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Hello? she asked. Is someone there? Can you talk louder or something?
“Not really,” I hissed, glancing out at the Librarians. Most of them had moved out the door, but a small group of men had apparently been assigned to search the hangar. Mostly security guards.
Um… okay, the voice said. Uh, who is this?
“Who do you think it is?” I asked in annoyance. “I’m Alcatraz. Who are you?”
Oh, I – the image, and voice, fuzzed for a moment – sent to pick you up. Sorry! Uh, where are you?
“In a hangar,” I said. One of the guards perked up, then pulled out a gun, pointing it in my direction. He’d heard me.
“Shattering Glass!” I hissed, ducking back down.
You really shouldn’t swear like that, you know…, the girl said.
”Thanks,” I hissed as quietly as possible. “Who are you, and how are you going to get me out of this?”
There was a pause. A dreadful, terrible, long, annoying, frustrating, deadly, nerve-racking, incredibly wordy pause.
I… don’t really know, the girl said. I – wait just a second. Bastille says that you should run out somewhere in the open then signal us. It’s too foggy down here. We can’t really see much.
Down there? I thought. Still, if Bastille was with this girl, that seemed like a good sign. Although Bastille would probably chastise me for getting myself into so much trouble, she did have a habit of being very effective at what she did. Hopefully that would include rescuing me.
“Hey!” a voice said. I turned to the side staring out at one of the guards. “I found someone!”
Time to break some things, I thought, taking a deep breath. Then I sent a burst of breaking power into the wheel of the airplane.
I ducked away, leaping to my feet as lug nuts popped free from the airplane wheel. The guard raised his gun but didn’t fire.
“Shoot him!” said a man in a black suit, the Librarian who stood directing things from the side of the room.
“I’m not shooting a kid,” the guard said. “Where are these terrorists you were talking about?”
Good man, I thought as I dashed toward the front of the hangar. At that moment, the wheel of the airplane fell completely off, and the entire front of the vehicle crashed down against the pavement. Men cried out in surprise, and the security guards dived for cover.
The Librarian in black grabbed a handgun from one of the confused guards and pointed it at me. I just smiled.
The gun, of course, fell apart as soon as the Librarian pulled the trigger. My Talent protects me when it can – and the more moving parts a weapon has, the easier it is to break. I rammed my shoulder into the massive hangar doors and sent a shock of breaking power into them. Screws and nut and bolts fell like rain around me, hitting the ground. Several guards peeked out from behind boxes.
The entire front of the hangar came off, falling away from me and hitting the ground outside with a reverberating crash. I hesitated, shocked, even though that was exactly what I’d wanted to happen. Swirling fog began to creep into the hangar around me.
It seemed that my Talent was getting even more powerful. Before, I’d broken things like pots and dishes, with the very rare exception of something larger like the concrete I had broken when I was seven. That was nothing like what I’d been doing lately: taking the wheels off of airplanes and making entire hangar doors fall off. Not for the first time, I wondered just how much I could break if I really needed to.
And how much the Talent could break if it decided that it wanted to.
There wasn’t much time to contemplate that, as the Librarians outside had noticed the ruckus. They stood, black upon the noonday fog, looking back at me. Most of them had spread out to the sides, and so the only way for me to go was straight ahead.
I dashed out onto the wet tarmac, running for all I was worth. The Librarians began to yell, and several tried – completely ineffectively – to fire guns at me. They should have known better. In their defense, few people – even Librarians – are accustomed to dealing with a Smedry as powerful as I was. Against the others, they might have been able to get off a few shots before something went wrong. Firearms aren’t completely useless in the Free Kingdoms, they’re just much less powerful.
The shooting – or lack thereof – bought me just a few seconds of time. Unfortunately, there were a pair of Librarians in my path.
“Get ready!” I yelled into my Courier’s Lenses. Then I whipped them off and put on the Windstormer’s Lenses. I focused as hard as I could, blowing forth a burst of wind from my eyes. Both Librarians were knocked to the ground, and I leaped over them.
Other Librarians cried out from behind, chasing me as I moved out onto a runway. Puffing, I reached into a pocket and pulled free my Firebringer’s Lens. I spun and activated the Lens.
It started to glow. The group of Librarians pulled to a halt. They knew enough to recognize that Lens. I held it out, then pointed it up into the air. It shot a line of red firelight upward, piercing the fog.
That had better be enough of a signal, I thought. The Librarians gathered together, obviously preparing to rush at me. Lens or no Lens. I prepared my Windstormer’s Lenses, hoping I could use them to blow the Librarians back long enough for Bastille to save me.
The Librarians, however, did not charge. I stood, anxious, the Firebringer’s Lens still firing into the air. What were they waiting for?
The Librarians parted, and a dark figure – silhouetted in the muggy fog – moved through them. I couldn’t seem much, but something about this figure was wrong. It was a head taller than the others, and one of its arms was several feet longer than the other. Its head was misshapen. Perhaps inhuman. Most definitely dangerous.
I shivered, taking an involuntary step backward. The dark figure raised its bony arm, as if pointing a gun.
I’ll be all right, I told myself. Guns are useless against me.
There was a crack in the air, then the Firebringer’s Lens exploded in my fingers, hit square on by the creature’s bullet. I yelled, pulling my hand down.
Shoot my lens rather than me. This one is more clever than the others.
The dark figure walked forward, and part of me wanted to wait to see just what it was that made this creature’s arm and head so misshapen. The rest of me was just plain horrified. The figure started to run, and that was enough. I did the smart thing (I’m capable of that on occasion) and dashed away as quickly as I could.
Instantly, I seemed to be pulled backward. The wind whistled in my ears oddly, and each step felt far more difficult that it should have. I began to sweat, and soon it was tough to even walk.
Something was very, very wrong. As I continued to move, forcing myself on despite the strange force towing me backward, I began to think I could feel the dark thing behind me. I could sense it, twisted and vile, getting closer and closer.
I could barely move. Each. Step. Got. Tougher.
A rope ladder slapped down against the tarmac a short distance in front of me. I cried out and lunged for it, grabbing ahold. My weight must have told those above that I was on board, because the ladder suddenly jerked upward, towing me with it and ripping me free from whatever force had been holding me back. I felt the pressure lighten and glancing down, I let out a relieved breath.
The figure still stood there, indistinct in the fog, only a few feet from where I’d been. It stared up as I was lifted to safety, until the ground and the creature disappeared into the fog.
I let out a sigh of relief, relaxing against the wood and rope. A few minutes later, my ladder and I were pulled free from the fog, bursting out into open air.
I looked up and saw perhaps the most awesome sight I’d ever seen in my entire life.
CHAPTER 2
This is the second book of the series. Those of you who have read the first book can skip this introduction and move on. The rest of you, stay put.
I’d like to congratulate you on finding this book. I’m
glad you’re reading a serious work about real world politics, rather than wasting your time on something silly like a fantasy book about a fictional character like Napoleon. (Either Napoleon, actually. They both have something to do, in their own way, with being Blownapart.)
Now, I do have to admit something. I find it very disturbing that you readers have decided to begin with the second book in the series. That’s a very bad habit to have – worse, even than wearing mismatched socks. In fact, on the bad-habit scale, it ranks somewhere between chewing with your mouth open and making quacking noises when your friends are trying to study. (Try that one sometime – it’s really fun.)
It’s because of people like you that we authors have to clog our second books with all kinds of explanations. We have to, essentially, invent the wheel again – or at least renew our patent.
You should already know who I am, and you should understand Oculatory Lenses and Smedry Talents. With all of that knowledge, you could easily understand the events that led me to the point where I hung dangling from a rope ladder, staring up at something awesome that I haven’t yet described.
Why don’t I just describe it now? Well, by asking that question, you prove that you haven’t read the first book. Let me explain by using a brief object lesson.
