Alexei couldn’t feel the force of the explosion while phased, but he still tapped into his pyrokinesis to bring the fire under control. They needed Jansen alive, and Alexei didn’t want to put the rest of the team at risk.
I need both of you to get to Jansen and divide his attention,Jamie said through the mental links.The remaining fighters are going absolutely berserk out here.
Empathic interference?Sean asked as they hurried down the hallway.
Yes, and Jansen is fighting me. I can’t do a hard mental strike to break his shields without risking his mind. I’ll keep you both shielded, but we need him alive and cognizant,Katie said.
Alexei would really prefer the bastard dead, but to each their own.
Alive, Inferno. That’s an order,Jamie told him.
“Should have broken neck in London,” Alexei said out loud.
“In hindsight, yeah, probably,” Sean agreed.
Sometimes the easy way to get rid of a problem was through sheer brutality. If Katie needed Jansen knocked around a bit to break his concentration so she could get control of his mind, then Alexei was just the guy for the job.
TheLibération Nationale Françaisthey’d taken out in the bottleneck behind them weren’t the only fighters on the second floor they needed to worry about. When they came around a corner, Alexei saw what Jamie meant by berserk.
The armed men and women between them and the room Jansen was hiding in had no sanity in their eyes. Their breath came rapidly, chests rising and falling in quick succession as they practically vibrated on their feet in rage. The manufactured emotion overrode all sense of self, driving them near to madness at Jansen’s emotional interference, with only one goal in mind.
Protect the Dutchman.
The fighters charged forward, but in their phased state, neither Alexei nor Sean were impeded by the attack. That didn’t stop Alexei or Sean from taking out the enemy so none of them reached the rest of the team.
It was a slaughter, and if they weren’t phased, they might have been overwhelmed. Except Alexei and Sean were metahumans, and the fighters were merely pawns to Jansen’s power, no matter the beliefs they held and their affiliation to a terrorist group.
This exact situation was what had governments up in arms ever since the first recorded existence of metahumans. Humans had no defense against the powers metahumans wielded, and the psionic ones were the most insidious to many people. Regulation of metahumans might look like slavery in some countries—and it was—but every attempt at control came from the same fear shared by people across the world.
That metahumans were, and always would be, dangerous to humanity.
Alexei proved that by burning and shooting his way through the group while Sean focused on keeping them phased. Alexei’s head felt heavy as they moved through dead men walking, the ache there less from being telekinetically slammed against the wall and more from Katie’s entrenched telepathic power to keep them safe from Jansen.
Sean got them through the melee and through the walls, phasing them into the bedroom where Jansen was hiding. Alexei was unsurprised to see the older man crouched on the floor with his back against the wall, out of sight of the windows but not from them.
Sean let him go and Alexei’s feet hit the floor with a quiet thump that Jansen didn’t seem to notice right away. Alexei was halfway to his position, weapon primed to shoot, when Jansen finally clued in that he wasn’t alone. At any other time, his comical, wide-eyed look would be funny, but Alexei wasn’t amused by the situation they were in.
“Hands up,” Alexei demanded.
Jansen scrambled to his feet, holding out his hands in Alexei’s direction, as if that would stop him from advancing. “Stay back.”
“Like I listen to you.”
Jansen had nowhere to go, but he still tried. With a shout, the Dutchman lunged at Alexei, attempting to get his hands on the AKR-75 assault rifle. Alexei easily dodged Jansen’s attack, twisting around the wild punch the other man threw that didn’t connect. He was telegraphing his moves so broadly it wasn’t even a fight. It would be pathetic if Alexei weren’t itching for a reason to shoot the fucker dead.
But his captain had given him his marching orders, and Alexei could only obey. So rather than shoot Jansen like he wanted to, Alexei stepped in close and used his assault rifle like a club. The rifle butt connected with Jansen’s skull with a loud, satisfyingcrack. Jansen dropped like a stone to the floor, limp and unconscious.
My turn,Katie said into their minds. Whatever she would do to Jansen’s mind, they wouldn’t have any part of the attack.
Grab him and retreat,Jamie said.
Alexei knelt down and hauled Jansen over his shoulders in a fireman carry. Standing up, he hiked Jansen’s deadweight into a more comfortable position, ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs as he did so. It wasn’t accompanied by a deeper ache that might mean an internal wound, so he wasn’t worried. Alexei grabbed his weapon and switched on the safety before hooking it to his tactical vest. His hands were too full to shoot, but he didn’t have to worry about getting injured, not with Sean fighting by his side.
“Ready?” Sean asked, reaching for his hand.
“Da.”
Sean’s grip was strong as they walked toward the windows overlooking the front of the property. Walking through walls was no longer strange, and they stepped out into open air, floating down to the ground two stories below. Alexei could still hear gunfire from within the building, which was momentarily drowned out by the sound of an explosion from the rear of the property.
