75

Nália let Wenthi help her as they brought Varazina over to the cycle. “I’ve got to hurry,” she told him.

“You’ve got to?” Wenthi asked. “No, I’m doing this.”

“Who’s doing what?” Ajiñe asked, coming over with the rest of the cell. “What’s the plan?”

“My cycle. Like we told you at the track, this baby, on the flat open, can crack three hundred.” Nália looked out to the barren scrubland, the tracks leading toward the derricks. “It doesn’t get much more flat open than that.”

Ajiñe hesitated. “But she can’t drive the cycle in her condition, and if you take her—”

“You won’t survive being next to me when I go,” Varazina said weakly.

“Well, someone—” Nália started.

“It has to be me,” Wenthi said firmly. “Like she said. Someone has to be the voice and the heart. That’s you.”

“But you—”

“I’m a tory, Nália. I am a rhique son of a llipe councilwoman from a Prime Family. My name is a Prime Family. I can’t lead the charge that this will need. I can’t be that voice. So I have to do this.”

“It’s my cycle—”

“It’s your fight,” Wenthi said, getting on the cycle, wrapping Varazina’s weak arms around him. “Besides, you can build another one.” He winked and kicked on the engine.

“But we need—” Nália started, but her words were drowned out by the engine as Wenthi tore off in a cloud of dust.

“What is he doing?” Gabrána asked. “Will someone please explain to me what is going on? Who was the llipe woman Renzi just rode off with, who is this girl, and is Renzi really a tory? Ajiñe, please?”

“That was Varazina,” Ajiñe said. “She was made by the tyrant and the Witch of the War to be a weapon. Made from the mushroom, made to tear the world apart. But she chose to be our weapon. She’s choosing to die, so she could save us.”

“And you are?” Mensi asked Nália.

“The better version of the person you knew as Renzi Llionorco, Mensi,” she said with a wink. Despite her outward cheek, her attention was still with Wenthi, her avatar on the cycle with him. Varazina was shuddering and seizing as he knocked the cycle up to passing gear, racing gear, fire gear, tearing the engine into the white. The speedometer was already past two hundred, almost to the limit of what it could read.

“Hey, asshole,” she said. “How far do you need to go?”

“It’s not the distance, it’s the velocity,” he said. “Do you feel what’s coming out of her?”

“I do,” she said. “I also feel a truck full of Alliance nucks racing up on us. And military tanks coming from the oil derricks. If this doesn’t work—”

“It will,” he said. “But maybe get people in the train.”

The energy coming off of Varazina rose, building as a vibration that filled every gram of Nália’s body, a song that came from the very earth beneath her feet.

“What’s happening?” Ajiñe asked.

“Can you feel it?” Nália asked back.

“I can see it,” Mensi said, pointing to the group of armored trucks coming over the horizon. “We can’t run from that.”

“Are there cycles or trucks we can grab?” Gabrána asked. “Get the train moving?”

“No time,” Nicalla said.

“We just need to buy Wenthi a couple swipes,” Nália said. “They’re almost ready.”

“Ready for what?” Gabrána asked.

“Her power,” Nália said.

“Everyone in the train!” Ajiñe shouted. “Hurry, get inside!”

People scrambled to get inside, as Nic and Fenito helped rally them in. Even Paulei and the other patrol officers were dragged in.

“A few swipes?” Mensi asked. He picked up one of the guns left on the ground.

“I suppose it’s a better way to go than slaving in the oil fields,” Gabrána said, taking another. Nicalla and Fenito grabbed a pair each and took their place in front of the train car the rest of the prisoners were hiding in.

Ajiñe looked to Nália. “It’s going to work?”

“It has to,” Nália said. As the armored trucks raced up, soldiers and officers jumped out, rifles at the ready.

“Surrender or be fired upon!” one shouted. “You have no chance to resist!”

“Get ready,” Ajiñe said.

Nália pushed herself to Wenthi one last time. The cycle’s engine was blaring hot, white and gray smoke pouring from it, as he closed in at three hundred kilos. Varazina’s eyes were rolled back in her head, a white glow emanating from her whole body. She could feel the heat from Wenthi’s body, like he was on fire. It wouldn’t be much longer.

“You did good,” she whispered to him, kissing him on the cheek with her phantom form.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said through strained teeth, even in his avatar. “There’s still plenty of work for you to do. And it’s going to be on you.”

“Last warning!” the Alliance officers shouted. “We will open fire!”

“Give it to them first?” Gab asked.

“Get ready on my order,” Ajiñe said.

“Light it up,” Nália told Wenthi. “And thanks, asshole.”

The last words came as a whisper that brushed against her spirit. “You’re welcome.”

Her sync with him snapped as a burst of white light erupted from the horizon, and a wave of light and power washed over the land.