by L. J. Hatton
“Get into the kitchen!” I ordered. Reconfiguring the house would mean the soldiers had to go around. There were enough spaces to make it difficult.
“Birdie!” Nola gasped, looking at the blank spot in the kitchen where there should have been a table large enough to hold us all.
Birdie had never left the house. Anise was out there on her own, and Birdie had never left the house.
“Birdie?” I put out my dripping hand. The water hit a transparent shoulder and ran down. She eased into view like I’d washed her invisibility away.
“Anise went out, and I was too scared to stop her!” She sniffed.
She was still scared and still not moving. Arguing with Birdie never worked. The only thing that worked was Bruno, and we didn’t have time for the “wait it out” approach.
“We’re ready to fly, Little Bird,” I said. “I need someone with experience to get these clowns in the air while I tell Anise you’re safe. Can I count on you?”
Birdie’s kryptonite.
When Birdie joined The Show, Bruno and Mother Jesek had gradually rebuilt her shattered confidence by giving her more and more responsibility, helping her prove to herself that she was both worthy and capable of it. She’d never intentionally let someone down, because that would let her parents down, and that was never going to happen. She crawled out and burrowed into Klok’s side, taking refuge in the biggest, strongest shadow available.
“Hold them off as long as you can,” I told Winnie and the others. “If you can’t wait, then go without us. We’ll manage.”
That sounded so much like the last words Anise had said to me before she was captured by Warden Nye that it gave me chills.
“Jermay, get ready to switch Bijou over to full power on my mark.”
Klok clamped down on my fingers before I could press the button on Xerxes’ neck that would make him grow.
“Their maximum size exceeds the dimensions of this room,” he reminded me.
“Exactly,” I said.
Xerxes and Bijou would rip the house to shreds, the essence of shock and awe. I wanted Arcineaux’s men to see exactly what their boss had put them up against—full size and fuming.
I picked up Xerxes and sat him on the table, which had become visible as soon as Birdie let go of it.
“All right, big guy, it’s showtime,” I told him.
He screeched and popped his wings.
“No games,” I told Xerxes, while Winnie and Nola cleared the kitchen and herded everyone out into the storm. “Protection protocol. You’ve got to guard this area until Dev gets everyone to safety.”
I knew he understood. I could feel it. A burning red shield dropped over his eyes like running blood.
Bijou pawed at the side of the stove, asking for a light. Jermay turned the knob to ignite the closest burner for him. The dragon sucked in flames and blew them back out, priming his bellows. Fuming napalm smoke curled from his nostrils and wafted between his teeth. He held his mouth open just enough for the glow to escape, casting flickers onto his scales in shades of red and orange—a new trick he’d taught himself. My playful toast artist had been replaced with a smoldering beast of the depths.
The creeper lights from the living room had twigged to the fact that something bad was coming. They formed ant-lines on the floor and scuttled out between my feet.
“Ready?” Jermay called. His hand hovered over Bijou’s neck.
“Make them regret this,” I whispered to Xerxes, with my forehead pressed against his.
There was no cold, metallic feeling to his skin or feathers, only the searing heat of vengeance.
I held my hand up and started the count: “One!”
“Two!” Jermay said.
“Cue!”
CHAPTER 16
Xerxes was off his leash.
He and Bijou burst out of Baba’s house, leaving nothing behind but metal ribbons, twisted and sharp. A modern-art masterpiece sculpted by defiance and righteous anger, soon to be lost forever.
Xerxes shrieked, drowning out the sounds of the Commission’s spike and the Mile’s air-raid siren all at once. He launched himself into the air, only to land with crushing force and do it again.
Bijou was showing off, encircling the Mile with a ring of fire. Acrid brimstone and the bite of rocket fuel. The raging heat of a too-close sun. All attention would be on them, not whatever orders Arcineaux issued.
“Good boys,” I called up. “Protect Dev and watch out for hummers!”
Bijou answered with a fresh plume of superheated plasma. Anyone who came close enough to be a threat was going to end up a toasted marshmallow.
I found Anise near the town square.
There weren’t any houses this deep into the Mile. A few of the storefronts had blown out, but the streets were still intact. The shiny new sidewalks and benches that had never been sat upon waited for people who would never come.
My sister had joined the elementals defending a pair of incapacitated escape modules and the families trapped inside them.
This was the origin of the flashovers I’d seen; it was the source of the windstorms set forth to knock out the hummers. Pyros had their choice of flames from the burning rubble across the Mile. They fashioned tongues of fire into a curtain to hold back the enemy. Their sister aeros wove threads of wind into a barrier behind them to shield the pods from the heat, but it was a temporary solution.
For now, there was a stalemate, with the Commission infantry holding their position. They’d call for backup. The Mile would continue to degrade. Someone would move eventually. The only chance Anise and the rest had was to make sure that they were the ones in control when the time came. I needed to be in there with them.
The soldiers hadn’t seen me yet. One girl wasn’t much of a concern for an entire unit.
“One, two, three, go!” I prompted myself, took a running start, and jumped through fire and air to join those on the other side.
Some of the uniforms must have seen me and assumed the walls were less dangerous than they appeared. They tried to follow me but fell shrieking, wearing burning coats their fellows rushed to douse. For Greyor’s sake, I took pity and reclaimed the flames for the wall. I couldn’t fix any injuries they suffered, but I didn’t have to let them burn.
Anise was the only terrakinetic in the fight. She’d climbed on top of one of the escape pods to try to open the door, but the hummers had rewired the locks, sticking them in place so the people inside would stay contained for capture.
“Anise!” I called.
“Find Birdie!” she shouted back desperately. “She disappeared and I got cut off searching. Go back through. You have to find her! Get her out of here!”
“She’s with Winnie! She never left the house!”
“You’ve got her?”
“We’ve got her!”
I scaled the pod to help with the door. She’d been trying to feel out the metal inside it—because natural ores responded to a terra the same way stones did—but the pod bodies were mainly synthetic polymer. She couldn’t latch on to anything bigger than a bolt.
“Get away from the hatch!” I told the people inside, shouting through the windshield with exaggerated gestures so they’d understand me in spite of the glass.
They nodded and huddled against the far wall, with the adults using their bodies to protect their kids.
The hummers had made such a mess of the circuitry that I couldn’t simply tell the door to open. I had to find a way to pop it loose. I forced as much air as possible into a ball and pressed it hard against the hatch. The polymers were designed to withstand pressure, but only when evenly spread across the entire surface. Concentrating my effort into one small area caused it to bow in. I raised the air mass and slammed it down on the weak point again and again until the hatch cracked. A chunk dropped into the pod, allowing the people inside to escape.
One of the Mile’s aeros stepped up to open the second pod using the same method.
“They’re waiting fo
r us at the house,” I said to Anise.
“We’re not going anywhere until we clear the walkways.”
Through the fiery curtain and swirls of wind, I could see more uniforms filling in the gaps between the ones already in place. We were surrounded, and there weren’t enough of us to spear our way through.
“Drive them back!” one of the women with us shouted.
Our protective walls blew into a firestorm. No longer stationary, the flames raged in every direction, pushed forward by feeding winds. Flares whipped out, licking at the soldiers’ hands and faces, warning them to turn and run.
“Spread out!” the woman called. These were practiced maneuvers. “Break!”
The pyros ran to the opposite side from where they’d gathered, switching places with the aeros. Their abilities crossed in the middle, pulled tight together like a drawstring. Whirlwinds intersected with fire spouts, pulling the heat into their core and slingshotting it back out as pillars of flame that spun in place to guard our retreat. The weather had no effect on them.
Everyone scattered.
Anise and I cut across the square and headed north. We passed the spot where Ollie had worked the crowd into a frenzy.
“Anise!”
“I see it!”
She’d been unable to join the fight because the Mile was disconnected from her power base, but the micro-particle drift created when my lynx fell apart was still there.
Anise’s Kodiak roared into being, all dusty brown fur and claws. It ripped one of the benches off its base and hurled it at the men pursuing us.
We ran on. The bear sailed forward on slime trails of mud, dripping in the rain and caught in the Mile’s tilt as the damage took its toll.
“Look out!” Anise pulled me toward her. Compromised buildings gave up the fight and toppled. Her bear jammed its shoulder into the side of a unit left top-heavy by the evacuation. It would have crushed me.
The sidewalk buckled beneath the bear’s weight and the downward force of the falling house. A crack opened, widening into a gap where one of the pods had lifted off. The bear, the house, and ten feet of artificial lawn dropped out of sight through the underbelly of the Mile.
Anise grabbed the bulk of the bear’s body by force of concentration and a lifetime of self-imposed control I could only dream of mastering. The grains poured back onto the sidewalk as individual cubs. Still helpful, but less heavy. They head-butted debris out of our way and bowled over the unfortunate infantry we happened to run into.
Up ahead, Arcineaux’s men had converged on Baba’s house. I could see Bijou perched atop the wreckage, lobbing fireballs like spit wads at clusters of hummers. Xerxes was on the ground, shielding our people with his legs and wings. Ollie and one of his older children remained, along with Nola. Dev had teleported the rest.
“What’s Birdie doing?” Anise asked.
I had no idea, but she wasn’t hiding. She was using the feathers on Xerxes’ flank to clamber onto his back, putting her out in the open.
“Get down!” Anise shouted. “Birdie! Get back there!”
Birdie’s head popped up, showing the determination on her face. She shook her head and used the joint of Xerxes’ wing as leverage to swing up its edge. It made a perfect balance beam to get her to the roof.
She hooked her fingers between the plates of Bijou’s armored scales; then they both disappeared. Bijou was now free to strike without warning.
Arcineaux’s men stopped firing the bundles of hummers; they no longer knew where to aim. Some turned around, expecting an assault from behind. Some watched the sides. They fell over each other in the confusion, and were completely unprepared when Bijou rained fire down on them from overhead.
Anise and I took the chance to slip by them.
“How much longer?” I asked the others.
“Two more trips should do it,” Nola said. “But Dev’s slowing down, and they’re not running out of men or supplies anytime soon.”
“There aren’t many targets left,” Anise said. “You have to know this was the last thing we wanted when we came here.”
“This was always going to happen. Nafiza tried to warn us, but we didn’t want to hear what she was really saying. It’s not your fault.”
That wasn’t how it felt. It felt like doom stalked us, waiting for the worst moments to pop out and yell, “Surprise!” Every time I was sure we’d hit bottom, the floor fell to pieces and dragged us deeper. It was easy to say that Nafiza had seen this day coming, but did that mean it was inevitable? Was it the Mile that drew Arcineaux’s ghost up here, or was it us?
“Daddy!” Ollie’s daughter screamed.
He pushed her behind his back, away from the sudden intrusion of a transparent form in our midst—one of Arcineaux’s unnoticeables.
Intentionally easy to overlook, unnoticeables were holograms with a twist. Given the right conditions and enough power, they could physically interact with the world into which they’d been projected, but their hallmark feature was how difficult it was to get a clear look at one. They didn’t want to be seen. Even with several of us surrounding one, it was difficult not to give in to the urge to look away, which meant they were capable of influencing thoughts. They were truly scary inventions, and something else my father would have to answer for when I found him. I’d always held Magnus Roma on a pedestal of best intentions, believing him to be a man who improved lives by simply existing, but he’d had a hand in every foul device the Commission used against us. My father had lit the match that set the world on fire.
This unnoticeable was female and wearing Commission silvers, but it was impossible to hone in on much more than that. Her signal was pretty weak, leaving her transparent.
“Assets located,” she said. “Lock signal and follow. These are the last on scan.”
She kept her hands behind her back in the at-ease stance common among lower-level personnel. From her perspective, we would appear to be translucent, too, and it was easier to do her job if she didn’t think of us as real people.
“Turning toward your position,” said a voice through her radio. Arcineaux’s voice.
“That’s him,” Winnie said. She and Birch and Jermay moved closer together. “You were right. He’s here.”
“You realize what that man will do?” Nola asked the unnoticeable. “What he’s already done?”
“Consequences arise from resistance.” She kept her focus in the distance so she didn’t have to look anyone in the eye. “I know it can’t be easy to leave your homes, but this evacuation is necessary.”
“See if that makes it easier to sleep after you witness what Arsenic does to the people he takes prisoner,” Winnie said.
“Prisoners? We’re relocating assets to a more secure location. This is a rescue mission. That’s why the National Guard released infantry to help.”
“If Arsenic told you that, he lied,” I said. “He does that a lot.”
I saw Arcineaux swaggering toward us on the opposite side of the street with the other unnoticeable, a dozen men to add to the number around the house, and a cluster of “evacuees.” They were all collared or handcuffed, depending on whether they were gifted or mundane.
“I suppose hound collars are standard procedure for relocation?” Anise asked the unnoticeable.
“It’s for the safety of everyone on board the transport. Those who cooperate don’t have to be restrained . . . that’s what we were told.”
She was trying to convince herself and clearly finding it difficult.
Arcineaux’s face looked worse up close. He’d been burned—badly. Patches of blistered skin were just frosting over with white scar tissue. Deep cuts on his face and neck still had suture lines from recently removed stitches. How was this man alive?
“Get this bunch with the rest and disengage.” He passed his prisoners off. All but about twenty of the infantry formed ranks and hustled off toward the transports. “Why has this unit not been processed as ordered?”
“There’s a proble
m, sir,” one of his men said.
“Then solve it. This is the last group. Process the assets, remove the mundanes. Those two are mine.”
He pointed to me and Winnie and ordered the remaining uniforms to cross the street. Bijou blew out another blazing fire jet as soon as they stepped off their side.
“That would be the problem, sir,” Arcineaux’s man said. “It’s that dragon-thing. We can’t see it.”
Arcineaux prowled back and forth on his side of the street, seething. He picked up a chunk of broken cement and hurled it toward us; Bijou turned it to ash. He tried again on a different trajectory. Bijou hit that one, too.
“I’m going to draw him off,” I said.
“No!”
That was pretty much everyone’s opinion.
Anise said, “Absolutely not.” She tried to pin me in with her grizzly cubs.
“He’s hunting Level-Fives, and Dev will be back here any second,” I said. “If Arsenic sees what Dev can do, it won’t matter where he took Baba or the others. They’ll never be safe. I can keep him busy until Dev’s last run, and then you come and find me. Bijou! Cover fire!”
The invisible dragon trumpeted loud and long. The sound came from everywhere, bouncing off the buildings and sidewalks and making Arcineaux’s men quake where they stood. The sound stopped, and in its place came bursts of fiery breath.
Anise turned her grizzlies loose to cause as much trouble as possible, while I zipped down the sidewalk.
“Hey! Gargoyle! Catch me if you can!”
“Pursue and secure!” Arcineaux spluttered. “Pursue and secure!”
I knew from experience that he was fast on his feet, so it surprised me that he let his subordinates take the lead. The female unnoticeable traveled along beside me, locked on to my biometric signature.
“I don’t understand,” she said. It was easy for her to speak while keeping pace with me; only her image had to move. “This was supposed to be rescue and relocation.”
