He didn't.

Howie Frazier was a Graysheet prodigy, trained in hand-to-hand, any weapon that fired and all those that cut.

His fists worked John top to bottom.

Frazier was unprepared to have Jade jump on his back.

It was enough to distract Howie and save John from certain death. He lay on the ground, too beaten to move or even groan, blood flowing from every orifice he possessed. His state of mind had shut down to the barest impulses and he'd never wished harder in that moment that he was AP. If he could have escaped the pain of this body and summoned help, he would have. Instead, he could do nothing but bear witness to Jade's assault.

And Tiff remained MIA, John remembered with a sickening horror in the pit of his stomach.

He watched Howie swing Jade around and punch her in the face. Like she was a guy. She fell like a limp ragdoll and John closed his eyes against the most acute misery of his life, unconsciousness sweeping him away on a black sea that rushed toward death.

*

Caleb

I awoke with Clyde's face in front of me again and had that overwhelming feeling of déjà vu slide over me, giving me a case of chicken flesh.

I sat for several moments without a thought, I was a total blank.

That ended when my parents stuck their heads beside Clyde's.

"You did it, I thought he was going to..." Mom covered her mouth, tears spilling over the knuckles of her hand, her eyes tightly shut against them.

I sat up and Clyde helped me off the ground.

The pieces of the disaster tumbled all around me, broken glass falling like rain.

But that's not what fell. Snow floated from a sky gone pewter gray, pregnant and angry clouds glared down on the ashes of the Weller home.

I hung my head and cried in front of my parents, my friends, and the troop of responders that were all in various stages of wakefulness.

Clyde wrapped me in his arms. "We will find her, Master."

I knew Frazier had her before Clyde confirmed it with his words.

I saw Jezebel stooped over Terran and ran to his side, sliding in beside him.

He looked like death.

As I watched, I felt his signature hover on my radar, bleeping in and out of existence.

John was fighting death.

And I was its master.

I had never been more torn in my life. My best friend lay dying from a beating given to him by a Graysheet assassin who now had the love of my young life.

I weighed my options.

Finally, I took John's cold hand in mine while his parents quietly sobbed in the background.

I held death at bay as John's blood soaked through the knees of my jeans and tears flowed down my face, dripping off my chin and hitting our joined hands. Men's hands.

Jezebel worked as a medic held a bag of blood above John, pulsing a unit into him even as it pumped out of his body.

I felt Clyde's large hand grip one shoulder; Dad's the other.

We waited and I focused on John as Frazier got a head start.

With my Jade.

*

Gramps wasn't waking up and nobody knew why. I watched the medics fold him into the back of the ambulance with John in its twin.

Jezebel and I had managed between the two of us to stabilize him.

But Jezebel still had a day's worth of work to do on him.

Meanwhile, Tiff was gone and I had a sneaking suspicion we knew exactly who was behind that.

And Jade was even now in the hands of someone who was a known Manipulator. A good one.

I was now without my Null side-kick.

I couldn't ask my friends to take this on.

I sat there collecting my thoughts while gearing up to try to find Jade... somehow.

Then Jonesy was there. "I have an idea, Hart."

He looked at me and I said, "Now's not the time for bullshit, Jones."

"Hey man." He held up his hands. "No bullshit."

"K, lay it on me."

"First, let's get the hell out of here before the 'officials' round us up for the cattle call." He gave me a significant look and I stopped moving. I could do nothing for Jade if they took me to get shot up with the reversal juice.

Jonesy studied my face, letting that brain of his show. "I see that you feel me, Hart."

"I do," I said slowly, nodding. The wail of the sirens taking Gramps and John to our home away from home, the hospital, plowed through the sloppy snow that slushed all over the road, now dangerous and icy.

I looked at the parents. My dad gave me a slight nod. "Go."

"No Kyle," Mom begged and Dad looked at her. "He's no safer here." He nailed her with a stare. "In fact, he might do better finding Jade."

"Howie Frazier is dangerous!" Mom sounded off loudly.

Dad and I looked at each other then he turned to face Mom again, taking her by the shoulders. "So is he," Dad said slowly with each word articulated in crystal clear distinction.

Jonesy did a small victory pump and motioned for me to follow him. We got near his parent's car. I glanced behind me and Dad extended his trust, shooing me off. Mom looked like she was holding back from barfing.

Jonesy's car of the day was his dad's four wheel drive. Jonesy rooted around, tossing Micah's car seat in the back, while I tried not to think of Jade... or Gramps... or John. "I hate all this baby shit!" he muttered, chucking a bunch of pacifiers and other crap in the back.

"There!" he said, sliding in. I ripped around the back and found the door being opened for me.

Clyde said, "We will finish this, young Master."

"It's Caleb," I corrected automatically.

Clyde shook his head. "Today it is not. Today we work together as necromancer and prodigy."

I took shotgun and Clyde hung between us, his arms hanging over the back of the seat between us. I felt his light suction of death energy right off the top of what leaked from me constantly. Didn't even make a dent. I was a geyser of death.

Jonesy pulled away in the muck of the weather that covered the roadway just as unmarked vehicles drove into the carnage of the Weller home. I watched Dad take charge of the scene, stalling.

I knew my friends were scattering to the four corners of the world and turned around, my back to the scene.

Jade, my mind said her name just once. It was enough. I put my hands to my skull and wanted to crush the thoughts out of it or scream... or both.

Instead I asked, "What's the plan?"

Jonesy grinned and I wanted to pop him. This was not the time for humor, with my girlfriend missing and... Tiff. John wasn't here to help her and from what I could tell back there, there'd been a beat down on John. It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that he'd been the only one left standing after Frazier's mass sleep command. John was too powerful a Null to succumb. So he'd fought for Jade.

And lost.

Kinda like losing the battle of consciousness I had. It was the most frustrating thing in the world: I could command the dead but couldn't do anything with a Manipulator, he'd made me fall asleep while he ripped Jade away from me.

My guilt wouldn't help her now. I needed to stay out of my head.

Jonesy's smile grew on his dark face. Those nearly black eyes glanced away from the road for a moment. "First, I think I know how to get that fucktard, Hamilton."

I couldn't help it, as grim as things were, I laughed and Clyde frowned. I explained.

Clyde scowled. He hated foul language but sometimes, there was no substitute. Like now.

"What about Frazier?" I asked. I knew time was running out for Jade.

"I'm working on that. I think I'll lump him in with Hamilton," Jonesy said, feigning deep contemplation as I heard Clyde grunt in the background.

"How?" I asked.

Jonesy busted out laughing as we neared a place I knew well.

"Fucktards 'R Us," Jonesy said.

Nice.

Clyde asked, "Is there a point to all this profanity?" he asked with the thinnest edge of irritation.

Jonesy was silent for a heartbeat then said, "Not really." Then shrugged. Clyde sighed.

We pulled up to a place I never thought I'd visit again.

Jonesy smiled and tapped his temple.

"S.M.R.T, Hart?"

"Smart?" I guessed.

"Hell yeah!"

We got out quietly and looked at the dirt road that led to the old Clemens Graveyard.

*

Jade

It was the jostling that woke her. Or maybe her face being on fire, a throbbing pulse of agony. Her arms flopped against the back of someone.

Holy shit, she remembered, Howie Frazier.

He immediately noticed her weight shift from dead to live and whipped her over his shoulder and set her on her feet.

Tiff had taught her one defense move she'd learned in class.

Avoidance.

Jade executed the smartest move she'd ever made. Ignoring her fear, and choosing not to run in natural reaction, she used her elbow, ramming it into Frazier's balls in a jab that was perfectly centered, an absolutely lucky strike.

Then she plugged her ears and ran, her elbows sticking out like wings as she took flight through the woods, branches tearing at her arms like grasping fingers.

Jade heard him hollering something but because she'd jammed her fingers in her ears, it fell on her as if she were deaf.

He couldn't Manipulate her if she couldn't hear him.

She ran, trying to recognize a landmark that would bring her to safety and seeing nothing, Jade ran harder, her lungs beginning to burn.

Jade would get away.

In her mind, she let out a distress cry for Caleb. She hoped that somehow, their connection would allow him to hear her.

It was her last hope if she couldn't find help before Frazier found her again.

She'd be aware of everything he did to her.

Or made her do to him.

Not wanting to but unable to stop it.

Jade shivered as she ran, slipping on the slushy ground, her thumbs popping out of her ears.

She shoved them back in like wayward corks, robbing herself of one of the best senses to hear the approach of an enemy.

Jade's soul trembled with the urgency of the call, its loud and shrill echo leaving her, seeking the recipient in a blind leap of faith and desperation.

She sent her silent psychic message like an arrow without a target and prayed as she ran.

CHAPTER 16

choice

the journalist

Tim Anderson strode back and forth, then paused, looked at the oddball pair who had come to him and began pacing again.

Finally he stopped, his hands on his hips.

"I could lose my job," he stated.

Christopher and Amanda just looked at him. Then Amanda said, "We came to you because we thought you'd give more of a shit about what was going down." She rubbed her nose in agitation, her short shock of brown hair trembling with the movement.

"And the story, of course," came the jaded response from Christopher, her antitheses; with his long blond hair, tied in a tight ponytail at the nape of a thick neck.

Tim raked a hand through his hair back and forth for a few strung out and tense moments then answered, "I'd sure like to refute that."

Christopher crossed his beefy arms across a chest muscled from stylized military training and smiled, a touch cruelly, "You can't though. So, given your lust for The Story, coupled with the sheer control by this organization..."

Tim raised his eyes to the male part of the duo. "Do you know their real name?"

"Of course," Christopher said, shrugging as he lifted his own precious pulse-coded crystal slide, the best conductor of information available. Glass was the perfect conduit for Brain Impulse Technology. The slides were coded and embedded for thumb security.

Christopher knew his way around that and slipped the thin and perfectly formed synthetic skin sheathing over his thumb. The DNA facsimile rose to the surface in a frosted white etch when he pressed it on the slide.

"Holy shit," Anderson said, awed.

Amanda nodded. "Isn't that nifty as fuck? Everything's there. It'll blow them out of the water...."

Tim glanced at her, tough girl, he thought. "Tell me. Tell me who they really are," Tim demanded of Christopher. "I know that 'Graysheets' was a code name adopted by those who didn't know, could only guess at their motivation."

"Insiders know," Amanda said cryptically, looking like she'd be right at home with a cigarette jammed between her teeth. But she wasn't a smoker, Amanda was a Telekinetic. Her mundane partner was just as lethal, but for different reasons.

Anderson trained his eyes on Christopher, his stare compelling answers.

"The Helix Complex," Christopher responded.

That made all kinds of sense to Anderson. Of course it would be short, inherently readable with what it pertained to, and with a paradoxical twist.

Christopher pushed the crystal slide across the table towards Tim Anderson. The emblazoned symbol of twisted DNA was a deeply etched pattern of permission.