Shards of Hope

Chapter 71

LESS THAN TWO hours after the meeting with the other members of the Ruling Coalition, and well before the planned announcement of the Coalition’s availability to the public, Aden and Zaira went into the proposed neighborhood. It was just past five in New York, the sunlight warm. Sixty minutes after their arrival and initial reconnaissance, they mapped out the security strategy from their concealed position on a rooftop.

“Any security will have to be subtle,” he said to Zaira. “The whole point of this exercise is to calm the populace, not put them on edge.”

“We should check out the parameters of the park the Coalition intends to use, see if there are any areas we need to sweep for hidden devices beforehand.” A pause. “It would be much safer if the meeting was indoors.”

“And much less effective.”

“Don’t get dead.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

Feeling her mind curl around him, Aden made his way down to the small neighborhood park with her. The two of them were dressed in civilian clothing—jeans and a white shirt for him, over which he’d thrown on the leather jacket Zaira had lent back to him. She wore a soft pink V-neck sweater borrowed from Ivy over her own black pants. It made them appear the couple they were, and meant they blended in with the people around them, though Aden could tell he was being recognized.

Three or four people nodded at him, but didn’t interrupt. An elderly man, however, came over. “You’re the Arrow,” he said, leaning heavily on a cane. “I heard you were captured, dead, or in hiding.”

“As you can see,” Aden replied, “I’m alive and well.” He also planned on a small demonstration of his power later that night in order to quash the claims of him being too weak to lead the squad.

The time for secrets was over.

Now his men and women needed him to be a bogeyman bigger than any other.

“Stupid rumors.” A huffed-out breath from the elderly man. “Can’t afford to have you die—the whole thing would collapse.”

Leaving the man sitting on a wooden bench, he and Zaira did a sweep of the park while appearing to do nothing but stroll, his left hand loosely linked with her right. It was why she’d accompanied him rather than any of the other members of the squad—the tabloids were already starting to hint at a relationship between them, so her presence wouldn’t be remarked upon except in that context.

They kept their senses on alert the entire forty minutes it took them to map out the park. It was highly likely the enemy had some kind of base in New York. It explained how they’d been able to organize the previous attempt on Aden’s life so soon after his arrival in Manhattan. If they were so bold as to make a second attempt, Aden and Zaira would be ready.

At present, though, the only people nearby were families taking advantage of the gentle early evening sunlight, and other people out for a stroll. When a small girl accidentally kicked her ball over to Aden, he kicked it back to her. She waved at him in thanks and kicked it on to her father.

A ray of sunlight hit her tight bronze curls just as Aden felt his senses prickle. Zaira.

I feel it.

They turned as one to look behind them, but there was no assassin, nothing but ordinary people involved in their own affairs. Aden scanned visually and telepathically, picked up a faint hint of deadly intent, but it wasn’t close. Then his eye caught a glint high up on a building. Even as he processed that information, his visual cortex was cataloguing other glints.

And he realized the enemy had mobilized the heavy artillery this time.

A target with big impact and with a low threat ratio away from other, stronger members of the squad: that was likely to have been the calculation when Aden was chosen to die.

Killing him would destroy the Arrows and strike a blow to the Ruling Coalition at the same time. As a bonus, it would rip away the shield of fear and mystique that protected the most vulnerable members of the squad. After all, shooting Aden in full view of so many witnesses would prove his lack of strength. Not only that, but if some of the witnesses were also murdered, it would indict the squad as being ineffective protectors against the monsters.

Aden had made it his mission in life to appear weak. It was what had allowed him to rise to a position of leadership within the squad right under Ming LeBon’s nose. But at that instant, as he prepared for countless sniper rifles to fire, all directed at him and Zaira and the innocent people around them, he knew the time had come for him to show his true colors. No small demonstration as he’d planned to orchestrate later tonight.

This was going to be a big one.

“Get down!” he called out in a voice that was calm but brooked no disobedience . . . then he reached for power as he’d never before reached. Always prior to this, he’d asked only a little, been given it with no questions asked from the five men and women who knew what and who he was.

Today, he squeezed Zaira’s hand and he took everything.

She went to her knees beside him as he channeled her ability through himself, but no matter that he’d stripped her of her psychic weapons, she made no effort to close that channel, to block him. Neither did Vasic, Axl, Amin, or Cris. Their power blasted through his psychic veins in a single split second. In the next, it became far greater than the sum of its parts.

Because Aden wasn’t a simple telepath. He was a mirror.

Hidden deep in his mind, behind the shields Walker Lauren had taught him to build, was a lens that reflected and multiplied the power he could channel from others. At that instant, he was stronger than a cardinal, the strength of five powerful Arrows merged by his mind into a roar of pure energy.

His telepathy expanded exponentially, until he could scan the entire city, but he didn’t seek to target the minds of the shooters. They were too distant and he couldn’t guarantee he’d locate each and every one. There were too many innocent lives at stake to chance a mistake. Shoving out his right hand, his left still locked with Zaira’s, he thrust out his power just as the bullets began to hit.

ZAIRA sucked in a breath as she saw a bullet heading directly toward them, readying her weakened body to push Aden out of the way. But the bullet seemed to slam into something before she could move and it just fell to the ground like a bird stunned by flying into an unexpected obstacle. Blinking, she stared as it happened again and again . . . and finally she caught a glimpse of the barrier. It was like an oil shimmer on a wet road, visible only in patches of light and color.

A soap bubble as strong as titanium. Stronger.

Looking up at the man who was holding that shield unlike any she’d ever seen, she sucked in another breath. Aden’s hair was blowing back in a breeze that existed only around him, his eyes an impossible reflective silver and his right hand held palm out as he stopped those bullets dead. She was weak because he was pulling power from her, but in the shadow of his power, she felt no sense of weakness, of being in a situation she couldn’t escape.

A second later, she watched in astonishment as he flicked his hand and the bullets stopped hitting the ground. Instead, the soap bubble became a mirror that echoed his eyes and the bullets pinged back along the direct flight paths on which they’d arrived.

Around her, the people who’d hit the ground at Aden’s order gasped and stared as bullet after bullet reversed trajectory, heading straight back toward the shooters at a speed that only the fittest and fastest would survive. Many wouldn’t—eyes to the scopes where they were set up at apartment windows, they wouldn’t be able to imagine a bullet reversing course. And so they would die.

The bullets stopped coming moments later. Some of the snipers had to be dead. Others had likely missed death by a heartbeat and would be racing to get away. Her telepathic strength was faint with Aden having locked her into his personal network, but it was enough to reach the high-rises and the cardinal mind she needed.

The rats are running, she said to Kaleb Krychek, having snapped out a warning to him the instant before Aden initiated the highest level of the psychic protocol the six of them had agreed to when Aden was only twenty-one and Zaira twenty. She’d known Vasic wouldn’t be able to respond as fast as usual, not with the teleporter forming one point of the five-pointed star that was the engine for Aden’s extraordinary ability, but Krychek was as swift a teleporter.

All she’d said was, New York! It had been enough.

I have two dead, two contained, Krychek responded. One more in progress.

Leaving him to the hunt, she got to her feet and placed her free hand on Aden’s jaw. The situation is under control, she said mind to mind. You can drop the shield.

It took him a minute, the tension leaving his body muscle by muscle until the breeze stopped, the mirror sliding down to fade into the ground. His eyes, however, remained that eerie reflective shade she’d never before seen. “Casualties?”

“None here.” She gasped as her own power returned to her in a storm surge. Her hand clenched on his, her breath hitched. When it was over, she found she had more power than she’d possessed before Aden initiated the transfer. It filled her to the brim, until it felt as if her fingertips were overflowing with it.

The mirror, she thought, looking into silver eyes that still surged with echoes of power. The mirror had made her power more, made it brutal. She’d known the mirror’s effect since the day Aden first told her about it, but never had she experienced it to this degree. Power that strained at her skin, her eyes flowing obsidian from the force of it. Aden could literally protect the entire valley, even if he had access to only midlevel Psy. Give him a full squad of lethally powerful Arrows . . . The idea of it was breathtaking.

Not only because of what he, himself, could do, but what he could create in the Arrows themselves. He gave back more than he took, and in so doing, he could create a turbocharged army. He’d be an unstoppable force if not for one simple and inevitable side effect, and even that wasn’t enough to negate the fury of his gift.

“Krychek just told me that he’s found two dead shooters so far,” she said, stifling her fascination with the true depth of his ability for now. “He also has two others contained.”

There was no more time to speak after that. People swarmed Aden, wanting to say thank you, to state their astonishment over his display of power, and to tell him that they’d never had any doubts about the Arrows.

Many in the Net have recently questioned the abilities and qualifications of the enigmatic man who leads the Arrow Squad. Rumors reported in the Beacon itself stated that Aden Kai was nothing but a figurehead, a field medic who played the leader so as to protect the squad’s true leadership.

Today’s display has put those rumors and speculations to rest in an incontrovertible fashion: Aden Kai isn’t only powerful, he is a power. There is no longer any doubt as to why he is the leader of the squad, and why he has a seat on the Ruling Coalition.

I’ve watched the footage captured by nearby security cameras and civilian phones multiple times, and I still can’t believe what I’m watching. Aden Kai’s abilities are unparalleled. Does anyone have a label for his designation?

B. Baker

(New Orleans)

Spectacular!

V. Ting

(Cape Town)

Aden Kai today proved that not only is the squad made up of the elite, it is made up of men and women with designations unknown to the general population, as it should be for a covert squad.

I feel safe in the Net and in our future.

L. Layton

(Cambridge)

I am breaking squad protocol in stating this, but it needs stating: Aden is not our leader because of his abilities.

He is our leader because he understands each and every member of his squad and pushes us to our very best.

He is our leader because he goes first against every threat, no matter the risk.

He is our leader because we know that should we fall in battle, he will not leave us behind. He understands the code of soldiers as the Council never did.

He is our leader because he has never forgotten that he is an Arrow. He may sit on the Ruling Coalition, but he is no politician and he is no Councilor. He is an Arrow and he will always be an Arrow.

A member of the Arrow Squad

(Location Error: Unable to Be Determined)