Page 48

I feel like a failure. I can still smell the hot polymers and tracework ink from the blast I’ve taken. I might be alive now, but I know in the days to come, my muscles and other soft tissues will slowly rot and decay as they die from the electrical overload. And soon after, so will I.

“Sorry about the pain,” Talros remarks somewhere nearby. My thoughts are awash with dizzy spells. Tines bite into my flesh near my temple with a momentary sting.

Com check. This is Allele.

Allele? What happened?

Blast from a Royal when you weren’t looking. Talros carried you here. Eluni and Jorusk returned to the fight.

I need to help, I tell her.

The wall beside me opens into a gelatinous room.

You are too damaged. You know this.

I wish she was wrong.

Only Aura has ever seen my core. But this gift I must give from my heart. If ever there is a day where I cannot protect the Torchbearer any longer, it will be up to you.

Momentum shifts. I try to spread my arms and legs to catch myself, but I am too weak and sink into the gel. It is soothing and pushes away the pain of the blast that was a scourge to my skin.

Blink in the gel, Jovie.

It swallows my eyes, my face, everything. It pours into my mouth, fills my lungs, and yet I can breathe. It’s like a wild dream, swimming in water under Heaven’s sun without drowning.

I’m sorry, I tell her. I feel like I’m getting your guts dirty.

I can process anything that I need to. But you are exactly where I want you.

The gel picks me up and swirls around me. It lowers me down, swallowing me until I cannot tell which way is up.

I’m settled onto a floor inside a bright white room.

Lay back, child. I will help your eyes adjust. Open wide.

I blink up at a blue river in the gel. It drips into my eyes. The world slowly tints darker and takes on more contrast.

This last piece may hurt. But it is necessary.

Gel crawls over me again until everything is covered. Bolts of bright green light punch into my legs, torso, arms, and back. They crawl up my stomach to my chest and face. Hundreds pelt into my bones, my lungs, my heart.

A wet cough leaves me as the pain becomes overwhelming. And suddenly, I gasp in air. The gel in my lungs has disappeared. I don’t know if it’s absorbed into me or vaporized. But it’s gone.

Each arc deposits something hot that melts and spreads through my body, leaving behind a fiery feeling that pulses from a small beacon near each entry point.

There are thousands.

Gel cools my skin again, retracts, and rises in a humanoid body of light.

“Jovie.”

It’s a struggle to get my feet under me with so much pain pulsating through my body. But I know she’s healed me. I can feel it. The acrid, sickening sensation of electric death is gone.

“Your Storm is young, untrained, and different. But it can be powerful when wielded with a focused mind. All you need to do is to envision the surge, then reach for what you want.”

Before I can ask what she expects me to do, the gel swallows me and lifts me up, passing me through the ceiling and into another room. It stands me before a wall. A panel slides open. Gel slips from me, and I step out as dry as if I never set foot inside Allele.

Your friend, Talros, has left to help the others, Allele says.

Looking down at my hands, I turn them over and study the faint dots under my lightly crackling skin.

Those will heal and hide soon enough.

Do I still need my Faraday suit? I ask.

You are now a mutant human with a unique Storm, but you are still human. You can not go up against a Royal Amphiran attack and hope to survive without your gauntlet shield. But we both know your shield works.

I smile to myself. “Thanks, Allele. You saved my life.”

More than one. Go get Aura. He needs you. They all do.