The Only Thing to Fear

by Caroline Tung Richmond

  She had to stop him.

  She knew what he would do to her next.

  As her fear spiked, she felt a marble-size bolt of lightning spring onto her hand. Next to her, Kristy gasped.

  “Where should we search first?” said Achen, who hadn’t seen the spark on Zara’s palm. As he started to rip Zara’s shirt, she released the tiny bolt, shooting it straight into his belly. It wasn’t enough to knock him unconscious, but his eyes shot open, stunned. He scuttled backward, breathing heavily, his eyes clouded with confusion.

  Before he could lunge at her, Zara was ready. Charge, she thought. Another spark jumped onto her hand, and she urged it to grow. She’d rather risk revealing her powers than find out what the Sentinel had planned for her. Both Achen and Kristy went still, their gazes locked on the fiery lightning crackling on her fingertips.

  Kristy pointed at Zara’s hand, speechless, while Sentinel Achen blinked at the ball of electricity.

  “You’re an … you’re an … ,” he said, fumbling for the radio on his belt buckle.

  The lightning burned hotter, doubling in size and contorting out of Zara’s control. “Kristy, get down!” she managed to scream before she sent the lightning at the Sentinel.

  “I need backup on floor three!” With his free hand, he tried to wrest his pistol from its holster, but his fingers were trembling too much. “I am requesting —”

  Sentinel Achen didn’t finish his sentence.

  Zara’s bolt struck him straight in the neck and sent him careening into the air. His arms flailing, he soared backward and his head hit the corner of a cot frame, sending an awful crack across the room. He slumped onto the ground, legs twitching. Then he stopped moving altogether.

  Zara’s eyes traveled over the Sentinel’s body, but they stopped when she saw his face. His eyes were blank, his mouth slack. Kristy crept toward him and shoved her fingers against his neck.

  “Is he … ?” Zara whispered.

  Kristy glanced up. “He’s dead.”

  Zara sank against the wall, only one thought rolling through her.

  I killed him. I killed the Sentinel.

  A wave of horror swept through her.

  Her heart shuddered at the sight of his body. He lay only a few feet away from her, but she could still feel his hot breath against her neck and his rough hands against her body.

  He can’t hurt me ever again, she told herself. She dry heaved anyway.

  Kristy shrank back from Zara, staring at her palms. “Your hands —”

  “I had to stop him somehow!” Zara blurted. She knew there was no way to hide what she had done. Or who she was. Everything had happened so fast: the Sentinel attacking her, the lightning surging up. Now Sentinel Achen was dead, and Kristy knew about one of her powers. Zara felt dizzy just thinking about it all.

  “You’re an —” Kristy couldn’t quite get the words out. “You’re an Anomaly?”

  “It’s not something I can exactly advertise. A kami like me,” Zara replied, a bitter note in her voice. Then a ripple of fear rolled through her. She didn’t know how Kristy would use this information about her power, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. She had to find her uncle, and they had to break out of the fort as soon as possible. They had to run before Sentinel Achen’s comrades came to check on him.

  Finally, Kristy tore her gaze from Zara, her eyes drifting toward the Sentinel. “You … you saved us.”

  “He didn’t give me much of a choice,” said Zara, not looking at the Sentinel’s limp body. Seeing his eyes, both still open, made her stomach twist into a knot, but she pushed that image far away from her. She only wished she could erase that awful cracking sound from her mind, when his skull met the cot’s railing.

  Blinking slowly, Kristy placed her hand on Zara’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

  Zara startled at the softness of Kristy’s words, but it was a little too late for kindness. She shrugged off Kristy’s hand. “We really need to go.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Kristy said. A tremor had entered her voice, as if Zara might shoot her with a lightning bolt at any minute.

  “Find the key and get the door open.”

  While Kristy retrieved the key ring from Achen’s belt and hurried to the door, Zara pocketed the other key that had been knocked across the room. Then she wrestled the Sentinel’s pistol from its holster, her stomach heaving the entire time as she tried not to touch him. She didn’t have much experience with pistols; she’d only had brief lessons where her mother taught her how to load a shotgun for hunting deer. Pistols were Uncle Red’s realm of expertise, but she would have to do her best — she didn’t want to reveal her abilities to anyone else unless absolutely necessary.

  Kristy unlocked the door, and Zara checked the gun’s ammunition. She wished she had a few minutes to sit on a cot and catch her breath, but they had to move. It was too early to meet Bastian, but she couldn’t stay in this room with the Sentinel’s body, especially after he had radioed the other soldiers.

  “Do you know how to get out of the hospital?” said Kristy, her eyes trailing over Zara’s hands.

  “I’ll figure it out. It’s not like I have a map.” Zara peered beyond the door to find an empty hallway. For now. She had to find her way to the prison to free Uncle Red. After that … they’d have to escape somewhere. They couldn’t go home, not after Zara had killed a Sentinel. The thought of leaving their farmhouse made her heart rip in half, but the important thing now was finding her uncle — and getting them both out of the fort alive.

  Zara slipped into the corridor, followed by Kristy, and a foul rotting stench flooded her nose. The hallway was in a state of decay: Water stains covered the walls, and the ceiling tiles were crumbling or were missing altogether. Two dozen doors, like the one they had escaped from, spread to Zara’s right and left. Glass skylights hung over her head, revealing a black sky.

  A siren blared into Zara’s eardrums. Both she and Kristy froze.

  The soldiers were coming.

  As the alarm pulsed through her head, Zara searched for the stairwell, her ankle still unsteady and throbbing, but fortunately she could walk on it. Kristy didn’t follow her this time. Instead, using the Sentinel’s keys, she ran from door to door, releasing the people inside.

  “Mom?” Kristy cried every time she unlocked another door. “Are you in here?”

  The hall soon swelled with women and the elderly, their hair wild and their eyes like sunken craters on their wan faces. Kristy pushed through them but couldn’t find her mother — the Nazis must have taken her to an isolation cell somewhere else. In one great mass, the crowd swarmed toward the end of the corridor where Zara had finally spotted a faded exit sign.

  Zara dashed down the stairwell with the rest of the horde, storming down two flights of stairs until they reached the main level of the hospital. Three women at the front burst through the door, only to throw themselves onto the chipped tile floor. Screams echoed in the stairwell as gunfire sprayed from the soldiers stationed on the main level.

  “Get down!” Zara shouted, but the warning came too late. Two people collapsed in front of her, their bodies erupting with blood. One of them, an old man with frost-white hair, toppled near Zara with a bullet hole gaping in his wrinkled neck.

  Zara crawled toward the door and fired off her pistol until the magazine emptied. One of her rounds drilled into a soldier’s shoulder, but the rest of them went wide. The guards pushed forward, their rifles pointed at the Kleinbauern, ordering them to surrender.

  Zara was out of bullets. They had no other weapons. With a sinking feeling she realized there was only one way out of this. She had to use her powers, even if that meant revealing herself as an Anomaly to the Nazis. Fear rushed up her throat, but she tamped it down. If she didn’t fight them now, they would kill her and everyone else in this hallway.

  While the soldiers snaked closer, she urged her hands to charge. Sweat dribbled down her forehead, but the lightning finally came, only a spinni
ng ball of energy at first. She commanded it to grow larger, deadlier. As soon as it swelled nearly beyond her control, she unleashed it at the guards, sending it crackling into their chests. She caught the horror on their faces before all five of them fell onto their backs, their limbs twitching.

  A stark silence fell inside the stairwell. Slowly, Zara looked behind her to find dozens of people blinking at her, all of their mouths dropped open.

  Kami. Traitor. She waited for the names to come, but they didn’t.

  They only stared.

  From the back of the group, Kristy stood and broke the quiet. “What are you staring at her for? Haven’t you ever seen an Anomaly?”

  Before anyone could respond, Zara finally found her voice. “We have to leave right now! More soldiers are probably coming. Grab any weapons you can find and run as fast as you can.” She knew most of them had never held a gun before, but there was strength in numbers, and that was all they could count on right now.

  Hesitantly, the Kleinbauern moved. A trio of middle-aged women searched the soldiers for ammunition while Kristy snatched a rifle from the floor.

  “Come on, this way!” Zara said.

  Urging her legs forward, she dashed out of the hospital entrance and into the cool spring night. Giant floodlights lit the fort, blanketing them in a swath of fluorescent light. Zara blinked against the harsh brightness before she spotted the military jail two hundred yards to their right. The fort’s sirens blared louder.

  “On our left, on our left!” Kristy said, her voice nearly lost in the noise.

  Zara’s gaze jerked to the side to find thirty soldiers rushing toward them. Shots fired. Some of the Kleinbauern dropped flat to the ground while others scattered toward the fence to escape. Kristy ducked behind a concrete bench, firing shots from her newly stolen rifle.

  The gunfire blasted through Zara’s senses, but there wasn’t time to shrink back in fear. She summoned the lightning again. It started as it always did, only a small flare, but soon it crackled over her palms, doubling in size every second. She reined it in, even though it yearned for release, but she urged it to grow even bigger before she aimed it at the Nazis. The spidery bolt sprinted hungrily toward the soldiers, strangling their bodies with its electric fingers. Another bolt flew toward the neatly trimmed trees and climbed up its branches. Soon, all of the leaves roared in billowing flames.

  “They’re falling back!” Kristy said. She gave Zara a triumphant smile.

  But their victory was short-lived.

  Another stream of soldiers joined the fight. Five tanks rolled in behind them, their machine guns pointed straight at Zara. At the sight of them, dread shot through Zara, and the remaining sparks of lightning died in her hands. The entire weight of Fort Goering was crushing down on her, and she didn’t know how much longer she could fight back — not against the fort’s endless supply of soldiers and weapons. But she gritted her teeth and forced herself to think about her mother, the bravest woman she had ever known. Zara had to make her proud this night.

  “Run!” Zara screamed at the others. “You have to get out!”

  While Kristy and the other women stumbled to their feet, Zara gathered every last bit of strength she possessed and lifted her hands to conjure an enormous tornado, the biggest one she had ever created. She would fight to her very last breath if she had to. But before she could muster a breeze, she heard the rumble of engines clanging into her eardrums. For a second, Zara thought the Nazis had sent in more reinforcements, but then she saw a barrage of transport trucks crash into the barbed-wire fence that surrounded Fort Goering. More trucks followed suit until the fence crumpled underneath their huge tires, grinding the wire to shreds. The vehicle doors sprang open, and dozens of people spilled out of them. Most were armed with rifles, but a few carried machine guns.

  They couldn’t be Nazis. They were dressed in all black instead of olive-green uniforms. Zara had no idea who they were or why they had come until she heard their deafening war cry.

  “Freedom, or death!”

  Zara darted behind a concrete bench, her eyes stretched wide. This couldn’t be possible. She was so sure the Alliance had called off the attack after Camp Hammerstein, but the proof was right in front of her.

  Operation Burning Eagle was pushing forward.

  “Freedom, or death! Freedom, or death!” the rebels shouted. Hundreds of them had poured from the trucks, followed by hundreds more from the woods. A handful of them shouted orders through megaphones to guide the rebels into battle, while others carried video cameras to capture the entire fight.

  Hidden in her nook, Zara stared at them, amazed. The timing of all of this was incredible. Just when she needed the Alliance most, it had leapt in to assist her. If there wasn’t gunfire surrounding her, she might have laughed at the sheer coincidence of it all.

  As another line of trucks hurtled through the fence, three of the rebels entering the fight caught Zara’s eye. One of them launched herself into the sky, throwing grenades at the incoming Nazis. Another lifted a tank with a mere wave of his hand, tossing it over his shoulder. And the last rebel breathed a cloud of fire at an incoming wave of troops.

  They’re Anomalies, Zara realized. There were others like her, fighting with the rebels.

  Zara’s awe was interrupted when an Alliance medic ran up to her. “Are you hurt?” the girl said quickly, ready to move on to the next patient if Zara didn’t need her.

  It took a few seconds for Zara’s mouth to work. “How —”

  “Let me take a look at your nose.” Like clockwork, the medic got to work, opening her medical bag and spraying an antibacterial liquid onto Zara’s face. A cooling sensation enveloped Zara’s nose at once, and the pounding went away for the first time in days.

  Ear-shattering shots burst around them. “The bombing at Camp Hammerstein,” Zara shouted over it. “What happened?”

  The medic brushed her blond hair from her face, revealing how young she was. She couldn’t be much older than Zara. “The Nazis got tipped off somehow, but we only had a few fatalities. Our real push was here at Fort Goering.”

  “Did Garrison survive?”

  The medic was already on her feet. “You’re good to go!” Then she was off again, searching for another injured rebel before Zara could even say thank you.

  After the medic disappeared into the battle, Zara shook away the shock of seeing the Alliance Anomalies and forced her legs toward the prison. Bolting through the jail’s entrance, she found three guards lying facedown by the metal detectors, the floor slick with their blood. Zara rounded the corner, the stink of sewage and sweat blasting into her nostrils, but she pressed onward to the cells, where she found half of them already empty. The remaining prisoners shoved their arms through the bars, reaching for a Kleinbauer woman who had somehow managed to locate the prison keys. The woman unlocked another cell, hurling open the metal door right before the prisoners pushed themselves out. Zara was nearly knocked over by the stampede, but someone reached out for her, steadying her.

  “Zara!” Uncle Red engulfed her in his arms. “Thank God!”

  “Uncle Red?” she gasped out. She slumped against him, unable to hold back her tears. All of those hours of worrying, of fearing the worst, leached away into sweet relief.

  “I thought they had killed you.” His voice nearly broke apart as he pulled back to look at her. “How did you escape?”

  “I don’t have a lot of time to explain,” said Zara. Thoughts of Sentinel Achen’s dead eyes rose up in her head, but she shoved them aside. “The Alliance is outside! They didn’t call off the mission after all. There are hundreds of them out there, maybe thousands.”

  The realization sank into Uncle Red’s eyes. “We’ve been hearing the gunfire, but we didn’t know what was going on.”

  More shots blared beyond the walls, followed by a grenade explosion that blew concrete chunks into the cells.

  “Fill me in later!” Uncle Red said swiftly. “The building isn’t safe. We need
to get outside.”

  Another grenade detonated, and one of the cells caved in, shooting a cloud of dust around Zara and her uncle. Prisoners cried out, still trapped in their cells, and the woman with the key struggled to free them. Zara wanted to run to help them, but Uncle Red yanked her away.

  “The building is going to crush us. We have to go!” he said.

  They ran toward the main entrance, but Uncle Red stopped when he reached the fallen Nazis by the metal detectors. He stooped down to take one of their rifles, a pistol, and ammunition. With the smooth moves of a veteran soldier, he loaded the gun and tried to give her the pistol, but she refused it.

  “I’ll use my powers,” said Zara.

  “Absolutely not. We’re behind enemy lines.”

  “It’s too late for that.” Her gaze ducked away from his. “I had to use them to escape the prison. But there are other Anomalies fighting for the Alliance, too. I saw them outside.”

  “How many Nazis saw you using your abilities?” Uncle Red swore when a third grenade shattered behind them, jarring his thoughts. “We’ll deal with this later. We have to come up with a plan — where do we go from here?”

  “We’ll escape with the Alliance. They should have stolen the fort’s weapons by now. We can’t …” She swallowed, her thoughts overcome with their house, their farm. “We can’t go home.”

  His lips spread into a grim line. “No, we can’t.” He gripped her shoulder. “The Alliance will take us in. We’ll go to one of their safe houses.”

  With a quick kiss on her cheek, Uncle Red raced to the door and kicked it open, only to go still. Outside, they saw a full-on war.

  Bombs went off like fireworks, chewing apart the fort’s buildings bite by bite. More rebels swarmed into the fort by the minute, but they were met by fresh Nazi soldiers — along with the German Anomaly Division. A battle waged across the sky as a sentinel strangled the flying rebel Anomaly, although she twisted free and punched him in the throat. Another sentinel spat poison at the Alliance fighters, but the second Anomaly rebel batted him away with a massive oak that he had uprooted.