2.31.1

Irreversible

She sifted through the torrent, to find the signatures of beings mired in light rather than static noise.

But the Statics overwhelmed her. They shouted and fired at each other now.

Astrid saw none of her own in the battlefield proper. With relief.

So, her eyes instead turned to the trees.

A shot whizzed by her head, and she dared not see if Rue once again resumed her hunt.

She didn’t have the time. She sprinted once more for the shrouded edge of the park.

Locating Zeke and Leia proved easy enough. She found them first, huddled against a tree.

Zeke braced his arms against the bark on either side of Leia and sheltered her against the trunk. While the girl sobbed in panic, unable to run.

“Leia. Leia!” Astrid ran to them and patted the girl’s cheek to bat her back into her senses. “We’re ready, okay? We’re going to get you out of here. We’re waiting on you, we’re just waiting for you.”

Leia whimpered a rambling nonsense of words in response.

“Listen, do you remember Eames? Guardian Eames? And Celeste? They’re waiting for you. Just over there!” Astrid pointed in the direction of the ship. “Just on the other side. You just need to get to them, okay? And then this over.”

Leia nodded, though clearly still a wreck.

Astrid looked to Zeke. “Do you understand?”

The boy nodded and took Leia’s hand.

“You’ll get her there?”

Again, he nodded.

Astrid hugged him for good luck. “Hurry. Stick to the bushes. They’ll be looking for you.”

Zeke dragged Leia in the proper direction. The girl continued to cry, but with each passing meter, she picked up speed in an eagerness to have the nightmare ended.

And Astrid sought the last two.

“Opal!?” She cried out over the gardens. She searched the brush first, most hopeful to find the small girl curled up and frightened by the sounds of battle. “Nigel? Opal!”

But after two minutes with still no sign of either, a new form of panic rose in the Channeler specialist.

Progressively desperate, she burst out of the foliage and back into the field. She scanned the withered ground on which the students once gathered, but it lay empty.

She turned upward, toward the battle. And with a burning heart, she observed four bodies make a break for the Aldebaran from the trees.

Four smaller bodies.

Zeke and Leia ran at the head. And along the way, they seemed to have found Nigel, and Opal.

But the youngest struggled to keep up. Nigel reached for her hand, but she kept slipping. And the boy being only a few years older, didn’t possess the strength to pick her up and run.

They were the last four. And they stood out for all to see.

EMS soldiers from Ramsey’s squad moved in on their position, to cover their escape. Ramsey stood hard and fast at the front, between them and the Opposition.

But others of the S.O. still kept to their priorities. And instead of risking the guns, reached for one of the grenades.

And Astrid would never get there in time.

A white ball of dread hurled from the S.O.’s dwindling line and sailed through the air toward the children.

Astrid ran.

She ran with all her will as though demons chomped at her ass.

But she couldn’t close the distance in the same time it took for the grenade to land just behind the kids.

Horrified, she reached out with her arm in a flurried attempt to shield the children from her position. Or even, if she could, catch the massive bloom of energy that followed as if it were a ship’s engine, or a pod.

But under such distance, and such a rapid burst, she could not.

No matter how much she willed it, how much her heart tore itself apart to try, the grenade went off.

Soldiers flew away. Those closest never moved again. Others were knocked senseless or numb from the energy burst. The range stopped just shy of Ramsey, who stumbled blindly then crumpled. Some of his comrades came to collect him under a covering spray.

While the Castor’s men advanced to take more of the field, the Opposition slinked back into their ship, to pull themselves from combat.

But Astrid peered for her Channeler brethren.

Ahead, Leia and Zeke, the furthest from the blast, crawled on their hands and knees to the Aldebaran. Zeke, the second in line, vomited once out of range.

Nigel twisted and convulsed in the field, caught somewhere between a direct hit and the outer radius. Guardians went to him, as he flopped helplessly.

But at the back, a small black-haired girl lay unmoving.

Astrid didn’t scream. She couldn’t. She couldn’t breathe.

She sprinted, careless and possessed, right into the worst of the remaining conflict.

Some of the S.O. peeled off to target her. She remained a considerably easier mark away from the ships and her support.

But she collapsed on her knees when she reached Opal.

Or rather, what remained of her.

The girl’s poor body remained intact, with nary a scratch on it.

But her energy, even the tiniest, teensiest spark…. was gone.

Astrid’s world narrowed to the void of life behind Opal’s face.

She didn’t shake the girl, didn’t call her name, didn’t beg her to come back.

Under the instantaneous pulse of offensive energy, any efforts, or pleas, came too late.

Astrid pulled the body into her arms. And the warmth she still found there broke her spirit harder than any cage.

A cry finally ripped its way through her throat, not of her own behest. She lost control, in total, and absolute.

And this time, she didn’t fight it. She wailed until her eyes blurred in tears, and even the sound of gunfire drowned in her screams.

Light and energy crackled between her and the ground. Wrapped her and Opal’s body in a blue and white haze. But Astrid controlled nothing.

Sparking light swelled in a dome around her that pushed away any and everything else. Brighter by the second, and she didn’t care. She wanted everyone away.

She would drain a ship, a thousand ships, and bear the rending of her soul a hundred times over if she could undo the last five minutes. She would do anything to relieve the agony that now wracked her every nerve. That would restore the innocence torn away.

The radius of supernatural power around her grew, haphazard and lethal. Arcs of lightning scorched the grass beneath her.

Somewhere beyond the realm of her pinned world, the S.O. officially ordered the retreat.

Anders, Romo, and Dell, made their way downfield to where Astrid lay encased in a dome of storms. The crackling arcs cast from her body pushed them back before they drew too close.

“No!” She shrieked while her soul burned. “Away! Get away from us!”

Her team stood confounded. Powerless. But with every tear fallen on Opal’s chest, the radius expanded again.

“We need to get out of here!” Romo insisted. “We can’t help her like this. We need to get the others away!”

Astrid ignored them all.

“Anders!” Romo yelled again over the torrent of energy. “We can’t do anything! We can’t be here!”

Astrid buried her face in Opal’s still body and let her grief lash away at anything and everything.

For the first time in her life, she didn’t want control. She didn’t want to quiet herself or repress her feelings. To pretend the pain would be temporary and that it didn’t matter.

Opal would never be the same. She would never be the same. And for that, she willed the world to never be the same.

Ships pulled away. The Defiance, then the Castor, in pursuit. The Aldebaran carried the civilian children away, to a safe distance from the battlefield.

Astrid cared not for where her people were as long as they fell outside the range of her despair.

The limp form in her arms brought wave after wave of shredding heartache. One after another crashed through her until she keeled again.

When the Defiance passed overhead and fled, Astrid wanted to bring the whole thing down. She didn’t care who resided within. Or who witnessed her wrath.

Her team, or the elite of Septimus that now lined the far street that now stared at the tumultuous flashes of light on Astrid’s position.

She would let them all watch her boil the ship alive if she could.

But all her anger, all her anguish, overwhelmed her. She could no more control it than she could herself.

In what could only be described as a static discharge of immense proportions, an upheaval of power surged outward over the park in a shower of arcs and sparks.

Every piece of grass, flower, and bushel. Every tree, every organism, within fifty meters died.

A singed, blackened circle burned into what remained of a battle-scorched garden park.