Red Fox Action Log 43 Cont:

  Stars — a sea of stars swirled in the expanse around me. A trillion trillion pinpoints of light seemed to crush me. My body was just a tiny black speck against the light of eternity. With my remaining hand, I reached out. I could almost touch it. Then the cold gripped me. Ice choked me.

  I slammed into the tiled floor, steaming against the heat of a warm planet. I looked up. There she was, Amulet. I’d landed right in front of the table I had been on.

  “Drat,” Amulet said.

  I needed to hide. I had no idea what she was capable of. I needed an advantage. In my panic, I felt the Fox Instinct grow taut. I can’t explain exactly what happened or how, but inside myself I plucked that string.

  My hand on the tile in front of me disappeared. I looked back at my legs and there was nothing.

  I was invisible.

  I stood. She moved to run. One kick, and I’d knocked her out cold.

  The building shook again. I’d become visible. I glanced at the stump of my shoulder. Extreme heat, then extreme cold, had turned it black and flakey. But it didn’t hurt so much as throb like a raw nerve. I’m sure that would come later.

  Jill sobbed in pain. I pulled a painkiller autoinjector from my belt and plunged it into her leg. The sobs subsided. I felt around on the table for a latch. There!

  I freed her arm, then chest. She sat up, bolt straight, and undid her legs.

  “Did you call Carla Quick?” I asked.

  Jill looked at me with her tearstained face.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let's get the hell out of here.”

  I grabbed the grapple gun, holstered it, then the laser pistol from its place on a side table, and opened the door leading out. Immediately three shadowbats descended on me. I pointed the gun. Jill put her hand over her face. I fired three times, sending one into shadow stuff.

  I hip checked Jill out of the way of one, and pistol whipped the other. I stomped on that one, then fired three more blasts.

  We were safe. I looked to Jill.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not cut out for this.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m not. I barely made it here. Now. Oh god, my arm.”

  I shoved the gun in her holster, then grabbed her hand.

  “We can do this,” I said.

  “No we can’t,” she said.

  “I am going to lead you.”

  She nodded.

  We ran down the hall. The complex shuddered again. Whatever was happening up there, it was dangerous as hell.

  We had to take the stairs.

  I kicked open the door. Too many. A horde of the bats.

  I pulled my grapple and aimed for the top railing. It hit the end of its line, then snapped to wrap around the rail. I fastened the grapple to my belt.

  “You’re gonna need to jump on me,” I said.

  She nodded, then jumped and wrapped her legs around me, throwing her remaining arm around my shoulder. The twinge of memory felt sick in my chest. I ignored it.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I was damned if I left her here to die. I don’t know if I would ever get to a ‘wish you well’ place, but I was certainly at a ‘you aren’t gonna die under a tonne of rubble’ place.

  I hit the auto-ascender function, I grabbed the line with my gloved hand, and we ascended. Once we got close enough to the top I swung my legs, hit the disengage, and we crashed into the landing on the stairs. She groaned.

  I stood, then offered her my hand. She grimaced, and took it. We took the last flight of stairs then I kicked the door leading out.

  We were back on the walkway around the silo. The nose of the rocket was not visible. A dozen men lay bleeding on the ground, and Rabbit flew like a white hot star above, blasting beams of heat down at the walkway. What she was trying to hit seemed like a blur, but every fraction of a second, I saw a woman in it.

  The blur tore a section of the railing, and threw it up at White Rabbit. A blast of heat, and light sent it tumbling off in another direction.

  “Brenda!” yelled Jill. “We have to get out of here! The whole place is coming down!”

  The response came from several different places.

  “That’s. The. Idea.”

  Finally a chunk of metal struck White Rabbit in the abdomen, and sent her tumbling down into the silo.

  Brenda ‘Carla Quick’ revealed herself.

  Her hair had been styled short, and it flew up in all directions. Her supersuit was a marvel of superdex, and shiny antifriction coating. Only a couple inches taller than Jill, her height seemed about average.

  Nothing about her was average. She looked like a true Superhero, with her bare arms like chiseled marble, and her leg muscles bulging against the superdex. Athletic didn’t even come close.

  Krackle, dark and slightly iridescent motes of energy, wafted gently up from her shoulders and feet. A wave of heat shivered through the floor like a mirage, and I tasted ozone. Dark energy pulsed from her.

  She sweat profusely, a sheen covering her brow, but she winked at me. She didn’t have a single scratch on her.

  “I’ll take her,” Carla Quick said with some kindness.

  “Please.”

  “Think you can get out of here on your own?” she asked, sweeping Jill into a bridal carry.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Great! Good luck, kid.”

  And she was gone, the sound of thunder in her wake.

  I ran to the place we’d entered from. Past the door was the golf cart.

  In front of it, fiddling with the key, hunched Atlas.

  “Any chance you can just let me go?” I asked.

  “Not likely,” he said in his thick Norwegian accent.

  I plucked on that danger sense in my chest, and became invisible. Atlas cursed. I crept in a circle around him. He moved in the opposite direction, unable to hear me over the racket in the silo. I kicked him in the back of the knee, hard. He faltered. I became visible again.

  Didn’t matter. I’d finally gotten his head on my level. One kick sent him doubled over grabbing his helmet. I kicked him three more times, and he finally went down.

  I hopped in the cart just in time. The steel doors to the silo buckled and tonnes of rubble buried it. Atlas stirred. There was a chance he got back up. That had to be enough.

  I gunned the cart, and sped down the concrete tunnel, ditching it when I reached the end. Then down the hall. Men with guns.

  I vanished and they shot where I had been, not where I was. Out went the baton, crunching into one’s face. I went invisible, and stepped back. He shot his friend through the chest at point blank range. Out went my baton again, crunching the helmet of another.

  Attack, retreat, attack again. Blood sprayed hot against my neck. I grit my teeth.

  I had to make it out.

  I ran out of the warehouse, past the guard that struggled against his zip ties.

  I was able to make it to the street, stumbling incoherently down the sidewalk. I glanced at the street sign, Chestnut Street. The asphalt shimmered with rain.

  Then everything was darkness.

  I remember being moved. I remember pain, a lot of pain. I cried until I had no more tears. I screamed my throat raw.

  I remember voices. I remember soft singing.

  When I awoke, I saw a kind-faced pale woman, older, rubbing sanitizer on her hands.

  “He’s up,” she said.

  Nora ran in from another room. I was inside? I felt a pillow under my head, and leather couch cushions under the sheets against my back. She knelt at the side of the couch.

  “You’re done?” Nora asked the woman.

  “I saved as much of the flesh as I could. Stopped the necrotization, healed the remaining skin. I’ll take what I had to cut over to the medical waste facility on the way out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That was the strangest injury I’ve ever seen,” the older woman said.

  “Well, heroes get into weird stuff all the time.”

  “Indeed, Nora. Say hi to your mother for me. I have places to be.”

  “Thank you again, Ms. Sparklefingers.”

  The other woman chuckled, and left. I could feel the gauze against my neck. They’d stopped my injury from becoming fatal. I hoped Jill was okay. But I couldn’t think about that. Everything about yesterday hurt. In more ways than one.

  “Nora?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” she said, putting her warm hand on my chest.

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  “Precog, remember?”

  “Right.”

  “You should sleep.”

  “Why did you come back for us? The book said you wouldn’t.”

  “I came back for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  I closed my eyes. I fell asleep.