Someone grabbed me and pulled me away—the arriving police, meaning well but not understanding what they were doing. I cried out, summoned up Earth power, and threw them off their feet with a roll of the pavement as I lunged back toward the girl. Paramedics were setting down cases and equipment around the motionless child, but they would be useless; it was too late for what they would try, far too late.
She had seconds left, at best. I was her only real hope. Something struck me in the back, bit sharply, and then my entire body spasmed as electric current slashed through me. My muscles lost all control, and I slammed facedown to the hot, blood-streaked pavement. I heard the metallic ticking of the Taser control, and as soon as it ended, there was a knee squarely in the center of my back, holding me down while my muscles continued to writhe in silent agony.
But worse than that, far worse, was seeing the paramedics kneel down, check the small girl’s pulse, exchange a look that clearly said their efforts wouldn’t be enough. Oh, they went through the motions, but I could feel it from where I lay pinned by the police—she was dying.
I could still save her ...
And then, with a last flutter of breath, she was gone.
I didn’t offer any more resistance. With the girl’s death, the police lost any real interest in me, especially when the mother woke from her stupor to tell them I’d been trying to help. A simple nudge of influence that I’d learned from Luis was enough to have them release me, though I didn’t immediately leave. Instead, I watched the paramedics load the body of the girl into their ambulance, and tried to understand what I was feeling. Inexplicable loss, yes. But more than that ... fear, very real fear.
I could lose Ibby, so easily .Rashid’s words came back to me with sudden, gut-wrenching force. If I’m ordered to kill those children, I won’t have a choice.
It became crystal clear to me: I couldn’t go on, not knowing what I knew now. There was someone hiding inside the school, with Isabel and Luis. I could fight all the battles I wished out here, but back there was the one that I hadto win.
I’d just seen the unmistakable outcome of what would happen if I didn’t. An omen of things to come.
I got back on my motorcycle, and opened the throttle as I raced back the way I’d come, and hoped—no, prayed—that I wouldn’t be too late.
I was still two hundred miles out when the attack came, in the form of a thickly falling rain. It wasn’t a normal storm, I could sense that, but I was no Weather Warden, and the purpose of the storm failed to come to me until it was too late ... until the tide of mud rushed down the steep hill on my left in a thick, choking rush. I didn’t have enough warning, and though it was certainly of the earth, and under my control, the water in it was the active force, and the vast amount of power in it hit me with the force of a speeding train, knocking me and the Victory off the road and sweeping us along in a grinding roar of rocks, earth, and malice.
I kicked away from the bike and tried to move with the tide, but the churning, thick mud made me clumsy and slowed my efforts. I couldn’t keep my head above the muck and, after a few uselessly spent moments of flailing, allowed myself to sink as I reached out for power ...
... And found myself almost exhausted. I expended what power I could to try to slow the avalanche of mud, but it wasn’t enough. I fought my way toward the surface, slicing myself on tumbling rocks, and came up in a tangle of black roots that held me under the surface like a thick, fibrous cage. I was able to grab a quick, muddy gasp of rain and air before the tumbling flow pushed me down again.
Panic and lack of oxygen quickly robbed my limbs of strength, and I lost track of where I was or how much time had passed. I knew only that I had to get free, quickly, or I would never draw a clear breath again.
My flailing hand fell on something sharp, and I felt the sting of the cut even over the muffling grip of desperation. My fingers closed around it—a torn, razor-edged piece of metal about as long as my forearm. I gripped it hard and used it to slice at the roots that had wrapped around my head and neck, hacking wildly until I felt it give way and tumble away in the tide.
Then I touched rock beneath me, and with the last, fading glimmers of power, I launched myself up, out of the mud. I made it to the rolling top of the flow and saw a chance—just one—as it took me toward a thick overhanging branch.
I stabbed the metal into the tree branch and, screaming with primal effort, pulled my legs out of the muddy avalanche. I wrapped them around the wood and slowly, painfully crawled up on the thick, sheltering tree. I was freezing and shivering, and so caked with mud that I could hardly move with the weight of it. It seemed to take forever, but I gradually stopped shaking as the wet, sucking tide beneath me slowed to a stagnant pool of muck. Things surfaced from its depths: shredded plants, broken and unidentifiable; sad, muddy lumps of dead animals caught in the trap. I caught a glimpse of something metallic, and dropped down into the chest-high mud to wade toward it.
The Victory was buried beneath what seemed like a ton of slowly congealing mud, but the wheels were intact, and I managed to get it upright. I rolled/dragged it to a shallower area and finally got it up onto dry land again. The rain continued in a torrential downpour, but this time to my benefit, as it sluiced the thick, heavy coating of black earth from my body and the bike.
I didn’t know if the Vision could possibly still be functional after that ordeal, and at first it seemed that it wasn’t; attempts at starting her met with nothing but impotent sputters. I was beginning to think that I ought to abandon it, sad though the thought made me, but I gave it one last halfhearted try, and the engine coughed, struggled, and then roared in triumph.
I mounted the bike and leaned forward, resting my cheek on the handlebars. “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
The Victory gave a rough purr beneath me ... not perfect, but running with the same determination I felt myself.
I walked it downhill, until I found a trail, and then rode.
I didn’t dare come at the school in the same direction as before; I would rather let my enemies think that they’d destroyed me. It was only luck and stubbornness that had saved me, in truth, but I couldn’t risk another encounter. I didn’t have the power.
Rushing into danger without it, though, was a fool’s errand. I needed to draw power; the question was, from what. Or from whom.
The obvious and easy answer was Luis, but the relationship between us was, at present, neither obvious nor easy, and I wasn’t sure he would respond ... but he hadn’t broken the link between us, which still pulsed and whispered deep within me. As I searched the aetheric for a better, less obvious route to where I was going, I also—very carefully—sent a wordless signal down the connection, like a tap on a wire.
I received a single, wordless pulse back from him. The relief I felt was immense, almost choking, and I had to steady myself for a moment before I tried to think what to do next. I was too weak to force open the connection wider on my end, and too weak to communicate with him in even that indirect whisper we’d used so often before. All I could do was signal, like someone walled up in wreckage, and hope that he’d act on his own.
My eardrum gave a peculiar flutter, and then Luis’s voice said, What happened to you?
I couldn’t really answer him. Instead, I tapped the connection again.
You’re hurt, he guessed.
I gave him another single tap. One for yes, two for no, okay?
Yes.
What do you need—dammit, you can’t tell me, can you? Are you out of power?