"Two options," Kerr said, pointing at the dimly glowing signs bolted to the side of the shuttle at the rear from where they stood and farther ahead. "Loading hatches, or another maintenance hatch."

"Where's the maintenance hatch down here?"

"Decking."

"We'll come out beneath the shuttle?"

"Yes."

"Then we want that one."

It took them five minutes to find it. The wide floor hatch was cordoned off near the rear of the shuttle. They got it open and found themselves staring at the smooth metal launchpad. It was a good four-meter drop, an impossible descent with what they carried.

Threnody lifted her head and looked at Kerr. "Trunks?"

He nodded. "Trunks."

They worked quickly to undo the safety harnesses and ropes that kept the nearest cargo trunks in place, pus.h.i.+ng several onto the platform. The noise the trunks made was drowned out by the noise of dozens of transport shuttles sitting with their engines running.

Kerr jumped down to stack the trunks, arms straining to move them. Once they were stable, he climbed on top and waited as Threnody carefully pushed the carrying case over the edge. She grunted as the weight swung from the end of her arms, joints aching, but she didn't let go. She saw Kerr get his shoulders beneath it and some of the tension eased in her arms as he took most of the weight. Threnody quickly pitched herself out of the shuttle and onto the platform.

She landed loosely, letting her body absorb the impact, and steadied herself with her hands. Then she moved to help Kerr. From beneath the body of the transport shuttle, they could see the rear of the Command Center, the squat building taking up most of the view. Technicians raced about, most heading for an emergency exit. Whatever their orders, Threnody and Kerr couldn't hear them. They weren't tapped into the comm channel being used, so they couldn't eavesdrop on the chatter.

"s.h.i.+t," Threnody said as she stared out at the launch area. "This place is bigger than I thought."

"Let's head for those doors."

They ran as fast as they could, trying not to jostle the dangerous contents of the carrying case. A brief touch of telepathic power on unsuspecting human minds caused the workers to ignore them. They couldn't do anything about the security feed, but hopefully the bioware on the recognition points of their faces would trip up the computers long enough for them to get inside.

The supervisor on duty let workers through the emergency exit in small groups. Threnody and Kerr made it inside within five minutes, the door closing behind them. They waited impatiently inside a small decontamination chamber, the process agonizingly slow to them. Once they were cleared to proceed, a second door slid open and they walked into a hallway crowded with workers. Threnody and Kerr paused only long enough to unlock their helmets and take them off. They breathed in recycled air that stung their noses. The emergency alarm going off hurt their ears; the strobe lights nearly blinded them.

Best place to put it would be on one of the upper levels, Threnody said as they pushed their way through the crowd. Setting it up in one of the support columns would effectively put it belowground, and that's not going to help us.

The further up we go, the more Warhounds we're going to encounter, Kerr warned. I can feel them on the mental grid. They're merged with Nathan and it's not pretty. Their attention might be outside this place, but I can guarantee you that if we're spotted, they'll turn all that power on this building to try to find us.

We need to stay aboveground.

Then let's find somewhere on the next level. It's the safest place we can use.

They took an access stairwell up, and appropriated the first empty room they came across. The pair set the heavy carrying case down once inside. After locking the door, they tossed their helmets aside. Threnody looked around the storage room at the half-empty shelves and dented walls.

"Let's figure out where to put the bomb," she said.

They wrestled the carrying case to the rear of the storage room before opening it. Strapped securely inside was a second, smaller case that, when opened, revealed the components of a nuclear bomb. Wires protruded from it, connecting to an external receiver, the remote detonator strapped securely beside it. Threnody pried the remote detonator free and set it down on a nearby metal shelf.

"Okay," she said, letting Kerr take her spot. "Let's hope Novak did this right."

Kerr removed the flashlight hanging from his tool belt and propped it up at an angle on the open carrying case to get more light. He then carefully slipped the receiver out of the case and set it down on a shelf. Having grown up with a hacker for a partner, he knew what to do better than Threnody, but that didn't mean he was an expert. Halfway through the setup, Kerr let out a sharp gasp.

"Tell me you didn't just set the timer," Threnody said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. "We're not ready, Kerr. Everyone's not off the field yet."

Kerr looked over his shoulder at her, face gone gray beneath the harsh lights. "No. Lucas just ripped apart a s.p.a.ce shuttle with Jason's help."

Threnody curled her hand around his forearm. "Focus on the bomb."

They wanted to be out on the field with their partners, but instead they were here, finis.h.i.+ng what Lucas had started. The two former team leaders of the Strykers Syndicate understood that failure wasn't an option, even if the plan was built through the shady gray areas of morality.

Kerr was plugging in the command codes that Novak said would connect the remote detonator with the receiver when agony exploded through his mind. He bent double beneath the pain, stumbling away from the shelves. Threnody grabbed him, giving Kerr support before he collapsed. He leaned heavily against her, forehead pressed into the curve of her neck as he bit down on his bottom lip against the scream wanting to leave his lungs. She felt something wet slide between the collar of her skinsuit and her throat: Kerr's blood.

"Kerr," Threnody said, voice tight. "Kerr. I need you to focus."

Jason's been shot, came the shaky words. Feels like he's dying.

They didn't share a bond anymore, but Threnody would never believe that meant Kerr gave up crawling into Jason's mind whenever he felt like it. Shoving the taller man upright, Threnody forced Kerr to look at her. The haunted look in his eyes made her stomach knot.

"Go save him," she said fiercely. "I'll give you five minutes to distract the Warhounds. You better make d.a.m.n sure Jason has you s.h.i.+elded from anything metal. Understand? I don't care if you have to hold his mind together to do it, you make sure he s.h.i.+elds you."

Kerr stared at her. "You're not coming."

"One of us has to finish this. Now go."

"I'll find Lucas," Kerr said as he pulled away from her and ran for the door. "I'll let him know we're almost ready."

She felt Kerr dig his power into her mind so hard and deep that for a moment all she saw was brightly colored spots. I'll keep you hidden, Kerr said, and then he was gone.

Kerr hit the hallway running, telepathy spanning the damaged mental grid for the only minds that mattered to him. He found Jason and Quinton first, their tangled thoughts weak and getting weaker. He couldn't find Lucas, but the Stryker merge still held against Nathan's focused attacks. Lucas was alive-somewhere-and all Kerr had to do was find him. But with all the telepathic power in the world tangled up in everyone's mind, Kerr only had one chance.

Using his empathy, he skimmed through the ravaged and dying minds around him, fighting the overwhelming urge to vomit in midstep as the horrendous feeling of hundreds of people dying overwhelmed him. He had to fight to regain his balance and continued running down the lower-level hallway, his footsteps echoing against the metal walls.

He felt Kristen first, her dysfunctional power like a hole in the mental grid that threatened to swallow Kerr's sanity. Keeping his distance would have been the smart thing to do, but he didn't have time to think about his safety, only about what needed to be done. Kerr snapped a telepathic psi link between them, Kristen's thoughts swirling through his mind.

I need Lucas, Kerr said.

He can't hear you, Kristen told him, the usual manic cheer gone from her mental voice. In its place was some emotion he couldn't identify, not in the context of her power. Kristen wasn't the sort to feel fear.

Then find me a telepath who can link with me.

Kristen gave him to Samantha, and Kerr almost lost himself to the merge. He had to claw his way back to a balanced mind, with Samantha dragging Kerr behind his s.h.i.+elds to keep him from getting sucked into the pulsating ma.s.s of power that was the merge. Samantha was barely managing to hold it together, and he could sense the brittleness in her mind.

Make it quick, came Samantha's strained voice. It echoed, as if she was speaking from far away.

We're almost ready. Start clearing the field.

Understood.

He could feel her pulling away, layers of his s.h.i.+elds peeling off as the magnitude of power bruised his mind. Kerr still reached for her. Wait! I need a teleport.

Visual?

It wasn't her voice alone this time, but dozens. Stryker telekinetics reached for him with their power through the psi link while others sought to hold off the Warhound merge. Through them, Kerr felt the strikes that Nathan was orchestrating against the apex, Lucas succ.u.mbing to agony, even if he could no longer feel it. Samantha was a conduit between the Strykers and her brother, with the Strykers giving Lucas their powers while still struggling to understand how it all worked. Their lack of knowledge was crippling him.

We need a visual, the voices said again.

Kerr struggled to come back to himself, to keep his focus, reaching for the familiarity of a mind he would know anywhere. Years spent hiding behind Jason's mental s.h.i.+elds meant it was simple for him to slide into the microtelekinetic's thoughts, to look through someone else's eyes and see where he needed to go.

Samantha's telekinetics saw through Kerr's mind and out through Jason's eyes, their resolve coalescing into a teleport that broke through the telekinetic s.h.i.+elds surrounding the Command Center. Kerr arrived in the command room with a heavy stumble, nearly falling to his knees, surprising everyone. Kerr tightened the psi link between himself and Jason, calling out a warning.

Jason-s.h.i.+eld!

Kerr got his balance back and slammed his fist straight into Nathan's face, even as Lucas struck at his father's mind. The physical attack briefly broke Nathan's concentration, head snapping back from the blow. It was enough of a distraction for Jason to slide his telekinesis around them in the strongest s.h.i.+eld he could create. He was just in time.

The sudden tearing shock that ripped through the command room rode the back of an electrical storm. It exploded out of every terminal, ripping through the metal structure of the building itself, burning through everything it could. Half the Warhounds in the command room died, burned beyond recognition by electricity surging under psion control.

FORTY-THREE.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

PARIS, FRANCE.

Threnody descended into the depths of the Command Center. She wasn't the telepath and Kerr wouldn't remain undiscovered for long, not with the core of the Warhound merge in the levels high above them. They both knew it, Lucas had known it.

You'll only get one chance, he'd said back in Toronto. Make it count.

She planned to.

Threnody ran down the hallway, counting down the seconds in her head. She held a gun in one hand and the remote detonator in the other. She kept her weapon out of sight when pa.s.sing people. Most were talking frantically into personal comms, too focused on the emergency to pay her any attention. Psionic interference, she thought. She could distantly feel Kerr through the psi link, his concentration a pressure in the back of her skull that faded in and out. It made her ears ring. She swallowed to make them pop as she dodged into an access stairwell.

Threnody's knees started to ache with every impact her feet took on the way down to the bottom level. The schematics Samantha had stolen were downloaded into the datapad hanging from Threnody's tool belt. Threnody had them memorized, the layout pressed indelibly into her mind. She had one goal and it lay at the very bottom of a support pillar-where the generator room Lucas had teleported them into on their way to pick up Novak in Antarctica was located.

She slammed her way out of the access stairwell, stumbling into a short hallway. The alarm seemed louder down here, the flas.h.i.+ng emergency lights hard on her eyes. Threnody looked up and came face-to-face with a pair of soldiers blocking her way. She didn't think the soldiers were a quad since there were only two of them. The door she needed was located right behind them. Threnody headed for it, acting as if she had every right to be there, but one of the soldiers grabbed her arm.

"What do you think you're doing?" the man snapped.

"Do you hear that alarm? Do you know what's happening out there?" Threnody said. "I've been ordered to do a manual check of the generators."

"A manual check was done an hour ago."

"Now the bra.s.s wants another one. You can help me with it."

She spun, lightning quick, slamming her elbow into the man's throat hard enough to crush his trachea. She dropped the remote detonator and shoved him against the wall, one hand pressed over his mouth and nose, cutting off his air as she shoved her electrokinesis into his body. With her other arm, Threnody aimed her gun and fired twice, one of her bullets finding its mark in the other soldier's face. Quinton was a brilliant teacher. She would never reach his level of expertise with firearms, but he had ensured she would survive a gunfight.

Breathing heavily, Threnody bent to pick up the remote detonator and headed for the door that led to the generator room below. She stepped on blood, feet skidding on slick wetness. When she reached the door, she discovered it was locked. Threnody smacked one hand against the control panel, frying the system. The door shuddered in its casing and she had to wrench it open, muscles straining against the weight. Her goal was within reach, the one place in the heavily s.h.i.+elded structure where she could start a chain reaction and guarantee it would affect the entire Command Center.

Threnody squeezed through the opening and stumbled onto a cramped landing. Several flights of stairs led down to the confines of the generator room. She started down them and was two steps up from the generator-room floor when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. A lifetime of training saved her from getting killed, but not from getting shot. Pitching herself over the metal railing, Threnody took the bullet high in her right thigh instead of in the chest.

Threnody landed hard, heartbeat pounding loudly in her ears. She managed to keep her grip on the remote detonator. Adrenaline masked the agony in her body, long enough for her to get a shot off at the two soldiers advancing on her position. One soldier took her bullet in the shoulder.

"Wasn't f.u.c.king thinking," Threnody gasped. "Two soldiers don't make a G.o.dd.a.m.n quad."

She smacked her bare hand down on the floor and called up her power. Bright blue electricity erupted from her skin, the metal the perfect conductor. The two soldiers died almost instantly, their nervous systems overloading. They collapsed as the alarm changed pitch. For one frantic moment, Threnody thought the Warhounds had located her.

A merged telepathic strike exploded on the mental grid. Her s.h.i.+elds nearly didn't hold. Only Kerr's telepathic maneuvering saved her. He shoved her thoughts further beneath static human minds so hard that her vision swam, or maybe it was the blood loss. She could sense the rest of the Stryker merge behind Kerr's mind, the power crackling across the mental grid. Threnody rolled onto her back, gasping from shock and pain. She pressed one hand over the wound in her leg, blood flowing over her fingers.

"f.u.c.k," she breathed. "f.u.c.k, that hurts."

Numb fingers fumbled at her tool belt. She unclipped all her tools and yanked the belt free. Methodically, Threnody wrapped it high around her thigh. She pulled the belt as tight as she could to form a tourniquet, choking back the yell that threatened to rip out of her lungs. Teeth tore through the thin skin of her bottom lip, slicing it open. Blood filled her mouth. She swallowed it, gagging on the taste. Lying there, the metal floor electric-warm beneath her, Threnody tried to breathe.

"You can do this," she told herself, voice raspy and hitching from pain. "You have to."

Threnody rolled to her good side and reached for the handheld laser saw nearby. Gripping it, she got her left knee under her and shoved herself to her feet, using the railing to take her weight when she stumbled. Putting weight on her right leg almost caused her to vomit.

"I f.u.c.king hate getting shot."

She hobbled forward. It was hot down here, despite the specialized s.h.i.+elding in place to keep out the radiation taint in the ground. Sweat trickled down her back and neck. She looked around, seeing only machinery beyond the walkway railings. She limped down the length of one generator, looking for the control panel.

When she found it, Threnody set the remote detonator on the floor and gripped the laser saw in shaky hands. She used it to cut through the metal paneling and let it clatter to the floor. She pressed a hand to the side of her head as pain throbbed through her temple. Kerr must have sensed her discomfort because he strengthened her s.h.i.+elds with his telepathy. Threnody let him do whatever he needed to keep her under everyone's radar. Taking a deep breath, Threnody stared at the interior of the control panel.

For the first time in years, she thought of Atlanta. Of the scorching summer heat and the muggy feel of the air. Of the acid storms and the churning hurricane that came to sh.o.r.e when she was only three years old. She remembered the night when her natal s.h.i.+elds broke in the middle of that screaming storm of wind and rain and ocean salt. How she accidentally fried the generator that supported environmental controls for two blocks of slum tenements, too young to comprehend the damage she had inflicted. Her first use of electrokinesis forced dozens of families out into that raging storm when air no longer flowed through the packed rooms.

Threnody remembered how everyone else in that storm died and how she didn't-saved by the Strykers Syndicate and destined for a life of slavery.

Except Lucas had shown her another way, and maybe it wasn't the best way or the right way, but it was better than how she'd lived under the government's control. Freedom always came with a price. This was hers, and she would pay it.

Panting, Threnody stuck her hands into the cavity before her, wires and motherboards sc.r.a.ping against her bare fingers. She was elbow deep in a piece of the sealed Command Center's complicated wired interior, fingers wrapped around what was, essentially, a computerized nervous system.

It could die.

"One chance," she whispered.

Threnody hoped she had given Kerr enough time to do what needed to be done. She hoped he had saved Jason and Quinton. Closing her eyes, Threnody tapped into her electrokinesis.

Electricity exploded from her nerves with no restriction, bursting through the Command Center. Threnody poured everything she had into the overload she was desperately trying to create. She didn't have lightning this time to fall back on, just sheer desperation.

A deep, cracking groan echoed through the structure, the generators shuddering as they overloaded and died. Electricity burned through the wiring embedded in the walls and floor of the Command Center. Threnody's electrokinesis pushed the damage further, tearing through circuitry until it found the command room itself with explosive, deadly results.