Quinton stayed by Kerr's side, gas and fire lighting up the air around him as he focused his power, draining a tube in each arm to get the fire big enough, hot enough, to burn through the storm that raged beyond the four fragile walls. Pressure existed beyond his mental shields, the unmistakable biting strength of telepaths going to war on the mental grid. Then his attention was divided, the fire he had built suddenly being carved into pieces by other pyrokinetics hoping to steal what he controlled.

Quinton's dark eyes narrowed. Over his dead fucking body. He grabbed Kerr by the arm and dragged them out of the burning building, through the smoke and fire, into the storm.

Acid rain soaked them in seconds, wind whistling in their ears. Quinton blinked the stinging wet out of his eyes, desperately looking for his partner. He gave up after a few seconds, needing to save his own skin, knowing Threnody could survive on her own. He got off a few shots with his rifle before the weapon was telekinetically torn out of his hands and tossed away. Quinton didn't bother running after it.

He thrust out an arm toward the pair of Stryker pyrokinetics, twisting the fire bigger, hotter, forcing it to burn when the storm wanted to put it out. Fuel came from nearby buildings, the flames crawling up their sides with a furious roar. Quinton struggled to maintain control of the inferno and keep the other pyrokinetics at bay.

Silhouetted against that bright orange glow was Threnody, her lean form moving with lethal intent as she fought to get within touching range of her target. The telepaths were between her and the telekinetic, whom Kerr had brought to his knees, but not before taking his gun. Landing a solid punch to a telepath whose mind was mostly tied up in defending against Kerr's powerful attack, Threnody held on to the Stryker as she bore the other woman's body to the ground. Pressing one hand to the telepath's face, she shocked the Stryker's nervous system as hard as she could.

Electricity crawled over the telepath, the woman seizing for a few long seconds before she went limp on the ground. She was still breathing, but was totally and completely out as Threnody moved on to her next target. With one less mind to deal with, Kerr was able to sharpen his focus on the remaining four Strykers.

Two, Threnody thought with hard satisfaction as she brought down the second telepath with a punch to the solar plexus and her hand around his throat.

It was easier because Kerr was in his mind, tearing through it with a telepathic strike that the Stryker couldn't counter, not against a Class II. Threnody's power burned into him with instant, shocking results. He screamed, his voice drowned out beneath the sound of the storm as he fell to the ground.

The telekinetic was still in the game. Threnody discovered that the hard way when she was picked up and tossed across the street to land on the crumbling sidewalk there. Landing hard on her side, Threnody rolled with a pained yell, coming to a stop up against a building that wasn't burning. She spat out a mouthful of mud and blood-she'd bitten through her lip-before shoving herself back to her feet. The world spun sickeningly for a few seconds before her inner ear found balance again.

Blinking burning water out of her eyes, Threnody unclipped her gun and took aim at the approaching telekinetic. Before she could fire her gun, it was wrenched out of her hands. Her body slammed back against the building, invisible pressure nearly crushing her.

Kerr, Threnody said. I need you to take care of this one.

On it, Kerr said.

It was simpler, now that the telepaths were out of the fight. Threnody didn't know what Kerr did, but the telekinetic fell to the ground between one step and the next, out cold. The pyrokinetics were next, the fire that all three of them had been fighting over expanding dangerously for a few seconds before Quinton got control over the flame. It was easy to let the fire die, to let the rain wash through it and extinguish the inferno.

The street was suddenly dark, but not silent. Thunder still pounded through the sky above them, but a secondary roar was filling the air now. Like the sound of a steam-engine train, in ancient movies saved to vids long after the fact, the increasing rumble couldn't be ignored.

They couldn't see the derecho hit, but they heard it. They felt it.

There on the street, the three Strykers felt the spine of that long windstorm slam into them, through them, knocking them to the ground with sideway winds and stabbing acid rain. It screamed over Buffalo, a heavy wall of nature come out of the west; power that humans couldn't fully predict, that psions couldn't control.

Threnody pushed herself up against the weight of the storm, arms shaking and barely able to hold steady in the face of the wind.

The tunnels? Kerr sent into their minds.

No. Threnody stumbled toward where she'd last seen Quinton, the lightning up above not nearly enough to show where her partner was. We've got to stay aboveground.

There's a car near my position, Quinton informed them. It functions, according to the computer.

Driving through this storm is liable to get us killed.

So's walking. At least this way we'll be a little drier.

Good point.

Kerr showed Threnody where Quinton was on the mental grid. She worked her way to where Quinton had broken into the vehicle and overrode the controls, headlights barely distinguishable in the heavy storm. She pried open the door and fell into the backseat.

Kerr was struggling to get into the front passenger seat, Quinton already behind the wheel. Kerr was barely able to pull the door shut behind him against the strength of the wind. For a moment, the three sat there in the car, the engine running, and the storm the only sound as the wind battered the vehicle.

"Lucas is crazy if he thinks we can fly out through this," Threnody finally said, surprised at how dry her throat was, how rough her voice came out.

"Crazy, yeah, but it might work," Kerr said as Quinton took the car out of park and pressed his foot to the gas pedal. "I don't think we'd have gotten this far if he didn't believe we could make it all the way."

It was funny, Threnody thought as Quinton drove into the storm, just how much faith all of them were putting in someone who was supposed to be their enemy.

PART SEVEN.

APERTURE.

SESSION DATE: 2128.05.26.

LOCATION: Institute of Psionics Research CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett SUBJECT: 2581.

FILE NUMBER: 487.

"We can't go aboveground anymore," the doctor says as she sits rigidly in her seat. "Too much fallout in the air is killing us and the towers aren't sealed yet. I haven't seen the sun for almost three years."

"Don't worry. It's still there."

"Aisling."

She is coloring again, rubbing her crayons to small nubs. "Shh, be quiet. He's talking."

"Aisling."

The girl looks up and frowns at the camera as the machines behind her whine. "I could never promise you the world, Lucas. Simply a world."

The doctor leans forward. "We need answers, Aisling. Not these disjointed reports of people we can't locate."

"You want what he wants." Aisling sounds frustrated as she slowly slides her crayon off the paper and onto the table, forcibly staining the room with color. "He wants what I want, but they aren't the same thing."

"We need to know when the next bomb will fall."

"Lima, Peru," she says, the tip of her crayon breaking off. "Five, four, three, too late. Can I have another box of crayons, Doctor?"

[TWENTY-SEVEN].

AUGUST 2379.

BUFFALO, USA.

The maglev train slid slowly into Bunker North, but no one was expecting anyone on it to still be breathing. Neither were the Strykers lining the platform expecting enemy psions to still be present in any of the cars as they worked their way through the stinking mess left behind.

Shielded tight on the mental grid, wrapped in a telekinetic shield to stave off the soaking wetness of the storm, Lucas was aboveground. Standing beneath a metal overhang of a building that did nothing to keep out the wind and the rain, Lucas ducked his head against the storm and reached through the psi link for Jason.

Tell me you're close to being done, Lucas said.

It's makeshift, but it should hold. Long enough to get us out of here, at least, Jason replied. I don't know about this storm. You trust Matron's scavengers to be able to pilot through this?

Enough of them will make it.

What do you mean enough?

Lucas ignored that question. Get those shuttles prepped for launch, Jason. As soon as Threnody gets the electrical grid back online, those launch silos will activate.

You better not fucking leave them behind.

I still need them.

It wasn't really a promise. Lucas cut the connection with a thought, the psi link going dormant. Where he was standing, the world was nothing but darkness and sound. Unlike in the tunnels, no emergency lights were shining to show the way on the streets. Closing his eyes didn't really change his situation, but it let him concentrate that much harder as he expanded his power through the mental grid for that one shining mind he would know anywhere. Through the other person's eyes, he got a glimpse of an office in a city tower, wide, familiar. Empty.

He teleported with that visualization firmly in his mind, arriving beside the woman he had first met when he was a child, and later, at the age of fifteen, when he realized he needed her help to change everything.

"Security feed is being blocked," Ciari said as she stared out the plasglass window at the storm that was hitting Toronto the same as it was hitting Buffalo, with only slightly less force. "My Strykers here are busy and the World Court is dealing with the media. They won't interrupt us."

Water slid off the telekinetic shield Lucas still had up, then fell in spatters when he dropped his defenses. "I can't stay long."

"You never do." Ciari turned her head a little, just enough to look at him. "Did you get what you needed from the Strykers you took?"

"More than. They'll be enough in the end, I think." Lucas frowned. "She hasn't been wrong yet."

"Yet," Ciari echoed.

"You gave me the best you had," Lucas reminded her.

"If I could have kept them from you, I would have."

He reached for her, let his fingers curl around hers for a second or two, no longer. "Maybe in some other future you did. We wouldn't be here today if you had."

"I like to think my choices are my own."

"You're not stupid, Ciari. Your life has never been your own and you know it."

Lucas stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the storm and everything they had made together. He was taller than she was, younger, more powerful; everything she hadn't been in years, but she still reached for what he offered. Ciari liked to think that maybe whatever was between them was real, or had been at one point. They used each other to save their own lives, and the taste of his mouth now was so different from the memory in her head.

His hands were cold against her face, grip painful as he explored her mouth with a ferocity that would have spoken of quiet desperation in anyone else. But this was Lucas, and he didn't do desperation. He only took and never gave.

"She told me you'll be carrying a girl," Lucas whispered against her mouth before he pulled back, a faint, mocking smile on his own.

Ciari closed her eyes, refusing to flinch away from his touch. "I shouldn't be carrying anything, much less a child."

It was just a bunch of cells right now, no more than five weeks old, dividing and multiplying along human DNA with incredible psion potential. She was determined to see the baby born free, outside of the collars the government issued and away from the human veneer Lucas had been forced to wrap around his entire existence.

Aisling had promised her that much, at the least, in exchange for the world. Some new future to survive in. Pipe dreams were something Ciari never normally believed in. Maybe it was the hormones.

Trust me, Lucas said into her mind before he disappeared, teleporting out beneath everyone's searching thoughts on the mental grid.

She didn't. She never would.

Opening her eyes to her empty office, Ciari thought maybe that was the reason why Lucas kept coming back to her. She was the product of a way of life that kept his side of this fight free to do what needed to be done. That didn't necessarily mean that each side was in the right, just that they believed in one simple truth.

No salvation was to be found in anything except escape. Maybe their ancestors had it right all those years ago, when countries fought each other for the chance to leave this world behind.

Ciari liked to think otherwise.

[TWENTY-EIGHT].

AUGUST 2379.

BUFFALO, USA.