Summus Proelium

Again, I wished the others were here. But they weren’t, and I couldn’t wait. No more delaying, no more taking it nice and carefully. I couldn't afford to pick these guys off gradually. And I definitely couldn't wait for any reinforcements to show up. It didn’t matter how close they were. Not when the people down there were about to blow up the building where the cure for Sleeptalk was being made. Hell, even if it hadn't been the place where they were working on that, I still couldn't have just stood by and let this happen. That was a building with innocent people inside. Whatever happened, no matter how dangerous it was to go straight at a heavily armed force that included several Touched of unknown limitations and strengths, I had to stop them right the hell now.

Of course, I immediately realized, while running down that hallway, that having Ryder here physically would actually have helped a hell of a lot. After all, if he could get his mites into those bomb things that these guys were setting up, he could have disabled them without any problems. Unfortunately, he wasn't here. And there was no time to get him. I was just going to have to deal with this and stop them before they finished setting up those bombs.

All of that ran through my head while I was racing through the office corridor toward the wall at the far end. There was no window there, but that was okay. I could make my own exit just fine.

To that end, I used the hand that wasn’t clutching that submachine gun to hit the wall with black-pink paint, turning it to liquid just in time to launch myself through it. Just in case, I activated a large orange blotch of paint across the inside of my suit. And sure enough, the very second I appeared, there were two more gunshots. One was a bit too quick, his bullet going past just ahead of me a moment before I passed through that space. The other sniper, however, was basically right on target with the first try. His bullet hit my shoulder. And boy did it not feel great. I’d been right to try to take these guys down carefully before, without letting them shoot me. Back when that was an actual option. My paint did manage to stop the bullet from penetrating (I probably wouldn’t have had much of an upper torso left otherwise), but it still hurt quite a bit. As did the first sniper’s follow-up shot a second later, while I was still airborne. That one hit me in the back of my left leg. Just like that, I had been hit twice by a couple shots from very powerful sniper rifles. I would have deep bruises, at the very least.

On the plus side (if there was a plus side to getting shot), I knew where the snipers were. They’d had to reposition and show themselves to aim at me. Even in the chaos of leaping through the window, even through the distracting pain, and my own near-panic, I could tell exactly where they were standing. In mid-fall, I raised that borrowed gun and pulled the trigger, holding it down long enough for six bullets to emerge first, then adjusted my aim and fired another five with a quick pull. Despite its rapid fire, the gun had almost no kick to it. Probably thanks to Touched-Tech.

My aim wasn’t perfect. Not exactly. Of the first six bullets, two of them missed. The third struck the scope of the rifle, shattering it, the fourth hit the man’s thumb, and the fifth and sixth bullets hit the butt of the gun, thoroughly damaging it and knocking the weapon from his already-injured grasp. It went sailing off the roof, disarming the man while he howled in pain from his injured thumb.

As for the other sniper, the first and last bullets missed. The middle three hit the man in the trigger finger as well as the trigger guard of the weapon itself. He dropped his as well, doubling over with a high-pitched squeal.

Just like that, there were no more gunshots. Not from those sniper guys, at least. Some distant part of me was screaming about the fact that I was shooting at what appeared to be normal human people. But the rest of me didn’t care. They would live with a few injuries. Hell, the way medicine was these days, they’d be fine in a week or so.

My shoulder and leg were stinging badly. I had used the biggest bit of orange paint that I could, and the two shots had still very nearly put me down. I could already hear Paige going off on me for taking that sort of risk. I'd had no idea if my paint could even stand up against something that strong. That was the whole reason I had been trying to hit those guys carefully.

But oh well, I'd have no other choice but to take the risk. Or to take the much bigger one that those people wouldn't finish setting up the bombs before I could take care of their snipers the careful way.

And speaking of those other guys, they realized pretty quickly that their snipers weren't covering them anymore. Mostly when I hit two of them with green-red paint while sailing over their heads so they could be yanked together. Thanks to the green added in, it wouldn't hold them together, using up its pull all in one quick burst. But it did pull them hard, slamming the two painfully into one another with enough force to make them drop their guns.

Just like that, in the time and distance it took for me to leap out of the building and dive toward the parking lot below, I’d managed to hit four of their guys. Two had lost their rifles completely and were probably both too injured and too far away to jump back into being a problem immediately, and the other two were tangled up with one another and disoriented. It would take them a few precious seconds to collect themselves.

A tall lamp post in the middle of the parking lot came rushing up to me, even as I inverted myself in mid-air and hit it with a quick shot of pink, which I disabled immediately. As my feet collided with the post, it bent backward partway before snapping back, launching me further across the lot. By that point, a couple more of the guys down there had already taken notice of me and opened fire. But they were using simple pistols, and my orange paint was still active. If getting hit by the sniper rifles had been like taking a baseball to the arm, these shots were more like small pebbles. Not nearly enough to distract me from snapping my arm out with my own borrowed gun, sending a short burst of fire. One bullet hit a man in the foot, knocked his weapon from his hand, and grazed his arm. His partner took a bullet in the middle of his hand and another in his leg.

If I’d tried, if I wanted to, they would be dead. But that wasn’t me. I couldn’t be that sort of person, no matter what these guys were doing. With Touched-Tech medicine, they could come out of having a bullet hit their hand, leg, shoulder, and so on without permanent injury. Without dying. But killing them… no. I wouldn’t do that.

By that point, I hit a second lamp post on the opposite edge of the parking lot with a spot of blue just before colliding with it. On impact, I rebounded off the thing, sending myself down at an angle before colliding with one of the guys who was trying to aim at me.

Needless to say, as fast as I was going when I hit the guy and took him to the ground, he didn't have any interest in continuing to fight. The three guys around us, however, did. They all spun toward me, pistols raised as they sighted in. But in that moment, even as the orange paint I’d been using up to this point was nearly out, I activated a different spot of it. This one was smaller, better suited for handgun fire. And, more importantly, it had a bit of blue mixed into it. Enough of it to rebound some of the damage as they shot me, making all three men recoil and cry out in pain and confusion, their guns bouncing off the pavement. I had kept the blue-orange paint on the inside of my costume so they didn't have any indication of what had caused the damage reflection. I really wanted everyone in the city who might ever take a shot at me to second-guess themselves and wonder if they would be taking some of that damage themselves if they tried it.

Those three guys had no desire to continue trying to shoot me. Nor did the two I had shot down here, or the two snipers up on the other roofs. Between those seven and the two I’d forced to collide with one another, nine of the Prev troops were down or occupied. Leaving, as far as I knew, another two dozen still around here, scattered through the parking lot. Several of those were working on setting up those explosives, but that still left around twenty armed and very pissed off troops. And that wasn't counting those few Touched.

I had hit these guys hard straight off the bat, but this whole thing wasn't nearly over yet.

As if in evidence of that, several of the guys shouted warnings as a handful of guns were pointed in my direction while I was still crouched on top of the man I had just crashed into. I made a show of trying to leap out of the way, acting like I couldn't move quickly enough. Sure enough, they took the bait and opened fire while my protection and damage reflection were still going strong. All four of those guys who had been stupid enough to shoot ended up regretting it as they stumbled and cursed upon taking their own medicine. You'd think they’d learn better already, but this had been happening in just a few seconds. They hadn't really had time to process any of it. And I didn't really plan on giving them the opportunity. The only way I was going to get through this and stop those bombs was by moving too quickly for these guys to collect themselves.

But, of course, I wasn't lucky enough to get through this without any problems. Even as I started to throw myself back in the air, the lights suddenly went out and I was encased in something solid. It was concrete. One of those Touched had noticed what was going on and trapped me with his cement-and-wood manipulation power. At least, we assumed it was just cement and wood. That was what Ryder had seen him using through those cameras. For all we knew, he could manipulate plenty of other things that simply weren’t around here right now. That was the problem with going up against a Touched you knew almost nothing about and had only seen for a few minutes through a security camera in a single situation. It was hard to know what they could do or what any of their weaknesses were. God knew I’d used that to my advantage before. I was using it to my advantage right now by hiding my blue-orange paint.

Just as that thought passed through my head, I was given more proof when the ground under my feet suddenly became incredibly hot. It immediately started melting through my shoes. Either this guy could heat up the things he was manipulating, or one of the other two could. Whichever, I was about to be given a very nasty hot foot, because the temperature was still rising dramatically. And, of course, my blue-orange paint had just worn off in that moment, so my feet were really feeling the burn, enough to make me reflexively cry out.

At least, they felt it until I activated the yellow-blue feather designs I had already placed on my shoes. That new combination I’d been experimenting with lifted me a few inches off the ground. It wasn't anything like flying, and I couldn't move very well that way, but it did let me float just a little bit. Which stopped the incredibly super-heated concrete from melting through my shoes entirely.

And speaking of being super-heated, there was something a bit strange about all this. The stone itself wasn’t melting or cracking even under that incredible temperature. I was no expert, but I felt like it should be showing some reaction. So whatever power this guy or one of his partners was using, it was apparently able to heat up material without letting it suffer the actual effects from that.

I was doing my best to avoid touching any of the walls of this place, but it wasn't easy. There were only a couple inches of clearance all around me. It had only been a handful of seconds, and this enclosed space was already turning into an oven. Which was the point, I realized. This wasn't just about trapping me, they wanted to literally burn me alive in here.

The moment that thought came to me, I tried hitting the spot in front of me with pink paint so I could break through. But my paint immediately boiled away before I could even use it. The surface was too hot for the paint to stick properly. Getting out of here wasn't going to be quite that easy. A fact that made it harder to concentrate. I could feel myself starting to lose it, the panic rising. Between the heat and darkness within this claustrophobically small space, it would’ve been so easy to give into that panic. There was a message across my visor from Ryder frantically asking if I was okay, but I couldn't pay attention to it right then. I was too busy trying not to collapse into a sobbing ball. I could be afraid later. There wasn’t time for that right now. There wasn't time to think about how easily I could die right here, not when I was the only one who could stop those bombs.

I had to think quickly. Which was helped when I activated a few orange shield images across my shoulders and arms. It was tempting to add in more blue to reflect the heat, but I wasn't sure what that would accomplish. Would it send the damage back to the person responsible for making the concrete hot, or send it to the concrete itself, which was already protected from that heat? I wasn't sure, and I only had so much paint to work with. Right now I just needed protection for a few seconds so I could think of a way to get out of here.

Okay, okay, so I couldn't paint any of the walls in this space. The paint would simply burn away. But I could still paint myself. What could I do with that? What sort of paint could I put on myself that would help me get out of this trap? There had to be something, some combination that would help.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and told myself to think. Panicking wasn't going to help. I had to push all that out of my mind and focus on getting out here. Not just for myself, but for my parents and everyone else who had been infected by Sleeptalk. Those bombs were going to be ready to go off any moment now. I couldn't let that happen. Please, please don't let that happen.

My eyes opened in the darkness. A thought had come to mind, but I didn't know if it would work. It was a new combination, one I hadn't done before. Still, it was worth a shot. First, I activated a couple white spots across my costume to light this place up so I could see. Then I focused on my new plan. Across the open spots of my costume, I created an intricate web of blue-pink paint. Then I took a deep breath, another thing that seemed to be difficult in this enclosed space, and activated that new combination.

The pink paint made things easy to break. Which would've been good to get through the concrete walls, except I couldn't actually paint them without it boiling away instantly. But that was where the blue came in. The blue paint tended to push things, even effects. Like the way it pushed damage back to where it had come from when combined with orange.

In this case, I was hoping it would push the effect of the pink paint outward so it would affect more than just the surface it was painted on. Which might have seemed like a bit of a long shot, but I had to try something. The heat in this place was becoming unbearable even with my protection, and that guy out there was showing no sign of letting me out.

A shock of relief and exhilaration ran through me in the next second, as I walked up to see the stone over my head quiver a little. It was cracking under the heat it was being subjected to. Cracking despite its protection, because I had made it brittle. The new combination was working! The blue paint was pushing the effect of the pink out away from me.

I have no idea how far it would reach, or how much it reduced the effect. Right then, it didn't matter. I painted blue-green spots across my shoes, then renewed my orange protection before disabling the yellow-blue floating. Immediately, I dropped back to the ground. I could feel the heat there by my shoes and feet, but it only lasted for an instant before I was rocking it upward to slam into that newly-fragile concrete ceiling. Into… and through. My experiment had weakened the surface enough for me to break right through it, erupting out of the trap with a shout of relief that I couldn't contain. It was a shout that morphed immediately into a laugh, both because I felt such intense relief that I just had to laugh, and because I wanted to mock those guys. I didn't want them to know just how close they had come to killing me, or how terrified I had been for those few seconds.

Instead, I forced my voice to sound as cheery as possible as I called out, “Well thanks, I was a bit chilly, but I think I’m warmed up enough now!”

I could see the concrete-manipulating Touched now, in his blue armor standing next to the broken dome I had just burst out. He was staggering backward, looking shocked that I had managed to escape. Well, his body language was shocked, anyway. He was wearing a matching blue metal helmet that made it impossible to see his expression.

Before he could recover, I hit the man with a shot of red-blue paint. This combination did the opposite of the yellow-blue. Rather than making the subject float, it yanked them hard straight down to the ground. Before the guy could even start to recover from his surprise at my escape, he was slammed down hard against the cement.

If there had been more time, I would have followed up with that. But there wasn't. I had to stop those bombs. Nor was there time to recover the gun I’d dropped while encased in that concrete trap. So, even as the guys around me were reacting to my escape, I used a quick shot of red against the edge of one of their vans to yank myself that way. Several of the guys tried to shoot at me, but they were too slow. I managed to hit the top of the van with a blue spot just before colliding with it, to send myself forward higher and faster even as several bullets whistled through the air around me.

Right there, at the corner of the building, I could see one of the men attaching a bomb and starting to program it. A bit further on, another was doing the same thing. Immediately, I hit that first guy with a shot of red to yank him away from the bomb before extending my feet as I collided with the second as hard as I could. He went down, and I rolled over him before snapping my hand out to shoot a puddle of blue at the feet of the next guy, launching him into the air away from the bomb he was setting up.

Too slow, this was all still too slow! Even as I rolled across the ground and hit yet another guy in the ankle with a shot of red to pull him off his feet, I knew it wasn’t enough. There were more guys all around the building. Even if I managed to stop a few of the bombs, the gang was already starting to retreat. They knew the rest of those explosives were about to go off. I had to move faster! I had to be better! Everything I was doing, every trick I had in my arsenal, it wasn’t enough. No one else was here. It was just me, by myself. And no matter how fast I was right now, no matter how many paint combinations I pulled out or how good my aim was, I couldn’t hit these guys fast enough to stop all of those bombs. Some of them were going to go off, and then… no. No, I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t. My parents, my family, the city, all those people, they were-- I had to disable those bombs! I had to save the cure, had to save all the doctors in there … I had to…had to…

I had to stop, and look over at the thing hovering there in the air next to my head. Even as shouting went up for the men to retreat, their voices sounded distant. They didn’t matter. Only this mattered. My hand rose, extending that way.

And then I found the glowing orb with my grasping fingers, and Touched for the second time.