SLAM (17 page)

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.

A black and inconceivable shape is falling,
bouncing off the Wall. Once. Twice. She pushes her power out and
wraps it around the thing, pulling it away from the Wall, slowing
it like she did for Sam.

Something in her chest collapses like a
punctured balloon.

She lays it down gently. It’s Abial, but
instead of landing on her feet like a cat, she’s horizontal. The
puddle she’s lying in is reflecting moonlight, and looks almost
white. Sam starts forward as Serena falls to her damaged knees,
crawling the distance between them. The brown-red mud of soaking
slum dust coats her, sticking to hands and legs and elbows, holding
her down like it wants to stop her from reaching Abial.

It feels as if it takes her an hour to get to
her friend. Maybe more.

When she finally, painfully does,
she reaches out, and notices that her hands are twitching. They’re
also dirty, caked in grime. She can’t help Abial if she is covered
in mud. She chokes, hastily rubbing them together and wiping them
off on her thighs. Then she delicately sets them on Abial’s torso,
searching for injuries, just like she’s been taught. She can’t feel
anything – it’s all soft and wet.
Come on,
come on. You’re okay. I caught you, you’re okay. You have to be
okay.

She tries to make sense of the scene in the
stuttering light. Abial is jerking, and Serena’s hands are dipped
in black, then red. Red.

Abial wheezes something out, coughing a drop
of blood that flies up and then falls onto her cheek, only to be
immediately washed away by the rain. Her hair is sticking to her
face in a dark sheet, hiding her eyes. Serena pushes it back,
frantically trying to decide what to do. Abial’s pupils are blown
wide and impossibly dark, almost obscuring the familiar ring of
orange-brown.

The light cuts again. Sam is slumped on his
heels, a ghost of a boy in the shadow of the Wall. There’s a
roaring noise in Serena’s ears, no, overhead. She looks up, tilting
her face against the rain and howling an animal’s shout of pain and
outrage. A chopper is banking in the skies, its searchlight
twisting. It will be on them in moments. She fumbles for her zap,
fingers made of rubber twisting round the trigger, and hauls it out
of her soaked pants, but Sam staggers forward, jabbing his hand
into her armpit and hauling her up with a reserve of strength she
didn’t know he had left.

“Bring her. Pick her up.
Now
.
Run
.” His voice breaks in the
middle, but it’s firm.

Gasping, she obeys, sliding her hands
underneath Abial’s shoulders and knees, and scooping her up. They
stumble forward, the white light of the chopper brushing over the
stone behind them, inches away from her heels. She risks a glance
back to see a pool of blood-filled water, shockingly lurid against
the desaturated surroundings. But Sam twists, dragging her
attention away from it, and thrusts his hand into the
sky.

Above them, the sound of the chopper pauses
for a moment, starts again, and then chokes as the power
dies.

Sam shudders and falls to his knees, and this
time Serena doesn’t have it in her to catch him. She already has
one body cradled in her arms, pressed against her cold chest: feet,
fingers and heart numb.

In the sky, the engine starts again just as
the chopper starts to fall toward the slums. As soon as it’s back
under control, it banks and flies back over the Wall.