She seized the pad and pen, then scrawled what she could only assume was her final note.
I love you and I’m not leaving you. Don’t you dare think I would.
Zack closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to Mia’s. From the moment he realized he could end people with a thought, a dark new tunnel opened up inside him. He’d barricaded the entry with warning signs and cattle skulls and enough moral rhetoric to fill a synagogue. Even now he’d rather follow his brother into the afterlife than join Rebel in the dark fraternity of self-excusing murderers.
Ultimately it was the thought of Mia that shattered his obstructions and turned every red light green. He planted a soft kiss on her forehead, then steeled himself to take a path he knew was one-way only. Whether he succeeded or failed, there was no coming back from this.
Suddenly Rebel caught a fresh new glimpse of the minute to come. In his mind’s eye, he saw Zack spring out of an office cube, launching his temporis in a thirty-foot arc that would easily rift the Gotham a second time.
Unfortunately for Zack, there was a reason Rebel kept making noise, alerting his targets to his position. Now that he’d flushed out the Zack of next minute, Rebel knew exactly where the current one was hiding.
He ducked behind the corner and aimed his revolver through three cubicle walls. The future had a better story to tell now. This little bullet cracks the heart of an enemy. This little bullet hits home.
—
Hand in hand, the sisters fled across the marble, toward the emergency exit in the north elevator bank. In Amanda’s frantic thoughts, she reckoned they (maybe maybe please) had a chance if they reached the stairwell. They might even get their defenses back if they escaped the cruel Asian woman with the heavy eyeliner and the Kryptonite stare.
Twelve yards into their dash, a flying white sphere demolished the flower pot near Amanda. Colin Chisholm had ditched the knives in favor of firing tempic cannonballs. His cracked ribs screamed with blunt force trauma. He was determined to pay Amanda back in kind.
At twenty yards, the air around the sisters abruptly doubled in temperature. Ben Herrick might have roasted his targets alive if he hadn’t been hobbled by a fresh concussion. All he could summon now was a dry sauna blast, one strong enough to send Hannah stumbling to the floor.
Amanda rained sweat as she struggled to lift her. “Come on, Hannah! Please!”
A loud crack rang out from the balcony. A bullet pierced the coffee table behind them. Amanda threw a savage yell at the distant railing.
“LEAVE US ALONE!”
Mercy pulled the bolt lever of her rifle, her face streaked with mascara tears. It was only just this morning that her parents finally told her they were proud of her. Proud of her for doing this.
The gunshot scared Hannah back to her feet. The sisters ran again.
Once they reached the elevator bank, a tempic cannonball slammed Amanda’s left ankle. Her fingers flew from Hannah’s grip and she crashed onto her back.
“Amanda! What happened? Where are you?”
The widow cried with pain as she sat up to check the damage. The skin of her ankle was red and distended. Her foot pointed in a horrible new direction. Broken. It’s broken. It’s—
“Over. It’s broken. Hannah, you have to go.”
“No . . .”
“You have to go,” she cried. The temperature around them continued to rise. They could barely draw a breath. “The stairs are right behind you. Please!”
Through the murky brown spots in her vision, Hannah could see two approaching figures. It was already too late.
You were wrong, she thought to Ioni. You got it all wrong.
The actress sat at her sister’s side, their faces wet with perspiration.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “For every awful thing I ever said and did to you. I’m so sorry.”
Amanda closed her eyes, squeezing her golden cross with one hand and her sister’s wrist with the other.
“Nothing to forgive,” she creaked. “You were never that bad.”
The two Gothams reached the elevator bank. Hannah shot them a hot wet glare.
“Assholes. You don’t even know why you’re killing us.”
“We know,” said Ben Herrick, with a shaky look that betrayed his confidence.
“You know nothing,” Amanda hissed. “Just do it already.”
The young men raised their palms for a final strike, and then arched their backs in screaming pain. With a sickening bone crunch, a curved white spike burst from the chests of both men, like elephant tusks. The tempis lifted the bodies three feet into the air and then hurled them to the ground like rag dolls.
Standing tall and fierce behind her two crumpled victims, Esis Pelletier shined a crooked grin.
“Hello, Givens.”
—
The high alarm scream of Gemma Sunder filled every earpiece, making Nick McNoel wince and Mercy Lee drop her rifle. Rebel flinched in surprise as he fired his revolver. The bullet cut through two cubicles, shattering the computer screen above Zack and Mia.