cratering the rust. He’d let the pain take over later. After he smashed this place to rubble.
The defenders let up on the RPGs when Wally closed with the Red House-a sprawling, brick mansion. It was a relief to dispense with the cage.
The spotlights followed his every move, making him an easy target. Gunfire raked him from half a dozen directions. A few at first, then more and more bullets found their mark. They ripped through his corroded skin with little explosions of rust chips. Something hot grazed his waist. A shot dented his temple, blurred his vision, and left his ears ringing.
He made a big show of tearing through the defenders. Punching them, kicking them, smacking them with a length of rebar he’d pulled from the cage. And he disintegrated every weapon he could touch.
Wally didn’t discriminate between the people in uniforms and people in lab coats. They were all part of this. They had all killed Lucien.
The house shook. It lurched, like something huge had grabbed and lifted it. Wally heard a momentous crash, like ten tons of crumbling brick. It came from around back, where Noel had taken Jerusha and the others.
All right, Jerusha!
She’d done her part. Now he just had to get her safe. Wally started working his way around the house.
Gardener’s vines had pulled down one side of the house. It had happened so fast, Michelle couldn’t believe it for a moment. Then she started running toward the collapsing side. Gardener was bound to be close by.
Michelle wanted to know what the plans were. And she wanted to know how the hell Gardener and Rusty had ended up here. It was too damn dangerous for them.
Bullets hit her and RPGs exploded close by. That just plumped her up more. She released a barrage of bubbles as she ran. There were screams and some of the guards went down. They weren’t dead-at least they shouldn’t be. The bubbles were hard but rubbery. She didn’t want to accidentally kill someone friendly. She had no idea who might be here with Rusty and Gardener.
As she got closer to the house, Michelle saw a shrunken, emaciated figure leaning against a massive tree trunk. The tree was still growing up into the air. No, she thought. It can’t be. But in her gut she knew. She felt a chill run through her.
She stopped in front of Jerusha. The person leaning against the tree didn’t look like Gardener anymore. Even in the gathering gloom, Michelle could see her sunken cheeks, the gauntness of her body, and the faraway look in her hollowed eyes.
Michelle knew that look. Jerusha was dying.
“Terrible, isn’t it? One of the child aces bit her. She’s been wasting away ever since.”
It was Lilith. She was hidden by the shadows, but Michelle knew that voice. “Why am I not surprised you’re in the middle of this,” Michelle replied. “Why is she here? She should be in a hospital.”
“She was. She wanted to come. For Rustbelt.”
“Stop.” Gardener opened her eyes and said in a whispery voice, “Stop. Please. Just destroy the lab.”
“I’m sorry, Jerusha.” Michelle gave Lilith one last hard stare, then ran into the Red House through the gaping hole that Gardener’s tree had torn.
Inside, she stumbled over bricks and debris, past desks and fallen filing cabinets. A fluorescent light swung by a long electrical cord, unmoored from the ceiling. A guard appeared in the doorway and started firing at her with an automatic weapon. Most of the bullets hit her. She threw a bubble at him and he went down with a whimper.
Two more guards appeared, and shot her as well. She threw bubbles at them, too. Then she struggled through the rubble until she came to the staircase. She’d seen some labs on the second level.
The staircase had broken apart. A big gap separated the two sections. Michelle wasn’t sure she could jump it at her current size. She wasn’t sure she could have jumped it when she was skinny. But she had to get to the labs, so she gave a grunt and leapt across.
Her foot hit, then slipped. She went down hard on her knees. Another zing of energy. The banister groaned as she grabbed it. She pulled herself up and then ran to the top of the stairs.
A sheet of fire met her.
The heat. The light. Memories of New Orleans washed over her, and for a moment she could not move.
But what had happened with Drake hadn’t hurt her. It had changed her. Michelle walked through the fire, curling her hand, forming a bubble in her palm.
When she emerged beyond the flames, she saw a small boy blowing a stream of fire from his mouth as if he were blowing soap bubbles. When he saw her, his jaw dropped and the fire stopped. Standing next to the boy was a man in a lab coat. He looked as surprised as the boy did. She released her bubble and it exploded on the floor in front of them. They were thrown back by the impact. She fired more rubbery bubbles to keep them down.
The doctor began to scramble to his feet, but the boy started crying and fire shot from his mouth again. The doctor shrieked. His lab coat caught fire and there was a nauseating smell as his hair began to burn. He started running, past her and down the stairs. But he didn’t make the gap. There was another scream and a sickening crack as he landed on the floor below.
Michelle turned back to the boy. She said in French, “I’m not going to hurt you.” But he started screaming. Flames shot out of his mouth again and the wallpaper in the hall caught on fire.
“Great,” Michelle muttered. “Just great.” She hopped over the hole in the floor, crouched down next to the boy, and grabbed his arms. She began to form a bubble around him. In a few seconds, he was encased. The bubble wasn’t going to last long, but if he started breathing fire again, he’d use up the oxygen inside and knock himself out. She needed him out of the way while she destroyed the lab.
The first door she tried was stuck. Michelle blew it to pieces and stepped through the hole. Inside the room were lab tables and various pieces of equipment she didn’t recognize. In one corner, three men wearing lab coats cowered. They began begging her for mercy.
“Get out,” she said. They scrambled to their feet and ran past her. Michelle blasted everything in sight. Pieces of metal and glass flew into the air and rained down on her. Instead of going back out into the hall, she just blew a hole into the next room.
This room was like the last one. Tables, equipment, glass, cowering men in lab coats. Rinse. Repeat.
She worked her way through the labs on this side of the hallway. When she got to the end of this row of rooms, she went back into the hallway and checked on Fire Boy. He was sitting quietly in the bubble. He turned and looked at her quizzically. The bubble wouldn’t hold much longer, so she needed to finish up quick. She bubbled and blew a hole in the door across the hall, and then went through it.
This lab was different. There were cots lining one wall. On the walls were brightly colored pictures of smiling children. It reminded Michelle of the lab she and Joey had found in the jungle. She felt sick.
She worked her way through the room, destroying the beds, the pretty pictures, the cabinets filled with syringes and bottles of the virus. Then she bubbled her way into the next room. More beds. More smiling pictures. It felt good to blow them up.
The last room contained rows of built-in refrigerated cabinets. They didn’t last long. Room by room she systematically obliterated everything she found. She was thinner when she came back into the hallway.
Fire Boy was still in the bubble. Smoke was filling the hallway. Flames licked up the walls. Michelle touched the bubble and popped it. The boy looked up at her, giving her a small smile. She smiled back. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and a wave of fire enveloped her. He clamped his hands over his mouth.
Michelle squatted next to him and said, “You can’t hurt me, but you should try not to open your mouth when there are other people around. At least until you figure out how to control your power.”
He nodded. Then he smiled at her again. She smiled back. She couldn’t help it. Then she said, “Come with me.”
Battle flashed and crackled all around the rambling Red House with its complicated compound roof.
Tom landed on well-tended lawn before the front portico. The first thing he saw was a sheet-lightning flicker of muzzle flashes beyond the prefab barracks between the main house and the gate. The rattle of automatic fire was near continuous.
Eyes beginning to water from the smoke that twined around him, he started to trot in that direction. A brilliant blue-white flash seemed to light the whole night sky ahead of him, accompanied by a nasty crack like the sound of lightning striking nearby. An RPG had gone off nearby. As he passed between two of the lightweight wood structures a window with a wall in it exploded outward toward him. A huge figure loomed there, misshapen and dark, like a hybrid of man and steel drum. A vast arm swung toward him, trailing wood splinters.
