Trance. Part 6

"I don't feel it, but I hope you're right, T," Renee said.

High-pitched squealing cut through the room and set my teeth on edge. Then a computerized voice rumbled over a hidden loudspeaker, "All Rangers, report to Conference Room A. All Rangers, report to Conference Room A."

"That's us," Renee said, grinning broadly.

Our first official meeting. Good. I had too many Specter-related questions and I was itching to get some answers.

Seven.

Angus Seward Marco knew where to find the conference room. William and Dr. Seward were already seated at a long oval table when we arrived. Computer screens were s.p.a.ced at intervals along the four walls. One of them displayed an aerial shot of Manhattan Island. The high walls of the prison outlined the shape of the island like chalk, dotted every half a mile or so with the square roof of a guard tower. The long gray patch of Central Park drew my attention.

After so many years, seeing it again-even from the distance of a satellite shot-brought back all of the fear I'd tried to forget. Fear of death. Fear of Specter and the day a few dozen surviving adults and eighteen adolescents made our last stand.

MHC came in after we lost our powers and cleaned it up. The devastated island was turned into a prison, and every single surviving Bane was tagged and accounted for, including Specter. For fifteen years they had lived there, fed by drop shipments, and ignored by the public. An island prison in the center of a ruined, largely abandoned city.

Gage touched my shoulder; I'd been staring too long. I turned around, seeking out Dr. Seward. "I don't suppose you've got anything new on me?" I asked.

"On your physiology, no," Dr. Seward replied. "But we may have something new on Specter."

He had my attention. I slid into a chair next to Gage, across the table from Seward.

William stood up, taking point on the conversation, and said, "So far, all preliminary reports show that the Banes imprisoned on Manhattan Island are accounted for. Each one was tagged with a tracking collar, which allows them to move freely on the island, without being able to leave it. No Bane has gone on or off the island in fifteen years."

"That's old news." I leaned forward on my elbows, intently focused on the strongman. "What's the punch line?"

"We had the warden authorize a sight check on all prisoners, to confirm that every tracker matched up to someone. When they found Specter's tracker, someone else was attached to it."

I shivered.

"Who?" Gage asked.

"We don't know yet, but we think a civilian," Dr. Seward said. "The FBI has him now. He was chained up in a room, gibbering nonsense, so it's likely he's been kept that way for a long time."

"How is that possible?" Marco asked. "The prison warden must know when a collar is removed from a body. They would have known if Specter removed it and placed it on someone else."

"We asked the warden that very thing. Their records show no break in contact from the minute it was attached fifteen years ago to now."

"He was never captured," I said. My stomach knotted. "This whole time they've had the wrong man secured on the island. Specter has been out there, moving freely, all these years."

"Freely, but powerless," William said.

"Any idiot with five fingers can fire a gun. He didn't need his powers to be able to hurt us."

"No, but he needed to find you first," Dr. Seward said. His calm exterior was insanely irritating.

"Not all of us blended into the crowd," I shot back, glancing at Renee and Marco.

"We did our best to hide you children back then, and that may have saved your lives."

We? Seward was involved in the ... what? Conspiracy? That didn't seem quite fair, but it was the only word I could connect to what had been done to us. We were just children, ripped away from everything we knew. Torn from our roots and replanted elsewhere, without the resources to thrive.

Renee snorted and said, "That's one way to spin an averted disaster, Doc. How about the guy who collared Specter? You talk to him?"

Dr. Seward nodded. "He was our first step once we discovered the deception, but that guard, Lorne Andrews, was killed during an apparent mugging eleven years ago. No one else we've questioned remembers seeing Specter that day, and all of the security footage has been compromised."

"Meaning what?" I asked.

"It means that anything pertaining to Specter was erased," William replied. He glared at Seward. "Right?"

"Correct," Dr. Seward said.

"So is Specter responsible for all of this?" I asked. The puzzle pieces kept growing more and more numerous, and it seemed unlikely they would ever fit together and make sense.

"He is the most likely suspect. The Banes were kept together after the end of the War. Fifteen years is a long time to plot revenge. We just have no idea how he reactivated everyone."

"If he did it at all."

"So what's his plan?" Renee asked. "Break the other Banes out, get them off the island, and start the fight all over again?"

"That was our initial hypothesis, yes," Dr. Seward said. "After all, you twelve are the oldest living Rangers we know of, and it will take time to find and train any new Metas. If the Banes manage to escape and eliminate you, they'll be unstoppable."

"Just like the first time," I said. "Why did your hypothesis change?"

Dr. Seward pointed to the map behind him and the colorful lines and dots that indicated security measures I couldn't hope to understand. "His best opportunity would have been Thursday, the day of the activation, before we could get you organized here and figure out what happened. But it's two days later, we have tripled the watch around the island, and there aren't enough Banes in any one part of it to successfully revolt. Not even with Specter on the outside."

His logic worked, even for me, but it wouldn't always be five against one (or twelve, if we managed to locate the seven of us still MIA). The other Banes would escape; new Metas would-I a.s.sumed-discover their powers and be free to wander. Sides would be chosen just like before. And this new Ranger team had inexperience to spare.

I was teetering on information overload, and had no idea how the others were faring. The tension in the room became a living thing, as tangible as our own bodies. Gaining these powers had seemed like a miraculous turning point in my life-a chance to finally have a purpose greater than struggling to pay my rent each month. Powers that could have saved lives. Now that miracle felt like a death sentence.

"So the plan, as I see it," I said, "is to stay out of Specter's way until our missing seven are brought in, to keep an eye on Manhattan Island, and to train any newly activated Metas as they're found to keep them on our side. Does that sound about right?"

"Yes, that's right," Seward said. He hesitated, but didn't add anything to his statement.

"Dr. Seward?" Gage said. "Your heart rate just spiked, in case you forgot I can hear that. What aren't you telling us?"

Dr. Seward dropped his gaze to the table. The good doctor was hiding something, and it didn't take Gage's honed senses to know it. We heard it in what he didn't say, and how he avoided eye contact with us. I stood up, drawing confidence from the stance, and braced my palms flat on top of the table.

"What aren't you telling us, Dr. Seward?" I asked. "Why haven't you found the other seven?"

"We know where three of them are," he told the table.

A frozen fist seized my insides and squeezed.

"That's good, right?" Renee asked. She seemed genuinely confused and unaffected by Seward's words.

"No, Flex, it's not good," Dr. Seward said. "Their bodies are being flown in by private helicopter. They'll arrive by evening."

Her cobalt eyes widened, and I looked away. I could see in her what I felt in myself. Loss without actually losing is an odd sensation to describe. Even though I hadn't seen the other seven in half a lifetime, knowledge of three of their deaths seared through my heart and left hollow pain behind.

Gage's hand covered mine. I dropped back into my chair.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Seward said. "I didn't want to say anything until we were certain."

"That they were really dead?" William asked.

"No, until we were certain Specter killed them. Because of the nature of Specter's powers, we can't be sure yet. He possesses and uses his victims to commit the crimes, so they aren't always distinguishable from standard murders. So far, Trance and Cipher are the only two who can honestly say they faced off with Specter. None of the other deaths had witnesses."

I wanted to ask their names and how they'd died, but couldn't bring myself to do it and not feel morbid. No one else asked, and I was glad. We would find out soon enough which of our childhood friends were dead.

"Maybe if we'd been allowed to grow up near each other," Gage said calmly, "they wouldn't have had to die alone."

"Possibly," Dr. Seward said. "You children faced a horrible trauma that day, watching your parents and mentors and cla.s.smates die. I wish I could tell you why and how your powers were taken away, or why and how they were given back. At the time, we thought keeping you together would be more painful than separating you. We thought it would save you the pain of growing up with constant reminders of the heartache of all that you'd lost."

I quirked an eyebrow. "I think I speak for everyone when I say that we still grew up with the heartache. You have no idea how many therapists I kept in business over the years."

"Regardless, MHC thought it was doing the right thing by separating you."

"What's that saying?" Gage asked. "The road to h.e.l.l is lined with good intentions?"

Amen.

Dr. Seward grunted, but didn't otherwise reply.

"It's been two days since we got our powers back," Renee said. "Do people know about it yet? I mean, I guess they would, but how much do they know?"

"ATF has spread the word to other government law enforcement agencies," Dr. Seward said. "It's being shared with state and local authorities, as well, so that they can be prepared when we go public with your return. They want to control the flow of information as much as possible. The last thing this country needs is widespread panic."

"You think?"

"Yes, I do. But that shouldn't be your focus right now. There'll be time to deal with the media once your peers are safe."

"So the plan changes," I said. "We find the other four before Specter does, and we get them here safely. Everything else takes a back seat to that goal."

"Trance-"

I cut Seward's protest off with a snap of my fingers and the amethyst flare of an orb. "You were saying?"

He looked away. I felt no satisfaction in my small victory. We were all on the same side. We couldn't waste time and energy fighting one another.

"So how do we find them?" Renee asked.

All Ranger eyes landed on me. I sat there dumbly for ten seconds before I realized they wanted an answer. I wasn't a cop; I had no idea how to go about finding missing people. Besides, Gage had been our leader once.

"We find their last known whereabouts and go from there," Gage said into the silence. "The only way to do this quickly is to split up."

Renee blanched. "Alone?"

"No, not alone," I said. "We go two and three. It's not ideal, but we're an odd five."

"Four," Dr. Seward said. "I don't want Trance out in the field until we know more about her powers."

I bristled. "If you want me to stay here, you'll have to shackle me. I am now the most powerful person in this room. I am not being left behind."

He seemed poised to argue, then deflated like a leaking balloon. If I'd inherited anything from my father, it was his stubborn nature, and Seward knew it. "Fine," he said.

"Good." I turned back to the others. "So who picks the teams?"

Eight.

Tempest I had earned the unofficial position of team leader-by standing up to Dr. Seward, or out of respect for my dad's former position as a unit leader, or quite possibly because I could blast a hole in the wall as easy as blinking, take your pick-so they let me divide us into teams. I wasn't sure I wanted the job. It meant being responsible for the lives of four people who weren't me. More when we found the others.

I convinced myself I had divvied us up based on our powers, but that wasn't true. Gage and I had started this journey together, and I owed him for the motel. Experience in something (not likely carpentry, and I couldn't imagine him as a police officer) gave him investigative instincts that I sorely lacked. Granted, what I lacked in experience I could make up for with bravado, but no amount of bl.u.s.tering would protect us when the chips were down. So I picked us as the duo.

The others agreed to be the trio, and we rea.s.sembled ten minutes later on the roof of the Base. Flex and Caliber had their personal Voxes. Their cases snapped nicely to the belts of their uniforms. Onyx couldn't keep one, because each time he shifted he lost anything except those special bikini briefs. Mine clipped nicely on my jeans.

Standing there on the roof, a united team for the first time, we just looked at each other. Gage and I were out of uniform, but we still fit. Our oddball quintet of two shapeshifters, a strongman, a power blaster, and a man with five enhanced senses fit together in a way that regular people could never understand. We'd been raised to do this. No matter where our lives had taken us these last fifteen years, this was where we were meant to end up.

"You sure you're up to this, T?" Flex asked.

"Definitely," I said. "We need to bring the others home."

"Let's make sure we bring ourselves home, too," Caliber said.

We just found each other seemed to dangle at the end of his comment. And I wholeheartedly agreed. "Good luck," I said.

Flex grinned. "Back at you."

Gage and I climbed into a private helicopter, piloted by a serious-looking fellow in military fatigues. He didn't introduce himself, so I designated our pilot Flyboy. Our first a.s.signment was Angela "Trickster" Bourne, last known address in Kingman, Arizona. She did visual retail merchandising for some home furnishing company, and her work took her all over the state. She had been on the road the night of the reactivation, somewhere between Flagstaff and Kingman, and no one had seen her since.

That stretch of desert seemed like the best place to start. All those lonely miles offered a lot of opportunities for Angela to have been ambushed.

Our helicopter might have been state of the art, but it was still d.a.m.ned noisy, so Gage and I spent the trip in silence. I practiced making orbs until Flyboy warned me about setting off the copter's internal fire sensors. Under threat of a dousing, I quit and spent the remainder of the thirty-minute flight trying to remember what Angela looked like. Pale complexion, curly blond hair, green eyes. She could create illusions of her own image, copying herself up to a dozen times. She had stood up and faced the final Bane attack, creating twelve more targets for the adults bearing down on us. For one brief moment, I hadn't been sure which was the real Angela. Then our powers disappeared and took her illusions with them.