The Reckoning Read Online Free PDF Page A

patrolman emerged from the trees only twenty feet away. I caught a glimpse of automatic rifles before a spotlight blinded me.
    “Stop,” said a voice I recognized as belonging to the Unbounded who’d found Walker asleep in the security room. “Put down those weapons.”
    Unbounded. Both of them, I told the others. Mari, stay behind the car until I tell you.
    Ritter, Stella, and I dropped our tranques and raised our hands as the Unbounded moved closer. I could see a red dot on Ritter’s forehead, and as there wasn’t one on Stella’s, I figured another must be on mine. Though the bullets wouldn’t kill us, we’d be out of commission long enough to lose the information we’d obtained unless Stella had already uploaded it to our servers. Worse, we’d be back in Emporium hands.
    I’d rather die a true death.
    I pushed at their shields. Tight, but I could get in. Summoning a mental image of the ancient machete I’d picked up in Mexico, I jabbed it at one of the mental barriers. The real machete was back in my closet in San Diego, but visualizing its image sometimes gave me the extra force I needed to break into stronger mental barriers. The swirling black mass was tough enough that it told me the Emporium was beefing up their own mental shields. For an instant, I wondered if Delia Vesey had admitted to her people that shields could be breached by certain sensing Unbounded. I doubted it. But she could have told them we created a device to do the deed. That would protect her people without exposing her seventeen centuries of lies.
    “Who are you?” demanded the second patrolman. Squinting, I could just make out that he had dark hair and a haughty manner that usually accompanied most Emporium agents. Unless they recognized us or were gifted with the rare sensing ability, they wouldn’t be able to tell that we were also Unbounded. Maybe it was possible we could talk our way out of this.
    Stella put on an innocent expression, apparently having reached the same conclusion. “Hey, we were just out here paintballing and ran across these weirdos. They were having some sort of disagreement. We just waited them out.”
    A snort from the first patrolman. “That might make sense if we hadn’t seen you take out half of them. Now we’ll ask you nicely one more time, who are you?”
    Stella shrugged. “Well, it was worth a try. Anyway, they weren’t here looking for us. They’re Hunters. You know what that means.”
    The first Unbounded came forward to check the nearest Hunter for the telltale insignia: a hunter with a rifle. He bent over at the same time I finally penetrated his shield. His gun was still pointed at Ritter’s forehead, though, and I had no doubt he could make the shot even with his momentary distraction. Just like Ritter, he wouldn’t need to pause to aim.
    I felt Ritter tense. Now, Mari, I put into her mind. She shifted, appearing behind the second Emporium patrolman, the one with his rifle aimed at me. Had she chosen him because she felt Ritter could take care of himself?
    Mari’s target turned, even as she appeared, his combat ability apparently warning him of a danger he couldn’t yet see and hadn’t planned for. On one level I was aware of her stepping close, slipping her knife almost gently up under his ribs. The guard I was linked to started to fire. I pushed hard, sending a flash of mental energy into his mind.
    The shot left his rifle and I felt Ritter jerk. Yet in the next moment he took off from my side, launching himself at the guard. I sank to the ground, spent as Ritter reached his target. The man’s gun went flying. Fists flew in a blur. If there had been any doubt about the patrolman’s ability at combat, that was put to rest immediately. Even so, my confidence in Ritter was such that I might have enjoyed the battle, if not for the blood drenching his head and face. He looked gruesome, like something from a slasher nightmare, and his grim expression made me shudder. This was the man I