Vivi reached out and pressed the call b.u.t.ton, closing her eyes as she wrapped her power around all the thousands of electrical impulses and currents in the building that were connected to that one single point. Nervous and panicked as she was, her finesse went straight out the window, and the entire hotel went suddenly black.

The elevator slammed to a halt, jolting everyone inside and making two of the pa.s.sengers cry out. Now Fallon and Rave were trapped in an elevator with two, possibly three armed men and a murdering son of a b.i.t.c.h besides.

"Power outage," one of the bodyguards said with a shrug. "Should come back soon."

"Strange, the emergency lights aren't on," JuJuren said. Rave didn't need Fallon to grab her hand to be made aware of the suspicion lacing JuJuren's voice.

"First floor! First floor!" Bronse commanded into his mike as he yanked Vivi after him and headed for the stairs. "Trick, the minute the electricity comes back on, you override the elevators. Make the one that Rave is on stop at the first floor. I won't do this with a crowd behind me. We're going to have zero body count. You got that?"

"Copy that," Ender and Justice chimed in.

"Pulling the program up now. How much time before the electricity comes back on?" Trick demanded.

"It's recharging as we speak," Vivi said breathlessly.

Bronse ran up the stairs two and three at a time, Lasher and Vivi hot on his heels as the men both drew their weapons and kept them low against their bodies. The stairwell was pitch-black, but they used the rails to guide them straight to the door to the first floor. Once there, Bronse pulled Vivi to a halt.

"Now, you stay right here and do not move," he ordered her, gently moving her into a corner surrounded by laser-proof stone walls and metal. Vivi nodded enthusiastically, having no desire to do anything but stay way out of trouble. By the same turn, Bronse needed her close at hand in case he needed one more delay if Trick couldn't override the elevator in time.

Bronse and Lasher left Vivi there just as fluorescent lights flickered on one by one, starting with the emergency lighting.

There was a collective sigh of relief in the elevator when they came on and then a common shout as a sudden surge in power sent the lift jolting back into motion. Out of the corner of her eye, Rave saw the first-floor b.u.t.ton suddenly light up as if an invisible hand had pushed it. Trick had worked his magic and now the elevator would stop and there would be a confrontation on the first floor instead of in the lobby. The only problem was the other people in the lift; Fallon and Rave were standing right behind their would-be target.

Ravenna stood ready.

"Ravenna, you let us handle this, you hear me?" Bronse ordered over the earpiece. "I don't want you using your telekinesis unless you absolutely have no choice. The last thing I need is three armed men and a woman with no moral compa.s.s to boot. You got it?"

There was no way she could reply and Bronse knew it, but he sensed she'd heard him loud and clear. He and Lasher stood to the sides of the elevator doors, waiting for the lift to arrive and the doors to fully open before they would drop on JuJuren and his men.

"We're coming to you, Commander," Ender said in staccato breaths. He and Justice had raced across the roof to the access door and were now running flat out down twenty-nine flights of stairs.

Ding.

The doors to the elevator opened, and Bronse and Lasher leapt forward in tandem, each pointing a gun in the face of the very startled admiral.

"Stay very still," Bronse warned the men as he eyed them down his sights. He was forced to ease forward, to put a foot in the way of the doors so they wouldn't shut and let their quarry escape.

It was hard to stare at the face of the man who had tried so hard to kill him yet somehow manage to keep from pulling the trigger. But he did it just the same, looking forward to JuJuren's long, hard road to justice. Bronse wanted to see Rave, to pull her out from behind the men, but the squirrelly and halfhearted way the men raised their open hands toward him was making him nervous. Instinct told him that these were desperate men about to try desperate measures to get free. But first he wanted them out of the elevator and away from Fallon and Ravenna.

"Come on. Out," he said, nodding to the two frightened pa.s.sengers to JuJuren's right. "Now run away." They did, not bothering to look back. "Stop twitching," he warned the bodyguard on the right, "and get your f.u.c.king hands in the air where I can see them."

The guard obeyed. But the three men kept sharing shifting looks, which gave Bronse a sick feeling in his intuitive gut.

"Chapel," JuJuren drawled suddenly, "you've been nothing but a pain in my a.s.s since the day I met you. You're lucky your promotions weren't up to me or you'd still be a half-baked sergeant somewhere in grunt land."

"I'm lucky a lot of things weren't up to you," Bronse retorted sharply. "Now step out of the elevator." Frankly, he didn't give a d.a.m.n about the two guards. But the last thing he needed was hired guns running loose on JuJuren's side. And where the h.e.l.l were Justice and Ender?

"You know," JuJuren said slowly as he took a step in the slowest of strides, "it's really hard to believe that some stupid grunt like you was responsible for f.u.c.king up my whole life."

"Oh, I think you took care of that all on your own," Bronse replied as he stepped back away from JuJuren as far as he could while still keeping the elevator doors ajar. He handed off the covering of JuJuren to Lasher and then turned back to focus on the men in the elevator. Now that JuJuren was out, he could see Ravenna standing still and quiet against the back wall of the lift, her body shielding Fallon's protectively. But the last thing he wanted to do was let the armed men know that he had people he cared about within their reach. "Now you." He indicated the bigger of the two. Unfortunately, keeping his attention in the elevator meant turning his back on Lasher and his prisoner.

"I want to know how someone as dumb as you managed to figure out what I was doing."

Bronse unwittingly rose to the bait, but not the way JuJuren intended.

"And I want to know what I did that makes you want to kill me so badly." Bronse took his eyes off his target for one split second to look back at the admiral, and that was all it took.

The beefier of the two guards reached out to grab Ravenna by the throat, nearly yanking her off her feet as he dragged her body across his front, protecting himself with her.

Pandemonium broke loose in the form of yells and shouts. A round of swearing bolted through them and then the antic.i.p.ated threat.

"You drop those guns or I'll break her f.u.c.king neck like the little delicate twig it is." The guard yanked back hard on Rave, dragging her up his chest and off her feet until she gagged beneath his strangling hand.

"Hey!" Bronse could barely think even as he shouted the word at the guard. "If you hurt her, I swear I'll blow your head off!"

"If you don't drop those guns, I'll rip off hers."

Ravenna was choking, trying to suck in what little air she could, her feet flailing almost a foot from the floor by then. She knew she didn't have time to waste. Lasher and Bronse would never be able to choose between her life and taking JuJuren to justice. They would eventually concede to his demands and let him go-an idea she simply could not stomach. She wasn't going to let this golden opportunity slip away, and she wouldn't let anyone get hurt. But if she was going to act, she had to do it now. She couldn't afford to waste time and precious oxygen debating the matter.

With a flicker of her lashes, she met Bronse's eyes. She could see the paralyzing fear that laced their periwinkle depths, and with it she could see so much more. She could see everything he was feeling for her, right out in the open where JuJuren could see it too.

"Let her go!"

"Don't let her go," JuJuren countered hastily. "He cares about her. She's probably one of his teammates. You want her back, Chapel? All you have to do is drop your guns. Otherwise I'll tell him to rip her head off!"

"Rave," Bronse rasped, his hands around his weapon starting to shake as adrenaline coursed through his body.

Ravenna knew what he wanted from her. It was the same thing she'd already been thinking.

Her mind hit the interior of the elevator like a bomb striking at ground zero. The percussive force of the explosion sent both guards flying apart, one slamming into the left wall, the other to the right. At the same time, JuJuren was ripped off his feet. His body slammed into the floor as if he'd been tackled by a powerful, invisible player. Ravenna fell to the floor on her palms and knees, and she tried to breathe and focus on the men she held in place all at the same time. Then she got to her feet and walked out of the elevator until she was standing over JuJuren. The two guards were yanked out of the elevator with her, like kites tagging along on invisible strings that were somehow tethered to her body. They struggled against the unseen force that held them, but they couldn't move so much as an eyelash with her holding on to them.

"We have them, Rave. Let them down." Bronse had his weapon trained on the guards as Rave saw Ender and Justice burst out of the stairwell at the end of the hall.

"Stop," Rave said.

And they did. Everyone around her found themselves suddenly frozen in place. Mid-step, mid-run, mid-blink-every last action was seized in the power of her extraordinary mind. She walked up to Bronse, whose eyes were wide with the understanding that she had lashed him in place along with the criminals he was trying to apprehend. He didn't understand it until she reached to take his weapon.

"Ravenna, no!" he croaked out of his nearly paralyzed throat.

But there was nothing he could do to stop her. It was child's play for her to make him hand her the weapon, his fingers peeling back away from the grip and trigger just as easily as she would peel a piece of fruit. The gun was in her hand now as she walked up to JuJuren.

The sweep of a finger lifted him from the ground and held him suspended in the air above her in a messiah position, the dangling helplessness of his body only accentuated by the shock and fearful understanding that washed over his face. She pointed the weapon at him. If she could have felt satisfaction right then, she would have smiled with it.

"You're a curse on my family as much as you were a blessing. If not for you, Bronse and I would never have met. Does that mean I have to be grateful to such a hateful creature?" She shook her head. "But what I know is what Bronse refuses to see and understand. You are relentless. Whatever your reasons are for hunting him down, you are the kind of hunter who will never stop. Nothing will ever get in your way. That includes military prison."

"Rave, no!"

"Ravenna, stop!"

The shouts and demands of her teammates fell on deaf ears. All of her attention and focus was on JuJuren.

"You think you have the right to make these choices. But you don't. Evil people don't have the right to destroy good people. I won't let you destroy Bronse."

Rave reached out and held the muzzle of the weapon directly against the former admiral's chest, right over his heart.

"Are you saying you have the right to say if I live or die?" JuJuren demanded in a panic. "That makes you as bad as I am."

"No, it doesn't. You see, normally I would care very much about deciding to take the life of another, but because you forced me to take control like this, I no longer give a d.a.m.n. I could take your life and not feel a moment's guilt. It will merely be a means to an end."

"Until the chemical in your brain fades away, Ravenna," Bronse said in rapid gasps of breath, needing badly to get through to her before she did something she would always regret. Now he could very much see why she did not and could not use this telekinesis power of hers. The complete obliteration of her moral standards had been wickedly quick, almost violent. But when she awakened from the numbing effect on her emotions, it would be something quite different. His peaceful, gentle Ravenna would be crushed and devastated. She would be ashamed of what she had done and would think herself as evil as the man she now stood before. "When the chemical in your brain goes away, you will regret what you have done here today. You'll be hurting yourself, the children, and everything you care about."

"But I'm not making this choice in anger," she argued calmly. "The dispa.s.sion works both ways, Bronse. It makes my motives in doing this really quite pure. More a matter of cause and effect than anything else. He has caused damage and pain. The effect should be an action that puts an end to that."

"It doesn't work that way," he warned her, "and somewhere in your head you know that. You know that you can't make summary judgment. You don't have the right! You may not even have all the information you need to make a proper decision."

"But I have his own admission of guilt." She gave a little shrug. "The solution is obvious."

"Are you sure?" he asked her, trying for all he was worth to find the angle he needed to make her see reason. How was he supposed to influence a mind void of all guilt, all conscience, all measurable emotion?

Logic. Logic was the only way. And it had to be sound logic at that. She was far too smart for tricks.

"What if he isn't the one behind everything?" Bronse posited. "Oh, I know he gave orders and he orchestrated specific crimes, but what if he's not the top of the chain? What if he gets his orders from someone else?"

"Then that person should be punished as well."

"But how will we know who that person is if you kill the only person with the answer?"

She hesitated, thinking for a moment. But only a moment. "There will be evidence. We will find out in other ways."

"Are you really willing to take that chance? What if you're risking other lives by making that choice so unilaterally?" Bronse prayed that there was enough of a conscience in her that she would care about the other lives.

"Fallon, you will read his mind and make certain that there are no others above him," she commanded the Chosen One at her back.

"No, Rave, I won't."

Bronse could have kissed him. Fallon was devoted to Rave. He did whatever she asked. For him to tell her "no" had to be against everything in his nature.

"Why not?" she wanted to know, the curious tilt to her head making her seem so innocent in such a deeply macabre way.

"Because I won't help you do something that's wrong. Something you taught me was wrong. Because Bronse is right. As soon as you stop expending yourself, all of your conscience and guilt will return, and it will destroy you to know you'd done something so wrong. I won't be a part of that. I don't care how much this man deserves it, Rave."

"Ravenna, let us go. We have enough people to keep control of the situation," Bronse told her. "Let us do our job and let the penal system do theirs. And if you still feel like this later, if you still feel that he deserves to die like this, then you can always go back and do it. You know you're more powerful than all of us put together. You can do anything you want."

"That includes killing him now," she pointed out.

"You could," he agreed. "But don't. I don't want you to do it now. I want you to let us go so we can take these men off your hands."

"And why should I do what you want?" she genuinely wanted to know. It was almost like talking to a child, except a child didn't have the knowledge that she did, and a child was easier to reason with than she was right then.

"Because ... because at any other time, you love me and respect me enough to know when I'm right about something. Just like I love you so much that I won't let you do this."

The gun lowered, and there was finally the registration of a fleeting emotion. It was surprise.

"What did you say?" she asked, her hand rubbing at her temple. Her head was starting to hurt. She didn't realize she was overextending herself with every minute she stood there holding them all at bay. "You love me?"

"Yes. Very much. It's something I've never felt before. I don't think you have, either. But it's important to us both, isn't it?"

"That ... that has nothing to do with this," she insisted, turning the weapon back up toward JuJuren.

"Yes, it does. Because I'm going to find it really hard to love someone who would kill a man in cold blood, Ravenna. Think about it. You know me."

"Yes," she said hesitantly, "you always do the right thing. You wouldn't kill without cause. But I have cause. What he does is wrong."

"There are other ways to punish him for those wrongs. Take away his freedom. Take away his power. There are other ways. Ways that won't cause damage between me and you."

The weapon lowered again, and this time two sets of fingertips went to ma.s.sage her temples. As he watched, small blood vessels were bursting in the whites of her eyes. She was going to burn herself out or have a stroke if she didn't let up.

"That pain means you're in danger," he warned her. "You're going to mess up your brain if you keep this up. Let us go right now, Ravenna. Right now!"

"Ravenna, listen to him," Fallon spoke up. "He's right. You can see he cares about you. You're going to get hurt if you don't listen to him."

Ravenna's chocolate dark eyes met Bronse's, the puzzlement in her gaze growing.

"Okay," she said at last.

She let go of her hold on the team so suddenly that they had to fight to keep their feet. Bronse grabbed the laser pistol from her, then jerked her against him, his strong body holding hers as she grew increasingly unsteady.

"Now," he murmured softly into her hair, "let go of the others."

He would never know if she let go because she was listening to him or because she pa.s.sed out in the very next instant.

Bronse was pacing outside of the infirmary room when Admiral Greays came up on him, his gait officious and his expression grimly stern.

"What happened?" he demanded.

"I don't know," Bronse said honestly. "She was using her power and just collapsed."

"d.a.m.n. Sounds like you were right about being careful not to break her. We've been working them all too hard."

Bronse wasn't about to disabuse the admiral of his theory. Whether or not it was the cause of Ravenna's collapse, it was the truth. All of the Chosen Ones had been worked beyond their capacity. It may very well have had a hand in Ravenna's collapse. But Bronse didn't kid himself about the more serious cause of it. The telekinetic power she wielded was dangerous and poisonous. The side effects of its use were not worth even the smallest benefit it might provide. But others might not see it that way, so it was best they never know about it.

That was why he had been forced to ask Fallon to erase the memories of the men they had captured. Just the information in JuJuren's hands alone was a dangerous prospect, never mind the other two prisoners who could blab it out to anyone who'd listen. Rave's secret would stay a secret, and he no longer felt any anger and betrayal against her for keeping it to herself. He just hoped like h.e.l.l that she could recover from this last display of it. What was more, he hoped she never had cause to use it again. As long as he was alive and breathing in the universe, he would see to it that she never did.

If only she survived this.

It didn't even matter to him that Fallon's memory rip had probably cost them valuable information that would lead to other names of other people who might be party to JuJuren's crimes. It didn't matter that he would never know why he'd been singled out for death by the man. All that mattered was that Rave would be all right. The Chosen Ones needed her. The Interplanetary Militia needed her. But more than all of that, he needed her.

He hadn't been lying or telling stories to get his way when he had told her that he loved her. And it meant everything to him that in a mind where all conscience had been erased, that one statement had been able to take hold of her. It meant that it was important to her and that she felt the same way. He didn't need to hear her say it to him. Just that single moment of hesitation had told him everything.