Around them, some of the police and members of the National Guard were yelling, but Sean couldn’t make out words in the frantic noise. He tightened his grip on Donovan and Liam, making their safety his priority. He didn’t know what the blast radius of this particular cruise missile would be, but if it was anything like the mission in Arizona a couple weeks ago, the destruction would be devastating, especially within a heavily populated urban environment.
Sean could see the streak in the night sky that was the missile launching, the heat of its thruster brighter than the lit-up megacity surrounding them. It stayed on course for a second or two before being abruptly yanked to the side by an invisible force. It careened downward, away from the White House, and slammed into the middle of the National Mall.
Sean couldn’t feel the explosion in his phased state, but he could see it. The Washington Monument disappeared in an eruption of fire and smoke that roiled violently against an invisible telekinetic shield.
“Thank fuck,” Donovan breathed out heavily.
Sean let them both go now that the major threat had passed, though none of them were in the clear yet and wouldn’t be for a long, long while.
He ruthlessly shoved his thoughts about what had happened to Kyle to the back of his mind, ignoring his worry for Alexei and Jamie at the same time. Sean let his training to compartmentalize parts of himself settle through him as he focused on the fight they still had to win.
The wind brought the smell of fire and burnt chemicals to his nose and Sean looked back at the National Mall. Whoever had been holding up the telekinetic shield had retracted their power now that the threat was no more. Smoke billowed into the sky as the wind teased it, wafting it over the megacity.
The perimeter around the White House was guarded by a heavy presence of MDF metahumans, Strike Force, the National Guard, and the Metropolitan police. The media that had been on hand tonight to cover the arrivals for the State Dinner had been ordered to take cover with the rest of the civilians, but Sean had a feeling they were still reporting from inside.
Liam’s identity had been compromised, but seeing as how he’d chosen to fight, Sean assumed he knew the risk. Now that their powers were working, Liam could target the enemy with his electrokinesis from a distance, which saved Sean from running all over the place to disrupt what he could on his own.
That didn’t mean the rest of the fight was easy.
Pockets of Sons of Adam fighters were embedded in and around the National Mall. Certain streets were impassable to everyone but metahumans due to the detonation of Splice chemical bombs. Washington, D.C. was under a citywide shelter-in-place order, and first responders had their work cut out for them dealing with both the casualties around the National Mall and those in zones farther out caused from more bombs and debris from enemy fighter jets that had crashed to the ground after being blown out of the sky.
Slowly, in the dark hours of the morning, what was left of Alpha Team regrouped.
First it was Annabelle, dropping down from the sky and bringing a heavy military crate full of ammunition for everyone in their section to reload with.
“Heard y’all needed a refill,” she said, using her anti-gravity power to gently lower the crate to the ground.
“Sticking around?” Donovan asked as he leaned over to unlock the case.
“Skies are clear, so yeah.”
Trevor was next, arriving on the back of a National Guard troop transport truck, mouth drawn in a tight line of pain. Sean eyed Trevor worriedly as he swung down off the truck, looking for a physical wound, then realized it was all mental.
“Was that you?” Liam asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the smoking crater in the middle of the National Mall.
“Yes,” Trevor said tiredly.
“Brilliant. Thank you.”
Liam’s tone was sincere, with no humor in it. Sean wasn’t the only one nodding in agreement. Trevor just shrugged, taking up position farther down the line. Delta Team was guarding the White House along Pennsylvania Avenue NW with several Strike Force members backing them up. There’d been a heavy assault on that section of the line right after the defensive energy shield went down, and Sean knew their side had suffered casualties before beating back the attack. The shield still wasn’t back up, but Sean heard through other people’s comms that the MDF had people working on it.
Dawn was breaking on the horizon when Jamie, Katie, Madison, Annabelle, and one of the MDF’s empaths finally made it to their position, walking across the National Mall with weapons in hand. Donovan spotted them first and he called out for everyone to, “Hold fire!”
Sean wanted to run to Alexei, but he held position. He knew what had happened in the Supreme Court Building and was expecting his lover to be an absolute mess. When Alexei finally made it to the line and looked at Sean with calm gray eyes, he knew something was wrong. Someone who’d just had his world ripped away shouldn’t be that calm. Sean glanced at the empath sticking close to Katie and wondered about the mental interference going on keeping Alexei from breaking down.
To say nothing of Jamie.
His face was devoid of all emotion, blue eyes empty holes that looked through everyone. Whatever was affecting Alexei affected Jamie as well. Sean wondered how much longer Katie and the empath with her could hold them both together.
Then Sean became aware of the fact that Jamie wasn’t wearing any head protection, that his face wasn’t covered in any way. In solidarity, Katie, Alexei, and Madison seemed to have removed their nanotech strips and lifted their tactical goggles off their faces. Alexei was missing his tactical goggles completely.
Beside him, Donovan lifted his tactical goggles off his eyes, letting them rest against his hard helmet, before scraping off his nanotech strips. “All right, then. If that’s how it is, sir.”
Sean looked down the line on either side of him where Annabelle and Trevor were doing the same thing. His own nanotech strips were already dead from his power, but Sean peeled them off anyway after removing his tactical goggles.
Voices murmured around him as people recognized Jamie, but the team ignored the chatter.
“Viper, tell Echo to teleport to our location,” Jamie ordered as they crossed the defensive line.
