Aubrey appeared, grabbing Laura as she fell.

That was three times Laura had saved him today.

Jack took the soldier’s bag and dumped the contents onto the pavement. With shaking, wet fingers, he picked through the first-aid gear and found a roll of gauze and an Ace bandage.

“What’s that smell?” Aubrey asked.

Lying on her back, with glazed eyes, Laura pointed upward. Black smoke was roiling from the Space Needle, about a third of the way up. And at the center of the smoke was a blinding white spot.

“Oh my . . .” Aubrey didn’t even finish—she just stared.

They’d failed. Everything had failed. They’d fought the very people that they’d come here to help—or, rather, those people had fought them—and the terrorists got to the target anyway.

There was no way to stop them, Jack thought as he stared at the brilliant glowing center of the smoke. Laura was the only one who could do anything like that, who could possibly climb to where the damage was being done, and she was lying on the concrete bleeding from her stomach.

“We have to get out of here,” Jack said, his eyes locking on Aubrey’s. Without another word, she began lifting Laura to her feet, and Jack scrambled to gather as much of the soldier’s gear as he could, throwing the first-aid kit, the flashlight, and the Beretta all into Aubrey’s bag. He pulled one of Laura’s arms over his shoulder, and Aubrey did the same on the other side. They hobbled as quickly as they could toward the alleyway, trying to put as much distance between them and the Space Needle as possible.

There was a metallic screech, and Jack hurried his steps. Laura was moving surprisingly well, but she’d always been tough. He hoped that she’d live long enough so they could thank her.

They moved down the side alley, which spread into a wider road, and a block later they reached a street. Jack didn’t care who was watching. He used the flashlight to smash in the window of a car, and then knelt on the ground to hot-wire it—a skill he’d used a dozen times to start the run-down tractors he worked with in Mount Pleasant. He took the driver’s seat, despite the blood that was still flowing from his head, and Aubrey helped Laura into the back and then sat with her, already applying first aid before Jack put the car into gear.

He pulled out into the empty street, and watched in his rearview mirror as the Space Needle fell.

FORTY-SEVEN

ALEC COULDN’T BELIEVE HIS LUCK, nor could he stop the grin from covering his face.

Laura, he thought. The stupid little bitch.

She’d put up quite a fight, but he’d seen the final bullet, seen it hit her in the chest. Laura was tough, but she couldn’t take a bullet so close. He was sure of it.

His team hadn’t had trouble with the Green Berets. They were so predictable, so ridiculous.

As soon as Alec had heard that the army was trying to create superpowered military strike forces—teams like his—he’d known they’d be simple to defeat. If anything, adding untrained superpowered teenagers to an army team made it weaker, not stronger.

It was fear. No one trusted a kid with that kind of power. Even Alec’s own trainers—his “parents”—had trouble trusting him, and that was after years of working together, years of testing and training and teaching. They were afraid of him, because he had a weapon they could never take away. And he was young. Adults instinctively distrusted the young.

So it was easy to implant a memory to make the Green Berets detonate the bombs.

Alec hadn’t even had to approach the captain. One of Alec’s new team members had lifted him into position near one of the snipers, and minutes later that sniper was sending panicked radio calls that one of the Lambdas was planting bombs near the Space Needle.

Alec didn’t know what happened after that. The army team was in complete disarray, Laura managing to escape with another Lambda, only to be shot in the chest.

And while all of that was happening below, the other two members of Alec’s team launched up to the center of the Space Needle. Lee—a Lambda like Alec had never imagined—superheated his body into a white-hot ball of flame and melted through the steel supports.

It was all perfect. Better than perfect. They’d taken the thing down in front of a team of Green Berets, a team of Lambdas, and Laura had been shot.

He had more important targets to focus on now, but he’d never forget this success.

FORTY-EIGHT

“WHAT HAPPENED?” AUBREY SHOUTED, LOOKING out the back window.

Laura didn’t care—her side was screaming with pain as she lay awkwardly in the backseat. Blood was soaking the makeshift bandages.

Jack was driving the car, bleeding from his head, and Aubrey was trying to treat the bullet wound to Laura’s torso.

Laura took a gasping breath and then gritted her teeth.

It had come down. Whatever team had been attacking, they’d succeeded, and Laura couldn’t help but be pleased. And she’d even killed a few Green Berets while she was at it.

But her side—her rib, her whole body—felt like it was on fire.

Aubrey had saved Laura’s life, and if she could have breathed better she might have found it funny. Aubrey, a loyal soldier, saving the life of her enemy. If Aubrey hadn’t slammed into Sergeant Eschler and knocked him back Laura would have been dead. And if Laura was dead, Jack would have been dead. The three of them were on their own, and Laura needed to keep herself together and stay in control.

Jack kept wiping blood from his face as he moved through the mostly empty Seattle streets, flying well over the speed limit. The Space Needle had come down, after all—who would care about a speeder?

“They turned on us,” Laura said, and dug in her pocket, wincing in severe pain as she did so. At last she pulled out the detonator, now a crumpled mass of electronics, smashed apart in Laura’s brutal hands.

“But why?” Aubrey asked, trying to inspect Laura’s wound in the bouncing car. “What did we do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Laura answered. “We did exactly what they wanted.” It wasn’t even a lie. Laura hadn’t done anything to prompt the detonator, and neither had Jack—she’d been right next to him. And Laura was sure that Aubrey hadn’t; she was a complainer, not a rebel.

Aubrey looked to Jack for an answer. “What do you think?”

Laura had to keep that in mind, too. Aubrey and Jack were totally devoted to each other. She couldn’t play one against the other. They’d always pick each other over her.

Jack glanced back at them. His face looked awful, like something from a horror movie. Aubrey’s hands shook even harder. Head wounds bleed a lot. Laura had heard it forever. Head wounds bleed—they look worse than they are.

“We didn’t do anything,” he finally said.

Aubrey had pulled up Laura’s shirt to expose the bullet hole in her second-to-bottom rib. Blood was seeping from the wound, but not like the bright red gush from Jack’s head. It was just a simple hole, not the violent tear above Jack’s ear—Laura could even see the butt of the bullet. It looked like it had hit a rib and just stopped, flattened.

There weren’t any tweezers in the first-aid kit, but Aubrey found some in her purse. She tore open a packet of antibiotic ointment and squirted it liberally all over the tweezers, and then positioned them on the bullet.