Trance. Part 13

"I hear voices," he said, a little out of breath. "Seward is still up there, and someone else, a woman I don't ..."

At the fifth floor landing we stopped, blocked from proceeding any higher by a pile of debris. I pushed against the door. It was stuck. And very, very cold.

"The h.e.l.l?" I said.

"It's Janel." Gage's voice had an unexpected hitch. "Specter has Frost under his control."

Seventeen.

Frost Are you sure, Gage?" I asked, for them as much as myself. I didn't doubt his certainty. We were facing one of our own, possessed by our enemy. Everyone had to understand the score.

"Yes. She's saying something to Dr. Seward about"-Gage's eyes widened-"Christ, she's got Marco."

With a trembling hand, I formed a softball-size orb and hurled it at the frozen door, where it shattered into slivers of metal and ice with a pop like a balloon bursting. Tempest charged through the door first, and I followed with an orb in each hand. A piercing scream greeted us, echoing down the corridor from someplace out of sight.

The floor and walls were coated with an inch of ice. Tempest slipped, flailed his arms, and fell flat on his back. I reached for him and lost my own balance. I hit the slippery ground on my hands and knees, sc.r.a.ping my palms raw. The scream came again, fueling both my determination and fury.

"It's Marco," Gage said. He remained upright, carefully balanced on the treacherous floor.

I rose to my knees, re-created the orbs, and lobbed them across the surface of the ice like mini bowling b.a.l.l.s. They melted a swath down the middle and created a narrow running track.

Gage hooked his arms around my waist and pulled me up. Tempest stood on his own steam, a little wobbly from his wipeout, and took point down the path. At the end of the icy corridor, we hit another dead end: a wall of ice. It covered the next corridor like a waxed paper seal-translucent enough to see through, but too thick to simply hit and shatter.

Beyond it, Dr. Seward sagged against the wall, hugging his left arm to his chest. Blood poured from his nose and over his chin. In the center of the hallway, Frost loomed over Marco's prostrate form. As we stood there, a miniature snowstorm engulfed them both. Ice adhered to Marco's exposed skin. Frost's eyes glowed an unearthly yellow-orange, and her frail, battered body swayed on the verge of collapse.

"You might want to duck," I said.

One orb from each hand and as much power as I could muster went sailing toward the ice wall. It shattered with a soft boom, sending ice and snow flying. Tiny bits p.r.i.c.ked my face and neck. Frigid wind whipped around us as Frost redirected her blizzard.

Tempest countered with his own windstorm and the battling elementals sent out enough counter-feedback to knock each other for a loop. Tempest flew backward and hit the wall, sending splinters up and down the icy coating. Frost sailed sideways, right through an open doorway.

I slid a few times before giving up, and just let myself glide up next to Marco. Beyond the snow covering his mostly naked body, I couldn't see any specific injuries, and that worried me. Especially with those earlier screams. But he was breathing and that's what mattered.

Gage slipped past me-very literally-and grabbed the doorframe for support. He peered inside and was suddenly skidding backward, hit square in the chest with a block of ice the size of a basketball. He didn't even scream-just hit the floor and lay still.

"Cipher!" I screamed.

"She's fighting him," Seward said, his voice high-pitched, unsteady. "She's trying so hard not to hurt us, but she's too weak."

Frost was in a losing battle with Specter. She'd been half dead when Renee and William brought her here; she didn't have the strength to resist Specter for long.

"You have to kill her," Seward said.

"I can't do that." Just the idea of it horrified me.

"You have to. He won't give her up. When the host dies, Specter is weakened and has to return to his own body. You have to kill her to drive him out."

My stomach churned. Bile scorched the back of my throat. "I can't; she's one of us."

"She'll kill you, Trance."

As though to prove his point, a scattering of icicle shrapnel flew out of the open doorway. Deadly, sharp icicles. They peppered the far wall just above my head, cracking the coating of ice already in place.

I backed up, slowly drawing up to my feet. Frost appeared in the doorway, her eyes alight with Specter's unholy power. Blood dribbled from her nose, down her lips and chin, staining the collar of her hospital gown. Dark smudges discolored the flesh beneath her eyes, and her sallow skin seemed stretched too thin. She was already dying from Specter's mental intrusion; my attack would make little difference.

To her.

I recalled the wounded girl William had carried across Central Park, the way she'd blasted Mayhem with icicles and saved us for a little while. This was how I thanked her. "I'm so sorry, Janel," I said.

Something mournful sparked in her eyes as the briefest glimpse of the girl I remembered peeked through. But Specter was too strong. Her eyes spat a barrage of hailstones. I erected a force shield easily, with less effort than before, and they pinged off. Frost's face twisted in fury, a terrifying combination of Specter's and her own, and she shot more icicles. Same thing. Warm power tingled through my fingertips, the only sense I had of its potency. Too many of those, and I wouldn't be able to maintain the shield.

A shield that protected myself, Marco, and Seward. Gage lay outside of my perimeter. Frost noticed this the moment I did and shifted her attention to him. The instinct to protect flared to deadly life. I dropped the shield and threw the largest orb I could muster directly at her head. It exploded against her temple and threw her weak body backward, knocking Specter's final ice blast off-target and freezing the far wall instead.

She hit the floor with a dull crack and lay still. I didn't move. The sound of my own ragged breathing was met by the distinct plink-plunk of melting ice. In moments the corridor was awash in cold water. Frost's spell was over, the effect of her powers extinguished with her precious life. A life I'd taken.

I sat for a moment in the middle of the puddle, trembling, forcing my bubble of grief to keep moving, to go away until later. I could not lose it here. Not in front of the others.

"Trance?" Dr. Seward squatted in front of me, still holding his left arm. Pain and exhaustion radiated from his scrunched brow and pursed lips. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "Come on, my dear, we need to help your teammates."

"Six," I said.

He frowned. "What?"

"Six dead, six of us left."

Had Specter planned the explosion at the construction site, effectively removing us from the HQ so he could coordinate his attack? It was very possible. The events were too perfect to be coincidental. He came in while no one was guarding the store and struck at our heart, finishing what he'd started with Janel. Half of our numbers wiped out. Murdered.

"Come on, Trance, we'll think about it later."

Dr. Seward reached out with his good hand and wiped an errant tear from my cheek. I hadn't realized I'd begun to cry and that shamed me into action. The gentle gesture changed my opinion of him. I decided then, surrounded by wounded friends and melting ice, that I trusted Angus Seward.

"Help Onyx," I said.

I crawled across the floor to Gage's body. His pulse hummed steadily beneath my fingers. I pressed gently against his chest. Nothing gave, no bones shifted. He was just knocked silly. Relief squeezed my heart and constricted my throat and colored the world a pale shade of lavender.

I blinked; the shaded vision was back. Not the best time for my powers to start going nutty again. No one's immediate health concerned me more than Gage's, Ethan's and Marco's. Specter had driven me to kill for a second time. I was determined there would not be a third.

"Trance?" Tempest limped toward me, favoring his right leg. The reddish-purple beginnings of a bruise colored the right side of his jaw. He stopped a few feet from Seward and Onyx. "What about the sixth floor? There's still a fire up there."

My hand tightened around Gage's wrist. My irrational need to stay by his side and protect him battled my duty to this facility. If we didn't get the fire under control, it could consume everything we were trying to rebuild.

"Go," Dr. Seward said. "I'll get help up here now that the threat is neutralized."

This clinical description of Frost's death rankled, but I channeled my annoyance into action and stood up, icy water dripping off my soaked jeans. The ceiling above snapped and groaned. I looked up, seeking whatever great force had made the sound.

A crack appeared in the tiles to my left and traveled down the corridor, splitting open like a fissure. The split ended just above Tempest. He gazed at it as though he'd never seen such a thing. I started to shout something-tell him to move his a.s.s-when the ceiling opened up and dropped a cloud of debris on top of him. A maelstrom of plaster, metal, stone, and dust rained down until the air was filled with gray and I couldn't see him anymore.

Eighteen.

Medical Ward III Agent Rita McNally knocked before she entered the small scrub room. I tilted my head in her general direction, aware of her, even though my attention was fixed on the gla.s.s part.i.tion between this room and the next. She was a distraction. She could wait.

Ethan Swift lay on an operating table, surrounded by the best surgical team in the city, his chest wide open and a machine pumping blood for his heart. It had taken ten minutes to get him out of the rubble that had buried him alive, and for a moment, I'd thought him dead. I'd screamed when I saw the blood mixing with cold water-it looked like more than a body could stand to lose. His surviving this long seemed like a miracle; surviving surgery would be a blessing from whoever looked over us.

"How are the others?" McNally asked.

"Alive," I said, cringing as one of the doctors dropped a blood-soaked towel into a wastebasket. Couldn't she have found someone else to ask for a d.a.m.ned status report? "Ga-Cipher is sore and headachy. Onyx has frostbite on his cheeks and arms and three broken fingers. She froze them and then snapped them."

McNally shuddered. "I can't imagine what you're feeling right now-"

"That sounds really condescending, so maybe let's not?"

"Fair enough. I did want to say how proud I am of the way you handled the press earlier. I wish you'd waited for me like I asked, but you answered the right questions and deflected what you didn't need to answer. You did well today, Trance."

I was so not in the mood for a pep talk. Maybe I'd done the d.a.m.ned interview right, but when it came to a real battle, I'd let my team down. Gotten three Rangers injured and one of them dead. Yeah, I'd done really well today. "You think so?"

"Of course," she said, missing (or ignoring) the sarcasm in my voice. "You saved the lives of four men, and in the process, gave the press a very positive image of the new Ranger Corps."

"I also killed a fellow Ranger."

"From what I hear, that couldn't be helped."

"Maybe." It didn't matter what could or couldn't be helped, only what had happened. Janel was dead, and I'd killed her.

"The minute Specter possessed her, she was dead, no matter what you did."

"I could have tried something else."

McNally moved to stand by my side. I wouldn't look at her. "Don't second-guess your decisions, Trance. Not decisions made in the heat of battle. Doing so won't change what you did, and it won't change what happened to the others. It will only make you crazy, and cause you to second-guess your decisions the next time you're in the field. That can't happen. Leaders make choices, and they can't wonder if they're making the correct ones. They have to know it."

"What if I don't know it?" I whirled on her, confusion and grief tightening my chest. Through the pale purple haze in my vision, she seemed younger, less impressive-a good target for my anger. "I never asked to lead this team. I never led anyone or anything in my life, and now I have people's lives in my hands. Frost is dead. Cipher and Onyx are hurt. Tempest still could die, and all of that is my fault."

"You didn't drop the ceiling on Tempest. How is it your fault?"

I balled my hands into fists, resisting the very real urge to shatter something. Maybe I hadn't dropped the ceiling, but my actions were directly linked to the fire that had destroyed parts of the sixth floor, and the fight with Janel that left two hallways on the fifth floor with serious water damage. All power had been diverted to maintaining the hospital and emergency center here on the fourth floor. More damage, my fault.

"I'm responsible for his safety," I said. "If I can't protect him, I might as well quit now."

"So quit."

I took a step backward, stung. Quitting was something cowards did. My dad had never run from a fight or backed down from a foe. Rangers faced things head-on. I'd hidden from things my entire adult life, instead of confronting them. "I can't do that, and you know it."

"You also can't guarantee their safety, and you know it."

"I ..." What? She was right. My anger deflated like a leaky balloon, leaving me stretched and tired. "How did things get so mixed up so fast?"

"I really don't know, Trance." McNally inhaled deeply, then blew out through her nose. "Just remember that you did what you had to do to stop Specter from killing anyone else. For a while he'll be too weak to come after you. Heal up, plan it out, and then go get him."

I snorted. "It's not really that simple."

"I know, but it's something to believe in when hope seems far away. You need to believe that no matter what happens, good will come out on top."

I studied her age-lined face and the determined glint in her eyes. "Were you like this for our elders, too?"

"You mean optimistic and full of charming wisdom?"

I wouldn't exactly put it in those words. "Yeah."

"No, but loss can change a person, Trance. Many of your elders were my friends, and I grieved their deaths. It took many years to forgive myself for ... not doing more. All I could do was mourn them and remember them."

She touched the gla.s.s that separated us from the operating room. "Blame won't bring Tempest back, if it's his time. It will only hurt you and the people who love you. You have to take it as it comes and stay the course."

Stay the course.

The mystery woman's words from my dream. Was I really seeing someone, or was she simply my subconscious mind telling me to shape up? Could I listen to that inner voice and do what needed to be done?

"It must have been hard for you," I said.

"What's that?"

"The end of the War. Losing your job."

McNally smiled, weariness settling into her sharp features. "I was more concerned for you children. We all were. Separating you was not an easy choice, Trance, but we believed it was best. The country needed a fresh start. You kids needed a fresh start."

"It was a good theory, but I think the execution was a little lacking."

"I won't dispute that." She leaned against the part.i.tion, hands clasped loosely in front of her. "It was all done so secretly. Only a tiny handful of people in the entire ATF Bureau knew where each of you was sent. Those of us from the MHC who knew you were forbidden from making contact. We never thought we'd see you again."

I was beginning to understand her just a bit. "It wasn't your fault, or anyone else's at the MHC. Something happened, you went back to your life, and then that something unhappened. We all play the hand we're dealt, right?"

She worried her lower lip with her teeth. "Yes, we do."

"Do you think we can beat Specter's hand?"