He looked like Nate, back at the dance. His skin wasn’t skin—it was something else, some kind of metal or stone. His hands were three-fingered hooks.
And he was where Aubrey had been only moments before.
Jack searched for a gun, but there was nothing—they’d all been thrown out with the soldiers.
Laura tackled the beast, smashing him down to the floor with an enormous crash. The guy tried to speak, but his voice was an inhuman rumble. People were shouting for Laura to get out of the way so they could shoot him, but Laura didn’t listen. She threw a punch into his face, connecting with a sickening crunch. Before she could throw another, the thing launched her into the ceiling. Her body tangled against the jagged hole.
The monster stood, and was instantly hit by Krezi’s energy blasts. He stumbled backward, but the attacks only seemed to push him, not hurt him.
He took a step forward, and fell flat on his face.
Aubrey. It must have been her—she’d tripped him.
A soldier shouted at Jack, and he turned to see a whole team of Green Berets in front of the bus.
“Open the door,” one called. Jack searched for a moment before seeing the bent lever. By the time he got it open, the soldiers were spreading out around the bus. Someone stepped inside and started grabbing kids, pulling them from their seats and ordering them onto the street.
The monster was getting up again, but the blasts were targeted on his head now, and he was trying to shield himself with his arms.
Someone grabbed Jack, and pulled him from the driver’s seat.
On the street, it was harder to see what was going on inside the bus. He hoped Aubrey was keeping hidden. The whole convoy was devastated, every vehicle either damaged or burning, and the street was filled with soldiers who were trying to tend to the injured, or beat back the remaining enemies.
The bus shuddered, rocking back and forth, and then a hole erupted from the back. The monster fell out onto the pavement and began running in slow bounds off the road and into the brush.
The soldiers gathered the Lambdas from the bus and formed a defensive perimeter. Within minutes aircraft appeared, flying low over the demolished collection of vehicles. Jack could hear them overhead for quite a while, but they’d missed all the action. There was nothing for them to attack.
Cesar Carbajal was dead. He was the only Lambda to die. And though the soldiers didn’t make an announcement, Jack could hear every word they whispered to one another. Cesar hadn’t been killed by the terrorists—he’d taken a bullet. Sure, it was the terrorists’ fault that the battle started in the first place, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. This war—this thing they’d agreed to do—was deadly. Cesar had no way to defend himself; his power was all mental. He wasn’t even trained for combat.
Aubrey sat across from Jack on the pavement, her knees tucked up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs.
“This isn’t like what they talked about,” she said. “It isn’t like the girl at the school.”
“I know,” Jack answered.
“So many,” she said, gesturing weakly to a row of bodies lined up a few car lengths outside the perimeter.
Jack glanced over at the dead bodies. Eight teenagers. Just like him, except driven by—what? He’d never heard any demands from the terrorists. Did they just want to watch the world burn?
Aubrey spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “In training they said the terrorists worked in groups of three or four. They didn’t talk about big attacks like this. They didn’t talk about battles. The terrorists never come out and fight the army.”
“They must have known who we are—what we’re going to do. They wanted to stop us.”
Jack crossed over to sit next to Aubrey and put his arm around her waist.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said. “I mean, so many . . .”
Jack couldn’t see where the other bodies were being collected, but he heard the radios talking about more of them—the soldiers killed in the attack. There were three, and several more wounded.
This didn’t seem like any terrorist act he’d heard of. Granted, not a lot of details were ever given, but they never seemed like suicide attacks. Had they just underestimated the army? Were they unprepared?
Aubrey laid her head on his shoulder.
From the distant skies, Jack could hear the thumping of helicopter blades.
FORTY-THREE
THE HELICOPTERS EVACUATED THE LAMBDAS to the airport, where a variety of aircraft was waiting. Aubrey stared into the dim morning light around them, wondering what other dangers were lurking in the shadows, what monsters she was getting ready to fight.
They’d all started like she had. She’d been a normal girl until she got the virus. It hadn’t taken long before she shoplifted her first thing—a box of medicine that she couldn’t afford. It hadn’t seemed evil. It was for her dad, not her, and she knew the pharmacy could take the loss—it was owned by one of the wealthiest families in town. Still, she’d cried that night, all night, afraid that she’d be found out.
It got easier after that. She needed supplies for school—notebooks and pens and a new backpack—and then she needed school clothes. Nicole was helping by that point, telling Aubrey what to choose—which outfits were in style and which colors complemented Aubrey’s skin and hair. It had been so easy to steal—a sweater from here, a pair of jeans from there. They were big companies with plenty of money; Aubrey knew that a pair of jeans didn’t cost one hundred and fifty dollars to make—it was just a greedy corporation that could get away with huge prices. If they missed one or two pairs, then what difference did it make?
Aubrey couldn’t make a direct connection between shoplifting and terrorism—that was crazy—but there had to be some path, some series of bad choices. Like when Nicole had dared Aubrey to steal the principal’s car, and Aubrey had faked an ankle sprain to get out of it. What if she hadn’t? Stealing jeans was one thing, but stealing a car? And what about the parties she’d been to, the party where Jeff Savage brought ecstasy and Aubrey could have stolen all of it. Selling that would have paid their rent for months.
She wasn’t a terrorist, but what was she? A criminal? A thief who just wasn’t stealing anything at the moment?
She’d be better, she promised herself, though it felt hollow. How could she truly be better when she didn’t have any reason not to be? There was nothing here to steal, nothing to gain.
When the helicopter touched down at the Salt Lake airport after a short flight, Captain Rowley directed them to a waiting truck. Another of the Lambda teams was in tow, an officer leading them. The other groups—including Nicole—were being sent elsewhere. Everyone had a different flight to catch.
Aubrey’s team and the second group loaded into the truck, which took them to a small commuter plane guarded by four soldiers in full combat gear. The plane was only sparsely filled—ten soldiers were relaxing, their packs and weapons in the seats next to them. When they saw Captain Rowley, they stood as much as they could in the cramped plane and saluted.
“Men,” the captain said. “These are our Lambdas. They’ll be joining us for the next couple of missions.”
The men nodded as though they knew what was going on. Aubrey recognized a few of them from the mission at the school. None of them seemed thrilled at the prospect of working with kids, and one of them openly grimaced at Aubrey and Laura—two small high school girls.
The Lambdas made their way to the back of the plane, to where seats were still open.
In a moment the captain and the other team leader were in the small first-class cabin, looking over some paperwork. The aircraft began to taxi without any announcement from the cockpit. Aubrey had only ever flown twice—on a school choir trip that she’d gotten a scholarship for—and this all felt new and weird. She missed having a flight attendant to explain what was going on.
“So you’re supposed to save the country?” one of the soldiers asked, turning in his seat.
None of the teens answered.
“I asked you a question, Lambda,” he said, smiling but grim. “Don’t forget that we outrank you.”
“That air force puke up front outranks you,” another one said. “The guy who refueled the plane outranks
