The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (13 page)

Corva swept the constant stream of
orange plasma over the truck’s hood until the metal melted into the
engine. The ball of light surrounding her hand slowly shrank as the
stream of energy flowed away from her.

She moved the stream down to the front
tires and melted them one at a time. Metal rims sparked against the
hot pavement as rubber tread flew off in molten chunks. The truck
veered off the road, hit an embankment, and launched into the
air.

Marius whistled as the truck soared
higher, spinning end over end until it landed on its roof with a
violent crash.

The second truck accelerated toward
the car as the light on Corva’s hand faded completely. She ducked
back into the car and sat heavily in the passenger’s
seat.

“
That’s it,” she said.
“I’m done for now.”

“
It was beautiful,” said
Marius.

“
We’re not safe yet.” She
turned and looked at Haven. “She’s pale. We need to get her to The
Dome as soon as we can.”

Haven blinked slowly. Cold sweat clung
to her skin. All of the sounds around her had a deep, resonating
echo that made her feel like a fish in a fishbowl.

The car lurched forward as the truck
behind them slammed into their rear bumper. Marius sped up to get
away, but the truck quickly caught up and nudged them
again.

“
Nyet!
”
he said. “Enough! Take
wheel.”

He set the cruise control and leaned
back in his seat so Corva could steer. Marius stood quickly and
pulled himself up out of the car through the sunroof. He slid down
onto the trunk of the car and stood up, facing the black truck that
was still trailing them.

When the truck sped forward to try and
knock him off, Marius jumped into the air. The truck slammed into
the back of the car just as Marius landed on the truck’s hood. He
scrambled up to the windshield before the driver could shake him
off.

“
I saved a little
something for you!” he shouted. The truck swerved on the road,
trying to knock Marius from the hood, but he stood firm. He leaned
down over the side of the truck as orange flames burst from his
hands. It was a different kind of energy than when he had been
connected with Corva. Less transparent somehow, and brighter. Haven
thought it was more like the energy Marius had used to burn through
the lock back at the facility where she had been held
captive.

He bent down and held his hand an inch
away from the spinning tread of the driver-side tire. A moment
later, the rubber burst into flames. Marius scrambled back onto the
hood as the tire exploded, sending strips of rubber flying into the
air. The truck jerked to the side as the driver overcompensated for
the flat tire. The vehicle spun sideways and flipped up into the
air, still traveling toward the black sedan.

Marius was thrown to the side of the
road as the truck slammed down into the asphalt and kept on
spinning. Chunks of metal ripped off the body and spun away in all
directions, peppering the embankments on both sides of the road and
spitting up tiny bursts of sand.

The truck stopped spinning and slid on
its side with a loud squeal of metal and a burst of sparks. It
scraped to a stop on the side of the road.

In the sedan, Corva jumped into the
driver’s seat, slammed on the brakes, and shifted the car into
reverse. Haven looked back eagerly at where Marius had disappeared.
Corva stopped the car next to the wrecked truck and
waited.

Someone coughed loudly. Marius
stumbled into view over a small rise just off the side of the road,
brushing a layer of sand from his arms. His forehead was cut and
bleeding, but other than the cut and a slight limp, he appeared to
be okay.

Metal scraped against the road and
Haven turned to see the crashed truck sway a little on its side.
One of the men inside was trying to open the door that wasn’t
pinned under the truck. He kicked against it loudly, wrenching it
open a few more inches each time.

“
Hurry up, Marius!”
shouted Corva.

He grumbled to himself but hobbled
over to the car and got inside. As soon as his door was closed,
Corva slammed on the gas pedal and sped down the road.

“
I think it went really
well,” he said.

Corva punched him in the shoulder and
he laughed loudly. He turned back and looked at Haven. “You doing
okay, little one?”

She reached up weakly and pointed at
his bleeding forehead. Marius touched the deep cut and frowned as
he rubbed the blood between his fingers. “This?” he said. “Is
nothing. It takes a lot more to hurt Marius. Don’t you
worry.”

Her eyelids fluttered and her vision
dimmed.

Marius’s voice drifted far away.
“Hurry, Corva, she is not doing well.”

Haven’s head fell back onto the seat
and the last thing she saw before passing out was the clear blue
sky through the sunroof.

18

C
olton stopped screaming when he realized it wasn’t going to
save his life.

He had been falling through the sky
for what seemed like an eternity. The ground below was quickly
rushing up to meet him. He didn’t know if it was Montana or
somewhere else. He saw mountains in the distance and the ground
directly beneath him was brownish tan—maybe a desert. Colton could
barely keep his eyes open against the wind. He flattened out and
looked down at the ground, then spread out his arms and legs to try
and slow his fall. It worked a little, but there was no way it was
enough to make the difference between life and death.

He imagined the battery that Alistair
described. It spun through the air, plummeting toward the Earth,
just as he was. Only as the battery fell, the small meter on its
side slowly filled to the top with kinetic energy—the energy of its
own descent. Colton closed his eyes and forced himself to
focus.

The wind was too powerful
to ignore, but eventually he was able to push it into the
background until it lessened to a dull but constant pressure. The
fact that he was going to die soon was
also
too powerful, so he did his
best to keep it from getting in the way of the battery.

The battery.

Colton imagined it inside of his own
chest, filling up like a fuel cell. He felt warmth—the same warmth
he had felt when he took life from the apple.

The warmth grew around his spine,
between his shoulder blades. It spread much faster than ever
before, traveling throughout his body and making him feel as if he
was glowing from the inside. Heat radiated from his skin and Colton
began to sweat, even with the frigid air surging past him. In his
chest, the imaginary battery swelled to capacity with the collected
energy from his fall.

Colton had forgotten to open his
eyes.

When he did so, the ground
was right in front of him. His mind screamed
No!
and every muscle in his body
tightened. The built-up energy exploded from the center of his
chest like a jet fighter breaking the sound barrier.

The sand beneath his body shot up into
the air as if a meteor had struck the earth, leaving behind a deep
crater that extended twenty feet in all directions. Colton hung in
the air for less than a second and had time to register all of
those things right before he fell ten feet to the bottom of the
sand crater and landed on his stomach.

He rolled onto his back, coughing for
air. The sand that had been thrown into the sky drifted down to the
ground, sprinkling over him like gritty snow.

Colton heard footsteps approaching. A
young woman’s face appeared over the edge of the crater above. A
pair of dirty goggles hung loosely around her neck.

“
Nice landing,” she said.
She looked to be about the same age as Colton.

He spit to get some sand out of his
mouth. “Who are you?”

“
The girl evaluating your
test.” She waved her hand in front of her face to clear away the
falling sand. “Congratulations, you passed.”

Colton stood up slowly, testing his
limbs for injury. His left wrist hurt to the touch from the impact,
but he felt okay otherwise. His vision was a little blurry, and
dark shapes swam around in front of him. “What happens if I would
have failed?”

The girl held up a plastic bag and
smiled.

“
Ha,” said Colton. He
scrambled up over the edge of the crater—the hole in the
ground
he
was
responsible for creating—and sat down. “How many people usually
pass and how many, you know…” He made a squishing noise with his
mouth.

“
Everyone is tested
differently.” She sat next to him and stuck her legs out toward the
bottom of the crater. She wore tight cargo shorts and a dirty white
tank-top. “Bernam must have thought you could do it or he would
have tried something else.”

Colton laughed.

“
What’s so
funny?”

“
Nothing,” he said, still
smiling. “I feel
really
good for some reason. Hey,” he said, “there was a
guy that got on the plane with me—”

“
Your friend is perfectly
safe.”

“
Good. Why is my vision
all fuzzy?”

“
Residual energy takes a
while to dissipate. A tiny bit of it is still floating around in
there.”

She had bright green eyes and short
auburn hair that bobbed over her neck when she talked. Colton
stopped himself more than once from staring at her slim figure and
tanned legs while she sat next to him. She looked into the crater
and banged the heels of her bulky shoes. Sand fell out from the
openings near her ankles. The shoes looked like men’s construction
boots.

“
So,” said Colton, “you’re
a…a Conduit?”

“
Ha! Bernam and his
ridiculous labels. Call me Shelly.” She offered her hand, which
Colton shook.

He felt warmth flow through her hand
into his, then up his arm. It spread over his body and he instantly
felt better. He flexed his wrist; the pain was completely
gone.

Shelly winked at him. “It’s from the
sun,” she said, glancing up into the sky. “We’re solar-powered. How
cool is that?”

“
So what now?” asked
Colton.

“
You ready for something
that moves a little bit slower?” Shelly stood and brushed sand from
the back of her shorts.

“
Gladly.” He stood up next
to her slowly since all of the blood in his body seemed to want to
be in his head at the same time. “Where to?”

“
My car is over there,”
she said. She stuck her thumb over her shoulder toward a beat-up
Jeep with big off-road tires.

“
There’s no roof,” said
Colton. “Or doors.”

“
Hmm,” she said. “That’s
pretty much the most obvious thing you could point out. Maybe the
fall affected your brain.”

Colton started walking toward the
Jeep. His feet sank down into the hot sand which poured over into
his shoes. “So you’re the local comedian.”

“
Somebody’s gotta be. It’s
a grim bunch, for the most part. Sounds like you’ll be good for a
little fun, though, once you get balanced out again.”

“
No promises.” He grabbed
the roll bar over his seat and lifted himself into the Jeep. Shelly
hopped lightly into the driver’s seat and fired up the
engine.

“
Might want to buckle up,”
she said. She grabbed the goggles hanging around her neck and
pulled them up over her eyes, then shifted the Jeep into
gear.

The car jerked to the left and Colton
nearly fell out the side. He used both hands to hold onto the roll
cage, then quickly buckled his seat belt as soon as the Jeep
leveled out.

“
Told you!” she said over
the roar of the engine.

“
I thought you said this
was slower!” he shouted.

Shelly laughed as the Jeep crested a
sandy hill and flew into the air. It bounced down hard and the back
wheels slid across the ground, losing traction. She gently turned
the steering wheel to compensate and after a few feet of skidding,
the tires caught hold and spit up two streams of sand. Shelly
jammed her foot down on the accelerator and picked up speed on a
long stretch of flat ground.

Colton wanted to ask her more about
where they were going and how she fit into the picture with Bernam,
but he had a hard enough time staying in his seat as the Jeep
bounced into small holes and veered around jutting boulders. Shelly
was enjoying herself immensely, and Colton was soon laughing with
her every time the Jeep went up onto two wheels as they took a
sharp corner.

They drove over a large hill and a
glimmering square structure appeared in the distance. Sunlight
glinted off its black mirrored exterior and hurt Colton’s eyes. He
squinted and turned to Shelly.

“
What’s that?” he
shouted.

“
Home base! Hang
on!”

“
Hang on
more
?!”