by Tash McAdam
But the boots pass. The shouting fades until it becomes indistinguishable from the rain.
Her spine melts like hot candy and she almost slides right off the chair, startling Sam out of his half-slumber. He jumps, and she settles him with her hand on his arm, stuffing the zap into her waistband, safety back on. Shuffling closer, she leans her legs against him, letting the welcome warmth permeate muscles that feel like old chewing gum, and they wait in silence; apparently no one has enough energy to talk.
Her comm remains stubbornly, indifferently dark.
The explosion, when it comes, is so far away that it sounds like a drawn-out thud, but alarms soon start shrilling through the air in fits and starts. A shudder of relief washes over her, and her shoulders drop from their hunched, nervous position. They wait in tense silence until they hear the distinctive sound of military boots stomping at high speed past their hideout in eerie synchronicity.
She manages a ghost of a grin, and holds her hands over the flame for a brief second more, then looks at Abial. Time to go.
At Abial’s nod, she grudgingly straightens, muscles protesting in varying levels of distress, and holds a hand down to Sam to help him up. He takes it, and as she assists him to stand, Abial uses telekinesis like a lid over the waste basket until the fire goes out. Serena knows she’ll need all her Talent to throw Abial and Sam up the Wall – she has to save it for that. Satisfied that their presence has been suitably obscured, she ushers Sam toward the door and gives herself a shake, taking a deep breath to psych herself up.
Last push. We can do this... right?
She meets Abial’s eyes across Sam’s shaking body. They are strangely reassuring, in that moment, and for the first time, Serena feels like things might really be fixable between them. Remembering the datapad, she shrugs it off her shoulder and passes it to Abial with a mental image of the importance of the little device – the information, the Institute. Everything they’ve ever wanted to know. Abial’s eyes widen, and she pulls it on with a determined nod. Then she cracks the door.
“Can you run for a minute, cowboy?” Serena wonders what Abial would say if he thought he couldn’t. What would I say? Could we carry him? Nuke, I don’t even know.
He twists his mouth and hugs his elbows, shrugging. “I can try.”
It has to be good enough. They don’t have any time to waste. Soldiers should be headed for the City Hall, but it won’t take them long to realize it’s an isolated incident. They might even figure out that it’s a distraction. Abial holds a hand up, signaling them to wait as she peers into the darkness. A moment passes and then they slip out of the relative safety of the building and streak toward the Wall. Serena’s feet slip and slide on the soaked solar panels, and she relies on her power to keep her footing, thrusting minute pegs of it into the floor to anchor her as she sprints. Sam is faring badly, feet slithering out from under him, and basically skating as she drags him along.
When she lets him go, he coasts for a moment and crashes to a halt against the Wall, collapsing into a heap. There’s no time to care for him; she has to be ready, the timing has to be perfect. Abial has dropped behind, slowing her steps to giant, forceful stomps as Serena skids to a halt, telekinetically mooring herself to the floor. She casts power around her calves and down deep into the ground, to brace herself as she twists around. The move hurts like running straight into a brick wall, and even her telepathically reinforced joints screech in angry protest. But Abial is already stepping up and into Serena's waiting hands, the leap fitting into her rhythmic strides so well that she can’t help the grin that spreads over her face as she thrusts upward. Just like they’ve practiced. Abial’s slipper is soaked through, clammy and rubbery for the brief moment it presses down on Serena’s palm before she’s catapulted into the air with inhuman force. She pushes her power out and down at the same time as Serena pushes, and they force their Talents to work against one another, and Abial flies high into the air, toward the far-away top of the Wall.
When she begins to slow, Serena shoves again, ramming power up toward her partner, and Abial’s now distant body is jerked upward again. Serena holds her breath for a moment, knowing the strain is visible on her face, but she can’t stop. Abial’s out of sight, blocked from her view by the darkness and the rain, and Serena can’t relax until it’s clear that her partner has landed.
If she comes plummeting back toward the ground, it means they’ve failed. And if that happens, Serena herself – and Sam – will be stuck on this side of the wall, without an ally.
A long minute passes, and nothing moves in the murk around them. Finally, Serena blows out a breath. She must have made it, or she’d be falling by now. Thank nuke for years of practice. Now, just to get the kid over, and myself. Piece of cake.
She tries to swallow, her mouth suddenly dry. It comes out as a gulp.
Sam looks like he’s been poleaxed, his mouth hanging open even as he huddles against the imposing hugeness of the Wall. Serena grins at him half-heartedly, completely unable to manage anything more encouraging, and cups her hands, lacing her fingers together. She can’t even imagine trying to face this jump without telekinesis to fall back on.
“Your turn.”
He sidles away, spine pressed tightly against the edifice behind him. “No, no, no. My power doesn’t work like that. I’ll fall.” His voice trembles, sounding like he’s close to tears, and his eyes are huge, the whites clearly visible rimming the irises.
For a second she has to fight the urge to slap him, the hours of tension pushing her to the boiling point. She pushes the feeling away determinedly, getting a hold of herself. “If you stay here, you die. If you jump, Abial will catch you. When we came up with this plan, we didn’t know you had any gift at all, so believe me, we could do this with a chair if we had to. And you, at least, have hands. So you’ll be able to grab her. She’s waiting on the top, okay? We’ve done this before.”
She tries to look encouraging, but it’s somewhat ruined by the nervous glances around them, eyes sidling away from his in order to check their surroundings.
“Look, we’ve gotta do this. You do it now, or I go and leave you here. Your call.” She’s not sure she actually would, but if it came down to it, she’s not convinced that they’d be able to get out any other way, anyhow. It’s this way or nothing. There’s no way she’s strong enough to jump with herself and Sam.
As it is, this will be the highest jump she’s ever made, and the second person always has a much harder job with no one to boost her. She’s going to have to throw telekinetic ‘arms’ up, Talent jump as high as she can, and hope Abial grabs her in time.
At least if I fall, I should have enough gift left to catch myself. Maybe.
But none of that will be any good if Sam won’t go first.
A choking sound forces its way out of his throat, but he presses his bloodless lips together and manages a small nod. “Okay. Okay. You swear you won’t drop me?”
“On my life.” She’s deadly serious, and he closes his eyes for a long second before steadying himself on the Wall, hand splayed, and lifting his leg. She cups her hands and he wedges his foot into it.
“I’m gonna throw you on three. Abial’s waiting, and she’s gonna pull you the rest of the way. Stretch your arms up as far as you can. If you miss, I’ll catch you on your way down. Our powers do work this way, okay? Trust us.”
Trust us. This is the only plan we have.
“Okay.” His face looks like he’s been carved from marble, and he swallows jerkily. “I guess I’d rather splat on the ground than end up back on a surgery gurney, anyway.” He touches his head like he’s remembering something.
Poor kid, how long did they have you for? How did you get away? She opens her mouth, about to ask, and then remembers their situation and crouches down farther, squeezing his foot.
“Ready? One, two, three.” On the word ‘three,’ she throws him upward with all her might, physical and telekinetic. He flies fast, his arms flailing above him
like he hopes he’ll be able to grab something now. But the Wall is smooth and impenetrable, with nothing to hook fingers on to. Unclimbable. If he touches it, all he’ll succeed in doing is slowing his crazy flight.
She’s staring at his squirming body so intently that she doesn’t even blink with the rain pattering against her eyes. Suddenly, from behind her, a yell breaks the ominous non-silence of the water hitting the ground.
She pulls her power up into a shield, tensing in anticipation of shots tearing her protections to shreds. She can’t jump until she knows Abial has him, because she’ll have to catch him if he starts falling. She crouches on the balls of her feet, ready to run from the soldiers that must be coming.
The seconds last forever.
Her back waits and waits for the thumping impact of zapshots. Will she have any warning? Or will they just tear her apart?
Finally he slows, clearly about to reverse direction. No shots from behind yet. She’s itching to look, but can’t. Instead, she prepares for him to fall – for the shattering, body- smashing fall that she’ll have to keep from ending in blood. And then, just as he seems like he must be about to plunge back to the ground, he jerks a little, and is suddenly yanked skyward, out of sight.
She looks around, eyes scanning for the soldiers. But there’s no one there. Either she imagined the shout, or it wasn’t focused on her. Thank Google.
She swallows, and her eyes fly back up at the imposing construction. Eighty-eight metres of solid white, slick and running with water. It’s huge. She could swear it’s never been this big before, but Abial and Sam are already at the top, and she has to try. A small part of her thinks that if she doesn’t make it up there, she might be able to get out of the City through the gates, and meet them in the slums.
For a moment, she considers it.
But no, they’re safer together, and she’d never forgive herself if they got caught while she was swanning around, lying to border guards with a fake ID. Who knows if she’d make it through, anyway? Sniffing and taking a second to swipe tendrils of wet hair from her face, she relaxes, gathering her power. She envisions her body, as she’s practiced so many times – the structure that makes the very shape of her. Threads of muscle and cords of sinew, bands of bone and cartilage. Pipes full of blood. She fills the tensed fibres of her thighs and calves with power, packing it in, envisioning the sparkling turquoise light building up and up and up, every cell of her stuffed with energy. Ready for her use.
It’s like the Serena Slam, but through her feet, combined with an outward thrust of power. No problem. Just as she thinks that, another shout echoes from behind her. No mistaking it, this one is close. She chances a look, and to her horror sees eight or nine shapes rushing toward her out of the misty rain. No time.
Turning her attention back to the Wall, just inches from her body, she coils and leaps, ignoring her screaming knees, driving Talent out of her soles with such fierceness that the wet slippers are left behind, a silent witness to her jump. The wind whistles in her ears, and a shot fires below her, hitting the Wall and sending a tremor through the air. But it’s like they don't see where she is – can't figure out where she could possibly have gone – because no more shots follow. Nothing hits her shields to send her back down in a wet heap of shredded muscle.
In front of her, the Wall is everything – it’s all she can see in every direction but down. She doesn’t dare to look down. The power of her initial push is already waning, and she’s slowing down, slow enough now that she can see a horizontal hairline between the blocks that form the protection of the City. Desperate, she looks up, hurling her Talent above her, searching for Abial’s. For a moment she hangs motionless, unsupported in the air, her stomach threatening to reject its contents, leaning forward so bare toes and cold hands press against the Wall in a last-ditch effort to somehow catch herself. Don’t look down. Her feet start to slip, she’s falling ...
Abial’s power suddenly roars around her, reaching down and down and finally getting a grip on her physical body.
Then she’s pulling herself upward even as Abial hauls on her, all grace gone in desperation, their combined gifts dragging her painfully, slowly along the icy surface, until she’s bellying over the rim of the Wall.
Rolling away from the edge, she gasps, face up and limbs splayed. From above, Abial laughs at her; not cruelly, but with clear disbelief. There must have been a moment there when she also believed that Serena wasn’t going to make it. The sound is faint in the pervasive, dampening sound of the rain, and she looks past her partner. Sam is sitting, looking out over the City, his hands pressed tightly against the Wall’s surface, like he’s afraid he’ll slide right over the side. She follows his eye line, and gasps. The view is somehow beautiful, the tips of the buildings just visible, and the Wall smearing around like a huge road in the sky. In the distance, a lightning strike illuminates the skies and silhouettes Abial against the City skyline, jagged building tops and sweeping curves dwarfing her lithe frame. She squats down.
“Holy shit.” I didn’t think you were gonna make it.
“Yeah.” Me too, thanks. There were soldiers. Keep an eye out. I’ll get Sam down. In a minute ...
Abial nods in acquiescence and Serena watches, relieved, as she crouches down on the City side of the Wall, alert and scanning the horizon for threats. Lying there, she can just make out an orange glow, far in the distance. Leaf’s explosion. Must be. It looks big. She hopes he made it away, that he got out of there before it was overrun.
It takes a few minutes for her to get her breath and courage back, lying there and staring at the black skies. The sheer enormousness of the Wall is exaggerated by the mere fact that they’re now on top of it. It’s wider than a street, and they’re far enough from the edges that there’s no danger of tumbling off.
Sam’s panting a little, she sees, but manages to get himself under control, and she struggles to her feet, feeling wrung out but knowing there’s no time to rest. They’re exposed, the wind tugging at their clothes, yanking at the wet fabric in a way that makes her feel as though she’s about to be dragged over the side. Added to that is the fact it won’t be long before the soldiers below figure out where she must have gone, impossible though it will seem to them. Maybe they’ll decide she had a grapnel, or a zipline. Whatever they use to explain her disappearance away, once they spend a moment checking the nearby streets, they’ll send choppers to check the area. They have to go. Now.
She forces herself to limp over to Sam, knees feeling twice their normal size, and stands in front of him, unable to crouch, ruffling his hair to get his attention. He blinks, bleary-eyed, and focuses on her.
“Almost there, dude. One more scary bit and we’re out. We have a house lined up; we’ll be dry, warm. Fed. And then we’re taking you back with us to a place where you’ll be safe for as long as you like. Okay? Hold on for just a little bit longer.” Her voice sounds remarkably like she didn’t just telekinetically propel herself further than she’s ever heard of anyone doing, albeit with some help.
He gets shakily to his feet with her help, and they edge toward the drop, though he refuses to look down, even as she peers into the swampy darkness below. Abial’s still crouching on the far side, watching out for threats. Sam slaps himself on the cheek a few times, looks at the angry sky for a moment, and then meets Serena’s eyes.
“Let’s do it.”
“Count to thirty. I’ll catch you.” She looks at him seriously, waits for his nod, and then steps off the edge. This way is much easier, but terrifying in a whole new way. She drops like a stone, and it’s a rollercoaster, it’s lying on top of the tube, it’s rushing liquid and air, and scrunched-tight eyes, with her back scraping painfully down a vertical waterslide, and her power thrusting out below her, waiting for contact with the ground ... there ... so she can push down, catch herself with an invisible air cushion, and slow her descent until her bare feet slam into the swampy ground, mud spurting between her toes.
Her knees
collapse under the new impact, and she folds slowly to the ground. Clambering to her feet is one of the hardest things she’s ever done. It takes too long. She hastily reaches her hands out and takes stock of her remaining power. There’s enough left for this, thank Google. Sam will be coming any second now ...
She thinks she’s ready, but the rush of him hurtling out of the darkness startles her and she just manages to shove her power at him, slowing his flailing body in the same way she slowed herself.
Suddenly she pauses, almost dropping him in a split second of distraction. There’s a strange noise in the air that could be distant thunder, but she can’t split her attention right now; she needs to steady him until he’s on the ground. He’s skidding madly at an angle, her power pressing him against the Wall as she grits her teeth and grunts with the effort of impeding his sickening rush toward the ground. After a shaky moment of working hard to keep him safe, he plops down in front of her.
He immediately vomits into a puddle and curls up into the fetal position.
Meanwhile, the noise she heard is getting louder, whomping in the distance. It’s familiar … not the cracking sound of thunder. She grabs his shoulder, urging him to his feet as the throbbing sound fills the air and a weird light illuminates the rain above them. She squints through it, looking for Abial, hunting for their connection. A series of popping sounds break the spell and Serena finally connects the light and the noise. Choppers ... Zapfire! The soldiers have already figured them out, and reinforcements are here.
She crushes Sam against the Wall, hiding them in the overshadowing blackness, while pain explodes above her.
The constant, low-level connection to Abial disintegrates. All at once, she’s gone, replaced by a howling, dark pit. A connection that’s been with Serena for years is imploding, forcing her to pull away from it lest she’s sucked down into madness as well. It’s reflexive, like yanking her hand from a hot stove, but the sensation is utterly incomprehensible; she can’t connect the feeling to any fact, and stares up into the erratically lit night. Looking for her friend. A keening noise comes out of her throat against her will, while she holds her hands out hopelessly.
