Brianna reached the hole first just as the black orb exploded, blowing her backwards and into the crowd as the rest of the stampede arrived, each trying to fit through the hole at once with Connor at their center. The wall formed a bottleneck that only allowed a few through at once, giving Slugger a few precious seconds head start before their powers enlarged the passageway, a torrent of wind from Anthony clearing the dust while Miles pounded away at the outer edges.
With Connor farther away across the room, my emotions dulled – though still present, I now felt enough control to hold myself back from joining the rush. Knowing the plan had helped – without the knowledge of what was going to happen beforehand, I surely would be among them, rushing along as a slave to impulse. Following anger instead of rationality.
Instead, I walked away from them towards the far corner of the auditorium. And I began to carve another hole through to the outside.
Chapter 76
“Take me with you!” shouted a voice behind me as I broke through to outside. “I can catch him!”
I whipped around to see Arial still handcuffed to the wheeled nurse bed where the instructors had dragged her prior to Siri’s singing. She strained against the metal links as she rose into the air, dragging the bed underneath her at a crawling rate as the legs skittered across the floor. Her eyes were crazed with the same infectious anger that had possessed the other students, but due to her constrained angle from the handcuffs, her power was at only partial capacity.
“I can catch him!” she repeated in a hiss. “I just need to be free! Help me, SC.”
“And that,” I said, walking over to her, “is precisely why I can’t let you go. Sorry, Arial, you need to stay here.”
I took off my belt as I walked, then looped it around the leg of her bed before running it through a metal grommet on the bleachers. Out of reach, it would stop her from following, effectively tethering her to a foot radius of where she was now attached to the thin bed frame.
“You jerk!” she said, writhing in an attempt to escape, swiping at me and catching my shirt before wrapping the fabric twice around her wrist to yank me towards her. I stumbled, prying her fingers away as my knees knocked against the bed frame and she collapsed onto the mattress, unable to keep flying at that angle. I succeeded in breaking her grip just as her fingers latched onto my own, interlacing, as she pulled me closer.
For a moment, we stared at each other, the rational region of our minds still slow to regenerate after Siri’s song. Our emotions jumbled, her mouth slightly open as she hesitated, my heartbeat accelerating. I felt myself drawn forward, the plan forgotten, just as I heard a crash from outside followed by a chorus of angry shrieks.
“I – I’ll be back, I promise,” I stuttered, turning towards the sound and breaking my gaze. “Soon, this will all be over.”
I pulled her fingers away, leaving her wide eyed and shouting, and returned to my fresh hole in the corner of the auditorium to jump out into the afternoon sun. I blinked as my feet hit grass, the brightness temporarily blinding me, my pupils shrinking just in time to see Slugger whipping around the corner to my left, barreling along at full speed towards the front of the school. He burst out laughing as he passed me, smacking my shoulder with enough force to spin me in place and face the stream of students forty feet behind him.
“Oi, the hunt is on!” he whooped, running backwards to goad the others. “Slugger rounds second and is picking up speed! He’s halfway home, and the other team is too fat to follow!” Then he kept sprinting directly towards the gate of the school, where the force field met the gate. A few seconds later, the front runners of the crowd started whizzing past me, their powers activated but still too distant to utilize them accurately. All except for Anna, who spewed lasers from her fingers with each step aimed at Slugger, each striking him in the back. But by the time the light covered the gap, the colored dots were too diluted and fuzzy to cause anything more than slight warmth.
I felt the rage surge up in me again as Connor neared, his weight keeping him in the middle of the pack, though his power was spurring them forward. I reached into the pocket above my wrist to remove the second black orb I had prepared, launching it high into the sky before I started to run with the group, blending in among them.
The orb connected with the top of the force field dome high above us, ripping a hole into the apex and reeling the remainder in like a sheet thrown into the sky as purple sparks fluttered down the entire length. They leapt like flames from the ground as the force field disconnected, tatters of it splitting away to dissolve in air, and Slugger leapt over the remains with a triumphant jeer.
“And he’s out of the park!” he bellowed, pausing just an instant to rip the facility’s brick mailbox from the ground and launching it towards the forerunners of the pack. They scattered as it gouged the earth, spraying dirt and bricks in its wake as Slugger cackled. Then he started sprinting again, pausing only to scatter massive objects behind him, leaving a trail of garbage bins, air conditioning units, and motorcycles for the rest of the students to dodge.
Josh the flamethrower launched an arc of fire to clear the debris but succeeded only in heating the asphalt to melting temperatures, widening Slugger’s lead as the road gripped our shoes. And now the rest of the objects were no longer simple obstacles, but red – hot flaming barriers to our path.
“Going to have to try harder than that!” Slugger yelled over his shoulder and lobbed a portable toilet from a construction site towards Josh, the plastic box splitting to shower him in blue liquid. “Seems to me like I’m beating you all at once! I should be the only Upper of the lot!”
The he reached an intersection and turned, weaving among the light midday traffic as sirens started to sound in the distance. Heading deeper into the city.
Directly towards Crescent Street.
Chapter 77
Shop owners gawked and passerby fled as the solo escapee darted down the street like a pinball, tossing anything from flowerpots to manhole covers over his shoulder at the growing horde following him. In return, they scarred the street, unleashing fire, cars, and other projectiles in his direction, though he continually danced out of their reach. Fortunately for Slugger, he did not have to outrun all the students chasing him – rather, he only had to outrun Connor. Anyone who rushed too far ahead left the radius of Connor’s power and forgot the purpose of why they were running, and all those next to Connor were too far from Slugger to inflict damage.
Several students were fully powered. Blake dazzled like a diamond, his skin throwing rainbow patterns over the others. Waves of heat ebbed and flowed from Fino, forcing a ring of space to form around him as the other runners avoided becoming burnt. And Wendy carved a fresh rut into the road with each step, creating countless potholes that would surely take months to be filled under the city budget.
Spewing fire hydrants, shattered windows, and uplifted trees were left behind with bewildered citizens. In the distance, sirens sounded, followed by the flashing of blue lights playing against the windows of skyscrapers and reflecting into the street.
Slugger rushed past light after light of intersections, pulling the crowd behind him, taunting them with every chance. In minutes, we were at Crescent Street, the homeless scattering before the rampage, leaving behind mounds of blankets and smashed bottles on the sidewalks while the doors of the building lining the street slammed shut. He whooped as he zigzagged, stopping at the entrance of the abandoned subway station, then turning back and searching through the crowd, his chest heaving. Then his eyes found Connor and he bent over, pulling down his pants to moon us before taking a celebratory jump worthy of a ballet audition into the station.
I felt a new surge of hate well up within me as Connor shouted profanities, spurring us forward, and we flooded into the station like bees into a hive just in time to see Slugger taking the escalator stairs two at a time. Down we followed, our voices echoing off the barren walls, the lights above us flickering. The floor was scuffed and unkempt,
litter covering it like autumn leaves, fast food wrappers a primary offender around trash bins that had never been emptied.
The station seemed to suck us in like a vacuum, pulling us deeper as we nearly fell through the levels. I recounted the route that Darian had taken, the one I had relayed to Slugger, instructing him to avoid the maintenance tunnel and take the main path to the terminal. To ensure that we would arrive at the bottom using the quickest route possible, and that there would be no opportunity for him to be cornered, even if that meant we would be spotted.
But the hallways were nearly deserted, the sentries likely fleeing to alert the guards below.
The ceiling arched high overhead as we broke into the terminal, sculpted concrete decorated with a carved map of stops that the finished subway would have taken, including one just outside my old apartment. Windowless, no natural light entered the vault, the only illumination originating from the florescent lights high above that dangled from swaying chains bolted to the ceiling. Graffiti covered adverts that spanned the walls, and only the shell was left of ticketing machines looted long ago in hopes of finding spare change.
The subway track flowed through the center of the station, dividing it like a river and disappearing in a tunnel at one end. Separating the flood of students from the tunnel were fifteen figures, each with their shoulders squared against us and dressed in the ragged clothes of the homeless. But their eyes were too alert, their stances too confident, and their frames too muscular to fit the demographic. And each displayed a characteristic of a Special, something that would never be found in the city slums.
Frost covered the ground in a radius around one, his bright blue eyes as cold as the icicles growing along his fingers, his breath visible as he exhaled. Three dust tornadoes swirled around another, gaining speed and size as he watched us with a cocky grin. Other displays of power were exhibited down their line, from balls of white hot fire to electricity that crackled eagerly to be released.
“Halt!” shouted one of them, the Electrospark, a spray of lightning erupting from his hand to catch our attention. We hesitated as he continued to speak, as I recognized him as the same man who had taken my mother from our apartment under the guise of the police.
“Turn back! This is our territory, and you see us as we are – high powered Specials. You will go no farther, whether you turn back now or we stop you with force. Deadly force.”
The horde of students hesitated, spilling over one another as they waited for a decision. A decision none, in their reduced state, could make. One that I made for them.
“They’re protecting him!” I shouted, pointing behind the line to where Slugger had just crawled out of the track behind the guards, his laugh magnified in the space of the chamber. The line of guards whipped around at the sound, while Connor’s power provided the goading to spearhead the students forward, their logic forgotten as emotion took control once more.
In my hand, I held a dark orb that I had prepared on the trip into the station, helping it grow by feeding it as we descended. And I threw it ahead of us, releasing it just as the high powered Specials turned back to face us, and letting it explode in a violent combination of light and sound mere feet in front of the Electrospark.
Chapter 78
The explosion blew the Electrospark backwards fifteen feet while scattering his companions, their faces shell shocked and eyes blinking away the flash. They struck out blindly, slashing out with their powers as their vision returned, two of them incapacitating each other with misdirected blows. But Siri’s training had prepared the students well, and those without protective powers wove among the mayhem, diving for cover as arcs of fire and lightning spewed over the station.
From behind trash cans, the doors of side hallways, and benches, the students returned blasts of their own powers, counteracting the guards through their sheer numbers. Anthony conjured a bellowing wind that swept away fire before it had a chance to reach any of the students, redirecting it upwards to splash on the ceiling and rain down along the edges of the station. Blake charged forward in full diamond form at the Electrospark, absorbing bolts of lightning that fizzled through his feet into the ground, slashing and advancing at a pace too quick to allow for a planned counterstrike.
After disappearing for a few moments, Miles returned with arms laden down with unused cinderblocks from the incomplete construction of the station, then started lobbing them like hail, preventing the enemy from creating any organized front as they continually skirted the artillery fire. Taking cover on opposite corners of the students, Josh and Fino combined forces to dampen the effect of the Blizzarder, negating the icy projectiles and arctic wind that threatened instant frostbite.
Had the guards been prepared, the students would have had no chance fighting against them. But the combination of my exploding orb and their expectation that the students would back down left them in complete disarray.
After only a minute of fighting, the guards retreated to find cover, driving Blake back to the ranks of the students with the use of tornadoes combined with fire, the heat and force giving him no option but to flee. The tornadoes raced across the gap between the two forces, spewing black smoke that formed a deceptive haze to turn bodies into shadows. With the weaving fire tornadoes, lightning that crackled through the darkness, and needle – like ice shards that descended in volleys, no student dared cross the center. In return, no guard jumped the gap across their defense, instead forcing a stalemate.
But there was another force that kept the two sides separated, warping any powers that came too close to the students. Through the smog, I directed my dark orbs, their explosions pushing against any advance, preventing both the students and guards from moving due to a fear of the unknown power. For if either side gained ground, it would only endanger the students. And this was a battle that did not need to be won, but only prolonged.
I maintained my position until I heard shouting coming from the above levels and saw the first of the police poke his head through an opening, then immediately swear and fall back as a fireball singed away half his thick dark mustache. Launching two more particularly large black orbs into the center of the fray, I dashed sideways as they erupted, darting down onto the track just as more of the police arrived on the scene. With the distraction at its peak, I sprinted down the track towards the tunnel at the end, keeping my head low to stay hidden.
Slugger appeared at the entrance, slack – jawed as he watched the scene unfold, and I kept running past him, stopping only for a moment to speak.
“If you see anyone come this way,” I said, panting. “Give me notice. I don’t know what I’m going to find down here and the last thing I need is someone sneaking up behind me. And if the fight starts to die down, stir it back up. Don’t let the students become any more endangered, though. We want them in foxholes.”
“Sure thing, boss,” said Slugger, and whistled. “They say Troy was fought over Helen, but damn. To think I started all this by calling one girlfriend a wagon.”
He smiled, then nodded appreciatively as I started into the tunnel, speaking a final sentence.
“Empowering is what that is.”
Chapter 79
I spooled light outwards from a dark sphere as I ran, the rays dancing across unfinished concrete and gravel. Ahead, the long shadows of rats scurried in search of dark corners and crevices, their squeaks echoing as a herald to my arrival. Every fifty feet, the roof leaked, droplets or streams of murky water saturating my hair when I failed to avoid them, and leaving mud – colored trails along my shirt. Drafts passed by me in a rush, carrying with them whiffs of familiar scents – mildew, sewer, and stale air.
Even with my light, it was impossible to see far ahead, the path blocked by turns of the tunnel and overlaid with sheets of cobwebs. I squinted, wondering what exactly I was looking for and realizing I had no inkling what awaited me at the end of the tunnel. Only the unknown.
Perhaps there were more high powered Specials waiting for me in a trap, alread
y alerted by their cohorts in the station and ready to spring the instant that I appeared. Their powers might turn me to ash and bone before I could react, and I would never see my mother again. Or perhaps they were working on Peregrine’s project and, whatever it was, I doubted that it would play to my advantage.
But I noticed no aspect alien to the subway as I trotted – rather, there seemed to be nothing particularly spectacular about any of the features, my eyes gliding over them as if they were a blank canvas. It was a familiar feeling, like an old smell or hearing an old tune played from years past. And I realized that I did not need to sense anything at all.
Rather, in sensing nothing, I had found everything.
I nearly kept running through the next station as I exited the tunnel, my eyes straight ahead, my brain not comprehending the change in scenery as the roof and walls expanded upwards or the empty train car I edged around. After all, there was nothing special about the opening, nothing that I was looking for here. Except for a single name, shouted by a voice that shattered the illusion around me, and hurled my mind into the current setting.
“Star Child!”
I knew it was her before I turned – to her child, the call of a mother is unforgettable, impossible to erase from the soul. While faces can be forgotten without pictures, and personalities altered in retrospect when reviewing fond memories, that voice never changes within memory. I slid to a stop, gravel skidding before me to form a mound and kicking a thick layer of rock dust into the air that surged into my nostrils. To my right, the ledge of the platform occurred just above shoulder height, and I searched over it for the origin of the voice.
Star Child: Places of Power Page 24