Unravel (29 page)

Her spine stiffened. Her head came up. “You tell me,” she said. “We moved a
spaceship
, Lin. We shouldn't be asking what
can
we do. We should be asking which thing are we going to
choose
to do.”

Something rose, blazing, into Lin's face. Her head came up too, and she swept one look around the square. “The people attacking us—they're not in vehicles or anything, or I'd be able to feel where they were, we'd be able to do something to their vehicles.”

“What about the people themselves?” said Cadan, his voice pitched low so it wouldn't carry.

Lin cast Elissa a cautious look. “Lissa said she doesn't like me killing people. . . .”

It was true. She had said that. But right now, with Felicia's life oozing away beneath her fingers, with a square full of hurt and frightened people who hadn't done anything, who were just trying to survive in a world gone mad, she couldn't remember why it had mattered so much.

Trust me, I can make exceptions.

She nearly said it out loud before she bit down hard on
the words, forcing them back, trying to unthink them before Lin picked up on the thought. Right now she
felt
that, but she couldn't say it, not to Lin, couldn't confuse her that way. “They're trying to kill us,” she said instead. “They're not trying to negotiate or
anything
—they're just a hate group. We can let them kill us, or we can defend ourselves. And if we can only do that by attacking back—”

Lin was shaking her head before Elissa finished speaking. “But I can't see them. If I can't see them and can't touch them, I can't do anything.”

“Not even knock them out?” Cadan said. “Like on the
Phoenix
?”

Lin had done that, had rendered the
Phoenix
crew unconscious long enough to take control of the flight deck, plug herself into the hyperdrive, and make that death-wish leap that had saved them all. But now she shook her head again.

“Not without touching them. I just can't.” She was biting her lip, driving the blood from it with the pressure of her teeth. Every time she spoke she released it and the blood rushed back in, making the skin bright red, swollen and sore-looking.

“Fine,”
said Elissa. “We'll do something else.” She cast a look around, trying to crush her own rising dread. What did they have? What weapons to use? What kind of protection? Her gaze swept over injured people, and others terrified into immobility, over Spares who might have something like Lin's electrokinesis, but who, if so, hadn't yet discovered it, and weren't going to do so in time to help them now. Over Mr. Greythorn and Commander Dacre, their hands full with trying to defend the square. No one could help. It was her and Lin or no one.

She scanned the square again, and this time her gaze caught on the burned, half-melted trail across the playhouse roof, on the mothers and children sheltering ineffectually by the overturned slide. The play equipment. It was just plastic, it wasn't even reinforced with anything stronger. But what else was there? What else was there that could be used as a shield?

She'd thought it a few minutes ago, thought that they'd be better running for . . .

For the security-cam supports. Supports that were made, not of flimsy plastic, but of super-steel.

“Lin.”

Lin followed where she was looking. “What? Those things?” Then, quick as a spark, understanding leaped. “You mean we can defend the square? Long enough for the flyer to come down?”

“It's you who's the heavy lifter,” said Elissa. “Do you think we can?”

“Yes.”
Lin's voice was all emphasis. “How do we tell the flyer pilot, though?”

“Cadan?” said Elissa. “The commander—she'll have communication, won't she?”

Cadan's shoulders were no longer slumping either. He nodded, a quick jerk of his head, then shot a glance over to Cassiopeia and raised his voice. “Hey, can you keep applying pressure here while I get over to the commander?”

Cassiopeia's eyes were so wide the eyelids seemed to have disappeared. Although she was staring at Cadan, nothing registered on her face. She was looking at him, but not seeing him.

“Cassiopeia?
Cassiopeia?
” Nothing. Cadan swung his head
to where El knelt. “El, listen, I need someone to take over here. . . .” This time his words trailed off as he recognized that El was going to be no more use than Cassiopeia, and his eyes went to Emily Greythorn. He raised his voice a little. “Mom?”

It was just Emily's head that moved. Her arm stayed close around Sofia, her other hand still pressed tight against the bloody pad on Sofia's head.

“Are you safe to leave her?” Cadan said.

Emily glanced at Felicia, at Cassiopeia's fixed, wide eyes, at Elissa and Lin. “If it's vital.”

“It's vital. Felicia's still bleeding badly. If you can leave Sofia, I need you to come deal with Felicia.”

Emily withdrew her arm from Sofia's shoulders, took the girl's hand in hers, and guided it up to the pad on Sofia's head. She spoke to Sofia, quietly, her voice steady, and after a moment Sofia's fingers spread to hold the pad in place. As Emily got to her feet, though, Sofia's eyes followed her as if she represented the only safety anywhere.

Emily came over to where Felicia lay. For a moment her gaze brushed Elissa and Lin. Her expression was neutral enough that Elissa couldn't read what Cadan's mother was thinking, but all the same she thought it was something pretty much like,
What the hell are they doing, then, that stops
them
helping you?

“Mom,” said Cadan, and Emily's eyes went straight to him. “Here.”

Emily knelt, sliding her hands under Elissa's onto the folded hoodie. She didn't look at Elissa as she did so, not as if she were deliberately ignoring her, just as if Elissa was no longer relevant to what was happening.

“Mom, you need to press harder than that—” Cadan broke off as his mother shifted her hands, pressing down as firmly as he'd been doing. She slanted him a look that was very slightly amused.

“I know first aid, Cay. Go, do what you need to before they start their next attack.”

As Cadan stood, Lin put her hand out for Elissa's. Elissa reached out, then stopped as she saw the lines of her own palm, the crease at the base of each finger, the crescents beneath her nails all lined with blood. It was no longer bright, fresh scarlet, but it wasn't the unalarming color of old blood either.
It's her life on my hands. Felicia's life, Felicia who stayed on the ship with us instead of leaving like most of them, Felicia who was kind to me and told me to stop feeling guilty. Is that still what she'd tell me, now, with her blood drying on my hands?

“Lissa.” Lin's hand slid into hers, covering the blood, bringing Elissa out of the sudden onslaught of horrified thoughts.

“Okay.” Elissa turned her head to look at the nearest of the supports, feeling rather than seeing Lin do the same.

Pushing at the base of the support wouldn't do anything, wouldn't even come close to knocking it over. It was thickest at the bottom, designed so that would-be vandals or criminals couldn't knock it down to smash the row of cameras it held.
But if we push halfway up . . . And we'll have to do them one after another, as fast as we can, or all we're doing is warning the attackers what we're doing and giving them time to move from alley to alley and attack again.

She didn't realize she'd been thinking it
at
Lin until her twin's reply sounded in her mind.
Okay
.
Let's go.

If they hadn't done something very similar with the fire escape earlier, Elissa didn't think they'd have been able to
manage this at all. As it was, she didn't feel the weight of the metal in just her hands, but throughout her body. Dragging on her shoulder sockets, stabbing pain, real pain, through the muscles down the sides of her spine.
I'm going to bruise this time. This isn't just some sort of creative transference thing going on in my imagination, this is actually taking physical strength.

But they did manage it. Slowly, slowly, the breath burning in Elissa's chest, they forced the metal strip to bend.

“Now,” said Lin, and Elissa heard it like an echo, doubled in her ears and her mind. “Now.”
Now.

A whip-crack-short agony of effort, a shock of pain that sliced knifelike through her palms, and the support snapped across its base. It fell, clanging, to bounce on the ground.

After that, it felt almost easy to flip it up, push it into the mouth of the nearest alley. It went in diagonally, curving to fit along the sides of the alley, forming—not a complete barrier, but half of one.

Now another.

I know.
If Elissa had had to say the words out loud, she would have sobbed it. Her muscles were screaming, and her hands throbbed so badly she didn't dare look at them for fear she'd see her own blood welling up from her ruined, mangled palms, to mingle with the dried blood from Felicia's wound.

They moved on to the next support, bent it over and over until they could break it, stuffed it crosswise into the mouth of the alley. It was no less difficult this time, and no less pain shrieked along Elissa's nerves, making her wish for enough leftover energy to cry out, but at least this time they knew what they were doing.

The support clanged and scraped into place. There was still
a gap above and below the makeshift barrier it formed with the first support, but it meant that anyone wanting to throw grenades into the square would have to come a lot closer to the alley entrance.

Let them come closer. Let them get
themselves
shot!

For a flicker of a moment, at the very edge of her attention, she was aware that Cadan had taken over the commander's place guarding one of the many still-unblocked alleys, that the commander had retreated to the edge of one of the tower blocks and was speaking into her wrist-unit.

Then she and Lin were focusing on the next support, and the next, and the next, and she had no attention left for anything other than turning to look at one support after another, forcing the metal to bend beneath their will. No attention left for anything other than making barriers across entrance after entrance, knowing they couldn't hold forever, hoping they'd hold just long enough to allow the flyer to descend.

But after the fifth support, or maybe the seventh, or maybe the thousandth, she had no attention left for hoping that, either. She had scarcely attention left for anything other than trying to hold herself together against the pain, trying not to let it win, no longer even remembering why she mustn't give in under it. Every time she had to look at the next support, had to focus on it with her eyes in order to focus on it with her mind, it blurred and wavered before her, like something seen through a heat haze.

Eventually, after minutes . . . or hours . . . or days . . . it was the sudden storm of the descending flyer's propellers that pulled her out of the haze enveloping her. And it was Cadan's voice that pushed her into movement, half blind as she was, caught inside her own mind, lost in a blur of pain.

“Lissa, go! Run for the flyer!”

She made an automatic step, realized she couldn't see and didn't remember which direction she was supposed to be running in, and stopped.

“Lissa!”

She shook her head, trying to clear her vision, terror sweeping over her. “I can't see. Cadan? Cadan?”

Someone grabbed her arm and spun her. She reached out, almost stumbling, finding nothing to grab, and then she was running, sand and the grit of broken masonry scraping beneath her feet, her free hand out in front of her, her eyes screwed up against the fear she was going to crash straight into something she couldn't see, the terror between her shoulder blades driving her on.

Whoever was holding her slowed, pulling her to a stop. Something seemed to clear from her eyes and the sleek silver side of the flyer rose in front of her, its side door open, hands—Lin's and Ady's—reaching out to pull her in.

“Up you go,” said whoever had been holding her, and as she scrambled up into the body of the flyer, she recognized Mr. Greythorn's voice.

“Cadan?”
she said, suddenly frantic.

“He's coming. Look.” Mr. Greythorn had climbed up beside her. He put his arm around her shoulders, turning her back toward the flyer's entrance.

Cadan was running flat out across the square. There was blood on his face, his gun was still in his hand, and behind him one of the supports was just crashing to the ground. A shot zinged over it as it fell. Not a grenade but a bullet.

Elissa saw Cadan's face change as he registered the sound. He slewed sideways, then back, running in a zigzag pattern.

“Good boy,” said Mr. Greythorn next to her.

The other support clanged to the ground. There were people in the mouth of the alley—people with masks pulled down over their faces, weapons in their hands. One of them drew an arm back. In his hand an oval something gleamed dull gray.

“Cadan!”
Elissa shrieked.

The grenade flew up against the pale backdrop of the buildings, then curved, falling in an arc, horrible and slow. Cadan was running beneath its trajectory, set on a collision course with it. Time slowed. The world stopped spinning.

Cadan. Cadan, oh God, no.

The grenade hit the top of the flyer with a clang. Every cell in Elissa's body went still, waiting for the explosion to end it all.

The explosion came, thunderous, world shaking, but from behind the flyer. The grenade had bounced off it, struck the ground before it exploded.

Every last bit of strength went from Elissa's knees. She started to crumple, and Ady caught her. He pulled her away from the doorway and lowered her to the floor.