Page 4 of He Is Jensen: Part One

David pockets the vial, and Charles grabs for his arm. David flings him across the alley with the kind of ease that says he’s feeling the super strength of his own ICE addiction.

I curse, hitting the mic in my ear and speaking to my team. “Hot ICE on the move, and so am I.”

“Wait on backup,” Caleb orders.

“No time.”

“Jensen—”

I fade into the wind and reappear in front of the dealer and his bodyguards, blocking their exit from the alleyway. “Howdy there, fellas,” I say, motioning to the dealer. “I’ll be taking that vial of ICE you’ve got there in your pocket. Then you can mosey on along and take a nice long vacation. Go do whatever drug dealers do for fun. Play the casino tables. WatchSpongeBobfor all I care. Just get thehelloff of my streets.”

The dickhead dealer cackles. “Your streets? These streets belong to Julian Rain, as you’ll soon find out.” He gives my black fatigues a once-over and speaks to the man to his right. “Looks like we got us some Army wannabe who’s been ICE-ing too much. Thinks he’s superhuman or some shit like that. Thinks he can push us around.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” I say. “Once you go GTECH, you never go back. Unlike you Pledges, I don’tthinkI can push you around. I know I can.”

David waves his hand and the three men rush me, clearly uninformed on what GTECH means to them, which is nothing good. I could windwalk away, but what good would that be? Standing my ground, I kick one of my attackers in the chest and land a fist on the other’s jaw. The two bodyguards—or whatever the juiced-up bastards were—come back at me before I can make a move toward Charles and David, neither of the guards fazed by my attacks when they should have been.

I punch one of the men and send him stumbling backward, but the bastards right themselves and come right back at me. One of them grabs my baseball hat and a chunk of my newly-cut short, spiky blond hair.

“Now you’re fighting like a girl,” I mumble irritably, punching him in the face hard enough to knock him down. I do the same tothe second man, and by the time he hits the ground, the dealer is making a run for the exit.

I windwalk and appear in front of David. At least, that’s what the dealer is calling himself today.

His eyes are wide with shock. “How did you—”

I grab him and jack him up against the wall, his feet dangling above the pavement.

“Give me the ICE.”

He’s gaping, still dumbfounded over my windwalking, which tells me just how sheltered the Zodius are from their own street operation. “Where’d you come from, man?”

“That’s what drugs do to you,” I say, digging inside his pocket and retrieving the vial. “They make you see things.” I toss David, and he scrambles to his feet to discover his bodyguards running away like chickens, arms flapping like wings.

Charles is now lying on the ground, foaming at the mouth. I step toward him, and the dealer smashes me in the jaw, the impact nothing but a puppy paw playing with me. I throw the asshole against the wall and kneel beside Charles. The wind lifts, and Caleb appears by my side, pressing the button on his earpiece to say, “Get me an ambulance and a military escort.” Every agency and hospital in town has been set-up to notify a military hotline about all ICE-related activity, which has a direct link to me, as I am the Renegade in charge of the inner city.

“You don’t know the meaning of ‘wait,’ do you?” Caleb snaps.

“This dude couldn’t afford for me to wait,” I say, indicating Charles.

Sirens lift in the air, and Caleb produces a syringe from his pocket, kneels beside me and Charles and quickly drawing a blood sample from the poor suffering pledge, and with good reason. At this point, we don’t know enough about ICE to form a plan to battle it and every bit of knowledge we garner might save a life. “Give him the ICE you took from the dealer,” Calebsays, offering the only real choice to save the man. No one we’ve encountered thus far who got hooked could survive without the constant flow of the drug. “But save a few drops for the lab.”

I give a nod and pull out the vial, pouring it down the man’s throat, not sure if I’m helping kill him or if I’m keeping him alive. When the task is complete, I hand off what’s left of the ICE to Caleb.

“One day soon,” he vows, pocketing it along with the blood sample, “I’m going to make Julian pay for all of this.” He’s barely spoken the words when chaos erupts in the alleyway as emergency personnel arrive.

A few minutes later, we’re on the sidelines, watching them work. “Katie put together a list of six scientists capable of helping us deal with this problem,” Caleb informs me. Katie being our lead medical director for Sunrise City, our protected facility for the GTECHs, human staff, and those in need of protection. “Five are dead,” he adds grimly. “We have to assume Julian got to them before we could.”

“What about the sixth?”

“We thought Julian had her,” he says. “But turns out she was in Germany the past few months. She showed up on our radar when she booked a flight back to the States. I want you to be there when she arrives.”

“Caleb, man, you know I’ll do whatever, whenever you need me to do it, but we need me here. I know these streets better than anyone, which makes me the best shot we have of finding that warehouse.”

“She’s from Killeen,” he says. “So are you.”

“At least ten of our men served at the Killeen Ft. Hood Army base, and they’re all damn good soldiers. Surely one of them can handle this.”

“None of the others went to her high school three of her four years there. It’s a connection you can use to earn trust. We need this woman to help us, Jensen.”

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