AUGUST 2379.

BUFFALO, USA.

Threnody fried the control panel to the blast doors until its necessary parts melted beneath her power. The blast doors unlocked, but they didn't open.

Lucas, the doors, Threnody said through the psi link.

Focused as he was on not letting them die, Lucas still managed to telekinetically open the blast doors for them. The two slipped inside the power plant, where the lights were running on half-power.

Power plant two, built in the middle of Buffalo, ran on fossil fuels, like the majority of the power plants left in the world. Nuclear power plants were a thing of the past, humanity's absolute fear of nuclear power etched into the backbone of the remnants of society. Renewable energy plants were few and far between, and America's East Coast had relied on fossil fuel power plants for centuries before the Border Wars. The tradition continued through to the present.

This one burned coal, supplies scavenged from cities all along the coast, stored by the ton in tall steel silos that supplied the plant's six pulverizers by way of conveyer belts. Those belts weren't running, stilled in the face of the acid storm and the government's order. The hum that should have filled the power plant had been replaced by the screaming wind and Threnody's and Quinton's own harsh breathing.

The skeleton crew assigned to monitor the power plant was dead. Only when Threnody tripped over a body did they discover that. They stared at the corpse's face twisted in an expression of permanent pain, a puddle of blood outlining the head. The lack of physical wounds had her thinking it was a mental attack. Lucas's doing, or possibly the Warhounds'. Either way, with the scientists dead, anyone who could have helped them bring the power plant back up to full readiness was dead.

"Well, shit," Threnody said as she knelt down to rifle through the dead man's pockets until she found a security card.

Quinton glanced at her. "I figure they'll have biometrics throughout this place."

They looked at the body on the ground. Without a word, Quinton called up fire from some of the remaining natural gas left in the biotubes in his arms, snapping his fingers to light it. The fire burned bright and hot, shrinking down to a thin blue line of the hottest heat he could produce. He focused it on the dead man's right hand, just below the wrist, and the fire burned through flesh easily. The stench was foul, something they ignored, having smelled the dead many times before. Only when they started to smell metal did Quinton stop to bend down and pick up the severed hand. It was cool to the touch, the wrist area cauterized.

"Let's go," Threnody said.

She and Quinton hurried down the hall, bypassing the doors that led to the boiler steam drum and the high-powered steam turbines, all abnormally silent. They ran, leaving a trail of wet footprints for anyone to follow. Working their way to the control room, they found it behind layers of protective shielding and fire-resistant paneling. Threnody swiped the card over the security reader as Quinton pressed the severed hand against the screen. The computer read the print, as well as the security card, and the doors slid open. Quinton dropped the severed hand on the floor; Threnody kept the security card.

Inside were more bodies, and they hauled two corpses out of the chairs they had died in. The terminals were still on, access to the power plant's computer network available. Threnody and Quinton slid into seats on opposite sides of the control room, the wide, clear windows providing them with a near 360-degree view of the massive, internal guts of the power plant.

"You ever wish they taught this in a simulator?" Quinton asked as he brought window after window up on the vidscreen, furiously looking for any prompt that would get them further than the public areas of the system. They couldn't get far without viable codes or passwords, not with the entire network so tightly locked down.

"You're a better hacker than I am," Threnody reminded him.

"I'm not that good, Thren. Maybe it should have been Jason after all."

Threnody didn't say anything to that, just continued to demand answers from a computer that was reluctant to give them up, security card or no. She swore after the fifth failed attempt, slamming her hand down in frustration on the terminal.

"Careful," Quinton barked.

"I know."

Frying the main system that controlled this place wasn't in anyone's best interest. There had to be a different way.

Lucas, we need a little help here, Threnody said. Can you link us to Jason?

No answer. From the way Lucas and Kerr had been fighting outside, she wasn't surprised. Swearing, she brought up a map of the power plant on the screen and stared critically at every last section of the place. Her gaze lingered longest on the transmission lines and transformers built into the ground outside, some distance away from the cooling tower and the building they were in.

"Think a jump start might work?" Threnody asked as she swiveled her chair around to face Quinton.

Quinton turned his head to look at her, a tight expression on his face. "It'll kill you."

She shrugged, grimacing. "Better here than under the government's control."

"Threnody-"

"Quinton."

She got to her feet and crossed the distance between them in a few quick strides. A bittersweet, ruined smile curved across her mouth. She hid it against the top of Quinton's skull; a brief caress, a thank-you, for all his years of loyalty.

"I'll come back if I can," Threnody said, promising no more than that.

Quinton pressed his hand to the small of her back, pulled her into an embrace that lasted only a second. "Go," he said, voice low and gravelly. "I'll keep trying to contact Lucas or Kerr."

She left the control room and didn't look back. Quinton didn't watch her go. This was how they worked, how all Strykers learned to work with their partner or their team. You did what had to be done for the good of everyone else, for the mission. Personal desires were never, ever allowed.

Quinton put all his focus on the terminal before him and calling out through the psi links for their only telepaths. Distracted, he missed Gideon and Jin Li's arrival. He didn't miss their presence when he was telekinetically slammed face-first into the wall.

His nose broke; so did a few of his teeth. Quinton spat out blood and shattered enamel, the front of his face feeling as if it were on fire.

"Jin Li, go after the other one," Gideon ordered as he flipped Quinton around onto his back against the wall.

Quinton wrenched his eyes open at that command, blinking through the swollen heat that encompassed his face in time to see Jin Li leave the control room.

Lucas! he shouted through the psi link. Kerr!

Silence, the psi link empty of any support. Held immobile against the wall by that strong Class II telekinetic grip, Quinton could only stare as Nathan's third child approached the terminal he had been working on, studying all the open command windows on the vidscreen he'd been struggling to break through.

"You're not a hacker," Gideon stated. "Not a good one. I don't know why Lucas allied himself with you Strykers if you don't have the proper skills to get the job done."

Quinton didn't say a word. Gideon was a telekinetic, not a telepath, which meant unless he brought in a Warhound telepath, he wasn't going to be able to pry a damn thing out of Quinton. Mentally, at least, and Strykers had died for less.

Gideon glanced up at him, the intent in his dark blue eyes different from the pair Quinton had been staring at for the past few weeks or so. "Why do you want the power plant turned back on?"

Quinton kept his mouth shut. Gideon was unsurprised at this silence. His gaze settled on Quinton's bare arms and the shadow of biotubes beneath his skin. "Pyrokinetic. You can make this easy on yourself if you open your mouth and start talking."

Quinton couldn't risk a fire here, not in a place that they needed. It didn't matter anyway, not when he couldn't create the very thing his power controlled. Gideon had him held fast, the weight of his telekinesis slowly crushing Quinton up against the wall.

Gideon started with Quinton's fingers first, breaking every bone from nails to knuckle with each refusal to answer his question. Eventually, Gideon moved up to the bones and biomodifications that spanned Quinton's palms and the carefully placed tubing there. Quinton didn't scream, just squeezed his eyes shut and ground his broken teeth together, trying to breathe through the agony of the slow torture as Gideon telekinetically tore his body apart.

"I'm sorry," a new voice said an indeterminate time later through the pain he was feeling, sounding raw and broken and so, so determined.

The power holding Quinton prisoner abruptly disappeared. He fell to the ground, gasping for air around the blood in his mouth, vomiting when his shattered hands touched the floor. This time he screamed, unable to choke it back, the sound mingling with the high tone of Gideon's own voice.

Lying on the floor of the control room, Quinton stared in disbelief at the sight before him. Samantha Serca had both her hands pressed against Gideon's temples, eyes narrowed in concentration, lips pulled back in a snarl as she focused all her telepathic strength on frying her twin brother's mind. The effort left the tendons standing out in her arms and throat, sweat pouring down her face, mixing with the blood that was dripping out of her nose.

Gideon, though, Gideon was rigid in her grip, mouth opened wide and the expression on his face one of shocked betrayal as his twin overrode his thoughts and his power. She sent him spinning down into psi shock with the last of her strength. Gideon fell to the ground first, Samantha less than a second behind him. But while Gideon was unconscious from the massive psionic overload, Samantha wasn't, and her dark blue eyes focused on Quinton's bloody, broken face.

Behind her, a skinny form slid into the control room. Quinton could only stare in shock as the girl approached him, the smile on her face cracked and bleeding, her eyes that signature Serca dark blue. He didn't need to be a telepath to recognize the distorted pressure against his shields as that of a dysfunctional mind.

Lucas, you fucking bastard, he thought muzzily through the pain. You never said anything about this.

"Shh, shh," that girl whispered as her fingers touched his forehead, stroking over his hot skin.

With every motion of her fingers, she wiped away the pain.

His brain ceased to acknowledge the agony that existed from his elbows on down in each arm, the sudden absence of it leaving him light-headed and queasy. The pain in his face faded until it was just a distant ache that was hard to breathe through. Quinton's brown eyes snapped open and he stared up in shock at the smiling teenager who knelt beside him, a psion who could only be an empath after that little show of power.

"Promises to keep, Stryker," she cooed at him. "Promises, promises."

"Wha-?" The word came out messy, garbled. Spitting blood, coughing to get air into his lungs, Quinton tried again, concentrating on what he was saying so that he could be understood, even with a broken face. "What?"

"You aren't the only person Lucas needs," Samantha said as she dragged herself into the nearest seat. "Kristen, get him up."

Instinctively, Quinton jerked away from that crazy empath's touch, wishing for the first time in a long while that he had even a sliver of 'path-oriented power in his genes. The knowing look in Kristen's gleaming dark blue eyes told him that his fear hadn't gone unnoticed. Still, for such a small girl, she had a lot of strength; enough to help Quinton get his feet back underneath him. Once vertical, Quinton shrugged her off, stepping away from her grasping, clinging hands.

"Kristen," Samantha said sharply.

"You're no fun, Sammy-girl," Kristen complained as she stepped over Gideon's still body and back to her sister's side.

"Is he dead?" Quinton asked carefully after a few seconds.

"No." Samantha sounded as if the word hurt her. "I don't have enough strength left in me to kill him."

Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. Maybe her reluctance was due to the nine months they floated together in an artificial womb and the eighteen years since that they had stood side by side beneath Nathan's judging eyes. It didn't matter. This was where her loyalty ended-with Gideon still breathing.

Quinton leaned against the other chair, staring at Lucas's sisters while blood dripped down onto the floor from his fingers and his face. "What are you doing?"

"What you couldn't," Samantha explained as she worked her way through the power plant's control system using access codes instead of a hack. "I stripped everything we'd need to bring this place back online out of the minds of the engineers and scientists before killing them."

"You do it on Lucas's order?"

"It doesn't matter."

"The hell it doesn't. Why isn't he here?"

"Because he and that other telepath are busy holding off what's left of the Strykers and Warhounds that are still on the field. We've got maybe five minutes, if we're lucky, to lock in the codes before the military reaches this place."

"Jin Li went after Threnody."

"I know. They both have their parts to play."

"What do you mean?" Quinton demanded, jerking himself up straight again. "You're not going to try and help her?"

Samantha didn't look away from the vidscreen. "I can bring this plant online, but it's going to take time to generate the amount of electricity Lucas needs to reach where it has to go. Threnody's an electrokinetic. So is Jin Li. There is a derecho storm raging outside. Do the math, Stryker."

Quinton didn't need to. He was already staggering out of the control room on shaky legs, heart pounding in his chest as he raced against time, knowing it was already too late even as the first hint of sound started to come from the machines around him.

The power plant was starting to come online again.

[THIRTY-TWO].

AUGUST 2379.

BUFFALO, USA.

There was a service door-locked, of course-that she had to fry before she could shove it open. It took all her strength against the crushing weight of the wind to move it. Threnody stood in the doorway, braced against the fury of the storm while acid rain lashed her body.

The transformer and transmission lines weren't housed in a separate building. They were outside, maybe twenty meters from the door and farther than that from the cooling tower. Located in the back, far from where the Strykers and the Warhounds were fighting Lucas and Kerr, they were cold, most of the city running off strained backup generators during the storm. Even if they weren't running at full power, they were still capable of transmuting electricity, of carrying it forward.

"I must be losing my mind," Threnody muttered under her breath as she stepped out into the storm.

Getting soaked wasn't new. The ground between the main building and the tall transmission towers was covered in cement, rain flooding the place. It sloshed over her boots, making it slippery to walk, much less run, as she made her way to the bulky transformer.

After the Border Wars, when many of America's and the rest of the world's electrical grids had been destroyed, rebuilding them had been a top priority for the survivors. They were limited, though, built specifically to support small pockets of survivors and expanding no farther than that. The government had controlled the output of electricity back then and still did now, because controlling the resources that everyone needed kept the population in check.

A wire fence surrounded the transformer block, more for safety than to keep anyone out, but it was still a restricted space. The door was locked, the mechanism easy to fry to gain entrance. Shoving the door open as wide as she could, Threnody stumbled toward her goal.

The transformer block was a three-phase system, with heavy wires pulled taut between the transformer and the transmission tower that they fed into. Even with the light coming from the single spotlight focused on the area inside the fence, it was almost impossible to see where those transmission lines disappeared to in the storm.

Swiping water out of her eyes, blinking against the sting it left behind, Threnody maneuvered her way back around the transformer block to the front, running through her options. Walking around that last corner, she came face-to-face with Jin Li. Threnody jerked back out of instinct, her feet nearly sliding out from beneath her. Jin Li followed her with electricity sparking in long arcs between his fingers.

"Your partner's being torn to pieces by Gideon," Jin Li shouted over the noise of the storm as Threnody twisted around the corner.