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“I’m fast,” Brianna said. “That’s why I’m the Breeze.” She shaded her eyes from the sun and squinted at the target she had in mind, a real estate sign in front of an empty lot pushed up against the slope of the ridge.
Jack pulled out his handheld. He punched in the numbers. “The slowest bullet goes 330 meters per second. Say 1,100 feet per second in round numbers. I found a book full of useless statistics like that. Man, I miss Google.” He seemed to actually choke up with emotion. The word “Google” caught in his throat.
Brianna laughed to herself. Computer Jack was just so Computer Jack. Still, he was cute in his own awkward, maladjusted, twelve-year-old and barely into puberty, voice-breaking kind of way.
“Anyway, 3,600 seconds in an hour, right? So about four million feet per hour, divided by 5,280 feet in a mile. So call it 750 miles an hour. Just one side or the other of the speed of sound. Other bullets are faster.”
“I bet I can do that,” Brianna said. “Sure, I can.”
“I do not want to shoot that gun,” Jack said, looking dubiously at the gun in her hand.
“Oh, come on, Jack. We’re across the highway, we’re aiming toward the ridge. What’s the worst that happens? You shoot a horned toad?”
“I’ve never shot a gun,” Jack said.
“Any idiot can do it,” Brianna assured him, although she had never fired a weapon, either. “But I guess it kicks a little, so you have to grip it firmly.”
“Don’t worry about that. I have a strong grip.”
It took Brianna a few seconds to figure out his ironic tone. She remembered hearing someone say that Jack had powers. That he was extremely strong.
He didn’t look strong. He looked like a dweeb. He had messy blond hair and crooked glasses. And it always seemed like he wasn’t really looking through those glasses but was seeing his own reflection in the lenses.
“Okay. Get ready,” Brianna instructed. “Hold the gun firmly. Aim it at the sign. Let’s do a—”
The gun exploded before she could finish. An impossibly loud bang, a cloud of bluish smoke, and a strangely satisfying smell.
“I was going to say let’s do a test shot,” Brianna said.
“Sorry. I kind of squeezed the trigger.”
“Yeah. Kind of. This time just aim it. At the sign over there, not at me.”
Jack leveled the gun. “Should I count down?”
“Yes.”
“On zero?”
“On zero.”
“Ready?”
Brianna dug her sneakers into the dirt, bent down, cocked one arm fo
rward, the other back, like she was frozen in midrun.
“Ready.”
“Three. Two. One.”
Brianna leaped, just a split second ahead of Jack pulling the trigger. Instantly she realized her mistake: the bullet was behind her, coming after her.
Much better to be chasing the bullet rather than have it chasing you.
Brianna flew. Almost literally flew. If she spread her arms and caught some wind she’d go airborne for fifty feet because she was moving faster, quite a bit faster, than a jet racing down the runway toward take-off.
She ran in an odd way, pumping her arms like any runner, but turning her palms back with each stroke. For almost all the mutants of the FAYZ, the hands were the focus of their powers.
