Suddenly the bright light flashed off to the north. It was gone in the blink of an eye. It took a moment for it to sink in. “He left,” Tom said. He sounded like a kid on Christmas morning. “Pulse left.”
Danny was way ahead of him. “Modman!” she cried. “There!”
Tom glimpsed something in his peripheral vision, turned, saw him. Modular Man. Weaving in and out among bursting shells.
There was no time. The antiaircraft fire was keeping him busy, but Modman had to know the Turtle was there. Hiding in the sun didn’t mean jack shit to the android’s radar.
Tom zoomed in, reached down, and grabbed.
Midway between a zig and a zag, Modular Man jerked to a sudden full stop and hung helplessly in midair.
The shell dropped toward him. Tom kept one nervous eye on Mistral. She was well below, winds howling around her. Three miniature tornadoes were rushing toward the New Jersey. Mistral still hadn’t seen him.
Modular Man had managed to wrench himself around in the Turtle’s telekinetic grasp. The android was hellacious strong. Sweat was popping out on Tom’s brow as he fought to hold him. “I don’t want to fight you,” Modular Man shouted up.
“GOOD,” the Turtle replied. “CAN YOU SAY, I SURRENDER? I KNEW YOU COULD…”
The android must not have watched Mr. Rogers. He just looked vaguely puzzled. “My programming does not permit me to surrender, except to preserve my creator’s life.”
“He told me before, none of this is his idea,” Danny said. “He’s being compelled.”
“It was Pulse,” Modman said. “He must have ignited the ship’s magazine. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“TELL THAT TO THOSE SONS OF BITCHES IN THE WATER.”
Modular Man seemed to thrum as he fired on all cylinders, trying to break free. He didn’t move a foot. The guns mounted on his shoulders swung around on the shell. He had a machine gun on his right shoulder and some kind of high-tech laser or maser or taser cannon on his left.
“GIVE UP,” Turtle said. “I’LL REPROGRAM YOU.”
“I cannot permit my programming to be altered,” Modular Man said. The taser swept across the shell in a smooth traverse; hidden video-cams fried like popcorn in a microwave. The machine gun was right behind it. Tom heard bullets whining off his armor plate. Three of his screens went dark, then a fourth, a fifth.
“BAD IDEA,” Tom said. He bent the barrel of the machine gun back on itself, then ripped off the taser and sent it spinning. Sparks arced from the hole in Modman’s shoulder. “LAST CHANCE.”
Modular Man had nothing to say. Danny was shouting something in his ear. Tom barely heard her. He wrapped invisible hands around the android’s ankles. “MAKE A WISH,” he said to Danny. She clutched at his arm, frantic. Finally he looked over, just in time to catch a glimpse of blue and white on the screen behind her.
Then the tornado turned his shell into a tiddledywink.
Up was down, down was up, and everything was spinning. Tom’s harness held him in place, but Danny was slammed up against the ceiling, then down, then up again. She tumbled across Tom’s lap and crashed into the big main screen. The picture tube exploded. Flying glass filled the cabin. Danny cried out. Somehow Tom managed to grab her arm as she went by. He pulled her down against him, hard, and held her tight as the shell went end over end.
It seemed like an eternity before he finally got control again. The shell jerked to a sudden stop. It trembled in the air. Tom had lost all sense of where the fuck he was. Danny was in his arms, groaning. “My leg … shit… I think I broke my leg.”
There was no time to worry about that now. More than half of his screens were out. He looked at the others, quickly. Modman was a distant speck, trailing smoke as he fled. He must have held on, wrenched something loose when the wind hit him and Mistral … he looked from screen to screen, frantic… there she was, coming alter him… riding the wind… her cape rippling like the sails of a clipper ship… smiling…
All of a sudden, Tom wasn’t afraid.
All of a sudden, he was angry.
He thought of a bubble.
Mistral’s cape deflated like a leaky balloon. It wasn’t until she began to fall that she realized something had gone wrong. She looked behind her, below her, not quite understanding what was happening.
The shell fell toward her like a dive-bomber.
“Yes!” Danny said.
Mistral tumbled helplessly. Her cloak was a limp rag now, useless as a torn parachute. Far below, her tornadoes began to dissipate. Tom turned his bubble into shrink-wrap, a telekinetic second skin that gripped her as tightly as her costume. The sea rose up to smash her.
Ten feet above the water, Tom jerked her to a sudden stop. Mistral glared at him. A wind came from nowhere and brushed against his armor. But it was attenuated, feeble.
“NOT THIS TIME.” Tom told her.
Mistral’s mouth opened wordlessly. She was gasping, struggling for breath. His teke was shutting off all her air.
He turned her upside down, gave her a good look at the bodies floating in the water below her. One of the men was still struggling feebly, clinging to the corpse of a buddy. He didn’t seem to know how to swim.
“JUMP,” he told her.
Feebly, she tried to shake her head.
“OKAY. THEN DIE.” He tightened his grip. His teke closed around her like a vise, squeezing the breath out of her.
Danny had gone pale. “Jesus, are you really going to kill her?” she asked nervously.
Tom didn’t know the answer.
Mistral’s pretty face was turning blue. It matched her costume. Torn squeezed harder. She was fighting his teke with everything she had.
And then she wasn’t fighting him at all.
Tom released her as soon as she went limp, caught her gently as she began to fall, lifted her atop his shell. He could see her chest moving weakly.
He felt Danny grab his arm. “Look,” she said. Down in the water, the man who’d been hugging the corpse suddenly kicked free and swam for shore. His strokes were strong and sure. For a moment Tom considered pushing him under.
“The ship,” Danny said urgently. “I can feel the deck tilting under me. It’s going down!”
Tom sighed. The Turtle lifted slowly into the air and moved toward the foundering New Jersey to do whatever he could do. Below him, the swimmer raced toward shore.
The scream startled the hell out of Ray, because it came from behind. He whirled to see the other team members clustered around Danny. She’d managed to cut short her agonized shout, but she was writhing on the tunnel floor, clutching her leg in obvious torment.
Ray ran back to the group, pushing past Battle and Boyd, and knelt by her head. Her mouth was clamped shut and beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. She wasn’t bleeding, but she sure as hell was in pain.
“What happened?” Ray asked.
“I don’t know,” Boyd responded excitedly. “She was walking in front of me all right, then she suddenly screamed, fell, and grabbed her leg.”
“It’s… o…kay,” Danny ground out between clenched lips. “I can deal… with it. It’s not… my … pain.”
“Whose is it?” Ray asked.
“Sister’s … broken leg.”
“You feel everything your sisters feel?”
Danny nodded. “Once … I fell out of a tree … I was eight, nine, playing hooky… broke my arm. The other me was at school, only her arm broke too, all by itself.”
“Christ,” Ray said. That was frightening. “You mean every time one of your sisters gets hurt.