I rolled off to my side as a heavy metal foot stomped onto the concrete where my hand had been, my gaze on the foot. It had hit hard enough to fracture the cement. I closed my eyes and pushed myself to my feet as I cradled my head. The buzzing had stopped when Mindslip was hit by the lightning, but the pain he had inflicted lingered as I forced my eyes open and watched the techie warily.
A hand gripped my forearm, causing me to look up to see the replicator hanging off me. Apparently, the pain had blinded my grav-sense enough to allow her to sneak up on me.
“Neat trick.” She smiled and held up an open hand, even as her eyes flashed a familiar shade of purple.
I was sent tumbling through the air, pulled toward the far wall by the gravity she threw behind me. Fighting through the pain that was easing in my head, I clamped a strong field of flat spacetime around me and pushed it forward, keeping me from hitting the wall when I was only inches from it.
I pushed my back against the wall and held up my hand to catch the metal gauntlet from the techie that had crashed down on an arc for my head. My other hand went in front of me to catch the rest of the momentum from the techie, who had blasted his whole body toward me with propulsors built into the back of his suit. By generating a strong field in front of my hands and arms, I managed to dampen most of the impact, but my palms still stung from the hits. The servos in his suit ground to a halt as they encountered my field. I saw his eyes go wide with shock as I used gravity to amplify my movements enough that I was able to push through the resistance from the powered armor he wore and twist his arm behind his back.
Gritting my teeth, I slapped my other hand onto his side. My fingers brushed against the flat metal paneling of his suit, and I focused on the feel of the metal, a dense tungsten alloy, against my skin. Using that contact, I reached out to sense the signature of the metal’s mass on the backdrop of spacetime around me. Its distinctive hue filled my mind, and I took a deep breath. With several quick pulses of warped spacetime on only the metal, I backed up as all the armor of his suit shattered under the stress. As most of his suit crumbled to the ground in thick slabs of crystalline metal, he was left standing in front of me with only the frame of his mech suit in place.
“I yield.” He held his hands up to make his intentions clear, then stalked off to the side of the arena to watch the rest of the match.
“Come on, Sophie.” I smiled and used a gravity-assisted jump to clear half the arena, leaving the tungsten-littered ground behind me. I landed a few feet from my final combatant and put my fists up in a ready stance. “You can’t hope to outmatch me with my own powers.”
“Maybe not.” She frowned and stepped forward, putting her hands up too. “But it’ll still hopefully keep you on your toes. I’m guessing you aren’t used to fighting anyone with gravity-based powers, though? Besides, you demonstrated pretty conclusively that Greg’s powers are useless against you, so I had to, ahem, adapt?”
“Good one.” I laughed and pushed out a wave of warped spacetime, which she nullified with a wave of her hand. “So, you think you can punch a pregnant woman?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
I ducked down as she swung a fist at me, then used the momentum from my dodge to stick my leg out and sweep it under her in a wide circle. As her legs dropped out from under her, she caught herself on a pocket of spacetime, but then cried out and clutched her stomach.
“Are you okay?” I held my hands up and winced.
“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. She shot her hand out and gripped my ankle even as she fell onto her back.
I stifled a scream of pain as my shin bone shattered from a contained pulse of spacetime distortion. Ripping my leg out of her grip, I limped back, one hand on my leg. I forced myself to keep my eyes on her as she hopped back to her feet. One of her hands, I could see, was still on her stomach.
“I didn’t expect your powers to be so finicky.” She wheezed as her eyes burned purple. She pushed a wave of spacetime out toward me that I negated with barely a passing thought.
“Gravity’s definitely not something to take lightly.”
“Damn puns.”
Clamping my jaw shut, I hopped forward on one foot, using gravity to help me flip over her. Her gaze followed me as I sailed over her head, our faces mere inches apart, and I saw the muscles around her eyes tighten, warning me of her intentions. I held my hand out and focused again on the signature from the chunks of tungsten alloy littering the ground a few feet away.
I shot my other hand forward to deflect the punch she had aimed at my head, and as I landed on her other side, I kept my hand on her wrist to hold it in place even as I balanced on only one foot.
“You can’t expect to fight with one leg.” She grit her teeth and tried to shove her hand free of my grip.
“I’m not planning on fighting anymore. You’re right. This match is over.”
Her eyes went wide as I took a step to the side and a three-foot section of the tungsten plating bowled into her and knocked her to the ground. She wheezed, even as more fragments of tungsten dropped sideways across the room and wrapped around her to restrain her to the ground. I took special care not to warp the tungsten too much, my mind flashing back to my first spat with Greg. My intent was to hold her—not roast her under molten metal.
The cement under her cracked as she sent out pulse after pulse of spacetime energy to try and break free, but I was able to negate her power within a foot of her body, and my hold on the signature of the metal was too strong, it seemed, for her to break through.
“I... yield.” She hung her head after another few seconds of struggling.
With a flick of my eyes, I pushed all the metal away and helped her to her feet.
“I think I ruptured something when I caught myself.” She doubled over even before straightening fully up.
“Yeah, I was worried about that too.” I nodded as a medic team rushed into the room to tend to our injuries. “Honestly, most of the time when I use my powers, it kind of feels like I’m using a blowtorch to warm up a can of soup.”
She laughed and clutched her side from pain.
An hour later, after being healed from my injuries, I found myself in the locker room preparing to go home. It was late afternoon, and both Kiara and Sophie had already left, with promises from all of us that we would stay in touch while I was on leave.
I looked up at the sound of the locker room door swinging open, my duffel bag slung over my shoulder. Since I would be on leave for so long, I had decided to take my Gravita suit home. Pretty soon my baby bump would mean I couldn’t wear it anyway, but the thought of leaving it at the hub, somehow, made me feel uneasy.
“Umm...” My stomach lurched as I recognized the man who had stepped into the room with his eyes on me. “Greg? This is the women’s locker room.”
He stepped toward me, his gaze moving across my body. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing, then, that neither of us are women.”
“Okay...” I pushed past him, my heartbeat speeding up. I twisted around as he grabbed my wrist.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” He frowned deeply as he looked down at me.
“What—?” I tried to pull my hand away, but stopped short as he shoved a heavy metal clamp on my forehead. Pain stabbed through my temple, and I was blinded for a second as my grav-sense was ripped away.
Without another thought, I moved my hand up to pull the nullifying clamp off, but then cried out as he grabbed my wrist and slammed it down next to my other hand. With one hand, he squeezed both of my wrists together, while he held his other hand over my mouth. He shoved me against the wall behind me, knocking the air out of me. I blinked, seeing stars.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this,” he whispered, his eyes burning with hatred as he pressed his whole body against me.
I tried to scream, but with him covering my mouth, I knew it wasn’t carrying far. I struggled to move my head or break one of my hands free, but it was n
o use. Even with all my physical conditioning, Greg outweighed me by eighty pounds. And all that extra weight was muscle. I didn’t have a prayer. Wouldn’t stop me from trying, though. With the few inches that I had to move, I shoved one of my knees up in between his legs, and I saw pain flash across his face as my blow connected.
I reeled my head to the side as he slapped me across the face with enough force that my vision dimmed for a second.
“You little bitch,” he hissed.
He grabbed me just under my jaw and lifted me a few inches off the ground. I clutched at his hand, then drew my legs up to my chest before slamming my feet into his chest with all the strength I could muster. He went falling back, even as I twisted free of the hand that gripped me.
I dropped to the ground on my back, gasping as the breath was knocked out of me once again. I fumbled in the half-second of freedom I had to get the nullifying clamp off, but as my fingers closed over the cold metal band, he grabbed my wrists again and held them over my head. I tried to kick at him, but he had evidently learned his lesson. He kneeled over me, both of his knees pressing into my legs. I was pinned down, unable to move.
“You know, it’s a shame I have to turn you over so soon,” he whispered. “It only occurs to me now. You’ve never had the experience of having a real man inside you, have you?”
I saw his gaze rove over me, greed and hunger burning in his eyes. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to tremble in fear as he kneaded one of my breasts over my shirt with his free hand. My mind was on fire, my fear turning to rage as his fingers slipped under my shirt. I hated him. For what he was doing, but more importantly, for what he was making me feel. For the first time in my life, I was completely, absolutely powerless. There was nothing I could do. I was entirely at the mercy of someone else. Someone who, I knew with perfect clarity, hated me. And he reveled in the power he had over me. In the pain and fear he was causing in me. That, above all else, was clear behind his eyes as his fingers roamed freely over my skin. My body trembled in earnest as I met his gaze. Whether I was trembling from fear or rage didn’t matter. By that point, it was an impossible mixture of both.
He leaned close, his lips only inches from my own. “Tell me you want—”
He stopped short as I twisted my head to the side and spat in his eye.
“You really don’t know what’s good for you, do you?” His face twitched with rage as he pulled his hand out from under my shirt.
I prepared myself for pain as he reared back to punch me, but I refused to lower my gaze. Never again. My mind was on fire, lit with an anger and rage I had never felt before. This was deeper than reflex. It was a rejection—complete and absolute—from the deepest core of my being to the suffocating terror and despair that had overwhelmed me not seconds before. If this was going to happen, I wasn’t going to take it without fighting back with every ounce of strength and resistance I had. It wouldn’t amount to much. I knew it wouldn’t change anything. And yet, it would change everything. I could already feel it was true. My fear was still there, yes. I could still feel it pressing in on me with more force than anything I had ever experienced before. But it couldn’t overpower the anger and resolve that now consumed me. It started at the base of my spine, radiating up and over every inch of my body and leaving no room for anything else.
He stopped, his eye twitching, as he stared down at me. I stared back at him, still tingling with rage and fury. As the seconds passed, though, and he still stayed motionless, my rage slipped away, to be replaced by a gnawing confusion as I tried to grasp what had given him pause. He blinked and studied me intently, though what he was trying to see was beyond me. I furrowed my brow as I saw a line of sweat form down the side of his temple.
“It’s just as well...” he muttered more to himself than to me as he fumbled with something in his pocket. I watched as he pulled out a syringe and uncapped it. “They’ll be expecting us. Any minute from now.”
I struggled again to break free as he pricked the syringe into my shoulder and pressed down the plunger, but I knew it would only be a matter of seconds before I was out. The last thing I saw was him push himself up to his feet as he looked down at me with worry before my eyes fluttered shut.
The next thing that came to me was a sensation of cold. I shivered as I opened my eyes only to find I was in a dirty room with bare cement floors and unpainted cinderblock walls. As I looked around me, I realized my hands were bound together behind my back. As I tried in vain to wiggle free, I noticed my ankles were also handcuffed through a loop of steel rebar that jutted up from the jagged cement of the floor.
“I wouldn’t struggle too hard, if I were you.”
The familiar voice sent a shiver of fear down my spine. Twisting around, I saw the mind smith from the Syndicate sitting in a metal folding chair in the corner of the room away from the door.
I tried to speak, but then realized someone had put duct tape over my mouth.
“Oh, don’t worry.” She held her hands up and giggled. “I’m not reading your mind. One of the consequences of those power-nullifying bands you arbiters like so much. Most people don’t realize they work both ways on most powers.”
She got up and walked over to me, then crouched down and pulled the duct tape off my mouth.
“Where’s Greg?” I demanded.
She gave me a wry smile. “He left right after dropping you off. I must say, I’m impressed. I saw his thoughts, you know. He really wanted you for a bit there. I don’t know what you did to scare him off so bad, but it worked. He doesn’t want anything to do with the Syndicate anymore.”
“He knows I’m going to kill him.”
“And I don’t even have to read your mind to know you aren’t joking.”
“So what’s your angle here?” I narrowed my eyes as I watched her cross back to the other side of the room.
“I’m pretty sure you’ve already figured that out.” She slumped into the chair with a sigh. “Doctor Quantum intended to use your powers to make a portal through time. That’s what we’re after too.
“You know, it’s ironic. With the world population where it’s at, there are just over thirty million primes out there. About five percent of them are force manipulators like you. And only twelve percent of those primes can affect gravity, like you can. But then, they’re not like you, because every single one of those one hundred and eighty thousand primes, without exception, can only act through manipulating gravitons, or Higgs-Boson particles or fields, or some combination of the two, or whatever the current model for mass is. There are a few techies out there who have cracked some parts of artificial gravity, but none of them has been able to replicate the power your wife had.
“Doctor Quantum, in a chance encounter with her, realized just how unique her powerset was. She really had a complete control over gravity. Not just the particles affecting mass, but a mastery over the very fabric of spacetime itself, the binding thread of the whole universe. Doctor Quantum intended to put a hapless bystander in her body and then subdue it to study her cells to try and artificially create a means of bending spacetime. His ray didn’t work, though. It must have hit a patch of your dead skin on her suit and bound to your DNA signature, or something like that, because instead of choosing a random person, it swapped you into her body. Sometimes prime tech is weird like that.”
I stared at her, my mind slipping as I tried to grasp everything she was saying. I knew, intuitively, that she was wrong, on at least one count. From everything I could tell, there was one other person who had the same powerset as me. I was just glad that, with the nullifying clamp on, she couldn’t seem to see that within my mind. Not that the mind smith would be able to do anything with that knowledge. I hadn’t seen that girl since... well, I would never see that girl again. I was almost certain of that.
The mind smith furrowed her brow, drawing my attention back to her. “Once we figured out his plans, though, we knew we wouldn’t be able to reverse-engineer your powers into a machine. Making tech tha
t mimics prime powers was something of Doctor Quantum’s specialty. With him dead, it would be nearly impossible for our techies to manage it. So, we settled on enhancing your own powers to make sure you could make the time bridge yourself.”
I shook my head. “There’s a problem with your plan. You’re never going to be able to convince me to go along with it.”
“Hopefully, we won’t have to.” She nodded toward the door, and I turned to see the replicator we had arrested from the lab standing in the doorway with his eyes on me. “And, even if that doesn’t work, you learn things about people when you spend your whole life in their minds. Everyone has a price, Amber. Something tells me you aren’t going to like when we discover what yours is.”
23
FROM THE GLIMPSES I caught from the doorway when people would come in and out of my room, I surmised I was being held in a derelict warehouse, likely in a burnt-out district of Chicago. As I thought more on it, though, I realized it was just as likely I was somewhere hundreds of miles from the city. There was just no way for me to know where they were holding me, and I had no doubt my disorientation was by design.
By the second day, my wrists had been worn raw from the handcuffs keeping my hands anchored to the ground behind my back. During my first night, I had spent hours trying to contort myself around enough to somehow knock the power-nullifying band loose, but nothing worked. The hard metal clip remained clamped to either side of my forehead regardless of how much I struggled. The bands were designed to stay in place through much more than what I could manage with only a few inches of free movement, so I knew it was a futile gesture to struggle. But I wouldn’t just wait idly by while the Syndicate enacted its plan.
“You really should eat something.”
It was the next morning. The mind smith crossed her arms as she leaned against the cinder-block wall and looked down at me.
Prime Identity Page 28
