Tempered

by Britt Ringel

  Tess nodded and stepped to the examination table. “Her power is insidious.” She frowned. “I’ve watched Tears kill test animals during her trials.”

  Kat brought her inflamed left hand to her face and braced herself as she recalled Tabitha’s callous declaration. She inhaled slowly before opening her eyes. Her fingers were certainly swollen but not as badly as she had feared. They were fiery red from the tips down to the middle joints. She set her jaw and tested their movement. Miraculously, they responded. The pain increased as she flexed but at least she could make a fist. She brought up her right hand. Its condition was far better.

  Muscles in her neck tensed as she raised her head to look down her body. Barefoot, her feet resembled her hands except the tips of her toes were a pale white. She successfully wiggled them and took that as a good sign. “I guess I survived.”

  Reynolds smiled at her. “You did, sweetie. Your hands will get better pretty quickly but your feet are going to hurt for a while.”

  Kat propped herself up on her elbows. “I was worried after hearing Tabitha.” Her eyes caught on the empty padded chair behind Reynolds and her brow lowered. “Where is she?”

  Three heads turned in unison.

  “Shit,” Sadler cursed as he marched quickly to the curtain that closed off the back room. He yanked back the cloth and demanded loudly, “What are you doing in there?”

  Tabitha’s guilt-ridden voice answered him. “Nothing. I wanted to lay down.”

  Sadler disappeared into the opening but reemerged with Tabitha in tow. The woman carried her free arm awkwardly behind her back.

  “What’re you hiding?”

  Tabitha bit her lip and looked away before producing her handheld.

  “Tabby,” Sadler growled. “She must have snatched it from Kat when we were busy.”

  Aircars roared overhead. Their vectored thrust rattled the tin shack’s roof.

  Sadler flung the handheld into the back room before grabbing Tabitha forcefully. He shook her while shouting over the din, “Who did you message?”

  Tabitha recoiled, lips curling in fear. “Corp-sec. I sent a message to corp-sec.” She jerked her hands free from his waning grip. “We’re not involved in this, Sadler. They’re coming to rescue us!”

  Tess looked anxiously at the closed service window. The muscles in her jaw flexed repeatedly and her blue eyes darted with terror. “Corp-sec might be coming but the Society will reach us first.” She took steps toward the side door. “We have to get out.”

  Gunfire erupted overhead, a nonstop thrumming of reports from multiple automatic rifles.

  Kat was under the examination table before she realized she had moved. She looked at the stunned expressions on her friends, still standing unprotected. “Get under the table!” she screamed.

  The rifle fire continued but no bullets penetrated the flimsy tin roof. Despite the racket, Reynolds’ shack remained untouched.

  “What the hell?” Sadler asked, now on his hands and knees next to Kat. Tess and Reynolds huddled on her other side.

  “Why are they shooting at us?” Tabitha shrieked. She alone remained upright, frozen in place near the curtain to the back room.

  As if in answer to her cry, the rifles ended their brutal tirade and the whine from the overhead aircars changed in pitch. They were landing.

  Kat crawled from under the table, adrenaline masking the throbbing in her hands and feet. Carefully, she pushed the service window out slightly and peered through the gap.

  Two VTOL vehicles descended slowly through the driving rain to the muddy center of the open cul-de-sac. They were large aircars with covered cargo compartments behind the front seats. A raised, wide door on the right side of each vehicle exposed its back compartment and Kat saw several figures dressed like Tears’ agents kneeling inside. Unlike the agents from the tenement, each wore black ballistics armor over their jackets. They were changing the magazines in their rifles.

  Two shacks down from Kat’s position stood the perforated remains of a clothing shop. Countless holes peppered the fragile hut, which now sagged heavily to one side. The sheer quantity of bullet holes spoke grim testament to any occupants inside.

  Nine agents hopped from the open sides of the hovering vehicles and into the rain. A man and two women followed them onto the muddy street. Kat immediately recognized Tears’ distinctive leather jacket and red-highlighted hair. The group stood arrogantly in the middle of the cul-de-sac, the agents openly brandishing their weapons. Behind them, the VTOL vehicles touched down. The lone man without a rifle motioned toward the perforated shack and the agents began a vigilant approach.

  “It’s the Society,” Kat warned quietly. “Nine agents with rifles. They shot up the clothing shop.”

  “That’s Leslie Gertz’s store,” Reynolds choked. “She and her husband live in the back of it.”

  “Tears is here,” Kat continued in a whisper, “along with two other operatives, a man and woman.”

  “Describe them,” Tess ordered.

  “The guy has dark brown hair, cut relatively short and parted on the left side. Average build, wearing a suit.”

  “Big scar on the right side of his face?”

  Kat shook her head slightly. “I can’t tell. He’s facing the clothing shack and I can’t see that side.”

  “Still, it has to be Bowen,” Tess predicted with a grimace. “The woman, is she short with blonde hair?”

  Kat squinted out of the tiny gap and then turned to Tess. “It’s wet and in a chignon but yeah, she’s short.”

  “Teki.” Tess paused but then blurted, “Kat, you need to know that—”

  A voice thundered from outside. “Dammit, Teki! That was the wrong hut!”

  Kat resumed her spying.

  “Should we search the rest of them?” asked an agent.

  “No,” Bowen stated flatly. He made a sweeping gesture and ordered, “Riddle them all. Quickly, before we have to deal with the local corp-sec too.”

  Kat watched the agents raise their rifles to different shacks in the cul-de-sac. “We need to get out the back!” she hissed. She pushed off the service counter and raced for the back room. As she passed the examination table, she snatched her shoes off the surface. Once she reached the curtain, she swept it aside before stuffing her aching feet into the black shoes.

  “There’s no exit that way,” protested Tabitha.

  Tess yanked her over the threshold and pushed her to the floor. Sporadic gunfire resumed and Kat dropped to a knee while waving frantically to Sadler and Reynolds. “Come on!”

  “Market Security!” boomed a distant voice over a megaphone. “P-put down your weapons.” The command, delivered in a stammer, was far from intimidating.

  The rifle fire stopped and only the sound of the downpour followed. “You’re joking, right?” Bowen sounded almost casual.

  Sadler, Kat and Reynolds crawled into the back room. Kat secured her last shoe and scuttled to the far wall.

  She heard Bowen issue more orders outside. “You five, take care of our unwanted hosts. You four focus on the shacks.”

  “Drop your weapons or we will fire!” The market guards were persistent if nothing else.

  “Run, you idiots!” screamed a woman outside. The voice sounded vaguely familiar to Kat, hanging in the periphery of her memories.

  Gunfire ignited on the street once more. Continuous bursts from military-grade battle rifles nearly drowned out the single shots from the woefully outclassed market guards. Just under the constant thunder of the fusillade rang the pings of bullet strikes on the shack next to Reynolds’ clinic. Tabitha’s incessant screams underlined the cacophony.

  Kat focused briefly and pushed at the back wall in controlled panic. In between heartbeats, the tin wall vanished and the hut’s side walls sagged from the loss of support. Kat grabbed Tabitha’s sleeve and heaved her off the ground. “Go!” She counted heads as they passed and dashed through the opening after the final one. Outside, thunder cracked overhead and rain p
elted her face. Her friends were crouched or on hands and knees in the mud. Kneeling next to them, she urgently scanned her surroundings with wide, brown eyes. Bullets peppered the shack to her right. To her left, a large covered cart bearing household goods rested in the mud. Further behind Reynolds’ shack, rubble from a brick building lay in twisted, broken heaps. It was impassable terrain, made that way either by the building’s original collapse or by market guards seeking to restrict access.

  Excruciating pain popped in Kat’s ears, forcing her hands to clench in the muck. The ground trembled, splattering mud and water on Kat’s face as half a dozen aircars thundered overhead, just meters from the rooftops. Strobing red and blue emergency lights and the distinctive wail of corp-sec sirens added to the mayhem. Unlike the market guards, no verbal warning was issued from above. Shots rained down from the aircars drifting over the battlefield.

  Chapter 22

  Kat pushed to her feet with a groan. She edged to the corner of the clinic and peered cautiously around it. The sight took her breath away.

  The Society’s nearest aircar burned brightly despite the deluge, set ablaze by the withering fire from corp-sec vehicles. Orange flames danced meters high over the wreckage before morphing into grey and black tendrils of smoke. The second cargo craft was a perforated shell, its driver slumped over the controls behind a shattered windshield. The agents with rifles were still in the fight, sheltered behind and under carts and barrels while returning fire. A third aimed at the market guards down the street while the rest focused on the corp-sec aircars overhead.

  Tears knelt in the mud, taking cover against the side of the pockmarked aircar. Teki stood next to her with her arms raised over her head. A weak, nearly transparent haze curved just above them as if some ethereal umbrella. Red and blue from the corp-sec aircars strobed against the shield as waves of rainwater ran down its sides. Kat’s jaw dropped as she watched a salvo of corp-sec gunfire strike the translucent miasma and ricochet away.

  A much louder pop brought Kat’s eyes back to the sky. One of the corp-sec cars peeled away, spewing black smoke from its turbines while rapidly losing altitude. The choking vehicle clipped the top of a two-story building, tearing bricks from the rooftop before tumbling behind the structure. Two of its brethren spun in its defense and focused vehicle-mounted weapons at the offending ground fire. Their underslung Atkinson M-18 rifles fired repeated shots, transforming a two-wheeled cart and the agent underneath it into wooden shards and gore.

  The unearthly canopy shielding Tears and Teki vanished and Kat watched Teki strike out at one of the airborne aggressors. The attack looked like little more than a feeble, open palm pushed toward her target but the security craft jerked as if hit by a missile. The vehicle’s front crumpled upward under the blow, buckling alloy and exploding the windshield into a cloud of glass. The tortured shriek of metal drew all eyes up to the battered craft. Gunfire died as combatants paused to watch the driver wrestle in vain for control of his plummeting vehicle. Seated next to him, his horrified partner clung to the gun mount’s controls while bracing for impact.

  In the midst of the pandemonium was Bowen. He stood like a statue in the center of the storm. The disabled aircar crashed to the earth two dozen meters from him in a thunderous crunch. Behind the unmoving man, Teki’s hazy shield flickered into place over her as the crescendo of weapons fire resumed from every angle in the street.

  Kat tore her eyes away from the bedlam and looked at her companions. “We’ve got to escape while they’re distracted.”

  “No!” cried Tabitha. She rose to her feet. “I’m not taking my chances with you or the Trodden tonight! I need to get to corp-sec! They came here to save me!” Kat reached out but the woman danced away from her hand and bolted from behind the clinic.

  “Tabby, no!” screamed Sadler. He was up and after her in an instant.

  Kat felt her stomach somersault. She took a step but hands restrained her.

  Tess hung onto her like an anchor pulling her to the ground. “You can’t go after him. Look.”

  Tabitha raced toward the lowest of the hovering aircars, waving her arms over her head while screaming indecipherably. Sadler, five steps behind, pumped his arms in effort to close the distance. One of the aircars, a scant four meters above the ground, rotated in place to unmask its Atkinson rifle. The gun barked once, twice. A red spray erupted from Tabitha’s back and she sprawled into the mud. The muzzle of the weapon trained toward Sadler.

  Kat leapt to her feet and stepped into the open. Oblivious to the chaos around her, she focused on the object that would take Sadler’s life and pushed with every fiber of her being. The entire aircraft ripped from the timeline, leaving both pilot and gunner unsupported. They dropped four meters like stones to land in the soft mud.

  “There!” Bowen thundered from the middle of the cul-de-sac.

  Kat locked eyes with him. He would have been a handsome man but for the grisly, Y-shaped scar that dominated the right side of his face. A maniacal grin caused his disfigurement to twist before he started a sluggish walk toward her. It was an inhuman lurch, an almost tortured gait. His legs moved in fits and spurts, carrying an otherwise motionless body. Shots from an aircar riddled across his back, seemingly without effect. Kat strained to understand what she was seeing. Another shot struck his head. Bowen barely flinched and the bullet ricocheted away. “How?” she gasped.

  “He’s biokinetic, Cat!” Tess pulled on Kat’s arm to drag her back to cover. “He can increase the density of his tissue until he’s nearly impervious! Please, we’ve got to run!”

  Bowen’s eyes cast daggers at Tess and his face transformed into outrage. “Traitor!” he roared. “Tears, Teki… There!”

  A chill ran down Kat’s spine as Tears glared at her. Not again. Her ears popped painfully.

  The missing corp-sec vehicle blinked into existence. It glided backwards slightly, drifting uncontrolled, before its auto-hover activated. Its former occupants, highlighted by the empty vehicle’s emergency lights, were already up and next to Sadler and Tabitha. Sadler was on his knees before the first officer, his hands on his head. The second corp-sec officer pointed a revolver at an unresponsive Tabitha while shouting commands. An aircar covering the officers attracted rifle fire from an agent and four silver circles blossomed on the side door of the craft. Kat noticed that the gunfire from down the street had completely abated. The market guards must have fled. She didn’t blame them, this fight was far above their pay grade. Even the shots from Society agents had become much more selective. They’re running low on ammunition. Our window for escape is closing. Kat looked pitifully at Sadler from the cover of her corner as an officer pulled him toward a landing corp-sec vehicle. Judging by how his arms contorted, he’d been handcuffed. The other officer abandoned Tabitha, leaving her a motionless heap in the mud. He ran toward his partner and the landing craft, all the while firing futilely at an unstoppable Bowen. The operative ignored the corp-sec activity and slowly drew closer to the clinic. Tears and Teki were on the move as well, shuffling under Teki’s umbrella of protection.

  Kat raised her hands to help bundle psionic energy. If she could muster another push and wipe the aircar on the ground, she might prevent Sadler’s arrest. She realized her hands were ice cold again.

  “Cat, it can’t end like this,” Tess pleaded. “You can save him but you have to be alive to do it.”

  “I won’t leave him!” Kat worked to pull energy from her reserves. Nothing was there. The doorway inside her mind refused to budge. She doubled her efforts, pulling harder and harder until another hand clasped her shoulder.

  “Kat.” It was Reynolds’ tender voice. “Go with Tess. I’ll stay behind and try for Sadler and Tabitha.” The doctor’s breath crystalized into white wisps in the frigid air.

  Kat looked at her. The aged, heavyset woman wouldn’t have a chance. “No,” she choked out. “Stay out of sight, Maggie. They haven’t seen you yet. Tess and I will make a run for it and draw them away.” She re
ached out to take the doctor’s hand. “I’ll find a way to contact you.” Kat’s hair lashed wildly at her face as more corp-sec aircars thundered over her. Reinforcements had arrived.

  “Be safe, Kat.” Reynolds edged away from the corner and huddled against the clinic’s wall. The mud around her feet was beginning to freeze.

  Kat grabbed Tess by the arm and pointed at a decrepit brick building a dozen meters away. Like the rest, it was closed off, barricaded by the market guards.

  “Can you push us an entrance into it?” Tess asked. She was shivering.

  Kat smirked. “Sort of. You ready?” After receiving a tepid nod, she burst into the cul-de-sac.

  She immediately noticed how warm the air was compared to the freezing clinic. The rain felt almost like bath water. The fresh mud pulled at Kat’s feet, threatening to trip her, but she tucked her arms to her sides and raced toward her goal. Thick planks reinforced the heavily barricaded door but only thin sheets of plywood appeared to cover the windows. She heard the deep reports of rifle shots but not the pops and whistles of near misses. The agents seemed to have their hands full battling corp-sec. She narrowed her focus squarely on the nearest window but made no attempt to draw psionic energy from her exhausted reserves. Three steps from her goal, she squeezed her eyes shut and launched herself into the air, throwing herself at the plywood separating danger from shelter.

  The wooden sheet burst inward, splitting and shattering with the impact. Kat felt the blow along her entire right side. A moment of panic rushed through her as she heard the pops and crunches of her assault. It sounded as if she’d broken every bone in her body. The next instant, she slammed onto dusty, wooden floorboards and skidded on her stomach across an empty room. She slid to a stop and opened her eyes.

  Her right shoulder sang a ballad of agony. She had shielded her head with her hand and the numbness in it hinted at further injury. She tested her fingers and, surprisingly, found she could still bend them. Even her shoulder felt more like it had been merely jammed into its socket than broken. Sharp pain rode a wave from waist to foot but the worst of it throbbed at her hip.