75.
Jamie
The arm around her neck was loose enough that Jamie could breathe, but only just. She was still struggling for breath, a grip like iron against her throat, restraining her in the arms of the mountainous man Sienna had called Friday. Jamie’s vision was fuzzing, and she had listened to the exchange between Sienna and Scott, waiting to see what progress was made, if any. The last thing she wanted to do was escalate the situation, but Kyra was there, on her mind, and she knew she had to be sure that her daughter was safe if it was the last thing she did before they dragged her down.
And it wasn’t going to get done here.
Jamie had a hand up and behind Friday’s neck. He wasn’t restraining her arms, because she couldn’t get enough leverage to hammer him in the back of the head, even with her meta strength.
But she didn’t need to hit him. No, she just needed to affix a channel to the back of his head, and then anchor the other end to the asphalt beneath their feet. That done, she took a hard breath, forcing air into her lungs, and turned the channel’s gravity on to nearly full.
The effect was immediate, yanking back Friday’s head like it had a hand on his skull. He let out a cry of shock and his grip loosened, just slightly. Jamie slapped two channels down, one to each of his feet and then set them to full reverse, causing him to flip up into the air in a perfect countermove to the channel she’d already set.
Friday flipped, legs coming up over his head as his shoulders slammed into the ground. Jamie anchored herself to the road by the bottom of her feet and turned her own flip, slipping out of Friday’s grasp as he hit, rolling back to her feet and vaulting into the air as she cut the reversed channels on Friday’s legs so she didn’t rip him apart from the torsion.
She left the one binding his head to the pavement, though. That seemed like a sensible precaution.
“Oh, Jamie,” Sienna said, cringing. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“I need to be sure my daughter is fine,” Jamie said, sucking in deep breaths. Having that ape’s arm on her neck had not been a pleasant experience.
A jet of water shot past Jamie, and she twirled with a dual push of gravity channels on her feet, dodging above it. “You are not getting away with this!” Scott Byerly shouted at her, his hands shimmering with moisture as he stood with his feet planted, aiming a hand at her. “Don’t make me knock you down.”
“GRRRRR-ARGHHHH!” Friday’s shout was followed by the sound of cracking rock, pavement splitting from the ground as the massive meta ripped a chunk of asphalt loose with his head. He stood up, leaving a massive pothole behind, a chunk of boulder hanging off the back of his head like some sort of perverse, rocky halo. “That … hurt.”
“On the plus side,” Sienna said, her dry voice sounding almost bored, “now you’ve got a road tiara so that you can finally claim your place as queen of … I dunno, truckers or something … that you’ve always been at heart.”
Jamie dodged another blast of water, but just barely. It hit her costume’s sleeve and left a tear in the material. Her eyes widened as she saw it; Scott was not tempering his attacks. If that had hit me in the chest, I would have died. And if I try and escape here without knocking him out … he will swat me out of the sky with one of those water blasts, maybe for good.
“Stand down now,” Scott said. “You don’t need to get hurt.” He was eyeing Sienna, who was hovering a little ways off, putting her at the back end of a square, opposite Jamie and almost equidistant from Friday on one side and Scott on the other. “If you’re innocent, we can work this out.”
“I will go with you,” Jamie said, “so long as you can guarantee my daughter’s safety.”
“Stupid cow,” Friday said, probing the rock that was stuck to the top of his head with his hand. He squeezed it experimentally and part of it crumbled off in dusty pieces. “We don’t know where your idiot daughter is. And we don’t care.”
Jamie felt like someone had reached into her chest and squeezed her heart, smashing it in a Friday-like grip.
“Oh, dumbass,” Sienna said, voice barely above a whisper, “you really don’t know what you just said, do you?”
Jamie felt the motions come without any conscious thought behind them; the only word in her head was one, urgent, repetitive: Kyra.
She twisted and anchored Scott Byerly to the front of the nearest house and turned the channel to full, came back around and anchored Friday to a black SUV with sirens roaring that had just come around the corner, and throttled them both to full. She watched the government agents zip off like they’d been hooked by an invisible shepherd’s crook, jerked from the stage by a pissed off talent manager, and she gave Sienna a hard look. “You’re not going to stop me, are you?”
Sienna just stared at her, looking slightly pained. “No.”
Jamie swallowed heavily. “Thank you.” And she pushed the channels she’d just set against the road down, flinging herself into the afternoon sky, trying to figure out where to go—and what to do—next. The only thing she knew for sure was that she had to find Kyra.