Free TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 by Scott K. Andrews Page B

was focused tightly on Steve.
    ‘You did Kaz no favours, you know,’ Sweetclover was saying. ‘By destroying the recording you merely ensured he’ll have to go through the mind probe again. I imagine he’d prefer to avoid that, wouldn’t you, Kaz?’
    ‘Screw you,’ Kaz shouted, an act of defiance that finally earned him a smidgen of respect from Jana.
    Sweetclover tutted and shook his head. ‘Such manners. When I see your father, I’ll have to tell him the kind of man he raised.’
    Kaz balled his fists and took a step forward but Steve held out his arm, not touching the boy, but blocking his way.
    ‘Calm down, Kaz. He’s playing with you,’ he said. Then he whispered to them both, ‘Look at the lab door and get ready.’
    Jana squinted down the corridor. She could see silhouetted figures moving behind the frosted glass windows of the central lab doors behind Sweetclover.
    ‘I suppose you want us to lay down our weapons and come quietly?’ asked Steve.
    Sweetclover shrugged theatrically. ‘Do or don’t, makes no odds to me. Either we kill you here and now, or you surrender and let us put you on ice until we’re ready to do it properly. Your call.’
    ‘But why?’ screamed Jana, finally allowing her own frustration to boil over. ‘Who are you? What is the point of all this? What do you want?’
    ‘Oh, Jana. Dear sweet Jana. What would be the fun if I told you that? Let’s say we had history, you and I. But we won’t have had soon.’
    Jana shook her head as he mangled his tenses. ‘What does that even mean?’ she yelled, more in confusion than anger. The shadows behind the lab window drew her gaze. Someone was holding up a hand, pressing it to the glass with their fingers spread wide.
    ‘Five,’ muttered Steve.
    The thumb bent inwards under the palm.
    ‘Four.’
    The hand was withdrawn and a shadow seemed to hurry away from the doors.
    Jana unfurled her own tight fists and got ready to grab the hands of Steve and Kaz.
    ‘Three,’ whispered Kaz, taking up the countdown.
    ‘Guards.’ At Sweetclover’s bark, all the guards raised their weapons.
    ‘Two,’ muttered Jana and Kaz in unison, raising their hands.
    ‘Hands above your heads, I think,’ shouted Sweetclover. ‘We don’t want anybody—’
    Before he could finish his sentence, the lab doors blew off their hinges in a ball of flame and spun down the corridor, cutting down the row of guards. The blast wave toppled many more, and Sweetclover himself was engulfed in smoke.
    Shots rang out ahead in the confusion.
    ‘Now,’ yelled Steve as the smoke reached them, shielding them from the view of guards both ahead and behind. Jana reached out and grabbed Kaz’s hand, lighting up the smoke with red fire from within. Her hand tingled where it touched his, like static electricity or the feeling of pins and needles you get when the blood returns to a numbed limb. Then both she and the boy leaned forward to take Steve’s outstretched hands as they did their best to empty their minds of all thought. Steve grasped their fingers tightly and the world exploded in a riot of firework red. Jana felt a familiar lurch in her stomach, the same as she had felt when she had vanished in mid-air above New York. She realised immediately what was happening.
    She closed her eyes and forced herself to relax, surrendering to the pull of whatever force it was that had snatched her away from certain death once already.
    And the world reshaped itself around her.

7
    Kaz had seen the two girls appear in mid-air, but in many ways that had been the least unexpected thing to happen to him since he had fled the farm in search of a bed for the night. Since that first flash of red fire he’d been granted no time for reflection, no opportunity to consider the events of his day, the things he had witnessed or the things that had been done to him. He had spent the last twenty-four hours reacting to events he did not understand, hoping that at some point everything would