slipping her hand back into the glove. She looked across the parking lot toward the trees, depressed a button in her own mask by her earlobe, and said, “Jordan.”
The boy’s voice came through an earbud. “What happened? Is that Elias-?”
“He got shot. I need you to hide him and the guard. Hurry.”
“Both? I can’t-”
“Wait.” She leaned over and turned Elias’s suit on again. He vanished. No way a camera would pick up the hovering bloodstain. “Okay,” she said. “Just the guard. Drag him out between the cars, and don’t let the camera catch you. Move it.”
She watched the tree across the lot until she saw the silhouette of Jordan’s eleven-year-old body descend from a branch and drop. Speaking to Ben’s eyes, she said, “Let’s go,” then stepped toward the doorway. Phin turned away, taking his bouncing peepers with him. Nevaeh and Ben entered the hallway and shut the door behind them.
3
With the smell of Elias’s blood still in her nostrils and her heart racing from the excitement of taking down the guard, Nevaeh hoped for more action-someone spotting their eyes or a security code that had changed since Ben’s informant had given it to him-anything that would force them to take a prisoner and get the intel they needed through good old-fashioned violence.
And she meant good, as in God. After all, everything they did was for him. To get his attention, to please him. Anyone who had a hard time reconciling their methods with God’s Word hadn’t read the Old Testament. He ordered violence against his enemies, and all they were doing was carrying out those orders. Someone had to do it, and more people should; if they did, maybe the Tribe wouldn’t be so necessary and God would call them home. Finally.
So bring it on, she thought. His furious wrath moves our muscles and cuts with our swords.
But there would be no cutting tonight. After the incident with the guard outside, everything else flowed without a hitch, and she supposed that was for the best. Ben had outlined a contingency plan to cover the break-in, but the farther into the building they could be traced, the more likely their true agenda would be discovered. And that would blow their grand plans to make a statement against evil that the world wouldn’t soon forget.
Ben had memorized the layout, and every door opened at his digital command. They coasted past glass- walled rooms inside which workers in hazmat suits layered electronic circuitry into silicon wafers, tested them on monstrous computers, and etched or silkscreened model and lot numbers on their surfaces. The three intruders lowered their heads to keep cameras from catching their eyes and turned their faces away from assembly personnel and guards even as they breezed past them, close enough to smell their perfume, aftershave, and sweat.
Within minutes they’d found the company’s most secure storage room and the vault inside. Ben punched in a code, passed an infrared security chip over a reader, and pressed a fingerprint on a square of transparent film against a biometric scanner. The vault door opened, revealing shelves of aluminum Halliburton cases, labeled with numbers. With his back to Nevaeh he was completely invisible, so when he pulled a case off its shelf, it appeared to spring up and dance in the air on its own. An identical case materialized, drawn from a metamaterial pack on Ben’s back. It floated onto the shelf, and the original vanished into the pack.
The case contained twenty microchips that would give them access to sophisticated military weapons, enough to level a city. These chips were backups of ones already in the Pentagon’s hands. Chances were they would be inventoried but never used, and the dummy duplicates Ben had left in their stead meant their theft would go unnoticed-at least until it was too late. Their tech wizard, Sebastian, had created them from specs provided by their informant, a man privy to top secret government contracts and who sympathized with their cause.
The vault door closed, and Nevaeh and Phin followed Ben back to their point of entrance. Before exiting, Phin produced a can of spray paint and graffitied the hallway wall: STOP HELPING BUTCHERS! And on the opposite wall: THIS TIME, THIS FAR. NEXT TIME, ALL THE WAY.
MicroTech had been the target of protests over their Pentagon contracts. The idea was to pin the attack on the break-in on radical peaceniks, content-this time-to demonstrate their ability to breach the company’s security. The guard’s claims of invisible beings would be chalked up to his head trauma, and the cameras would show that no one had penetrated any deeper than this hallway.
Ben punched in a code, and they stepped into the night.
4
Back on his perch in the tree, Jordan watched through binoculars as the rear door opened and closed. A few moments later Elias appeared, slouched against the brick wall beside the door; someone had turned off his suit, probably to check on his condition.
Lord, make him all right, he prayed. Elias was a bit scruffy, and sometimes his penchant for one-word answers came across as grouchy, but like Jordan he was partial to Western movies and comic books-Wolverine and G.I. Joe were their favorites. And over the years, Jordan had learned about God more from Elias than from any of the others, even Ben with his books and scrolls and big brain. Creed-who had remained home with Hannah, Toby, and Sebastian-once said that Elias’s instruction was like God’s “still small voice” coming to Elijah on the mountain, and Ben’s was God’s voice “like the roar of rushing waters and a loud peal of thunder” that the apostle John had heard in his dream.
Through the binocs he saw Elias rise, and Jordan’s heart thumped with joy. Then he realized two of the others had lifted him, carrying him between them with Elias’s arms draped over their invisible shoulders. He appeared to be skimming over the pavement, his toes dragging behind, arms outstretched and head drooped like a crucified zombie. And that was just creepy.
Jordan spoke into his mic, “Could you guys turn off your ghost suits now? You’re freaking me out.”
Nevaeh popped into view on Elias’s left side, then Ben on his right. As they started up the berm, Jordan dropped down and looked around. “Where’s Phin?” Then he jumped and yipped in surprise.
Phin’s suit beeped and he appeared behind Jordan, his gloved hand on his shoulder.
Jordan swatted at it and stepped away. “Don’t do that!”
Phin just laughed.
Jerk.
Nevaeh wanted only to get back to their rented van, then to their private jet and out of this city. Elias’s weight wasn’t a bother-she’d lugged much heavier things-but that guard would be waking soon. Everything had gone too smoothly to get caught now.
She and Ben carried Elias past Jordan and Phin and pushed through the hole in the chain link they had let Jordan cut, which he had thought was “totally sick”: after spraying it with liquid nitrogen, the metal had broken under his fingers like ice. They traversed a park on the other side and piled into the van, laying Elias on the floor in the back. Ben and Jordan crouched next to him, Ben peeling the mask off Elias’s gray-bearded face.
Nevaeh got into the passenger seat and yanked off her mask, releasing long black hair that flowed over her shoulders. She shook it out of her face and looked at Phin behind the wheel. He’d already removed his mask and was rubbing at the metamaterial paint with which they’d coated their eyelids.
“This stuff is terrible,” he said. “Every time I blink, I have to force my eyes open again.”
“But you’re so pretty,” she said. “You’d have made a beautiful glam-rocker.”
He scowled at her, and she could see the crazy in his eyes. She tried to remember if Phin had always been a bit bats. No, just hyper. The loony part had crept in slowly-like what, over a couple centuries? Seemed like it.
“So,” she said, “what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”
He started the van, but before he could put it into gear, Ben stopped him. “A second, please.” In the glow of the dome light he nodded at the others, bowed his head, and they began to pray. Correction: the three conscious
