XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good Read online

  Chad snapped his fingers. “Ground control to Major Tyler.”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Have you told Janis any of this?”

  Tyler’s face grew warm. “Naw, man, there’s Scott. He’s a friend.”

  Chad laughed as he punched Tyler’s shoulder. “I’m not suggesting you propose. Just tell her what you told me. If your worry for her is what’s throwing you off, then she’s the one you need to talk to. And if I know Janis, she’ll say the same thing. That she can take care of herself.”

  “Maybe I will,” Tyler said, knowing he wouldn’t.

  He had long since decided that if he couldn’t be with her, he would do everything in his power to protect her. He would never stare into her lifeless eyes again. He stood from the chair and focused on the training room.

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  7

  Scott’s bedroom

  Wednesday, December 18

  2:46 p.m.

  Wayne slapped the manila folder down on Scott’s desk. “That will be two hundred fat ones, my computer-challenged friend.”

  “Two hundred?” Scott said, looking from Wayne’s open palm to his small, smudged-in eyes. “The deal was one fifty.”

  “Correct, but that was under the agreement that I would have the data to you by Friday. Today is … Wednesday.” He double-checked his calculator wristwatch. “I charge a twenty-five-dollar-per-day expedition fee. Oh, and an extra ten for materials. So, two hundred ten.”

  “Materials?”

  Wayne tapped the manila folder.

  Scott shook his head as he counted out some twenties from his top drawer. “Fine, two hundred,” he said. “But I’m not paying for any materials.”

  Wayne spread his fingers along his threadbare mustache, eyes squinting in deliberation, before accepting the ten bills with a nod and stuffing them into the small pocket of his battered green backpack.

  “So, what did you find?” Scott asked. He opened the folder to a single piece of paper.

  “Your man,” Wayne said, slinging his pack over one shoulder, “is dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Cashed in his chips, kicked the bucket, croaked. I copied his death certificate as proof.” He laughed sharply. “Easiest two hundred bucks I ever made.”

  Scott looked over the certificate for Adrian C. Shine. According to the date, he had died a week following the Champions’ return from Saudi Arabia. The cause of death read “Natural.”

  Which meant their man had shifted. Scott blew out his breath in frustration.

  “I’d love to stay and console you,” Wayne said, “but I have a campaign to dungeon master. I stayed up half the night revising the module. Ever heard of a Beholder?” He grinned devilishly. “Craig’s and Chun’s asses are grass, and they don’t even know it. Care to witness the carnage?”

  “Aw, I wish I could, but I’m still grounded, remember?”

  “Well, sucks to be you,” Wayne said as he bopped past him. “Later, aggregator.”

  “Yeah, see ya.”

  Scott frowned over the death certificate. The development was annoying but not a surprise. Scott had spent the last several days scanning the local phone networks. When a person spoke into a phone, his voice was broken down into bits of data, shot along the network, and then reassembled on the receiving end of the call. For Scott, each bundle of data was distinct, and he’d experienced Mr. Shine’s data enough times when he had been their yardman to recognize his signature. For the last several days, that signature had been absent, at least locally.

  “Dead end, huh?”

  Scott turned to find Janis stepping through the doorway Wayne had just exited. She had no doubt picked up his stray thoughts, but he showed her the death certificate anyway.

  “Allegedly,” he said. “How about you?”

  She shook her head. “Still nothing.”

  Scott racked his brain for new ideas. If they weren’t confined to the neighborhood, they could go to Mr. Shine’s old house, search for clues—physical or psychic—as to where he might have gone.

  Janis watched him, her face pale. “I’m worried, Scott. The premonition is gaining strength.”

  The skin over her brow pulled taut beneath his kiss. He wrapped her in his arms, wishing he could offer more. She was pressing her head to his chest when their Champions watches beeped simultaneously.

  Scott checked his wrist behind Janis’s back.

  “Great,” he said. “Kilmer wants us to report to his office.”

  Janis sniffled and checked her own watch. “How well hidden was that little phone switch you installed.”

  “Um, pretty well. I think.”

  Janis slugged his shoulder. “C’mon.”

  Scott shifted in his padded chair as Director Kilmer watched them, teepeed fingers against his lips. He had not spoken since gesturing them to the chairs that faced his desk almost a minute before. To Scott, that kind of lengthy silence spoke of trouble. The worst kind.

  “You wanted to see us?” Janis asked.

  Without moving his fingers from his mouth, Director Kilmer asked, “Who are you two looking for?”

  “What do you mean?” Scott said.

  “Don’t B.S. me. You’re looking for someone.”

  Scott tried his hardest to appear confused. Hey, uh, any ideas? he asked Janis.

  “You’ve been scanning the networks.” Kilmer nodded at him before shifting his gaze to Janis. “While you’ve been reaching out with your abilities to scan minds. I’ll ask again, who are you looking for?”

  “Our teammate,” Janis lied. “Jesse.”

  Kilmer sat back. “Steel’s team is working on finding him. I told you that. I also told you—no, ordered you—not to extend your abilities beyond the neighborhood. That’s like sending out a beacon to anyone looking for it.”

  “But isn’t that what you want?” Janis asked.

  “Huh?” Scott twisted toward her.

  The chip in his brain, Janis said, the one that protects his thoughts. For the first time, I’m picking up these tiny intervals where the protection fades out. I’m able to decipher bits and pieces of thought.

  Scott wondered whether the gaps were cycles in the chip’s microprocessor.

  “To what are you referring?” Kilmer asked her.

  “You’ve confined us to the neighborhood in the hopes the Scale will come to us.” More understanding dawned on Janis’s face. “You want a showdown, one that will destroy them once and for all.”

  Scott waited for Kilmer to shake his head in denial, but he only remained staring at her.

  “Is … is that true?” Scott asked.

  Kilmer twisted as though he was going to stand. Instead, he fished a pack of cigarettes from the jacket draped over the back of his chair. A cigarette between his lips, he touched a match’s flame to the tip.

  “It is,” he said, exhaling and shaking the match out.

  “Were you ever planning on telling us?” Janis asked. “Or are we just the bait?”

  “You can choose to look at it that way,” Kilmer said. “Or you can consider yourselves the trap, the ones to deliver the fatal blow. Either way, the Scale aren’t coming here. That much is clear now. They’re assassins. They operate from the shadows, waiting until their targets are at their most vulnerable. It was how they dismantled the last team. It’s how they acquired Jesse.” He looked at them frankly. “It’s how they plan to deal with the rest of you. As long as you remain in the neighborhood, they’re unlikely to make a move.”

  “Which means the Scale succeeded,” Janis said.

  Kilmer’s brow bunched up. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re confined to the neighborhood,” Scott said, sensing where Janis was going. “We can’t use our powers beyond it. For all intents and purposes, the Champions are out of commission.”

  “Maybe that was the Scale’s plan all along,” Janis prodded.

  Smoke jetted from Kilmer’s nostrils. “Any leads?”

&n
bsp; Scott glanced from Kilmer to Janis and back. “I’m sorry?”

  “In your search for Jesse?”

  “We hit a dead end,” Janis said.

  “What would you need to find him?”

  “Well, for starters,” Janis answered, “freedom to leave the neighborhood.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Wait.” Scott pushed his glasses up. “You’re going to let us out?”

  “Not me,” Kilmer said, “Agent Steel’s second in command is Dutch. I’ll give you a code to contact him through your consoles and watches. You’re to notify him anytime you leave the neighborhood so he can get a security detail on you. He’s also the one you’ll report any findings to. Understood?”

  As Scott nodded, Janis’s voice entered his thoughts. He’s going way off protocol with this, so he wants to keep himself and Agent Steel in the dark. I think there’s a name for that.

  Plausible denial, Scott said.

  That’s the one.

  “Also, under no circumstances—and I mean none—are you to engage the Scale. Their members are good at what they do, and that’s being deadly.”

  Scott thought back to the presentation Kilmer had given them some weeks before: grainy photos of a massive man with an eye patch, a slender African American woman whose face was blurred. The Champions were to send out a level one alert if they spotted either one of them. Given the poor quality of the photos, the directive had struck Scott as odd.

  “You’re to wear ballistic armor under your clothes at all times,” Kilmer went on, “keep your defenses up, and have an escape plan wherever you go. One other thing.” He studied the cigarette between his fingers. “You’re not to tell the others what you’re doing.”

  “You mean our teammates?” Janis asked.

  “Creed and Tyler are too close to Jesse. And the Scale may have it in mind to use Jesse to turn one or both of them to their side. There’s no evidence Jesse has contacted them or vice versa, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”

  “And if it did,” Scott said, “the less Creed and Tyler could potentially share, the better.” He was pretty sure Tyler wasn’t a risk, but Creed was another story. He understood their director’s reasoning.

  “What about Margaret?” Janis asked.

  “I’d prefer you keep this between the two of you.” Kilmer said, looking from her to Scott.

  “You asked what we needed,” Scott said. “How about transportation?”

  “You two are still fifteen, right?”

  “Only for a couple more months,” Scott answered. “But we have our learners’ permits,” he added, hopefully.

  Kilmer sighed out more smoke before nodding. “I’ll see about getting you a car. We’ll keep it parked in the Grove, on a side street.”

  Exhilaration surged through Scott, and he pumped a fist.

  “Now listen,” Kilmer said. “If I were advising you on this operation—and let’s be clear, I’m not—but if I were, I would suggest starting in the warehouse district where Jesse claimed to have crashed his car. Steel’s team processed the area, but Steel’s team doesn’t possess your abilities.”

  Two missions, then, Scott thought toward Janis. Find Mr. Shine and find Jesse.

  And who’s to say they’re not connected? Janis replied.

  Good point.

  “When can we start?” Scott asked.

  “Start what?” Kilmer replied. He gave a tight smile before waving a hand to say they were dismissed.

  8

  The next day

  Thursday, December 19

  11:07 a.m.

  Janis looked from the leaning brown station wagon to Scott’s frowning face. He peered up and down the street a final time, as though expecting another parked car to materialize—the one they were meant to have.

  “As long as it runs, right?” Janis said, cracking open the passenger side door of the Ford Country Squire.

  Scott did the same on the driver side. When he landed behind the steering wheel, he wrinkled his nose. “They could have at least sprayed some Lysol in here. And when was the last time this thing was cleaned out?” With a finger, he drew a groove through the dust over the plastic console.

  Janis could feel his fantasy of tearing around secret-agent style crumbling to pieces.

  “It’s actually a good cover,” Janis said, struggling with her safety belt’s feeding system. “A top-of-the-line car might have turned heads. This is more suited to a couple of teens. A starter car.”

  “Well, it’s not gonna start at all without some keys.”

  Janis pulled open the glove box. Beneath a key chain sat a pair of laminated cards. “Congratulations,” she said, handing Scott the key and one of the cards. “You’re sixteen.”

  A smile spread over Scott’s face as he studied the fake driver’s license. “This is more like it.” With renewed enthusiasm, he pulled the gearshift into drive. “Where to first?”

  “How about Mr. Shine’s old house? It’ll be a quicker search than that huge warehouse district.”

  “But what about Kilmer not knowing we’re interested in Shine?”

  “He won’t know,” she said. “Plausible denial, remember? He’s assigned our out-of-neighborhood activities to Steel’s number two. Kilmer won’t be briefed unless we actually find something.”

  “Guess plausible denial has its perks,” Scott said, coaxing the hitching car forward.

  Scott pulled up in front of a plot of woods that Janis recognized, even though she had never been there in person. The plot stood adjacent to Mr. Shine’s old house, a place she had visited several times in her out-of-body form.

  “All clear?” Scott asked her.

  Janis performed a quick feel of the area. “Except for our security detail, no one’s watching.”

  Scott cut the engine and depressed the pedal for the emergency brake. They climbed from the car and met at the back bumper. The day was chilly and they both wore jackets over their sweatshirts. They stood for a moment, eyeing Mr. Shine’s white clapboard dwelling.

  “You ready, Champ?” Janis asked.

  Stepping from the road, they crunched over the leaf-strewn lawn. The house had been empty the last time Janis had come, its energies stale. She reminded herself that her perceptual abilities were less astute in her out-of-body form. She would be better able to discern key energy patterns in person.

  She hoped.

  At the top of three cinderblock steps to a side door, Scott drew the screen door back and tried the knob. “Locked,” he said. He fished some picking tools from his front pocket.

  “You do realize this is the first time our breaking into a house is actually being sanctioned?’ Janis asked.

  “Yeah.” Scott popped the lock and pushed the door open. “Feels pretty good.”

  Janis followed Scott into a dim kitchen, its wooden floor creaking beneath their shoes. Cabinet and pantry doors stood open, their shelves empty. While Scott ran his hand over the highest shelves, Janis palpated the energetic lines that flowed throughout the space. From the kitchen, they moved into the living room, also cleaned out. The empty space carried the piney smell of turpentine.

  “Anything?” Scott asked.

  “Nothing new,” she answered. Only there was something new—or different, anyway—a low energetic quality she couldn’t quite interpret. The energy persisted as Scott completed his physical search of the living room.

  They made their way to the bathroom and back bedroom. In a corner of the vacant bedroom, Scott knelt and picked something up.

  “What’ve you got?” Janis asked.

  He held it up to where sunlight slanted past a row of security bars. It was a small brown vial. “The last time I was here, I saw a bunch of these in his medicine cabinet,” Scott said, “behind the mirror.”

  Something clicked inside of Janis. She suddenly understood what she felt.

  “Illness,” she said.

  Scott cocked his head around.

  “I began picking up something i
n the last room,” she explained, “a dull-colored energy. Mr. Shine was ill. I can’t say exactly how, but his illness had something to do with why he left here.”

  Scott nodded in thought and pocketed the empty vial.

  Back in the hallway, they approached the door Janis had found Scott stooped in front of on that night months ago, right before Mr. Shine had surprised him. Now a sliver of daylight glowed along the door frame. Scott raised his eyebrows before pushing the door open the rest of the way.

  They stepped into a room that smelled to Janis vaguely antiseptic. A vertical bookcase stood against the far wall, the sole piece of furniture they had encountered thus far. In the middle of the room, Janis knelt to where a clump of red wax had fused to the floorboards. Dark stains streaked off around it. Blood? When Janis closed her eyes, she sensed an undercurrent of urgency.

  “Whoa, check this out,” Scott said.

  Janis opened her eyes to see that he had scooted the bookcase out and was separating a vertical board from the rest of the wall.

  “This must’ve been why he kept that door locked,” Scott said. “Some sort of stash space.” He pulled a penlight from his pocket and shone the beam into the wall. “Empty now, though.”

  That might have explained the locked door, Janis thought. But the room felt more cell-like, as though it had been used to detain someone. She studied a fresh-cut hole in a corner of the flooring. Frowning, she tried to access the room’s recent past, but no images would come.

  Who would Mr. Shine have kept back here? And why?

  Janis saw the yin-yang symbol again, that interplay between white and black, good and evil.

  The answer was somewhere in that symbol…

  “Hey, I’m going to check the other rooms for hidden spaces,” Scott said. “There’s also the shed out back. Without me to distract you, maybe you can pick up some more information on that illness energy.”

  Janis nodded.

  As Scott’s footsteps receded down the hallway, she sat in the middle of the room, crossed her legs, and relaxed her eyelids. With a thought, she hovered above the floor. She had discovered that the less physical contact, the greater her ability to access the astral plane.