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Crane shrugged. “I might have gotten more information, but Palmer’s team decided to make his attempt at capturing my team.”
“You informed your team to run. They’re now on the loose,” Palmer asserted.
“No, they’ve gone to ground and will contact me tomorrow. They’re still my squad. They remain devoted to the mission, as do I,” Gordon asserted.
“But they won’t come in,” Baines growled.
“Yes, they’ll come in, but not if they’re going to be experimented on. Fully human soldiers would behave the same way under this threat, and there’s no need for it. They’ve already proven they’ll tell us everything we need to know.” He locked eyes with the General. “Having a squad of bulletproof soldiers able to move faster than we can register with our eyes gives us one hell of an advantage, wouldn’t you say? And remember, we know how to make more.”
That got through to the man.
“I’d personally like to speak to one of these Silver People,” said the man with the crooked smile.
Crane nodded. “We saw a report from Kuwait that Silver People were assisting the Glass People after that massive attack from the pseudo-clouds. It looked like some escaped, and these may be the ones my squad saw through the tear.”
Dawes looked uncomfortable. “I got word from Director Hall that the Glass People the armed forces in Kuwait detained have escaped. The soldiers guarding the prisoners were screaming some nonsense about them falling through the floor. Now, that makes sense.” He fixed his eyes on Colonel Crane. “We need information on how they’re doing that and how we can counter-act it.”
“Yes, sir,” Gordon responded crisply. “Out of curiosity, have the Glass People demonstrated any offensive abilities, aside from opening rips between worlds?”
That earned him another sharp glance from Dawes. “The building the Kuwait intelligence officers and two CIA observers were working in collapsed. The bodies have yet to be recovered from the rubble. No sign of the ones they were interrogating either. That sounds like they have some offensive abilities to me.”
Crane held his tongue, though he could interpret that information another way.
Dawes looked to the General. “Any more secret teams watching our people? Do you have a team watching Colonel Palmer and his team?”
“If I did, you know I couldn’t tell you about it,” the General snapped.
The ludicrous nature of the situation and the events over the twenty-four hours was suddenly too much for Gordon, and he snorted.
The others in the room all looked to him.
He could have apologized or pretended the sound was just a sneeze, but he was so weary of subterfuge. He looked back at them with a frank stare.
“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
“Not helpful, Colonel,” the Director of Homeland Security said gruffly.
He just nodded to his boss. “Am I under arrest? If not, I’d like to check into a hotel and get some sleep.”
“The power grid is still down, so hotels won’t be accepting new guests at the moment,” the nameless man added.
“You’re not under arrest. We have a few rooms on reserve at a nearby hotel. You can stay there. Bring your team in tomorrow to Homeland Security headquarters. I want to speak to these soldiers directly.” He caught a raised eyebrow from the third man on the team and nodded to him. “You’re invited, as well as the General.”
“And Colonel Palmer,” General Baines insisted.
“Leave your toys at home,” Dawes said, looking to Palmer and received a nod from him once the General nodded as well.
A man in a dark suit entered and walked to the Director’s side to whisper to him.
“Shit! Send two more teams to assist in the search,” Dawes said to the man, who nodded and rushed away.This content is © NôvelDrama.Org.
“Search?” General Baines asked.
Stephen’s expression was grim. “With the chaos the pseudo-clouds caused and the blackout, people have gone missing. Most were running in a panic and got separated from their groups. One of the missing is someone we’re trying to recruit. The young man is a genius with computers. He makes our geniuses look like toddlers discovering an Etch-a-Sketch. If his skills got into the wrong hands, there wouldn’t be a computer on the Internet that wouldn’t be open to them.”
The men shared concerned looks, then Dawes looked at Crane hopefully. “Your team can cover way more ground quickly!”
Gordon nodded. “A brilliant idea. Yes, they could, if they hadn’t been forced to go into hiding until the morning. If your genius is still missing when they contact me, I can send them a picture and have them check every road, alley, and walkway for him.”
Dawes glared at the General, whose expression closed up. He looked back at Gordon. “I’ll send you a photo of him. Go get some sleep.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “Where are Corporal Dulane, Private Jackson, Private Blayne, and Corporal Rewan?”
“We only brought in you and Dulane. You can bring him with you to the hotel. There was no sign of the others,” Palmer said.
“Fine.” As Crane left the room, he caught the nameless man giving him an appraising look. When he held his eyes, the crooked smile reappeared. Gordon looked away, an uneasy feeling in his stomach.
His instincts told him the man was every bit as complicated and mysterious as the Glass People or the Silver People.
That didn’t bode well for tomorrow.
-=-
“What do you mean Henry is missing?” Camila’s shrill voice came through the earpiece of the phone the Homeland Security agent loaned Mahati. It was going out over satellite as the local cell towers were all down. She watched the teams coordinating their search. There was a little butting of heads between them and the NSA agents.
Mahati’s cell had been off and protected inside her shielded purse when the EMP’s went off. Her extra caution against data thieves finally paid off as she had a working phone. Of course, without the cell towers functioning, her cell was a costly paperweight.
“I’m calling you with a satellite phone borrowed from the Homeland Security people. Power is still out here, no cell towers, and the dark is making the search more complicated.”
“What happened?” Camila asked, conscious of listeners.
“We were doing a little sight-seeing on the Mall, and a weird lightning storm suddenly struck. Henry got us running for shelter in the Lincoln Memorial, then the lightning started, the lights went out, and everyone was running. We got separated. Afterward, I realized he wasn’t with me, and I couldn’t find him. Teams from the NSA and Homeland Security are looking for him now,” Mahati explained, her voice beginning to wobble.
“Mahati, they’ll find him. He couldn’t have gone far,” Camila said to calm her.
“I’ve never been this far from home, and I thought I was on top of things. The day was going so well. Henry was enjoying the museums and the monuments. We only had one more to see then we’d catch our flight home. Now, this!” She had a lump in her throat, which was hard to talk around.
“You need to be our eyes on the ground for when they find Henry. We know you can do it. Henry believes in you, you know that. I’m watching the news story now, and I see the blackout is extensive. He’s probably just lost.” Camila said gently, and Mahati felt herself calming. Henry did believe in her. She had to live up to that.
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. I’ll be here when they find him. I’ll get him home,” she said, feeling her nerves settling. “Thank you, Camila.”
“Thank you, Mahati! Please keep me informed.”
“I will. Goodbye.”
She wasn’t sure why it was so difficult to find one man. Camila was right. He couldn’t have gone that far.
Henry couldn’t feel his body.
Rather, he felt all of it, but it just felt like a big ball of cotton.
He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear, taste, or smell either.
One thing he could feel was magic. He was overloaded with the stuff. He knew that cotton sensation was every cell in his body vibrating so quickly that if any additional energy was added, it would trigger a cascade explosion tearing him apart, right down to the atomic level. He needed to bleed that energy off.
“Henry? This is Xiong.”
He couldn’t respond verbally, but he pictured a smile in his mind and received a flash of one in return.
“Thank you for saving our friends.”
He envisioned a thumbs up.
“You helped save many people in your capital city. No one in the large park was affected by the lightning,” Xiong expressed.
Henry felt him holding something back, so he reached for Xiong mentally.
“No, Henry, don’t. You were injured. You must rest and heal… as best you can.”
Frustrated by his inability to communicate, he simply pictured an unhappy face.