Dirty Mirror

by R S Penney

  When they reached the food processing plant, Melissa found a hole in the chain-link fence that bordered the property. Half a dozen people had slipped through and were now spread out in the grass between the fence and the building's front wall, firing on security drones that tried to hold them off.

  “Hey!” Melissa shouted.

  Two men at the back whirled around to face her, one slightly closer than the other. For a brief moment, they just stared, unsure of what to make of her. Then the nearest one lifted his pistol and tried to take aim.

  Melissa ran for him.

  She leaped, tucked her knees into her chest, and somersaulted through the air. At the apex of her jump, she threw up a Time Bubble – well, more of a tube than a bubble – and for an instant, she could see that it had saved her life.

  The blurry images of both men had arms extended, pointing guns at her. Glowing white bullets hung frozen in mid-air, converging on a spot that she would pass through in her descent.

  She fell through the tube, landing within a few feet of the nearest man. When she let the bubble vanish, bullets passed over her.

  The man in front of her gave a start.

  Melissa kicked high, striking the pistol and ripping it out of his hand. She brought her leg down, then spun and back-kicked. A quick hit to the chest made the man stumble and drove the air from his lungs.

  Melissa rounded on him.

  She lunged at him, seizing the man's vest with both hands and then quickly twirling him around so that he was between her and the other shooter. It was a well-timed move. Seconds later, the man's body spasmed as bullets hit the back of his vest. The current was absorbed into the material.

  Melissa slammed her open palm into the man's chest and drove him backward with a surge of Bent Gravity. He flew toward his companion with arms flailing. The other man tried to get out of the way, but he wasn't fast enough.

  They hit hard, like two cars colliding on the freeway, and dropped to the ground in a heap. “Justice Keeper!” one called out. “She's a Justice Keeper!”

  If only…

  The other four turned on her.

  Harry charged through the hole in the fence to find his eldest daughter kicking the crap out of one of the terrorists. She grabbed him by the vest and spun him around to use him as a human shield.

  He ignored that and focused on the three people – two men and one woman – who had their backs turned as they fired up at floating egg-shaped drones that bobbed and weaved to avoid their aim. White tracers flew into the night sky, but the drone managed to avoid them, swooping off to the side

  Harry drew his pistol, setting it for stun-rounds.

  Taking aim with the gun in both hands, he pointed the muzzle at the back of one man's neck and fired. A charged bullet hit that guy just below his hairline, and then he fell to the ground as the current knocked him out.

  The other man and the woman whirled around to face him. In mere fractions of a second, they were raising their own weapons to take aim.

  Harry was faster.

  Thrusting his left hand out, he summoned a force-field with the N'Jal and watched as the air in front of him rippled. He loosed the force-field, angling it downward so that it sank into the ground and churned up a spray of dirt.

  Both the man and the woman raised their hands up to shield themselves as chunks of soil pelted them. This gave him a moment to react.

  Harry took aim with his pistol again, and he fired. One slug into the woman's chest; her vest absorbed the energy, but the impact staggered her. Another bullet hit her right in the forehead and bounced off, leaving nothing but a bruise. But the electric current that surged through her body knocked her out.

  The man aimed.

  Harry threw himself sideways, grunting when his shoulder hit the ground. White tracers sped over him, the air sizzling in their wake. He lifted his gun in both hands and fired several rounds.

  The man stumbled as stun rounds hit his chest and fell uselessly to the ground. But it left him off balance.

  Harry lined up the perfect shot.

  Before he could squeeze the trigger, the other man stumbled as something hit him from behind. Flailing about like a drop of water on a hot skillet, the guy dropped to the ground, revealing the floating drone behind him.

  That drone quickly reoriented itself to aim at Harry.

  He raised a hand instinctively, the N'Jal erecting a force-field that intercepted stun-rounds before they hit him. This was why he would never trust robots! The drone didn't recognize him as a friend. Its software merely noted the presence of an unidentified man on its property, and so it responded accordingly. The worthless hunk of junk seemed to recognize Melissa as a Justice Keeper – it didn't bother targeting her – but it didn't know what to make of Harry and his force-fields.

  Melissa ignored the man and woman who were currently fending off a spray of dirt that her father had unleashed. A grizzled old cop like Harry could handle himself. It was the other two – the ones nearest the building's front entrance – that concerned her. A man and a woman: they whirled around as soon as someone shouted. “Justice Keeper!”

  Melissa turned and dove for the pistol that she had kicked out of the first guy's grip. Slamming her hands down in the moist grass, she grabbed the gun and then somersaulted across the field.

  She came up on one knee.

  Thrusting her hand out to the side – using her eyes wasn't necessary when she had spatial awareness – she fired blindly and mapped the path of each bullet with her mind.

  White tracers sped across the field, struck the woman's vest and threw her to the ground with the force of their impact. The man didn't bother returning fire; he just fell to his knees.

  Melissa could have put a bullet through his skull, but she wasn't a killer. She was a Justice Keeper, through and through.

  The man pulled off his backpack, unzipped it and retrieved something from inside. “Back off!” he shouted. “Order the drone to stand down, Justice Keeper!”

  He stood up and smiled at her with a small, rectangular device cradled in both hands. It was clear that this guy was the leader; tall and slim, he had an arrogant face and brown hair that he wore parted in the middle. “Tell the drone to stand down,” he said again. “Or I will reduce this building to a crater and kill us all in one spectacular fireball.”

  “That's the bomb,” Melissa mumbled.

  “How very observant of you.”

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Melissa drew in a breath. “Security systems!” she called out. “Recognize Cadet Melissa Carlson, Justice Keeper serial number 5612578. I order you to stand down.”

  The drone stopped firing at her father, who was taking refuge behind a force-field. It floated upward and then retreated to the building's rooftop.

  A nasty grin spread across the leader's face, and he nodded to her. “Very good,” he said, taking a few steps forward. “Now, you and your friend are going to drop your guns, and you're going to let us walk away.”

  Anxiety chilled her blood until it felt as if she had ice in her veins. What should she do? It felt wrong, just letting them go, but it wasn't just her father's life on the line. Or her own for that matter. There was no telling how powerful that bomb was.

  “All right,” Melissa said. “Go. But first, you put down your weapons.”

  “You're not in a place to be dictating terms.”

  Melissa stood up and faced him, lifting the pistol in both hands and letting out a deep breath. “Try me,” she said. “I Bonded a symbiont that cut my lifespan in half. It's safe to say I have a death wish.”

  The man frowned and turned his head, staring at something off to her left. “Fine,” he said after a moment. “I'll even make a show of good faith. My people will put down their weapons first, and then you do the same, or I activate this bomb.”

  The pair of men that she had disarmed earlier were groaning as they sat. One of them shook his head to get his bearings. “I don't like this, Aldin,” he said. “We give up our weapons, and
she'll be on us in seconds.”

  “Shut up, Roja!”

  That silenced the man.

  Aldin stood in front of the building with the bomb cradled in his hands, a great big grin on his face. “Now,” he said, nodding to his people. “We're all gonna do what the nice lady says. Put down your weapons.”

  The woman who was lying on the ground after taking several hits to the chest threw her gun aside, as did Roja, though he grumbled about it under his breath. The two people that her father had dispatched were still unconscious.

  “Your turn,” Aldin said.

  Dropping to a crouch, Melissa set her gun down in the grass. She craned her neck to fix her gaze on Aldin. “Sufficient?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “I'm not carrying anything else on me.”

  “Your friend?” Aldin said.

  In response, Harry threw his gun away and sat up. A grimace twisted his features, and he shook his head. “Run if you need to,” he said. “You'll have a dozen Keepers on you before you reach the nearest SlipGate.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Aldin said.

  He dropped to his knees, setting the bomb down on the paving stones in front of the building. “There we are,” he murmured. “Now, young Justice Keeper, a lesson for you in trust: it's a weakness.”

  He tapped a few buttons on the bomb, and suddenly the LCD screen on its surface lit up. Had he just armed the thing? Had he just armed the god-damn bomb with all of them standing here?

  Aldin looked up at her and trembled with laughter. “You can chase me if you want to,” he said. “But you have only five minutes to save this food processing plant, And I do hope there are no civilians in the area.”

  He got up and ran for the hole in the fence.

  As did his comrades.

  Melissa snatched up the pistol she had dropped, lifting it in both hands to point it right at Aldin's chest. “High Impact!” she growled. “Stay right where you are. I swear to God, I'll pull this trigger.”

  He stopped in his tracks.

  The others did likewise.

  Colour drained out of Aldin's face as he stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “You wouldn't,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Keepers don't kill.”

  “If I'm going to die here tonight,” Melissa said, “then you're going with me. So, I'm thinking you might want to tell me how to disarm that thing.”

  Standing in the grass with a hand pressed to his chest, Aldin threw his head back and laughed. “It can't be disarmed!” he shouted. “We wanted to make sure no one had any second thoughts.”

  Wincing hard, Melissa felt sweat prickling on her brow. “Brilliant,” she growled, standing up. “Then I guess we're all going to die here, tonight. You so much as twitch in a way I don't like, and I will end you.”

  “You don't have.”

  She lowered her aim and fired.

  A bullet grazed his leg, then dug itself into the ground behind him, leaving a crater the size of a bowling ball. Aldin yelped, crouching down to slap a hand over the spot where he had been stung. God bless spatial awareness. Precision shooting was that much easier when you had an intuitive sense of everything around you.

  After that little display of her sincerity, the woman and the two men who were still standing all backed up with their hands raised. Quite satisfying. Now, if only she could find a way to enjoy her pride for more than the next three and a half minutes. “Tell me how to disarm the bomb,” Melissa said coldly.

  “You can't!”

  “I don't accept that.”

  Aldin was hopping on one foot with one hand pressed to his thigh. His face was so red that it looked as if he had acquired a permanent sunburn. “Idiot girl!” he squealed. “What does it matter if you accept it? It won't change anything.”

  “He's not lying!” the woman panted. “The bomb has no disarm code. If you start poking around with its circuitry, it will explode. We have to run now! Or we're all going to die here!”

  Suddenly, Melissa was very much aware of the pounding of her own heart. Was she ready to die? At seventeen? This was the life she had chosen. “Well, then I guess we're all going to die here.”

  “You're insane!” one of the men shouted.

  “No,” Melissa said. “Insane people use bombs to make their point.” Gripping the pistol tightly, she strode forward, and it pleased her to see the lot of them backing up. Except Aldin, of course; he just kept hopping. “Up against the wall.”

  The woman and her two male companions pressed their backs to the front wall of the food processing plant, each one raising their hands. “I don't understand,” the woman said. “You could have run.”

  Melissa felt her face heat up, fury burning in her veins. Her lip twitched, and she had to struggle not to snarl. “Any poor bystander who happens to be passing through this neighbourhood wouldn't have the chance to run.”

  She crouched in front of the bomb and saw that the timer was steadily counting down the seconds. At this point, less than two and a half minutes remained. “Harry, get over here!” she called out. Under no circumstances was she willing to call him Dad in front of the terrorists. That would just kill her credibility.

  Her father rushed over, dropping to a crouch next to her with his hands resting on his knees. “What is it?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. “Do you know some way to disable it?”

  Closing her eyes, Melissa took a deep breath. “I was planning to ask you that,” she admitted. “What do you know about defusing bombs?”

  “Next to nothing.”

  “Damn it.”

  She tentatively reached out to touch one of the buttons on the bomb's surface only to yank her hand back when the terrorist woman shouted “No!” Melissa looked up to see the other woman standing in front of the wall with a hand outstretched, sweat glistening on her face. “If you touch that, it will explode.”

  “Then what do I do?”

  The woman shuddered and shook her head. “Nothing,” she whimpered. “Anything you try will only set off the bomb.”

  One minute and twenty-five seconds.

  There had to be something she could do! But what? Was it too late to run? Maybe they could find cover in the time remaining? No…That was impossible. She had chosen her course, and now she had to stick with it.

  If disabling the bomb was impossible, could she move it? A brief image of herself carrying the bomb down the street only to have it explode in her hands flashed through Melissa's mind. What good would that do anyway? Best case scenario, it would destroy some other building, and there could be people in those buildings. Not likely at this hour, but it was possible. If only she could move the bomb upward, but that was impossi-

  Of course!

  The calculations played out in her head. Physics was never her thing – she much preferred history and literature – but you gained a sense of these things if you carried a Nassai long enough. If she applied a Bending roughly ten times as strong as the planet's gravitational pull – but directed upward instead of down – the bomb would travel about five kilometers in ten seconds.

  Of course, that was assuming the ideal conditions of a vacuum. There was terminal velocity to consider, and she didn't know how to do that math. But she figured she would at least get a few kilometers out of the deal.

  The final issue to consider was just how long she could make the Bending last. In general, the stronger the Bending, the longer it lasted, but even the most powerful ones fizzled out after about ten seconds.

  Meaning she would have to time it well.

  If she applied the Bending too soon, Leyria's natural gravity would reassert itself. The bomb wouldn't start to fall right away – an object in motion remained in its current state of motion unless acted on by an outside force – but it would begin to slow down. Every inch of distance she could gain was vital.

  Twenty-four seconds remaining. Twenty-three, twenty-two…“Harry,” she said. “Cover me.”

  Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen…

  Melissa touch
ed the bomb with her fingertips, calling on the power of her Nassai. Energy surged through her body as she applied a Bending ten times as powerful as the planet's natural pull, directing it toward the upper atmosphere.

  The bomb shot upward like a bullet loosed from a gun.

  In less than a second, it was so far away that she couldn't track it with her eyes. Now, there was nothing to do but wait. Exhaustion hit her like a transport truck with the pedal to the floor. Her muscles felt rubbery, and her head was full of fog.

  Melissa fell forward, slapping her hands down in the grass to catch herself. Her head drooped as dizziness came over her.

  With an extreme effort of will, she managed to look up in time to see a bright flash of fire in the night sky. Like a new star birthed in the heavens. She was barely aware of the soft popping sound that must have been the explosion. It had worked; she had saved them, but now she was on the verge of passing out.

  Her skin was on fire. It was like a million bees had decided to sting her at the same time. God help her; she was in no shape to defend herself.

  The three terrorists along the wall stepped forward.

  Before they could make a move, Harry stood up and thrust his hand toward them, proudly displaying the N'Jal. “Don't even think it,” he said. “I swear by all that's holy, I will flatten you if you try.”

  In her mind's eye, Melissa saw Aldin standing behind her with his back turned, bent over and rubbing his leg. The man seemed to think this was his chance to run for it; so, he began hobbling his way to the hole in the fence.

  Melissa tossed the gun to her father.

  He caught it in his right hand, keeping his left pointed at the other three and putting up a force-field to show he meant business. With an almost casual motion, Harry turned and shouted, “Stun-rounds!”

  He fired.

  A charged bullet hit Aldin in the back of the neck, and the man spasmed as current surged through his body. He dropped to his knees mere seconds later, then fell flat on his face in the grass.

  Letting his arm drop, the force-field vanishing the instant he did, Harry showed them a wolfish smile. “Now,” he said. “Who wants to come quietly down to the nearest police station?”