“Boston PD is trying to form a hard quarantine zone, but there are a lot of civilians in the line of fire, and some of those contaminated by Splice may havealreadyfled.”
They’d end up with pockets of people dying all over the city if the quarantine zones didn’t hold. Chasing after the living who didn’t know they were dead yet never got anyeasier.
“Dropping in ten seconds,” the agent now piloting the combat jet announced over the generalcomms.
Everyone strapped in, with those leaving first positioning themselves closer to the ramp. Kyle heard the engine noise change frequencies as the pilot took them down through the atmosphere at a steep dive towardBoston.
Kyle loved coming home, but he never envisioned coming home like this. The red warning light near the ramp switched on, the piercing noise whipped away by the wind as their exit opened up. The jet leveled out hard over a city street filled with scattered, screaming people. Kyle heard the X51 Vulcan autocannon mounted on the bottom of the combat jet go off with sustained fire for a few seconds before going quietagain.
Annabelle launched herself off the ramp and into the air, using her anti-gravity power to fly out of view. Trevor caught everyone else up in his telekinesis and carried them with him to the ground, out of Kyle’s sight. The ramp closed in seconds, sealingtight.
The engines whined with power as the combat jet rose into the air and banked hard, heading for the Seaport District, which was mere seconds away at the speed they were flying. Katie bowed her head, gripping the edge of her seat so tightly Kyle knew her knuckles would be white if he could see them beneath her gloves. He scratched at the underside of his jaw, vaguely aware he needed to shave. The little details weren’t on his mind the same way Alexei was. Thinking back to the image of Alexei’s broken, wounded body that Phaedra had shown him, Kyle only hoped they weren’ttoolate.
You better not be dead, Lyosha,Kylethought.
He’s not,Katie said, her telepathic voice sliding intohismind.
As good as that news was, Kyle knew all too well how quickly things could change in the midst of battle.Wherearethey?
On the street. Sean got them free, but that’s all I know. He’s too panicked for me to attempt a solid link and I don’t want to fuck with hisconcentration.
Kyle had a very good imagination, and it didn’t take much for him to figure out why Katie wouldn’t want to risk a mental link if Sean was stillphased.
“Get me down there,” Kyle said as hestoodup.
A quiet settled over his mind, the sharp focus that came when he peered through a scope at a target washing everything else away. The ramp wasn’t even all the way open before Kyle was flinging himself out of the combat jet and falling several meters to the street below, rifleinhand.
The chaotic scene on the street overlooking the waterfront consisted of stopped cars peppered with bullet holes, people cowering behind any cover they could find, bodies in the street, and Kyle’starget.
He processed everything in a split second, taking a bullet to his chest and thighs, the impacts absorbed by the tactical gear over his combat uniform. Kyle got off three shots that found their targets as he fell to the street. Three of Cillian’s men dropped where they stood, the rest scattering for cover except for one, a woman who raised her hands and made a shoving gesturewiththem.
Kyle’s feet had barely touched the ground before a shock wave slammed him backward at a speed that made his head snap back. It felt like getting hit by a car at high speed, all the air driven out of his lungs, the pressure of the hit bruising even through his tactical body armor. Kyle expected to hit the ground hard and ended up crashing into Tessa instead. For a split second, everything went black, the stomach-lurching sensation of a teleport ripping through his body. Then the world blinked back into existence, sound filling his ears withabang.
Tessa let him go, teleporting to a different location. Kyle’s feet smacked down on the ground meters behind the Sons of Adam affiliated metahuman and a few scattered members of their group. Kyle didn’t think, just took the headshot the opportunity gave him, and blew out the back of the woman’s skull. The element of surprise was always the best way to deal with enemy metahumans. Her body crumpled to the ground, the shock wave half-formed by her power fading to a meredisturbance.
Bryan was a hydrokinetic, and since they were only a short distance from the bay, he didn’t waste his strength in forming water out of thin air. A column of seawater exploded upward near a dock, spinning tightly as it moved and bent in an unnatural way. It cut through the air, its passage sounding like a roaring waterfall as it crashed into a trio of Sons of Adam fighters hunkered down behind a solarcompactingbin.
Dying by drowning on dry land from water you couldn’t escape was a messy waytogo.
Kyle took shot after shot, picking off Cillian’s people with bloody ruthlessness, unwilling to let any more harm come to his brother. Katie crouched beside Sean and Alexei on the sidewalk, Cillian having run like the coward he was the second the combat jet descended into the fray. Their pilot was restricted from using the heavy guns since too many civilians were within range, but that didn’t stop him from tracking the SUV Cillian had scrambled into with a few otherfighters.
“Keep on them,” Katie ordered the pilot over comms. “Echo, Ineedyou.”
Kyle ran to Katie’s position, but Tessa easily beat him to it. The older woman teleported within range as Bryan slammed another wave of water at a group of fighters who thought they could take advantage ofthelull.
Tessa’s hand passed through Alexei’s bruised and bloody arm, half of the lower part of his limb skinned down to muscle. Kyle’s rage seared him from the inside out as he took in the wounds Alexei had sustained at Cillian’s hands. Phaedra’s glimpse was nothing compared to getting actual eyes on their missingteammates.
Alexei was a broken, bloody mess, from his skinned arm to the dangerously black bruising afflicting his chest and abdomen. The number of blows required to bruise a body like that in a short period of time was too terrible to think about. Internal damage was high on the list of wounds that needed immediate treatment, to say nothing of the neurological damage the hit from the neuro-jammer gun and subsequent Faraday cage usage had caused. Kyle recognized the incisions over Alexei’s temple and base of his neck alltoowell.
His face was gray beneath the swelling, hair wet in a way that didn’t hint at anything good. Alexei’s fingers were broken, twisted at odd angles at the knuckles. Deep lacerations in his thighs made from a serrated knife were crusted over with blood, puffy and swollen at the edges with the beginning of infection. His pants were a ragged mess, bare feet bruised with the imprint of boot heels over fractured bones. His left leg was bent at an odd angle at the knee, limp in a way that hinted at severe damage hidden beneath the ripped, blood-soaked fabric coveringthearea.
As for Sean, his face was heavily bruised, mouth torn up and swollen, blood dried over his throat and bruised chest. He clutched Alexei to him, both eyes swollen, but one a little less than the other. What Kyle could see of his gaze was distant and not all there. His breath came quick and frantic, but strangely enough, that was the only sound he made. He wasn’t as extensively hurt as Alexei, but they needed to get both of them off the fieldimmediately.
“Try now,” Katie said in a clippedvoice.
Tessa didn’t hesitate, getting a hand on their wounded teammates and gathering them all in a teleport while her partner held the line. The world tilted, going black for half a heartbeat. Then the cold sea breeze was replaced by the temperature-controlled environment of Medical’s medevac triage room. Used exclusively by the teleporters on the MDF’s roster to ferry their wounded off the field, the restricted area was kept clear like the teleportation receiving room in the mainbuilding.
Dr. Gracie Gold strode forward the second they popped into existence, snapping out orders to her team of nurses and doctors. Tessa stepped out of the way while Katie had to pull Kyle away from Alexei and Sean, giving the doctors roomtowork.
