hit me.
“What the hell?” Ethan asked. “Anyone hurt?”
“Fuck, yes!” Bethany whined from the back. “Shit.”
“We’re okay up here,” Teresa said. She tried to angle back to see us, her face half hidden by a curtain of purple-streaked hair. “You guys?”
“Okay,” Thatcher said, just as I said, “Peachy.”
“Did something hit us?” Ethan asked. “Landon?”
“I’m not sure,” Landon replied in a shaky voice. “It was like we hit a ramp or something, only nothing was in the road.”
“We need to get out of the car,” Teresa said. “Right now.”
Ethan undid his seat belt first, then landed on the ceiling in an awkward pile. He shoved at the door while I unbuckled and executed a much more graceful landing, thanks to my flexible limbs. After Teresa righted herself, she blasted through the frame of the passenger door with a couple of orbs. In less than a minute, everyone except Bethany was out of the Sport. That’s when I took note of our path.
A few cars had stopped along the turnpike above, and several people were watching us, at least two on their phones. I rubbed at my sore neck while I turned in a circle, positive we weren’t alone. Teresa was doing the same, ignoring a cut on her forehead that was oozing blood down the center of her face toward her nose.
Landon and Thatcher went around to the back of the Sport. Together they got it open and pulled Bethany out into the grass.
“Let’s go to their HQ, he says,” Bethany whined. “It’s a good idea, he says. My big fat toe, it’s a good idea!”
“Can you walk?” Landon asked.
“Yes, I can fucking walk, you jerk. Where do you want to walk to, exactly?”
“Do you guys feel—” Ethan started to ask.
Landon cried out as he was flung through the air, only to be caught by a big, well-muscled man in all black, standing a good twenty feet away.
The Recombinant clone referred to by us as Sledgehammer held Landon by the front of his shirt. The whirlwind that followed Landon’s sudden flight across the field came to a halt next to Sledgehammer—the Jasper clone.
Teresa raised both hands into the air, each one glowing with an orb. Ethan pulled the wind in around him. I stood beside them, wishing I had my damned gun. I’d been pretty useless in the first fight with the clones, and I didn’t see myself faring much better today.
Thatcher prepared to charge. I grabbed his arm and yanked him back with a terse, “Don’t.” Sledgehammer could snap his neck without thinking.
“Well, well, well,” Jasper said. He wore a patch over his left eye like a wannabe pirate. “We meet again. Some of us.”
“If you wanted to talk, you could have called,” Ethan snapped.
“And spoil the surprise?”
I didn’t see the heat blast as much as felt it charge past me, a concentration of hot air unlike anything I’d ever felt. Jasper moved just in time for Bethany’s shot to soar past him and hit a small tree that instantly burst into flames. Sledgehammer spun and threw Landon like a human shot put, sending Landon right into the burning tree. He hit with a scream and a thud.
Teresa fired her orbs. Both caught Sledgehammer in the knees, and he toppled over. Then Teresa went sailing sideways into the grass—Jasper, the speedy little bastard. Ethan caught him with a wind wall, which got Jasper to slow down to normal speed long enough for Thatcher to tackle him.
Useless in the actual fight, I yanked a blanket out of the back of the Sport, then raced toward Landon. The smell of burning wood filled the air. Smoke made my eyes sting. Landon had rolled away from the tree and was slapping feebly at a spot of fire on his pants leg. I draped the blanket over him and smothered the last of the flames. His face was streaked with ash, both cheeks red but not quite blistered. I moved the blanket to take stock of his injuries, aware of the fire nearby.
The sounds of fighting continued behind me, but my senses zeroed in on the scorched fabric on his left arm and the red, weeping flesh beneath. The arm was badly burned from wrist to elbow, but nothing else that I could see from the front. Tears streamed from his eyes, and he was gasping for air—not good.
“Gonna roll you over a little,” I said. “I need to see your back.”
Landon nodded, and in that moment, he didn’t seem eighteen. He didn’t look older than twelve, and my heart broke a little bit for him. He was just a kid, and he was suffering and scared.
And he was about to suffer a little bit more. I slid my arm beneath his shoulders and lifted. Stretched my neck out enough to get a look at his back. The shirt was burned in several places, the skin blistered all over. Worse, though, was the piece of tree protruding from between two ribs on the left side. Cold fingers crept up my spine. The wound wasn’t bleeding heavily, but God only knew the damage it had done internally.
“Landon!”
Thatcher skidded to an ungraceful stop next to us, then dropped to his knees hard enough that I heard one crack. He had a red mark on his temple and another under his right eye. I looked past him. Teresa, Ethan, and Bethany were together by the Sport, all three a little frazzled and grass-stained. The clones were nowhere in sight.
“Did we lose again?” I asked.
If a thumbs-up could be sarcastic, Ethan managed it.
“How bad is it?” Thatcher asked.
“He has a piece of shrapnel in his back,” I replied.
“Hurts to breathe,” Landon said on a wheeze. “Want to cough.”
“Don’t cough,” Thatcher said. He cupped Landon’s jaw in the palm of his hand, his face a study of fierce determination. “You might have a punctured lung, so don’t cough. Try not to move.”
Landon blinked his understanding.
“He needs a hospital.”
“If he goes to a hospital, they’ll arrest him,” Bethany said. The others had gathered around. She looked battered and tired, but she was on her feet.
“If he doesn’t go, he’ll die,” Thatcher snarled.
“No hospital,” Landon said. “Please. Dad.”
Thatcher wilted. “I can’t let you die.”
Ethan crouched next to me. “I can try flying him back to HQ.”
“Can you fly that far with another person?” Teresa asked.
“I haven’t tried this kind of distance before, so I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.”
“What about the wood in his back?” I asked. “What if it shifts during flight?”
“Take it out,” Bethany said. “I’ll cauterize the wound so he doesn’t bleed to death.”
Landon groaned, probably having the same mental image I did of her searing his flesh with her powers.
“I don’t know—” Thatcher said.
Landon grabbed at his leg with one hand. “Please. Let her. We’ll fly.”
Something in the finality of his decision snapped the rest of my world back into sharp focus. I saw the burning tree, smelled the burning wood, saw the burnt skin. Tendrils of dread curled around my spine and into my stomach, pulling everything tight. I scrambled away from it all, my eyes blurring with tears. Everything around me was on fire, and I had to get away, get free of it before it consumed me.
Before I was burned alive, too.
“Renee?”
A warm hand touched my bare arm, jolting me back to awareness. Teresa’s concerned, blood-streaked face filled my vision. I was sitting down, my back to the side of the Sport, an empty, rolling field in front of me. I didn’t recall moving this far, or sitting down, or really much of anything in the last couple of minutes. God, I really needed to get this . . . whatever it was, under control.
