I hope the squad’s confusion won’t slow them down. That they’ll trust me, though our new trust is a fragile thing, built on heartbreak.
“One.”
Tyler and Kal fold to the ground, and I throw up my hands, letting go of every piece of myself. My body’s gone, left behind where it stands in the doorway of the Longbow, swaying in place. And I’m a tumult of midnight-blue mental energy, laced through with vicious threads of silver, exploding in every direction.
To the rest of the world I’m invisible, or I’m back where my body is, or maybe something in between. But on the plane where I exist, I’m a roiling sphere, expanding at the speed of light to envelop the SecBots in front of me.
It’s a wave I’m barely riding, not at all controlling, and I can’t choose my direction—I can keep the tsunami away from me, sparing the weak, fragile bodies of Kal and Tyler, the squad behind me, but it balloons outward and upward and beyond them in a millisecond.
The ripple of force explodes in three hundred and sixty degrees, and I’m dimly aware of the Longbow crumpling in the same instant the bots do. My silver threads wrap around them, grip deathly tight, and delight roars through me as I squeeze, as I crush, as their metal crumples and their circuits flare and die.
Everything is silent and the roar is deafening, and I’m part of my midnight-blue cloud, I’m gripping them with my silver threads, and I’m snapping back into my body like a piece of elastic stretched too far, and suddenly …
… it’s over.
And once more I’m an infinitely fragile thing, standing on two shaking legs, and all around me are screams and alarms, and in front of me is the wreckage of the hoverskiffs and the SecBots, and around me is the ruin of our Longbow, and I’m swaying again, and my knees want to bend backward like the robots’ did when they jumped from the flatbeds, and there’s blood on my lips, and I’m moving, and I’m falling, and then the ground is rushing up to meet me.
· · · · ·
When I wake, Kal is leaning over me, his hand gentle at my cheek. His violet eyes are wide and beautiful, his long silver hair is framed by a fuzzy halo of light.
“You look like an angel,” I murmur.
“What is an angel?” he asks, curling his hand around mine. His expression is as grave as ever, but I can see the concern in his eyes. I can feel the restraint he’s exercising to avoid crushing my grip in his.
“It’s a dirtchild with wings,” Finian says from somewhere behind him.
Kal’s brows rise. “Humans do not have wings.”
“How would you know?” Fin asks. “Ever seen one naked?”
Kal’s brows rise higher and his ears are starting to blush when Scarlett steps in to save him. “Be nice, Finian. You alive over there, Auri? That was some kaboom.”
She and Tyler come into view, looming over Kal’s shoulder, and I realize nobody’s wearing a halo—we’re just inside, and they’re backlit by the lamps set into the ceiling. I feel like a human shape made out of noodles, my limbs weak and uncooperative, but slowly my vision’s clearing. Zila gently shifts Kal to one side and starts running a med-scanner over me.
“Where are we?” I try.
“Hotel on the Emerald City underside,” Tyler says. “The low-rent and ask-no-questions kind. I booked it as a backup before the deal with the gremps, just in case things went really south.”
“Which is weird,” his sister says, bumping his shoulder. “Because I thought all your ideas were amazing. Lucky that you knew we’d need a fallback position.”
“Almost like I studied tactics,” he says, bumping her back.
“You are well,” Zila pronounces, looking at me. “Brainwave activity is still slightly elevated, but bio-readings are normalizing.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“You lost consciousness,” Kal replies.
“After reducing a pile of SecBots to scrap metal and dragging their hoverskiffs out of the sky,” Fin supplies. “It was pretty hot. Though could we maybe work on you learning to aim this thing? If we hadn’t ducked …”
“We did duck,” Scarlett says. “And Auri’s force-sphere saved our shapely behinds, so thank you, Auri.”
Our squad’s Face helps me sit up against the wafer-thin pillows, and I get a better view of the dingy hotel room. It’s the same kind of sticky-floor decor that I guess never goes out of style on a certain budget. There’s a holo display taking up one wall, and two