Confidence surged within me, for neither time had I intended to actually hit him. Rather, I wanted to test that I could feel him ripping through space just before he moved. And each time, I felt it just before he flickered away.
For a moment, I considered launching a black sphere at him in a direct strike. I knew he couldn’t feel space like me. If that was among his talents, he would have known that I was an imposter far before now. He would have sensed my power was not, in fact, telekinetic. And without that sense, he might have no time to move. The sphere would leave a hole in his chest the size of a bowling ball, and the battle would be over before he would have a chance to attack.
But if the sphere missed, my power would be revealed. Peregrine would be more cautious, would anticipate the unknown in his attacks. And if he did win the battle, instead of killing me, he would bring me back to Siri. With my power revealed, perhaps I would become just as strong of a weapon for them as the device Peregrine had built.
“Your mistake, boy,” Peregrine said, his lip curling, twitching his mustache. “But I won’t kill you here. No, instead of taking your heart, all I shall do is disconnect a single vertebra. Cripple you beyond the help of most healers, make you watch all that you turned down come to fruition. And turn you into the wedge that will make your mother cooperate.”
“No, don’t!” cried my mother behind me as Peregrine extended his hand once more, and I felt space open just before his fingers and at the small of my back, the seam of reality splitting with reluctance. Then he pushed his hand through, his expression triumphant as his fingers disappeared into nothingness. For a moment he was still, the expression on his face frozen, while I felt a mounting pressure build just above my hips. Then his eyebrows raised in disbelief as I continued to stand, my head cocked to the side, feeling his fingers trying to ram through the barrier.
Without my intervention of creating a tiny force point just where he tried to break through, effectively trapping his fingers, he might have accomplished the task. Peregrine had mentioned that higher powers possessed auras more difficult to penetrate. Maybe mine would have stopped him. But my mobility was not something I was willing to chance.
“Was that supposed to hurt?” I asked, my voice level, “Or are you trying to tickle me, Peregrine? After creating all these portals, maybe your power is exhausted. Or maybe, you’ve underestimated my abilities!”
To punctuate the last sentence, I raised my hands, calling forth the strongest force points I could muster. As I pulled the empty train car from the subway track up into the air and hurling it at Peregrine, sparks erupted as it bounced, the metal screeching as it peeled back and grated against the floor. His expression still shocked, Peregrine failed to teleport before the car and he collided.
Chapter 84
The roof of the car drove into his shoulder with the unstoppable mass of several tons, sending him skittering backwards on his heels until his instinct kicked in. He teleported away as the car continued on its kamikaze path towards the wall, the metal wailing as air RUSHED out from the closing gap. And without powers, Peregrine would have been in that gap only moments later, crushed and the fight finished.
Instead, he scowled, evaluating the damage of his torn sleeve before nodding his head in approval.
“If nothing else, we taught you the element of surprise,” he sighed. “Just another trait that will go to no use. But you’re out of your league, boy. Far out of your league.”
The punch came out of nowhere, the space ripping open just right of my head as Peregrine led his teleport with a fist. Two knuckles caught me across the face as he stepped through the void, my vision flashing as I reeled backward. Then he was through the other side, teleporting away in an instant, both the entrance and exit rips in space appearing too quick for me to react. I sprawled backwards, launched by the force of the collision and rolling against the concrete.
Blood dripped from my nose as I climbed to my feet, stars flashing across my vision and lacerations digging into my forearm. But Peregrine was already thirty feet out of reach, casually leaning against the side of the station, his eyes on me like a snake watching prey.
“It’s no fair fight,” he said. “No way for you to win. This is a game for me, SC. I only have to invoke the lowest extents of my power.”
Provoke him until he makes a mistake, I thought, Make him too confident. Time it just right.
“You’re still no match for me!” I shouted, raising my hand to whip a stream of gravel from the track. The stones curled in midair, a band of rock cascading as hail in a strike where Peregrine stood. He sidestepped, not even bothering to teleport as the projectiles missed him and scattered about the station, bouncing in every direction as they met the wall and floor.
“Inexperienced and incompetent,” commented Peregrine, disapproving. “With many more lessons to be learned.”
This time, I caught the rip in space as he stepped through, his left hand gripping my shoulder as his right dug into my gut. I doubled over, coughing and gasping as a second impact followed the first. My hands gripped my knees as I sputtered, Peregrine already departed out of reach once more as I lashed outwards, kicking only air where he had been moments before.
“I do believe pain is the best teacher.” He laughed, now at the other end of the station, his voice echoing. “And maybe, with time, you will learn from it.”
He teleported again, only ten feet away and directly facing me. From behind me, I could hear my mother screaming, shouting curses at him that I pushed into the background while I concentrated, as I focused my attention away from the throbbing side of my face, and my breath that came too shallow, and the blood that was seeping through my clothes. Becoming aware of all that was around us that could be sensed by my power.
There was his machine, a twisted knot at the center of the station, with tunneled stands that travelled through the air away from it in all direction. There were the rips in space he had recently closed, like wounds still healing, steaming as they faded away. And there were smaller sensations, such as the feeling of the earth bending space around it, a light ever present touch that was always in the background. Far away, I also felt reverberations from the raging battle in the last station, the distant ripples of thick packets of energy being released so quickly they warped space itself.
“One last time I offer you,” Peregrine said as I stared, waiting on the balls of my feet, reaching out with my power to feel the space between us. He held up a single finger and leaned forward as he spoke, like a parent to a disobedient toddler. “One last courtesy. Choose.”
“Never!” I shouted back, my voice coming out barely as a wheeze.
“Then your lesson in pain has only just begun, boy!”
His eyes flashed as he lunged forward, and I tensed, knowing I would only have one chance. There, just milliseconds later, I felt it start to form, the rip in space that preceded his teleports. And right as his body started to cross through the tunnel in space, I struck, putting all my power behind a single blow.
Chapter 85
The space behind Peregrine collapsed with a force so violent that the station shook, the force point I generated by him so powerful that it pulled in objects from far edges of the track. To Peregrine, the point would be indistinguishable from gravity. And now, he was already moving through the rip in space, propelled forwards by his own power, climbing out of a gravitational energy well with no way to pay the debt.
Cold exploded in front of me as he stepped through, his eyes widening in shock as frost leapt across the tips of his hair, and his breath billowed in front of him like a miniature cloud. Snowflakes flurried out from the rip in space as if an arctic blizzard were on the other side, partially obscuring him as I aimed my punch directly into his lower chest. In his unexpected environment, the blow caught him defenseless and his expression flickered to confusion, then panic, and he initiated the logical course of action for a seasoned soldier in an unpredictable situation.
Retreat, reassess the situation
, and return to attack.
Two dark orbs appeared in my hands by the time he opened the second rip in space, his steps slow as frostbite bit him down to the bone. And as he stepped through once more to escape, I yanked the space around the orbs downwards, pulling him as hard as possible towards me while still letting him flee, creating a second gravitational debt that he would have to climb out of to teleport.
What came out the other end of the portal was not Peregrine – no, the figure that materialized on the other end of the room was solid ice, the skin cracking as moisture flash froze within cells, the muscles refusing to obey commands as energy fled them. Moisture from the damp underground air rapidly joined him as his knees buckled, covering his exterior in a layer of white that hissed like dry ice. Then he fell backwards, his limbs locked in position as he rocked on his back and stared at the ceiling, his temperature as cold as liquid nitrogen.
I walked to him with caution, still nursing the injuries that he had given me, and stared down at what remained. Through the layer of ice, his eyes were frozen and still. His face was a shade of blue, his expression locked and his chest unmoving.
“The trick is in elevation changes,” I whispered as a chunk of ice fell from his hair and skittered across the ground. “You said it yourself, Peregrine. And you gave me no choice.”
I turned back to the machine he had created, the monstrosity intended to generate an army of super – soldiers to obey him. And I realized that it would be no small feat to destroy it. The strands of ripped space surrounded it like bits of spider webs and knocking them down at once would only tangle the web together, twisting and folding space rather than smoothing it out once more. I would have to return later, after the battle was over, when I would be at full strength and my injuries would be healed, and when I would have hours to work. The portals still showed the Pacific, the azure ocean waving through the small doorway to the room, the dark shapes in the depths hiding just out of sight.
But now, it was time for one more shape to join them.
I had to wrap my shirt around my hands to lift Peregrine, his skin still too cold for me to touch. Even then, I could only drag him, leaving behind a trail of white that led to the entrance of his contraption.
“You made this to bring people into this world,” I said, pulling him up onto the metal table at the center. “It’s fitting, then, that it delivers you from it.”
I pushed, the legs of the table screeching as they moved, as if Peregrine himself were resisting his fate. Then the lip of the metal met the border on one of the portals and pushed into it, the Pacific absorbing the edge of the table with greedy tendrils of water. The table continued sliding as if it were moving downhill, pulling itself through, tipping into the depths, taking its payload, Peregrine, with it as the last portion passed through and was now only visible from my side of the barrier.
Together, they sank, Peregrine weighed down by his boots and the undercurrent of the falling table. And around them swam the same bright school of fish as before, darting in and out with curiosity to view their new visitor. Swirling around him, but gradually leaving in a flurry of color that travelled towards the surface, forgetting the faceless shape as it sought the ocean floor.
Chapter 86
“I had to,” I mumbled, my hands shaking as I looked back to the portals. I sat next to my mother, my breath coming in shallow gasps. In my lap was the chain that had shackled her moments before, the metal links in the center freshly vaporized by one of my dark spheres.
A dark sphere that sickened me to look at. The same that had brought Peregrine to his death.
“SC, how did he die?” she asked, her voice soft as tears welled in my eyes. Now the police had a true reason to find me. Now I was no longer innocent.
“I froze him,” I started, swallowing. “I killed him by using—”
“No, SC,” she said, using the edge of her shirt to brush away the blood on my face, the fabric stinging as it met open cuts. “What was he doing when he died? What action was he taking?”
“He was teleporting to hit me, to punch me again. And it was either I attack, or I be killed. It still doesn’t feel right, though. Not at all.” I shook my head as I tried to use the words as a flimsy shield.
“Tell me, SC,” she continued, running a hand through my hair. “If he never teleported to attack you, would your attack have worked? Would he still be alive right now, and speaking?”
“He would. Without jumping, my power would have had no effect.”
“Then to me, it sounds like he decided his own fate,” she comforted, embracing me with both arms. “Through his own actions, he died from a force of nature. As surely as looking over the edge of a cliff and walking into nothingness. And even if you had taken his life directly, SC, there are many that he has already stolen. Plus many more to come. Mine, yours, your classmates.”
She stood, taking my arm, and started to walk towards the subway tunnel, continuing to speak.
“You prevented that, SC. Remember that Peregrine brought this on himself.”
“That doesn’t make it much easier,” I said as our footsteps echoed in the cavern. “It does a bit, but not much.”
“And it shouldn’t. If it were easy for you, I’d be worried. Do not take it lightly,” she said, though her brow was already creased. “But given the chance, I would have done the same. You saved me, SC. You made the right but difficult decision.”
We reached the track and climbed down into it, my mother sighing as she dropped over the edge. We stared into the dark tunnel, pausing, blinking.
“Is there another way out?” I asked, casting my gaze over the station. “Things aren’t going to be calm on the other end, and I’d rather approach from above.”
“All the exits are filled with cement,” she answered. “I nearly escaped once, but the only path is through this tunnel. And before I could take it, they found me – took them three days of searching while I hid in plain sight, but Peregrine had the tunnel boarded up until I was shackled again.”
“Then the tunnel it is,” I said, and we stepped forward together.
After the last few weeks, it felt strange to fall into the rhythm of footsteps with my mother, for her cadence to lead my walk. I’d grown used to setting my own pace, to choosing my own path. The world had forced me to learn to move on my own, to make my own decisions.
And now, shadowing someone again was strange, almost awkward. As if the muscle memory no longer existed and was now replaced by something else, something stronger.
“What happened, SC?” asked my mother as we moved. “Ever since the apartment. Did they harm you?”
“A lot happened,” I sighed, my thoughts racing, unsure where to start, “but I came out okay. And now, everything can go back to normal. We can move back home – wait, can we move back home?”
I’d never actually planned farther than rescuing my mother – everything afterward seemed secondary. Something that she would be able to figure out once we had reunited.
“We’re not going to be able to, are we?” I asked, my voice deflated.
“Most likely not, SC. But home is not simply the apartment we left a few weeks ago. Home is where we make it. Where we’re together. And with my ability to keep you hidden, that can be many places.”
As we retraced my steps, the tunnel turned to reveal a dull pinprick of light far ahead. And with the light, I heard the sounds of fighting, battle cries accompanied by crashing and explosions. Indications that my friends were fighting.
“I have to go!” I said, turning to my mother. “Home might be more than just the two of us! Don’t leave the tunnel.”
“SC, wait—” she shouted, but I had already started sprinting, leaving her behind in the darkness. Ahead, my friends were still in potential danger. Danger that I had brought them into.
And now, I would need to help them escape.
Chapter 87
I exploded from the tunnel at full speed, two black orbs hovering just above my palms, and leap
t up onto the platform. Smoke still obscured the scene in a thick haze, but I could see the guards lined on one end, their powers still fully activated. And on the other, crouched for cover but holding ground, were the police and students.
Neither side was moving – both held back, tentative, as two figures stood in the middle between them, their arms outstretched against both sides. The guards from the rehabilitation facility, with thick glowing force fields generating from the palms, stronger than any I had seen them use before, and splitting the fight down the center, preventing either side from mounting an attack.
“Stand down.” The voice came from within the mist, a slight singsong quality to it that I knew all too well. “What has happened today is the business of the rehabilitation facility alone. We shall cover all costs for damages and assure you nothing of this nature shall ever occur again, as testified by our unblemished track record prior to today.”
Siri’s typically spotless suit was covered in dust, a hole the size of a baseball singed into the side, and an entire collar missing. Her hair, usually restricted to allow no strands freedom, was frazzled and unkempt. And her voice was low, dangerous.
“Neither the police nor I can ignore what transpired in the last hour,” came another voice, one that made me bite my lip. The Hunter. And far closer to me in the smoke than Siri. “Perhaps we can ignore the outbreak, but there is something far more sinister occurring. The rehabilitation facilities are not authorized to hold a militia. And worse, they appear to have been attacking children before we intervened.”
“The business of the rehabilitation facilities is beyond the police, and this was simply a training exercise gone awry,” Siri retorted, her voice low, almost a growl. “We have a balance, Art. A delicate one. Lives will be lost if it is toppled. Do you really want to be responsible for that? Just to try to prove a point that doesn’t exist?”
Star Child: Places of Power Page 26