Shade and Clearwater

Chapter Twenty-One

 The real world welcomed me back with a cacophony of gunfire. At least two, maybe three, submachine guns were blazing away meters from where I was sitting, still tied to a chair, still blindfolded. Each new burst that knifed through my aching head felt like it would be the last thing I heard, but they weren't firing at me. They were firing at something outside of the room.

Jon! I realized in a panic. I had to help him. There were too many for him to handle alone.

I knew I couldn't reach the agents in the room, not without a disruptor, but Circe might be an opening. If I could just hijack her senses for a moment, I might get a better idea of what exactly was going on, and find a way to help Jon. But strangely, when I reached out, I couldn't find her.

There was a momentary lull in the action. I heard several metallic clicking noises, figured the marshals might be reloading. I almost yelled for Jon but realized it was pointless. He already knew the situation, or so I figured.

"Allie, get ready," I heard Miles' voice whisper in my ear.

For a moment I thought the Feds had somehow left my earpiece in, but then I remembered I hadn't even gone in with one. Jon and I hadn't exactly geared up to go check on Max – and believe me, we wouldn't be making that mistake again – so I had no idea how Miles was talking to me.

"Ready for what?" I whispered, probably to myself.

As if to answer, there was a crashing sound like a rock being thrown through a window, then the familiar high-pitched squeal of a disruptor grenade. Three new consciousnesses appeared nearby, the marshals who'd been guarding me. Ignoring the throbbing pain in my head, I reached out and with a simple jab to the consciousness center of the brainstem, I put each agent to sleep, one-by-one.

There was deafening silence.

Gentle hands fumbled with the cords that tied my hands behind the back of my chair. Then I heard the click of a pocket knife, and they went slack. "You're free," I heard Jon's voice.

I tore the blindfold off, spat the gag out of my mouth, and threw myself at Jon, holding him tight, desperate.

He looked at me with wide eyes. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

"Yeah, they did," I said, smiling at him through tears of relief. "I think I'm going to be okay, though."

Jon looked me over a bit longer, and I could see he was just as relieved as I was. "We need to move out," he said. "We don't know when reinforcements might arrive."

I nodded. "Jon, the telepath was here. She was trying to interrogate me."

"That's not good," said Miles' voice. Startled, I looked all around, confused how Miles could have gotten to Capital City so fast. A sleek-looking gadget hovered nearby, half a meter wide and about as long, with the sound of a thousand house flies buzzing their wings. "We have to assume whatever information Allie has is compromised."

I stared at the thing. "Miles?"

The device waggled, like Miles was shaking his head. "Good grief, Allie. It's a drone. I don't have time to explain at the moment but I'm controlling it remotely."

I noticed a gun barrel slung under the drone, about as thick as Butch's grenade launcher. "Is that how you took out the marshals?"

"Of course. Listen, you and Jon need to get out of there. We can debrief on the road."

Jon slipped his arm under mine for support and we hobbled out of the office and through a dimly lit warehouse and out the backdoor and into the night. I wondered for a minute how long I'd been in there.