Child of the Fall

by D Scott Johnson

  “I can’t,” June replied. “We’re fighting imbalances. There’s no way to leave out one of the ducts.”

  “We have to protect the portal. Will is on the other side.”

  “Mike,” Kim said. “We can do it. Protect the portal.”

  He looked at the holes in a different light. Of course.

  More alarms blared, then the ground shook.

  “Warning. Critical containment failure imminent. Take shelter immediately.”

  It could work. “Fire it up, June.”

  “But you’re still—”

  “Fire it up now.” He cut the connection.

  Kim could access zero-point energy when she was transformed, a source that tapped power at the base of the universe. She used it once already to protect Tonya. This would be much worse, but he was here with her, sharing the load. He had done that in the battle with Ozzie. They complemented each other in ways neither of them understood yet. If containment failed, it wouldn’t be bottled up in this room. It had a place to go now.

  Kim arranged herself in two concentric circles around the portal while four broke off and picked up their real selves. They grunted under the load. “You need to lose weight,” the Kims all said in unison. The instances set them down to the left of the portal, then joined the rest.

  “Embrace the power of we, Kim.”

  “Emergency vent initiated. All personnel proceed to your nearest shelter.”

  “We need to dig deep for this,” Kim said.

  “Understood.”

  When she accessed her power, Mike felt it everywhere. The groups of threads that helped each of her instances made the requests more efficient, faster, easier to access. They were both exhausted, but this new combination gave them a second wind. He’d never done anything like it, never imagined it was possible.

  The substance being held in by the force fields was denser than water and hotter than molten lead, moving who knew how fast, right over them. That they wouldn’t feel it if they failed was cold comfort.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I know.” It was an old joke to them now. She waited for him to get annoyed before she said, “I love you too.”

  Kim closed her eyes, which blanked his own ability to see in realspace. Channeling the power also set a roaring in her ears, so he couldn’t hear the alarm countdowns anymore either. Mike needed to see, needed that connection. He used his threads to hack the security camera feed just as the floor lurched, and they both swore.

  “Here it comes,” she said, and he felt her terror, matched by his own. They were standing next to something you never stood next to. You’d die if you stood next to it. When the force field bulged over their heads under the sudden increase in pressure, he turned the feed off. Kim was the endpoint, he was the conduit. Mike didn’t need to see what was happening now. He had to concentrate.

  Her instances formed two concentric domes of energy, with the inner one as close to the top of the portal as she could get it without touching. He tweaked the distance down to a millimeter. “Do we have enough oxygen in here if it goes wrong?”

  “I’m not sure I need to breathe like this. I don’t know if our real selves are breathing at all.”

  The term would’ve made him smile in realspace. Calling them their real selves was his line.

  Over their heads, the fan system that drew power for the portal started to whine. Subject to pressures and velocities it was never designed for, the bearings were failing.

  “Get ready,” he said. “That’s where it will happen.” And it would. The other rooms were designed to vent this way, but this one had been modified with crude additions to the turbines. Realizing the inevitability of it choked them both. Death wasn’t an abstract anymore.

  But he was wrong. The failure happened in the inner duct, where the screen that had trapped their friends was. There was a crack that they both heard over all the noise.

  Kim said a phrase in Greek that sounded like a prayer. Mike got through one fast om mani padme hum when the first screen fragments hit fans that were stressed well beyond their limits. The framework holding them exploded, rupturing the containment forcefield. Steel shrapnel, some of it as big as they were, bounced around, tearing everything outside the force field apart. Each hit on the sphere was a body blow to them both.

  Pulling the sphere in tight was a mistake. It had taken away their margin.

  “Help me push it out,” she shouted.

  “I’m trying!”

  The rain of shrapnel was over in an instant, forcing the outer ring of her instances to step back until they were shoulder to shoulder with the inner ring, then the main assault began. Heat and pressure filled the room. Everything burned, even the concrete walls. The holes Kim’s instances left in them gave it a place to go, but it came in too fast. The room filled and then the compression started.

  He felt it through her, the terrible hot pressing, crushing them inward. “Help me!”

  “I am!”

  They were losing. He wanted to hold her, and then remembered he was. They would die together at least. They had failed. This was it. He tried to fall back on his faith and that helped, but knowing Kim was here with him helped more. It gave her strength, too; he could feel it.

  The pressure shrank the spheres, exposing the top edge of the portal.

  It vaporized in an instant.

  The sphere was too big, that’s what was wrong. There might still be a chance.

  “Kim! We have to let the portal go!”

  “We can’t! It’s our only way to Will!”

  The sphere kept compressing, causing the portal ring to vanish like it was being erased.

  “We can’t save it, and if we die, nobody will know how to get to him! You have to let it go!”

  He felt her give up. She sent three of her instances over to cover their real selves, and then let the sphere collapse.

  He fell.

  Chapter 63

  Tonya

  Tonya was on the third Hail Mary of her rosary when the room they were in lurched sideways and knocked them all off their feet. Panels fell out of the ceiling, and shelves tossed equipment onto the floor. The room went black for an instant before emergency lights kicked on and alarms rang out. None of it mattered to Tonya.

  “What happened? Are they okay?” Please, Lord Jesus, let them be okay.

  June’s face was ashen as she climbed back into her seat. After pushing a few buttons, the alarms went silent. “No. I don’t think they are. Nothing could survive a containment breach, and that’s what I saw just before the explosion. I’m sorry.”

  Tonya’s heart lurched at the thought that Kim was gone. It wasn’t possible.

  “Fuck that,” Spencer said as he dug himself out from under a pile of junk that had fallen on him. “You don’t know Kim and Mike like we do. She walks through walls, remember?”

  Even as a normal human—well, for Kim’s brand of normal anyway—her friend was a survivor. Tonya had seen her transformed three times now, twice in realspace. When she punched Kim on the chin, it had been like hitting armored glass. Now that Tonya thought about it, Kim might not be flammable when she was like that.

  “We need to get down there,” Emily said. “What’s security like?”

  The big woman grimaced and cursed in a language Tonya didn’t understand as she tried and failed to get a response from controls only June could see. “Everything is offline now. What we did was intended as an absolute last resort. The central junction was triple-redundant, with a fourth independently developed backup. It was never supposed to fail. It will take months to repair the damage. Maybe years.”

  As Cyril, Tonya had talked many times about the plant with June; she knew how much it meant to her. Being upset by this disaster was natural, but it wasn’t what Tonya was looking for. “June. We need to help them. Is there anyone out there who’ll try to stop us?”

  “Security isn’t organized anymore. If you’re half as dangerous as Spencer claims, you have nothing
to worry about.”

  “She’s a fuck-ton more than half, sister.” He swore. “God, what I’d give to have Bess back.”

  All Tonya needed was a teenager wandering around with his own personal cannon while they crawled through dark hallways. She tossed one of the safe-stop pistols they had picked up along the way. “Use that.” She tossed another one at Emily. “You too, blondie.”

  Spencer caught his smoothly and then looked at it like it was a—

  “Fucking piece of dogshit.”

  Well that was a bit more graphic than Tonya would’ve put it, but this was Spencer. He swore the way other people breathed.

  She tossed the last pistol to June. It looked like a toy when she held it. “If you’ll lead the way?” Tonya asked.

  She looked at the pistol. “Don’t you need one of these?”

  Tonya smiled. “I prefer to work with my hands.”

  Their lair was above the duct rooms but below the surface, and naturally the elevators were out. Tonya wasn’t sure she would use them even if they were working. She set off at a jog. It might be useless; they may be dead. But if they weren’t, they’d need her. That was a great plan until she turned around and only saw Emily. The alarms must have drowned out any shouts the other two had made for her to slow down. Tonya needed to get their phones connected again.

  When they went back, they found Spencer bent over. “Why did…they make it…so fucking…big?”

  June leaned against the wall, looking like she’d fall over if it wasn’t there. “We…still need to…hurry…”

  Sometimes Tonya forgot that not everyone spent an hour a day in the gym, at least three of them sparring with Mike. She looked at Emily.

  “Long-distance runner in college. I still run marathons sometimes.”

  Mike and Kim needed them.

  Tonya meshed their phones together with an ad-hoc wireless network. It wasn’t as good as a real connection, but it would do for now. “You two rest here and then come forward when you can. June? Keep me going in the right direction.” She stared up at the big woman until she got a nod. But then June laughed, a big, bold sound. “What?”

  “I’m still not used to you like this. You’re supposed to be a skinny old white man. I don’t know why I pictured you that way under your costume, but I did. It’s so strange.”

  Tonya had been worried how June would react to the lies she’d been forced to tell. Trying to picture herself as an old white guy did at least let her smile for a second. But only a second.

  June nodded at the change in her expression. “Yes. Mike and Kim come first. I’ll guide you in. We’ll follow.”

  Tonya set off with Emily at a pace she knew she could maintain for hours, and then sped up until it started to burn. It didn’t help that she was climbing up the entire time either.

  She stopped and stared at what she found outside. It was like after a war or maybe a volcanic eruption. A swath of forest had been reduced to ash. Not metaphorically, literally. A patch about a hundred feet wide was nothing but gray powder, right down to the ground. The trees to the right and left still stood, but their inner branches had disintegrated. Things smoldered, but there was no great fire up close. A few hundred yards away, though, the forest was solidly burning. It looked like a campfire on steroids out there.

  “What happened?” She sent June and Spencer a picture.

  “The emergency vent is to your left,” June replied. “We’d predicted something like this, but nobody knew for sure what would happen. The air at the bottom of the Hellmouth goes through four different energy harvesters before we use the last of the heat to make steam for conventional turbines. This time we vented it directly to the atmosphere. It was nearly solid when it left.”

  Tonya could see other pillars of smoke in the distance, roughly where the other duct rooms were. This was going to be one hell of a forest fire. They set off at a run again.

  Her route crossed the main parking area, and that’s where she found all the people. Thousands were milling around, confused and leaderless. The route out of the parking lot was already jammed with the less faithful. Without anyone directing traffic, it would be hours before any of them moved.

  She saw the two scientists who had made it all possible, sitting in a car looking bored like they were trying to leave a concert. Well, Silas looked bored. There was no way to tell what Shonda was like through the suit she used. Tonya had to get to Mike and Kim. There could be no final reckoning here; it would take too long.

  That didn’t mean she had to leave them alone.

  Shonda’s droid head casually scanned the scenery, locking onto Tonya and sounding a warning she could hear through the glass. Silas’s shocked expression vanished under the explosion of his window. The pain in her fist was purifying, good, almost as good as the rabbit punch she followed it up with, which knocked him senseless.

  Tonya leaned down until she could see the main sensor of Shonda’s suit. “I have to be somewhere, but know one thing. We are not done here. I am coming for you. Do you understand?”

  The suit shuddered.

  Tonya still didn’t have her undivided attention. “I said,” she smashed the back window of the sedan open with her foot. Shonda jumped. “Do you understand?”

  “I…I understand.”

  Tonya walked around slowly, never taking her eyes off Shonda’s optical sensor. Everything she’d gone through, all the terror, all the pain, she pushed at them. The cars in front and behind them were honking, but Tonya didn’t care. When she got around to the passenger’s side, Tonya feinted another punch, and the other woman flinched back, falling over awkwardly in the car.

  It would have to do. She ran just as someone in the car behind them got out and shouted at her.

  Emily asked, “What chance do Mike and Kim have?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s Kim. They may not even be down there anymore.”

  Right after Tonya said that, they rounded a corner, and there they were, lying beside the path piled on top of each other. The trees above them had been set on fire even though they weren’t near a vent. It was already so hot it felt like an oven. They rushed over to them, dodging falling embers.

  “Are they alive?” Emily asked.

  Tonya checked for pulses. “Yes. Now help me get them out of here.”

  “Where’s Will?”

  Tonya looked around while Emily shouted his name, but there was no response. “Emily, help me pull them clear!” Tonya threw Kim over her shoulders, and they pulled Mike by his arms. “Hurry! It isn’t safe!” A flaming tree fell in front of them, cutting them off from the nearest safe area. First an explosion, now a forest fire. Being inside things that burned wasn’t any damn fun at all.

  Kim stirred and then jerked hard enough Tonya didn’t put her down as much as throw her to the ground. The smoke was starting to choke her. “Get up, Kim. I’m sorry about touching you but you need to get up.”

  “I can’t see,” Emily said, then she shouted for Will again. “Which way is out?”

  An arrow lit up in their shared vision. “This way,” June said. They followed it, Tonya directing Kim while she and Emily carried Mike between them. Tonya knew what burn victims went through. She could even end up in a suit like Shonda, and wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth?

  June navigated them out of the woods and across a shallow stream. As soon as they were clear, Emily turned to Kim. “Where’s Will? What happened?”

  Tears streamed down Kim’s face, and the bottom fell out of Tonya’s stomach.

  “I don’t know,” she said as she collapsed to the ground with her back against a tree. “He went through the portal. We couldn’t stop him.”

  It wasn’t good news, but it wasn’t a tragedy either. When Tonya had gone through the portal, she’d ended up somewhere safe. “If we can find him, I think he’ll be fine.”

  Emily sat down next to Kim. They were both a mess, and when Tonya looked at herself, she was no better. Their clothes were singed, their arms and faces
covered in soot.

  “Do you know where he could’ve gone?” Emily asked Kim.

  “Mike worked with the portal. I only caught bits and pieces of it. He was talking to someone, though.” She wiped her face, which only smeared the soot around. “I think he’s safe.” She turned to Tonya. “Why hasn’t Mike woken up yet?”

  Tonya checked his vitals. “Everything seems fine. He’ll come around when he’s ready.” More trees fell over in the forest, but June had directed them upwind so they seemed out of immediate danger. They still needed to get out of here. “Come on, Emily,” she said as she grabbed Mike’s shoulders, “you take his feet.”

  A frantic, tinny horn started beeping away just as Spencer and June appeared on their side of the stream, riding in an industrial-sized golf cart.

  Spencer stuck his head out of the passenger’s side as June braked to a halt. “You guys need a ride?”

  Chapter 64

  Kim

  The fires got so bad everyone at the plant took shelter in the wrecked structure. A war almost started when word got out that the plant was ruined. At least a dozen revolutionary committees formed to figure out what should happen next, all with acronyms that seemed to compete with each other in how many different ways they could combine green, revolution, liberation, and oppression. Kim gave up keeping them straight when they started using French.

  Anna’s senior staff had disappeared. They were either hiding deep in the bowels of the plant, or they’d been given advanced warning about her real goal and had scattered to the winds. The authorities showed up a few hours after the fires started, but the only person who seemed to be in the local chain of command was the nurse in charge of the infirmary. The committees didn’t recognize her, so they’d all been arguing with each other ever since. Kim didn’t know if they’d ever work it out.

  Everyone was too busy pointing fingers to pay attention to them. It made picking one of her priorities easy. The plant had to be disarmed.

  Spencer and June volunteered for that duty. They made for an odd pair: the skinny white kid from the South and the giant black South African more than twice his age. But they had an easy rapport and worked well together.