He wouldn’t let Kim down. He was damned if he’d let her down.
Psychic attacks came next: nameless dreads and anxiety attacks, illogical aversions and paranoias that jerked through his head like razor wire. The thought of going on became impossible, intolerable, unthinkable. But JC did it anyway. He snarled into the face of the attacks, shouldering aside his fears through sheer stubborn will-power. He didn’t look back for Happy and Melody. He knew they’d still be there.
And that was when Natasha Chang and Erik Grossman launched their attack from ambush. At the last moment, Happy sensed somebody’s presence and yelled a warning, and that was enough to save JC and his team. One word of warning, and their training kicked in. They all threw themselves in different directions, as a fusillade of bullets ripped through the air where they’d been. Puffs of pulverised stone and plaster flew on the air as bullets punched long lines of ragged holes across the corridor walls, and the occasional ricochet screamed through the still air. But not one bullet hit its intended target. JC and Happy and Melody had gone to ground, tucked away in convenient hiding-places. Natasha and Erik were forced to leave their own hiding-places in search of targets. Natasha stalked down the empty corridor, gun held out professionally before her, while Erik scurried along behind, clutching his gun with both podgy hands.
Happy hit them both with a telepathic blast, his chemically enhanced brain shouldering Natasha’s defences aside long enough to undermine her thoughts and disrupt Erik’s. Both Project agents yelled aloud as their guns seemed to become blisteringly hot, and instinctively they threw their weapons away. The guns were still in mid air when JC and Melody and Happy erupted out of their hiding-places and threw themselves at Natasha and Erik.
Natasha realised immediately what had happened, pulled her mental shields back into place, and hit Happy with a telepathic onslaught that stopped him dead in his tracks. The two most powerful minds went head to head, while their bodies stood perfectly still, staring unblinkingly into each other’s eyes. Natasha had intended to go after JC, as the most powerful member of the Institute team, and because she ached to test herself against him; but Happy had proved himself the biggest immediate threat, so she had to kill him first. Happy caught that thought and laughed breathlessly at her.
Erik drew his Aboriginal pointing bone and stabbed it at Melody as she ran towards him. She changed direction immediately, and the tiles on the walls behind her cracked and exploded one after the other as the bone’s influence moved in an arc across them. Erik raked the pointing bone back and forth increasingly wildly, spitting out a series of baby swear-words, but Melody jumped and spun and ducked with unexpected acrobatic grace, always one step ahead of him.
JC hesitated, caught between helping his team and needing to pursue Kim. And in that moment of indecision, Natasha hit Happy with a mental blast of pure rage that rocked him back on his feet. Natasha seized the moment and threw her thoughts at the ghost of Kim, hanging on the air at the end of the corridor; and Kim screamed shrilly as streams of blue-grey ectoplasm burst out of her ghostly form, torn from her by the sheer force of Natasha’s will. The ectoplasm quickly formed itself into solid bars under Natasha’s urging, imprisoning Kim inside a spirit cage. Kim screamed again, caught between two implacable forces, both of which had power over her while she had none. But summon as it would, the unseen force could not pull Kim through bars made from her own ghostly form. The spirit cage held her.
By then, Happy had recovered, and he lashed out at Natasha with his own rage. Natasha met the attack easily. She knew all about rage and its uses. Happy quickly brought himself back under control, knowing he faced a mind easily as powerful as his own and that if he didn’t fight with all the strength and subtlety at his command, he was a dead man. He met Natasha’s cold gaze and held it, attacking her shields on a dozen different levels at once, and Natasha was forced to give him her full attention. They stood face-to-face, totally absorbed in each other, like two gun-slingers on an old Western street. There was a war going on inside their heads.
The station disappeared for them, replaced by a psychic battle-field of their own creation, a desolate plain, cracked dry earth under a night sky, full of pale, fading stars. It was cold and silent, an empty place, with no help or distractions, fit only for battle and slaughter. Happy concentrated, and great stone golems burst up out of the earth, dry soil falling away from their brute heads and wide shoulders as they levered themselves up out of the broken ground. Crude, misshapen, only nominally human in form, they lurched and lumbered towards Natasha, to break and crush her with their heavy hands. She laughed at Happy, a brief, cold sound rich with contempt; and lightning bolts slammed down from the empty heavens to shatter the golems and reduce them to rubble.
Then Natasha had the advantage, and the battle-ground changed. The two telepaths stood in the ruins of a city, in the dark time of an apocalyptic future. Tall buildings had been thrown down and lay half-buried under crawling alien plants and weeds. A pale sun hung low on a sickly green sky. Natasha shot up suddenly, growing in size until her giant form towered over Happy. She raised a pink leather boot to stamp on him. But Happy immediately increased his size, shooting up past Natasha until it was his turn to tower over her. She grew again in size, then him, then her again—two incredible giants blasting up out of the ruins of a dead city, each of them trying to outdo the other. They became vast and colossal, leaving the world behind, until they were the size of gods, and threw planets and comets and worlds at each other.
Battles and battle-fields came and went increasingly quickly, there and gone in a moment, flashing like kaleidoscopes as two minds fought it out for dominance. They tore at each other like tygers, burning bright in the forests of their nights.
Back in the real world, in the station corridor, strange things were occurring in the vicinity of the two motionless telepaths, psychic fall-out from the mental wars. A rain of fish fell out of nowhere, slapping against the walls and flopping helplessly on the floor, drowning in fresh air. Rose petals fell, in twisting patterns of strange significance, then humped slowly across the floor like so many flat red slugs. And a slow, terrible pressure built upon the air, as two minds slammed together, and neither would give an inch.
Melody forced Erik back step by step, dodging his increasingly wild attacks with contemptuous ease. She was right on top of him, and enjoying the chance to try out for real the shokotan karate she’d only ever practiced in the gym. But though she danced and punched and kicked with dazzling speed, somehow Erik continued to evade her, constantly backing away, staying just out of reach. He didn’t have any fighting skills of his own, but sheer terror had given him amazing speed and reflexes. He kept stabbing at her with his pointing bone, but Melody never gave him a chance to draw a bead. Behind her, posters on the walls burst into flames or exploded into multi-coloured confetti under the bone’s malign influence. Melody spun and kicked, and Erik retreated, and neither dared break off long enough to try something else.
Erik was outraged. There’d been nothing about this in the briefings. Girl geeks weren’t supposed to suddenly turn into warrior women. It wasn’t fair. The blows and kicks got even closer, and he backed away even more frantically.
Neither Happy nor Melody could break off from what they were doing to help JC, so it was up to him to break Kim free from her spirit cage. He stood before her, careful not to get too close to the shimmering blue-grey bars, and spoke gently to Kim, calming her. She’d been shocked right out of her deathly trance and, for the first time, seemed fully awake and aware. Her vivid green eyes fixed on JC, seeing him as real, and right before her. She looked at the bars of the cage, then past them at the world beyond, and fear and panic surged up in her as she realised she wasn’t where and when she thought she was. She started to fade away, retreating back inside, denying herself to deny the world; and only JC’s calm, coaxing, caring voice brought her back again. She clung to his presence like a lifeline, and he stood firm and steady before her.