If they could keep up the pace—a moderate running speed—they could be there in an hour. Maybe a little more.
Both of them knew it would be too late.
Gaia strode through the burning camp, earbuds still in, music still on, with the terrified Alex cringing like a Harry Potter house elf behind her.
Each time she saw movement she aimed and fired. The killing light was quite effective, she thought, not as messy or as slow as using her father’s telekinetic power. But the lifting and throwing and smashing were more fun, somehow. There was a certain pleasure in grabbing a human, throwing it high in the night air, and letting it fall with a scream that ended in a satisfying crunch of broken bone. Or bashing a car down like a hammer on a fleeing person and seeing the way two tons of steel would collapse a human body and burst it like a water balloon.
A group of maybe twenty was racing away on foot, running at top speed. Gaia turned on her own speed and was on them in a flash, running beside them effortlessly.
She lit her hands, not to kill, but to see the looks on their faces. Terror. They were like terrified herd animals running from a predator, eyes wide, mouths open, gasping, weeping. She was the tiger and they were, what, sheep?
She decided to play with her other powers. She canceled gravity beneath the fleeing people. They stumbled and rose into the air, twisting, unable to get their balance.
She looked up at them and laughed. She raised one hand, picked out a first victim, and fired. A girl burned like a torch in the sky.
It was wonderful.
The others screamed and begged and floated even higher, unable to escape, unable to hide.
She fired and missed, which was embarrassing. The moonlight was too dim to see them clearly, even when Gaia squinted. So Gaia lowered them until her nearsighted eyes could make them out in detail. Then she lit them up, one by one. They burned prettily, casting a lurid orange glow over the ground below.
She pulled out the earbuds to hear more clearly. The sound of burning was—
Gaia toppled over. She hit the ground, face in the dirt, and realized she was staring over at her own leg, lying by itself, the severed knee bleeding.
The second blow was from a knife that seemed almost to come out of thin air, it happened so fast. An invisible force had left it planted in her belly.
Agony!
With Gaia’s focus destroyed, her burning human torches plummeted and splattered in greasy flames on the ground all around her. Someone—a girl, Gaia thought, a blur—was momentarily caught in the light, and Gaia saw her yanking something off her back.
Gaia rolled to one side as BOOM!
Shotgun pellets tore up the ground where Gaia had been. She kept rolling, each turn forcing the knife deeper into her stomach.
Gaia yanked the knife out, amazed by the pain, and pressed one hand on the wound. Her severed leg was now several feet away.
BOOM!
She was too slow this time, and some of the pellets hit her arm, lacerating her bicep and spraying blood everywhere. Blood was pumping from the hole in her belly and her leg, and Gaia could already feel herself weakening dramatically.
She felt fear. Pain. And worse, a sort of humiliation that she might be beaten.
“Who are you?” Gaia gasped.
The girl froze for a moment. Looked at her. Smiled and said, “Who am I? I’m the Breeze, bitch!”
This person, this blur of a girl, this Breeze, was a mutant. She was the source of the speed. Gaia couldn’t kill her. And yet, if she didn’t . . .
Gaia swept her killing beam in a wide arc, low to aim for the girl’s legs, and so fast she almost caught her with it. But quickly, so quickly, her target leaped to let the beam pass beneath her, and even as she jumped, Gaia could hear her slamming in another shotgun round.
Gaia struck then with telekinetic force, and the mutant girl went flying backward through the air.
Gaia pressed one hand on the deadlier wound, the one in her midsection, and caused her leg to fly to her. It came a bit too fast and hit her in the head, knocking her on her back again, and now Gaia was really afraid, because if the speed demon attacked again, Gaia would be helpless.
But the telekinetic blow against the Breeze must have been effective, because Gaia had time to shut off the loss of blood from her stomach before the counterattack could come.
This time her tormentor was not moving so fast: she had been hurt, too. Gaia had time to aim and fire her deadly light. The aim was poor and the girl was still quick enough to sidestep the worst of it, but the light caught the side of her head, and she screamed in pain and dropped her shotgun.
Just like I was burned, Gaia thought.
Justice.
Gaia shoved the leg stump in place and focused all her healing power, ignoring the fires and screams, the burning bodies, all around her. She waited only until the skin had reattached at the most tenuous, superficial level—she could not walk on the leg, let alone run—and stood on her remaining good leg and hopped away.
It was an undignified, pain-racked retreat, but no one came after her.
FIFTEEN
38 HOURS, 58 MINUTES
THE LAKE SETTLEMENT burned.
Astrid swam to shore, chilled to the bone by the freezing water, and in something like a state of shock.
She climbed heavily from the water, dragging herself up over the wet pebbles and into the sand. Dekka was already on the shore, and Diana was just behind Astrid.
Other survivors were swimming ashore or had just climbed out of the water. No one was talking. Many were crying.
The water of the lake rose suddenly, a massive waterspout that seemed to carry Dekka and Orc in its flow. Astrid saw Orc move. He was alive.