The bolt shoots from his arm. It hits Peeta and the pain forces Madelyn to let go. In a blinding flash of intense heat, her mother is incinerated like the other people were. Where a woman just stood there is now a small, sad pile of black dust.
Black flakes spin in the air where Peeta had been.
Madelyn drops to her knees. She doesn't even feel the pain as she hits the ground. All sensation is gone. Her heart is broken in an instant.
The crowd looks on at the horrific scene. Mother incinerated. Child grieving. Mad man hovering above them all, ready to do the same to the rest of them.
Blanc laughs. God laughs.
Chapter 86
I'm hovering in the air, paralyzed by what I've just seen unfold below me. I heard what that woman said. I saw what he did. I watch her daughter wailing. I see the smoke and dust where a human life, a mother, stood just seconds ago.
She—she—, my brain tries to complete the thought but I can't.
I lock up. I feel like I'm being pulled in a million directions at once. Another death because of me. A child has lost her mother. A threat that isn't just run-of-the-mill. This isn't merely someone robbing a bank or dealing drugs.
What can I do?
"I told her," the man says, his digital voice booming all around us. "I told her and—wait."
He turns around to me. I recognize him. Madden Blanc, the billionaire. I put that fact away. I can make sense of it later. If there is a later.
"You're here," he crows. "Too late for that one but hey—you eventually made it; I suppose. Still moping around? You've been a little emo lately."
I wince because he's right.
But his haughty tone makes me finally pick a course of action. I can't run away, even if I'm going to screw up. There's an extremely high likelihood that I'm going to fail but I have to do something.
I keep saying I'm the only one who can, and even if the existence of the reptile and Madden Blanc in this suit shows that I'm not, I have to try.
Fly.
I hurl myself at him, getting to top speed in seconds. I slam into him and the two of us go flying into the Reflecting Pool.
Water shoots hundreds of feet into the air and I feel a slight bump as his armor breaks through the stone foundation of the pool and we dig deeper into the ground.
I stop and look down at him. I've seen his face on TV lots of times. He probably even came in to the Herald-Examiner like every other powerbroker has. But he didn't look like this.
Through the clear pane of glass I can see his mouth twisted into a grotesque smile. He is enjoying all of this.
He slightly moves his arm and after aiming it at me he fires.
There is a blinding white blast and I feel like an entire Amtrak train has slammed into my stomach. The force pushes me out of the pool and up above into the air.
The pain is intense, and it makes the reptile's punches feel like child's play. One of the downsides to having this strength and power is you have a tendency to forget how much real pain hurts. You shrug off enough standard issue punches and bullets and even after a few days pain quickly becomes an ever-distant memory.
As I fall to the ground, I remember the sensation well. I land on the Memorial steps and crash through them. Shards of marble break off and I can vaguely hear screaming and yelling around me. In the distance there are sirens, but if I don't act there won't be anything or anyone left for them to help.
I stand up, trying to ignore the pain from the blast.
Blanc shoots up out of the now-empty pool and hovers above me. He points his arms at me and I see a quick shimmy as his left arm transforms to match his right, turning into another cannon.
He fires.
The beam leaps through the air at me and I quickly cross my arms out in front of me in an attempt to ward it off. The electricity scrapes at my arms.
It feels like a million long fingernails slashing at me. I can smell my jacket burning a little. It is eating through the small protective barrier that has seemed to extend to my clothing.
How is he doing this? What is he?
I try to focus on the problem at hand, but I can't help but to work on the puzzle a little as well.
Blanc is suddenly flying at me, the jets on his back engaged, glowing hot red and orange to push him forward.
His fists hammer against my chest and the impact sends me hurtling backward. He laughs again, louder. The unearthly cackle fills my ears. My back slams into one of the columns holding up the Memorial. A crack runs up the length of the stone.
Damn it.
I push off the ground and pull back my fist. I fly to him and hit, not pulling my punch. In fact, I try to put a little extra on it.
The force sends him back across the Reflecting Pool and a loud clapping noise echoes like a crack of thunder.
I fly to him as he spins head over heels.
"You idiot!" I yell.
Despite his predicament, he's still laughing.
I can sort of understand it. Despite the intensity of what I've dished out, he's still intact. My stomach and chest hurt, as do my arms. I can't see any sign that I've even nicked him. The suit is still shiny and almost completely intact.
He has the upper hand.
Chapter 87
Madden Blanc's rockets fire and he stabilizes in mid-air. That suit can do things I've never seen before, defying physics in a way I thought only I could.
We're now just a few feet away from the Washington Monument. Blanc hovers between me and the iconic obelisk. To our left I can see the outer fringes of the White House.
He fires at me again.
Left.
I drift aside and evade the blast, which dissipates harmlessly in the air.
He fires again and I float the other way. Missed again.
Now I move forward, coming in closer to him. His smile drops a little bit.
"Half-breed thinks it's smart," he says.
This insult angers me more than I expect and I swing both arms upward with a double uppercut. My fists burn as they slam against the metal. It is electrified like a fence and I can feel thousands of volts shooting through me. He goes flying but that hurt me as well.
"This doesn't end well for you," he says, as he stabilizes again. "I've watched you, wasting your genetic gifts, stumbling and bumbling as you help these insignificant ants instead of crushing them."
He floats there, leering at me.
"Wasted. Just wasted. Like that woman. Like all of you people. Just a total waste. You get power and have no idea how it should be truly used, exploited, controlled."
I know he's some kind of lunatic, but his rant makes me again think about how I'm not the right person for these powers. Someone else out there must be able to stop guys like this. It can't be me. It shouldn't be me.
I want to answer him but there are no words coming.
"Just a waste!" he yells and flies at me. In no time he's inches away from me. I feel the imprints all over my body of his blows. I feel the scars on my arms from his burns. It hurts.
Blanc reaches out to me, his cannons now transformed back into hands. He grabs my shoulders and instantly there is a white-hot light.
The same bolts as before, but now creating a circuit of intense, burning pain, with me stuck in-between as the conductor. Every inch of my body is electrified. I can smell burning.
I'm burning.
He smiles, opening his mouth wide. I can see his teeth as I stare down his throat. My ears fill with the noise of his sadistic, wild laugh.
"A waste!"
Even more energy pours through me. It feels like the very core of my body is on fire.
Let go. Just let go.
I want to just let go. Let him have it. Let him do what he wants.
I was the wrong one. The wrong person.
I've let everyone down.
More energy pours out of him and my body continues to grow limp, sapped of strength.
He's still holding me by my shoulders and he lifts me up in the air, ab
ove his head.
I'm barely conscious. I see blackness at the edge of my eyes and I'm ready to slip away.
Sorry Taylor. Sorry Dad. Sorry Mom.
He hurls me away through the air. I spin, head over heels. I see the sky, then the city. The sky, then buildings. The sky, then the honeycomb-shaped building I am hurtling into.
I hit the roof, and everything goes black.
Chapter 88
Madden Blanc watches as Carla Logan's body falls through the roof the National Museum of African-American history. It has all worked out wonderfully.
The suit is working like a charm. It easily absorbed her attacks while also channeling the energy he needed to incapacitate her.
Masterpiece, he thinks.
He again ponders the future to come. The glorious reign he will have. He will achieve immortality as history is re-written in his wake. He is a hunter, who will put the most dangerous prey ever conceived of as a trophy on his wall.
The White House catches his eye.
Maybe on that wall.
The idea of Carla Logan's body rotting as it hangs from the most famous mansion in the world thrills him. It makes him almost delirious with joy.
These are the emotions that he has been suppressing for so long, keeping them below the surface. He knows millions of eyes have been watching the clinic he has put on today and that this demonstration of absolute power will cow anyone who entertained thoughts of stopping him.
He has broken her in every way. And God will now take his throne.
Chapter 89
Everything is black. Every inch of me feels like it has been completely burned down to a cinder. I can barely feel but there are stones and metal and wood on top of me. They came pouring down as I crashed through the roof of that building.
I don't want to open my eyes. I just want to let go, let the blackness take me and finally proclaim victory. I was the wrong one.
But I see that mother. I see her invoking my name and standing up to Madden Blanc without hesitation.
Damn it.
I see the last moments of defiance on her face, even as she was certain he was going to kill her. She never wavered. She didn't have the strength to survive the blast, didn't have the ability to hit back, and yet she showed more power and resolve than I have.
I open my eyes and it's still black. Just a few tiny pinpricks of light make it through. I can recognize that it is rubble and stone around me.
She stood up. It was harder for her.
I push against the ground. I feel blood dripping down my arms and my face. My back muscles ache as I push against the rubble. I hear wood snapping and cracking as I slowly push through.
She did more.
I push and push, feeling exhausted in every muscle. I exhale and redouble my efforts. I have to get out of this.
She would. She should have been given this power. But I was, so I have to figure it out.
I think about Mom, flying across the universe, pursued from one planet and chased billions of miles through the great unknown only to land on a world completely alien to her, changing the very basic building blocks of her body. Passing on something to me, keeping me safe. For my entire life.
I think about Dad too, his time in service, putting his life on the line, coming home and once again having his mettle tested with a situation nobody could possibly imagine.
Giving it all up now, no matter what I've done, is an absolute insult. If not for me and my ego, for them. I have to try.
So I do.
I make one long push and finally I break through. Dirt and wood and other debris goes flying as I pop through. The sun pours in through the broken ceiling above me. My eyes are blinded for a second as they come out of the darkness.
The darkness isn't for me.
I finally realize that now.
Then I see where I am.
Chapter 90
I'm looking up at the walls and I recognize immediately that I'm inside a museum. The image is fuzzy and out of focus for a second, but then I see clearly.
It is a depiction of a slavery auction block, showing families, black families, being shown off to grimacing, grotesque crowds that stare at them like they are nothing more than livestock. Not human. Property.
As badly as I feel right now, broken in my heart and broken in skin and flesh and bone, it doesn't compare. I've never been owned, never been property, never faced the kind of indignities and dehumanization they did.
They barely existed as human beings, let alone one with special gifts and abilities that give her – me a shot at something they could never dream of. As I steady myself, trying to plant my feet even as my head is swimming, the thought helps to keep me centered.
There's a slight hum above and I look up to see Blanc, his shining shimmering suit hovering over the scene, looking for me, looking to put a final nail in my coffin. I could see it on his face as he overloaded my body. Bloodlust, a frenzy, that will only be satisfied with my death.
Even that might not be enough for him. The way he treated his hostages, the mother, everyone else. He wants blood and validation.
I sigh and as I exhale I feel a sharp pain in my side. Since I've had these powers I've barely been injured, but on the few occasions I have been – like with the reptile creature – I've healed quickly.
Hurts like hell.
I wish there was a way to speed it up. But there isn't. Dad told me once about getting a bullet in his shoulder. How the pain felt excruciating, like it would never go away. Even now, from time to time, depending on the weather, it would flare up.
Live with it.
As I look up at Blanc I see a huge photo of Dr. King. Pain? Suffering? He died for his cause. He was killed, simply for demanding that people like me be treated with equality, dignity, respect. He didn't have the luxury of watching bullets roll off his skin. He couldn't, like I do, simply walk away.
It took one deranged lunatic just minutes to erase King from Earth. But here I was, decades later, having the temerity to think I've actually faced anything.
The burns, the cuts, the bruises, they can all heal. I'm here because King stood up with much bigger stakes at play. A psychopath with a tin-can suit of armor seems laughable compared to hundreds of years of ignorance and oppression.
One more.
I see a statue of Sojourner Truth. Born into slavery. She not only made her way out, but then when she could have kept on walking, turning her back on those left behind, she didn't.
She turned, walked into the jaws of danger, aware that at any moment she could be swept back up as property. She stood up. Faced the fire, over and over, to rescue those far worse off than her.
My aches and pains are insignificant. They are nothing like what those who share my skin have felt. I was put here for a reason. My parents met each other, not simply due to luck or happenstance.
I don't know what it is, but there is a plan.
The plan is not over. It's just beginning.
These people, their hopes and dreams are in me.
They live on.
In me.
They persist and resist.
In me.
My mother. My dad. The mother. Her daughter. The heroes and the pioneers.
Madden Blanc drained me, threw me away like so much trash. He wants me to lay here, wallowing in misery, waiting for him to decide my final fate.
No.
Chapter 91
I launch vertically, my legs aching as I spring from the ground. I put the pain out of my mind and pour on the speed.
I'm quickly out the hole in the roof and standing, hovering, across from Blanc.
He still has that dumb smile on his face.
I'm going to tear it off.
"You're dead," he says.
"Not yet," I reply.
I launch myself at him and I close the gap between us in two seconds. Could have used that speed back in my track days.
I slam into the suit and he goes flying.
I quickly fly
back, out of his grasp, only to change altitude so I'm a little higher in the sky. I launch at him again and slap against his suit. I fly fast, without any hesitation. I can't put brakes on to stop him, he isn't worth letting up on.
Every hit, I feel the shockwaves ripple through my skin and against my bones. If I live, I'm going to need an ice bath for a week.
I hit him again. Back away. Shift angle. Hit. I repeat this a couple times and I can see tiny white fractures finally emerging in the armor. It's small, but I've accomplished something.
Finally.
I flash back on what I saw in the museum, the faces of the past surrounding me, looking down to me. They're telling me this story isn't over.
I aim for Blanc and this time, instead of bouncing away, I hold on, much like he held my sides during his electrical attack. He tries to power up the suit like before but the fissures have taken a small toll.
There's a slight buzzing sensation. It hurts. But I can handle it.
I start to fly up.
Thinking he has figured out my strategy, he turns on his engines. Soon we are both rocketing higher and higher in the sky, in a strange, aggressive dance.
He is still smiling, that grotesque smile that echoes the slave auctioneer hundreds of years ago. They both share the belief that they are untouchable, above the rest of us. Godlike, if not God himself.
But they aren't.
"Not today," I tell him, shouting as we shoot higher and higher through the clouds. "I didn't come here to die."
I'm yelling now, my voice booming above the sound of his engines, the whipping wind of our rapid ascent.
"I came to win."
Chapter 92
It's getting colder. Darker. We are higher and higher above the ground. You can barely see the city below us anymore.
I'm staring into Madden Blanc's eyes and he's not smiling anymore. It's everything I can do not to bust out a goofy grin now that the tables have turned. I know I'm going to feel it later but, in the moment, all my aches and pains are gone.
He is in my hands now, trying to get his suit to hurt me and failing miserably. If anything, he has to keep more focus on preserving himself and staying alive now, rather than hurting me.
The Xtra- Volume One Page 20
