Ride the Lightning
Arc 4.3
I ran for hours.
I ran for minutes.
I ran for seconds.
I ran in the space between seconds. My speed lets me appreciate how relative our perception of the world around us truly is. When I go fast, everything else goes slow. One might think this would be an issue for me, that having to perceive the world in such a slowed state would result in a corresponding stretching of my perception of time. A person having such a thought would only be partially right. When I am forced to interact with aspects of the world which my speed can't influence, like a computer, I do indeed feel the seconds crawl by. For the most part though, my perceptions scale with my speed.
For the most part.
At the moment, I was keenly aware of every second ticking by and of the immense gulf between them. Since I began my run I had pulled seventy one of Bakuda's implanted bombs. The range of targets painted a disheartening view of the mad tinker. They ranged in age from a girl of five to an elderly man in the Brookside Hospice. Many of the victims were of the homeless variety, scattered in slums and alleys throughout the city. Even though the schools were closed, I knew for a fact that some of the bombs I had retrieved came from faculty.
"Flash you need to leave the city now!" The voice was female with an odd accent and some kind of modulation. Even stranger, I was able to understand it while moving at speed. I keyed up my radio.
"Who is this, and why?"
"This is Dragon. I'll explain more later, but you need to get to the drop point now. In the last four seconds I've detected two transmissions would could detonate the bombs. I managed to block both of them, but we have no guarantee that I will continue to be able to do so."
Fuck.
"Copy, heading out now."
I turned towards the West and ran, doing math in my head as I went. Two detonations. Seventy one total bombs identified. Sixty eight retrieved and in my possession. One bomb left.
"Dragon I'm one bombs short. Where is the last one?"
"You don't have time…"
"And I have even less now, where is it?"
"West 23rd and Altizan."
Speeding down the road, I gave silent thanks that the week of intense gang fighting meant that the streets were relatively deserted. Twelve blocks down and five over had me coming up on a man dressed in yuppie casual. Khaki pants, a blue sweater vest over a white collared shirt with a black tie. The overlay on my HUD showed a blue aura around the man, definitely my target.
Coming up next to the man I took a relative moment to collect myself, to shift my focus inward. A week's worth of practice with this ability still didn't seem like enough. When Kid Win had first suggested my phasing might be helpful I had scoffed. In the next minute we would know for sure how it turned out. Turning my attention inward, I focussed on the lightening, the pure pulsing speed that thrummed through my veins. A million pins and needles walked over my skin as my hand became slightly indistinct. Reaching forward, I pushed past that slight bit of pressure that indicated I had penetrated something that should have been solid. The trick here was to pay attention to differences. Everything in the universe vibrates. As near as we can tell, my ability to phase through matter is a side effect of me matching my own vibrations with those specific to a physical structure, and then offsetting the vibration just enough that all of the bits of "me" pass between all of the bits of "it".
Easy right?
The hard part was next. The bomb inside of the skull, a small disk about the size of a penny, didn't belong there. It had a different fundamental resonance from the surrounding person. Sliding my hand through the empty space within the man's head, I was able to note the renewed feeling of pressure that meant I had reached the bomb. Wrapping my hand around it, I allowed the vibrations to propagate into the bomb. When the pressure vanished, a feeling somewhat like but not really like the popping of a soap bubble, I closed by hand and accelerated. In the blink of an eye the man was half a mile behind me and vanishing further into the distance as I headed out of the city and towards the drop zone.
"Flash to Dragon, don't know if you are still monitoring this frequency, but I have the last bomb. I should be at the drop zone any moment now."
There was a burst of static, then a series of breaks in the static.
... .. -. -. .-.. . / -. - - / - ... .-. - ..- -. ... -..- / -.. . - - -. .- - .. - -. / .. - - .. -. . -. - -..- / ... - .-. .-. -.-
Was that morse code?
Fuck.
I pushed myself harder, thinking fast. I knew morse code, it had been covered in Explorers during the orientation to the radios. I reached back with my mind, my running becoming something akin to a zen exercise as I focussed on the past. Dots, dashes and spaces. Short burst of static, long burst of static, dead air. Repeating.
[SINGLE GOT THROUGH]
[DETONATION IMMINENT]
[SORRY]
Panicking I opened my hand and looked at the bomb in my palm. Seventy two of seventy two, the rest of which were in the (theoretically) signal proof case on my utility belt. As I watched, the small disc doubled in size.
Fuck.
Explosions are fucking fast.
I was more than fifty miles outside of Brockton Bay. Twenty more miles down the road there was an abandoned quarry which had been designated the drop off point for this payload. I wasn't going to make it there. Up ahead was a cut off. I took it.
Leaving hardtop roads behind me, I shot down a dirt and gravel road, leaving a plume of debris in my wake. To the best of my knowledge the place I was heading had been closed for the last two seasons. Even if it were to be opened this year, no one should be there for another couple of months. The bomb in my hand had doubled again. It was becoming more difficult to run with it, some kind of field was trying to flicker into existence around the disc. I could feel the field messing with the space around it. I had to start zigzagging, leaving distorted areas of space behind me. Finally I passed the sign.
WELCOME TO KEYSTONE LAKE NATURE CAMP
I haven't been here in years. When I was here…. I hadn't been in a good place. I had been getting better, but the numbness of mom's passing…..it was still fresh. Now I blew past the cabins, through the arts and crafts areas, and down to the lake itself. I blasted over the pier, my feet leaving the wood behind and coming into contact with the water. Arcing out to the right, I began a wide circle. Taking the pouch of bombs, I threw it and the currently detonating one, up towards what would be the center of my path.
Once, twice, ten times, fifty, a hundred. Round and round I ran, churning the water under my feet, a vortex forming and the waters of the lake were forced into a whirlpool. The bomb above me continued expanding as I sunk lower, clearing an open area in the middle of the lake, walls of water rising around me until I was running at the bottom of the lake. I sprinted to the middle of the circular mud patch and began spinning like a top, sinking down into the muck. Fifty or so feet later I looked up and saw that I was out of time. The spacial bomb had expanded to an almost unmanageable size. Worse, at least some of the explosives in the case had to be going off. It was the only reason I could think of the the case to be partially glass, partially magma, while also occupying four different places at the same time.
I reversed direction and sprang out of the hole. Grabbing a broken oar from the bottom of the lake, I run up the slowly collapsing column of water and sprang across the open middle, repeating my bullet trick with currently exploding, tinker made explosives.
Mental note, hug dad when this is over.
I made as much contact with the ordinance as I could, rocketing it down into the hole at the bottom of the lake. I then shot back across the water towards the shore. As I ran I noticed a strange leeching effect. All of the colors in front of me were bleaching out, becoming more wan. I headed towards the outcropping of rocks where end of camp group pictures were taken and ducked behind them, coming to a stop as I ducked my head between my knees and covered my ears. Time resumed it's normal progression.
There was a rushing sound, followed by a roar and a strange note, like the ringing of a bell, only not heard by my ears. Instead I felt it in my bones.
Then quiet.
Poking my head out from behind the rocks I was greeted by a horrible image of mind numbing beauty.
The center of the lake was a roiling mass, with water falling up and into a black abyss before shooting out as azure crystals which caught fire shortly after leaving the darkness. The flames reached down instead of up, the smoke moving independent of the wind before making a screaming noise upon contact with the surface of the lake. Fortunately none of the effects looked like they were reaching the shore on either side of the lake.
Still, I would probably be getting a talking too from someone about this. Reaching up I tapped my radio.
"Flash to anyone monitoring this channel, bombs safely detonated."
Nothing. No response, no static, no beep. I pulled up my sleeve and checked my watch. A blank display looked back at me.
EMP.
Looking towards the center of the lake again, I allowed myself to dwell on the horrible implications within the astounding effects. Bakuda was going to, in miniature, do this to over seventy people. I rocketed away from the camp, back to the roads which would lead me into the city again.
Bakada was going to be stopped.
And I was going to stop her.
*********Authors Note*********
Happy imminent Turkey Day! Have a chapter! Not too long, have to leave room for stuffing. I should have a longer offering not this weekend (I am working this weekend), but next weekend. I won't rule out a chapter or two before then (I'm on my month of nights, so writing can help fill the time during my nights off). As always, feedback is appreciated. Also…
So I tried doing the beta thing and it didn't work out (mostly my fault, what with my weird schedule and inability to wait instead of posting as soon as I finished something). As I look towards the end of this story, I am toying with the idea of seeing if anyone is interested in doing a start to finish pass of it (for spelling, grammar, etc). I do have a couple of story ideas for when this is finished. After those I will probably come back to iron out some things here I am less than happy with (I don't want to change them now, as it would result in throwing off the forward progress).