The detectives put Sarah in their SUV with a bit roughly. They were obviously put off by the Helen incident. They were chatting in the front of the car and Sarah looked down at her ankle limiter and wondered what would have happened if she had not been wearing it.
“How the hell did she get the drop on you Bill?”
“I don’t know that was some special forces shit. She must be a spy or SIS or something. She took us both down before I could even draw my weapon. I’ve never seen someone move that fast.”
“Maybe we should have checked with HQ before we decided to grab her.”
“Hell no, we’re not going to let these British fucks take her out from under our noses. She’s an attempted murder suspect. She was preparing to flee the country.”
“Yea, but she literally had a letter from the President.”
“Feds sticking their nose in our business. Fuckers.”
The one who had been called Deacon looked back at her.
“What makes you so special kid?”
Sarah shrugged.
“Not much of a talker, are you?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll talk.”
“Aye, I’m a talker, once I start can’t shut me up.”
“You know they love mouthy ones in prison. That’s where you’re going. That girl is never going to walk again, she’ll be eating with a tube for life. What kind of psychopath does that?”
Sarah frowned and looked down. She looked guilty because she felt guilty. She hadn’t meant to do it, but she had done it. Maybe she should go to prison.
“You look guilty, this is going to be a slam dunk.”
They pulled into the station and dragged her into interrogation. They hooked her cuffs to the table and left her there for a while. Finally returning with coffees and a few forms.
“You have anything to say to us before we finalize this arrest? We saw the video pretty nasty. I understand why you did it, but why so badly? Come on tell us, give us a confession, the extenuating circumstances, age, you’ll get probation. Make us draw this out I could see them charging you as an adult. So, give us something, what do you say?”
“Aye, I want my mom, who is my lawyer.”
“Oh, little girl, your mom is going to be charged with aiding and abetting she can’t be your lawyer. So, work with us here, maybe the charges against your parents will get dropped.”
“Is my Scottish accent confusing you? Dinnae understand me?”
She spoke the next sentence very clearly and concisely.
“I said I want a lawyer and I’m done speaking.”
The detective mimicking every bad movie detective slammed his hand on the desk.
“Kid you are looking at some serious charges here, we’re trying to help you out.”
Sarah shrugged. She could feel the panic rising in her but with the limiter she was able to push it aside. It was like the thing cleared her mind, or maybe it was the fact she hadn’t taken any other pills besides her ADHD meds in two days. Whatever it was she liked it. She just looked down at her very healthy-looking hands. She would probably be a lot more freaked out if she wasn’t one hundred percent sure Eyre was on her way with help. They prodded at her for another two hours and she didn’t say another word. She didn’t even look at them. She was kind of afraid she’d start losing it and hurt them, so she kept looking at her hands. The door opened and Eyre walked in like a boss.
“Release her.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Officer Deacon, this is the part where you unlock her cuffs, apologize to for detaining her for so long and thank God that I am in good mood.”
“Fuck off, I have no idea who you are. She’s wanted for attempted murder.”
“No, you are trying to get her to confess to attempted murder without her lawyer present. She’s a clever girl I know she asked for one. Your captain was ready to come in here and suspend you both. I told him I’d chat with you first maybe it wasn’t necessary. But questioning a suspect after they ask for a lawyer, wow.”
“Look lady, you can’t come in here and order us around.”
Eyre smiled and listened patiently.
“Are you done? Anything else to add?”
“Who do you think you are?”
“I think I’m the Federal Agent who has her in custody. See the ankle monitor?”
They both looked at Sarah’s ankle, who in an uncharacteristic act of bratiness lifted her leg to show it off. They looked at each other.
“So, remove her cuffs, apologize to the young lady and we’ll be out of your hair.”
“No, no we’re not going to do that, we got her for this attempted murder, I don’t care what you feds want.”
Eyre held up her finger. Reached into her pack and pulled out two tablets she put them down on the table.
“These are classified, but I’ll show you, you tell anyone want you saw on them, you’ll be thrown in a federal cell so dark people will think you vanished off the face of the earth.”
She pressed play on both.
“Look at the time stamps.”
The two detectives watched the video of Sarah’s computer exploding on her and Candace’s assault by a masked figure that hadn’t been in the video Sarah saw.
“Tell me how my asset got over to the victim’s house assaulted her then got back to her own house that is three miles away to sit at her computer. Did she run back and forth superfast? If you can explain how that all tracks together, I am willing to discuss letting you keep her.”
“How did you get these videos?”
“The girl you have here, is a hacker. She has violated the computer fraud and abuse act so many times that they’re thinking of renaming it after her. She is also extremely good at finding things she shouldn’t, she found something the Russians didn’t like, hence the virus that blew up her computer in an attempt to kill her. I was keeping an eye on an asset. The other one has been going after her hard core so I thought maybe she might be up to something, so I had her computer bugged too. This girl is so valuable and dangerous that the president declared a national emergency just to get her into custody and transport to Britain where we can debrief her and detain her. She’s not your attempted murderer but she is dangerous. I’d be less worried about her beating someone to death then you suddenly finding yourself legally dead with all your accounts frozen or finding yourself under investigation for child porn. This girl could probably do it with a cell phone. Yours haven’t been near her at all have they?”
She glanced at Sarah who was still staring at her hands.
“Have they?”
They looked at each other and checked their pockets.
“Good, she had some cell phones that had no internet connection so she couldn’t do much damage.”
“If she is so dangerous, why was she out on a date?”
“Detective, I’m assuming you don’t know much about intelligence operations, so let me give you the briefest of lessons, she is the only person who knows a secret. She is willing to share that secret for two things, one, she got to go on her date with her boyfriend uninterrupted, and two she gets to have a going away party with all of her friends. You two have jeopardized our deal. Thank you for fucking it up. She could be the difference between two hundred agents living or dying and you gung-ho cunts drag her in here without even checking with your Captain, or the DA, who were both provided with a copy of this evidence exonerating her. You might have even compromised her ID, the Russians only had an IP address before now they might have her name. So uncuff her, you can expect to be suspended.”
Deacon fished for his keys and unlocked the cuffs. Eyre put her own cuffs on Sarah then grabbed her by the arm. She leaned in whispered to Sarah as they were walking out of the station.
“If I ever catch you doing what I just did you’ll be in detention until you’re legal drinking age.”
“That’s only two years from now in Germany, ma’am.”
Eyre smiled, it was a slight one that she tried to conceal from Sarah.
“Drugs are wearing off, aren’t they?”
Sarah nodded.
“Good thing they don’t know I barely know how to turn on my computer. So… umm Ms…Headmistress… could you do that thing you did for me for Candace? I don’t think I can live with knowing she is like… messed up… But I mean if she had a few broken bones left I’d be okay with that.”
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“She’s being looked after; I’ve got someone on it.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Eyre nodded
“Sorry your date got ruined.”
“I mean it could have been worse my dad could have caught us kissing and been a Scottish dad.”
Eyre laughed. Eyre stopped and looked around. Sarah felt it too. Her eyes focused on the gun immediately. Sarah blinked as she watched Eyre reach out and snag a bullet out of midair then another but a third hit Sarah in the shoulder. She didn’t feel it hit she felt the burning afterwards and collapsed against Eyre. Eyre caught a third and fourth bullet and before the fifth could be fired an officer tackled the man with the gun. Eyre held Sarah up.
“Sorry Sarah, I couldn’t get them all.”
Sarah had tears flowing now. This was a new kind of pain for her.
“Shh, shh Sarah I got you, we’ll get this taken care of we just need to get the bullet out before I can heal you. Hit your shoulder, nothing vital there.”
“Why?”
Sarah was close to blacking out. She was used to pain from training hard, but this wasn’t that. It was so much worse like the time she broke a bone. She overheard the man ranting.
“She turned my baby girl into a vegetable and you’re just letting her go?”
Sarah’s eyes were starting to close she muttered.
“What is this, a bad crime drama?”
Eyre quirked an eyebrow at that. She scooped the unconscious Sarah up in her arms. The captain was rushing towards her.
“I’m so sorry, we’ll get you an escort to the hospital, full police protection for your asset.”
“I think you lot have done enough. We’ll take it from here we don’t let innocent fourteen-year-old girls get shot. Fuck!”
Eyre rushed out. Helen saw her coming and jumped out of the SUV and helped Eyre get Sarah into the back seat.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know we were walking out of the station and some man came out of nowhere and tried emptying his entire clip into her. I caught most of them but missed one. Guess I’m getting slow.”
“Something doesn’t feel right, been having this feeling like we’re being watched.”
“I did too, and the police were acting strange, and that man. It was like Sarah said, like we were acting out a bad crime drama.”
Helen closed the door behind Eyre and jumped in the driver’s seat. The tires spun as she peeled out. Eyre pulled a medical kit from her pack.
“Didn’t think mom would have one of these.”
“You know she was a doctor for like thirty years before she went to the past right sis?”
“I wish she was here now, god damn it I’m tearing her up trying to get this bullet out.”
“Should I pull over?”
“No, something is not right here.”
Helen slammed her feet on the breaks and ducked and what could only be described as small stalagmites flew from the fingers of a woman who was blocking their way. Piercing the armored plexiglass of the SUV’s windshield and embedding in the seat a few flying out the rear window. She slammed her foot on the gas and pulled into a skid around a corner and down an alley between two buildings. More of the spikes of rock hit the hatch at the back of the SUV embedding themselves in it.
“Shit sis there is a super attacking us.”
“Did you recognize her?”
“No, she’s gotta be a PL7 though. Those are hitting hard enough to go through armor.”
“Bet they have a telepath too, was probably controlling the cops or influencing them. Which is why they seemed like bad actors from a crime drama.”
“Why didn’t they just take control of her and walk her to them?”
“Donno, maybe they can’t. She is no normal super.”
Helen made a quick turn.
“God damn it I cannot get it out with us moving.”
“Then get her to do it with her TK.”
“She can barely do it when she’s mad, what makes you think she can do fine control in a moving vehicle with people shooting at us?”
“I don’t have any better ideas, unless you want to go to a hospital with supers chasing us on Earth-2 where they’re not supposed to exist.”
The stone spikes started to shiver and move. Helen grabbed the nearest and threw it out her side window then reached for the next.
“Bad news sis, she’s a PL9 or 10 she’s controlling them remotely.”
“Get rid of the ones up there and call this in. We need support ASAP.”
“You’re the lead agent over here, what are the orders? Capture or kill?”
Eyre swore under her beath.
“Put them down. Make sure the evidence is erased.”
Helen nodded with approval. She threw the other spike that managed to get in the car out the window and into the road hard enough for it to get stuck in the asphalt. She hit her hands free.
“This is Raven. Fox advises - Activate all assets. Tracking multiple supers. At least two. One PL10 earth manipulation. Another PL11 mind manipulation remote. Task all satellites to North America. Trace for signatures known and unknown. Notify treaty countries of hostile super activity. Use global assets to sort Intel. Find them and bring them in cold. Silence protocol is in effect. I repeat bring them in cold, silence protocol is in effect. Authorization - 1BT84$K5E”
Eyre swore again.
“Call the President, have her send someone to grab her brothers and parents. Tell her the asset is secure and that there are hostile Super’s in Phoenix.”
“Sis, they haven’t signed the treaty.”
“I bloody well know that, but she can help us cover this shit storm up.”
Helen started making another call and Eyre shook Sarah and slapped her on the face eventually. Sarah screamed as she woke up.
“Sarah, love, I need you to pull the bullet out so I can heal you.”
Helen suddenly swerved and skidded sideways. She ducked as bullets hit the side of the armored vehicle.
“How the fuck are they finding us?”
Helen pulled out her pistol and returned fire. Bullets impacted the armored glass of the back driver’s side window.
“Helen we can’t stay here the earth manipulator might catch up.”
“I know that but..”
“Get us out of here.”
“It’s not going to do us any good if they can find us!”
Helen put the gun on the seat and slammed the SUV into gear and went down another alley. Sarah was crying. Eyre’s attempts to get the bullet out in the fast-moving SUV had torn up the wound pretty badly.
“I can’t…I can’t”
“Yes, you can. If you can break fifteen bones in someone’s body from miles away, you can pull one tiny bullet out.”
“Limiter…”
“Limit, not stop. Sarah try. You’re bleeding out and I can’t save you until we get the bullet out and we can’t stop right now. I can’t do it when the car is moving, you’re the only one here with TK.”
Sarah was sobbing.
“It hurts.”
“I know, push past the pain. I know you can do it. You’re a Grey. You’re from a family of the best battlemages our world has ever produced. You can do this.”
“How? I don’t know how?”
Sarah cried out again as they hit a bump.
“Focus on the bullet. It doesn’t belong inside you. Picture two fingers reaching in and pulling it out. Do it slowly. Put your hand over it, it helps you focus the energy.”
Sarah was still sobbing. Eyre stroked her hair. Sarah put the hand of her good arm over the bullet wound and she closed her eyes but nothing happened. She started speaking in a strange language she was not with it all.
“I can’t. I can’t.”
Eyre looked at her funny.
“Sarah I can’t understand you.”
“I cannae, I cannea.”
“Yes you can, focus, the only pain you are feeling is the pain you are letting yourself feel. Imagine it gone. Imagine you are laying in your bed comfortable and relaxed and there is an annoying itch you have to scratch on your shoulder, it won’t go away until you scratch the inside.”
Sarah cried out again as they hit another bump. Helen swerved again.
“They’re tracking us Eyre, they’re still tracking us.”
Eyre didn’t answer she was looking down at Sarah.
“Sarah you need to get it out. You can’t stop the itch until it is out.”
Sarah put her hand over the bullet wound and closed her eyes again. She cried out as the bullet dislodged and scraped against the sides of the wound.
“It hurts.”
“I see it, you just need to move it a little further Sarah.”
Sarah closed her eyes and screamed again as the bullet jerked towards the entry point. Eyre reached down with the medical kit’s tweezers and pulled it out. She put it in a pocket in the med kit. She put a bandage over the wound holding it tight. She chanted a few words and did enough healing to stop the bleeding.
“Not going to heal her all the way?”’
“No, she needs a transfusion, or she will die and if I heal her all the way how do I explain her being down half a human worth of blood. And we’re being chased by who knows how many supers I can’t waste the blood healing myself. You’re going to be fine. Good girl Sarah, good girl.”
Sarah’s hand fell to her side. She was pale from blood loss.
“That’s all well and good but every time I think I’ve lost them someone else shows up. How are they tracking us?”
Eyre started patting Sarah’s unconscious form and checking her pockets and clothes for anything that might be a GPS tracker.
“Nothing.”
Helen looked in the rear view.
“Nothing but the ankle monitor.”
“No, that’s impossible it’s a closed network.”
“Not impossible if they have someone on the inside.”
Eyre looked down at the unconscious Sarah. She pulled out her phone and went to an app and tapped a few commands. The limiter fell off, she picked up the halves and put them together and reactivated it.
“Radio in that the asset died in transit to hospital, say we could not heal too much blood loss. See if we stop running into people.”
“But they’ll get away.”
“They’re going to anyway if someone is on the inside they’ll be hiding their signatures.”
“But.”
“Helen, do it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Helen hit a button on her phone.
“Raven here. Asset is cold. Blood loss. Keep tracking hostiles.”
She hung up.
“Happy?”
“Yes. With the monitor off but activated it will look like she’s got no vitals.”
“I could have taken them.”
“Of course, you could have. But that isn’t the point of this op is it? It’s to get her safely across the border.”
“Well, if you’d just pulled her in…”
“Then we would have been sitting ducks in quarantine instead of mobile.”
“Go dark. Pull the cards from everything even her phone.”
“Aye ma’am.”
“Don’t be snarky with me kiddo. I was doing this…”
Helen made a face.
“No, you weren’t. And I’m not pulling the cards. I’m just going to put them in mom’s pack like I always do, you always do it the hard way.”
Helen put the phones in her mom’s old pack.
“I forgot it could do that.”
“What now?”
“We need burner phones. Then you’re going to a hospital.”
Helen started driving.
“Where are you going?”
“Luke Air Force Base.”
“Why?”
“She needs a transfusion, and it has a hospital. It is also a secure facility.”
“Why would they even let you on base?”
“Because as far as they know she’s a high value asset, so high value the President declared a national emergency suspending all of her human rights and authorized her extraordinary rendition. On paper she’s a fourteen-year-old hacker who breached numerous countries secure information networks. Gaining access to a massive amount of secure information valuable to the US and her allies. And I’m an Agent of the US Government.”
Helen pulled into a 24-hour convenience store’s parking lot. It had advertisements for pay as you go phones.
“Use our off the books ID.”
“Do I look like an amateur?”
“Only half the time these days.”
Helen stuck her middle finger up at her sister and went inside. Eyre kept holding Sarah’s head in her lap. She had no idea why she had such an attachment to the girl already. She usually wasn’t one to get emotionally involved with students, better to be at arm’s length. She looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Her sixth sense wasn’t triggering at the moment. She saw Helen approach and she started pulling the stone projectiles out of the back of the vehicle and threw them in a garbage can. Eyre laid Sarah’s head down gently. And got out of the car. Hazel handed her one of the burners.
“What am I doing now?”
“Go to a hospital. Pull your phone out of the pack, unlock the monitor and put it on someone who’s alive. I don’t care. Call in that the asset was able to be resuscitated, that you are creating an emergency rift into Earth-Prime in ten minutes Tell them you can’t get a signal through to the other side and you need them to have emergency personal at that location on the other side. Do that to each agent we have here. Do it with one, wait fifteen minutes, then on to the next. See when the bad guys show up. Kill them quietly and then take that agent into custody.”
“You know, it’s almost like you expected this mess. I’m wondering if you didn’t release information about this kid to people you shouldn’t have on the other side so you could find moles.”
“That’s something mom would do. I don’t risk my student’s lives.”
“You let her call her grandparents, you think they could have?”
“No Grace Grey is as solid as they come. She has wanted a relationship with her Granddaughter since she was six. No, we have someone inside the school, possibly HQ. We are going to have to find out who. But I need to get her treatment. Her pulse is getting weaker. Remember we need this handled quietly.”
“What about humans with them?”
“No survivors, no witnesses. Do I have to be any clearer with that? Operation is to clear the board. If you can get some intel from them before they die good, but it is not primary.”
“Aye, ma’am”
Helen saluted sarcastically.
“You’re a real brat sometimes.”
Helen shook her head and walked over and started stealing a car. Eyre got back in the SUV and started driving towards the Air Force Base.