Good Evening, All -

This story, Inviolate, will be the third one I post to FF. It is complete. I finished it in 2006, printed off a few hardcopies (bound) for friends, and it has basically languished ever since. My goal, if you want to give such a slight velleity that term, was to send hardcopies to Brad Bird and Sarah Vowell as a (very) small 'Thanks' for the (ahem) incredible job they did with the movie. That never panned out. Apparently you can't send unsolicited manuscripts, EVEN if it is being done merely as a gift, and EVEN if you don't expect any further contact with the celebrity in question. I was informed that I would need to hire an agent, put the story in galley-proof format, and let the agent 'pitch' it.

What, is this baseball or publishing? Geez.

So I didn't hire an agent and Mr. Bird has no idea that I exist. I'm okay with that.

As I noted, this story is complete. However, I will be posting it one chapter at a time, every day or two, because I'm an Evil Bastard ™ ... and I like to give readers the opportunity to speculate on what may or may not happen. So it'll be a couple of months before the Epilogue hits FF.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: The supers known as the Incredibles (Bob Parr, Helen Parr, Violet Parr, Dashiell Parr, Jack-Jack Parr), the NSA, Rick Dicker, Syndrome, and all other references to the Disney/Pixar movie The Incredibles are copyright by and the sole property of Disney/Pixar. This story (Inviolate) has no connection to Disney/Pixar or Brad Bird or any of the (awesome) creative team that conceived them. The plot line for Inviolate and all other incidental characters are the property of Clint McInnes (Concolor44) and are copyrighted as such. These characters, and this story, may not be reproduced in any form without the written (WRITTEN!) consent of the author. As it goes with Disney, so it goes down here on Earth.

And now, without further obfuscation on my part,

INVIOLATE

Prologue

Since the events documented by the National Supers Agency ca. 1975 concerning the repatriation of supers into North American society, and especially since the activation of the team known as "The Incredibles", or "Team Incredible", the cultural bias against supers had undergone a sea-change. Initially, the public at large was wary of a return to the era of free-wheeling super-battles in our major cities – and the concomitant incidence of extreme property damage – but by 1980 every opinion poll conducted showed an overall high level of confidence in those supers who had decided to rejoin the NSA. As a result, the various pieces of legislation that had been passed banning their activities were repealed or overturned, and the supers were able to operate as freely as any other citizens, provided they had signed on to the Agency.

Of course, those supers who disdained working with the government were on their own from the standpoint of liability, and it wasn't very long before the few holdouts either came on board or retired from full-time hero work for good. On the other hand, that small minority of the "normal" populace who still deemed the supers a threat became ever more vocal, and ever more willing to forego proper channels in their fight to keep them out of the public square.

Nevertheless, with the NSA taking a larger role in directing the missions of the supers, they realized a high degree of success through the program. Better still, the supers stayed busy enough to keep even the most enthusiastic of them satisfied.

Hollywood once again started producing films that featured supers; and though hardly ever was a super in a starring role, they were almost uniformly depicted favorably. A few of them landed endorsement contracts, some were featured on late-night talk shows, and one enterprising super even got her own weekly variety show for a while. Gradually, the country settled into an easy routine. Major airline or shipping disasters became a thing of the past. Violent crime statistics dropped significantly, and stayed low. Over time, the prison population declined to less than two-thirds of where it had stood in the late 1960's, court backlogs were rare, and the continent enjoyed a period of brisk prosperity.

The situations in other parts of the world, however, varied widely. In a few countries, most notably certain of those under totalitarian or dictatorial rule, supers were outlawed completely, and executed (if possible) when discovered. At the other end of the scale, in countries such as Australia, Brazil, India, and South Africa, the supers never fell from grace in the first place, and enjoyed something of a celebrity status with the rest of the inhabitants. The balance of the planet fell between these extremes, from uneasy to complacent.

The North American Union consists of The Canadian General Commonwealth, The United States of America, and the Republic of Mexico. They had merged shortly after World War II into a coalition government. The military arms of all three nations were combined, updated and streamlined, and currently represent one of the two most powerful such forces on Earth. The other is the People's Army of the Union of Soviet States.

The Union, or as they sometimes prefer to be called, the Soviet, a group of Asian and Eastern European nation-states that fall under the general hegemony of the Republic of Russia, came into being in the second and third decades of the century, largely due to the efforts of Vladimir I. Lenin, a super with the power of mass persuasion and a powerful ego to match. However, he managed to topple the monarchy, form the vast, new government and get most of the populace to accept it without undue bloodshed, so as far as coups go it was fairly benign.

The central government of the USS is an autocratic one, and private property under this regime is a privilege typically reserved for those in power. The State owns the vast majority of the land and all electrical power generation facilities, and controls the media, the education establishment, health-care, the distribution of commodities … in short, most of what the people need to get along. This program of centralization could have worked a lot better than it did. The frequent shortages gave rise to a large and well-organized black market, which, in turn, led to the proliferation of criminal syndicates to control it. The local crime syndicate is the de facto ruling body in many of the member States, and some of them do a surprisingly good job of it. It must be said, though, that most of them don't.

On two occasions (in 1939 and in 1952) there were general uprisings, resulting in the government backing down and granting greater autonomy to the member states, and greater individual rights to the citizens. In both uprisings, those behind the reform movements were supers. That did not escape the notice of those in power.

During the late 1950's the leaders of the USS came up with an arrangement with their own supers that was modeled loosely after the North American setup, with the caveat that all of them, without exception, were agents of the central government through the Soviet Bureau of Supers (Советских Супер Контора, or CCK). By 1971 the last holdout had joined, and the CCK was the government's organ of choice when a difficult task needed doing.

While relations between the NAU and the USS had never been what one could call cordial, they had a healthy respect for each other's abilities and armed forces, stayed out of each other's business (more or less) and had maintained a tacit agreement not to send their supers into the other's "personal space". However, in the mid-1980's a series of events took place that involved the supers, and that brought these two governments – and the rest of the world – to the ragged edge of total war.

. . .

. . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . .

Chapter One

The warehouse was an unassuming structure, no more or less noteworthy than any of the hundreds of others in this section of the city. As with all port areas of any size, San Francisco and its associated communities contained scores of districts that served as break-of-bulk points, where cryptic, rusting cargo containers might be stacked six or eight high, awaiting disposition into one or more of the wide, low buildings that stretched off into the night, past vision.

The view hardly ever changed. To those who worked here it was all quite dull; every day, every shift melted into the next, the hum-drum, monotonous coming and going of huge pallets and boxes whose contents they hardly ever examined, and cared about even less. The only time anyone ever paid any attention to one of the warehouses was when something had to go in one or something else had to come out. Otherwise, like the workers themselves they remained faceless and unknown, nothing more than background noise in the drab, dreary, repetitive life of the docks.

Understandably, there were those who saw this arrangement as an advantage; those who needed this sort of anonymity; those with something important to hide.

As it hadn't rained in quite some time, dust had accumulated around this warehouse, as it had all over the city: dust and pollen, leaves and bits of litter that blew along and collected in corners wherever they happened to be. If some very observant person had been looking in just the right place, and looking for just the right telltales, he might have noticed the dust scuffing up in a line of tiny clouds from a concertina-wire-topped fence over to the building's wall, or the thin, black wafer that seemed to bob and hover in the air a meter and a half above them. But while it was true that this particular warehouse had an inexplicably large number of armed guards patrolling it, and was better-lit than most, the shadows, and their own ignorance, kept them in the dark.

Violet paused, leaning against the side of the building and listening. She pressed her head lightly against the wall and picked up the mechanical whine of high-speed machinery and a deeper, subsonic thrum that told her what she needed to know. Touching one fingertip to the black disk, she whispered, "Mark one secure. Bogey positive." The shorthand of familiarity, built up slowly over the ten years the family had functioned as a team, rendered further explanation redundant. Not to say that any of them had grown complacent, but they were very comfortable with each other now.

Her mother's voice sounded tinny and distant in her ear, a side effect of the encryption routine. "Roger. Proceed to mark two."

Violet moved carefully along the base of the long wall, came to the rear corner and turned left into deeper shadow. About a third of the way along the back wall she came to a large enclosure. Steel-walled, and maybe eight or ten meters square, it nestled up against the main building, and was warm to the touch; to the invisible girl it couldn't have been more plainly a powerhouse if the word had been stenciled on its side. She took stock of her position, checked both sides to find the darkest corner, and knelt there, leaning against the wall. She touched the disk again and said, "Mark two positioned."

"Copy that."

Inside the warehouse, a bored guard thought he noticed a yellow flickering on the console in front of him. He sat up and looked closer, but it had stopped. He rubbed his eyes and gazed intently at the array of warning lights. It was probably nothing, but it wasn't worth his job to ignore it, just in case.

Outside, Violet waited a bit while an armed duo on patrol strolled past on an overhead walkway. Keeping an eye on the retreating figures, she extended one finger toward the powerhouse wall and concentrated. A nearly invisible line of force sprang into being, dim even in the darkness here, and ending some ten centimeters from her unseen glove. She pressed it into the solid steel, meeting no resistance to speak of, and moved it slowly in a roughly triangular path, the longest side right at ground level. When she got back to where she'd started, she let the field wink out and pressed gently on the cut section. It resisted. She waited until the two guards rounded the corner and tried again. The wall had been thicker than she'd anticipated, and it took a good shove to get it to move. Once it broke free, though, it wasn't that hard to push it into the room and off to the side. Violet was stronger than she appeared. She snaked into the room and looked around.

Sure enough, she could make out a bank of huge transformers in the gloom. Several large conduits passed through an opening in the warehouse wall, letting in what little light there was. She felt along the common wall and found a small door, locked as she shortly discovered. As the door opened in toward her, it was the work of but a moment to cut the latch off. She eased it open and peeked inside.

The light was quite bright in the building proper. A row of what looked like large, upright storage tanks of some kind stood only meters away, and blocked her view of most of the warehouse. She slipped through the door and pulled it back in place, then crept over to stand between two of the tanks. Noticing a ladder nearby, she cautiously ascended the three long flights to a narrow mezzanine, little more than a catwalk that ran along the rear of the building. The view was much better from there, and she gasped as she took in what she was seeing.

The warehouse was at least two hundred meters wide and half again that long, a single, vast open space. All the windows had been painted over, black and opaque, and from the outside it looked all but dead. Many of the truss beams overhead were fitted with cranes and hoists, and two were busy carrying large pieces of equipment from one place to another. Teams of technicians swarmed over an immense mechanical structure that occupied at least a third of the available space. Peering around keenly, she finally spotted her real objective: off to the right, on the same level as the mezzanine where she stood, was situated the master control booth. She could just make out the glow of CRT's through the windows.

She touched the disk. "Mark three located. North wall midpoint, near the roof."

"Roger. Source reallocation commencing."

This time, when the yellow indicator flashed, the guard immediately stabbed the button below it. "Gotcha!" He grabbed the transceiver from his waist, and spoke into it rapidly.

Violet crept along the mezzanine as quickly as stealth would allow, making it to the corner and about halfway down to the control room. She spotted another patrolling guard as he came up a set of stairs and headed her way, considered briefly whether to take him out now or let him pass, and decided that it was unlikely he would have to report in anywhere before things got really interesting. She glanced around briefly, noting the building's framework. The massive I-beams that supported the roof were about a meter and a half across where they met the trusses, and there was easily enough room in one to store an unconscious goon where he'd be out of sight. She looked back at the guard. He had a holstered side arm, but nothing heavier. Nodding to herself, she judged the distance and concentrated.

Two things happened simultaneously. A pair of small, dimly-glowing spheres appeared just beyond the guard; and he put a hand to his ear, started at what he heard, and went for his gun. By the time the spheres impacted on either side of his head, he had drawn his pistol. He crumpled to the steel treads, out cold, but his weapon flew out of his hand, just nicked the edge of the mezzanine, and fell the ten meters to the floor. He must have been carrying it "hot", because it discharged on contact. The report was unbelievably loud.

"Crap!" Violet touched the disk. "We're compromised! Let's get this show on the road."

On the security console, a different light came on. The guard on monitor duty jumped noticeably, punched the associated button, and rattled off another set of instructions into his communicator.

Almost every one of the techs crawling over the colossal machine was wearing hearing protection of some kind, but to a man they turned and looked over at the wall. Violet jumped over the unconscious guard, leaving him where he lay, and raced the rest of the distance to the control booth. Behind her, a high-intensity spotlight flashed onto the area she'd just vacated. Several uniformed men, armed with automatic carbines, raced to converge on the spot. At that precise moment a large bulldozer came hurtling through the wall treads-first, below and to the other side of the control booth. It mowed down a handful of guards and smashed into the side of the monstrous, humming contraption, which immediately began to spit sparks with great enthusiasm.

As the building shuddered under the impact, Violet "suited up", a force field snapping into existence right over her skin and outlining her slim form in a dim sparkle. She focused on the door, wedged a narrow field into the crack on the handle side, and then expanded it suddenly, crumpling that portal into a twisted mess. She leapt through the opening into a hail of automatic gunfire.

Inwardly she sighed. Some things never seemed to change. These guys were so predictable.

She cocked an ear and grinned as she disarmed the four men in the booth. A high-pitched whizzing sound had begun to reverberate around the building, accompanied by the odd smack, thud, crash, or cry of pain. That would be Dash, probably collecting weapons.

She caught the four gunmen in a single field, and then compressed it until they looked like a Chinese puzzle. The squished mass of men she floated off to the side as she studied the control panels laid out before her. The odd heavy thud and resounding crash distracted her, and presently she glanced up at the action in the warehouse, noting with some concern that the fight seemed to be getting pretty hot on the far side. Crouching out of sight, she eased the field down from around her head and touched the disk behind her ear. "Mom? Can you get in here yet?"

"Yes. Hang on." There was a smacking sound and a bit of static. "Be there in four … three … two …" Elastigirl's upper body popped up in front of the booth. She shot an arm over to the railing at the mezzanine and did a round-the-corner slingshot move to end up next to Violet. Squinting a little at her daughter's tenuous outline, she asked, "What have you got?"

"Nothing I can make any sense of. Take a look."

Helen studied the unmarked displays and monochromatic banks of knobs and dials. "Blast. This stuff wasn't mentioned."

"You'd think they'd at least have the courtesy to label the 'OFF' switch."

"They do not," her mother replied, "teach deportment at the International School for Mad Science." She glanced over at the glowing ball of unconscious bad guys. "You planning to leave them in there until they ferment?"

Violet grinned. "Oops." She blanked the field, and the four sprawled in an untidy heap on the floor. She looked back out into the warehouse. "How's Dad doing?"

"Great, so far. He said his back was feeling good today." Helen worked her fingers under the edge of one panel and ripped the cover off, then started poking around in the wiring. "This'll take me a minute or so, Honey. Why don't you go see what you can stir up out there?"

"Suits me." She jumped for the doorway, but no sooner had her boot touched the catwalk than the entire building shook violently. She had to grab onto the rail to keep from being pitched over. It lasted less than two seconds, but then a stubby spike at the top center of the huge machine began to glow cherry red. The ominous thrumming that had been in the background all the time stepped up in both period and volume. She stuck her head back in the room. "Mom? You do that?"

"Umm …" She had a worried look on her face. "… maybe. I may have tripped a failsafe." She pointed at a large meter prominently displayed on the wall. "Look." The meter was color-coded, fading from blue at the bottom, through green and yellow to orange. An indicator arrow that had been resting comfortably in the blue had jumped to the middle of the green band and was climbing.

"Uhboy."

"Better get going, see if you can cut it off from out there while I try …" Someone's automatic rifle knitted a line of spidery impact cracks across the glass front of the booth, and Helen ducked back down, shouting, "Get him!"

Violet saw instantly where the fire was coming from. She raised an arm in that direction and a force sphere bloomed, enveloping him. His bullets ricocheted around inside the ball very briefly, then stopped. She let the field go, and the erstwhile gunman slumped lifelessly to the floor. She turned back to her mother. "Okay, Mom?"

"I'm good! Get going."

Violet jumped the ten meters to the floor, using a small plane of force pressed down against it to control her descent, and landed lightly. She raced off toward the far side of the machine, from whence came the fierce sounds of a small war.

Mr. Incredible had ripped the pusher blade off the Caterpillar he'd tossed through the wall, and was using it as both a shield and a flyswatter. It performed well in either capacity, but the majority of the enemy combatants that remained had holed up in a series of armored rooms along the machine's base. Dash had managed to disarm and incapacitate all of the ones who'd originally been stationed on the other side, but these had taken cover before he found them. He rounded up as many of the technicians as he could get to before they scurried off into their holes, knocked them cold, and tossed them into a dumpster near the entrance. Now he was racing around over the machine's top surface, looking for some way inside. As yet, he'd found nothing.

When Violet came shooting around the corner, propelled to a speed of better than fifty klicks by her judicious use of force planes, she took the situation in at a glance. Most of the heavy fire was coming from a bank of rooms maybe eighty meters away. They couldn't see Dash to aim at him, so her father's makeshift shield was taking the brunt of the punishment. She formed another plane and shoved it hard against the floor, launching herself in a forward arc toward the top of the machine. Once there, she dropped her invisibility and looked around for Dash, spotting his space-black-and-silver costume immediately, and calling to him. He heard her and zipped over.

"Hey, Vi, can you get through this stuff?" He tapped the heel of his boot on the obdurate metal surface on which they stood. "All I need is a way in, and those guys are toast."

"You sure of that?"

"Oh, yeah. Lamest bunch of amateurs you ever saw, popgun-wise. Three of 'em shot their own men, trying to hit me."

"Okay." She indicated their immediate surroundings. "This spot do?"

"Good as any."

She nodded, and a ring of force appeared. With no need for stealth, she had a man-sized opening done in seconds. The now-loose piece of metal fell down inside the machine with a clang. Dash followed it instantly.

Her ear-piece came to life. "Violet, the indicator's up into the yellow zone."

She touched the disk and said, "Right," and then looked up at the glowing spike. It was very obviously brighter, and its outline had become hazy with a weird distortion, something similar to the heat waves that can be seen hovering over desert roads in high summer.

The gunfire from below diminished, and in a few more seconds stopped entirely. By the time she landed next to her father, Dash had opened one of the doors in the side of the machine and come running out with an armload of weaponry. He dumped it in a pile against the wall and ran over to the other two.

Bob dropped the 'dozer blade to the floor and asked, "How's your mother doing?"

Violet shrugged and said, "Could be better. She thinks this thing's about to blow, or fire, or something."

"Well that's just great." Bob's reply had a distinctly wry flavor as he shook his head and worked one shoulder around. "Guess we'd better start ripping out its innards, then."

Dash nodded agreement. "I saw some corridors leading deeper into that thing. I think I can …" His words were cut off as the ground suddenly jerked, throwing all three of them off their feet.

As they were jostled back and forth, their father said, "I don't think we have time for that now." He turned to Violet and asked, "That spiky thing must be some kind of antenna or transmitter or something. Can you get a field under it?"

"Think it'd be safe?"

"Safer than doing nothing."

She touched the disk. "Mom, I'm gonna try cutting that spike thing off from the rest of the machine."

Helen's voice clearly telegraphed the strain she was under. "Go for it. I can't think of anything better."

"Okay. You'd better get moving." She looked around at Dash. "Make sure Mom gets out. You know how stubborn she can …" But she was only addressing the space where her brother had been. She stood, turned to face the behemoth, and held her arms up, palms toward the glowing spike. The stance was not at all necessary to generate the field, but occasionally it did help her to focus.

How big to make it? How much of the thing would she have to separate in order to disrupt its function? Should she simply slice it in half? Her mouth twisted in a grimace of frustration. The ground flopping around under her didn't help her concentration one bit, and there was just so much about this threat they didn't know! Helen's source had indicated that it was some kind of earthquake-making device, and that it might represent a danger to the entire state. Considering how the ground under her was trying to teach them all how to samba, she could well believe it.

Her father stood behind her now, steadying her, his big, reassuring hands gripping her waist. She glanced back and up at him with a smile and a quick "Thanks" and then she flipped that secret switch in her head and sent a plane of force flowing toward the ominously radiating device.

The edge of the plane met the machine some four meters below the base of the – well, she couldn't help thinking of it as an antenna – and bit, sliding deeper, parting it like a glowing wire through wax. But the farther it went, the harder she had to shove. Her brow furrowed in puzzlement, then in the strain of concentration. This didn't make any sense! Normal matter of any type had been no kind of barrier to her fields in years. A granite boulder or a titanium airframe was no more difficult to slice than an equal amount of warm butter. But something was certainly resisting her efforts!

She quickly began to sweat, then to pant, as her heart raced and her vision blurred with the exertion. It was like swimming through molasses with weights on each limb. Fire and ice played up and down the length of her body. She felt alternately light-headed and then heavily weighted down. Something was different about this, different and very wrong. It was as if …

Then suddenly she was through. The terrible pressure lifted, and she had passed whatever the obstacle was. She realized her father was calling her name over and over.

"Yeah … I'm okay, Dad." She shook her head. "Things really got weird for a minute there …"

"But it's still … doing whatever it was doing!"

She looked back at the machine. Sure enough, even though she knew and could feel that the transmitter, if that's what it was, had been completely separated from the base of the machine, the hazy radiation hadn't stopped. If anything, it was more pronounced.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, Honey?"

"This doesn't look good."

"Now there's a news flash." He studied the scene for a few seconds, and then asked, "Can you get the whole thing in a field?"

"The whole machine? No. It's too big."

"Not the whole thing, just the part you cut off."

She nodded. "No sweat." And it was done. She adjusted the dimensions of the field to make it spherical, which severely crimped up the cut metal edges. As soon as the field closed, the quaking eased off, and in a few seconds the ground ceased its contortions entirely. And yet the antenna still glowed, still generated that hazy interference. "I dunno, Dad. It looks like we broke its contact with the ground, but it's like that thing's carrying its own power source or something. Or maybe it already got a full charge before I cut it loose."

"Can you move it?"

She concentrated on the ball and it rose a couple of meters. "Uff! Sort of. Heavy sucker! A whole lot heavier than it ought to be." She licked her lips. "Not fast, and not far, but yeah, I can move it a little." She frowned in amazement. "What the heck is it made of? There is no wayit ought to be that massive!"

"I was hoping we could get it out to the bay."

"Oosh! No, I don't think I've got that kind of juice."

They both stared at the device, noting that the hazy waves coming from the spike were all but hiding it. They'd taken on a purplish sheen as well, and Violet could feel the pressure straining against her field. She asked, "So what do we do?"

He looked down at his daughter and frowned. "This thing is supposed to create earthquakes, right?"

"That's what we were told."

"So, logically, it would have to be able to reach the ground, don't you think?"

"Yeah. And it can't right now. But if things get too much livelier in there, my field is gonna rupture and reaching the ground won't be a problem." She was sweating again.

"You remember those roman candles we played with last July 4th?"

"Huh?"

"I'm just thinking that maybe you can turn this thing into the world's biggest roman candle."

She looked at him in confusion for only a moment until the light dawned. Then she grinned and said, "You know, that's not a bad idea." Turning her attention to the field, she altered its shape to that of a cylinder, and extended the top up through the roof of the warehouse. Debris rained down on the machine. She wanted as much distance as possible before she pulled the cork, but this thing was pushing her to her limit.

Outside, Dash and Helen were standing in front of the van they'd come in, watching intently. They both jumped when something exploded out of the roof, and gaped at the sight of the cylinder of force. Helen called into her communicator, "What's going on in there?"

Bob had to answer for Violet. "She's trying to refocus this thing's energies away from the earth."

The cylinder grew.

Eighty meters.

Ninety meters.

Helen asked, "Do you think that'll work?"

"If it doesn't we'll find out soon enough."

A hundred.

One-ten.

One-fifteen.

One-seventeen.

The vibratory energies whirling and spinning around the inside of the tube made it look like some sort of demonic barber pole on speed. Through gritted teeth, Violet said, "That's … all … I can … do …"

Her father gave her a reassuring squeeze and shouted, "Let it go!"

The upper end of the cylinder opened, and the colossal pressure abated as the insistent waves of force shot out the top, leaping straight up to the sky. Violet sagged with relief and nearly fell, but her father caught and held her. "No more quakes yet. Keep your fingers crossed. And see if you can narrow that field down a little more."

She blinked the sweat out of her eyes and grinned at him. "No problem now, Dad. With no lid, all that stuff has somewhere to go." She quickly raised the top of the cylinder to the limit of her control, some two hundred meters in the air.

The view from outside was colorful, to say the least. The iridescent vibrations cascading along the tube of force made it fluoresce in every shade imaginable, and lit up the surrounding cityscape like a kaleidoscope. The weird stream shot out of the top of the narrow cylinder and impacted the scattered cloud cover with Technicolor gusto, spreading pastel ripples in ever-widening circles. All Dash could think of to say was, "Whoa."

The spike began to pulse rhythmically, flashing white every few seconds. Each flash would streak up the tube and burst in the clouds. All of this was clearly visible for upwards of a kilometer in every direction.

Helen asked, "What's it doing, Bob?"

"What can you see from your end?"

She described the interesting phenomena in the briefest of terms, and then insisted on knowing more from him.

"It's just pulsing. Looks … kinda like a … well, a heartbeat. Sort of."

"Mighty big heart."

"Yeah."

Violet interjected, "Dad! Something's happening!"

The pulses quickened into a continuous, ululating whine. The colors spiraled up through the spectrum, building in brilliance, racing past ultraviolet, until neither of them could bear to look at it.

"Can you hold it, Vi?"

"Yeah, I think so. It doesn't feel any different from here."

"I get the feeling it's about to do whatever it was built to do."

Dash and Helen had to shield their eyes as well. The cylinder was a livid purple scar against the sky, the erstwhile cloud cover entirely gone, the rippling effect of the earthquake engine's energies spreading to every point of the compass. Sirens could be heard now, converging from several directions. People all over the city were standing outside, holding one another, watching, waiting, wondering …

There was a heavy CRUMP within the force field, which bulged alarmingly, and Violet jerked in pain, screaming, "Daaaad!"

"What?"

She panted a couple of times and gasped out, "Hang on!"

The forces Violet had been negotiating with to that point merely constituted leakage, the bleed-off that resulted from its being inadequately shielded after it was cut loose from the master power condenser. The object they'd been thinking of as an antenna reached the point of maximum capacitance, a switch tripped, and the primary energy was finally freed. However, it did not, as its designer had intended for it to do, go to ground. It did not burrow into the nearby fault lines, liberating uncountable trillions of kilotons of stored tectonic energy in the form of killer earthquakes. It did not level every city within two thousand kilometers, did not slaughter untold myriads of people, did not significantly alter the shape of the coastline, and did not bring about the total collapse of the nation's economy.

But it did treat the people of the west coast to the most fantastic light show any of them had ever witnessed. Dash decided then that distance would be a really good idea, picked up his mother and made tracks away from ground zero at better than three hundred klicks.

The top end of the cylinder of force stretched and bucked and whipped around like a loose fire hose as the incalculable energies expended their fury against the uncomplaining sky. Violet's control over her ability was truly impressive, but this showed her what her limits were, in no uncertain terms. With a shriek of pain, she enveloped the two of them in the tightest sphere she could manage, and let the towering, shattering tube dissipate.

By that time there was hardly more than residual energy left at ground level, but it was enough to convert the rest of the giant machine to slag and reduce all the nearest buildings to their component splinters. The field containing the two supers squirted out of the area like a watermelon seed, flying better than a kilometer in just a few seconds.

They landed hard, and although Bob cushioned her as much as he could, she got the wind knocked out of her, but good. Hovering there at the edge of consciousness, her concentration shot, she couldn't hold the field together any longer, but by then it was all over anyway and with what perception she had left she realized it. The ghost of a smile playing across her lips, she surrendered to the blissful dark, resting secure in her father's arms.