by R S Penney
Ben skidded to a stop on the sidewalk beside her. The man stared into the distance, his face so gray it looked as if he was about to throw up. “It's a slaughter,” he whispered. “She's going to kill them all.”
In her mind's eye, Keli was right behind them, a wispy silhouette who stood with fists clenched, shivering. No doubt the woman could feel what those people were feeling. All that fear. All that pain.
Melissa stood up straight. “No,” she whispered, striding forward. “No one else is going to die today. God puts you where you need to be, and he put us here!”
When she spun around, Ben and Keli were standing together on the sidewalk, both with nervous expressions, both watching her as if they weren't quite sure whether or not they wanted to believe her. People rushed past all around them; no one seemed to wonder why Melissa and her friends weren't fleeing for their lives.
She was keeping tabs on Isara as well; the woman and her goons were focused on victims on the other side of the park.
“We have the power to stop her,” Melissa said.
Ben flinched as if someone had struck him, then shook his head slowly. “Maybe you do,” he said, stepping forward. “But I remind you that any hope I had of besting a Keeper went away when they took my tech.”
Keli was shivering, gripping the fabric of her shorts as she trembled. Her lips were twitching. “There are three of them,” she said. “The other two have symbionts as well. I can handle one.”
“I'll take Isara,” Melissa said.
With his mouth hanging open, Ben tossed his head back and blinked at the clear, blue sky. “Is anyone gonna listen to me?” he moaned. “I can't take on a Justice Keeper. I don't have the tools!”
“You'll think of something,” Melissa assured him. “Do everything you can; trust in God to make up the rest.”
“Great advice for an atheist!” Ben protested.
Retrieving the gun from her purse, Melissa threw the weapon to Keli. The telepath caught it awkwardly, stumbling backward and nearly dropping the damn thing. Had Keli even handled a firearm before?
Melissa flung her purse to the ground – there was nothing in it that she would mind losing anyway – and then took off at a dead sprint through the grass. The park was a large field with trees that took up most of a city block between Third Street and Balin Avenue.
Four concrete pathways spread out from the fountain in each of the four cardinal directions, but no one was keeping to those. The last few stragglers ran through the grass or took refuge behind trees.
Isara was at the fountain with her back turned, as were her two minions. Had the woman noticed that someone was running toward her? It didn't matter. It was time to end this once and for all!
When Melissa took off through the field, Ben didn't even try to stop her. Charging headlong toward death itself was something that Keepers just did. Those Nassai messed with your brain; only an idiot would want one.
He rounded on Keli.
The woman jumped and then backed up on the sidewalk. Her face hardened after a moment. “Are you just going to stand there?” she demanded. “If we don't help, that girl's going to get herself killed.”
Licking his lips, Ben looked down at himself. “We need to create a distraction,” he said. “Can you do anything to those other two with Isara? Mess with their minds the way you did with the guards on Ganymede?”
“Their symbionts will make it difficult.”
“Try,” Ben said.
He detached the metal disk that contained his multi-tool's processing unit and then handed it to Keli. Of course, the woman was baffled, but he had no time to explain. “I'm gonna go right, you go left,” he said. “Set this down in the grass. It doesn't matter where, but make sure it's out in the open.”
“All right…”
“Let's go!”
He broke into a sprint, tracing the circumference of a circle around the open field, using the trees to make sure the enemy Keepers wouldn't notice him until he was ready for it. Not that it would do much good. You're an idiot, Tanaben Loranai, he told himself. Always letting these insufferable do-gooders drag you into trouble.
Melissa skidded to a stop some fifty feet away from the fountain. Close enough for Isara and her pair of jackals to notice. Keepers using their gifts to kill and wound instead of protecting the innocent! It sickened her. “Isara!” she growled.
The woman twisted around to face her and flinched as if she hadn't really taken note of Melissa's presence. A mocking grin spread on her face. “Well, well,” she said. “It's the Carlson girl. I thought you had enough of a beat-down last time to put the idea of being a hero out of your mind.”
“I lack Jack's talent for quips,” Melissa said. “Let's just fight.”
“Very well!”
Isara raised her weapon.
By instinct, Melissa jumped and curled up in a ball, back-flipping through the air. Bullets rushed past underneath her. She uncoiled and then fell to land poised in the lush green grass.
The other woman adjusted her aim.
Crouching down, Melissa felt another bullet fly over her head. Her right hand came up to craft a Bending, the colours stretching until Isara and the fountain were completely unrecognizable to her.
When the next bullet came at her, it hit a patch of warped space-time and looped around in a tight U-turn. She sent it flying back toward its master.
The Bending vanished, and Melissa found herself looking at a shocked Isara who couldn't stop staring into her own empty hand. One of Jena's old tricks. Reflect the bullet so that it strikes the shooter's gun.
Isara's weapon was now lying in the grass near the fountain.
The other two Keepers raised their weapons.
“No!” Isara growled, snarling as she shook her head. The woman strode forward with determination. “The girl is mine! Guard my back in case any of her little friends show up, and be ready to make a tactical retreat.”
Melissa stood up straight and tall and began the slow, steady walk toward the battle she would have preferred to have avoided. Maybe other Keepers found a thrill in the fight – Jena had, though she would never have admitted that – but Melissa didn't. This was just duty. That and nothing more.
“Come, girl,” Isara said. “Let's have a little fun.”
Tarell backed away as he watched the Justice Keeper – a young woman from Earth unless he missed his guess – advance upon Isara. Melissa Carlson passed between two of the concrete lampposts that formed a ring around the fountain.
Her face was grim, her eyes focused upon Isara. “Normally, this would be the part where I ask you why,” Melissa said. “Where I ponder what would make somebody like you use your power for evil, but I already know-”
Tarell ignored the exchange; it wasn't about him. He had no intention of fighting anyone who carried a symbiont, even if she was young.
Scanning the perimeter of the park, he looked for signs of other Keepers and saw nothing of consequence. Just a bunch of people who ran across the road and took refuge in nearby apartment buildings. It had only been a few minutes since the shooting started. The Keepers weren't here yet, but they would come. They always came.
Tarell knew.
Not because he had been a Keeper, mind you – Slade had had less success than he would have liked at turning them – but he had spent most of his adult life running from Keepers, dealing Euphoria and Diamond Snow. He'd even dabbled in Amps a few times.
Only some of Slade's converts had been Keepers that he had brought around to the right way of thinking. Many were people who would never have been allowed to take a Nassai in the first place, people that Slade had recruited and then slowly introduced into the ranks of the Justice Keepers over the course of a decade.
It was-
Tarell touched his fingers to his temples. A screech that he barely recognized as his own voice came from his throat. “What…Who's doing…” There was a pressure on his mind; his symbiont was writhing.
He turned to his right and f
ound a man walking between two trees with branches that intersected, forming an arch of green foliage. A tall and slender man in black pants and a purple coat moving with a kind of serpentine grace. His face with high cheekbones and tilted eyes looked like it belonged on a statue, and long, silky black hair fell over his shoulders.
Tarell closed his eyes, bowing his head to the other man. “Lord Slade,” he said. “I am honoured by your presence.”
Grecken Slade drew himself up to full height and then turned his head to survey the field. “What are you doing, fool?” he snapped. “The Justice Keepers will be upon you in seconds! Why would you expose yourself like this?”
“Lady Isara-”
A sneer pulled Slade's lips back from immaculate white teeth. “Isara!” he bellowed, fixing his attention on the woman. Tarell could perceive her as a wispy silhouette in his mind. “Once again, you have threatened the success of our mission!”
Strangely, Isara seemed not to notice.
Dropping to one knee in the grass, Tarell kept his head down. No need to offend his master. “We were told this was your will, my Lord,” he whispered. “That you sent us to serve the Inzari-”
“Stop babbling, fool!”
“Yes, my Lord-”
“When I want-”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tarell noticed something that he had not seen before. A young woman in shorts and a tank-top stood off to his left with her arm extended, aiming a gun at him. “Idiot,” she said. The image of Grecken Slade vanished from his mind just before a bullet pierced his skull.
Ben was running at full speed, tracing a circle around the park, huffing and puffing with every step. Sweat rolled over his face, and he shook his head in disgust. “Sooner or later,” he whispered. “This lifestyle is gonna get you killed.”
When he was a quarter way around the circle, he stopped.
Ben threw his shoulder against the trunk of a tree, gulping down air as fast as he could. “Come on, Tanaben,” he said in a rasping voice. “A few months out of action did not dull your skills that much.”
He peeked around the trunk of the tree.
In the distance, he saw the bubbling fountain and a distracted Calissa Narim who was staring up at the sky for some reason. She would have noticed him, of course – even if only with her spatial awareness – but there had been dozens of people running in all directions. If she didn't consider him a threat…
Behind Calissa, young Melissa fought with the woman who wore Jena's face. That couldn't be easy. Ben didn't know Jena that well, but he wouldn't have liked to have been the one to pull the trigger on her doppelganger.
The other one – some man that Ben didn't recognize – just stood there with his back turned, focused on something on the other side of the park. Was that Keli's doing? There was no way to know for sure, and he didn't have time to wonder. He just hoped that Keli had planted his multi-tool in a convenient spot.
Lifting his right forearm, Ben tapped at the touchscreen on his gauntlet, readying a program that might save his life. He still had a few tricks up his sleeve.
He drew aside his jacket and took a pistol from the holster on his left hip. Gripping the weapon in both hands, he stepped around the tree trunk and pointed it at Calissa.
The woman noticed immediately, her head turning to fix green eyes upon him. In the instant when he fired, Calissa's body stretched into a blur of colours, the bullet that would have killed her swerving off to his left.
The fallen Keeper resolidified and strode toward him. “Tanaben!” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “I was wondering if I would ever see you again. I owe you for putting me in that cell!”
She lifted her own weapon.
Ben ducked behind the tree, grunting as a bullet zipped past on his right. Nothing hit the tree trunk; he suspected that it would be thick enough to provide adequate cover, but Calissa was precise. She wasn't going to waste ammunition.
“You're not gonna win this!” Ben called out. “We've got people everywhere!”
Something hit the tree trunk with a loud THWACK, and he knew that Calissa had fired off a shot just to intimidate him. Companion have mercy, couldn't they have let him keep his force-field generators? Those weren't even illegal! Well, not for an agent of the LIS, they weren't. But he was a private citizen now.
“Last chance!” he called out.
Without looking to see – he would die if he poked his head out from behind this tree – he tapped his multi-tool and activated the program that he had prepared. One, two, three, now!
He stepped into the open.
Calissa spun to face something on his left, her hand coming up to create a patch of rippling air in front of herself. The threat she was responding to was a stream of white tracers that flew across the open field and somehow winked out before getting within a hundred paces of her. Not real bullets.
Holograms.
Ben took aim with his pistol.
In a fraction of a heartbeat, Calissa became a streak of gray and blue that reformed into a person several steps to the right of where she had been. Her hand came up to point that damn gun at him.
Ben spun around, pressing his back to the tree trunk in the instant before a bullet flew close enough to scrape off some of the bark and send chunks of wood flying. Damn! That was his last resort! He had nothing left.
“You're a tricky one, Tanaben!” Calissa shouted. By the sound of her voice, she was getting closer. “I must admit, I would never have anticipated that one!”
Ben shivered.
A high-pitched squeal from Calissa made him jump back. Had the woman been hit from behind? Hard to imagine with a Justice Keeper, but not impossible. Should he take a peek? Or would that get him killed?
Cautiously, oh so cautiously, he peered around the tree trunk. Calissa was there, in the field, with the heels of her hands pressed to the sides of her head. Her face was red, and there were tears on her cheeks. It was as if she had developed a sudden headache.
Ben noticed Keli coming toward him.
The telepath moved at a slow, steady pace, her face grim as she stalked through the grass. “Kill her!” she snapped. “I can't hold her forever!”
Calissa dropped to a crouch, and the sound that came out of her mouth made Ben imagine a dying pig. The woman was suffering, but he could see that she was already fighting through the pain.
“Kill her!” Keli insisted.
Ben looked at the pistol in his hand.
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, and then made a decision. “Stun-rounds,” he said, listening for the beep that confirmed the change in settings. He could kill another human being if he had to, if his life was threatened, but not if they were helpless.
Lifting the weapon in both hands, Ben squinted at his opponent. Then he pulled the trigger.
A charged bullet hit Calissa in the chest and sent a jolt through her body that made her arms flail about. The woman fell face-first into the grass and then suddenly went still. They would take her back to her cell.
“Come on!” Ben said. “We need to help Melissa.”
Melissa stepped through the space between two lampposts, standing with her arms hanging limp. Her mouth tightened as she stared down the other woman. “Normally, this would be the part where I ask you why,” she said. “Where I ponder what would make somebody like you use your power for evil, but I already know why.”
Grinning maliciously, Isara closed her eyes and bowed her head. “The usual bland, sanctimonious moralizing I've come to expect from a Keeper.” The woman took one step forward, the fountain spraying water into the air behind her. “You've learned your lessons well, girl.”
“You killed those people.”
“And many others!”
Melissa felt her lips peel away from clenched teeth, her face suddenly burning with intense heat. “You're a mockery of everything that Jena stood for,” she said. “It's about time somebody put you down.”
Cold dread welled up inside her as she watched the other w
oman close the distance between them in three quick strides. “Think you can?” Isara asked in a sweet voice. The kind of voice a mother would use to soothe a crying infant. Melissa found herself backing up toward one of the lampposts. “I'm not so sure. The only Justice Keeper who had any chance of besting me is dead.”
Isara turned her body for a high roundhouse kick.
Melissa ducked and felt a black boot pass over her head. She came up in time to watch Isara bring her leg down. The woman stood so that Melissa saw her in profile.
She kicked out to the side, driving a foot into Melissa's stomach. Pain flared up, and it was so very hard to breathe, so very hard to concentrate. Tears blurred her vision, but she saw her opponent closing in on her.
Isara threw a punch.
Melissa ducked, evading the blow by inches. She slammed a fist into Isara's belly, then rose to back-hand her opponent across the face. The other woman stumbled away, blood leaking from the corner of her mouth.
Melissa charged in, punching.
Bending over backward as if she were made of rubber, Isara reached up to seize Melissa's wrist with one hand. She snapped herself upright and then drove her open palm into Melissa's chest. Keeper strength did the rest.
The other woman released her grip, and Melissa went stumbling backward. Her back hit the concrete lamppost as the air fled her lungs. So much pain. She was barely even aware of the other woman's approach.
Isara spun for a back-kick.
Melissa stepped aside.
Isara's foot hit the lamppost instead, and cracks spiderwebbed over the concrete. Chunks of it fell away, dropping to the ground. God have mercy! The woman was just so strong! There was no way she could win this.
As she backed away through the grass with her fists raised in a defensive posture, Melissa tried to catch her breath. “You're nothing like her, you know.” It came out as little more than a whisper. “Your daughter was better than you in every way.”
Isara pulled a small throwing knife from a sheath on her belt, and then flung it with all her might, augmenting its velocity with a touch of Bent Gravity. By instinct, Melissa threw up a Time Bubble.
