by Becca Mills
Williams followed Yellin out. That was a big plus.
After Theo closed the door behind them, Andy plunked down on the sofa with a sigh. “Thank god that’s over. You don’t want the class nerd or the school bully at your party, much less both.”
“Andy,” Gwen said, frowning.
“Please. You know I’m right. A pair of grade-A assholes.”
Gwen’s voice took on an edge. “You shouldn’t go around badmouthing Nolanders who could wipe the floor with you, much less Seconds.”
“She’s right,” Theo said. “You take too many risks.”
Andy looked from one to the other, then at me.
I shrugged. “They’re sorta right, Andy. Talking about them when they could be standing right outside the door isn’t the best idea.”
Zion pantomimed shooting herself in the head.
Kara said, “Don’t look at me, dude. There’re only so many times a man should hear about his own idiocy.”
“Jesus Christ. You people are friggin’ annoying.” Andy leaned back and crossed his arms, clearly put out.
Theo, who was headed to the kitchen, gave him a playful cuff on the back of the head. “Don’t take it so hard, kid. We still love you.”
“Don’t ‘kid’ me. You’re only eighteen months older.”
“Ah, that’s right,” Theo said. “I forgot.” He shook his head mournfully. “How tragic to be so ancient and so unlaid.”
“Dude, your mouth and my sex life need to get unacquainted, fast.”
And they were off. Gwen, Kara, Zion, and I sat back, listening to the familiar and oddly soothing sound of the brothers ragging on each other. It lasted a good ten minutes, only petering out when Andy brought up the fact that Theo’s high school girlfriend was now a nun.
I’d heard about Sister Annalisa before. She seemed to be Andy’s weapon of last resort. Truth be told, I thought he went to that well a little too often — the dig was going to lose its sting if he trotted it out weekly.
Maybe I’d put a bug in his ear about the way Theo looked at Zion when Zion couldn’t see. I probably owed him one. Andy hadn’t had a problem with Williams until I’d told him about my experiences with the big man in Dorf. Now Andy hated him on my behalf, so the “school bully” remark was sort of my fault.
Having sent an irritated Theo stomping into the kitchen, Andy turned to me. His smile faded.
“How’re you doing with all this, Beth? You know we never wanted you involved, right?”
“I’m glad to be involved.”
But my mind kept going back to the thought I’d had by the Canal Street manhole: what if my gift put in an appearance?
“Kara, Zion, do you remember, in that isolate …”
I had to stop. It was hard to talk about.
Kara came and sat down beside me. Everyone else just waited quietly.
“The fire that destroyed everything. You know I did that, right?”
“Yeah, Zion said the working had your signature.” She elbowed me lightly in the ribs. “We’re not total dumbasses, you know.”
I shot her a quick smile, then took a deep breath.
“I didn’t exactly make it. It just happened. Cordus, he said that can happen, that a gift can get forced out early under, you know, stressful conditions, or whatever.”
I stumbled into silence. My friends looked around at each other.
It was Gwen who finally spoke. “Beth, I don’t think we’re quite following. What do we need to understand about this? That you have a gift for fire? That’s not so unusual.”
I shook my head. “No. It wasn’t fire, not directly. It was infrared radiation.” I looked around at them. “I might be able to generate every kind of electromagnetic radiation, and I have no control over it at all.”
“Holy shit,” Theo said from the kitchen.
“Damn, girl,” Zion said.
“What?” Andy said. “It’s a cool gift. What’s the big deal?”
Kara said, “She means she could accidentally nuke the metro area.”
One of those heavy silences fell.
Andy looked at me for a few long seconds, brow furrowed. Then his face cleared, and he shrugged.
“Who knows — might be sort of cool. Gamma rays made the Hulk, right? I don’t look half-bad in green.”
We all laughed.
“Hey, Theo,” Andy continued, “you remember that fuzzy little mint-green sweater Annalisa used to wear?”
Theo threw a tangerine at him, and instead of dodging or catching it, Andy crossed his eyes and let it bounce off his forehead. This struck everyone as hilarious. Pretty soon we were all opening another round of beers and talking about happier things.
Friends are good. They can’t always fix things, but they can make you feel better anyway.
Chapter 6
The early October sun warmed the back of my neck. I wrapped my arms around myself, chilled despite the gentle weather.
“It’s out there,” Zion said.
Liz nodded. “About two miles north.”
We were all standing at the edge of the lawn. The estate’s property stretched almost a mile and a half north from where we stood. The terrain was wooded hills.
All of Cordus’s people from the day before were there.
Williams was speaking quietly into his phone, probably reconnoitering with Innin’s people.
Yellin stood with us, holding the bag containing the carven strait. He was staring off into the distance and made no move to take command of the situation. Gwen glanced at him and looked away, clearly uncomfortable.
Williams ended his call and started issuing orders. “Hegstrom, take Globa, Tanner, and Zion. Meet Lady Innin’s people at the road. They’ll approach the fragment outside the barrier. Mirror them on the inside. Don’t bring them through unless you have to.”
Gwen nodded and headed off with Zion, Natasha, and Rudolph.
I wondered if their being about to die would be enough of an excuse to bring Innin’s people over to the safe side. Probably not, in Williams’s book. Good thing he’d left it up to Gwen’s discretion.
Williams looked pointedly at Yellin. “I’ll take the strait. You wait here. Rest of you, keep up.”
He took the sack out of Yellin’s hands and turned toward the trees.
The Second seemed to shake himself out of his stupor. “I will accompany you.”
“No,” Williams said flatly. He headed into the forest.
Yellin was livid. He was also scared. He stood, staring after Williams. I could see anguish on his face as well.
For a few seconds, everyone stood there looking back and forth between Yellin and Williams’s retreating back. The training to follow and obey Seconds was hard to ignore. Then people started peeling off, following Williams toward the woods.
Gwen caught my eye. Ever so slightly, she gestured toward the trees.
I cleared my throat. “Okay, I guess this is it. Please, Mr. Yellin, would you show us the way?”
Yellin turned toward me so abruptly I was sure he was going to start screaming at me, but instead he just stared for several long seconds. Then he visibly collected himself, straightening up, loosening his shoulders, adjusting his suit jacket.
“By all means, Miss Ryder. Let us go.”
He turned and headed into the woods.
Gwen gave me a disapproving look.
I flushed and averted my eyes. Maybe it had been the wrong call, but Yellin didn’t deserve to be left behind. He’d had his face rubbed in his own uselessness. He’d been left no dignity at all. Yet he was still here, unwilling to surrender Cordus’s affairs to another, even after they’d been forcibly taken out of his hands. That kind of faithfulness deserved some recognition.
We eventually caught up to Williams, but only because he stopped to wait for us. Following along behind Yellin, I came around a bend in the trail, and there Williams was, leaning against a graffiti-covered cement wall and staring at me very pointedly.
The look on his face sai
d, I know you’re the one who brought him along.
I made my face say, I know you’re the one who has a tiny little dick. Or I tried to, anyway. I might’ve just looked like a scared person covering it up with pissiness, which is what I actually was.
Williams didn’t say anything, just pushed off from the wall and headed down the trail.
We moved fast, jogging past other scattered ruins of the military base that had been built on the property in the early twentieth century. It had been abandoned decades before Cordus seized the land, but old ruins and tunnels remained.
Yellin was soon dripping sweat and breathing in great shuddering gasps. He just wasn’t up to the workout. I sympathized. A few months earlier, I would’ve struggled with it too. On the other hand, I would’ve been bright enough not to go running in a business suit and dress shoes. I guess he’d assumed we’d drive. Or maybe he just didn’t own anything else.
We crossed the decaying blacktop of the old Schuyler Road, which had been moved west when Cordus claimed the land, and pressed on another hundred yards to the northern edge of the property.
When we stopped, I hung back from the others. Unlike them, I couldn’t sense the estate’s barrier, and running into it accidentally wouldn’t be pleasant. I was just a trainee and wasn’t allowed to leave the property alone. If I tried, the barrier would either repulse me or hurt me on the way through. Probably the latter. Graham had been able to get through it, and I was supposedly stronger than he was. Though with Graham, it was hard to know.
We stood quietly, letting Liz do her job.
“It’s pretty close,” she said. “That way. The other group’s still a mile out.”
Williams made an angry sound.
The estate was ringed with homes and businesses, so we’d left early in hopes of avoiding people. Unfortunately, Liz was placing the fragment in the middle of a subdivision. That wasn’t workable. Even at 6:00 a.m., we’d attract attention. This was one drawback to the new strategy: there were plenty of tough-looking people wandering around the city, but in an expensive suburban neighborhood, we’d really stand out. Someone would have to keep us all silent and invisible if we had to go in among the houses, and whoever was doing that wouldn’t be able to fight the fragment.
Williams started walking slowly south, and we all followed along.
“It’s pacing us,” Liz said, “directly west, half a mile out.”
We kept moving for a good twenty minutes, until we were farther from the populated area.
“Still with us?” Williams asked.
“Yeah,” Liz said. “It’s keeping up but not getting any closer. The other group is just over that rise.”
Williams stopped. We all took up watchful positions and waited.
Forty-five minutes later, we were still standing there.
“It hasn’t moved at all,” Liz said. “It must know we’re behind the barrier.”
Williams cursed, then fell into silent thought. Finally he said, “Bring her,” jerking his head at me.
“I don’t recall changing my name to ‘Her,’” I muttered under my breath.
Kara rolled her eyes. “Come on, smartass.” She put her arm through mine and drew me closer to the group.
Together we all moved forward and, I assumed, through the barrier. It was designed to let trusted members of the organization bring people through, though they had to be able to make a barrier of their own to do it.
We walked about twenty feet, then stopped.
In his customary growl, Williams said, “Drop your personal barriers.”
Yellin looked scared enough to pass out. Everyone else looked tense but focused. Disposing of renegade Seconds was, after all, what Nolanders are for. Idly, I wondered when Yellin had last had to do any dirty work. Probably never.
Kara busied herself with the small backpack she was wearing, which probably contained medical supplies.
“What do we do now?” Liz said.
“Wait,” Williams said.
“For what?”
He glanced at me, then went back to scanning the trees.
Yep, that’s me. The worm on the hook.
Liz came to attention like a pointer. “It’s coming toward us.”
So it really was me. Innin’s people had been outside the barrier all along. The youngling had ignored them.
Williams loosened the drawstring of the bag containing the carven strait and set it down near his feet. Then he looked at me.
I forced myself to walk calmly over and put my hand in his.
Just touching him made me break out in a clammy sweat. Dread writhed through me. Dread at the pain, dread at what the pain might make me do.
Liz’s brows knitted. “It’s stopped.”
Kara came over. She was holding a syringe.
“Beth, I’m going to sedate you for this.”
“Thank god,” I said.
“No,” said Williams.
“Why the hell not? It hurts her,” said Kara.
“Need her awake.”
“You can carry her if we need to move.”
Kara dabbed the crook of my elbow with an alcohol wipe.
Williams clamped a huge hand around her wrist. “No.”
Kara lost her temper. “Earth to dickhead — we talked about this! Don’t you remember what that isolate looked like?”
I hated that Kara had talked to him about me, even if they were friends. He was the last person in the world I’d have chosen to share anything with. On the other hand, I didn’t want to destroy Rockland County.
“I don’t have any control over my gift,” I ground out, hating him even more for making me say it.
He stared down at me for some torturously interminable length of time that was actually probably only a few seconds.
“Yeah, you do,” he said. “But not if you’re semi-conscious.”
“Son of a bitch!” Kara said. “You’re gonna —”
“It’s coming,” Liz said. She pointed west and began to count down the distance.
“Williams, you are one mean fuck,” Kara said, stuffing her supplies back into her bag.
“Fan out,” he said.
People spread around us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gwen and Zion moving Innin’s people in, flanking the youngling.
I felt Williams push into me in that indescribable way, his capacity to work essence reaching for mine. He didn’t actually take anything — not yet — but it was still grossly invasive. It was hard not to think of it as a kind of rape, like I had to stand there and let myself be violated. Something deep inside of me recoiled from him, and he started swearing under his breath.
For the dead kid, I reminded myself. For Thomas Kaits.
I could still hear Liz counting off the fragment’s approach. When she said “forty feet,” I saw it, a disturbance on the forest floor off among the trees.
Williams murmured, “On my mark.” I heard the command being relayed in both directions.
We waited.
The fragment approached along the ground. When it was four or five body-lengths away, it flowed up onto the trunk of a large tree. There it stayed, undulating spastically. I watched it, waiting for it to spread out and go still, as it had in the tunnel. Waiting for Williams to draw on my capacity and put a barrier around it. But nothing happened. Neither of them seemed willing to make the first move.
Then Yellin shouted “Now!” from right behind us. I startled. So did Williams.
The fragment shot off its tree trunk, and more than a dozen people assaulted it in a storm of fire, water, howling wind, and forces I couldn’t sense.
Williams ripped something huge out of me, and a barrier of worked gases and fluids sprang into existence around the thing. White agony shot through me. Standing was impossible. Kneeling was impossible too. I ended up on the ground, one arm twisted up and backwards to where Williams still gripped my hand. The pain went on and on as the creature attacked the working and Williams poured power into it. It was as though some deep-
inside organ I didn’t know I had was continually bursting into flame and pouring the fire out through every cell in my body.
Time slowed. All I could sense was pain and the barrier, a perfect six-foot sphere of super-compressed oxygen, infinitesimally thin, yet so dense ten men couldn’t have shifted it, coated on the inside with layers of spinning air and rushing water.
In the first instant, the youngling had recoiled from the torrent. It didn’t like moving water.
Then it attacked, working gravity to rip the water layer loose. I could feel exactly what the fragment was doing, and I fought to keep the water in place.
No, not me — that’s Williams.
But it felt like I was doing it. I could feel myself holding the water back. The fragment pulled, and I pulled back. I could feel the water down to the grain. I pulled and pulled, and all those tiny water bits quivered under the strain. Then they began to break apart, fizzing into hydrogen and oxygen. For an instant I fumbled at the gases, trying to make them water again — no, it was Williams doing that — and the entity surged through to the air layer, seizing the gases, trying to pull their circulation apart. I surprised it by shifting the air layer to a blast of wind powerful enough to punch through the fragment, scattering it into a cloud of dust.
It only bought me a second. Almost instantly, the thing reformed and attacked the outer layer of my barrier, prying at the electrons in the crushed oxygen atoms. I pulled them back in, and when I couldn’t pull hard enough, I jerked the barrier sideways so that the fragment had to attack a fresh spot.
I was tiring, still dizzy from when the fragment broke the water layer.
No, that’s Williams. It was all Williams. I didn’t even understand what he was doing.
My sense of the barrier began to fade, leaving only pain — endless, unbearable. Then that started to fade as well. It faded until the hurting body seemed a separate thing I was tethered to by a cobweb.
Things got dark.
I came to with the sense of having just hit something.
I hurt in that placeless way that came from having been drawn on. I also hurt more concretely in my back, neck, and head. My right shoulder was a burning knot that felt all wrong. My right arm was limp. I couldn’t move it.