Superluminary

by Olivia Rising

  Goodnight, bitch, she thought, pulling the trigger.

  The weapon clicked without firing a shot.

  5.3 Escalation

  Somewhere near Lyon, France

  Saturday, the 9th of June, 2012

  2:57 p.m.

  Dancer released the useless gun’s trigger. Mindbender turned and lashed out with her power at the same time, entering Dancer’s mind with the force of a thousand battering rams. There was only one thing she could do to defend herself.

  She had to let Crybaby Sarina back in. As Mindbender’s power latched onto her consciousness, Dancer released the power she had held onto and retreated back into the dark recesses of Sarina’s mind, taking her power with her. Sarina emerged once more, now wholly herself thanks to Snow’s interference.

  She stared wide-eyed at the gun in her hand while a sick feeling spread through her gut. The gun felt heavy and wrong in her hand. She hadn’t meant to take it, and she couldn’t understand why she had. She hadn’t meant to use it, either.

  Oh, God, no. Her grip on the gun slipped and she nearly dropped it.

  Sensing movement, she tore her eyes from the gun to see gray metal tendrils sprout from one of the nearby pieces of machinery. Before she knew what was happening, the tentacles curled around her personal space, caging her in.

  “It’s okay, Plenty,” Mindbender said in German. She was still standing about five feet away, facing Sarina. “I’ve got her. She’s playing nice again.”

  Sarina looked around, helpless, shellshocked, and overwhelmed. The metal tentacles fenced her in on all sides, allowing only a few inches of wiggle room.

  Oh, God, no, her mind echoed, racing with panic.

  Her eyes darted from Tess to Ace to Sunny. They sat on the floor next to one of Trashcan’s workbenches, looking unconcerned about their predicament. Finding no help there, she looked to Jasper who smiled at her broadly from the other side of the workbench. None of them looked hurt, and no one appeared to be in any immediate danger. Sarina calmed enough to turn her attention back to Mindbender.

  I almost killed her, she recalled, incredulous. The girl had to be almost the same age as me, a few years older at most. As the thought weighed heavy on her soul, she struggled to hold back tears.

  The mousy young woman met Sarina’s gaze with suspicion flashing in her eyes. “Wait a minute,” she muttered in German. “I can feel she’s under my control, but something’s different about her.”

  She knows, Sarina realized with a flash of terror. She knows there’s someone else in my head, someone rude and violent who makes me do bad things.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpered in German from her improvised cage.

  “Sorry, huh?” Mindbender repeated, tilting her head.

  “Yes,” Sarina managed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, I swear.”

  “Mmm,” Mindbender murmured. She turned back to Trashcan, relaxing her jaw muscles. “False alarm. I think she’s safe after all.”

  “How the fuck did she get out?” Plentiful snapped, glaring at Trashcan. “I thought you said you locked her in the storeroom.”

  “I-I did,” Trashcan stammered with a perplexed look on his face.

  Plentiful refocused her glare on Sarina to redirect her interrogation, but something else caught her attention. “What the hell happened to your hair, girl?”

  Something happened to my hair? Sarina was dumbfounded.

  She reached up and pulled a fistful of it over her shoulder to check. Sure enough, several locks of her strawberry blonde mane had turned as white as Snow’s.

  Her breath froze in her lungs as more memories flooded her awareness. Snow is outside. She let me out, she let me into here….

  “Who the fuck cares about her hair?” Trashcan barked. “What I want to know is, what the hell did she do with the door?” He jabbed a finger at the gaping hole in the wall where the door used to be.

  To Sarina’s horror, Snow chose that exact moment to poke her head through the empty doorway. As much as she wanted the Revoker to free the minds of the others, she couldn’t bear to see her get shot.

  Trashcan’s head snapped around in alarm. “Shit! It’s the freak girl. Mina! Get her!”

  On cue, the artificial arm attached to his workbench whirred to life. With a rapid series of clicks and snaps, the minigun it wielded aligned itself at the vacant door frame. Snow had already withdrawn from sight.

  “Take cover, Plenty!” Trashcan shouted.

  Sarina was restricted by the metal cage woven around her, and the Nameless didn’t budge. Trashcan and Plentiful scattered around the room to dive for cover, shielding themselves from an attack that never came. Mindbender edged along the wall to get a better view of the vacant door frame, looking in the wrong direction.

  Ace straightened up from his position on the floor and reached one hand into his jacket so fast that Sarina barely registered the movement. He flung a gleaming metallic object with a flick of the wrist, moving with the speed and reflexes of an Olympic athlete, an Olympic athlete who cheated. The object he had thrown traveled too fast to watch, but Sarina heard a faint swish as it cut through the air and flew past her. All she saw was a brief flash of metal before Mindbender gave a sharp gasp of pain. In an instant she was slumped over, her body sliding down the wall that she had been clinging to.

  What the … Sarina stared, overwhelmed by the suddenness of it all. It took her a second to notice the knife hilt, sticking out from one of Mindbender’s eyes. Oh, no. There was no doubt. The young woman was dead.

  A single shot cut through the air, followed by the thunderous roar from the mechanical arm’s minigun as it unleashed a torrent of bullets. Sarina dropped to her knees in reflex, pressing her hands to her ears. She didn’t know where to focus her attention because all around her was noise and chaos. She wanted her friends to be safe, especially Jasper. What if he needed her help?

  Sarina pulled herself together enough to raise her head and take stock of the situation around her. Now that Mindbender had slumped against the wall as a lifeless doll, Tess, Ace, and Sunny stirred from their positions in front of the workbench. Someone groaned. Sarina caught a glimpse of Jasper crawling across the floor on his knees and elbows.

  Oh, God, not Jasper.

  It was her last thought of him.

  The stone floor bulged and rose up in one massive, solid barrier which separated the workroom in two halves, blocking her view of her companions and the exit. She was now stuck on the wrong side of the room with only Plentiful and Mindbender’s corpse for company.

  Plentiful leapt out from her hiding place, her bleached hair hanging down in front of her face in a disheveled mess. “You bitch!” she yelled. The Transmuter’s eyes narrowed and focused on the contraption confining Sarina. Slowly, but surely, the metal tendrils contracted around her.

  Seeing the metal squeezing in around her snapped Sarina from her daze. She dropped down as low as she could to find a gap between the lowermost cables. She hit the floor with a rolling dive, rotating free of the cage. Her somersault came to a jarring halt when her shoulder crashed into a toolbox and a sharp pain shot through her body. The ensuing shock lasted long enough for an animated metal tendril to curl around her leg. As she made a frantic attempt to shake it off, she saw another cable tendril reshape itself with a pulsing ripple, its blunt end sharpening to a foot-long spike.

  “Leave me alone!” Sarina yelled as she freed her leg from the grasping metal with one kick.

  She crawled backwards until her head bumped into a wall, stopping her short. She heard muffled shouts from beyond the stone wall. Her companions were on the other side, embroiled in a battle of their own.

  Don’t leave without me, she wanted to shout, but she couldn’t find her voice.

  Plentiful made a sweeping motion with her hand, causing the metal tentacles to whip down in response.

  Sarina rolled again, out of their reach, and squeezed into a gap between two massive steel shelves. One of th
e cable tendrils walloped the shelf, creating a resounding clatter. The shelving unit itself twisted and swayed, sending boxes of junk crashing to the floor. Sarina pushed in desperation against the side of it to keep it from falling on top of her.

  She turned her head to search for somewhere, anywhere, to find cover. But all possible exits were blocked with rippling, bloating metal. The terror caused her eyes to tear up, blurring her sight. All she could see was the shelf’s massive frame bending in on her, inch by inch, straining to crush her at Plentiful’s will.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Sarina whimpered. “I didn’t, I promise.” As soon as the words left her mouth, the vibrations stopped and the warping metal froze in mid-movement.

  Emboldened, she shouted, “I never wanted anyone to die. Honest!” The words came out in a shrill squeak.

  The voice coming from the other side of the contorted shelf wasn’t Plentiful’s. “Sarina?”

  Ace?

  “I’m here!” she shouted back.

  “Leave the girl,” she heard Ace say in a low and threatening voice.

  His words sounded loud and clear in her ears, though definitely not muffled by a stone barrier. Once she realized her friends made it through the obstacle, her tear-filled eyes brimmed over in relief. She sagged back down on the cold hard floor, too exhausted to move.

  “I didn’t kill Trashcan,” she heard Ace tell someone. Plentiful, she assumed. “But don’t make me change my mind.”

  “Drop the peacemaker shit,” the Transmuter snarled back. “You killed Mina.”

  “He was gonna give us the bullet,” Ace said. “And when we had our friendly little chat, you didn’t think our friends in Paris would find out what happened to us.”

  “Fuck you,” Plentiful spat. “Mina deserved to live. The girl never hurt anyone in her life.”

  Wrong, it all went so wrong. Sarina squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Shut up.” Ace’s voice frosted over. “I’m warning you. I don’t wanna kill anyone else.”

  “All we wanted was to be left alone by the Covenant.” Plentiful’s voice was dripping with spite. “Your boy could have kept her safe, but you didn’t want to help. So what else were we supposed to do?”

  The air was filled with the sound of a dull thud, and another one. Through the narrow gaps between the bottom shelves, Sarina saw a splay of platinum blonde hair fan out over the floor.

  “I warned you,” Ace muttered.

  Now that the euphoric effect of not dying was wearing off, the sick feeling returned to Sarina’s gut. Maybe if she concentrated hard enough, if her wish was strong enough, everything would turn out right.

  “Dancing Queen! Are you okay?” Jasper’s voice called from somewhere. It was so hoarse, so filled with concern, she almost didn’t recognize it. The Jasper she knew was always so calm and reasonable.

  I don’t want you to worry about me, she thought, overflowing with tears. I want everything to be like it was before. Like it would have been if none of this had ever happened.

  “I’m okay,” she croaked.

  “Come on, Wondergirl,” Ace said, his voice kind now. “Let’s get you out.” He and Jasper each took a side of the heavy metal shelf, and heaved it out of the way. Sarina winced at the nails-on-the-chalkboard sort of sound it made as it scraped across the floor. When she opened her eyes, Ace was towering over her with his mouth in a tight, grim line. He offered her a hand.

  Sarina took it and managed to stand with his support. Her shoulder still throbbed and her legs felt so wobbly that she had to cling to Ace’s arm to keep her balance.

  “Thanks,” she whispered.

  “No problem, girlie.” He removed his wide-brimmed hat, and wiped the sweat off his brow with his forearm.

  It took her a moment to notice that some of his hair had gone as white as hers. Snow, she realized. She must have kicked Mindbender from Ace’s head when she looked through the doorway.

  She looked at the bulging stone wall Plentiful had erected a few minutes ago. Or was it hours ago? It was all so hazy. Regardless, there was a gaping hole in the wall’s center about the size of a man.

  Most likely erased by Snow’s power, Sarina pieced together. She vaguely remembered ordering the white-haired girl to erase a door. When Jasper stepped up and wrapped an arm around her uninjured shoulder to offer support, her thoughts were cut short. She leaned into him, grateful, as he studied her face from beneath furrowed brows.

  His hair isn’t white, she noted. Mindbender’s death must have ended the effect on him without Snow’s intervention.

  Sarina wanted to say something, but no words came out. She still didn’t understand what had happened to her, or why she had even touched the gun. It didn’t make sense. She wanted to believe that she hallucinated—that Mindbender had messed with her head and hijacked her memories somehow, but that didn’t feel right, either.

  Her adoptive mother would have told her that it was the stress of the situation getting to her. All those changes in such a short period of time. Sarina could almost hear her mom’s voice now, telling her to have a tea and get a good night’s sleep. If only it was that simple.

  Her eyes drifted over Mindbender’s slumped body, the knife sticking out of her eye socket. It wasn’t me who killed her. The thought failed to convince her or calm her nerves.

  Her stomach heaved again so she steadied herself by taking a deep breath and forcing her mind to think in a more pleasant direction. An amusement park at sunset, she thought to distract herself. Ice cream and a dance in a wooden pavilion. Now that was a good memory.

  “The girl’s in shock,” Ace determined, running his hand through his hair.

  “Yeah, I figured as much,” Jasper said. “Sarina, would you like to sit for a bit?”

  When she nodded, he guided her through the hole in the makeshift metal wall to a bench beside what had been the absent doorway. As she and Jasper stepped over Plentiful’s splayed-out body, Sarina couldn’t help but to notice the purplish-red swelling on the rogue Transmuter’s eye and temple.

  At least she’s still breathing, Sarina thought. And she’s not going to hurt anyone for a while.

  “Sit,” Jasper gently instructed, guiding her onto the bench.

  As she gingerly lowered herself so she didn’t jostle her shoulder, her eyes landed on the assortment of cables and machines sitting idle nearby.

  “Don’t be afraid of the tech,” Jasper assured her. “Ace used his powers to deactivate it all.”

  To keep herself distracted, Sarina asked, “Oh, yeah? He can do that?”

  “Yeah. There’s always a small chance any piece of tech will fail or backfire, right? So he amplifies that small chance and turns it into a big one.”

  Sarina peered up at the mechanical arm jutting out at her. All the lights on it had gone dead, and it was pointing its minigun at the floor at an odd twisted angle. She turned her face away, immediately regretting it. On the other side of the worktable, previously blocked from view, was Trashcan’s sprawled-out body. His chest still heaved, but by the looks of him, he had to be hurting.

  Jasper sat down beside her, leaving the usual hand’s width of space between them. He looked at her for an awkward silent moment, and he wasn’t the only one. Sunny and Tess both watched her from where they stood, their arms wrapped around one another in what looked like a comforting, almost mother-and-son embrace.

  At least Sunny’s finally dropped his cool kid act.

  “What?” Sarina asked, meeting Jasper’s eyes. “I’m fine. Really. Is everyone else okay?”

  “Yeah, don’t worry. It’s just….” He stopped short, as if reconsidering his words.

  She was getting weirded out. “It’s what?”

  “It’s your power, girl,” Tess spoke up, taking less time to consider her words. “It makes you go bat-shit crazy.”

  “I know I created that track for you,” Jasper spoke up, smoothing Tess’s contribution. “It’s for emergencies, and now was definitely one of those. Promise me yo
u won’t use it again unless you have to.”

  Sarina nodded feebly, wanting to keep this promise more than any other that she had made in the past.

  Goodnight, bitch. The thought drifted as an angry echo at the back of Sarina’s mind, and she could still feel the cold gun’s trigger against her finger.

  She pushed the memory aside. “I don’t think I ever want to use my power anymore. Not after this.”

  “But it’s good that you did.” Ace stepped through the hole in the wall. “Probably saved all of us.”

  “Yeah,” Jasper said. Definitely. “It’s just that you weren’t … you.”

  She glanced up at him. “You noticed?”

  He nodded, a small frown fixed on his usually smiling lips. He looked so sure about it, as if he knew something she didn’t. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  Friends should never keep secrets from one another.

  Jasper must have misinterpreted her gloomy expression because he went on to explain. “Remember how I told you that I have a good people sense?”

  “Yeah.” She recalled their conversation in the Sun King’s Paris garden two days ago.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, even when Mindbender had me under her control it still worked. I still sensed you, but you were almost like someone else.”

  I certainly felt like someone else.

  “I noticed the same thing when you danced at the Sun King’s court,” Jasper went on. “But it was different this time. More noticeable, maybe. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You think my power might be getting stronger or something?”

  Jasper studied her face as if he read something from it. “Did you feel like you were actually in control of your power this time? Did it do what you wanted?”

  “No,” Sarina admitted. She cringed at the thought of her power. It hadn’t done what she wanted. Not even a little bit.

  Jasper raised his eyebrows.

  She explained. “What I did … it didn’t feel like they were my ideas or my decisions. It worked out, I guess, but still…”

  I almost shot the girl in the head. She held the words down, along with the contents of her stomach. Thinking too far in that direction made her nauseous all over again.