by Dean Murray
"That's a lie!"
The words jumped out of me of their own accord. The anger that had been bubbling in the back of my mind for as long as I could remember exploded out of its cage with a fury that should have terrified me.
Up until that moment, I would have said that nobody was capable of equaling my rage, but Kyle matched it instantly. It shouldn't have been possible to feel another person's emotions, but I felt his anger reaching out to me, tendrils of white-hot fury that wanted nothing more than to ignite everything around us so that he could step back and watch the world burn.
"It's the truth! You married my brother and the two of you and Kat cast me off without a second thought."
"I refuse to believe that. I wouldn't have just turned my back on someone I loved. That isn't me, not in this incarnation, not in any incarnation. You're leaving something out."
I should have been terrified. Kyle must have fought Fenrir to a standstill. He was obviously an Awakened, one who doubtlessly knew dozens of ways of killing me, but my anger didn't leave any room for other emotions. I matched his anger by fanning the flames of my own.
He raised his hand as though planning on hitting me, and instincts that I hadn't even realized I possessed took over. It was easy to find the heartbeat of this place. The only sound was the low hum of the central air system.
I harnessed my anger, made it work for me instead of allowing it to explode into a consuming fire. The time bend happened instantly. My heartbeat shot through the roof at the same time that the sound of the massive fans slowed to a crawl.
I immediately knew that I'd pushed too hard. I wasn't just at double or triple speed, I was at more than six or seven times normal speed. It was too much, I wasn't strong enough to function at such a high multiple, but even as I realized my error, the augmentations to my physical body dropped into place with solid jolts that were imagined more than felt, and I shot away from the bed moving faster than I'd ever moved before in my life.
If I'd been up against someone else maybe I would have chosen to attack rather than run, but Kyle was more experienced than I was, and regardless of whatever else might have happened in the last few hundred years, at one point we'd meant a lot to each other. I ran, digging deep, throwing myself forward against the resistance of the air that suddenly felt thicker than water around me.
The door was still open, which saved me valuable time, but then my heart stuttered as I saw the stairs awaiting me and realized that I was going to have to make a choice between up or down. Fortunately, one of the side effects of bending time was having a lot more time to think.
I slowed down for only a fraction of a second before realizing that all of the signs pointed toward me being underground. The forced air, the lack of windows, it all said the same thing—I was going to have to go up if I wanted to get away. I turned to the left and headed up the stairs, taking them three at a time.
Traveling at this speed was a new experience in more ways than I'd anticipated. I'd expected the air to resist my efforts, but I hadn't realized that I was going to be able to feel the metal stairs flexing and groaning under my weight. Running on a level surface at even just three or four times normal speed required significant amping to the bones and soft tissue; running up stairs was a whole different ball game.
Ascending at a speed of sixty or seventy miles per hour meant that each step hit the metal underneath me with the force of a battering ram. I was worried that the stairs were going to give way beneath me, but I was too terrified to slow down.
I went up three levels in quick succession before I heard the first sign of pursuit. The big question was how far Kyle had chosen to bend time. He'd started out at normal speed, which meant that I had a significant head start. Even if he'd reacted within a second or two of me making a break for it, my greater speed meant that I had somewhere between a ten and twenty-second head start.
As I felt my body start to go into oxygen debt I told myself that it was going to be enough. It should have been enough—against almost anyone else it would have been. Jace and Kat had both been in agreement that most of the other pantheons hadn't pushed time manipulation research as far as we had.
Two—or even three—times speed was nothing. You could even function at that speed for limited periods of time without amping up your body. It wouldn't be pretty and you'd be nursing bruises and stress fractures for weeks afterwards, but it could be done.
Six or seven times normal speed was like trying to function at the top of Mount Everest. I shouldn't even have been able to manage the series of effects that I'd just pulled off. They'd happened without conscious thought on my part, but that didn't mean that I hadn't noticed just how much more complicated they'd been than what Jace and Kat had taught me.
The muscle amp I knew amounted to little more than just making my body burn the sugars in my bloodstream at a faster rate and forcing my nervous system to recruit more muscle fibers with each movement. That was about the extent of my knowledge of anatomy and physiology, but I'd been able to feel other things changing this time.
My connective tissue, the ligaments and tendons that were a vital linkage in getting the force generated by my muscles down to the ground, had just thickened and transformed to something else, something that was capable of laughing off the abuse I was inflicting on my body.
That alone would have blown my mind, but I'd caught glimpses of other changes. My blood was different, able to clear lactic acid much more efficiently and transport several times as much oxygen. My bones had transformed to something that felt like living crystal, and my skin wasn't just thicker and stronger, it was pulling energy from the heat in the air around me.
I hadn't just amped up my body, I'd transformed it into something that never could have evolved on this planet. That kind of knowledge went beyond just the tricks Jace and Kat had taught me up until now, and it was orders of magnitude better than what most other pantheons were capable of.
Only Kyle wasn't just some other random Awakened. He was a researcher and at one point he'd been part of our pantheon.
I'd started up the fourth set of stairs when I heard it. The stairs back outside of the bedroom rang like a gong. I could feel the oxygen debt start to deepen. The air was so thick that it was hard to get it in and out of my lungs. I was gasping, trying to get fresh air down where it had a chance of doing me any good, but for all of its viscosity going down, once it was down there it felt thin and unsatisfying.
I needed to slow down, needed to back off enough for my system to be able to keep up with my oxygen consumption, but I knew I wasn't going to get another chance to escape. I pushed off the stairs even harder and felt the metal start to tear in the split second before my foot left the next step.
I hadn't just hit the limit of my circulatory and respiratory systems, I'd hit the limit of what the stairs were capable of supporting. My mind was screaming that there had to be a way to go faster, but my thoughts were starting to become more lethargic. I wanted nothing so much as to just drop to the ground and throw up—it was all I could do to force myself to keep moving.
The next set of stairs rang like a gong, but this time there was a cracking sound a second later. He was gaining on me. It shouldn't be possible, but I could hear him closing in.
Up ahead I could see an odd glowing curtain of light positioned a few inches ahead of a heavy steel door. I couldn't explain what I was seeing other than as the result of my brain shutting down due to lack of oxygen.
I blinked, but the curtain of light didn't go away. It didn't matter though, the door was my ticket to freedom. I just needed to drag it shut behind me and then use my limited transmuting ability to fuse the steel into one piece. Kyle would have to slow down and break through the door before he'd have any chance of following me.
"Selene, stop! You're about to hit my ward!"
Kyle's voice floated up the stairs, but for all of his undeniable urgency, it still sounded like it was coming to me by way of a miles-long tunnel. My mind stuttered. The last
gong had sounded from only a few feet behind me, but that wasn't possible—he couldn't have made up so much ground—the stairs wouldn't have allowed him to go any faster than I had been, not without giving way.
I was less than a foot away from the translucent wall when Kyle grabbed my arm. It was too late. Our momentum would carry me to the door and let me slam it on his arm.
A fraction of a second later his other arm was around my waist and then he was ahead of me, feet travelling up the curved wall like something out of a science-fiction movie. I would have said that it was impossible to stop two people moving at more than fifty miles per hour before we hit the glowing wall I'd been charging towards.
Kyle proved me wrong. He ran up the side of the wall and grunted as he pushed off against it to stop my forward motion. It felt like I'd been hit by a garbage truck. Despite all of the changes to my system, I still felt my flesh bruise and a jolt of agony shot through two of my ribs as they broke.
I had just long enough to see Kyle's shoes come apart and the concrete underneath his feet start to powder, and then my toes grazed against the shimmering field of light in front of the door and I was thrown across the room.
The last thing I remembered thinking before my head hit the wall was that the glowing barrier must not have been a figment of my imagination after all.
Chapter 2
"Are you done running?"
My eyes were blurry, but I didn't need to be able to see to hear the unhappiness in Kyle's voice. Maybe I should have been scared, but the simple fact that I was waking back up told me that he still wanted me alive. It would have been a lot easier to let me die, but instead he'd nearly managed to keep me from hitting his 'wards' at all.
"Will it do me any good to run?"
My eyesight cleared enough for me to make out his face a few inches away from mine. He shook his head. "No. You don't have the knowhow or power to break out of here. Wards that strong cost at least a full decade's worth of memories to break through."
I wiggled my toes to make sure that the impact hadn't paralyzed me, and then sat up with a grimace. I was still alive, but just about every piece of my body hurt.
"I am seventeen. If I wanted to break through your precious wards I have enough juice to do it."
"No. You couldn't. It would take more than a decade of Awakened memories. Right now all you've got is a decade and a half of weak human memories. Even assuming you knew how to bring down a set of wards, you could throw everything you had at them and leave yourself as blank as the day you were born without bringing them down."
He was wrong. I couldn't explain why, but I was different than all of the rest of my kind. Somehow when I'd been Awakened all of my memories had taken on the vibrancy and hard edges that were part of being an Awakened—even the memories from before I'd manifested my power.
I was twice as powerful as he had any right to expect. I was still ridiculously outclassed, but at least I had that working in my favor.
I looked back up to find Kyle watching me with a suspicious look. "I don't know what you're planning, but it won't work. Even if you somehow manage to bring down the ward you can see, there are several more wards that you'd have to destroy before you'd be able to escape."
"I'm not planning anything."
That earned me a smirk. "I may not remember our time together, Selene, but I wrote down your tells just in case we crossed paths again. You're planning something—you can't help it, it's in your nature."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Did Jace already tell you about wards? That's surprising given just how little time the two of you have had together, but I guess it's not out of the question. If you're thinking that killing me will bring the wards down, you should know that these wards don't work like any other wards you've learned about. If I die they still won't come down. They'll stay up forever."
That made something inside me bristle. "Nothing is forever, Kyle. If you die the wards will come down. They are strong, so it may take a while, but they'll start fading as soon as you're not around to serve as an anchor."
To say I was shocked didn't even begin to do what I was feeling justice. I had no idea where those words had come from, no explanation for what I'd just said. I looked at Kyle, half expecting to see him overcome by anger again, but he was smiling.
"That's very good. I have to admit to being impressed. Everyone else believes that the location serves as an anchor, that all the wards need from us once they are established is a kind of low-level power feed that is the next best thing to undetectable. I wasn't aware that Jace was a good enough researcher to have figured that out."
I almost told him that Jace hadn't, but at the last second I realized that I needed to play my cards close to my chest. I'd been giving too much away for free.
"So why don't you tell me why it is that your wards are so much different than everyone else's."
"They are different because I'm the only one—other than Jace apparently—who's experimented with them during the last few hundred years."
"And you discovered…"
"I discovered that over time the wards naturally take a shape that is perfectly stable, a shape that doesn't need outside power to maintain it, a perfect matrix that actually draws energy from the air around us."
"How come nobody else was able to figure that out before now?"
"Because the shape is too complex for inferior minds to grasp, too complicated for what most pantheons consider researchers to understand."
"Wow, you don't have a pride issue—not at all."
Kyle smiled again, but this time it didn't make it to his eyes. "I don't believe in sins, but even if I did, pride wouldn't make it on my list. Most of the ills of the world can be directly traced back to people's refusal to admit that all men are not created equal. Some men—and women—have ability, but most don't. Some individuals are capable of great things, but most will spend their entire lives trying to justify their existence, trying—and failing—to create value in excess of their consumption."
I half expected Kyle to break out into maniacal laughter, but he met my gaze with eyes that seemed as sane as any I'd ever seen.
"So what, the rest of us are just insects that should serve as your slaves?"
"No, you—and apparently my brother—are more than that. You're capable of true greatness, capable of seeing beyond the falsehood of human philosophy. You may not see it yet, but eventually you will. People talk about equality, but the truth is that as long as individuals are different with regards to their capabilities, the only way to create equality of outcome is for the gifted to serve as the slaves to the drones."
Chills ran down the outside of my spine. There was something familiar about Kyle's arguments, something seductive.
"You would reverse the slavery, put the weak and simple under the lash and destroy human choice."
My words came out lacking the condemnation I felt like they should have carried, but I wasn't sure whether that was because I hadn't had a chance to think about them, or if it was because I didn't actually believe what I was saying.
"Exactly. It's always going to be a matter of slavery, Selene. Us or them, there isn't any middle ground. Someone has to serve and someone has to rule. It only makes sense for the most gifted to be in the driver's seat."
"I don't believe it has to be that way."
That earned me another frown. "I should have known better than to expect real discussion out of you. Once upon a time we were able to have real conversations about this topic, but you no longer have the framework for real thought."
"Tell me then. Why does one group have to be in charge? Why can't everyone just do their own thing?"
"Because nobody is willing to let the law of consequences naturally play out. As long as we're not willing to let people starve to death there are only two possible outcomes. Either you make them slaves and force them to earn the bread they need to survive, using them as dumb animals guided by your intellect, or you make yourself a sl
ave and bind yourself to feeding those too stupid or lazy to sustain themselves."
I wasn't sure that I even understood what Kyle was saying. I'd never had a philosophy class, never thought about anything more complicated than how I was going to make it to college, but what I did understand of his arguments was disturbingly close to what I saw going on in the world around me.
Slavery had been outlawed for ages and yet my dad spent nearly every waking hour working in the Conners' tile factory, making huge profits for Sandra's dad. In a lot of ways my dad would have been better off as a slave. The way things were going right now he was probably only a few years away from a heart attack. If Mr. Conner had owned my dad he probably would have made sure that my dad was taken care of. A slave couldn't work after they were dead, and they weren't free to replace. If an employee died, all you had to do was send a card to their family and hire a replacement.
I didn't want to believe that the world was as terrible as Kyle had made it out to be, that things were as black and white as he was saying, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't come up with a reason he was wrong.
I looked away—unable to argue, but unwilling to agree—and felt him lean forward to press his advantage home.
Before he could say anything, alarms started ringing all over the room.
Chapter 3
The alarms nearly made me jump out of my skin. I opened my mouth to scream for Kyle to turn them off, but he already had his phone out and a couple of taps shut the alarms down.
"What was that?"
"It was my intruder alert system."
"Wait, you mean some poor idiot is trying to walk off with your silverware?"
"Hardly. No common thief would get far enough to trigger my alarm. Whoever set my sensors off has already made it through a ward that is strong enough to knock a normal person unconscious."
"So it's an Awakened then?"
I tried to keep the hope out of my voice, but I wasn't very successful. Kyle looked up from his phone and shook his head at me. "It isn't Jace and Kat, if that's what you're hoping for, but yes, it's either an Awakened or one of the fae."
