by M. G. Herron
I glanced up as another fountain of sparks shot into the air. Dyna squinted her eyes. “It will take a great amount of energy to brute force the lock, but it is not impossible.”
“What happens if he does?”
“If he gets away with an active beacon, this planet will become infested with Tetrad dissidents.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Kilos said.
“Incredibly, I find myself in agreement with Wolverine here.”
Kilos growled at me.
“Hey, that one was a compliment, pal.”
A black SUV with dark tinted windows pulled around the corner and came to a stop next to us. The drivers-side window rolled down, revealing a familiar face.
“Gunn?” Detective Gonzalez said. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same.”
Gonzalez frowned at Dyna, whose expression was carefully neutral, and Kilos, who had come around from the other side of my truck. “Who are you?”
I jumped down from the truck bed and approached Sheila’s window.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” I stammered. “This is, er, Agent Dyna and her partner, Agent Kilos.”
“Pleasure,” Gonzalez said. There was no pleasure to be found in her voice or her flat eyes. She glared at me. “You didn’t tell me you were working with the Feds.”
“It’s temporary,” I insisted, glancing at Dyna. She shrugged. “Besides, you told me not to ask you for help.”
Gonzalez shook her head. “How did you figure it out?”
“Come again?”
“The Frost Building. Isn’t that why you’re here? We just got a call that the power was out on the top floors. My guys notified me because this was on the list of Kovak’s most common dispatches for the power company.”
I snapped my fingers as the pattern finally came together in my mind. “Gonzalez, you’re a genius.”
Dyna and Kilos cocked their heads in confusion. I pulled them a few feet apart and spoke in a whisper. “First, I found Elekatch on the rooftop of that apartment building. Then you tracked him to the power plant. Now, Frost Tower. They’re all places Kovak worked for the power company.”
Dyna nodded. “It seems logical. If the victim had strong enough memories of these locations, Elekatch would have been able to extract them before feeding.”
I shuddered, remembering what the Pharsei had done in the simulation to that poor, hapless little creature. It turned my stomach to think about it happening to someone I knew. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the fight to come.
“What are you whispering about over there?” Gonzalez demanded as she got out of the SUV.
I waved my hand. “There’s no time to explain.”
Gonzalez’s eyes darkened and her face screwed up in anger. “Goddammit, Andy.”
“I thought you didn’t want to work together?”
She glared. “This is obstruction of justice. I could have you arrested.”
Stepping around the detective, I climbed into bed of the truck and pulled my Kimber from the lockbox, where I’d placed it under lock and key when we left the power plant the night before. I checked the magazine, shoved it into my shoulder holster, and then turned back to Gonzalez. I didn’t see the point in keeping it from her anymore. “Kovak is dead,” I said.
“What? According to who?” She pointed at the roof. “Who else would want or know how to sneak up there, except Cameron Kovak?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated, hell,” Gonzalez swore, stepping closer to me. “I’ll show you complicated, you stubborn a—”
Dyna stepped between us. “I advise you both to save your breath for the climb.”
“Try not to take too long,” Kilos growled.
He tapped the small device at his belt. The air around him shimmered and he disappeared from sight. I could just make out his outline when he was right next to me, but as he moved away it became harder and harder to tell where he was. Taking a few easy strides, the almost invisible Peacekeeper loped across the street and bounded up the wall to grab onto the low roof of the Mexic-Arte Museum. From there, he hauled himself up and began to climb the side of the skyscraper, nothing but a smudge against the glass.
“Wow,” I said. “That will never get old.”
Detective Gonzalez’s big brown eyes widened as she stared, her mouth hanging open. “Dios mío,” she said, crossing herself. “Where did he go? How did he do that?”
I stepped close to Detective Gonzalez and put one arm around her. “I’ll explain everything, later, when there’s time. Right now, I have to go.”
“Gunn, what is going on?”
“It’ll be safer if you stay down here.”
“Safer? Like hell! We aren’t kids anymore. You can’t just leave me behind to go pull some stunt that was my idea in the first place. I’ll be damned if I stand idly by and let you take all the cred—Gunn, wait!”
Hiding a smirk, I turned and took off in the direction Dyna went, toward the alley that led into the building. If Gonzalez stayed down here, great—but I never really thought she would. She’d always followed me right into danger before. There was no one I’d rather have watching my back.
It wasn’t like that with Anna. Kindhearted people tended to get hurt. I felt a primal urge to protect and shield people like Anna from the dangers of the world. But Gonzalez, she was made of tougher stuff. She could take a direct shot and come back swinging in the next round. We’d fought alongside each other, and with each other, since we were teenagers. She was a warrior, and the finest cop I’d ever met. I trusted her with my life.
“Detective Simmons!” Gonzalez shouted to her partner, who was leaning out the passenger-side window gawking up at the Frost building in the direction Kilos had gone. “Simmons, dammit, focus! Radio for backup. Cordon the area and get these people off the street.”
“Where are you going?” he asked, his voice high and thin.
“Up there.”
“But that’s not protocol—wait, you’re not supposed to—”
“Just do it, Simmons!”
Her boots struck the pavement as she hurried to catch up with me. We jogged past the Do Not Enter sign and stepped into the alley that ran beside the museum. Ahead of me, Dyna was already conversing with a middle-aged man who’d been smoking a cigarette by the dumpster. She held up a finger, and a pattern of whites, yellows, and reds skipped across her head. The man blinked, dropped his cigarette, and ground it out. He crossed to a white door with a keypad next to it, where he tapped in a four-digit code. Then he pulled a new cigarette out of a pack as he wandered back toward the dumpster, shaking his head and looking around as if wondering how he’d wound up there.
“Stay behind me,” Dyna whispered, standing framed in the doorway.
“Like I’d let you out of my sight,” Detective Gonzalez retorted, unbuttoning her hip holster and drawing her police-issue firearm—a forty caliber semi-automatic—without breaking eye contact with Dyna. “I don’t trust Feds who just show up on my cases without the courtesy of notifying me.”
Dyna assessed Gonzalez coldly. “That is a reasonable position to take,” she said and then ducked inside. Gonzalez clenched her jaw and followed. I let go and the door slammed into the frame, cutting off the sound and shutting us into the building.
The cool air washed over my sweat-soaked neck. I started reminding myself of the brick wall, already wetting my mental cement. We moved past the elevator to a stairwell, and I laid a row of bricks down as a foundation in my mind simultaneously.
Lay a brick, take a step.
Take a step, lay a brick.
I wouldn’t waste my shot if I got a second chance.
I built that foundation up, slathering on more cement even as I pumped my legs up thirty-three flights of stairs. It was strangely meditative.
As we climbed, I avoided the hundreds of evacuating employees while Sheila screamed for them to quickly make their way out of the building.
When we g
ot to the top, though, I was winded. Gonzalez wiped her flushed face with her forearm. Her ponytail was loose, but it held. Dyna’s chest heaved like ours did, but she stayed calm and seemed intently focused, as if she were listening to something only she could hear. She gave us about five seconds to catch our breath, then yanked open the security door. We stepped through the door and into a driving wind on a lower part of the roof, searching the massive sheets of blue glass that angled above us for signs of Elekatch and Kilos.
At least, I did. Gonzalez pointed her pistol out in front of her and turned, looking for a man. “Cameron Kovak!” she said. “Show yourself!”
“Sheila,” I hissed. “Did you not hear what I said? Kovak is dead.”
We made it halfway across the roof when glass shattered and shards rained down on our heads. Kilos soared through the air like a pale missile, head extended backward, arms cast wide. He plummeted out into the air well past the roofline.
Dyna thrust out her hands, as if to catch him. She was way too far away—or so I thought. The knots on her head blazed bright white. She latched onto something in the air as if grabbing an object with her hands and hauled back. Her feet slipped against the gravel as a powerful centrifugal force yanked on her, pulling her close to the edge. I lunged out and caught her around the waist with one arm, adding my strength to hers.
Dyna clutched at the air and groaned with the effort. I held on for dear life. Somehow, she redirected Kilos’s fall with her abilities so that his body slowed and swung around in a long arc, following her motions but on a greater scale. A moment later, he was careening through the gray sky back toward us.
“Move!” Dyna shouted.
Kilos’s inert body came in fast, striking the wall just below the roofline. I jumped past Dyna and managed to snag a handful of Kilos’s shirt in one hand. With Dyna’s telekinetic—and now physical—support, plus my own, we managed to haul the Peacekeeper’s huge, limp body back onto the roof. I fell back on my tailbone, wincing.
Kilos had reverted to his true form, half man, half cat with bright white fur bunched at the collar of his shirt. He began to twist and groan. There was a horrible black burn mark marring his abdomen, the wound exposed and raw. Dyna touched Kilos’s stomach and chest gingerly, murmuring worried noises.
“Gunn,” Gonzalez said, her tone frantic. “Gunn, a little help!”
Turning, I followed the trajectory of her gaze. Elekatch, a mass of python-sized tentacles with a giant black head, shining yellow eyes, and an angry pink maw edged through the hole Kilos had made in the angled sheet of glass.
Before I could react, a scream tore from Dyna’s throat, and the Peacekeeper launched herself at the Pharsei. She shoved out with her hands, causing an invisible wall of force to push Elekatch backward. However, the Pharsei seemed unfazed. He cartwheeled up and whirled at Dyna. She deflected razor-edged tentacles that snapped out at her with carefully directed pushes and twists of her body. Then the Pharsei drew back and launched a crackling burst of electric energy in her direction. The fork of lightning caught Dyna in the right shoulder, slicing through the forcefield she tried to throw up to defend herself. The blow catapulted her backward, past Gonzalez and then me. There was a sickening crunch that could have been glass or bone from where she hit a sheet of hardened glass, and slumped down.
“What the hell is that thing, Gunn?!” Gonzalez yelled. “Jesus, I—argh!”
She screamed and clutched at her head. It bought me half a second to make a move. Reaching across my chest, I yanked my gun from my belt, took a deep breath, and leveled it on Elekatch. At the same moment, something sliced at my own mind.
This time, I was ready.
Time seemed to move in slow motion. I focused in on my mental defenses. In my mind’s eye, I conjured a brick wall with a square hole at eye level for shooting. It didn’t appear around me like it had in the simulation, but the vision was crystal clear in my mind. When the stabbing pain from Elekatch’s assault came, it was dulled, and though my body felt sluggish, I was able to focus on what was happening around me.
Gonzalez was on the ground clutching at her head, her sidearm between her knees. Dyna struggled slowly to her feet, the knots on her head flickering erratically. Kilos was still—still enough that I took it as a bad sign.
I maintained the wall-building exercise even as I took three steps across the roof, moving to put my body between Elekatch and the others. Each brick, each step, was heavier than the last. The Pharsei shoved back, testing my mental resolve with something that felt almost like eagerness.
Pain lanced from my head down into my neck and shoulders. It spread through my whole body. It was all I could do to stay on my feet. Somehow, I lifted my arm. My Kimber was a big gun, and under the mental strain, aiming it was no easy task. My arms shook. The alien’s vicious mouth twisted with an effort of his own.
I gritted my teeth and squeezed the trigger. Elekatch flinched and gave a snake-like hiss of surprise. Yellow blood oozed from where the bullet went in.
A renewed mental attack struck at all sides of my awareness. Something heavy and full of the pleasure of violence pounded on the door to my mind, shaking the foundations of my resolve. My skin burst out in a sheen of fear-cold sweat. I tried to pull back on the trigger again but I couldn’t.
Elekatch lashed one of his long tentacles at me, and it broke through my brick wall like a wrecking ball. Before I realized it, my gun was lying on the ground and I stood exposed.
Something hot and wet slithered against my neck. A dark, slimy appendage wrapped itself tightly about my throat. It squeezed and lifted so that my feet dangled inches above the rooftop.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Elekatch.” I choked out the words as I struggled for air. “Dyna, do something!”
She staggered up, looking between Kilos’s unconscious body and me. “Let him go, Elekatch.” Her voice rang with the tone of command, but I could hear the fear hidden in it.
Wind whipped my shirt around my waist. Shards of glass tumbled across the rooftop. Gonzalez remained incapacitated. Elekatch, apparently, could defend against us on many fronts at once.
A smaller tentacle, not occupied with the pesky business of being wrapped around my neck, snaked behind Elekatch’s body and produced the beacon. The small sphere was still wrapped tightly with the overlapping bands of the silver interference cage. Its inner glow was suppressed, dim.
“Unlock the beacon,” Elekatch hissed.
“I won’t do that,” Dyna responded
“Unlock it, or the human diesssss.” A nasty wet tongue slithered out and slobbered on my neck.
“Ugh, gross,” I managed to say.
Thanks to the inoculation Dyna had given me, I clung to consciousness. With every scrap of my willpower, I tried to imagine my wall, stacking mental bricks in rows as neat and clear as I could manage. But every time I conjured one, it disintegrated into dust and blew away.
Elekatch locked eyes with Dyna, his horrid, open maw mere inches from my face now. I felt a prickling on my head, and though I couldn’t see them, my imagination painted a vivid picture of the ghost tentacles pulsing eagerly above my skull.
In that moment, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Tetrad or the beacon, or even getting paid by the Gatekeeper. I just wanted to survive whatever happened next. “Dyna, please.”
Dyna clenched her jaw. “The Earthlings go, unharmed.”
“Very well,” Elekatch said.
She took a deep breath, looked down, and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. The interference cage snapped open and clattered to the floor. The beacon’s inner glow brightened immediately, forcing me to squint against the light.
“Now, let them go,” Dyna said.
Elekatch curled a limb around the beacon. The Pharsei’s tentacle tightened around my throat, threatening to knock me out. My heart pounded. I found every movement sluggish, every thought difficult.
“Elekatch,” I finally managed to say, choking the words out through my constricte
d throat. “You got what you wanted, now get your slimy fingers off me!”
One of the thinner appendages caressed my face. A wave of fear washed over my body with an icy shiver. He wasn’t going to let go. At this point, I’d managed to construct a meager little wall, like one you’d find surrounding a garden. As quickly as the bricks went up, the pressure against my awareness increased. I closed my eyes. Bricks fell. Cracks appeared in the wall and began to spread. With a last gasp of effort, I sucked in all the air I could manage, drew in my resolve and fear, and shoved against the brick wall with all my mental might.
Elekatch threw his head back, startled. His grip finally loosened. I fell to my knees. My breath returned with a sharp gasp, and I coughed at the sudden rush of air that surged into my lungs.
Beside me, Kilos stirred. He blinked, as if coming out of a deep sleep, and looked around.
Whatever I’d managed to do to Elekatch must have been equivalent to throwing sand in his eyes—annoying and distracting enough to jar his careful control, but not debilitating. His hissing scream sliced through the air, sending chills up my spine. While he was distracted, I rolled to my right, grabbing my fallen gun as I went.
The Pharsei lunged at me at the same time as someone drove their shoulder into my solar plexus. The tackle knocked the breath from my lungs and lifted me off the ground, driving me back several feet. Elekatch’s lunge, therefore, missed me, the ends of his tentacles slapping at my legs and feet as his incredible momentum carried him past.
My back and head came down hard on the rooftop, with Gonzalez on top of me. Gasping, I managed to roll out from under her. I gulped for air as we both staggered up.
Kilos was still lying prone on the ground, conscious but unresponsive. Dyna had managed to recover her feet and stood between us and Kilos. She thrust her hands out and a wall of force, bending the light like a wave, rolled toward Elekatch.
Desperate to avoid this attack, the Pharsei’s many tentacles grabbed Kilos and yanked him up, just as he had me.
Unfortunately for Elekatch, this move jostled the beacon free of his grasp. Like a living shield, Kilos’s body took the brunt of Dyna’s attack and deflected it away from the Pharsei. At the same time, Kilos somehow managed to snatch the beacon out of the air and clutch it like a football to his chest.
