The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (57 page)

One of the soldiers ran into the
training room, after June. The other shouted, “Hey!” and raised his
rifle.

“
It’s happening now,” said
Dormer. He shoved Colton to the ground as the other soldiers
noticed him. They raised their rifles and aimed right at Dormer’s
head as he approached with his arms raised.

When the nearest soldier took a step
forward, Dormer brought his hands down and clapped him on the sides
of his helmet, just over his temples. The lights over the elevator
hallway door flickered and blinked out. The soldier collapsed to
the floor. His rifle fell from his hands and Dormer kicked it
across the floor to Colton, who picked it up and slung the strap
over his shoulder.

The soldiers rushed Dormer. He stood,
fists closed, waiting.

Colton grabbed the gun and aimed at
one of the two soldiers still standing near the elevator hallway
door. They hadn’t moved toward Dormer with the rest of their pals.
The gun felt too heavy in Colton’s hands, as if it would drag him
down if he fired a single round.

He found the trigger and squeezed. The
muzzle-flashes blocked out his vision, and when he lowered his
rifle, the two soldiers by the elevator hallway door were out of
the fight.

More gunfire erupted nearby and Colton
dove for cover. He flipped over an empty metal table and huddled
behind it, inspecting his gun and wishing he knew how to check his
ammo count. He looked across the dome at the training room
door.

The second soldier that had been
guarding the room went inside after June.

“
Go,” said Dormer to
Colton. He stood a few feet away, using one of the soldiers as a
body shield from the gunfire of the others. The bullets sank into
the soldier’s armor and he groaned in agony. Colton guessed the
bullets in the soldiers’ own guns were armor-piercing rounds never
meant to be used on anyone but unarmed innocents.

Some of the bullets—the ones that
normally would have missed the soldier and hit Dormer—stopped in
the air, inches from his head. They fell to the ground a moment
after being suspended mid-flight. Colton remembered Corva saying
that a Conduit could only do that for so long before the bullets
got through. Negating the velocity of a bullet drained a Con’s
power quickly, as the output required for such a stopping force
usually exceeded the energy they were consuming.

Dormer closed his eyes and the space
around his body darkened. The soldier he was using for a body
shield screamed as Dormer drew on his energy. The lights in the
wall nearby exploded, sending glass shards tinkling to the ground.
Dormer turned to Colton and saw he was still there. “Go!” he
shouted.

Colton ran.

32

B
ullets thunked into the floor at his feet. He zigzagged
across the dome room, ducking behind shelves and anything else he
could use for cover as he went. On the other side of the room, the
door to his mother’s old holding cell opened. The door was less
than a hundred feet from the training room, and Kamiko stood there,
eyes blazing with blue fire.

Colton ran faster, but she wasn’t
looking at him. Her gaze was focused across the room, at Dormer. A
black hole had formed around his body as he moved from soldier to
soldier. Any of them who passed through the black light fell
instantly and lay on the ground, unmoving.

The last thing Colton saw before he
kicked open the training room door was Kamiko literally flying
across the room, carried through the air by long strands of
lightning that shot from her back. They moved like the legs of a
giant, electric spider as they carried her forward.

The door closed behind him and Colton
squinted into the darkness of the training room. The overhead lamps
had burned out and the back half of the room was pitch black. The
only light was coming from the window in the door. On the floor,
laying at the edge of the light, was Micah. Colton couldn’t tell if
he was breathing. A few feet away from him was a soldier, sprawled
out, unconscious or dead.

Colton took a step toward Micah and
someone spoke to him from the shadows.

“
Don’t come any
closer.”

The voice was deep and muffled. A
moment later, a soldier stepped slowly out of the darkness. He held
June in front of him and kept the muzzle of his rifle buried under
her chin. Her hands rested on Noah’s shoulders, who stared across
the room at Micah with wide eyes.

Colton blinked heavily and his vision
blurred. Blood rushed to his head and made him dizzy. The black
veins that covered his body throbbed painfully and he realized it
was the virus working its way deeper into his system.

He raised his rifle with
shaking hands and aimed it at the soldier—he
hoped
he was aiming it at the
soldier.

“
I still have my ability,”
said Colton stupidly, not knowing what else to do.

The soldier paused for a moment, then
slowly marched forward. He laughed coldly from behind his mask.
“Nice try. I can see the veins in your neck from here.”

“
Why don’t you just shoot
me then?” asked Colton.

The soldier stopped again, considering
the offer. Finally, he shrugged, and pulled the rifle away from
June’s throat so he could aim it at Colton. As soon as the gun was
away from her skin, she raised her elbow and drove it back into his
armored stomach. He let out a surprised laugh as June grabbed Noah
and pushed him to the ground.

“
Now!” she
shouted.

The soldier was bringing his rifle
back up when Colton pulled the trigger. The rifle was set to
automatic mode and the bullets spat out in a steady stream. A haze
of gunpowder hung in the air as Colton lowered the gun. The soldier
was on the floor, a small pool of blood spreading out from his
abdomen.

Noah pushed away from June and ran
over to Micah. He crouched next to the boy’s body and wept. Even as
Colton approached, he could tell that Micah’s skin was too pale.
There was a dark bruise around his neck, and his eyes were closed
peacefully, almost like he was sleeping.

Colton helped June to her feet and she
gave him a quick hug. “Thank you,” she whispered. When she released
him, she wiped away her tears and shook her head. “He tried to save
us.” Her small smile told Colton she was familiar with the ways of
children—familiar with their unclear sense of how the world really
worked and also their crystal clear belief that you had to protect
the ones you loved.

Colton did not ask her what happened.
She would tell him in her own time, if she needed to tell him at
all. He took Noah’s hand and led him away from Micah, and took
June’s in his other. Together, they walked to the door and looked
out through the window, into the dome room.

Smoke hung in an ugly haze near the
elevator hallway door. Colton could barely see the lifeless bodies
of at least six soldiers on the floor. Suddenly Kamiko appeared
outside the window. Blue fire exploded from her eyes and melted the
window. Colton pulled June and Noah away from the door as it
slammed open.

Kamiko swatted Colton’s rifle aside
with no effort at all. It clattered across the floor and stopped
against the body of one of the dead soldiers. The fire in Kamiko’s
eyes seemed to grow more intense when she saw the
bodies.

Behind her, in the middle of the dome
room, Dormer was on his knees, his hands tied behind his back. He
looked close to falling over from exhaustion. Half his face was
covered in blood. He turned and smiled weakly at Colton. One of the
two soldiers still standing cracked him on top of the head with the
butt of his rifle and Dormer collapsed to the floor,
unconscious.

Lightning shot from Kamiko’s fist as
she punched Colton in the chest. He hit the ground on his back and
skidded across the floor. Noah screamed and broke free of June’s
arms. He ran at Kamiko blindly, his eyes tightly closed, tears
streaming down his face.

She turned to face him as a brilliant
white light exploded from his body. The flash lit up the room and a
wooden weapon rack hanging on the wall burst into flame. White
plasma shot out of Noah’s chest toward Kamiko. It was a sloppy
attack—a burst of raw, uncontrolled anger from a child with no
training; from a five-year-old boy who should have been a decade
away accessing his own ability.

Kamiko quickly brought her hands
together in front of her face just as the plasma hit them. A shield
of lightning erupted from her hands and surrounded her completely.
White flames enveloped the protective shell.

When Noah’s fire died, he collapsed to
the ground, unconscious. His nose was bleeding and his fingers
twitched slightly, as if he were dreaming.

“
Is he dead?” asked June.
She huddled in the corner of the room, looking between the bodies
of Noah and Micah.

The ball of lightning around Kamiko
disappeared with a static crackle of energy. She floated over to
Noah and looked down at him sadly. His small chest rose and fell in
shallow gasps.

“
Poor little Nova,” she
whispered. “Now they’ll never leave you alone.”

Colton’s clothes smoked from the heat
of the blast. He stood up and stumbled toward Kamiko. The black
veins pulsed beneath his skin, choking his senses and dulling his
mind. Kamiko reached out and grabbed him by the throat. She lifted
him up in the air and screamed in anger. A storm of lightning
erupted from her mouth and enveloped Colton in an electric cocoon
that seized his lungs. He could not breathe. He could not fight
back. Lightning crawled over his skin and burrowed into his
body.

The lack of oxygen dimmed Colton’s
vision. His world slowly faded into darkness, and the last thing he
saw was Kamiko standing below him in a sea of swirling, shimmering,
beautiful dark blue light.

33

T
he truck bumped across the desert as Marius drove farther
from the burning virus facility. Haven’s brown, red-streaked hair
whipped in the wind that blasted through the open windows. She
watched black smoke billow up into the sky in the reflection of her
passenger-door mirror. The building was hidden on the other side of
a large rise, but the smoke climbed far into the blue morning sky
like a soul reaching for heaven.

“
Where are we going?”
asked Haven.

Marius stared straight ahead, his
bloodshot eyes fixed on the distant horizon. “Billings is the
nearest town. South of here.” He looked at the truck’s fuel gauge.
“Not enough gas to go anywhere else.”

The truck hit a dip and bounced back
out roughly. Bastian shouted in surprise from the back. He and Roku
sat with their backs against the truck’s cab, shielding their eyes
from the sun with their hands. Haven put her palm against the glass
that separated them and melted away a handprint-shaped hole with a
slow burn of blue energy.

Bastian scooted closer to the hole.
“Where are we going?” he shouted. Sand whipped up around the sides
of the truck. He held up the collar of his jacket to shield his
face.

“
Billings,” said
Haven.

Bastian nodded. “It’ll be south of
here, about fifty miles.”

“
Do you have any idea
where Alistair might be?”

Bastian turned away to look at the
black smoke, then shook his head.

“
I’m sorry,” said Haven,
and she meant it. In Bastian’s mind, no one else was working to get
rid of Alistair. To him, his quest represented the only way to
eliminate the threat for good. “What will you do now?”

Bastian looked at Roku. “I don’t know.
We lost him and I don’t know if we’ll ever get another chance.”
Roku sat quietly, his face an emotionless mask.

“
Marius and I are going
back to the Dome,” said Haven. “Cure or no cure.”

Roku opened his mouth to say something
then quickly shut it again. Haven thought she knew what he was
going to say.

“
You can come with us,”
she said. “Both of you.”

Bastian and Roku shared the same look
again—a knowing look that carried some deeper knowledge.

“
What if Kamiko is still
there?” asked Bastian.

“
She better not be,” said
Haven. “For her sake.”

Roku stared at the tire tracks in the
sand, winding like twin snakes back the way they had come. Bastian
slapped him on the shoulder and tried to cheer him up. Roku pushed
him away. After a moment, Bastian shrugged, then he leaned his head
back against the window and closed his eyes.

Haven tucked several wind-blown
strands of hair behind her ears and settled into her seat. Marius
was still intently focused on the desert ahead.

“
Marius wants to strangle
him,” he said. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles looked like
they might pop through the skin on the back of his hands. “No cure.
Why did he lie about something like that? Marius should have stayed
with Corva. What if she is gone by the time we get
back?”

“
I’m sure she’s fine,”
said Haven. Even to her it sounded like an awful lie.

“
Don’t say things you know
are not true,” he said harshly. “Nothing we did made a
difference.”