XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good Read online

  XGeneration 6

  Greatest Good

  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

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  27

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  29

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  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  Available Now

  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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  http://bit.ly/xgenlist

  Description

  The Champions can’t seem to get a break. With U.S. victory at hand in the Cold War, enter the Scale, a deadly adversary determined to perpetuate the global arms race, nuclear war be damned.

  Reginald Perry, shapeshifter and survivor of the last generation of Champions, knows the Scale’s ruthlessness too well. Ordered to assassinate a Champion in exchange for his life, he is desperate to reunite with his old team. But his mortality is failing. And watching him is the Scale’s leader—warder of his medicine and a clairvoyant whose blood-red eyes see all.

  Janis’s own clairvoyance shows a teammate slain. A possible future, she tells herself. One that can be altered. On the backdrop of escalating global instability and a Champions Program fracturing from within, she and Scott must race to hunt down the Scale before becoming targets themselves.

  But will their supernatural efforts be enough?

  Recap of XGen 4*

  (Advance to next chapter to skip)

  *Because of its standalone status, there is no summary for XGeneration 5: Cry Little Sister.

  Pressure Drop begins with a meeting between Director Kilmer and Agent Steel. Kilmer shares President Reagan’s concern about evidence of a Soviet threat to Western Europe. He asks that Steel have the Champions ready. Privately, he’s more concerned about the threat of the Scale.

  Jesse receives a strange phone call at his favorite pool hall from a man who suggests he knows Jesse’s origins. Following a brawl with a group of college boys, Jesse finds a transparent business card on his windshield with a phone number, presumably from the mysterious caller.

  On the first day of their sophomore year of high school, Scott wonders aloud who Mr. Shine, the yardman and custodian, really is. Janis says she’ll look into it. But when she tries to explore Mr. Shine’s thoughts, she feels herself being repelled. Tyler calls her into the woods behind school to thank her for restoring his sanity at the nuclear launch facility months earlier. Janis recalls their kiss and is concerned that she hasn’t yet shared that information with Scott.

  In a biological weapons laboratory in Siberia, Soviet leader General Dementyev showcases his latest weapon—a cyborg with an infallible immune system. The general is anxious to arm him with a deadly toxin called B-factor.

  With his concern over the Scale growing, Director Kilmer imposes a curfew on the Champions. When he asks the Champions if anyone has tried to contact them, Jesse lies and says no.

  At home, Jesse’s father, who distrusts anything having to do with the government, threatens to pull Jesse from the Champions Program. Jesse discovers another transparent business card on his car with the same phone number. Shortly after, Mr. Shine drives by in his station wagon.

  At the school library, Scott hires his friend and rival Wayne, as well as Craig and Chun, to find out what they can about Mr. Shine. After their meeting, Mr. Shine emerges from a back room. Following a conversation that disarms Scott’s fears of having been overheard, Mr. Shine invites him to stop by his house anytime.

  Janis, meanwhile, is approached by her old friend-turned-enemy, Amy Pavoni, who asks Janis to help her confront an abusive aunt. Though it is against the Program’s rules, Janis agrees out of a sense of duty. In their face-off with the aunt, Amy is shot through the thigh. Janis calls Tyler, who arrives and cauterizes Amy’s wound. Janis is bothered by a growing magnetism she feels toward him.

  In his father’s home office, Jesse finds a birth certificate that suggests he was adopted. His father admits as much, but can’t or won’t say who his real parents are. When Jesse confronts Kilmer about his origins, the director claims not to have any information. Jesse leaves feeling that the mysterious caller might be the only person he can trust.

  On a dinner date with Janis, Scott goes over the dossier that Wayne put together on Mr. Shine. They learn that Mr. Shine moved from New York City to several states—as though looking for something—before settling in Florida. Their meeting is interrupted by a member of Scott’s surveillance team who has arrived to rush them back to Oakwood. One of their teammates is missing.

  The teammate is Jesse, who has driven to a warehouse district to meet with Scale member Henry “Titan” Tillman, introduced in book three. Titan claims that he, Jesse, has cancerous mutations, presently latent. When Titan reveals that Jesse’s mother is dead, Jesse attacks him and gets pounded as a result. Titan asks a dazed Jesse if he wants to switch teams.

  When the Champions do find Jesse, he appears to have been in a car accident. He denies further memories of that night. Shortly after, Jesse’s father is taken into custody by Agent Steel for threatening to expose the Champions Program. Fearing his father is on the verge of pulling him completely, Jesse contacts Titan through a transceiver installed in a Walkman and commits to the Scale. However, Titan wants some information first.

  Scott steals into Mr. Shine’s house one night when he’s not home. He discovers unmarked vials of a medicine and a locked door to what appears a second bedroom. As Scott attempts to pick the lock, Janis arrives in her astral form and tells him there’s someone else in the house. Scott is startled when Mr. Shine appears with a candle. They speak in the living room, Mr. Shine revealing himself to be a shapeshifter. He tells Scott he’s been watching him for his protection.

  After Scott leaves the house, we learn that the real Mr. Shine, Reginald Perry, is imprisoned in the locked room whose door Scott had tried to pick. Scott had not been talking to Reginald, but Shadow, Reginald’s sister.

  Meanwhile, Scott and the other Champions have been called to a meeting. Director Kilmer is prepping them for a Soviet attack on Western Europe when Jesse appears. He reports that an unidentified source has told him that the actual target is a large oil-processing facility in Saudi Arabia. The Soviets hope to drive up the price of oil to enrich themselves and bankr
upt the United States and Western Europe. Kilmer checks and confirms this to be true.

  Left alone the following morning, Reginald manages to free himself from a contraption designed by a member of the Scale named “Techie.” Shadow returns and takes the rest of the medicine that keeps Reginald alive. He tries to talk to her as a sister, but she denies having any family. When she suggests she will intercept the Champions in the Middle East, he shoots at her but misses.

  The Champions arrive in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, staying in the palace compound of a playboy prince named Khoggi. That night, Janis accompanies Margaret on a secret date with Khoggi. At his brother’s restaurant, Khoggi leaves the sisters to meet with his brother and a group of Russians, for unknown reasons. When one of the Russians attempts to shoot Khoggi, Janis and Margaret intervene. Khoggi’s men then gun down the Russian group.

  Meanwhile, news has leaked of the Soviet takeover of the oil facility, plunging the U.S. economy into crisis. This moves the timetable on the Champions’ operation forward.

  During a conversation with Tyler, Janis understands the source of her magnetism toward him. When she went into his psyche at the end of book three, a part of her remained there. To retrieve that part of herself, she kisses Tyler again without realizing she’s doing so, an act Scott witnesses. Before Janis can explain, Scott punches Tyler in the mouth.

  Meanwhile, back in Gainesville, Reginald phones the head of the Scale to request more medicine. She agrees to give him a single vial in exchange for a report on everything he knows about the Champions.

  Late at night, the operation to retake the Al Karak oil facility in Saudi Arabia begins. While Janis, Tyler, Creed, and Margaret head for the engineering complex, Scott is tasked with locating the explosives planted throughout the facility and delinking them from the detonator. He can’t find the detonator, however. The urgency of the operation increases when whoever is in control of the detonator begins exploding the stabilizing towers.

  Scott eventually detects the detonator in a monitoring station, but is unable to deactivate it remotely. To access it, he must ford a sandstorm as well as an environment turned toxic by the ignited towers. Partway to his target, Scott realizes that the engineering complex, where Janis and the others have arrived, is also wired with explosives. Scott is unable to contact them to warn them.

  Meanwhile, Janis and the others, now including Agent Steel and Jesse, understand that they’ve been led into a trap. Janis forms a telekinetic shield around everyone but realizes Jesse is no longer with them.

  Jesse has left in pursuit of the retreating Russian soldiers and Artificials. In an underground garage, he proceeds to waste them. He’s about to return to his teammates when Titan appears. Thinking Titan is working for the Soviets, Jesse attacks him. Following a bruising fight in which Jesse prevails, Titan claims to be his father.

  Scott reaches the top floor of the monitoring station and blasts the man holding the detonator. He is surprised to find that it’s Mr. Shine. Scott deactivates the detonator as Mr. Shine explains that he arrived with his own team and assassinated the operator of the detonator, a Russian. Mr. Shine invites Scott to leave with him in a helicopter, but Scott is anxious to return to his own team.

  In the engineering facility, a cyborg named Pestilence seizes Creed and demands that Janis and Tyler remove their helmets. Janis manages to free Creed but is hit with a cloud of toxin that paralyzes her. Scott arrives and kills Pestilence with a blast. By the time he reaches Janis’s side, however, her heart has stopped. Tyler restarts it with a shock, but Janis remains in critical condition.

  When Director Kilmer learns of Janis’s plight, he phones what seems to be another superhero team, Beta, and asks them to send their healer.

  As Janis recovers in a hospital in West Germany, Margaret explains that Prince Khoggi’s brother and the group of Russians at his restaurant had been the ones to leak news of the takeover of the oil facility—a move Khoggi opposed, hence the fire fight. Scott arrives and tells Janis that Jesse was poached by the Scale. They end their meeting trying to decide whether Mr. Shine is a member of the Scale or someone looking out for them, as he claims.

  Back in Gainesville, Reginald has just received a vial of Vitrin in exchange for providing information on the Champions. It was an excruciating decision, but Reginald believes the Champions will fall without his help. Plus, for reasons not yet clear, he fears for the fate of the world. To get a full supply of the drug, Reginald is told he must eliminate a Champion: no body, no Vitrin.

  At book’s end, he appears to arrive at a decision.

  Which brings us to XGeneration 6: Greatest Good…

  1

  Christmas morning, 1985

  6:21 a.m.

  Reginald Perry blinked a droplet of sweat from his lashes and squinted through his rifle scope. Through the grass and across a soundless distance, the Champions returned to focus. They were standing loosely in a field, helmets at their hips, awaiting the helicopter that was to retrieve them. Agents in black body armor ringed them, but there were plenty of gaps.

  From his stomach, Reginald pivoted the rifle on its bipod. Crosshairs floated from one Champion to the next until he found his target.

  Sweat trickled past Reginald’s lashes and blurred his view. He cursed. The chill weather wasn’t drawing the perspiration from him. Neither were his nerves. He had made a decision and was committed to its course, come fire or fury. No, the moisture pouring from him was that of the terminally ill. Absent Vitrin, he was succumbing to his mutation.

  Again.

  “Which means you have to take your shot,” he whispered to himself, digging a handkerchief into the corners of his eyes and mopping his brow. “Now.”

  Reginald tossed the handkerchief aside, nestled the rifle butt against his right shoulder, and returned his cheek to the rest. As he reset the trembling crosshairs, he reminded himself that without his help, the Champions didn’t stand a chance. Sooner or later, the Scale would destroy them. And then the entire world would be in peril.

  But without a pulse, Reginald wouldn’t be able to help anyone—a pulse whose beats were numbered.

  No body, no Vitrin, the Witch’s note had read.

  Reginald sped up his breathing, saturating his cells with oxygen. A tremor convulsed through him. Reginald tried to ignore it. After a minute, he let out his breath in a slow hiss.

  The crosshairs steadied.

  Please let this work, he thought.

  A tight explosion pierced the silence.

  In the distance, a Champion fell dead.

  2

  Frankfurt, Germany

  Two weeks earlier—Wednesday, December 11

  4:14 p.m.

  Soviet Commander Vetrov stepped to the edge of the hole as the machine trundled down the earthen ramp. He watched the machine place its giant drill bit against the outer wall of the central bank.

  “Commence!” he ordered in Russian.

  The drill screamed against the wall, flinging away a shower of sparks before boring into the granite. The ground underfoot began to vibrate. Satisfied, Commander Vetrov turned to the operators of the earth moving equipment.

  “Get them out of the way!” he ordered above the drilling. “Move the haulers into position!”

  As the machines rumbled off, Commander Vetrov checked his watch. Plenty of time to finish penetrating the vault, load the tons of gold, foreign exchange, and securities onto the phony NATO cargo plane that had delivered them, and then pilot that plane back over the Iron Curtain. Western forces would still be engaged in repelling a Soviet push into the Fulda Gap along the German border. Couple the diversion with help from double agents in the German Army, and Operation Back Door would be an intoxicating success. The West Germans would return to Frankfurt to find their treasury empty and their guards dead.

  The Soviet treasury, meanwhile, would grow by the equivalent of a half trillion American dollars.

  Commander Vetrov’s earpiece crackled. “We’re inside,” the drill operator
reported.

  “Good,” he answered. “Pull out.” He began to wave the arriving haulers and forklifts into position.

  “Wait,” The drill operator said. “There are people approaching!”

  “More guards?”

  “I don’t know,” the operator shouted back. “But one of them is … is flying!”

  “Shoot them,” Vetrov commanded. “Shoot them all.”

  “You got this?” Scott asked as the two men spilled from the drilling machine, fumbling along their belts for weapons. Through the suspension of dust, Scott made out West German military uniforms.

  Nice try, he thought.

  “Already on it,” Janis said. From her hover, she made a simple gesture with her hands. Across the vault, gun barrels crunched and the two men swore—in Russian. They flung the guns away and, drawing combat knives, charged forward, boots kicking through the rocky debris.

  Using Janis’s psychic linkup, Scott gave a command to his teammates and released a blast. The lead Russian caught the beam in the gut and was rocketed backward. The one behind him threw his hands to the sides of his head as his communication system erupted in white sparks. He collapsed to his knees, then face planted. Smoke rose from his light-colored hair.

  Good going, Tyler. Scott said. Creed?

  A moment later, Creed was at his side. “Didn’t get to throw a single damn punch. They’re already in la-la land.” He dropped the weapons he’d collected from them and sulked away.

  “Hey, be careful what you wish for,” Scott said.

  A hand came to a rest on his shoulder. Scott turned to find Janis settling to the ground beside him. That was the latest in her impressive skill set, using telekinesis to suspend herself. Her visor retracted into her helmet, and a pair of chestnut-green eyes shone up at him.

  “I’ve lost track of their commander,” she said.

  “He must know something’s wrong,” Scott replied, as Tyler came up to his other side, “which means we need to be ready for some fireworks.”