“Stay here,” Carlee said.
Jeff looked over just in time to see her guns fly from her sides and into both of her outstretched hands. As deadly as Stefani had looked, Carlee’s calm demeanor was even more intimidating.
“What if they make it here?” Jeff asked.
Carlee paused in the doorway. She sighed as she looked at him. Jeff imagined he looked pretty pathetic, standing there in the dark yurt with one arm and one leg, asking what would happen if the bad men made it to him. He swallowed his pride and stood resolute.
“Don’t get too used to these,” Carlee said. “Jane will never let you keep them.”
“What do you mean?”
But she didn’t respond. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, and her serene energy filled the room. The fighting was already growing worse outside; Jeff could hear people dying not far from them, but it didn’t seem important compared to Carlee. She was transfixing.
“By my bed, there used to be a folding chair and a metal nightstand. Stay here.”
She tossed him one of her guns, which he caught with his good hand before she disappeared as well, blending into the nighttime air. It wasn’t as impressive as making objects appear out of nothing or knowing what was happening in other realities, but their level of nearly perfect camouflage was almost as stunning.
He looked down at the energy gun in his hand with disbelief. A single weapon like this would have made him the richest man in Fifth Springs. Of course, that would have gotten him killed.
The piercing scream of a small child brought him back to the moment. People were dying out there. Despite Carlee’s orders, he refused to be a coward like the braves had been in Fifth Springs.
Jeff hobbled to where Carlee had been sleeping and froze when he saw what was beside her bed. The chair and nightstand were gone. Sitting in their place were two shiny, metallic limbs. Unlike his current thin, bendable stump of a leg, these looked to be the exact size that his original limbs had been before Horus had cut them off.
He grabbed the arm with his hand and turned it over until he found where it was supposed to connect to his stump. It was cold, and it didn’t seem to have a suitable way to connect to his body. But he knew that Carlee wouldn’t mess up. It was lighter than he expected, but it was still heavy enough to take a considerable amount of effort to try to navigate the metal arm to where his arm ended midway through the bicep.
Something triggered the arm to wake up, and tiny metal snakes sprouted from the smooth metal. He instinctively dropped the arm, but the snakes were too fast. They bit into his skin, and the arm sucked in against his body like it was being pulled by gravity. Jeff screamed in pain as the arm attached.
He only stopped when he realized that he was flexing both arms. Every ounce of sensation he had been missing from his arm had been restored. He touched his mechanical fingers to his new thumb with lightning fast precision. He slapped his new metal arm with his organic one and realized that he felt the expected sensation from both limbs.
He was back.
A bullet ripped through the top of his yurt, sending splinters of wood and fabric flying through the air.
He didn’t hesitate as he took a seat on Carlee’s cot and pulled off his stump and attached his new leg. It hurt bitterly, but he didn’t cry out this time. He refused to acknowledge the pain. Not when there were kids out there who needed him. He knew they weren’t Chad’s, but he was desperate to save them, just like he longed to have been able to help his father in Fourth Springs.
Jeff picked his gun up, holding it in his human hand as he jumped out of the yurt and into the fray.
The small village was overwhelmed. A giant hole had been blasted in their small wooden fence, and bodies littered the ground. Most the yurts were on fire. A whirlwind of energy blasts swirled beyond the breach in the wall, which Jeff assumed was one of the vagrants.
A child’s scream seized his attention. He turned in time to see a woman push her daughter out of the way while an ax smashed into her back. A burly figure wearing a wiry mask howled behind her savagely.
The small girl who had given Stefani a flower earlier that evening fell to the dirt face-first and she shrieked.
Jeff’s body moved as fluidly as ever as he raced toward the girl. The man stepped on the mother’s leg while he pulled his bloody weapon free of her body. Jeff held up his gun, but as he ran, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hit the man. The warlord’s soldier raised his ax to finish the girl. It was either inhuman cruelty or cold pragmatism that motivated the man, but Jeff’s drive was stronger.
He launched himself through the air with his mechanical leg. He hit the ground and slid in front of the girl just in time to catch the killing blow in his bionic hand. The force of the attack vibrated up his metal arm and into his body, but that was the extent of his damage. Jeff twisted his hand and broke the head off the ax while the man was still trying to figure out what had happened.
Instinct took over. Jeff pushed off the ground with his legs and his left arm and landed on his feet. He had learned long ago that when you had your opponent off-balance, you made him pay.
He dropped the ax head as he swung with his new arm. His metallic fist broke through the man’s face with little resistance, sending a grotesque spray of bone, teeth, and blood splattering against the nearest yurt.
The man choked on his own blood. But Jeff didn’t give him the opportunity to suffer for long. A jab of Jeff’s metal fist punctured his throat before the lifeless soldier could crumple to the ground.
Jeff felt shocked by what he had just done, but he refused to let it take control of him. He picked up the small girl with his natural arm and ripped the door off a crowded yurt with the other. Everyone inside screamed as he stuffed the girl inside and replaced the door as best as he could.
Jeff found his gun on the ground and picked it up while he decided what to do next. Everywhere he looked, he saw violent chaos. He didn’t need to know the exact numbers to recognize that the village had already lost more people than it could afford.
The screams of a young woman caught his ear amid the chaos. He found her a moment later, trying to fend off an attacker who was set on having his way with her. Jeff’s body pulsed with anger. He held the gun up, but he wasn’t confident he could make the shot, so he rushed over to the young woman.
He didn’t make it there in time. An energy blast came out of nowhere and evaporated the man’s head. Jeff followed the streak of burning air it left behind and saw that it had come from a nearly invisible woman galloping on a horse.
Energy blasts shot from her gun faster than Jeff could count. They raced across the village in all directions, permanently silencing every soldier they encountered. It was stunningly efficient. A gunshot sounded, and Jeff looked to see a bright red rose appear out of thin air next to Carlee’s body. She turned and ended the assailant whose bullet she had transformed into a flower.
The horse pulled up just past him, and the energy blasts ended. A moment later, Carlee solidified into her gray vagrant uniform. The barrel of her energy gun was glowing a bright orange, and the light caught in her fiery eyes.
13 VAGRANTS
THE SUDDEN END TO THE battle created a void in the hectic night air that lingered for a moment. Carlee twisted around on her horse, looking for anyone else she could target, and saw that the entire village was fixated on her.
The girl pushed the dead body off her and started to cry. It served to give permission to what was left of the village to breathe again. To scream and cry again.
Jeff approached Carlee cautiously; they had just been in a serious battle, and he didn’t want to die from friendly fire. In his years helping to defend Fifth Springs, he had never seen a skirmish like this one. The warlords had done little more than test Fifth Springs’ defenses, but the village here was in shambles.