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“Orc.”
“You’re not human,” Gaia said dismissively. “I don’t even need to kill you. Run away.”
“No.”
Gaia cocked her head, curious, as she chewed her food. “Aren’t you afraid?”
Orc shook his massive head. “The Lord is my shepherd.”
Gaia walked right up to him, peering carefully at his gravel skin and taking special interest in the patch of human skin that remained on his face. “Interesting effect. I don’t quite see how you happened.”
Orc swung a ham-sized fist at her.
Gaia sidestepped with Brianna’s speed. She dodged Orc’s next three blows as well.
“Not at all the usual mutation,” Gaia said, fascinated. “You could join me; I doubt Nemesis could use you.”
Orc was panting from the effort of missing Gaia.
“No,” Or
c gasped.
“Mmmm. Well, then, I guess I’d better kill you, just to be safe.”
“That’s gunfire!” Brianna yelled.
Lana said, “Brianna, no! You’re not done healing.”
“What, this?” Brianna pointed at her disfigured face. “Pff. Just a flesh wound.” She winked with her good eye. “Where’s my stuff?”
Lana nodded toward a pile in the corner: the familiar modified runner’s backpack with the sawed-off shotgun and machete.
“Kick ass, Breeze,” Lana said, but she was talking to air.
Down the hall in a second. Down the steps in less. Through the lobby. And now she could really turn on the speed as she blew down the hill, tripped, and went tumbling head over heels.
Brianna did not get up with super-speed. She stood slowly. Both knees were bleeding, as were the palms of her hands.
Brianna touched her swollen eyes.
“Depth perception, Breeze,” she chided herself. “Depth perception.”
She slowed through town, doing no more than sixty miles an hour down Ocean Boulevard past a darkening sea that was just swallowing the sun. She hung a hard right on San Pablo, blew through the town plaza, slowing just enough to hear the fierce cheers of “Breeeeze!” from shooters positioned in windows and on rooftops. She gave them a jaunty wave.
She hit the highway and cranked a left toward the sound of gunfire, passed a fleeing kid, noticed that the entire northwest was on fire and the air smelled of smoke, yanked out her machete, and had merely enough time to think, This could go bad, before she saw Gaia and Orc.
Gaia had a hand on Orc’s throat, and Orc, forced to his knees, was punching air as Gaia twisted her head this way and that to dodge blows. Gaia was laughing. Her blue eyes were alight.
Brianna blurred to a stop.
“Hey. Gaia. Remember me?”
Gaia tossed Orc aside as though he weighed no more than a toy.
TWENTY-TWO
17 HOURS, 25 MINUTES
