“Please!” Lena didn’t know to whom she directed the imploring word. None of the men would do a thing. “Please, please, please….”
Reyes darted around Lucas to crouch beside her mother. He turned her body over, half into his lap, cradling her neck and the back of her head in one hand as he checked for a pulse. Lena stilled, her neck straining, stretched against the limits of the straps around her chest. Her breath came in harsh sobs. She stared at the slowing flick-flick-flick of her mother’s bloom.
“Put her down, Reyes.” Lucas’s command came, sharp and cold. “The protocol is three shocks in rapid succession. They’re about to get another.”
“No, they damn well are not.”
Reyes leaned over her mother, his fingers still at her throat. She stared at him.
“Do something.” The words from Lena’s throat were a thin thread of sound.
Reyes’s shoulders moved helplessly. His eyes tracked the pulse of the flickering light. He looked over his shoulder to Hernandez, ignoring Lucas. “Get a medic.”
Hernandez sighed, and Reyes half-rose.
“She’s not a criminal, she’s a citizen of this city. Get a fucking medic!”
Her mother’s dark eyes were wide and staring, only slight movement in them. Was she trying to turn them to Lena?
“I’m here, Mama.” She strained against the straps. They bit into her skin and her rigid muscles. “Please don’t go. I’m right here.”
Her mother’s lips moved. A breath of sound escaped. The pause between glimmers grew long now.
“Please fight. Mama, just fight.” Her words turned to a hoarse moan. “I can’t lose you, too. Fight, Mama. I’m here. I’ll be a good girl. I’ll do what they want.” She turned to Lucas, to Hernandez, desperate, gasping. “I will do whatever you want. Please go get a doctor. Please don’t let her die.” She strained against the straps. “Please. Please, please.” Her eyes fell back to Reyes. His head bowed in regret. He lowered her mother to the floor.
Lena stared at him. “No! She’s not gone. I can help her, Reyes. Get me off of here. Reyes!”
Her mother’s bloom didn’t pulse back. Lena could help her if she could get off the damn bed. Her mother blurred as tears rose.
She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound building within her chest caught in her throat. Her muscles slackened. Her watery view of her mother, of Reyes placing her upon the floor and closing her eyes, faded away as her body sank back. Her mouth hung open, the scream still caught, beating at her vocal cords, waiting for an exit.
She sagged onto the bed. A memory flashed into her mind: crying as her mother brushed her snarled hair. The brush caught; Lena’s breath stuttered with it. Her mother’s hands stilled as she held the snarl in her fingers and gently untangled it, urging Lena to recite the Spark’s Rede, the code that all of the Spark children learned in their earliest years. She began, voice quavering, high and pained, “I will do no harm with my power. I will follow the will and the good of those without. This gift is my virtue; My Councilor is my guide.” By the time she’d finished, the knot, and with it the pain, were gone. Her mother had told Lena many times the act of focusing on the words could keep pain at bay.
Her lips moved. The Rede came back to her, as if she were young again. The pain didn’t recede.
Lucas’s voice intruded, disgusted. Put upon. “I should have sent for the sister.”
The Rede stuttered in her mind. I will do no harm…. But they could? They could do whatever they wanted to the people she loved? No more. I will do harm. I will be free.
She focused the grief inside, rage making her immune to the effects of the current. Dust swarmed to answer her. The scream howled free. With it, white light arced across the room, seeking the men. Her electric-coated shriek of rage and grief released something within her. She convulsed, her body arching up in a corona of white light that flashed up and across with a concussive boom of sound that drowned her out. It sucked away her breath, and her voice died, the electricity following it back, crackling away into nothing.
When her eyes fluttered open, the windowless room was dark. The brilliant after-flare of the branching white heat etched her vision, glowing in the black. From somewhere nearby, a metal fixture squeaked as it swung. Voices shouted from outside. Someone banged at the door.
No sounds came from inside. She pulled her body up to the right, trying to roll to the limits of the straps, but they didn’t hold. As her body pressed against them, the leather cracked and fell away from the buckles with dry pops and faint metallic tinging. Waiting for the pull of the taut, thick restraints, she rolled up and almost off the bed. She caught herself with one shaky hand.
She leaned her face over the edge, vainly searching past the vivid memory of light into the darkness below. Her mother was down there. She’d freed herself to go to her mother.
“Mama?” It hurt to make even the faint, hoarse sound she managed.