by John Dixon
For a fraction of a second, Scarlett thrilled, hoping the phone would pop against Jagger’s pulsing aura like an insect hitting an electrical bug zapper, but no—Jagger had mastered force in a way Scarlett wouldn’t have thought possible. He raised the phone to his ear, clearly planning to charm the president of the United States. For what purpose? Jagger might find it hilarious to launch nukes around the world.
She edged closer. She needed to do something now—but what could she possibly do?
She’d absorbed strikes from Seamus, storing their force in her bones, but Jagger would gobble any energy Scarlett threw at him. If she charged Jagger instead, the High Rollers would mob her and pull her limb from limb with the help of the cadets and cadre, who gaped up at Jagger like an audience of ventriloquist’s dummies.
Jagger’s electrical loop pulsed with terrible power, suffusing the very air with a crackling undercurrent that made the hair on Scarlett’s arms stand at attention.
How had Jagger generated so much power? How could he hold it? Throughout training, Rhoads had warned Scarlett about overloading. Take on too much power, Rhoads had told her, quoting the battery of scientists at his disposal, and you’ll explode like an overloaded fuse box.
“Hello, Mr. President,” Jagger said, his voice ripe with charm that Scarlett not only heard but felt at the back of her neck. She had plucked the gum from her ears as soon as she’d parted ways with Seamus. It was a good idea for Seamus to protect himself, but she was betting everything on an assumption now, and if her success or failure came down to chewing gum, she was dead. Better to hear what the enemy was saying. “I’m going to tell you just what to do.”
This is it, Scarlett thought. You have to stop him now.
But how? Blasting Jagger now would be like trying to use a barbecue lighter to extinguish an erupting volcano.
The curtains parted slowly across the stage, and Seamus emerged from the darkness. If she didn’t strike now, he would, and—
“Call an emergency State of the Union address,” Jagger said, “and allow me to speak with the American people directly.”
To hell with Rhoads and his half stepping, Scarlett’s true self blurted. Her old mojo, which she’d been suppressing since day one at The Point—and which had more to do with popping wheelies than with following orders—flooded back in. If I overload, I overload.
She crouched, released the pent-up force from her bones, flooded her muscles with energy, and leaped straight at Jagger. She spread her arms wide and stuck out her chest as she had done countless times back home at the quarry, pulling a theatrical swan dive in one more impulsive, death-defying stunt, spitting into the face of the crushing boredom and unbearable depression that wanted so badly to define her life.
And then, barking laughter, Scarlett exploded into the supernova surrounding Jagger.
JAGGER GRUNTED WITH SURPRISE, SPOTTING the hurtling shape—A person? Scarlett Winter?—just as the girl slammed into his loop of power.
A blinding flash, a loud zap, and Jagger hit the stage with a heavy thump. The phone spun away across the floorboards.
His assailant—yes, it was Scarlett—blasted away from the explosion, pinwheeling through the air like a bird killed by a speeding automobile. She slammed into the side wall and collapsed to the ground in a lump, steaming and sparking.
“Exit stage right,” Jagger said, and emitted a burst of static laughter.
But something was wrong.
I’m not on my feet anymore.
He looked around woozily and realized that he was several feet from where he’d been standing when Scarlett had hit the ring—and apparently destroyed it.
His consciousness twisted in and out of focus like a face in a fun house mirror.
She rocked me.
His confused mind tumbled back in time to a night long ago, before he’d mastered his powers, when a pit boss had chased him down in a parking lot outside an Oklahoma casino. The pit boss started shouting about cheating and giving back money. The guy had brought an employee out with him. Not one of the security types you see in Vegas, burly goons with cauliflower ears and cheap suits. No, the pit boss had a skinny dishwasher with him.
Jagger remembered the guy now, in this cloudy moment. The dishwasher was tall and dark and wiry as a whip handle, with a sopping wet apron and huge knuckles gnarled with scar tissue. The guy just stood there, looking bored, while the pit boss yelled and threatened, and Jagger had made a mistake then, trying to charm the pit boss instead of asking himself, Why bring a dishwasher outside?
The dishwasher’s right cross had shattered Jagger’s orbital bone and knocked him out cold. Jagger had awakened on his back, coughing blood, the macadam warm and hard beneath him. The dishwasher stood over him with no real expression on his face. No anger, no excitement, no sorrow, and Jagger…
What the hell?
He shook his head.
Jagger, old buddy, you are fucked up. That girl rocked you harder than the dishwasher.
The confused burble building among the cadets roused him. He had to shake off the cobwebs and fix this shit before everything went south at approximately the speed of light.
Ditko leaned over him, looking concerned, and offered a hand.
Jagger pushed the hand aside and sat up on his own power.
His head was clearing now. The air smelled strange. Ozone and singed hair and burned rubber and some other smell, like overheated metal…
Get your head straight, he told himself, and struggled to his feet. He felt spent, wobbly. The world tilted and came back into focus.
The cadets stared up at him, looking confused—some were clearly more agitated than others—and he understood that the blast had fractured his hold on them.
Fractured but not destroyed. Good.
Meanwhile, his High Rollers, long conditioned to doing his bidding, remained on point, watching him, ready to act, and over all of this played achingly beautiful music, the discordant symphony of the still-raging dining hall chaos.
A wall of muscle crossed the stage, Steede moving toward where Scarlett had fallen.
The stupid bitch had gotten herself killed, breaking the loop. What a waste. She could have been a convenient backup battery.
“Oh, well,” Jagger said. “The show goes on.” He gestured toward the phone, and it flew into his grasp. He just needed to calm the president and buy a few minutes to build another loop before addressing the nation.
Across the stage, Steede reached for Scarlett—and spun away with a thwack sound. One of Steede’s massive arms flopped free, as if hacked from his body by an unseen machete. Steede roared in pain and shock, spraying blood, then flew from his feet, hit by an invisible snowplow doing fifty miles an hour.
A male cadet—lean yet muscular, with black hair—emerged from the wings, glaring fiercely at Jagger.
The missing boy, Jagger thought. Scarlett’s sweetheart, Kyeong.
And then the invisible snowplow that had blasted the life from Steede slammed into Jagger.
He jerked with the impact. Then he straightened and smiled at Kyeong. “Ooh, you’re strong,” he said, and sent the force boomeranging back at the boy.
Kyeong tried to dodge, but the blast caught him broadside. He cried out sharply, spun away, and lay on the stage, twitching like fresh roadkill.
“Colonel Rhoads, what have you been feeding these cadets,” Jagger said, smiling at the crowd, “whiskey and vinegar?”
“Hooah!” Rhoads roared back.
“Hooah!” the audience echoed.
Yet Jagger felt a twinge of concern. Kyeong’s blast had actually hurt. Yes, he’d handled the force, but not cleanly. How badly had Scarlett damaged him?
Eyes on the prize. Take care of business now and worry about all that later.
He lifted the phone to his ear and almost laughed to hear the president�
��s concerned voice. “No worries, Mr. President,” he said. “Everything’s squared away, and I’m ready to rock and roll.”
But at that second, a bright light shone from the wing, illuminating the auditorium in a strange, wavering light. Scarlett rose to her feet and squared with Jagger like a gunfighter, encircled by a blue-white halo of power.
“You can take a punch,” Jagger said. “I’ll give you that much.” He spread his arms. “But what are you going to do? Anything you throw at me, I’ll just throw back at you. We’ll do the do-si-do a couple of times, but then my soldiers will eat you alive.” He gave the phone a shake. “And then I’ll get the real party started.”
A crackling whip of force lashed across the stage. The phone exploded in his hand.
“Schweinehund!” a tall, skinny cadet with spectacles shouted up at him. Somehow she had shaken off his control and destroyed his phone, his plan, with a telekinetic attack.
Jagger stared at the empty hand into which the force of the exploding phone had rushed. He tightened the throbbing hand into a fist, but he knew better than to spend it on the TK sniper, just as he knew better than to waste a telekinetic blast on Scarlett. Oh, no…she could handle that kind of force.
Instead, he smiled brightly.
“Very impressive, Scarlett,” he said, and lowered his voice an octave, infusing it with warmth and goodwill. “You really are amazing.” He stretched out a hand. “Come, join me.”
Scarlett smiled back at him, and the halo surrounding her shone even more brightly.
Yes, Jagger thought. It’s working.
“And what then?” Scarlett said. “Rule the world together like a couple of supervillains?”
Jagger laughed. “See, that’s where the villains get it wrong. Why bother to manage the herd? That’s just another version of the duty-country-honor lie that this place sells. Why rule the world when you can just do whatever you want?” Then he took his voice lower still, tightening it like a flashlight beam, and stared straight into Scarlett’s eyes. “Now, be a good girl, get down on all fours, and bark like a dog.”
“I have a better idea,” Scarlett said, and snapped her fingers. The corona of light around her shimmered, and her voice boomed like a salvo of artillery. “Everyone…help me fight!”
EVERYTHING WENT CRAZY.
Jagger’s power to manipulate had been one more form of force, a literal manifestation of personal magnetism. She hadn’t understood what was happening when she’d felt energy building during Rhoads’s presentation on the High Rollers. It was only after she’d resisted Jagger in the Chamber and felt similar energy building in her neck and skull that she’d begun to wonder.
Scarlett had absorbed the charismatic attack and counterpunched with her own command. She knew that Jagger was weakened, just as she was, and she hoped that everyone would attack him simultaneously with enough power and variety to overload and destroy him.
The cadets and cadre, free of Jagger’s hypnotic yoke, came to their senses immediately.
Unfortunately, the High Rollers, apparently under a much stronger spell, resisted her command and attacked the cadets.
The auditorium exploded in a posthuman battle royal. TKs on both sides launched devastating attacks. Meatheads roared forward, smashing skulls and snapping spines. Speedsters jumped and flashed past the enemy ranks, snapping necks. Guards from The Point waded in with Tasers and nightsticks. Rhoads fired his tranquillizer gun.
A massive female High Roller lifted Vernon overhead and pitched him screaming over several rows of seats but then screamed herself when Cramer stepped forward and bathed the meathead’s face in a billowing charcoal miasma streaked in crimson. This was the dreaded antihealing mentioned only in whispers at The Point. The big High Roller’s face twisted into a grimace and then ballooned, going purple. Fissures opened over the distended flesh, spraying pus. The meathead choked horribly and clawed at her own face, which sloughed away in bloody hunks. She retched and gasped and toppled heavily forward, dead as a stone.
In those opening seconds of the melee, it appeared that the cadets, through initiative and superior numbers, would overwhelm the High Rollers.
Then Penny screamed, and a napalm strike of flames rolled across the auditorium, engulfing cadets, cadre, and those unfortunate High Rollers who had rushed forward to engage the enemy. People dived for cover. Many, however, were too slow. They writhed, burning brightly, completely indistinguishable in the hot flames.
In a single instant, the battle had swung. Combat-hardened as they were, the High Rollers seized the initiative and launched blistering, unrelenting attacks against the survivors hiding behind the burning auditorium seats.
Chantel Uba, the firstie TK who embodied integrity, rose from cover and fired a calculated attack.
Penny spun as if struck by a bullet and collapsed to the stage.
A fraction of a second later, Uba’s head jerked and lost its shape as one side caved beneath an invisible hammer blow. She collapsed, dead before she hit the auditorium floor.
Her killer, a TK named Gans, started barking orders then, coordinating the High Rollers’ attacks to eradicate the surviving cadets.
ONSTAGE, SCARLETT AND JAGGER FIRED simultaneous blasts of concentrated force. Both of them were hurt, and both were hoping to catch their weakened opponent with a decisive blow. Instead, their attacks collided at center stage, forming a river of sparking energy that ran like a conduit between them. They both staggered, caught themselves, and pushed harder.
Scarlett shouted and strained. Everything hurt.
In the space between them, at the point where her energy met his, she could feel energy condensing, crushing in on itself, growing denser and denser, as if they were creating a singularity.
When she surged, the singularity pushed toward Jagger. When he struggled back, she felt the singularity edge in her direction.
She didn’t know what precisely would happen if Jagger managed to push the singularity all the way to her, didn’t know whether she would explode or vaporize or be crushed down to nothing, but she knew without a doubt that touching the singularity would mean instant death.
She growled, pushing the mass of condensed energy back toward Jagger.
She wouldn’t quit. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how strong he was, she wouldn’t surrender.
Jagger was immensely powerful. Alone, he could destroy anyone, any one, but Scarlett was not alone.
She fought with the power of love and hatred.
Jagger, meanwhile, fought only with the urge to survive and destroy.
It wasn’t enough.
Scarlett was strengthened by the desperate need to avenge her brother, to save her friends, and, yes, to rescue this place, this place that she once had loathed but had come to respect, this place where people sacrificed their lives to safeguard the lives of people who didn’t even know that The Point existed, people who would brand them as freaks and burn them at the stake.
As a mother will starve to feed her child, as a father will surrender his life one factory shift at a time to support his family, as a soldier will charge into withering fire to rescue a fallen brother in arms, Scarlett summoned that which is most beautiful in humanity, the power to fight harder, suffer longer, and endure more, all for the good of others. She endured not merely for herself but also for her fallen brother, for Seamus and Lucy, Cramer and Vernon, and even, somehow, the likes of Lopez and Rhoads and Hopkins. She transcended herself, fighting for this place, these people, her family, her world. And filled with that determination, she braced herself and pounded forth more power so that the deadly knot of force edged back in Jagger’s direction, closer and closer, and she could see panic widening his eyes, closer and closer…
“High Rollers!” Jagger barked. “Forget them! Fire on me!”
His fanatical soldiers turned their attacks away from the beleaguered cadets and
blasted Jagger with their various energies.
She felt his power surge, felt the singularity push in her direction, forcing energy back into her. A volcano of churning heat pulsed within her. She stumbled, tripping backward until her back slammed into a wall. Jagger pressed forward, laughing, and she was pinned against the wall by their joined force, with the singularity and certain death edging closer and closer.
She gritted her teeth, summoning every bit of courage and determination. She wouldn’t quit. She battled back, straining, but Jagger, fueled by the High Rollers’ attacks, was too powerful to withstand.
At that moment, the cadets rose bravely from their defensive positions and blasted the High Rollers, who had been left defenseless by Jagger’s command. The High Rollers fell as one, blindsided by a simultaneously barrage of telekinetic force, projectiles, and the bone-crunching tackles of speedsters.
Jagger’s gambit, however, had paid off. He had sacrificed the High Rollers, but his power had surged incredibly. He pressed the singularity forward. Its sizzling force was blinding now, eclipsing everything.
Feeling like her insides had turned to boiling oil, Scarlett screamed in pain and rage and desperation. Her body would explode at any second.
“Hit Scarlett with everything you’ve got,” the familiar voice of Lucy DeCraig shouted.
In an instant, the maddening heat and pressure rushed out of Scarlett, riding a thundering river of new power. The cadets and cadre of The Point had turned their energy on her—and not a moment too soon.
She pushed.
Jagger staggered backward, cursing, and slammed into the wall. Pinned there, he shouted frantic, unintelligible commands that melted into wordless screams of pain and terror as the singularity edged to within inches.
“This is for Dan,” Scarlett said, and shoved out one last time.
There was a bright flash and a faint scream that was cut short, and Jagger imploded. In a fraction of a second, he crushed down on himself and disappeared with a crackle into the singularity, which released a flash of light, a blast of wind, and a tremendous thunderclap—and was gone.