by Alana Melos
“Can we get through?” Adira asked, fretting. She didn’t like not being in control of herself, being at another’s mercy, even if it was her leader’s.
“Of course,” I said as I slowed our pace and floated us towards the energy. When I reached out with my teke, the shield repelled the energy, forcing it back. Frowning, I tried again with the same results. “Uh, crap. We’ll just have to take another way.”
From what I remembered of my parent’s stories, there was a tether from Uptown to Downtown, which would be Old New York, located somewhere in the middle of the great floating platform. Changing directions once again, I flew us higher and in a straight line. I kept thinking my energy had to go at some point, but the longer we went, the more revitalized I felt. The blows from earlier faded until I was left with my buzz, still pleasantly high from the Clarity. No wonder it had been outlawed. So far as I knew, no one knew how to make it on Prime. That was going to change.
That was also the future. I swept through the skies, looking for the place and scanning the skies for other metahumans. I didn’t know what it would look like exactly, but at least no one was pursuing us yet. In the middle of the city, I spied a large building, lit up like a Christmas tree. Nothing else I’d seen matched it in magnificence--though plenty of the buildings here were done by inspired architects--or in size. It was either the entrance to the tether, or the Sentinels headquarters. I lowered us to the ground. Adira stepped away from me, her lips drawn in a tight line.
“I think this is it,” I said. “That or we’re going to walk into a very bad place.”
“Think this is what?” she asked.
Oops. I hadn’t filled her in. “We’re in Uptown. Here, it didn’t crash to Old New York. This is our way down, since we can’t get through the barrier.”
“I see,” she said. The vampire reached underneath the lab coat. “I have something of yours.” She reached behind her back and snapped something, then withdrew my o-wakizashi from underneath the coat. “You dropped it.”
My face lit up and I grabbed my beloved weapon. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it for perhaps the fourth or fifth time in my life. “I owe you.”
“Just get us home, and the debt is repaid,” she replied, looking out of the mouth of the alley we stood in.
I sheathed my sword, and nodded. Energy still buzzed through my body. “Let’s just walk up,” I suggested. “They can’t be looking for us here this fast.” Well, they could, but we had to enter the building somehow. If we could just meld with the traffic here and ride our way down, all the better. If not, I’d find or make a hole in the tether--it was metal and thus bendable--and we’d fly down. Either way, we had to be in the building.
She shed the lab coat and dusted herself off. I looked myself over and shrugged. I looked a little beat up, but not too bad. I wouldn’t even draw a glance in Imperial City. Here, who knew? We stepped out of the alley and crossed the street. The building was done up in an impressive array of lights and glimmer, with delicate patterns traced into the concrete. Those patterns reminded me of the fence around Nox, and I wondered if it was just the style here or if it meant something more. The lights spilled around those designs, pouring into them as if they were a liquid which made it look as though a rainbow waterfall danced over the surface of the building. Gaudy, not exactly to my taste, but impressive and beautiful all the same.
The towering building itself was large, and had many open archways at the bottom, reminding me of a train station. The closer we got, the buzz of the crowd--even at what must have been nine or ten in the evening there was a large crowd--floated to us in the still night air, growing louder with every footstep. Electric taxis waited along the curbs, and pedestrians walked in small bunches to and fro. All around the perfect lawn which surrounded the station were large statues, a few of which I recognized. Ajax and Bluecoat were among them. I curled my lip up at their likenesses as we strode in.
Adira grabbed my hand and I scowled, trying to pull away from her. Her grip was firm and she nodded ahead and to the right: guardians. They stood silently in the shadows, waiting for anyone to break a law. People didn’t even spare them a glance or, at a quick scan of their surface mind, a thought. They were just part of the scenery, as every bit important as a potted plant. I sent out a wave of ‘we’re not important, we belong here’ vibes, not trying to concentrate on anyone in particular, and did my best to walk casually.
The telepathic suggestion couldn’t stop anyone viewing us from through a camera lens, though. As we entered the station--what else could it really have been?--I noted the surveillance right away. If they were actively searching for us, we would be spotted in a matter of minutes, maybe less. I pulled ahead, tugging Adira along behind me as if I were a commuter rushing for a train. The analogy wasn’t too far off. Instead of a subway, large tubes were in the middle of the station, flanked by the turnstiles and booths familiar to me. These tubes contained single cars, large enough to hold twenty to thirty people.
“Get ready to run if we have to,” I whispered to Adira as I brazenly walked up to one of the booths. I reached forward with my mind and mimed putting something in the silver cup below the bulletproof glass. “Two please.”
The bored looking attendant picked up nothing at all and went to her till as if she were putting money away, then slid two tokens into the bowl. I grabbed them and handed one to Adira, then used the coin and moved onward. Oh, how I missed my telepathy! Things had been so much easier with it, and even more so here where it appeared the gene for psychic gifts was rare, if not non-existent.
“There they are!” a voice shouted across the vaulted station. As one, Adira and I turned seeing Ajax, Bluecoat, and a couple of the others entering from across the way. Without words, we turned as one and rushed towards the near car. I gripped her hand, taking some comfort in the cool touch of her flesh. It was good to not be alone. I would have gotten out without her, but it was good to not be alone.
An alarm sounded and the motionless guardians came to life. There were more of them here than I thought as a dozen dark shadows detached from the walls and searched the crowd for us. As we reached the doors, they closed right in front of us. I saw a few wide eyed stares gawking at me before the car dropped out of sight through the massive floor. Using my teke, I pried the doors open just as the ground shook behind us. A flicker of thought told me it was Ajax, but unlike before I couldn’t touch his thoughts. My lip curled up. Even on Prime they had that technology, to block mental tinkerings with circuitry of some kind. They hadn’t been prepared for me before, but they were now. With time and effort, I’m sure I could have broken through that while I was on Clarity, but we had no time left.
Adira pulled me into the tube as soon as the doors opened under my mental might. She flung me down the long passageway before I had the opportunity to react. She jumped a moment later, reaching for me. I pulled her to me as we free fell in the darkness, occasional light glittering as covered bulbs marked our descent. A few seconds later, the sky erupted as the metal from the platform gave way to glass. The tubes might have just been steel or titanium or what-have-you in the past, but sometime between then and now, they had replaced them with strengthened glass. From a distance, Old New York stood bright and beautiful with a million pinpricks winking at us from below.
“We can’t stay in here,” Adira said as our fingers interlaced. The rapid descent stole her words away, but I saw them clearly in her mind as she spoke. “Can you get us out?”
She couldn’t fly, but I could… and if they thought we were stuck in the tube, we might be able to shake them. There had been ways to track psychics before, but I gambled my mother had destroyed them. If she went to the trouble of eliminating what genetic stock they had stored, then surely she would have done that as well? Even if she hadn’t, it would take time to find the devices which had to have been stored away.
Nodding in agreement, I grabbed us with my telekinesis and slowed our fall so I could examine the tether. There wasn’t just
one, but many, maybe as many as a dozen. Bands of steel held them together so they weren’t loose, but one solid line, like a braided rope. I brought us to a stop by one of the bands. Rivets held the pieces in place. I focused first on simply trying to break the glass--the easiest solution was the best one. tt was too strong after my first exploratory bangs, even with my heightened powers. Next, I concentrated on the rivets.
I have to stop here and say that usually I don’t “feel” things with my teke. Think of it like picking up something with an arm that’s completely numb. Obviously, you’re moving it, and you know how much pressure to exert so as not to break the object yet still hold onto it, but you don’t feel it. With Clarity pounding through my veins, this was no longer the case. My teke was alive in a way I’d never really felt before, save for my first fight with a guardian. It was another part of me, something I felt and experienced. I got input through it, but not in a way that would hurt me like a cut on a finger could. Hence, when the rivet had a little bit of give, I felt it through my phantom limb, which made me redouble my efforts. I wiggled the rivet back and forth, then yanked. It came popping out with a loud clang and I dropped it down the shaft. The next few went faster now that I knew what to expect, and by the time I was on the sixth one, the tube had peeled open just a bit, held on tenuously by threads of steel. Air whooshed past us, and at number six, the whole thing groaned. Other rivets popped, one by one, until they hit a bar of some kind. I glanced at it, and it seemed to be a stronger weld, or some other kind of safety feature. Whatever it was, the tube stopped opening. It kinked a little, but overall still stood straight, though now we could slip out.
I maneuvered us through the gap. It looked larger than it was, and we both had to wiggle to escape. Once free, I took to the skies, carrying Adira along with me. Ah, down there was the city I loved. The lights of the buildings burned bright and beautiful. I saw the second tower of the World Trade Center, saved so many years ago by Ajax Major, accompanied by the ghost light of the monument of the first. Beyond that, the Statue of Liberty lay, her torch gleaming in the darkness now as it never had when she had been built. On the horizon, further out into the Atlantic, the metahuman prison--the Citadel--stood, but I saw no lights there. In Origin, I supposed they had no more need for prisons since everything was hunky dory. All of that and so much more lay below us. I looked to Adira. Faint trails of her thoughts floated along behind her, about how she hated being carried around, and she wondered when the officers would find us, and how long this drug would last….
Laughing, I glanced to her. Since the wind was whipping past us, and voices were lost, I touched my mind to hers. My confidence surged through the connection mollifying her thoughts briefly as I spoke to her. They won’t find us, and don’t worry about the drug. I feel str--
That’s when the Clarity wore off and we plummeted.
Chapter Eight
This was the second time in a few months I was falling to my death. The first was off a skyscraper. I’d managed to slow us down enough that when we landed, it wasn’t fatal. It had hurt like a bitch. This time, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop our rapid descent.
Not that I could put it into thought. When the Clarity stopped, my world stopped. My mind shrieked at me as we went into free fall, clambering after the high which had vanished. My stomach roiled, and all my aches and pains were back including a mind-splitting headache. For a second, I thought I was dead. Then, I realized I’d passed out for a heartbeat at the sudden change in velocity and the incredible crash which came with the meta-drug. Something had burst in my head. As I fell, I saw blood droplets leaving a trail behind me. Adira shouted, her hands reaching for me. I couldn’t move. It was all I could do to not puke. I flipped over as I fell, head over heels, until I didn’t know which way was up. The lights of Old New York burned my eyes. They were so bright in the darkness. The wispy trails they left behind as I flopped in the air both confused and distracted me.
Adira’s strong hand gripped my forearm and she pulled me to her. She screamed something, but the wind swallowed her words. I shook my head, but that motion just made lights burst behind my left eye. A maelstrom of images toppled over each other, piling over in my head: sights and sounds and smells that I’d never consciously known covered my mind in a patchwork, and I felt my mother’s touch ever so briefly. The vampire slapped me hard, then spread out her free arm as I tried to focus my rattled brain on her. She wanted me to spread my arms. I could do that. When I stretched, my shoulders screamed with leftover, cramping pain. I’d ignored it while high. Now that I’d crashed, it had come back twice as bad as before.
She did the same with one, but kept a firm grip on me with her other hand. Our descent slowed as the buildings rushed up towards us. I had to focus. I knew I had to, but all these thoughts flooded me, boiling up from my subconscious. I felt my mother again, stronger this time, and pushed away from her. I recoiled from the thought that we were anything alike, even if I really was just a copy of her, and a weaker one to boot.
The block in my head. It had been bendy before, but now, it had large rents in it as I viewed it through my mind’s eye. I reached for my power, but liquid pain poured into my skull. I cried out, and tears bloomed in my eyes, only to be whipped up and away by the wind. If it was weakened, I should be able to take access to whatever she had locked away in me. I thought it was my true potential, but there was nothing there. I reached… and had found only emptiness.
Adira shook me, and I shook my head. My teke! Oh yes! I tried to focus, but the same white hot pain lanced through me. The Clarity clash had denied me use of any of my powers. Adira screamed something else, and this time I heard the word ‘fly’. I shook my head again, trying to convey that I couldn’t.
Even in pain, I saw her roll her eyes at me. She opened her mouth, all of her teeth sharpened and extended. When she brought my wrist to her mouth, I shook my head vehemently, whipping it back and forth as I struggled to break her iron grasp around my arm. Was she going to make me into a vampire? A vampire could survive a fall from this height, in theory. Was there enough time? But… but that was impossible! I had no soul--vampires were literally nothing but parasitic spirits, souls which moved on to living hosts.
“Stop!” I screamed, but she bit down. I struggled, but she drank. The pain of the bite was nothing compared to the pain in my head, but even so I felt the blood drain out of my wrist. We had reached the very top of the tallest skyscrapers in Downtown now. The ground moved up at an accelerated pace.
She stopped drinking, and gathered me close. “Don’t!” I yelled. “I can’t be made a vampire!”
“Going to fly!” she said. Or maybe it was ‘try’. She held me close, and I tried to shove her back. Yet instead of going for the kill or giving me her blood to drink, she closed her dark red eyes and frowned, concentration etched upon her pretty face.
The world slowed around us. The ground didn’t rush up quite so fast. Then I understood. She wasn’t going to make me a vampire. She was going to try to fly herself, but she needed blood to make the attempt. Vampiric powers were dependant on age and blood. Nosferatu was the only vampire I knew of who could fly, but he was ancient. The rest tended to travel like the legends of the jiangshi, with giant leaps from building to building, relying on their raw strength rather than a supernatural power. Adira might have finally had the age, but she’d needed the blood to fuel it.
Necessity might have been the mother of invention, but desperation was definitely the father. She had saved us, though her skill was incomplete. I didn’t care. As the buildings sprang up around us, our descent slowed, then jerked to a stop. Our controlled fall started anew as she learned a power which was innate to her, but had never been taught. I had the delirious thought of vampires shoving their baby vamps out of a really tall building to teach them to fly, and then started crying when I laughed. It hurt too much. With death off the table, my adrenalin dissipated from my system and the pain which pounded through my system left me a mess.
I took several deep breaths, and regretted it immediately. Adira knelt by me, but I didn’t respond. I had to get it to stop. I rolled on my side and felt the bottle bite into my hip painfully from the pocket it was in. My thoughts seized on it, and I grabbed it, clawing the bottle out of my pocket and opening it up to shake a pill out.
“You shouldn’t,” Adira said, but I’d already tossed it down. Just like any common drunk, I went back to the hair of the dog that bit me. Well, it was more like the hair of the tiger who mauled me.
It worked. The sights and sounds seemed to fade, the pain became manageable, and after a few moments of laying there, I breathed deep, knowing there was garbage all around but not overwhelmed by the unpleasant odor. When I opened my eyes, Adira frowned down at me. I reached for her, but couldn’t sense her thoughts. Only wisps of feelings came through a tenuous bond. The blinding pain didn’t come with the try either. I touched her cheek, and then ruffled her hair telekinetically. At least that worked, but it wasn’t as strong as I’d wanted it to be either.
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice hoarse from screaming so much of the way down.