“We've got maybe a minute before—”
“You go,” Jack said, nodding down at the girl in his arms. “And take her with you.” He was now more convinced than ever that the other three containers formed a prison. A cattle truck, where they kept the subjects for their gruesome, inhuman experiments.
“You really want to play a lottery for whom that bullet's aimed at?” Fleeter said. She was pointing up, and Jack could now see a metallic smear to the air ahead of where the flash of gunfire and smoke was blooming from high up. I'm watching a bullet travel through the air, he thought, amazed. It was just about the only thing visibly moving.
Neither of them knew whom the shooter had been aiming at.
“Damn it.”
They hurried back across the clearing towards their friends and allies, and as they reached them Jack saw a smear of blood hazing the air around the girl's face and across her chest. She was bleeding from her nose and eyes, but he had no time to help her right then. He set her gently on the road.
“Hurry!” Fleeter said. Jack glanced back and saw the silvery trace of the bullet. It was already halfway between the sniper's rifle and its intended target, and Fleeter was standing at Reaper's side. “Remember, gentle,” she said. “Just ease them aside. It'll hurt, but if you shove them over into the ground, the impact might kill them.”
“Did it kill those guards?” he asked, but Fleeter did not answer. She was guiding Reaper to one side, lovingly, reverently, and Jack had to look away. That was his father she worshipped. A man he loved, and now the most brutal person he knew.
No, not quite. That title now went to Miller.
He stood in front of Sparky and Jenna and turned to watch the bullet, tracking its path. “It's him,” Jack said. “Fleeter, it's my dad.”
“Safe now,” she said. “Kneel by the girl, flip back, make sure they see her.”
“You think we can stop this now the first shot's been fired?”
She looked around more urgently. “Can't see any more flashes. Come on. Flip.”
With a smack against the dulled air, Fleeter grew dull and motionless in Jack's vision.
He closed his eyes and did the same.
The gunshot and ricochet were deafening.
Jack gasped in a heavy breath, winded, and scooped the girl from the ground.
“Bloody hell!” Sparky said. “Where did you—?”
“We've got the girl!” Jack shouted. “And your torture doctors are dead! One more shot and the rest of you die too. Every…single…one of you!”
“Hold fire!” a voice shouted. It was electronically amplified, and Jack recognised Miller right away.
The rush of sound and input shocked Jack. The breeze against his face, his friends’ heavy breathing, the rustle of clothing, mysterious, distant noises from elsewhere in the huge container park or beyond…he heard none of these when he was flipped. I accelerate, he thought, but knew that was not quite right. He could not fully explain what he and Fleeter could do.
The girl moved in his arms. She moaned something, and whined, and blood was still flowing from her nose and eyes. She was much too light, and he could feel bones he should not be able to feel. In using her, they had also neglected her. It was so brutal that it made him want to cry, or rage.
He chose rage.
“One more gunshot, you bastards, and you'll only kill one of us!” he shouted, voice echoing from stacked containers around the clearing. “That'll leave the rest, and others you can't see. Check on your torture hole. Check it!”