“Blake,” Remy stood and pulled me down into his lap. “You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”
“Why can’t we go to the roof at least?” I asked for the hundredth time.
“We’re more effective down here,” Remy reminded me.
I sat in tense silence, watching the clock once more.
“SC team in place,” we heard over our coms.
The South Carolina team didn’t have the coms that we did, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have brought them with them. They had already been en route when we were attacked, traveling in their own vehicles, not expecting to walk into this.
When Will called Beau for more back up, he asked him to send other coms with the Knights. The Knights had made sure to properly outfit them before the mission, so now we were able to communicate with all the people on our side.
“Copy that SC,” Paul responded to them pressing down his own mic.
“Knights in place,” a voice that sounded vaguely familiar spoke over the coms.
“Copy that Knights,” Paul responded once more. “Stand ready in one mic.”
I’d learned they transmitted minutes into mics over the radio. For ins
tance, five mics translated into five minutes. They were a lot of things I didn’t understand when I was first introduced to this culture, but I was learning as I went.
“Copy,” I heard Terrance, the South Carolina team lead. Will and the familiar voice responded once more.
“Who is the team lead on the Knights?” I turned and looked at the guys.
“That’s Ben,” Jaxson laughed.
“No way!” I exclaimed. “Think he’s mad at me for never texting him?” I joked.
Troy chuckled. “I think he understands. Rick, Taylor, and Mike are out there, too.”
I had spent months with Ben, Rick, Taylor, and Mike in their band. We had been going places until Horatio forced Kade to turn back time. We had sung together once more at our Halloween party, but then we ended up here.
“That’s pretty cool,” I stated with a smile as I felt Remy place a hand on my shaking knees. I hadn’t even realized that the nervous energy within had manifested in my knees. I gave him an apologetic smile as he gave me a reassuring squeeze.
“On my go,” Paul stated. “Three, two, one, go.”
I leaned forward and watched as the doors were flung open. I watched as Terrance led his team to the top of the helipad. He immediately rained rocks down on the people below him. Marcel hurled hail from his hands. Sam caused the wind to sweep people off their feet. Gavin was working in a purely defensive position, watching from the mountaintop and mimicking other people’s gifts to use against them. Sierra was standing back, equally spreading her gift to those around her.
“Unbelievable,” Lincoln breathed as he watched the screen. He had seen a brief video of us on the obstacle course, but he had never seen the gifted fight. He only used his gifts to learn a role, to study people that he was supposed to be imitating. He never knew that battles were fought between us. He was unaware that, just as in reality, good and evil were everywhere, even in our community.
I also knew the sheer number of gifted we saw was a bit overwhelming. He’d been exposed to his mother and Anna. He never got to see the gifted in this spectrum. It was one thing to know you were talented and think you were one of the few. The gifted made up less than one percent of the earth’s population, but it was still mind-blowing to realize that was still quite a bit of people.
“Better than Hollywood, huh?” Jaxson joked as he leaned back in his chair.
Lincoln gave him a rueful smile. “Beyond.”
I heard Noah exclaim to my right. He had come in here to wait with us. His eyes were glued onto another screen I hadn’t been watching.
“A few of our guys are down,” he said grimly. “I should be out there to at least pull them to safety.”
“We can’t risk you right now,” Jace said quietly as he looked over at me.
“Soon as the worse of it’s over, I’m going,” I told him resolutely.
Jace sighed. “We all will.”