Temporis and electricity had a complex relationship. While one could be used to generate the other, electric current proved stubborn to most forms of temporal manipulation. It couldn’t be advanced, reversed, sped up, or slowed down. It could, however, be steered through the air with laser precision, a development that made power cables a thing of the past. It also allowed for some interesting new weapons.
The moment the invisible bolt struck the Roosevelt Man, his tempic tendril disappeared and he stumbled backward over the railing. He fell nine feet, cracking his skull on the reception desk before crumpling into a motionless heap on the marble.
Czerny dropped the chaser and examined his bleeding stomach. He knew from battlefield experience that abdominal wounds, while painful, were typically slow to kill. With the proper triage, he’d have hours to get himself to a reviver.
His legs grew weak. He teetered backward. In his feeble attempt to gain balance, his heel slipped on a patch of his own blood.
He went down again.
—
The Motorcycle Man moved faster than Hannah. He gained yards on her every time she looked back.
Their high-speed foot chase took them past the front of the building. As soon as Hannah passed the entrance, she felt the man’s cool glove on the strap of her shirt. He’d been running too fast to swing his katana. His goal now was to pull her down.
Frenzied, Hannah broke to the left, toward the green van parked in the driveway. She spied a pair of heavy boots on the far side of the vehicle, toes pointed upward. Beyond them, Erin’s freckled arms lay prone on the asphalt.
The last working piston in Hannah’s brain registered the sight as two dead Salgados, until she turned the corner around the van and saw just one woman in two places.
Suddenly her mind and limbs all quit in synch. She fell to the lawn.
The actress wriggled away on her stomach, gasping in panic. The Motorcycle Man de-shifted and approached her at a leisurely pace. His sword swayed idly in his grip.
Hannah flipped over and scuttled backward out of his shadow. “Why are you doing this? What did I do to you?”
The Motorcycle Man stood over her, pointing his blade at her stomach. All he had to do was lean in and she’d be impaled through the gut, stabbed on the grass like park litter.
It was at that moment that Hannah discovered something hard beneath her. As the Motorcycle Man leaned into his stab, she screamed into velocity. She rolled over, grabbed the rock from the grass, and then hurled it with all her strength.
It flew from her hand at 205 miles an hour and careened off her aggressor’s helmet. The visor cracked. His balance teetered. He toppled back to the grass.
Hannah climbed to her feet and lunged toward him in a furious streak, thumping his chest as he made his slow-motion fall.
“You asshole! You killed her! You cut her to pieces!”
Hannah hit him five times before he collided with the ground. On her final punch, she felt something snap inside his rib cage. She chucked his sword over the gate and then watched him writhe from a safe distance. She knew she should go inside and check on the others, but she couldn’t seem to work her muscles. A cruel little voice in her head insisted that the people she cared about were already gone. Everyone dies, Hannah. You should know that by now. Every friend. Every sister. Everyone under the sky.
The actress crumpled to her knees at the base of the fence. She wept at high speed.
—
Mia cursed her future self for not teaching her the security console. In her frantic button-mashing, she’d somehow constrained her surveillance images to the second-floor cameras—six in test labs, two in the hallway, one in Theo’s room. The former prodigy was awake and fully dressed. He nervously paced the rug with a wooden post in his hand, a leg he’d unscrewed from his desk chair. He’d been on high alert since 5 A.M. without having any idea why.
Through the monitors, Mia saw a very good reason for him to be scared.
A bald-headed gunman patrolled the hallway at a methodical pace, as if sniffing for prey. Though Mia couldn’t tell his height from her bird’s-eye vantage, he carried the thick frame of a wrestler. His sleeveless black T-shirt advertised every bulge of his powerful arms. His face was concealed by a bandana mask and sunglasses.
Mia didn’t know if he was moving farther or closer to Theo. All she could see was that his revolver looked powerful enough to shoot through walls.
For the third time, she grabbed the public address microphone and furiously hit its buttons.
“Theo? Theo, can you hear me?”
He kept pacing, oblivious. Mia cursed again.
The intruder suddenly ducked into a lab. He placed his back against the wall, aiming a vigilant gaze through the door crack. He was ambushing someone. Who?
On the second hallway monitor, Zack popped into view. Mia blanched.
“Oh my God . . .”
—