A/N Olá a todos! I'm back from Portugal and I'm very sorry that I was silent whilst I was away - Mum was fine with me using her laptop, but then we didn't have any internet connection for me to post through. Anyways, now you're getting two chapters to make up for it, so be happy. :P
Suddenly the docile, waiting crowd of Gen 77 zombie kids descended into brawling chaos; their front lines surged forwards, pushing over me like some kind of solid wave towards the others at the door. Noise erupted out of the silence that had been there only seconds before, battle cries filling the air as both wordless yells and shouted threats. I didn't have time to look back at the others before I was whaled into, a number of kids falling on me at once. Right Max, I thought, how can you fight something off without hurting it? I might as well not have worried, though, because it turned out that these things were dang near impossible to land a hit on anyway. Most of them were just so quick that they dodged anything I threw at them, but others had more unusual methods of evasion: some were clearly mind-readers, moving before I'd even gone to attack, anticipating my actions perfectly; some seemed to be made of rubber, contorting and stretching their bodies into impossible shapes to escape my fists and feet; one in particular looked as if he could actually pull his own matter apart, disintegrating before my blows could land and then re-forming right in front of my eyes as I spun through the battle.
For a while it was like they toyed with me, dancing around me as I struck out again and again, putting all my energy into moving faster, striking harder, trying to make contact. They're waiting until you've tired yourself out, I told myself. Slow down. Stop playing offence. All you have to do is get out and make sure the others do the same. By this point I'd reached the chain-link fence surrounding the complex, jostled through the crowd by their heckling jabs. I whipped around, my back against the fence so that nothing could catch me from behind, and shifted lower, pushing my centre of gravity down towards the dirt, grounding myself, making it clear that I wasn't going to waste any more energy attacking things that I couldn't make contact with. Defence mode, activated. There was a moment of surprise among my charming little group of assailants at my sudden change in style, and I had enough time to take in what was happening across the rest of the battleground: Fang twisting through the air, holding Angel close against his chest as he evaded some airborne Generation 77ers; Iggy and Gazzy up on the roof, trying to stand up against their attackers whilst making sure that Ella wasn't hurt; Star zipping through the throng, her face white; Holden pushing past anyone in front of him, not caring about the hits that were landed on his body as he made his way over to the place where Ratchet and Dylan were placed on either side of Kate, supporting her as she fought even with The General slung across her shoulders.
It's amazing how long a second can last sometimes, how much you can absorb from a scene.
My first thought was 'how are we supposed to manage this with the added weight of three people we need to protect?' Angel, Ella, and The General/my mom were hindrances, preventing the group from giving the fight their all as they dealt with having to look after someone else in the fray.
My second thought was 'where's Nudge?' I barely had time to think about what I would do to Jeb if he'd let her get hurt or, worse, turned on us again, because suddenly my time was up – my happy band of genetically-enhanced rivals was over the momentary confusion. They crowded in on me, throwing out blow after blow, and suddenly it was all I could do to defend myself against the onslaught.
A flash of adrenaline speared through Nudge's blood.
'Jeb!' she cried, not pausing to think about how much things had changed, how only a week, a day, an hour ago she might well have let him fall. The floor had collapsed, caving in on the room below, Jeb's weight acting as the last straw for the already heat-weakened structure; now he clung to a slab of flooring that hadn't fully detached, hanging down into the lower level of the building. Smoke billowed up through the gaping hole that had been left between the floors, creating a thick, black blanket around Nudge that swept into her mouth, burning her throat and invading her lungs. Moving down low, dropping beneath the level of the smoke as it rose to the ceiling, she sucked in a deep breath of half-clean air; the room was fuzzy, visibility awful, but through the shadows of the haze Nudge could see Jeb literally holding on for dear life. The space beneath him looked like hell, Nudge thought, all leaping flames and orange light that seared your eyes and made you blind even as the smoke did the same. It was a crazy, impossible combination of choking darkness and blistering light, the most horrible yin and yang Nudge had ever seen. Why did Iggy and Gazzy like fire so much?
'Jeb!' she called again, coughing.
His voice came back to her over the crackling, the popping of the flames, the creaking of the floor as it threatened to collapse even more, the ever-present alarm that Nudge thought would probably ring in her ears forever even if she managed to get out of here alive.
'Stay back! Don't come this way. Move slowly around the edges of the room and get out.'
She wanted to cry. She wanted to curl up in a ball right there on the floor and just sob, no matter if the tears evaporated as soon as they came. She couldn't leave him here, and besides, they still hadn't found the files they needed, and if she left now then what would be the point of them coming here at all? What would Jeb have died for?
She flattened herself out on the floor, trying to spread her weight as much as possible. How could she reach him without making everything give way again? Scanning the area through the smoke, breathing as shallowly as she could through her nose, Nudge caught sight of a pole lying on the opposite side of the room; a long hook used to open the windows that were placed high up on the wall. She almost screamed in frustration – how was she meant to reach it? It was placed right on the other side of the hole, and trying to get to it would probably just make things worse. A thought came to her and she stilled, staring at the pole. Those things were usually wooden, but the hook on the end would be metal, right? Her eyes dropped to her hands, her hands which could attract metal. Could she do it? She'd never tried pulling anything towards her over such a big distance, and she could feel her energy being sapped by the heat and the lack of air in the room. Focussing hard, Nudge stretched a hand out in front of her, her fingers splayed, palm facing the pole. Please let this work, she prayed, then her teeth gritted and her raised arm began to shake as she put everything she had into her magnetic power, imagining it leaving her hand as a sharp spear of energy directed straight towards the metallic hook on the opposite side of the room. It was as if time slowed down; seconds seemed to last for much longer, the flames that were still visible through the smoke suddenly didn't look as if they were flickering quite as fast, and as each moment went by Nudge became more and more desperate, more and more certain that she wasn't going to manage it. Then time went back to normal as the pole shot without warning across the room, nearly flying straight past her hand as she almost missed catching it in her surprise.
Feeling like she could've jumped in triumph – she didn't of course, that would just be stupid – she slowly picked herself up, feeling like she was being suffocated as the layer of smoke that hung a few feet off the floor enveloped her. She held out the pole, extending her arm as far out as she could, and shuffled tentatively towards Jeb.
'Jeb, grab hold!' Her voice came out about half as loud as she'd expected, rasping with the irritation of the hot smoke. He's going to have to push off from the slab he's on to get up, she thought. It won't hold under that pressure. If we don't get this right first time then he's going to fall. Jeb seemed to be thinking the same way.
'One shot, sweetie,' he called as his hand closed around the other end of the pole. Nudge stayed close to the wall, bracing herself against the more solid floor, using a large filing cabinet as a support.
'One, two, three!'
There was an almighty crash as the slab of floor broke away and fell down into the room below; Nudge felt the sound shudder through her body as she threw her weight backwards on the pole. For a moment Jeb looked suspended, hanging in the air like a stick puppet, then he was crashing to the floor, rolling quickly away from the edge of the hole as the structure gave out another groan. Suddenly Nudge felt his arms around her, bundling her up into him, and he was lifting her up just like he used to when she was younger, when he was living with them in Colorado.
'It's too dangerous here, we need to leave,' he said, and his voice was barely there, hoarse and croaking.
'No!' Nudge cried out, twisting out of his grip and moving as quickly as she dared over to the monitor. 'We need to do this, we need to find the files and deactivate the Generation 77 people and save Dr Martinez! We have to!'
Something in her voice must've told Jeb that it would be pointless to argue, or maybe he just knew that he wouldn't be able to walk away from everything without finishing the job, but either way he didn't protest to Nudge laying her hands back on the keyboard. As she worked, he moved steadily around the safer parts of the room, opening the lower windows by hand and using the hook to pull open as many of the higher ones as he could.
Then he was sitting in front of another monitor, working quickly to find the tone that would stop the Gen 77ers and save the rest of the group. If it's not too late, thought Nudge. Then she shook her head sharply, trying to clear it as her oxygen-deprived brain attempted to focus on the job at hand.
'Got it,' grated Jeb, and even though Nudge couldn't hear the tone that was being projected across the grounds, her eyes flicked quickly to the camera feed and she could see the effect it had on the children – suddenly the fighting ceased, the brawl died down. She longed to stare at the image for more time, to pick out every member of her family and make sure that they were okay, but she still had to finish what she was doing. It was as if there was a series of bolts inside her, sliding slowly away as each step was completed: one had gone when Jeb had opened the windows, letting a tiny amount of fresh air into the room and diluting the smoke just a bit; another had gone when she knew the first tone had been found. Now there were three left: find the second tone, get out, see the group safe and unhurt.
The next few minutes felt like an eternity of drumming at the keyboard and taking quick runs over to the nearest window for a gasp of clear air, but finally, finally, she found it. As she pressed the final key to activate the signal that would save Dr Martinez, the one that would end everything that had been going on since before she was born, Nudge felt as though she could have collapsed. She felt Jeb's hands on her shoulders, felt him reach past her to tap in the combination that would reverse the lockdown that she'd set on the room, and then he was pulling her to her feet, turning her around towards the exit.
A hulking, dark shape stood in the doorway.
'Surprise,' leered Not-Ari, and then he'd batted Jeb aside like a fly, swinging straight at Nudge. She barely had the strength to stand by herself, but somehow she managed to stumble out of the way of his fist. A second strike seemed to come out of nowhere, and even though she lifted her arms to try and block it, she was still forced sideways by the momentum of the blow. Then a tremendous kick sent her flying backwards, landing against the super-computer's main control board. She felt her back bend over it, thought she heard something crack, and then her body went limp, her eyes half closing; she thought maybe she'd passed out, but that didn't make sense. She could still see, could still smell the smoke, could still hear Not-Ari's words:
'Oh no, I think I broke her back,' he sneered, not even seeming affected by the smoke and the heat. 'Isn't that how my original template died the first time, Daddy?'
He turned to look over at Jeb, a horrible grin on his morphed face, but he was met by a powerful blow from the heavy wooden and metal pole as Jeb swung straight at his head. Caught off guard, Not-Ari lost his balance, spinning with the force of the hit and staggering. His foot caught the edge of the hole in the floor, and his arms wheeled wildly for a second before he tipped, dropping like a stone through the gap and into the fiery pit below. He didn't have time to open his wings.
'You're not my son,' Jeb choked out, dropping the pole and running over to Nudge. 'Nudge, can you hear me?' She wanted to nod, to let him know, but her head felt so heavy. 'Okay, sweetie, it's okay. I'm taking you out of here. It's okay, we're getting out.'
Lifting her once again, he carried her to the door, moving out into the hallway. The smoke had spread out, winding its way through the corridors, and somehow in the back of Nudge's addled mind she knew that Jeb wasn't going to be able to make it, not whilst he was carrying her. Their breathing grew weaker and shallower as the smoke took its toll, and they had only just rounded the second corner when Jeb's legs buckled.
A/N Aren't you glad that I'm not leaving it there? Ha, onwards to the next chapter! And remember to review. :D