I put my phone against my mouth, said, “Now. Send it down.”
I reached for the controls, and seemed to see my hands reduplicated twenty times. I sent another jolt along the central line. The air before me shivered. A thousand fractured images all whirled across my vision. I heard the pinging of the elevator bell, the sound distorted, buzzing with harmonics.
Everything went very slowly then. I turned. I saw it all with a peculiar clarity, exactly what I had to do. I was thinking faster and more calmly than I had in weeks. The elevator door slid back. Ballington must have been leaning on it. He tottered for a moment, catching his balance as I stepped from the table.
And I threw myself at him.
The man was stocky, heavyset. He was shorter than I was, and I caught him in the upper chest and neck. He fell into the open elevator and I fell on top of him. Bare wires glistened on the walls, shone on the floor, the ceiling. A flask was taped into the corner. I reached up, trying to hit the floor buttons. I couldn’t reach. Ballington moved under me. I pushed at his chest, his belly, trying to get a purchase. My hand slipped. I yelled into the phone. “Up! Call it up!”
The door began to close, then stopped, slid open. Ghirelli was there. The whole plan could have died at that point, but Shwetz was quick. Quick, tough, and vengeful.
Ghirelli never got to us.
Chapter 66
Ballington
I wasn’t much for fighting, even back at school. Did it when I had to, but that’s all.
Ballington reared beneath me, arching like a wrestler. He was a fit, well-muscled man, but the energy, the power running through his nerves—that came from somewhere else, and it would work his body to destruction if it wanted to. It would feel no pain, no loss. It could not be killed, only disabled. And this was what I’d taken on: here, in this tiny elevator carriage. Trapped with it.
I smashed my fist into his face. He lunged forward, his teeth snapped down, and I just pulled my hand away in time. I pressed my forearm on his neck. I tried to get my weight on it, but he shifted under me, easily maneuvering me, keeping me off balance. His hand clawed at my upper arm. There was a smell of cooking meat.
His hand sank in my flesh. I felt it burn. I felt it roast.
Then Angel hit the power.
The wires screamed.
My calf cramped up. I yelled out. Ballington was hurt as well. He was under me, and caught the worst of it. He let go of my arm, taking the skin with him. Shreds of tissue smoldered on his fingertips.
He rolled over. He got into a crouch, ready to stand. I pushed myself away from him. The elevator jerked. The door slid back. I couldn’t walk. I fell out, rolled. Then Angel grabbed me, dragged me free.
“Again,” I told her. “Hit him.”
I slapped the floor, trying to ease the torment in my arm, my leg. I pushed my toes down, stretched the muscle. “Again,” I said. “Again—”
She didn’t look at me. She was good: she didn’t get distracted. Not for anything. She was back at the control box—and not working the fourteenth floor, as I’d let everybody think; working the elevator carriage.
Ballington shrieked. He scrambled back into the corner. He’d seen the flask. He scuttled like a spider, shrinking from it. But he couldn’t leave. We’d got him. If we were lucky— “Again!” I said.
She was ahead of me. She pumped it, and he roared, a horrible, inhuman sound, the sound a hurricane might make inside a human larynx.
Somebody was beating on the stairwell door.
The door was locked. I only hoped it held.
Ballington shook. His limbs twisted. His head went back. It was as if the bones had melted in him. He flowed, he writhed. He pushed against the walls. He eased himself up, seeming to stretch out, long arms sliding from his suit sleeves, reaching for the power lead.
Angel saw it, shot another blast through him.
Then the lights blew out.
In the gloom, we could see him, crouched there in the middle of the carriage, suddenly still.
He whimpered.
He cried—not that awful, elemental sound we’d heard a moment earlier. Now he was weak, and quavering.
“Please—”
She blasted him again.
He huddled there. He moaned.
My cramp had eased. I pulled myself onto my feet.
She said, “I got him.”
“Ease off,” I said.
His breath came, rasping like a saw through timber.
“I got him!”
“You’ve done great. Don’t kill him, please. I want to finish this.”
She hesitated for a moment. Then she stepped aside.
I’d thought of saving lives. Being a nurse, a doctor or a paramedic. I’d never thought of this. I pulled back on the power. I saw the tension dropping out of him. He slumped down on the floor, and his long, strained breaths became a rapid panting. I remembered poor, frail Melody Duchess. This was different, but in my head, they seemed to overlap, as if whatever I did now might somehow undo what had happened to Melody, send the days and weeks into reverse, time rushing backwards, helping me unsee, unfeel.