.

  A doomsday device called the Dead Hand.

  A countdown to all-out war.

  This is it.

  Recap of XGen 6

  (Advance to next chapter to skip)

  Greatest Good begins with shapeshifter Reginald Perry taking aim at the Champions. A shot is fired, killing one of them, but that is all that is known.

  The story shifts to two weeks earlier with the Champions preventing the Soviets from looting the German Federal Reserve Bank of a half trillion dollars, thanks in part to Margaret’s mind control powers.

  Following the campaign, Director Kilmer discusses the future of the Champions Program with Agent Steel. He fears for his team. The last time the Champions gained the upper hand in the Cold War, the Scale began targeting them. We learn this is happening again. Two alternate teams—Alpha and Beta—have already been decimated and are in hiding. Jesse Hoag remains with the Scale, though whether by choice or coercion, Kilmer doesn’t know. Kilmer is supposed to have hidden his team away as well but confines them to the neighborhood instead. If the Scale want them, he decides, they will have to come to Oakwood.

  In a meeting with Scott in the woods, Janis shares her premonition that a Champion is going to die. They decide their best chance to alter that future is to find Mr. Shine, a man who seems to have an affiliation with the Scale but an interest in protecting the Champions. When Wayne produces Mr. Shine’s death certificate, Scott and Janis determine he has shifted and gone into hiding.

  Director Kilmer, thinking the two are looking for Jesse, allows them to leave the neighborhood. But he orders them to keep their activities a secret from the rest of the team.

  On a search of Mr. Shine’s house, Scott discovers an empty vial of medicine. Janis senses that the Scale have been using his illness to coerce him. She also senses that the illness is a side effect of their powers.

  Out of Vitrin, Reginald meets with the team leader of the Scale, a clairvoyant called the Witch. The Witch chastises him for taking too long to carry out his assassination, expanding the mandate to include any of the Champions, not just Margaret or Tyler. The Scale would especially like Janis eliminated.

  Reginald is torn. Because he can’t warn the Champions without the Witch knowing, he decides to plant a crystal necklace, formerly Madelyn’s, in the hopes Janis will find it and access their old rapport.

  Janis and Scott next search the warehouse where Jesse met with Titan. By tapping into the events of that night, Janis learns Jesse went to the Scale willingly. She asks Scott to check on the Walkman Jesse used to communicate with the Scale on the chance it will link to another transceiver.

  Later that day, Janis confronts Director Kilmer about their illnesses. Kilmer admits to there being a destructive aspect to their mutations, which are developing at a faster rate with their generation. The clinical team has been working on a cure but without success thus far.

  While Scott is inspecting Jesse’s Walkman, a member of the Scale sends him a message in Morse: “YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME.” In an attempt to capture the sender’s signal direction, Scott and Janis drive to a nearby television tower. They succeed but receive an alert that Jesse has returned to the neighborhood.

  Tyler and Program agents battle a rampaging Jesse, who appears to have undergone a brain operation. Janis and Scott arrive only to learn Jesse’s destination is his bedroom, where he falls into a comatose sleep. Not knowing why the Scale released him, Kilmer places Jesse in a secure medical cell under close surveillance.

  Upset that Kilmer hasn’t followed the evacuation protocol for the team, and further, that he has been sending Janis and Scott out without her knowledge, Agent Steel threatens to force Kilmer from his position. She gives him twenty-four hours to execute the evacuation protocol.

  Scott and Janis resume their search for the Scale member. At a second transmission tower, Scott’s consciousness is blown apart by a booby trap. Using her powers, Janis restores him to his body, but barely. Scott believes he has found the Scale member’s location—a nearby farmhouse.

  When they arrive, Scott and Janis learn it’s another trap set up by a computer hacker named Techie. Techie claims the only way to spare themselves, as well as an elderly hostage, is for Scott to disarm the trap by way of Techie’s computer system. It’s a bluff, however. Using her telekinesis, Janis saves Scott’s mind from being blown a second time, and they escape the house.

  Through a series of associations, Janis determines that Mr. Shine has been two different people: Reginald and his sister, Shadow. When Janis projects to Mr. Shine’s house, she senses a new artifact. But before she and Scott can return there, Kilmer orders the team’s evacuation.

  Back in the neighborhood, Kilmer denies Janis and Scott’s request to retrieve the object. Believing Mr. Shine to be Shadow and not Reginald, who Kilmer thinks dead, he is upset they didn’t tell him about the shifter’s presence much earlier.

  Janis and Scott scheme with Tyler on how they might retrieve the object from Mr. Shine’s house. When Tyler’s attempt fails, Janis is surprised to receive a delivery that night from Creed. After refusing to help them earlier, he has grabbed the object, a crystal necklace. Through the necklace, Janis is able to contact Reginald, who tells her his plan to foil the Witch.

  The next morning, Janis shares Reginald’s plan with Ma
rgaret, mainly from guilt for having left her out of the loop. At a transfer point during the Champions’ evacuation, the plan commences. Reginald is to shoot near Janis who will fake her death, then upload an alternate future into the Witch’s clairvoyance. As events play out, however, Creed takes a real bullet, which kills him.

  Believing the bullet to have come from Reginald, the Champions, led by an anger-fueled Janis, give chase. Helped by his sister—who turns out to have been the shooter—Reginald escapes. But he now finds himself in the center of a power struggle between Shadow and the Witch.

  At the emergency bunker, Agent Steel interrogates Janis in what appears an attempt to place the blame for Creed’s death on her and Director Kilmer. Steel succeeds to the extent that Janis is kept in lockup and the president dismisses Kilmer, placing Steel in his position.

  With Scott’s and Tyler’s help, Janis escapes her incarceration. The entire team, including Margaret, flee the bunker. Meanwhile, Reginald escapes his sister. Without the Vitrin that sustains him, though, he knows his time is short.

  When the Champions arrive back in Oakwood, they discover that Kilmer has not ceded authority after all. When Agent Steel arrives, agents arrest her. The Champions meet Reginald, who surrendered that morning, clearing himself of responsibility for Creed’s assassination. During a meeting, Reginald shares what he knows of the Scale, an organization whose members believe they’re sparing the world from catastrophe by balancing global powers. The Champions plan an ambush of the Scale in order to prevent a large money transfer to the Soviets.

  The plan begins with Janis planting an alternate future in the Witch’s clairvoyance. She seems to succeed, but Shadow, informed by an unknown insider, warns the Witch of the ploy. Worried that Shadow is attempting to seize power, the Witch dismisses the warning and sends the Scale to Oakwood anyway.

  The battle commences in the Grove with the surprise arrival of Titan and two new members, Shockwave, who can send disruptive forces through air and matter, and Minion, who conjures earthen creatures. Aided by the Witch’s clairvoyant abilities, the Scale keep the Champions on the ropes.

  When Janis detects the Witch’s presence in a neighborhood behind their own, she leaves to confront her. The remaining Champions neutralize Shockwave and Minion and manage to subdue Titan with the help of a new arrival, Erin—a Special from another team whose power is controlling atmospheric pressure.

  Meanwhile, Janis has found the Witch. She mind blasts her into submission, but not before the Witch has given an order to Techie to transfer the funds to the Soviets. Shadow appears, disguised as Scott, and knocks Janis unconscious.

  Scott senses something has happened to Janis. Reginald insists he will check on her, sending Scott to stop Techie.

  At the Scale’s outpost, Reginald finds Janis being held at gunpoint by his sister. Shadow has killed the Witch and plans to rewire Janis’s brain to assist a revamped Scale she imagines herself heading. Following a tense standoff, Reginald lunges for Shadow’s gun but misses. When he hears a shot, he thinks either he or Janis is done for.

  Scott realizes Techie is executing the transfer from the Champions command and control center. He arrives only to be confronted by Jesse, who has been awakened and is under Techie’s control. Following a bruising battle, Scott manages to short the implant in Jesse’s head. He bursts into the computer room to discover that Techie is, in fact, his frenemy Wayne. After knocking Wayne flat, Scott manages to halt the transaction to the Soviets, but Janis is still missing.

  Scott and Tyler drive to the neighborhood behind Oakwood. At the Scale outpost, they find Reginald carrying Janis outside. He reveals that his disturbed sister ended up shooting herself.

  At Creed’s funeral, we learn that Titan, Shockwave, and Minion have been incarcerated, Jesse has had the implant removed, and Wayne his memory wiped. Agents discovered Vitrin at the Scale outpost, which the Program is reverse engineering for their own members. Additionally, Kilmer has been restored to his former position and, in a surprise move, restored Agent Steel to hers.

  With the Scale defeated and the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse, Janis and Scott wonder aloud whether the Champions Program will end.

  But Director Kilmer privately worries about the person behind the Scale, a kingpin who remains unaccounted for. Additionally, Titan claims that by upsetting the balance of global powers, the Champions have sent the world into a death spiral. This makes Kilmer wonder about the Soviet secret project, the Dead Hand.

  Which brings us to XGeneration 7: Dead Hand…

  1

  The Kremlin

  Moscow, Russia

  General Dementyev’s boots clicked like a mechanical timer as they paced the circumference of the large room. Inside brown and dark gray suit jackets, the backs of Politburo members stiffened. Sweat shone through the thinning hair of several engineers. A throat swallowed with a dry click.

  Dementyev returned to the head of the long table, standing beneath the severe bronze-cast Soviet emblem. A pair of steep red flags flanked him. Outfitted in a stiff military uniform lined with medals, he frowned over the gathering. Anger writhed in the pit of his brain like a knot of black worms.

  “Imbeciles!” he shouted in Russian. “Traitors!”

  The explosive accusations clapped eardrums and resounded throughout the high-ceilinged meeting room. Chaffed faces winced. Eyes fell to nervous hands and scattered folders.

  “I gave you a date. I gave you a deadline.”

  The Minister of Defense cleared his throat. “With all due respect, General, the deadline was under the assumption that there would be financial backing.” He glanced around. “We have seen no money.”

  “So, you are like the dirty capitalists in the West now? You work only for money?”

  “No, General,” he answered. “We work for the people, the Party. But what you’re asking…”

  “It is not what I am asking. It is what the proletariat is asking. It is what the international working class is asking. Where is the might of the Soviet Union? Where is its storied sword?”

  “We are still at nuclear parity,” a voice ventured.

  The tremulous sound had come from the engineers. Dementyev’s eyes hunted among them, the worms that spread in his head sprouting needle-sharp barbs. He burned at the insult of NATO troops in Eastern Europe, in his lands. He burned at being told his project was behind schedule.

  And now this treachery.

  “Who said that?” Dementyev demanded.

  No one in the cluster of engineers moved or met his gaze.

  “Who in the devil said that?”

  At last, one of their numbers stirred. He was a bookish-looking man with a large head and a lean, bony neck. His Adam’s apple leapt up and down for several beats before words emerged.

  “It was an empirical observation,” the engineer said hoarsely. “Nothing more.”

  “Stand up!” Dementyev ordered.

  The man jittered to his feet. Dementyev stared at him for several moments. He hated the man’s brown suit, the way it crumpled around his narrow shoulders. He despised his stooped figure and wire-frame glasses. Such weakness. A pathetic breeze could blow the man to the ground. He was what was wrong with the Soviet Union. He was the reason it suffered.

  Dementyev raised his gaze to the line of military police standing at attention against the far wall.

  “Take him,” he said, nodding toward the engineer. “Kolyma, Siberia. Ten years hard labor.”

  The engineer’s eyes flew to either side as footsteps closed in and two of the police seized his arms. “N-no,” he gasped. For the first time, his gaze met General Dementyev’s. “Please. I will give everything to the Project. I will work day and night. I have a wife, children. They depend on me.”

  “Fine. On your word, I will send them, too.”

  The man grasped the back of his chair. “Please!” he screamed.

  The remaining engineers leaned away, no longer wishing to be associated with their colleague. A police
official drove his baton into the man’s gut. The engineer’s cry cut out with a breathless grunt. His glasses dangled from one ear and then fell from his face. A lens cracked beneath one of the policeman’s boots as they wheeled with him and dragged him from the room.

  Dementyev’s black eyes returned to the assembly.

  “I will not settle for parity,” he said, curling his sharp lips around the pathetic word. “I want superiority!”

  The assembly straightened.

  “They gloat in the West. They say the Soviet Union is weak. They say the Cold War is won. They dance in the streets like women. I tell you, the advantage is ours to seize!” He addressed himself now to his Minister of Defense, Alexei Aksakov, the one man in the room whose voice he tolerated. “What do you need to complete the Project?”

  “The cloaking technology,” Aksakov answered.

  “At what cost?”

  Aksakov named an amount.

  The black worms wriggled while Dementyev considered the large number. He had been promised funds for a campaign to retake Eastern Europe. Funds that had been thwarted by the American superhero team. His benefactor had reassured him: the money would come; it would just take time. But Dementyev had no plans for a conventional invasion of Eastern Europe. Once the United States was destroyed, there would be no need. Without the capitalist superpower to back them, the world would bow to the Soviet Union. Resources and capital would flow through them. They would never have to beg or pilfer again.

  “And then how long until the Dead Hand is operational?” Dementyev asked.

  “Two months,” Aksakov answered.

  “Two weeks,” Dementyev countered. “But I want action before then.”

  “Action, General?”

  “A launch.”

  The remaining sound was sucked from the room. Was he truly ordering a nuclear first strike? Dementyev moved his gaze down the table, daring any of them to give voice to the question, to second-guess him. When no one did, Dementyev outlined his plan and rationale. The occasional black worm wriggled over his thoughts like shivers of madness. He paused now and again to shove them back. They piled against the edge of his sanity, ever threatening to spill over.