Shattered Sky

  He recalled how, when he was a child, his father had once amused him by rubbing a balloon against his shirt, and sticking it to the wall. His mother had a trick, too. She would take Dillon to the laundry room, and turn off the light, then pull the sheets from the dryer. They clung to one another, and as they pulled them apart, lightning would flash in the ripples of the linens. “Dream lightning,” his mother called it. “It fills the sheets and sparks your dreams.”

  1:39. He shuffled his feet like a boxer, building the charge, then approached the vault door, slowly extending his index finger toward the jamb.

  Open sesame.

  Even before his finger touched the door, static sparked from his fingertip—a healthy shock—but he could feel that this was not a random static blast. It was controlled, and prolonged, as if the gap between his finger and the door was just another synapse, and the lock was simply another appendage to flex.

  In that protracted instant he could actually feel the mechanism as a part of himself, the gears, the deadbolts—but more than that, he could feel the pattern of the digital combination within the shock pulsing through his fingertip. The sensation was automatic, but what he did with that sensation was an act of will. In the instant it took for the static to discharge from his finger, he shaped it to match the series of charges of the digital combination, and by the time his hand flinched back from the shock, the job had been done. The most sophisticated security system in the world had just been undone by a carpet shock.

  The mechanism engaged, and the triplet of huge deadbolts began to pull back. An alarm sounded immediately, no doubt reaching to the far corners of the plant. In any normal plant, it would be the panic signal of a meltdown.

  But the blare of the alarm was nothing compared to the blast of perception that flooded Dillon as the door began to swing its long arc to the open position. It was the same wave of awareness that sent him into convulsions when he had been confined to his chair. But now, instead of clogging his mind, it activated it—galvanizing him beyond a mere adrenaline rush, filling him with determination. If he could not have Deanna’s faith, he thought, at least he had the brute force of his will, and perhaps that would be enough. He peeled off his socks, and without even glancing back to say a final farewell to his cell, he squeezed through the widening slit of the opening door, and into the expanse of the containment dome.

  With the alarm mounting into a ghastly echo in the great stone chamber, Dillon cut a jagged, serpentine path toward Corridor A—the only corridor he knew. His zigs and darts were perfectly choreographed to defeat the efforts of the sharpshooters stationed on the catwalks above. He heard the crack of one rifle, then another. Were they ordered to kill him, he wondered, or just to disable him? The bullets nicked the ground, setting off coughs of concrete dust just a few feet away. Then, as he lunged for the closed door of Corridor A, one of the shots hit the mark. It caught Dillon behind the right knee, and its exit blew his kneecap to shreds.

  He collapsed in excruciating pain, and almost succumbed to it—but he told himself not to look, not to consider the damage, because the moment he did, it would be over. He could not give up—he would either escape, or die trying; there could be no in between. So he reached his hand up, and grabbed on to the knob of the locked door to Corridor A, hoping the sharpshooters would hesitate, seeing he was wounded. They would assess before firing again, and that moment of assessment would give Dillon the advantage.

  The door to Corridor A had a simple mechanical lock. He focused his will, forcing it into the keyhole, jiggling the knob with his hand, with just the proper torque and rhythm to make the mechanism spring. Then his leg took a second shot; this one in his calf, just beneath his shattered knee. He screamed, but let the sound of his own pain fill him like a war cry. He turned the knob, and fell forward into the corridor, pulling himself along by his hands until he was out of the sharpshooters’ sights.

  “Face down! Now!” a voice screamed right beside him. It was the Corridor A guard, who held his pistol at point-blank range, aimed at Dillon’s head. If the other guards were instructed to merely take Dillon down, this one was definitely planning on taking him out.

  “I am face down,” said Dillon, pushing himself up on his hands.

  “You know what I mean.”

  He put his boot on Dillon’s back, pushing him into a prone position, cheek against the concrete floor. Dillon took a deep breath. There was a trail of blood to the door behind him, but the blood had stopped flowing. The sharp pain of his wounds was already beginning to subside.

  Dillon pushed himself up again, defying the guard’s direct order, then turned to him, catching his gaze. There was not enough time to unlock the guard’s mind and find the perfect thing to say that would make him lower the weapon, so Dillon played a dangerous angle.

  “If you shoot me, the gun will backfire,” he told the guard with calculated calmness, “and the blast will blind you.”

  “Don’t move!” shouted the guard. “I’m warning you!”

  “A piece of shrapnel will wedge in your temporal lobe,” Dillon continued. “You’ll lose the ability to speak. To read. To communicate.”

  The guard’s finger was still firm on the trigger, but his hand was shaking the slightest bit.

  “Your misery will be so great that in three years you will take your own life,” Dillon told him. “If you pull that trigger—”

  Dillon’s leg still ached, but he knew his ruse would only sustain him another moment, so he bolted upright, and ran down the corridor. His healing power that had done so much for so many, had already pulled enough of his bone and cartilage back together so that he could limp away, his pain still intense, but bearable—but if this guard shot, there would be no mending. Dillon knew a blast to the heart or brain would kill him before he had the chance to heal.

  He didn’t look back to see what the guard would do, instead he just impelled himself forward. Only when he turned into a side corridor did he know his ploy had worked. It was a bluff, of course. Nothing he had said to the guard was true, but it had the semblance of a prophesy, and coming from Dillon Cole, even the most disciplined of soldiers would have paused for thought. For once, his celebrity had saved him.

  The corridors he traveled through had no windows—no hint of any connection to a world beyond the plant, and the sound of the alarm kept him from hearing any approaching guards. His only advantage was the skeletal nature of Bussard’s crew. It had served the general well while Dillon was imprisoned but had no contingency for the complete breakdown of the security system. It was a big plant, and as long as he kept out of the visual arc of the videocams mounted on the ceiling, they couldn’t pinpoint his position.

  He burst through a double door, hoping it led to the outside, but instead found himself in the empty cafeteria. It was an open space, and open spaces weren’t good . . . but on the other hand, kitchens usually had service entrances. He leapt over the service counter, knocking several metal pans to the ground, and although he heard someone banging through the cafeteria doors behind him, he didn’t wait to see who, or how many of them there were. A cold draft flowed past his ankles, and, following the direction of the draft, he located the kitchen’s back door. He pushed his way through it, and found himself standing on a loading dock, in freezing rain.

  He took an instant to get his bearings, and see the best route of escape. The entire plant was flooded in spotlights, and everything beyond those bright lights was darkness. He heard a crack of lightning, then realized it wasn’t lightning at all—because he felt a sudden pain in his gut, and warm blood began to pulse from his abdomen. He turned as the second shot pierced him, higher this time. The right side of his chest. Unable to bear the pain, his legs gave out, and he crumbled to the wet ground. It’s Bussard, thought Dillon. It has to be Bussard. But as he looked up, it was a far more familiar figure standing over him with a smoking weapon. Dillon felt betrayed. And for a moment his despair almost overwhelmed the pain.

  LIEUTENANT MADELINE HAAS
HAD spent a restless night, waiting for the alarms to go off. She knew they would. She didn’t know what she would do, but she knew it would be something decisive: Either something that would mark her for a promotion, or mark her for disgrace, but she wasn’t sure which it would be.

  She left her room even before the alarms went off, not willing to wait, and stood by the entrance to the sleeping quarters, beneath an overhang that protected her from the downpour. When the alarms when off, she was the first one out, circling the plant, eyeing the exits. There were six exits from the main building of the plant. Three of them led to the underground utility accessways that didn’t connect to the containment corridors at all, so Dillon would not come out of those doors. Two exits were in the main office wing, where Bussard’s office and quarters were. It was one of the best patrolled areas of the plant, so if Dillon went in that direction, he would be brought down in an instant. That left the loading dock as the only true chance of escape that Dillon had.

  She rounded the path to the dock, and stood behind a Dumpster, waiting, hearing others approaching. That’s when Dillon burst through onto the dock, slipping on the wet ground. The loading dock was like a shooting gallery. Even in the blinding rain he was an easy target beneath the floodlights.

  What Maddy did next was a split-second decision, that might never have come to her had Dillon not already cleared her mind and brought her thoughts into fine focus. With other officers approaching behind her she raised her gun and fired, then fired again. Her aim was precise, as she knew it would be, and Dillon collapsed to the ground.

  She ran to him. Blood was everywhere, pulsing into the flooded pavement, mixing with the rain, and spilling over the edge of the loading dock. Dillon tried to speak, but Maddy leaned down to him, holding her weapon to his face.

  “Quiet,” she demanded.

  He gasped his breaths, but Maddy ignored him. Her duty was clear, and her purpose justified. She could not be sidetracked.

  “I’ve shot your right lung, and your left kidney,” she told him. “Maybe your spleen and liver, too. Most people would die from it, but you’re not most people. Do you understand?”

  He moved his jaw, but no sound came out.

  “How badly do you want to get out of here?”

  Still no words, but this time Dillon nodded. Do whatever is necessary, it communicated. Do what it takes. And so she did. Before anyone else reached the loading dock, she put the gun against his cheek, pulled the trigger, and blew apart Dillon’s face.

  BUSSARD’S CAREER FLASHED BEFORE his eyes. The moment he was jarred awake by the alarm, and made aware of the nature of the emergency, he knew it was either him, or Dillon. If Dillon escaped, Bussard had enough enemies in the Pentagon to send his career down in flames. After thirty years of struggling to get where he was, he was not going to let himself get shot down. His superiors feared Dillon—and that was an asset in this situation. They saw Dillon as an armed warhead—too useful to destroy, but dangerous to maintain. Dillon’s death would be unfortunate, but his escape would be catastrophic. The Pentagon would rather see him dead than on the loose, and there might even be a collective sigh of relief on word of Dillon’s death.

  With his own gun drawn he fired orders left and right, making it brutally clear that if they could not catch Dillon, then they must kill him. When word came that Dillon was in the cafeteria, Bussard led the way, and he followed the sound of gunfire through the kitchen to the loading dock.

  Shielding his eyes from the spotlights and rain, he found Haas kneeling over a blood-drenched body. Dillon. She held her hand to Dillon’s neck, feeling for a pulse.

  “He’s dead, sir,” Haas said.

  Bussard tried to hide his own sigh of relief at the news. “Are you sure?”

  “He turned as I shot, sir. He took a blast in the face, leaving a pretty big exit wound in the back of his head. Would you like to see?”

  Bussard looked down at the pulp of Dillon’s face. His nose, and cheek had been shredded. Blood covered his chest and abdomen as well. Although Bussard was no stranger to gore, he had no burning desire to see Dillon Cole’s splattered brains either. Besides, he was already contemplating the report he would file.

  MADDY KEPT A CLOSE eye on Bussard through all of this. She watched his eyes linger on Dillon’s inert form for a brief moment, but as soon as Bussard’s men began to arrive on the scene, Bussard began to delegate duties, refusing to give even a moment of respect to the passing of Dillon Cole.

  “Haslovich, get to the control room, and shut off that damn alarm. Haas and Burns, get the body to the infirmary. Johanson, clean this mess.” And the rest he sent back to their quarters. “Show’s over.”

  The contingent of officers began to break up, but Bussard didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. “Shouldn’t you get on the line to General Harwood, sir?” Maddy prodded.

  Bussard sighed. He took one more glance toward Dillon, then nodded to Maddy. “You did the right thing, Haas. He couldn’t be allowed to escape.” And then he added, “You’re twice the officer I expected you to be. When this fiasco is over, assuming we still have careers, I hope I’ll have the privilege of having you under my command again.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He pushed his way past Burns and Johanson, who were still tending to the body, and into the plant.

  Once he was gone, Burns turned to Maddy. “Who was this guy anyway?”

  Well, thought Maddy, if nothing else, Bussard had been successful at keeping the majority of his officers in the dark. “Nobody anymore,” she told him. “Tell you what—why don’t you two bring the gurney, and I’ll wait with the stiff.”

  “Okay by me,” Johanson said and left with Burns, both probably happier to be out of the rain than away from the body.

  As soon as they were through the door and out of earshot, Maddy got to work.

  “Dillon? Dillon, can you hear me?”

  No response. She put her fingers to his neck. She had lied to Bussard, of course, about the pulse—she had felt a weak pulse a minute before, but she could not feel it now. Her own heart was pounding so furiously it defeated any attempt to feel Dillon’s. The blood had stopped flowing from his wounds. That either meant he was dead, or that he had begun his miraculous healing process. She had to believe he was still alive—and that the bullet had cut cleanly through his jaw and nasal cavity without splintering any bone back toward his brain. She had to believe it because she could not live with the alternative.

  An Army-issue delivery truck was parked twenty yards away. It was the only port in the storm, and the closest thing to a plan she had at the moment. She hauled Dillon onto her shoulders and climbed down from the loading dock, splashing her way toward the truck.

  The passenger door was locked, so she put Dillon down, and rammed her fist through the window. It hurt more than she expected it to. She undid the lock, pulled open the door, and when she turned to Dillon she was surprised to see him struggling to his feet, climbing into the truck under his own power. Seeing him alive lifted a huge weight from her. She even thought she could make out some features of his ruined face. He was already bringing order out of the chaos, undoing his wounds.

  “Hey, Haas—what the hell?”

  It was Burns. He and Johanson were out on the loading dock with the gurney. She thanked God that these officers were not too quick on the uptake, and tried to play on their dim awareness. “Change of plans,” she shouted back to them. “Bussard will explain it to you.”

  But no sooner had she said it than Bussard came out onto the dock behind them, his BS detector finally kicking in. It only took an instant for him to size up the situation.

  “Haas!”

  She jumped in the passenger door, forcing her way over Dillon to the driver’s seat. How long would it take to hot-wire a truck? Too long—Bussard was already on his way, sprinting the distance from the loading dock, with Burns and Johanson close behind.

  While she fiddled with wires beneath the steering column, it was Dillon wh
o had the presence of mind to grab her weapon and fire, blowing off the ignition completely. With the ignition gone, all it would take was a screw driver to start it, but there was nothing in the glove box but maps and gum wrappers.

  Bussard jumped up on the running board, grabbing Dillon through the window. “You son of a bitch!”

  And then Dillon did something strange. He turned to Bussard, and spoke. His voice was a garbled mess, his lips barely able to form words, but from the instant he began to speak, Bussard was transfixed. It only took a moment for Dillon to say his piece, but for that moment even the raindrops seemed suspended in air.

  “She was dead before the fire,” Dillon hissed at Bussard. “You suffocated her.” Then Dillon leaned closer to Bussard and delivered his final line with a guttural growl of enmity:

  “You suffocated her . . . and they knew.”

  Something snapped. Something detonated with such force, Maddy could feel the shockwave pass through her in a single migraine pulse that made her hair stand on end. And suddenly Bussard didn’t look right. His eyes were wrong—mismatched. One pupil was open and dilated, the other closed to a pin prick. He fell from the running board onto Burns and Johanson, screaming, flailing his arms, tearing at his own scalp. Dillon slumped down, completely spent. Maddy frantically searched the cab for anything flat that could fit into the open sore of the broken ignition, and, finding nothing, she tore the mirror down from the visor, broke it against the dashboard, and jammed the largest sliver into the ignition. She cut her thumb and forefinger as she turned the jagged shard of glass, but the engine started. With Bussard still wailing, she tugged the shift into gear, sideswiped Burns who was trying to block her, and took off toward the electrified gate, her wounded right hand already on the mend, tingling in its point-blank proximity to Dillon.

  IN THE COMMOTION ONLY one guard had the wherewithal to find a jeep, and take off in pursuit of the truck that crashed its way through the electrified gate. He was able to keep the truck’s taillights in his sights, but a half mile past the gate, a pickup came barreling through an intersection near Bobby’s Eat-N-Greet, sending the jeep spinning off the road into a muddy ditch. An old man stepped from the ruined pickup, gripping what was most certainly a broken arm, angrily spouting about stop signs, and damned crazy-ass military driving. Meanwhile the vehicle the guard was pursuing had quickly sped out of sight.