Justice Keepers Saga - Books 10-12

Chapter 7-2

Adjusting his aim, he noticed Jack Hunter at the southern border of the park. The man was watching the street, focused on potential threats at the ground level. Aiden felt hot hatred in his chest. Hunter had tried to rip a man apart with a Bending, but he got to keep his symbiont and his position? And they said Aiden was unworthy? Yes, killing Jack Hunter would make Slade very happy.

His finger curled around the trigger.

Standing at the edge of the park with one hand on the grip of his holstered pistol, Jack frowned into the distance. “Everything"s still quiet,” he said. “I"m thinking we"re in the clear.”

“Just the same,” Anna said in his ear. “Stay sharp.”

He felt his lips curl into a smile and nodded slowly. “Always,” he promised. “You just make sure you do the same.” It was the closest that he could get to saying "I love you" over an open channel. Not that he minded the rest of the team knowing how he felt, but they might think he was being unprofessional if he got all sappy.

Resuming his task, he took another visual survey of the area. Drialo Avenue was a wide street between two lines of skyscrapers. Ordinarily, that street would be filled with a hundred pedestrians going about their business, but now it was quiet. Everyone had been cleared out for-

Summer was terrified!

Without a second"s hesitation, Jack put up a Time Bubble. That sudden spike of alarm was something he had never felt before from Summer, and strangely, the instant he was safe within the confines of the bubble, her fear vanished to be replaced with a sense of relief so powerful it made him want to sigh. Instead, he looked around.

Beyond the bubble"s shimmering surface, the world was a blurry mess of wobbly buildings and distorted trees. Everything seemed normal. But Summer would not react like that without cause.

Jack took two steps to his left.

When he let the Time Bubble collapse, something whistled past his ear and struck the ground behind him, burying itself in the grass.

“Sniper!” Jack bellowed.

Voices cried out in shock.

Dropping to one knee, Jack drew his pistol and used spatial awareness to calculate the bullet"s trajectory. Four buildings down on the west side of the street. He fired several times without hesitation.

Aiden gasped when Jack Hunter blurred out of the line of fire in the very instant that he pulled the trigger. Instead of killing the other man, Aiden"s bullet hit the ground and sent clumps of dirt flying. People were already screaming; he could hear them even at this distance.

Desperate, frantic, Aiden tried to adjust his aim. Maybe he could get off a second shot before he had to retreat. When he centred the cross-hairs on Hunter once again, the other man was down on one knee in the grass…and pointing his pistol directly at Aiden.

Aiden threw himself sideways just before something smashed through the scope of his g*n. Another bullet grazed his right shoulder, ripping a gash in his suit and exposing a thin strip of his flesh.

The cloak failed in that area, and part of Aiden"s upper arm was now visible. Oh, Bleakness take him! This should have been easy. He was well beyond the range of Jack"s spatial awareness. There was no way the other man could have sensed him. And with the cloak providing invisibility, there was no chance that Jack might have caught a glimpse of him. So, how could the man have known? Aiden couldn"t believe that Hunter would just happen to erect a Time Bubble mere seconds before a bullet went through his head.

Ignoring those questions, he scurried away from the ledge so that his enemies could not get a clear shot at him. Then he disassembled the rifle, returned it to its case and fled into the stairwell.

Halfway down the first flight, he disabled the cloak and let himself become visible again. There was no point in maintaining it now. Not with the suit damaged. Aiden had failed in his task, and Slade would not be pleased.

People were out of their seats and running in all directions, trying to get out of the park before the sniper took another shot. Over the cacophony of voices, Melissa heard Anna talking.

The other woman was crouching near the corner of the stage with her pistol in one hand, scanning the distant buildings for some sign of the shooter. “Rooftop Team,” she snapped. “What have you got?”

A brief moment of silence was followed by Anna sighing. “What do you mean you can"t see him?” she snarled. “The door opened and closed on its own…Well, that"s just b****y brilliant.”

Ignoring her, Melissa climbed up on stage to join the patrol of uniformed guards who had clustered around the Prime Council. Sarona Vason was spooked. You could see it in her eyes.

Backing up with her pistol drawn, its muzzle pointed toward the shooter"s rooftop, Melissa took a deep breath. “Madame Prime Council,” she said. “I will be escorting you and your team through the evacuation route.”

“Thank you, Agent Carlson,” Sarona murmured.

Melissa almost dropped her g*n when the shock hit her. The Prime Council knew who she was? Recovering her wits in a heartbeat, she put that out of her mind and went with the guards through the backstage exit.

That took them down a small set of stairs to the field on the north side of the park. Men and women in heavy armour formed two lines around their group, each one carrying a portable force-field generator.

Melissa scanned the nearby buildings for any sign of trouble, but there was nothing she could spot with the n***d eye. She was pretty damn sure that Sarona Vason was not the sniper"s target anyway. If he was aiming for the stage, then his shot was off by at least three hundred feet. So, either he was the worst sniper in the world…or he had been trying to kill Jack.

“Ma"am,” one of the Prime Council"s aides said, “We"re going to have to cancel the debate tonight.”

Sarona Vason continued onward with her eyes fixed dead ahead, not even bothering to acknowledge the young man with a glance. “Absolutely not,” she insisted. “I will not be bullied by a terrorist. If we show weakness, Dusep will use it against us.”

Melissa was right behind them with her g*n pointed down at the ground, frowning as she glanced left and right. “I don"t think you were the target anyway,” she muttered to herself.

“Very astute, Agent Carlson,” the Prime Council replied. “Perhaps you would like to share your observations with the group?”

A blush put some colour in Melissa"s cheeks. She had not intended for the other woman to hear that, but she was in it now. “A trained sniper might miss by a few inches,” she said, “but that shot was off by a hundred metres. There"s no way they were trying to hit you.”

She could only see the back of Sarona Vason"s head, but she still felt an incredible surge of relief when the other woman nodded. “I reached the same conclusion,” the Prime Council said. “This attack was not about me.”

On the north side of the park, they found the Prime Council"s limo – a long, black car decked out in force-field generators and ballistic glass – waiting by the curb. With a great deal of urgency, Sarona Vason was ushered into the back of the vehicle. Her aides went in next, and then some of the armoured guards.

Melissa turned to go.

“Agent Carlson,” the Prime Council called out.

Pausing in mid-step, Melissa turned back to the other woman. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Ma"am?” Anxiety tied her stomach in knots. If her performance had been lacking in some way…

She could see Sarona leaning forward to peer out the open door. “Join us, please,” the Prime Council said. “I would appreciate your insight.”

“Um…Yes, ma"am.”

An hour later, when the commotion had died down, Jack was sitting in the back of an automated car with Anna. His girlfriend kept glancing in his direction and frowning; he could tell that she was worried.

Closing his eyes, Jack let his head hang. He touched two fingers to his forehead. “I"m all right,” he assured her. “The bullet didn"t even touch me.”

Anna sat with her shoulders hunched up, staring mournfully into her lap. “Yes, but it got pretty close,” she muttered. “I don"t know, I just…I can"t bear the thought of losing you, you know?”

“You"re not gonna lose me.”

A moment later, she was looking at him, those icy blue eyes of hers trying to bore a hole in his skull. “How did you do it?” she asked. “How did you know that someone was going to take a shot at you?”

didTilting his head back, Jack blinked a few times as he considered it. “It wasn"t me,” he answered. “It was Summer. Right before it happened, she had this moment of…panic, and I just trusted her.”

Anna gave him a smooch on the cheek. “Well, I"m glad you did,” she whispered. “But maybe you should ask her about it.”

That was a wonderful idea. Jack let his mind drift, willing himself into a relaxed state that would allow him to commune with his Nassai. With Anna holding his hand, it was easy.

The world began to fade, growing darker and darker until he was floating inside an endless void. Sheer nothingness in all directions. For a very brief moment, he was nothing, but then sensation began to return.

heSound came first, then touch. He heard the chirping of birds and felt stone beneath his feet. The darkness receded, and he saw that he was standing in the middle of a garden, surrounded by rose bushes and flower beds full of yellow tulips and purple lilies. He could smell the flowers.

His actual body was still in the car with Anna, but this virtual world was as real to him as his waking life. He came here often to speak with Summer.

On cue, she stepped out from behind one of the bushes and stood before him in a strapless white dress, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. Her smile was warm and inviting. “It"s good to see you again, my host.”

“How did you know?”

Turning gracefully on her heel, Summer clipped a rose with a pair of scissors that appeared in her hand the moment she needed them. “Straight to business then?” she said. “No time for pleasantries.”

Jack stood on the narrow path with his arms folded, glaring at her. At first, he tried to convey irritation, but then he realized that he didn"t have to convey anything. Summer knew his every thought. “Hey, you saved my life today,” he countered. “I don"t think it"s totally unreasonable that I might like to understand how you did it.”

totallyhow“You call it spatial awareness.”

Jack blinked as if somebody had just thrown a glass of water in his face. “Spatial awareness,” he said. “I couldn"t sense him with spatial awareness.”

It startled him when Summer answered that with soft, delicate laughter. She offered him the flower that she had cut, and Jack took a moment to enjoy its scent. After all, she had gone out of her way to fill this mental construct with sights and sounds and smells that he would find soothing. The least he could do was enjoy it.