SLAM (18 page)

THEY STAGGER INTO
a lean-to made of aluminum and plastic sheeting,
and see an old woman huddled in the corner. Well, old by slum
standards – she’s probably only thirty-five or so, but the haggard
lines ingrained with dirt ruin her face. Her greasy hair is lank
and wet, and her eyes are wild, flicking from side to side. She’s
probably flying on one of the street drugs.

They ignore her. Serena sets Abial down
gently, using the dregs of her power to guide her body, not wanting
to drop the heavy weight. The woman curses emphatically under her
breath, seeing the slight girl floating a body to the floor, and
bolts into the rain.

Serena starts after her for a split second,
realizes she wouldn’t know what to do with her even if she caught
up, and sags down onto the uneven floor instead. The lean-to
doesn’t cut out the wet and wind, but it is a kind of shelter, even
with the water streaming down the runnels in the
‘walls.’

For the moment, at least, they’re
safe.

She leans over Abial, pressing her
hand to her cheek, and communicating mentally.
Abial, hold on. Listen to me, we’ll get you out of here, it’s
going to be okay.
She tries to inject her
mind-to-mind speech with confidence, but can’t hide the edge of
panic. She wishes she’d paid more attention in the classes meant to
help you separate emotion from sending. Her thoughts are scattered
and confused, splitting away from each other like light refracting
through a prism, but she knows Abial is getting a sense of
everything she’s feeling: fear, uncertainty, misery.
Regret.

Abial shudders.
No.
She sends a wavering
image of the chopper beam finding her as she stood, poised to jump,
then heard the stuttering of zapfire that broke the air as she went
over.

Serena curses and tries to rip away her shirt,
to see the damage. As she does, she realizes that the flatpack
Abial had been wearing is gone. All for nothing. It’s gone. She
counts the noises Abial sent her.

Eight zap hits at close range. She
knows it’s hopeless, and that knowledge is painted starkly on her
face. Abial’s insides must be mush; not even a shockvest could dull
that amount of energy. Abial’s hand clutches feebly, golden faded
to willow white, and Serena’s lip trembles before she takes it in
hers. Skin to skin, their connection reignites. The pain drives a
gasp from Serena.
Please don’t.
She isn’t even sure what she means. Please don’t
hurt, please don’t go, please don’t die, please don’t leave me. She
can’t look away from the pulverized mash of body armour mangling
the torso of her oldest friend.

Abial opens her mind.
I’m sorry.
She shows
Serena Kion, starting from the very first day they met. Abial as a
twelve-year-old slum kid, and Kion a dashing young operative. He
saved her life, once, twice and she was his from that moment,
always. The following years she’d spent training, and a closeness
had developed between them. Then the raid. Damon taken, months of
watching Kion helping Serena train, looking after her, only paying
attention to
Serena,
as though Abial no longer existed. Caught up by Serena’s
intensity and purpose, dismissing Abial as a kid, not a soldier.
Not an adult.

The only reason Abial had taken the test so
early was to prove to Kion that she wasn’t a child anymore; that
she was ready to fight. To fight for him, by his side. For a while,
he’d looked at her again, seen her with those arresting, driven
eyes, shadowed with all the pain he’d never shared.

Then Serena was ready to test.

Abial shows the jealousy and hatred that built
up in her until she finally snapped, and Serena feels the roiling
emotions like they’re her own as Kion whispers, ‘She’s amazing’
over the ear comm units the defending operatives wore while they
struggled to catch her in the Arena. The words had cut Abial to the
core, laying something open she was unwilling to face herself, and
the pure pain and rage had boiled out of her, sculpted into an
image she knew would make Serena feel that pain, that
rage.

There hadn’t even been conscious thought to
it, just a bitter outpouring of jealousy and hatred. Of love turned
to dust.

I didn’t know. You never told me.
You should have
told me.

Serena bites her lip and sends memories of her
spending time with Abial, hanging out, talking, killing time and
training together, playing with Damon – all the good memories she
can muster. She winds her power into Abial’s and helps her block
the burning pain of her ground-up organs, using techniques they
learned together. She lets Abial see deep into her mind, and tries
to show her how wrong she was to suspect something romantic between
her and Kion. How the feeling between them could never be that way.
She feels as though she has been skinned alive, sharing the hurt
Abial has carried. Tears streak down her cheeks, following tracks
left by the rain and dripping to the floor.

Never?

Never.

Abial relaxes a little, sighing, eyes fixed on
what passes for a ceiling.

Sam sits down by Abial’s head and combs her
wet hair from her face, looking blank and shocked. They wait
quietly, uselessly, and soon Abial’s chest stutters and stills, her
harsh breathing catching and dragging wet in her throat, then
stopping. The silence beats down like a drum until Serena sniffs
and drags her hand roughly across her face.

“We have to go.” She sounds bleak,
even to her own ears.
I lost Abial. She’s
gone.

She watches with a strange detachment as her
hands move of their own accord, business like, closing Abial’s eyes
and removing her few personal effects. There’s a picture of Kion
and Abial playing Rizkball together, laughing. This she carefully
slips into her chest pocket, and the rest of the odds and ends are
put away without looking. She gets to her feet.

Sam grimaces and looks around. “Are we really
leaving her ... her body in that woman’s house?” His voice breaks
halfway through the sentence, and he has to clear his
throat.

Serena shrugs a shoulder and jerks her head at
the gaping hole in the hut. “I can’t carry her. I’m too weak.
They’ll find her wherever we leave her. They’ll find us if we don’t
get gone. We don’t have a choice. At least …” Her voice cracks for
a moment. “At least it’s not raining on her in here.”

She swallows, looks at the body for a long
second, and then ducks out the gap that serves as a door. Back into
the night. Sam follows her hastily, clanging something on the
entrance on his way out. She doesn’t look back.

Serena checks her wrist unit robotically and
leads them on in silence, her mind playing the evening over again
and again. She catalogues her injuries, keeping her mind veering
away from a place that threatens to collapse her. Chest: badly
bruised, but nothing broken or cracked. Manageable. Face: cut, no
problem. Knees: twisted, at least, badly. She’s limping heavily,
but has no power left to brace them, having spent the last dregs of
it carrying Abial with them. Feet: sore, bruised, but nothing life
threatening for now. The dirt of the slums is deep in her,
ingrained in her wounds and the creases of her skin. She’ll need
medicine, soon, to hold off the sickness.

She chokes back a sob as she realizes that the
place that hurts the most won’t stop hurting, no matter what
medicine she’s given. Her heart feels too big, too heavy for her
chest, like it’s pulling her down and down into the mud, dragging
her to the floor with the weight of the changes the night has
wrought on her.

The journey is a meaningless blur. When the
chopper throbs overhead, scanning for them, they duck into whatever
shelter they can, startling groups of people hiding from the
weather. Serena would prefer to leave less of a trail; her bare
feet will be leaving evidence of her passing, of her misery. She
can only hope that the rain will wash it away. But if these people
are questioned psionically, it will be easy to follow them. She’s
relying on the fact that the slumdwellers have no love for the
Watch and know how to make themselves scarce. Nobody interferes
with them; seeing the looks on their faces seems to be enough of a
deterrent.

Dawn is lightening the horizon to a paler
shade of black when Serena finally checks their position one last
time, and, furrowing her brows, raps lightly and rhythmically on
the plastic sheet in front of them. It is exactly the same as all
the sheets around it – wet and grimy, haphazardly leaning against
whatever has been scrounged up for a wall. She doesn’t feel
entirely confident in her navigation, but thankfully, a returning
knock is heard, and when she responds with the arranged answer, the
sheet moves, screeching against the rough floor. A brown hand is
visible, holding it back.

“C’mon in, kids. The weather’s terrible, ain’t
it?” The voice is so incongruously warm and cheerful in the
desolation of the slums that something inside Serena loosens, just
a little, and she squats and shuffles through the gap. Leaf
promised they’d be safe here, for now. And so far, he’s kept his
word.

She has no idea how they’re going to get home.
Their mission is well and truly blown, Abial is dead and left
behind, and she’s certain that everyone in the Institute knows her
face. The bag, with Sam’s all-important comm unit, is lost
somewhere, probably smashed when Abial was shot at the top of the
Wall. All that information, gone.

Worse, the tube is probably crawling with
Readers and Institute soldiers.

If they’re going to get back to Fourth City,
they’re going to have to go overland. And she doesn’t know how that
will work. Or if Sam will make it.

But, she knows she’s not going to die here,
like Abial did. She’s already lost her oldest friend. She’s not
willing to lose herself, too. After all, if she gets Sam home, the
information he has could save them all.

Tash
McAdam’s first writing experience (a collaborative effort) came at
the age of eight, and included passing floppy discs back and forth
with a best friend at swimming lessons. Since then, Tash has spent
time falling in streams, out of trees, learning to juggle, dreaming
about zombies, dancing, painting, learning Karate, becoming a punk
rock pianist, and of course, writing.

Tash is
a teacher in real life, but dreams of being a full-time writer, and
living a life of never-ending travel. Though born in the hilly
sheepland of Wales, Tash has lived in South Korea and Chile and now
calls Vancouver, Canada home.

Maelstrom, the first book in The Psionics, is Tash’s first
published work. Visit the
website
or
Facebook
for news,
gossip, and random tidbits about Tash’s adventures.