The Next Chronicle (Book 2): Damage (10 page)

When Kit blinked out of view with James Shane, Ray jumped in his seat. He threw open the door, but stopped when he was halfway out. He looked back at the trainees, who all stared in horror at the damage before them.

“Come help,” he said. “We've got injured people.”

Before the trainees could even open their doors, James Shane reappeared with a pulse of light. Alone.

Fury welled up in him, and with it came a rush of energy. The ocean of power stored in his body seemed to rush into his veins all at once, strengthening his muscles and sharpening his senses. The world flashed to shades of green.

“Where is she?” Ray thundered.

Shane spun to face him. He pointed a finger straight up in the air.

Ray looked to the sky and saw a faint green dot, bright against the heavens.

“Oh, God,” Ray breathed. “We need a flier! Do we have anyone who can fly? Kit's up there!” He pointed with his right hand.

The agents in front of him looked at each other desperately, even as they tried to close on their target. Shane blinked in and out, dancing between points in space in an effort to close in on the SUV holding Kevin Gray.

“I got her,” said a shaky voice from behind Ray. He looked back just in time to see Graysen rocket into the air, though not the way Ray had ever seen a flier do it. Rather than leap off from the ground facing upwards, she seemed to fall away from the earth. She flipped and turned as she dwindled upward, much as someone in free fall would.

“Deal with the problem in front of you,” Ray muttered to himself.

“Ray! Short him out!” Archer's tinny voice sounded in his ear. He had tuned out the constant buzz from his earpiece, but hearing his name reminded him he had a job to do.

“On it,” Ray replied.

He dashed into the fray, trying to time it just right. He had to time his disruption with Shane appearing, but the man was determined to make it as hard as possible. By the time Ray registered Shane being in a new place, he was already teleporting away.

Blink. Shane was gone. Blink. He appeared just long enough to punch or kick an agent. Blink. Gone. Blink. Attacking again.

He was a one-man whirlwind, flashing between points with a practiced ease Ray couldn't help but find impressive. He briefly considered taking a chance and disrupting the Surge at random, hoping to get lucky, but decided against it. Better to nail the guy for sure rather than risk losing him while also screwing up the powers of everyone nearby.

But how to know when Shane would appear ahead of time?

Inspiration hit him like a bullet. He couldn't know exactly where the man would pop up, or when. That didn't mean Ray couldn't affect him.

Ray focused his will on a careful application of his power. The effort required forced him to rein in the flood of energy suffusing his body, locking it away as he observed and planned.

Agents tried to fight, but there was no predictability to Shane's timing. Pulse guns were ineffective, fired too late. Pulse grenades were too slow, giving him the chance to flit away. Pulse tags did no good, as they had to make contact.

Ray watched James Shane come and go perhaps a dozen more times before he was sure about his next move. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the handful of pulse tags, holding them tight in his fist.

His other hand stretched out, a wave of shaped power washing from him in a controlled torrent.

The asphalt vanished in a section as wide as the road itself and fifty feet long. Ray couldn't risk shouting a warning Shane might hear, but he figured the other agents would forgive him any minor injuries. Everything in the now-empty space dropped eight inches, including the vehicles. Agents swore as they stumbled and tripped, most of them falling.

James Shane appeared again, and while Ray couldn't read his mind, it was clear the man expected the road to still be there. Rather than lash out and vanish again in less than a second, Shane lost balance just like everyone else. Ray was ready, darting forward and throwing the fistful of tags with the rusty skill of a former all-star little league pitcher.

Several tags in the barrage hit home beautifully, latching on to pants and jacket and instantly sending out tiny but effective pulses. Ray, still running, saw confusion and then honest terror on Shane's face as he realized he couldn't escape. He looked up before Ray could get all the way to him, and had the presence of mind to block the blurring kick Ray sent toward his skull.

“He's tagged!” Ray shouted. Anything else he had planned to say was cut short by the vicious sweeping kick that took his legs out from under him.

No sooner had his back slapped into the newly-revealed dirt than the enemy was up, looming over Ray before dropping down to punch him in the face with shocking speed. Ray didn't try to impress anyone; unarmed combat was new to him and he wasn't proficient. Instead of making a vain attempt to fight back against someone who actually had experience, he put his forearms up defensively. His core muscles tensed against potential strikes.

Ray hoped desperately the beating would continue. It wasn't all that painful, if he was being honest, and his powers worked to heal him even as the blows landed. If they were very lucky, Shane was enraged enough to keep his attention on hurting Ray, which would give the others time to take him down.

All of this happened in the span of tens of seconds, enough time for the other agents to regain their feet and start helping out. From every direction, Ray heard the whine of pulse guns discharging, felt the sudden wash of their energy moving through him. His powers grew slippery, harder to hold on to, but he managed. One thing Archer was not was stupid. The first thing he had done was make certain pulse weapons didn't make Ray lose control.

The ground trembled beneath Ray, which coincided with the sudden end of the blows raining down on him. Then a shadow flew over him, temporarily blocking out the sun, and took Shane to the ground with great prejudice.

Ray sat up and stared at Archer, who was holding the prisoner down by his neck. There was a sharp snap and a shudder to Archer's huge shoulders as he straddled the smaller man. Ray's heart slammed against his sternum. Surely he hadn't...

Shane's feet moved, trying to throw Archer off. The big man stood, hauling his captive up by the arm. Brushed steel glinted at Shane's neck, LEDs blinking. Ray let out a relieved breath, his anxiety returning to sane levels. He'd heard the collar latching shut, that was all.

Other agents rushed in to take over, slapping on a specialized set of cuffs matching the collar. They weren't taking any chances.

Archer worked his way over to Ray, relief evident on his face, and put out a hand.

“Thanks,” Ray said as he was hauled to his feet.

“No problem,” Archer said as he grimaced at Ray's suit. “I think you fucked that one up beyond repair,” he noted, brushing some dust from the shoulder. “That was some good thinking, by the way. What you did with the road, I mean.”

Ray shrugged. “It was the only thing I could think of.”

Archer snorted. “You'd be amazed how often it works out that way. Hell, we were armed to the teeth and staffed to the gills, but he might as well have been fighting children. We weren't ready for this kind of assault.”

“Who could be?” Ray asked. “You saw the way he moved. How he appeared for a second at a time. No one can prepare to fight someone who can do that.”

Archer sighed. “You're probably right, but it still bugs the shit out of me. We knew from his dossier that Shane spent years studying martial arts, and not just as a tourist. He studied a bunch of them, the cultures they came from, their arts of war. He was obsessed with it.”

Ray laughed. “So are teenage boys who buy cheap swords at flea markets. Just because we knew he'd spent time learning all that doesn't mean we had any reason to expect him to hand our asses to us.”

Archer relaxed slightly. Very slightly. “We knew he was smart, though. Feels like we should have planned for the worst.”

Ray cocked his head. “Not that I mind being your shoulder to cry on, you big baby, but why exactly are you having this conversation with me?”

Archer smiled sardonically. “Usually Kit gets the honor of hearing me at my weakest, but I don't see her. Where is she, anyway?”

In the heat of the moment, Ray had forgotten. He looked up.

“Crap.”

If not for the probable and near certain fact of her death, Kit would have enjoyed herself. This was far from the first time she had fallen from a great height, but all those other instances involved either a parachute or someone carrying her. Dropping from cruising altitude without either was, she punned internally, for the birds.

The first thing she tried was calling for help over the wireless, but the roar of wind made it impossible. She would have attempted again, maybe cupping a hand tight over her ear, but the buffeting current managed to snag the device and rip it away.

Raw terror was an unfamiliar state of being, and it didn't last long. Long habit forced her to push down the fear and assert control over herself. She had been in enough dangerous, deadly situations that this barely rated on the list. While the gut fear still pulsed below the surface, the active emotion asserting itself as she quickly approached terminal velocity was exasperation, with a dash of annoyed disbelief.

She had survived being shot, stabbed, even fighting Next whose power made her look like an ant when compared to her own. Being killed in a manner befitting an animated coyote seemed more than a little insulting. If there was a God and that being did manage the universe according to some ineffable design, then God had a streak of whimsy a galaxy wide.

Kit held her jacket open as wide as it would go and spread her ankles apart in an attempt to slow down. Air resistance would help a little, and every second she could buy was a second someone might notice her.

Then she saw something odd. A small, dark dot appeared below her, then grew rapidly. It resolved into the distant shape of a young woman—barely more than a girl, judging by her frame—flying unevenly toward her.

“Don't catch me!” Kit shouted pointlessly, her words lost in the rushing wind. “You have to slow down!”

The girl didn't slow down; if anything, she sped up. Kit kept on yelling but closed her eyes against the inevitable collision. Young Next who could fly (and all trainee agents) took classes on the safe use of their powers. You never knew when a high rise might catch fire, after all, and it was important to know the physics involved. If the girl tried to catch Kit without slowing to match her speed, it would effectively be the same as hitting the ground. Except the girl's arms would treat Kit like an apple in a slicer, if she were strong enough. If not, Kit would be injured as she broke the poor woman's arms and likely ripped them off in the bargain.

When she wasn't dead or hurting a few seconds later, Kit cracked one eye open. The girl had slowed in a remarkably short time. Kit saw her sail up and past, and craned her neck back in time to see the girl drift back down to match speeds.

“H-hey,” she shouted, plummeting next to Kit. “You might want to close your eyes for the next part.”

Kit shook her head, able to understand the words but not processing them logically. The girl—a trainee, she realized, remembering her face from the picture on the roster—reached out a hand and grabbed Kit's wrist.

The world
twisted
. Kit's stomach flipped upside down, and she had to bite back the bile rising in the throat. She no longer felt like she was falling, her body telling her instead that she was on the upward arc of a very high jump. Physics confirmed this; she began to slow. Every sense she had but one swore to her that the sky was now down, the ground up, and she was about to reach the peak of her upward movement and begin the fall back down.

Her eyes stubbornly refused to agree with this assessment. The friction between those senses made her mind feel like a complicated clock whose gears had all changed sizes and speeds, a horrific grinding mess incapable of function.

There was a slight tingle in her skin—it reminded her of putting on a shirt fresh from the dryer—and the world suddenly righted itself. She and the girl stopped moving, the two of them hovering thousands of feet in the air, Kit's wrist held in a tight grip.

“I—wow,” Kit stammered. “Thank you...”

“Graysen Ross, ma'am,” the young woman said. “I hope I'm not in trouble. I wasn't really ordered to come get you, see—”

Kit stared at Graysen in sheer, open-mouthed amazement. After a few seconds she realized the girl wasn't joking, and burst into laughter. “No, you're not in trouble,” Kit assured her. “You just saved my life. If anyone so much as looks at you funny about it, I will personally break their jaw.”

Graysen smiled uncertainly, and actually blushed. “That won't be necessary, ma'am. I wouldn't want
you
to get in any trouble, either.”

Kit raised an eyebrow. “Has anyone ever told you you're kind of a Hermione?”

Graysen mumbled something so low even Kit's hearing didn't pick it up.

“What was that?” she asked kindly.

Graysen blew out a resigned sigh. “That was my nickname in high school,” she said.

Kit laughed.

As Kit drifted slowly to the ground, the gathered agents staring up at her in surprise, she began to understand what fliers felt. She wasn't being carried, as she always had been before. Other than Graysen's grip on her arm she felt no outside pressure, as if she were the one making this happen.

They touched down lightly. It was only after Graysen released Kit's arm that the difference became clear; her body suddenly felt incredibly heavy. Kit dropped to her knees, disoriented. A shuffle of rushing feet, hard soles slapping against the now-bare earth, approached. It was Graysen who knelt next to her, putting a hand on Kit's shoulder.

“I'm so sorry,” the young woman said. “I forgot you aren't used to it. Give yourself a minute and it'll get better.”

“What—” Kit gasped, trying to work moisture into a mouth gone Sahara dry. “What just happened? I've never felt that way after flying before.”

“We weren't. Flying, I mean,” Graysen said. “What you're feeling is gravity rebound. That basically means you went from experiencing very little to normal gravity really fast, which is what happened when I took my hand away. I should have increased it slowly, but I've never actually used my powers on anyone before and I...”

Kit, already starting to feel better, gave the girl a small grin.

“I'm babbling,” Graysen said, a slight blush reddening her cheeks. “Anyway, sorry about that.”

“Like I said, kid, you saved my life. I'm not complaining.” She chuckled. “And I've been through worse. At least this way I've learned something. I'll recover faster if I ever get hit with something like that, now that I know what to expect.”

Kit forced her mind to relax, falling back on her training to assert control. The sense of tremendous weight began to recede further. She noted how similar it was to the odd wrenching sensation from having her own gravity reversed, and really it was just another facet of the same thing.

Human beings were now able to do astounding, even miraculous, things. Having the ability wasn't what comic book creators imagined, for the most part. Even ignoring the practical effects of Graysen using her powers to help a person not at all practiced in dealing with their consequences, there were still countless examples in Kit's own life.

She reveled in being strong and fast, having the many perks that came with her abilities. Still, the average person didn't think—or even know—about the drawbacks. The ten thousand calorie diet, the need to constantly practice to avoid hurting people just by shaking a hand.

The social stigma of being Next.

She looked out over the destruction before her, and Kit felt the old familiar dissatisfaction rise up. James Shane had made their attempt at a quiet capture very messy and public, which would no doubt only fuel the flames of public discontent. Seeing the property damage and knowing the potential death toll the wrong sort of Next could cause, it was hard to blame them.

Archer appeared from the milling crowd and made his way over. He was smeared with dirt, the elbow of his jacket shredded, but otherwise looked fine. Not that his appearance was any way to tell; with his healing abilities, the man could have broken every bone in his body and been okay by now.

“Glad to see you're okay,” he said, surprising Kit with a quick but genuine hug. A relieved smile crept across his face.

“Thank Graysen for that,” Kit said. “She's the one who saved me.”

Archer turned his gaze to the young trainee. Though Graysen was a full foot shorter, she met his eyes evenly, without a hint of the nervousness Kit had witnessed over the city.

“Glad to see you again, Ms. Ross,” Archer said. “Especially since you just made yourself a hero. Thank you. I mean that.” He held out a hand, which she shook firmly.

It took Kit a moment to realize that of course Archer knew her; he was the one who selected trainees out of the general applicants. It was one of the many administrative tasks Kit abhorred that Archer didn't mind taking on.

“Just doing my job, sir,” Graysen replied.

Archer's mouth twitched at the corner. “Well, not your job
yet
, technically. But appreciated all the same.”

“Did we get him?” Kit asked, nodding toward the circle of agents.

“Yeah,” Archer answered. “Cassidy caught him off guard and I tackled him.”

Kit's brows knitted together. “You? In combat?”

Graysen partially muffled a squeak of surprise, possibly laughter, at Kit's words. From the trainee's perspective, it probably sounded as if Kit were implying Archer couldn't handle himself. He was a large man, not a regular fixture in training classes, and carried extra weight. It was the obvious assumption to make, and probably the only one the girl
could
make given what she knew.

The glimmer of embarrassment on Archer's face was perfectly acted, though Kit knew it for what it was. The man had to gorge himself constantly to keep the fat on his body, which his healing ability could use as fuel.

What Kit actually meant was that by going into such a dangerous situation, Archer had risked being injured badly enough to alert everyone around him of his true nature. As far as the world knew, he was human.

They had decided, upon cementing their small conspiracy, to divide the dangers up in the most efficient way possible. Kit, being openly Next, would handle the more risky elements. She was the one who fought, who dealt with Robinson. It was her job to be obvious and implement whatever physical actions they deemed necessary to find the truth about Fairmont.

Success depended critically on Archer staying in the closet, so to speak. As an administrator and bureaucrat, his searches for information, requests for certain personnel, and all manner of other less-dazzling but important tasks were seen as just part of the job.

“Well, just glad you didn't hurt yourself,” Kit said, forcing a smile.

Archer gave an award-worthy sigh, then smiled wryly as he patted his gut. “Guess I should hit the gym if I want to start getting in fights, eh?” He looked at Graysen expectantly, and the girl did a wonderful impression of a deer in headlights.

“Stop messing with her, Archer,” Kit said. “You know she's not going to answer that.”

They called in a cleanup crew, though James Shane was on his way to the facility long before they arrived on scene.