The victims in the terminal screamed and many with only minor injuries ran. The wounded huddled in fear behind any cover they found. Emergency personal remained behind to care for those in need. Everyone prayed that Tessa could contain the explosion.
She felt the concussive force inside the force field push against her power. She held the explosion trapped for what seemed like an eternity and sensed herself losing control. Tessa needed another option. She would not stop the explosion.
She looked up to the ceiling at the skylight above and decided the bomb would escape no matter what she did, but she could control where. Tessa pushed against the sphere with her power, lifting it into the air as she positioned herself underneath. With a surge of energy, she shoved the sphere up and crashing through the ceiling glass. The shattered glass poured down around the sphere to the terminal hall below. Survivors shielded themselves from the shards. Tessa worried the glass might injure someone, but the collateral damage was far less than if the bomb went off.
Tessa continued to push the protective bubble into the air as high as she could and then let it loose. The explosion radiated from the sphere, sending fire in all directions. Tessa luckily got the blast up high enough that it injured no one. She looked up into the sky as ash slowing fell back into the terminal. She closed her eyes, letting the soft flakes touch her face grateful she prevented further loss of life.
She looked back toward her friends. Arica motioned for her to return and finish bandaging the injury above her left eye. Tessa had no intention of sitting back down. The base was under attack, and as the strongest Evo on base it was her job to protect all of those she sheltered.
Tessa blinked to a terminal exit, leaving Finn and Arica behind. She needed to assess the damage and start guiding people toward a rebuild. Once she saw the destruction outside, she wasn’t sure rebuilding would be an option. H.I.V.E destroyed many of the storage hangars or they were on fire. She saw Sam directing a team with a water hose to douse the flames engulfing their weapons hangar. Other people tried to extinguish flames devouring vehicle storage. Most of the base’s primary assets were gone.
Tessa blinked toward the engineering hangar, which was still intact. She was curious why they spared this location. She moved closer to hear a drill boring through metal inside the building. Tessa concealed herself and crept around the hangar to peek inside a side window. She peered around a corner to see a man drilling the lock on their safe room. Tessa had Sam fortify the place to prevent anyone from obtaining the battery core she created.
Tessa realized she was right and H.I.V.E was responsible for the attack. They must have planted suicide bombers as a diversion while they stole the core. At least she answered whether or not H.I.V.E created their core. The answer being no. They could not make a core without her power, so they were here to steal hers. How did they know she succeeded? There had to be a mole.
All she had to do was make sure her core didn’t fall into their hands. She wanted to dash out and stop him before he breached the lock, but there were a lot of assets in this hangar she didn’t want to destroy. She waited until he had the core in his possession and outside the hangar.
Tessa repositioned herself outside to intercept the H.I.V.E thief. As he exited, Tessa stepped out from her cover behind the hangar, “Nice try, but you’re not leaving here with that core or your life.”
The man turned to raise his arms with the core in submission. “Do you think you’re stopping anything? H.I.V.E always gets what they want.”
“Not today they don’t. They can’t have that core. Of that much I’m certain.” Tessa preferred to get the core back intact, but she would destroy it there was no other choice.
He moved to let his coat fall open in front to reveal a bomb strapped to his chest. “If I go up, there’s another bomb planted here that explodes. I promise you I put it somewhere really good. Maximum casualties.”
“I just stopped one of your other bombers. I can stop you too.” Another explosion echoed from the other side of the tarmac. Tessa jumped and looked behind her. The helicopter hangar went up in smoke.
The man took the moment of opportunity to run, but Tessa blinked after him. She seized the core and attempted to wrestle it from his grip, but he resisted her attempt. He reached for his pocket, and she assumed he would trigger the bomb.
With her arms still around the core, she did the only thing she could think of and opened her power to absorb the energy back. She wasn’t sure it was even possible, but she wasn’t willing to let go of the core, nor was she ready to see what happened if the core exploded with a suicide bomb. With the condensed energy in the core, it might trigger an explosion far more powerful than any C-4 bomb H.I.V.E could cook up.
Tessa re-absorbed the energy in the core, but the H.I.V.E agent still triggered the bomb. The force of the blast sent Tessa flying across the tarmac and rolling across the asphalt. When she came to a stop, she was unscathed but had new problems.
The absorption
