Nature’s answer to the empath.
Balance between unseeable forces, and so,so much potential left untapped…
3
Asearing heat flashed past my dangling arm. Singing the fine hairs and leaving the scent of ozone burning thick in the air.
I blinked.
Foggy and not quite lucid.
All around us, bodies. Some still uttering garbled, soggy screams. Some were quiet and still, reduced to little more than obstacles that forced Asher and Marco to step on things that squelched and crunched. Each unsteady footfall jostled me where I hung limp from his arms.
They were running. Fast as they could, despite the obstacles and the carnage and the chaos.
Another flash of vibrant, noxious green energy sailed over our heads. Illuminating the riot in a single frozen blink that refused to fade, even when I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to see what I could feel with such clarity.
It was Marco who voiced the truth of the horror. “They’re firing on civilians,” he whispered, aghast. His eyes rimmed in white as he looked back. Back toward the only branch of the military that seemed unaffected by the swirling eddies of poisonous energy rippling through the weakest minds.
The elites.
“We don’t have time,” the captain rasped. “Keep pushing. Keep moving. Get us out of here, before I lose what little control I’ve got left.”
“But—”
“I don’t care if you have to mow down a line of women and children,” the captain spat, making no effort to disguise the desperate edge to harsh words. “It’ll be less horrific than what’ll happen if I can’t stop her—”
“Please! Please help me…”
It was a woman.
Shuddering around wretched, ugly sobs as she staggered back and forth in the middle of an obliterated street. One of her legs bore the bulk of her weight, while the other… the other was…wrong.
Crooked at the knee.
She’d been trampled. Burned.
For a moment, the captain stilled. Faced with the reality of a dying woman, his breathing grew ragged, his arms trembled as he strained to hold my dead weight. Fought not to keep pushing forward as a nagging sense of duty flushed through his system. His throat clicked around a dry swallow as something twisted in his chest before it was promptly squashed. Neatly tucked away, deep inside, where I couldn’t reach it.
And then, “Can you walk?” he said. Not unkind, despite the obvious flaw in asking her to do such an impossible thing.
She couldn’t.
We could all see it.
But she nodded anyway, reaching for Marco with both hands as she shored up what little strength remained and readied herself to fight through it.
I knew, because I was with her too. Felt the hopeless courage when she pulled it tight about her narrow shoulders, as if it were a cloak that might shield her from what would come next.
A sob bubbled through my lips. “Ithurts…” I mewled, twisting away from the intense agony wafting off that ruined woman. A pain so visceral, I was driven to lift my head and look. Scowling through the burn of salty anguish as she took another step and wailed anew.
“Come’re,” Marco murmured, tucking his weapon into its holster before reaching out to her. “Take ol’ Marco’s hands. Easy, love. That’s right—”
It happened in blinding flashes.
Tableaus burned into my memory as an errant blast from an elite weapon finally landed true.
A blast that incinerated her before she could utter another helpless screech—her death was brilliant and blinding. So bright that I could see straight through her flesh to what lay beneath. The image of her contorted skeleton was seared into my memory against a backdrop of green.
