by A. L. Knorr
My heart was pounding a quick but steady rhythm, and the vortex running through my center was humming like a generator as I closed the distance between myself and my target: the TNC labs and offices, where the schemes that destroyed my parents and goodness knew how many other lives, had been staged.
I moved off the path and into the trees, making a beeline for the first modular building. I recognized it and reoriented myself on my mental map, putting the Atlantic ahead and off to the left. The building I was approaching was the one just behind the lab where Sy had always landed the helicopter. The rear of the building was a windowless block of concrete. On either side there was a glow of light.
The distant sounds of engines and indistinct shouting came to me from the front of the building.
I squeezed my eyes shut and sent out an electromagnetic pulse. There was a deep sonic boom and the artificial lights on either side of the building went out. The sound of engines ceased immediately, and so did the sounds of human voices.
Then they swept up stronger than ever, shouting and hurling commands.
I rounded the corner of the building and into the parking lot and gravel roundabout in front. Everything was shades of blue and gray under the dim light of a setting moon. A couple of yellow flashlight beams could be seen through the trees in between the building nearest me and Hiroki's lab. I headed for the front doors. These were offices, where servers were kept.
"Stop right there," a woman's voice called sharply.
I turned, my hand outstretched, ready to blow out the door.
A woman with close-cropped dark hair stood alone on the pavement in a half-crouch. Her eyes were lit like embers, and she held up both hands, which flickered with red flames. Saxony had looked much like this when she'd created the artificial sun for the prototype.
"Hello, mage." I faced her, unafraid.
"I'm not alone," she said as three more people, eyes lit in the same way, hands aflame, emerged from the trees and joined her, ready for a fight.
I turned my back on them, reaching for the door again.
A blast of fire hit my force-field and lit the world around me so brightly I squinted. When the blast ceased, I turned to face the woman, who was now only a few feet from me. With a flick of my fingers I lifted her into the air and threw her back into one of her friends, who caught her and staggered back before the two of them fell to the ground in a heap.
Facing front again, I put a hand on the door and cracked the metal. Kicking the door in, I stepped inside.
The building was empty, locked down for the night. Behind me the mages were talking fiercely, arguing. I wondered how much they knew about who I was and what I could do.
"You made a mistake with me, TNC," I muttered to myself. I looked right, then left, and headed down the carpeted hall. "Big mistake."
It didn't take long to find what I was looking for. It was underground, as I knew it would be: a small room housing several Faraday cages. These cages were meant to protect the servers inside from electromagnetic radiation. Lines of blinking blue light confirmed that my EMP had not damaged the servers.
The cages on both sides of the room peeled back and folded like an accordion under my mental control, leaving the servers exposed.
Shattering them to bits took mere seconds.
I turned my back on a room that was filled with nothing but broken plastic, twisted metal, and fried electronics. The acrid stench of electricity and smoke hung in the air.
I emerged from underground and went through the offices room by room, destroying laptops, computers, phones, anything electronic I could find.
No one entered the building to stop me, and I wondered what TNC forces were up to. Still trying to recover from my EMP? Reaching out to other supernaturals in their employ who might be able to face off with the Euroklydon?
Hiroki had made the mistake of inflating my confidence, telling me there was no one like me in the world of supernaturals. He’d said I was not just rare, I was one-of-a-kind. Was it just lip-service? Was there someone out there who could get through my force-field? I pushed these thoughts aside and moved faster, destroying everything and anything I could find until I had gone through every room.
On the front steps of the building, when I emerged, I had something of an answer.
A group of about two dozen people in full combat gear stood in the clearing in front of the building. They'd formed a semicircle and every one of them had some kind of weapon leveled at me. The two people on the outer edges of the half-circle each hefted short, huge-barreled things on their shoulders, which, based only on movies I'd seen, might be actual bazookas.
"So," I said as I took the steps down to the ground. "We finally get the ammo test you guys have been looking forward to."
Two notions materialized in my mind. The first was that I could mentally bat their weapons out of their hands and smack them over the heads with them. The second thought stayed my hand. I wanted to see what was going to happen when they leveled all the firepower they had at me. The assault would either be too much for me and I'd die, or it would prove to both them and to me that my barrier was as indestructible as Hiroki had me believing it was.
"I intend to destroy every single piece of technology I can find in this field station. And after that, I intend to visit every single other lab, office, field station, battle-ship, tank, freaking zeppelin that TNC owns, and destroy them too." I took a step forward. "After that, I'll visit the personal residences of everyone with enough clearance to know what TNC has been up to since it first killed all those people in India after the second World War."
I couldn't make out the expressions of any of the people, hidden as they were behind full-face protection. But there was an uncomfortable shifting from a few of them. My guess was that none of them had a clue what I was talking about, but now they'd be curious.
"Come on, then." I made a beckoning motion with my fingers. "If you want to stop me, now is your chance."
I took the sunglasses out of my pocket and put them on my face. I couldn't stop my grin.
With a cry of, "Fire!" from someone, the world around my bubble exploded.
A multitude of frequencies lit through my core. Even with the sunglasses on, I had to squint against the bright lights of the assault. Starbursts and sparks went off everywhere, the blue ripples of my force-field adding to the visual chaos. It was like an over-the-top firework display happening mere feet from my face.
The light was simply too much for my poor retinas, the sunglasses were not enough protection. I crouched and hid my face in my arms, waiting.
When the assault finally ceased, I lifted my head and opened my eyes, blinking as the firing squad came into view. The acrid smell of hot metal and smoke lingered in the air. The world went still as they realized I was still here, whole and untouched.
"Are you finished?" I stood up.
A few long seconds passed before two of them parted. Hiroki was shoved through the line to the forefront. A soldier held him by the collar, pressing the barrel of a handgun to Hiroki's temple. Hiroki was pale and sweaty, looking fit to have a heart attack.
I flicked my fingers.
The gun flew out of the soldier’s hand, did an arc in the air, and landed behind enemy lines. There was a murmur as they witnessed this.
I flicked my fingers again, and did what I could have done earlier.
The weapons were wrenched out of their hands to hover in the air. With a batting gesture, I send the guns into orbit, rotating like a macabre carousel high over their heads.
My eyes on Hiroki, I walked forward, anger simmering. I ignored those now gaping up at the weapons swinging in their grim merry-go-round.
"How much did you know? Did you know about Libya?"
"Petra, I'm so sorry," Hiroki stuttered.
I spoke through a tight jaw, trying to keep my teeth from clenching. "Did you work with my father?"
Hiroki wilted under my gaze. "I tried to tell them—"
I cut him off. "Did you
know they killed my father? Did you know they've been watching me since birth? Did you know the whole dig in Libya was a fake? That it was all an elaborate scheme to get me on your roster?" I turned and said this to everyone present. "Do you know that people die every time TNC executes a project? Do you know who you're working for? What you're working for?"
No one answered me. I looked at the faces, covered in dark glass.
"Why? Can any of you tell me why?" I paused, giving time for someone to step up with a response. No one did. "Why does TNC seem to exist to hurt people?"
I couldn't see their faces to tell how they were feeling, what they might be thinking.
I narrowed in on one of them and lifted the gates between our minds, probing for answers. Nothing. There was wolfram here. I wouldn't doubt that it was lining their combat gear. I closed the gate and took a weary breath.
Someone was speaking. I turned to Hiroki, rubbing the back of my head as the pain passed.
He was stuttering. "I-I asked them not to hire you." Sweat poured down the sides of his face in streams. "I told them not to–"
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" My lip curled in a snarl. "It doesn't even matter if you're telling the truth. I can't believe a word you say."
"He did," said a muffled but familiar voice. "He warned us not to hire you."
Miss Marks pulled off her helmet and put it under her arm. Her perfect face was ashen in the dim light. The carousel of weapons circling overhead sent shadows over her features.
She continued, "But do you know what his recommendation was?"
"Jody, don't," Hiroki said.
"He said we should terminate you instead."
Somehow this admission, which was meant to shock me, did not surprise me at all.
I stepped through the line and headed for Hiroki's lab. "You should have."
Petra
I tore the guts out of it.
Destruction became almost mindless as I fried electronics and blasted computer hardware and complex tools that did goodness knew what. I shattered millions of dollars’ worth of lab equipment, cracked open the hologram machines in all of the theatres, busted up the consoles and left them smoking and sparking. I even broke their coffee and vending machines. I ruptured pipes and let the water run. I sparked fires to life and let them burn.
The sun was breaching the horizon by the time I finished with TNC's offices and labs.
I stood on the road leading to the prototype, listening. If there was anyone around, they were quiet. I wondered where Mr. Nakesh was, and what the team was doing now. They couldn't stop me with any show of might, they knew that now. But were they re-strategizing? Coming up with some way that didn't involve firepower to bring a halt to the destruction I would rain down upon them?
I put the rubble of FS11 at my back and made the journey to the dome the Elemental girls and I had built the day before.
It was truly beautiful to look at, like a protected park. The curves of the dome pressed the leaves of vegetation growing next to its inner walls into a gentle curve that made it look like the plants were reaching for the sky. The small sun and moon were slowly orbiting, throwing shadows as they moved peacefully around the dome like a lazy top.
I turned the force-field around it off and the vegetation sprang outward.
A pleasant smell and the feeling of fresh and humid air rich with the scent of damp earth swept over me.
The moon Georjie had assembled drifted slowly by. I untethered it and it dropped out of the sky and crashed into the jungle below. A cloud of gray-white dust drifted up from its wreck.
With a powerful mental shove, I sent the small sun, which had lost much of its brightness, flying toward the Atlantic. It became a shooting star as it arched across the sky, trailing smoke and flaming debris. Shadows moved under its path and then vanished as it splashed with a loud hiss into the waves beyond, extinguished forever.
Unsure of what to do about the vegetation, I made a mental note to ask Georjayna about it. She had mentioned that many of the species were not native to the area, but this issue was out of my jurisdiction. If she thought it was going to be a problem, she could deal with it.
The sound of footsteps and panicked breathing made me turn.
"I wondered when you'd show," I said, crossing my arms and facing Mr. Nakesh as he came running through the trees, huffing and puffing.
His blue eyes were wide and blazing, his brow and hair pasted with sweat. His clothing was torn and muddy. He was wheezing hard but when he saw me, he still had breath enough to let out an agonized wail. He bent over at the waist and put his hands on his knees, his back heaving.
"What…have…you…" he wheezed, panting and looking the color of curdled milk, "done?"
His eyes traced the edges where the tell-tale curve of plants should have been. Then he looked up for the orbiting fake-sun and fake-moon, which were no longer there. His face seemed to cave in on itself. He shook his head and dropped his face again, moaning.
"What have you done, Mr. Nakesh?" I asked in a flat voice. "You were hoping that I would never find out what you did to my parents? Worse than even the personal offense, I know about the sinister side that TNC projects always have. I'd ask you to tell me why people die whenever you and your company come near them, but I don't think you're capable of saying anything that isn't a lie."
"You don't understand," he said, standing and scrubbing at his pale face with his hands. His sweaty hair gleamed in the morning sun and stuck up in all directions. "There has always been more good done than bad. It's the way it has to work."
"What are you talking about, 'more good,'" I snapped, then held up a hand. "You know what. I don't care to listen. Actions speak louder than words, and your company is about to see a whole lot of action from me."
I walked past him, fighting the urge to send him flying into the nearest tree.
He reached out for me but his hand bumped hard against my force-field and there was a crunch of knuckles.
"You don't get it,” he said. “I’m due to pay up. Now is the time. It has been too long since it fed."
My skin prickled and I paused, wondering what kind of new insanity this was. I turned slowly. "It?"
His face was terrible to behold—terror, fear, desperation.
"Please," he whispered. "This is your only moment to fix this, to stop what’s going to happen. Put it back. Please, put it back." His voice became conspiratorial. "Let’s let it think the plan is going forward, if only to buy us a little time."
"Us?" I almost laughed. "There is no us, Devin.” I enunciated his name.
He trembled and opened his mouth to argue. I shook my head.
“I don't know what you're talking about, but I do know this." My voice was calm in the face of his apparent mania. "I will never, ever, do anything you ask of me."
"Then I am a dead man, and others will die. People you love. You may be indestructible, but they are not."
My lip curled. "That already happened, in case you forgot. It's in the name of those people that I'll destroy everything you own, everything you have ever touched."
"Jesse is alive," he said, shaking his head. "Put the prototype back, or he dies."
For a moment I had no words, and scanned Devin’s face for a lie.
"What did you say?" I asked, my voice low.
"We have him. We picked him up as you were blowing apart all of our hard work, all of my assets."
I narrowed my eyes. "Where did you pick him up from?"
"In Saltford. We knew when we lost track of him in Berlin that he was going to find you." He put out a hand. "Please, put the prototype back before it wakes up."
I didn't believe anything that came from his lips. The 'it' thing was just another lie, something he'd made up to get me to cave. The 'it' thing was not my problem. Jesse was. Could I afford to assume he was also lying about Jesse?
I lifted the gates between our minds and got the result I expected. Nothing. There was wolfram on his person somewhere.
My eyes ran over him, looking for sign of the metal.
"I need proof that you have him," I said.
He let out a sharp exhale. "Petra, we don't have time for this. We have him. I'm not lying."
"How do you even know that your people found him? I fried all of your electronics. You'd have no way of hearing from anyone outside of shouting distance." My eyes traced his collar, looking for a necklace, his fingers, looking for rings. Nothing.
Then I spotted his watch. Its band was made from alternating gold and wolfram.
"We have ways, Petra." His tone was patronizing and it made my skin crawl.
"That's a nice watch, Devin."
He paled. "Wh–what?"
"Take it off."
He began to shake his head.
"You want me to believe you have Jesse? Take off the watch." I crossed my arms. "You have three seconds."
He laughed that creepy high-pitched giggle, rubbing at the back of his head frantically, like there was a serious itch there.
The wolfram was dead to me, but the gold’s frequency sang out loud and clear. I gave the watch a mental yank and his arm shot out toward me.
He gave a cry of surprise and tried to pull his hand back. I held it there as he squirmed against it. Keeping my eyes on his, I flicked open the watch's gold clasp and it came shooting off his wrist. It arched over my head and landed somewhere in the trees behind me.
Lifting the gate to his mind was like opening Pandora's box. Strange scared gibberish and images flashed across the screen of my mind. A demonic face tipped with horns flew out of the refuse filling his head and I choked off a scream. I yelled out Jesse's name to help focus Devin’s thinking and Jesse's face and form flashed in front of me, along with the truth.
They did not have him. They knew he was in Saltford and they were looking for him, but they did not have him.
I slammed the gates down and fought back a moan against the pain.
Devin stood before me, his eyes still wild. His hands came together and I believed he was about to resort to begging. I shuddered and swallowed the urge to throw up. I desperately wanted to take a shower, and never, ever would I fish around in his mind again.