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Everything became a blur, even time. I kept my attention on the road, on keeping the ATV going no matter what got in the way. We crashed through potholes and over rubble, and the distance between Central and us quickly grew. It didn’t ease the tension; if anything, it only increased it, because we were so damn close to safety now, and yet still so very far.
“Swing right at the next turn.” The sudden command made me jump. Jonas leaned across and squeezed my arm. “It’s okay. We’ll be okay.”
“Says the man who has no seeking skills to tell him otherwise.”
I swung right but didn’t slow, and the ATV pitched to one side and threatened to topple. Several lights on the driving panel flashed red as the electronic stability control kicked into gear. The ATV quickly righted itself and I continued on without losing much speed.
“In one kilometer take the gravel road to your left—but this time, slow down or you’ll have us in the forest.”
I flashed him a somewhat tense grin. “You say that like it would be a bad thing.”
“If we want to remain alive, then yeah, it possibly is.”
I spotted the road and slowed down as ordered. Dust flew up behind us, a trail that would be easy to follow if it didn’t settle quickly enough. But Jonas didn’t seem to be overly worried, so I tried not to be. After a few more kilometers, an old farm and a couple of barns came into view. The barns were in reasonable condition, but the house was a weird conglomeration of tree, stone, and metal. I very much suspected it hadn’t been built that way—that it had, in fact, been rebuilt. Not by anything human, but rather a rift. It had the same twisted, not-quite-of-this-world feel that I’d seen in other organic materials hit by the rifts. I shivered and prayed to Rhea that the one that had caused this destruction had left the area. The last thing we needed, on top of everything else, was to be chased by one of the things.
In front of one of the barns were three long-distance solar vehicles. I stopped beside them but didn’t kill the engine.
Jonas tugged Nuri’s bracelet from his wrist and shoved it into a pocket. The blond-haired, craggy-faced image thankfully disappeared. “Remove the RFID from your palm.”
I picked the edge of the false skin layer free, carefully peeled it away, and then handed him the chip. He placed the two of them back in their plastic containers and opened the door.
“Wait here, both of you.”
“Where are we?” Williams asked.
“I have no idea.” I watched Jonas disappear into the darkness of the barn and tried to keep a lid on the ever-spiraling tide of tension. “And keep your damn head under that blanket until I tell you otherwise.”
“Lady, enough with the tone. Remember, I can kill these kids with the simple press of a button.”
“Kill them,” I snapped back, “and you’ll erase the only reason I’m not filling you with lead right now.”
The stink of fear jumped into the cabin again. Good. The bastard deserved to be afraid, just as those kids had undoubtedly been afraid, before their emotions had been cur- tailed.
I reached for the shifting magic and changed to my own form, then tugged my way out of the coverall and dumped it on the pa
ssenger seat. And immediately felt better simply because I wasn’t expending energy on a form that wasn’t mine. I might have had a decent enough meal at the museum, but that hadn’t been enough to fully recover my strength. Only time and rest, or using the healing state, would do that.
Jonas reappeared, accompanied by two men I didn’t recognize. He opened the rear passenger door and the two strangers each picked up a kid and walked across to the solar vehicle.
“Hey,” Williams said, throwing off the blanket and sitting upright. “What about me?”
“You,” Jonas said, “can get you own ass out of the vehicle.”
Something in the way he said that had the hairs along the back of my neck rising. His gaze met mine and that small, cold smile touched his lips again. The ranger was not only back, but on the warpath.
Williams hastily climbed out, but I remained where I was. Jonas strolled around the front of the ATV and, as Williams hustled past, threw a punch so hard that I heard the crack of Williams’s jaw from inside the vehicle. He dropped like a ton of concrete to the ground and didn’t move.
Jonas straddled him, then pulled a cable tie from a coverall pocket and tied Williams’s wrists together. Then he went through the scientist’s pockets, eventually pulling out a small black control disk.
Relief spun through me and I closed my eyes for a minute. The kids might not be out of danger, and a very long way from ever being healed, but at least the immediate threat of being poisoned had now eased.
Unless, of course, Sal’s partners had a similar disk and remotely triggered the pellets.
Two of the solar vehicles hummed to life, and a heartbeat later they’d risen from the ground and disappeared into the shadows of the forest. They wouldn’t be able to stay there long, as it would drain the batteries far too quickly, but it would at least make it more difficult to immediately trace their whereabouts, given that there was little indication on the gravel as to where they’d gone. I crossed mental fingers that they’d arrive safe and in one piece wherever it was that they were headed and climbed out of the ATV.
“It’s kind of hard to interrogate someone when they’re unconscious.” I stopped on the other side of Williams’s prone form from Jonas. “Or is that not what you intend right now?”
“Oh, I intend it all right.” He grabbed Williams by the scruff of the neck and dragged him over to the ATV, where he produced a longer cable tie and threaded it through one of the ATV’s treads, then looped it around the tie binding Williams.
