Heavenfall: Genviants Book 1 (5 page)

"Yeah. A couple of places." Always careful, Jonah didn't offer specifics.

"Why me?" Mary asked. None of what Dex told them made sense. "I'm not mech. I don't have any special skills. Why is he after me and not Jonah?"

"To assure Jonah's cooperation. If Hadrian has you, he knows Jonah would do anything to keep you safe. And it will take all three of you to take Hadrian down."

"Who's the third?" Mary asked.

"Not me," Dex answered and gave her a wry smile "Hadrian already has him. He's being held prisoner at the old
Brushy Mountain prison facility with a handful of others Hadrian considers dangerous, and a few political prisoners." The curfew warning, three blasts from the civil defense speakers, echoed through the trees. Dex ignored the alarm. "We need him to stop Hadrian."

"Brushy Mountain?" Mary asked, not believing she'd heard him correctly.

"You can't even get to it now," Jonah added. "The place is too overgrown. The forest has completely swallowed it. I heard rumors that Hadrian wanted to re-open it about a year ago in an effort to get some control over the mech gangs and to house the people camping outside the wall. Then it died out. Word was, even with all the equipment at his disposal, he couldn't make it happen."

"And you believed it?" Dex leaned forward, forearms on his knees, and looked straight into Jonah's eyes. "Hadrian demolished businesses, leveled the land they sat on, and cleared twelve miles of
Clinton Highway, and had it rebuilt. Then, he added security enhancements on Edgemoor Road and Pellissippi Parkway to make sure he controlled the access to the old nuclear facilities. Do you really think he couldn't clear access to Brushy Mountain through a few thousand feet of forest?"

"Like I said, rumors."

"Yes, well, Hadrian controls the information—all of it, even the rumors."

More questions circled in her mind, but they were drowned out by the sirens. The sound sliced into her, louder, more shrill, than usual, and she doubled over in pain. Rocking back and forth with her hands covering her ears, she couldn't hear anything but the sound echoing in her mind. The others moved toward her, and their voices buzzed around her in meaningless words. Why didn't the sirens stop?

"Mary!" Jonah grabbed her shoulders and forced her to look at him. "You've got blood coming out of the corners of your mouth, and it's bad. Real bad."

She gulped for air, tried to speak, but her words were choked. Blood bubbled in her throat, choking out her voice, until she couldn't control it. It gushed out
her mouth, trailed over her lips, and soaked the front of her shirt.

In her mind, she screamed.

She closed her eyes, wanting to cry. Wanting to wash away the red haze, but her tears did nothing except add to the increasing pain. Blackness closed in around her, but she fought it. She couldn't pass out. If she let the darkness take her, she might not make it back.

***

Dex looked around the room. Ursula and Niko stayed calm and quiet, but concern shown in their eyes. Corene had pulled Mary out of Jonah's grasp and had her cradled in a tight hug. Nothing to do now but wait.

Jonah stood, fisted the starched lapels of Dex's coat, and pulled him close so they were nose to nose. "Activate the nanites."

Dex held his hands up in a sign of surrender. "I don't know how many aspirin she's taken. It may not be enough."

Jonah pulled back with his right hand and let his fist fly into Dex's jaw. "Now, damn it! She dies. You die. You got that?"

"If she dies, we all die." He rubbed his face. "And I activated them as soon as she started the brainwave transformation."

"Don't try to bullshit me." He pulled his arm back again. "You haven't even blinked since it started."

"You're upset, and unless you've taken some hard blows to the head since we last saw each other, I know you're not stupid." He nodded toward Jonah's raised fist. "Don't make me rip the mech out of your arms. You're no good to your sister, or me, if you're damaged."

Jonah kept his arm raised, but the muscles weren't as tense, or ready to strike, as they had been a few seconds ago. "Internal wireless access to the control comp? At this distance?"

"We can discuss my hardware at a more appropriate time." He glanced at the door. "Right now, you need to get Mary out of here. Hadrian's got mech security searching for her, and they'll be heading here soon. Get to the safe house, make her comfortable, and get more aspirin in her. Dissolve them in water and pour it down her throat. Hold her nose if you have to. We don't have time to be gentle." Dex nodded to Ursula, and she whispered to Niko. The dealer stood, went to the kitchen, grabbed the garbage, and met them at the door.

"I keep my word." Dex opened the door. "We've got to get out of here. I need to get to the comp before someone notices I activated the nanites." He stepped through and motioned Niko and Ursula toward the car. "On the way, I'll intercept security and inform them that I've checked the house and it's empty. Corene needs to go with you. I'll make sure Stran picks her up in the morning."

"Wait!" Jonah followed him onto the front porch. "What about taking Hadrian down? What do you need us to do?"

Dex stopped on the bottom step. "If Mary makes it through the night, meet me tomorrow at the park."

"I can't leave her alone." Jonah glanced at the sound spilling from an upstairs window and paced the length of the porch underneath it.

"You won't. She's got to come with you, whether she's able or not. You don't leave her alone for a second. Hadrian wants her, and he won't stop coming for her. We don't have much time." He pointed toward the sky. "The wave is going to hit soon. Sooner than anyone expects. We've got approximately thirty hours, thirty-five if we're extremely lucky, and we'll need every second of it for you to have the controller mech implanted and to get to the prison control comp by this time tomorrow night."

Jonah stopped. "In less than a day? You're fucking crazy. Not possible."

"It is possible, and you will be at that comp." He put his hands in his pockets and walked casually to the waiting vehicle. At the open door, he turned and rested his arm over the window frame. "All I've got is a drug dealer, a wallflower, a handful of controllers, and a few rag-tag mech gang members. So yeah, I probably am fucking crazy, but I'm it. There are no other options. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. After that," he shrugged. "It pretty much won't matter, will it?"

CHAPTER
FIVE

Mary mattered. Right here, right now, he had to take care of his sister. He grabbed the aspirin off the couch where she'd dropped them, poured a glass of water, and sprinted up the stairs.

The sight of blood stopped him at the bedroom door. So much of it covered Mary, her shirt, the pillow, the sheets. The coppery scent coated the air and choked him. He'd seen worse, much worse, but none of the others were his sister.

Corene gently pushed a sweaty tendril off Mary's cheek. "She stopped vomiting blood, but she's still unconscious, and she's struggling to breathe."

"Dex says we've got to get to a safe house and to get more aspirin in her." He crushed several pills with fingers that had almost lost all feeling and dropped them into the water. "Let's try to wake her up, first. If we can't, we'll have to chance pouring it down her throat."

"She'll aspirate." Despite her protest, Corene patted Mary's cheeks and urged her to wake up. Mary stirred, but her eyes never even fluttered.

"We've got to try. It's the only way to get it down her while she's out. I won't give her much." He sat on the side of the be
d and held the rim of the glass to Mary's lips. "Lift her up a little."

He tipped the glass and held his breath while tiny drops of the aspirin infused water fell on his sister's lips. "Pinch her nose, make her open her mouth."

The strategy worked, and drop by drop, his sister swallowed.

"Look at her eyes, Jonah."

Nothing. No flutter, no movement, no blood. "What the hell?" His gaze when to her ears, her nose, and he wondered how they had missed it. "Maybe she had more nanites in her than we thought and they fixed it."

"I don't think so." Corene shuddered. "She wouldn't have thrown up so much blood."

"It is
not
a partial brain blast." He grabbed Mary's shoulder. "Do you hear me? You are not going to end up in a church."

Outside the wall, in the fringes, almost all of the churches had been abandoned by their parishioners and converted to asylums. Many of their inhabitants had been driven insane from a partial brain blast, but more and more controllers ended up inside the hallowed walls too junked up on artificial emotions to function. His mech gang guarded the old Presbyterian church in
Fountain City, one of the many near the park. The area was lousy with them, and each gang watched over a church. Not so much to keep people out, but to keep the unfortunates in. Inside the wall, if an unfortunate was discovered, Hadrian's security forces took care of the 'diseased citizen.' He'd lost count of the deals he'd made with prominent families over the past year in order to keep their sons, daughters, wives, mothers safe in one of the churches. Mary would not be among them.

"Don't think about it. Let's try to get her to swallow some more."

The process seemed to take hours, but a quick glance at the clock showed they had only been at it for about fifteen minutes. Corene slumped against the headboard, but kept Mary's head elevated by cradling it against her chest.

Jonah stopped and placed the glass on the bedside table. "There's cash and an extra set of blades stashed in the nightstand in my room. And grab some of Mary's clothes, throw everything in whatever you can find. Her breathing has evened out, so I hope that means she'll be okay. We've got to get out of here."

"Are you sure she'll be—" The muffled sound of the cell phone tucked into her pocket interrupted her. "It's a text. Probably Stran."

"I've heard it vibrate several times tonight. You should let him know you're okay. He's crazy in love with you and worried."

She blushed a bright crimson and scowled at him. "Dex will let him know. Besides, Stran knows the deal."

"No. He doesn't. He touches you, but he doesn't read you."

"I know." Her voice, barely above a whisper, sounded distant, and her gaze went to the window.

"I made a deal with Dex."

"To help you through the brain blast?" From the faraway look in her eyes, Jonah knew she wasn't seeing the rooftops across the street, or even the darkness beyond them.

She nodded. "And to help me find my family. They're ardent followers of Brother Samuel."

"The preacher on TV?"

"The one and only. Haven't you watched his devotions or sermons?"

"Nope. I've never bought into the whole religion thing."

"Well, preacher man isn't too fond of psychics. Calls us genetic deviants. Says our blood is tainted. The worst kind of taint, according to him. He makes out like we're trying to be gods with our powers. He's fond of spouting prophecies where the righteous eradicate us before we can pass our demon DNA on to the next generation." She turned away from the window. "Anyway, Sammy has convinced his followers, including my parents, that the wave is the beginning of the apocalypse. Mom and dad weren't about to commit heresy, or blasphemy, or whatever by putting their faith in Hadrian's web instead of God. 
So, when Sammy called the righteous to him, my parents didn't hesitate. They sold everything, used the money to buy MREs, tents, survival gear, and took off on foot a few weeks ago." She smirked. "Obviously, I couldn't go with them. Not with my head ready to explode and the possibility of the devil turning me into his servant. Dex has the resources to find them, and as soon as I recover, I'm going after them."

"Why would you even want to?"

"They took my little brother with them, and he's...sick."

"And just what does Dex get out of this deal?"

"I don't know."

"Stran would go with you to find your parents."

"Yeah, he would. But if the wave hits as quick and as hard as Dex says, you're going to need him here. He's a lot more useful to you than me." The cell phone vibrated again.

"Answer your phone, Corene. Stran deserves to hear you're okay, and not from Dex. You owe him that much."

She pulled the phone out of her pocket. "It's not Stran. At least the last few aren't. They're from Dex." Eyebrows knitted in concentration, she scrolled through the messages. "He says Mary didn't have a brain blast. The data from the nanites is that she had a bleeding ulcer. Explains why there wasn't any blood in her eyes or from her ears." She kept scrolling. "He also says the nanites are repairing it, and she'll be okay in a little while, and for both of you to meet him at the park in the morning."

"Text him back and ask him if he's sure the park is safe."

Her fingers flew across the screen, and Dex's response came soon after. "He says Hadrian's security force is spread too thin with the wave coming, and they don't have enough men to risk taking on the gangs on their turf."

"Okay. Let him know we'll be there
—if what he says is true and Mary recovers." He stood. "You don't have to tell him that last part."

Corene grinned and turned, sent his answer as she walked out of the room. "I won't."

"And text Stran."

Faced with
only Dex's assurance that Mary would be okay, and the quiet of the room, the full force of his responsibilities hit him. He'd gone mech to protect and provide for Mary after their parents had died, and had never intended to do more than that. Never intended to be the leader of the Dragons.

The road to hell.

He'd taken the first steps down it five years ago. He'd tread cautiously at first, making a few deals, making a game out of stealing what they needed to survive. Tonight, though, by making the deal with Dex, to save Mary and to help Corene, he'd run all out and jumped in every muddy puddle. He stood guard at the end, covered in the muck and filth that clung to him. This was his road now. He owned it, and he doubted he'd ever make peace with himself.

Mary stirred, pulling him out of his thoughts, rolled over on her side, and settled deeper into the pillows.

No sleep for him tonight.

The adrenaline boost made his muscles and biomechanics twitchy, and he paced the length of her room in an effort to siphon it off and think. They could hold up in one of the caves the gang used to hide shit in and away from the sunlight like Hadrian did. Nanites were already doing their thing, and if she held out until the wave hit, no more energy web and no danger of a brain blast.

No anything to come back to afterward.

Usually, he never took the time to question his decisions. Didn't have the luxury to wonder if they were right or wrong. Necessity was the only requirement he considered. Was Mary really necessary to Dex's plan?

A little voice in the back of his mind told him yes, but was his instinct enough with Mary's life on the line?

Had Dex changed?

Mary had met him a few times in passing, but she only knew Dex through stories and rumors. Most of them were true enough, but not complete. No one knew the reason he decided to break from the Dragons and join with Hadrian. Had to be something major, and not the extra mech everyone presumed. Or maybe it was his old hero-worship surfacing, or guilt, that influenced his thoughts.

He was still a lanky, awkward teenager when he'd first met the former gang leader. Jonah's parents had tried to keep him away from the gangs, but the opportunity to be like Dex was too tempting for a fourteen year-old to resist. Mechs were new technology then, and Dex knew a doctor who'd do the implants on the cheap. The good stuff, too. Not the junkyard metal that'd corrode and poison the bloodstream in a matter of months. He and Dex had been friends once, and he'd even thought of Dex as the brother he'd never had. But that was before Dex's brain blast. Before he'd changed sides.

But even through the anger of betrayal, he couldn't accuse Dex of ever lying to him, or anyone else in the Dragons, and now he wondered if Dex had really betrayed them, or had he left the gang in order to save them?

A little voice in the back of his mind said Dex's motives didn't mean a damn thing now. Any feelings Dex might've had for his old gang would have been destroyed when the controller mech was implanted. The unshielded wiring went right through the amygdala, and after a few stints at a control panel, the damage was irreversible. No more emotion. No more emotional decisions. Mech logic circuits took over. Trouble was, it made sense. Controllers couldn't make the calculations and adjustments needed to save the world if they were worried about saving their families.

And by tomorrow night, he'd be just like them in order to save his family.

"Got everything packed." Corene slung a bulging pillowcase over her shoulder. "Where are we heading?"

"One of the churches. Not in Fountain City, though. Can't go to one associated with the Dragons." He cradled Mary in his arms. "We'll go to the baptist church on Washington Pike."

"Jonah, you know I can't. There's got to be other places. Anywhere but a church."

He kicked the door open with his foot and carried Mary through. "We don't have time, and I'm hoping Hadrian's goons feel the same way about the churches. Besides, you don't have to spend the night there, or even go in. Text Stran and tell him where to pick you up, but I need you to hold Mary on the bike."