“I’m the plan,” she murmured matter-of-factly. “I’m going to paralyze the guards. Then while all of you finish them, I’m going to deal with the collars.”
“You’re going to—” Roddric shifted. “You’re like Rose.”
“Rose is your girl out there?” Alex asked.
“Yeah. She can take any machine, no matter what, charge it up. Make it work. You like her?”
Lena made a more-or-less face. Of course, she meant more. Much more.
“You’re going to take out all of those guards?” The man who’d been holding her spoke.
“I said that, yes,” she answered, then looked at Alex. “I’m ready when you are.”
She turned and picked her way to the wall of the canyon. She peered around and marked all four guards. The men fanned out around her. If the guards turned, they’d all be seen.
She slipped a breath in, eased it out, and let her vision blur, reaching to the Dust, sharing what she wanted. The Dust raced through the men’s bodies, eager and quick.
Seconds later, she pulled back to herself and nodded at Alex and Roddric.
Roddric looked at her, then at Alex. He took a deep breath. Being told the men would be paralyzed and being willing to believe it and step out into the line of fire were apparently two different things.
She rolled her eyes, bent to scoop up a rock, and threw it at the back of one of the guards. She missed. The rock clattered past him and rolled away toward the river. Two of the girls nearest the guard looked up, startled and blinking as they shivered. The guards, of course, were still.
Alex and Jackson stepped out. She joined them, with Roddric only a step behind. His men moved in on the guards. The Council men collapsed to the ground in a flurry of metal glinting in the sunlight and four fanning sprays of blood.
Someone whooped in excitement. “She did it! She really did it!”
Lena ignored them. She had tunnel vision, moving straight to the smallest girl with her oddly canted chin. Lena smiled at her and made soft noises of comfort as she deactivated the collar. The girl’s eyes went wide when Lena reached down and fumbled with the collar. She couldn’t get the little hollow for a finger or thumb print to respond to her, so she wiggled her hand in the tight space between the collar and the girl’s neck to protect her skin and instructed the Dust to part the collar. The heat released by the Dust as it complied went a step beyond merely painful, but Lena considered it a small price to pay. She pulled the broken collar apart and tossed it to the ground. Her arms went around the little girl.
“It’s okay. It’s okay now. You’re safe.”
The girl resisted for a moment, unable to keep from looking at the nearest guard, his blood reddening the rocks around him.
“No, no.” Lena told her. “Look at me. Look at me.”
The girl brought her enormous brown eyes up to Lena.
“I won’t let them hurt you. I’m Lena. What’s your name?”
The girl regarded her for a moment. She glanced away to take in the other girls sitting near them. When she looked back, she answered in a voice so breathlessly soft Lena wasn’t sure she’d heard her.
“Missa?” Lena asked.
“No.” The voice was soft, but stronger. “Marissa.”
“Marissa. Okay. I’m going to put you down, now, Marissa. But I want you to stay right here with us, okay? We’re going to take you away from these bad men, and keep you safe.”
Marissa nodded.
Lena sank down. She knelt on the rocks and settled Marissa beside her, her back to the dying or dead man. A chestnut-haired girl was bold enough to dart forward. She looked at Marissa’s collar on the ground and pulled at her own with one shaking hand.
Lena nodded and reached out, deactivating the collar a second before she slid her hand between the collar and the girl’s skin. She separated the collar and pulled it from the girl’s neck, wincing at the oozing blisters hidden beneath it.
“Oh, Dust.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she promised the girl, “I’m going to fix those for you as soon as everyone is free. I’m going to make sure you’re okay.”
The girl nodded and slid over to sit tight beside Marissa.
Lena turned to the next, and the next, pulling off collar after collar, ignoring the painful burns she inflicted on her own hands. She tried to place hoarse and whispered names to hollow-eyed faces as she winced at the injuries beneath and around the collars. Her rage grew.
She kept it buried deep, smiling reassuringly at the girls even as she wanted to rise and go to the guards to beat them, kick them, defile their bodies for what they’d done to these girls. For what cause? Because they were different? Because they had the audacity to be born?
Lena blinked away tears of anger and frustration to stare at the ring of solemn faces around her. The men, Alex, Jackson, Roddric, and the others, encircled Lena and the girls.
Rose stood in front of her, tall and proud before lowering herself into a squat. She stood the tallest and, with her appearance placing her near Lena’s own twenty-four years, easily the oldest. She was the last of them.