Page 53 of Trigger Discipline

They’d entered a municipal park. There was a lot where school buses were parked, along with snowplows, street cleaners, and a few other city vehicles. To his right, he could see some plain looking office buildings and a crappy park with only one bench and a dried-up fountain.

While he was busy getting his bearings, they pulled closer to the park. Just past the dried-up fountain, he finally saw it.

Nearly transparent; it looked more like an incandescent shimmer on the top of an oil slick. Blake could only see there was something there when he shifted positions, and the sun hit it just right. A wave of something, maybe energy, crackled across its surface as it wobbled in the sky.

Parking the SUV, he cut the ignition to save gas and stepped out of the car. Craning his head, he looked up only to find he couldn’t see where the barrier ended. The translucency of the shield mixed with distance had him losing it somewhere near the clouds.

“How high does it go?”

Victoria limped over to him, leaning against the car. “Higher than we can fly.”

“Fuck.”

Judd pushed himself up to the roof of the car, pulling out a pair of binoculars so he could scan the area. Crouched, he took a long moment to scan their surroundings.

“I don’t see anything like a power source.”

Blake didn’t either, not that he knew what he was looking for.

“It wouldn’t just be out in the open, you redneck.”

“Oh?” Judd asked, jumping down. “Doyouhave any better ideas?”

Tuning them out, Blake approached the barrier. It cut right through the little fountain. The cement was cleanly severed with such precision that he only noticed it was broken at all because there was a little pool of water at his feet. Tapping the toe of his boot in the standing water, he tried to see if he could figure out what the barrier was made of.

While technically transparent, the shield did have some substance now that he was close enough; it was almost invisible to the naked eye, unless you were looking for it. Clusters that looked like knots with filaments extending to interconnect them. Almost like a fishing net, or wire of some kind.

There was no heat or any kind of electricity coming off the barrier. On a whim, Blake leaned closer.There. A faint buzzing. Like the thing was alive.

Blake lifted a hand and without thinking about it, he extended his palm forward towards the shield. The sunlight caught the barrier, projecting a pinky swirl of color on his palm. Entranced, he shifted his hand until almost every color of the rainbow was splashed across his skin.

He followed the color until his hand was hovering just above the barrier. Blake’s breath caught in his throat as hemade the final push, touching his hand to the luminous shield.

It felt gelatinous, but solid. Like there was a thin layer of gel over ice. He hissed at the cold as goosebumps erupted along his arms. Shivering, he ignored it and pushed more. The filaments and knots hiding in the barrier seemed to grow corporeal, pressing back against him. The more he pressed, the harder it pressed back. Color streaked across the barrier and solidified under his hand, like the knots were demanding reinforcements.

Less translucent under his hand now, the coy rainbows had congealed into a brown color. Then he felt it. The barrier startedpushing him back.

Not hard enough to knock him off his feet, but enough that he felt a burn in his arm as he fought against it.

Suddenly, the barrier began to flicker. It snapped, and the filaments began to retract. The buzzing stopped and like a waterfall, the shield dropped. Blake’s hand slid through to the other side, his entire body rocking forward from the abrupt lack of pushback.

Before the waterfall had even hit the bottom, the shield flickered back, filaments reconnecting and slamming back into place.

Judd jerked him back just as the barrier reengaged itself.

“Jesus!” he snapped, breathless. “You want to lose an arm?”

Held up by the scout’s strong arms, Blake found himself unable to speak. It had happened in the span of a second. He had been so busy watching the shield change that he didn’t realize what was happening.

“The pulse,” he gasped, wide eyed.

Victoria nodded, still leaning up against the car. “Unpredictable and fast.”

“How did you even fly through there?”

Without a word, the pilot gestured off to the left.

Turning, Blake looked at the open field beyond the shield. Through the sheen of the filaments and knots, he finally saw what Victoria had been talking about.