CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

THE SUN SLICED through the tree tops as all thirty-eight twitchers converged on Everlast at telekinetic-assisted speeds. The daylight splashed the rivulets of oil with swirling color, highlighting the contrast between the twitchers and their surroundings. The moment they passed the outer defenses, I sparked the current with my mind like lighting a ring of fire.

Instantaneously, all thirty-eight twitchers dropped to a more human speed and intensified in clarity. They shrieked, a vibration rattling throughout the current.

The war began.

Emerging from their hidden positions, Jeb and his militia cracked the morning with a storm of plasma bolts. Like ball lightning, the rapid-fire projectiles flared and burst all over the map.

The air of the prison grew warm, beads of sweat forming on my skin. Adel’s breath hovered nearby. Across Everlast violence bloomed, both physically and mentally. The telepathic war flashed. Coronas blazed around each of the twitchers as I met their attempts to employ mental abilities and held them in check.

Despite their mental frustration, they leapt into physical action, responding to the plasma bolts without hesitation. A black fountain spewed from a twitcher. Spinning to the side, he launched an attack. Bolts struck him twice more. Orange hot upon entry, the plasma exited as black spray.

Jeb, the most brilliant signature in the area, sprang from his hole and dashed toward the downed twitcher. He pulsed it several more times, until the dirt beneath the body exploded. The mental assault reduced by one. Spinning around the battlefield, I redoubled the interference multiple times a second on each of the twitchers.

Using a method of coordination I couldn’t detect, a second surge of militia emerged from an inner ring of defense. Attempting to trap the twitchers, they dotted the current with a storm of plasma.

Conscious and subconscious sensory data rushed through and around me. An explosion shook the floor of the jail. The current shimmered. I maintained focus on the invading forces, checking the corona on each. A single twitcher had bypassed the inner ring. Using a propane tank as a missile, he incinerated one of the tunnel hatches.

As a unit, the twitchers rushed the inner ring, overwhelming it. Just as quickly, the openings around both rings disappeared from my perception, except the burning one. The twitchers flooded toward it without opposition.

I winced. If they reached the tunnels, I’d lose them. They’d be that much closer to Evie. I sat up, still swimming in the current.

“Jim?”

“The tunnels are compromised,” I panted.

“Wait for it.”

The current shook violently as a ripple of energy lashed outward from the center of town to converge on the tunnel opening. Like a cannonball dropped in a pool, the current surged and rolled, ending with an explosion of black spray. Three more signals disappeared. “What the hell?”

Dizzy and sweating, I pushed against the remaining twitchers. I tightened the coronas to the immediate space around them, trying to crush them with their own thoughts.

“Laser cannon. The blooming can be a bitch.”

“I’m counting thirty-four.” The hole disappeared, sealed from the inside. “I can’t tell if one made it into the tunnels or not.” The remaining twitchers dispersed, running at speeds upwards of 30 mph in concentric circles around the entire town.

“Let’s hope not. What are the rest doing?”

“They’re running circles around the town. What in God’s name—”

“Dust storm. Dammit, they’re removing the laser from the equation. Even the plasma bolts can erupt prematurely if the particulates are thick enough.”

Half the twitchers continued to circle, as the other half poured into the town. A surge of earth rose beneath a home, buckling the floorboards before shattering the roof and spraying over the tops of nearby trees. “One’s underground.”

The moment the twitcher emerged into the standing rubble of the home I blocked him. An orange and red corona flared. Just as quickly, he dove back into the hole and disappeared.

“Where?” Adel stood.

“The Victorian a block west.”

Another building buckled, this time a brick storefront. Shrapnel whistled past, a few bricks slamming into the rock walls of the jail. “Store two blocks up.”

Adel moved to the door. “He’s searching for you.”

“Now another home. He’s heading in the right direction.” Debris fluttered from the sky, landing on the roof.

“He’s in the wrong tunnel. Focus on the rest.”

I continued to suppress the mental abilities of the remaining twitchers, half of which kept up the dust cloud surrounding town. The rest commenced a building-to-building, urban-style warfare, ripping off doors or simply smashing through walls. “They’re trashing the town and nobody’s fighting back.”

“Be patient.”

No sooner than she’d spoken, a clump of militia emerged from under the diner and a second building across the way. Pouring into the street, the two dozen Everlast warriors created a bristling ball of plasma, spraying bolts in every direction like a porcupine defending its young.

A handful of nearby twitchers streamed from wrecked shops and homes in an effort to overwhelm the militia. In a dazzling display of airborne acrobatics and blitzkrieg mentality, they bore down hard, increasing in number by the second. Six, a dozen, nearly twenty.

The bolts sizzled, some exploding prematurely, others slicing past dodging twitchers like water through a sieve. Finally an attacker miscalculated. Skewered by a bolt, the twitcher gurgled and screamed before dispersing as black mist in the current of my perception. The rest relented, breaking off the attack for the shelter of nearby structures.

Adel released a deep breath, stepping away from the small window. “That was sticky for a bit.”

“They’re mostly staying indoors now, spreading in this direction systematically. We don’t have much time.”

“We’re whittling them down.”

“They’re adapting.” The last of the twitchers encircling the town collapsed inward, content they’d stirred enough dust into the air.

“We’re holding.”

“Back of the building!” In the current of my mind, I watched the stone wall of the prison shatter. At the same moment, the air surrounding my physical body compressed before filling with dust and fragments of rock.

The current shuddered. Rolling onto my stomach, I covered the back of my head with my hands and struggled to regain focus on the twitcher signals all over Everlast. The flicker must have registered. Coronas swelled as mental abilities pushed outward, nearly lashing free. They knew one of them was closing in.

Debris pelted my back and legs as a shriek clawed at my mind from the outside in. The rapid crack and fizzle of Adel’s plasma rifle, firing several bolts per second, bounced around the single-room jail. The current pulsed and rippled outward like pebbles in a pond.

The gripping urge to open my eyes and protect myself fought to tear my mind free from the current. Redoubling the effort, I pushed myself under, trusting Adel to be my shield from the physical world. Oleg hadn’t spotted me.

Bounding off a wall, the twitcher crossed the room in an instant. As the beast came crashing down, Adel dodged while continuing to release a torrent of plasma into the ceiling. Super-heated stone cracked and splintered. Somersaulting quickly back onto her feet, she continued firing. The twitcher sprang, a heartbeat ahead of the bolts. In mid-flight the beast caught sight of me for the first time. A ripple of recognition flared through the current.

Backing away, Adel’s reflexes finally caught up. The twitcher had taken a direct path toward her, allowing her to pulse a bolt straight at him. Severing the twitcher’s arm below the shoulder, the plasma burst dispersed throughout the twitcher’s body in the form of a paralyzing shockwave of EM.

In obedience to gravity, the flailing twitcher struck Adel full-mast. The two of them crashed onto a heap of rubble. Remaining submerged in the current, I crawled on hands and knees in their direction. A trailing plume of black smoke rose from the downed twitcher, but Adel’s light had diminished as well. The remaining twitchers continued their systematic search from building to building, razing the town. Oleg hadn’t seen me.

Nothing in the jailhouse moved except me. “Adel?” Still a yard away, I whispered her name before speaking it slightly louder. “Adel.” A smudge suddenly repulsed the current around me, revealing my position in the streambed. Shocked, I opened my eyes. My physical surroundings imposed themselves over the grid of my larger perception, both endangered simultaneously.

Grabbing for a shard of glass, I lunged toward the twitcher as his consciousness flickering awake. Before I could bury the point in his watching eye, a blast of hot wind and sand tossed me down the leeward side of a dune.