I look at the police barricade, flashing lights, and moving forms behind their improvised wall of cruisers. They’ve got to be wondering who I am.

  I undo the velcro flap on the front of my vest, revealing yellow stenciled “FBI.” It’s built to do that so that they bright colors don’t give agents away if they’re hiding in the dark. There’s one on my back too, but it takes me a moment to locate the tabs with my fingers. It pisses me off. Okay, how do people tie aprons behind their backs or hospital gowns, anyhow? I can never do it and feel like an awkward ass every time. I got to twist it around to see it to knot it first, then move it behind me again, which they are not designed to do and I get all tangled up--.

  What the fuck am I even thinking about right now?

  “Tell these guys to let me through,” I say to Amir, slamming the door to the back seat, stubbornly empty of any Monicas, then flinging wide the driver’s hard enough for it to bounce into me, banging into my shin. I yelp in pain, ease it open with sarcastic exaggeration, then, when I sit down, my helmet collides with the roof, and I almost tumble right out of the goddamn thing again.

  “Um, I’ll check with the boss.” Amir sounds like he’s not sure I shouldn’t stay where I was.

  Well, they’re free to try to stop me. “Yep.”

  I get the damn helmet off without breaking my neck and toss it into the passenger seat, fasten my seatbelt, and put the SUV into gear.

  She’s in the other caravan. Motorcade. Whatever.

  “They at the airport yet?” I ask, but my helmet’s off, the coms are inside it, and if Amir replies, I can’t tell. “I’m going,” I say, loud enough so he should hear.

  The police are watching. No one is getting ready to shoot me, but they aren’t moving out of the way either. I could go around them into the median, I suppose, but I know where I am, and that farmer’s field to the right leads up to a back road that’ll get me to the airport.

  Good deal.

  There’s a bit of a steep decline before the land rises up to the asphalt, but the SUV handles it with aplomb. Yeah, I’m knocking about the cab like a five-year-old in a bouncy castle, but it’s doable.

  And I have to do it, no matter what Cal tells me. After what I’ve done? What they forced me to do?

  Okay, alright, nobody forced me. It’s not like the Sidorovs put a little dude in my brain to flip my switches and pull my levers, making me do the things I did, making me feel the things I feel, I know that. Nobody makes us feel anything. Other people do things and we choose our response, even when it doesn’t seem that way. Yep. I know. But tell me, what is the correct response when human trafficking rapists and murderers kidnap your friend? Evil fucks who victimize children and whole families?

  I don’t want to hurt anybody, but how else could I have rescued that bus full of people? How else? And they’ve still got Monica, doing God knows what to her.

  Yeah, tiny, five foot-three if she’s an inch, but the woman’s fierce. I saw her off-road a sedan down the steep side of a hill to attack an entire motorcycle gang to back me up. She’ll fight if she gets the chance, and she’s good at it.

  The Sidorovs will expect that and take steps. They’ll be prepared for a well-trained agent. They’ll have hurt her. Done things.

  So, what else am I supposed to do? What am I going to allow when I have an opportunity to stop it? I keep hearing Jim Beck’s voice telling us about his toes, about being raped over and over, about his baby.

  Goddammit, I don’t even believe in capital punishment! But this is stopping these assholes in the act. In the very act.

  What choice have they given me?

  The SUV leaps onto the road, exactly where I remember it. The lumbering thing fishtails, but I right it, then head off toward the airport. It’s not far. Two miles maybe?

  I hear the Charlie Brown’s teacher’s sounds of the speaker in my helmet.

  Sighing, I reach over and pluck it up, holding it up to my ear like I’ve mistaken it for a conch shell and I’m trying to listen to the ocean.

  “…down. I repeat, Cal says to stand down.”

  “Amir? Stand down? What?”

  “Finally, he talks to me. Did you really tear off through some farmer’s field? Cal says you’re to stand down. They’ve got people at the airport and they’re ahead of the Sidorovs. You are not. They’ve got it from here.” He says it all fast. Like if he doesn’t, it won’t take. Like it’ll hurt less, like ripping off a bandage.

  “Fuck that,” I say to the helmet.

  “Seriously, dude,” says Amir. “Agent Tyler is not kidding around. She said—.”

  “They got Monica.” The farmer’s fields on either side of the road have given way now to rows of corporate offices. Industrial parks for small businesses huddle in their parking lots, and further up the hill is the apex predator of the bunch. Here it’s called Yingling. On my old world it was Timken. I think they’re both in steel or something. Chemicals? I can’t remember.

  “I know.” Amir’s trying to calm me down, though having the opposite effect. “But Cal’s got this, man. She—.”

  “Ben?” It’s Cal. She’s come on the line.

  “Yeah.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “This is Special Agent Calliope Tyler, and this is being recorded. You are to stand down. You are to do so immediately or your employment with the Federal Bureau of Investigation is terminated. Prosecution may follow. Am I understood?”

  Not kidding around, indeed.

  “But she’s—.”

  “Tell me you understand.”

  I pull up to an intersection. The way to the airport, not two minutes down the road, is off to the right. Yingling’s complex is to the left.

  “Ben.”

  “I understand.”

  “I have to go, Ben.” Cal’s softening her tone. “You’ve done plenty. We know where she is and who’s got her, the entire FBI is pissed, and we have got this.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  There’s a click, and she’s gone. Well, she’s busy.

  Amir says, “Sorry, man.” Then he, too, clicks off.

  He’s busy too.

  I feel sick, angry, frustrated, and all emptied out at the same time. I look to my right. It’s bright enough outside that I can’t see the lights of the airport, but I know I would have if it was still night.

  I turn left.

  I want to scream. I don’t.

  Then it’s like all that screaming I didn’t do congeals and sits solid and heavy in my guts. My eyes are watering and my nose is running. Am I angry-crying? I’ve never done that before. Maybe I’m just sad? No, I’m not just anything. I’m too much. Images blast back through my mind. Muzzle flashes strobing at the dark shapes of armed men, the street lamp punching through that windshield, the man with the rocket launcher, the knife.

  I can’t drive like this. My entire body’s shaking and I need to pull over.

  Seeing that there’s no barrier restricting the Yingling parking lot, I stop on the far side, some distance from the entrance, well away from where any early birds coming to catch their corporate worm will likely park.

  The truth is that I wanted to be the one to save Monica. It’s childish, I know. Like, whatever she’s mad at me about, whatever makes her hate me, would dissolve and be forgotten in the face of a storybook rescue.

  Stupid.

  She doesn’t work that way. If she did, well, she wouldn’t be Monica.

  I put my hand on my chest, feeling her glasses there over my bruises, resting in my shirt pocket under my vest. Stupid fake sunglasses. Her eyes are big, beautiful, and kind. They listen at you somehow with the gentle understanding and unconditional regard of a sainted grandmother. I’ve only seen them a few times now because they are not the eyes of a hard-bitten FBI agent.

  Her glasses are with me, and she’ll want them. They are her armor. I should be there to hand them over, but instead I’m here, crying in an empty parking lot, trying not to puke on my shoes, and having PTSD flashbacks while anything at all could be happening to her.

  What did I do? How many people did I hurt?

  What am I going to do?

  What can I do?

  Well, just because I’m not there doesn’t mean I can’t help, I guess. The aethings aren’t telling me much right now. Yeah, they’re a little darker around me than they normally should be, but it’s nothing alarming. No telltale concentrated darkness over by the airport. Yingling is farther up the hill and its lot provides a vantage point that’s really kind of nice. Panoramic, even. I can see the blocky terminal, the hangars, the black ribbons of runways. The Akron-Canton airport wasn’t big in my world either. Here, it’s about the same size with a few major airlines flying out of it. There’s a couple of rental car places too, but no hotel. Back home, there are one or two, and a pretty good restaurant nearby, but it’s absent here.

  I can’t see any unusual activity. No squad cars buzzing around or anything yet, so I guess the Sidorovs haven’t arrived. Still, I start to Push.

  I don’t do it this way very much. Sort of generally Push? Okay, I do, but just a little bit, to nudge slightly things into the positive? What I’m doing now is Pushing against everything.

  It’s easier, I’ve found, to try to accomplish something specific, like a trick shot or a winning scratch-off ticket. This kind of general Pushing is trickier because I never know what’ll happen. Also, if I’m not careful, it’s easy to Push too hard and get that photo-negative flash telling me there’s going to be some significant backlash. Feedback. Whatever. The point is, I don’t want to make anything worse, so I Push gently. Carefully, but with building pressure.

  The process is helping me calm down. I concentrate on my breathing. Maybe I should Push in the general vicinity of the airport, but who knows when they’ll get there? Monica might need help wherever she is right now, so my efforts are just… outwards, in every direction. I Push not only hard enough, but wide enough that light aethings dance and swirl around me, heading off tendrils of darkness that try to Push back. It’s a little like watching a slap fight between two determined octopuses.

  There. That’s about as much as I dare. Backlash, blowback, whatever you want to call it, is no joke. I once put a dollar in a vending machine and it didn’t vend. So, I hit another button or two and Pushed too hard. There was a flash, and the thing fell through the floor, taking me with it. We were in a children’s hospital at the time, interviewing witnesses, but the building was old, the inspector paid off, there was a leak no one knew about in the wall, and the contractor had skimped in some awful ways back when it was built. Nobody got hurt, but the lawsuits were many.

  I sit and I breathe, Pushing with my eyes closed, keeping watch of the aethings.

  There’s a thrumming sound. A cavitation in the air that rocks the SUV and vibrates my chest. I look up, but the thing’s too high above me.

  It’s got to be the police helicopter, but here? Why?

  I get out as it lowers into view.

  Yep. A helicopter, much bigger than I expect, suitable for multiple passengers, and it’s all in black. No insignia of any kind. Shit. This is not the cops.

  If the pilot sees me, they give no sign. It’s landing in the far corner of the lot, away from any of the streetlights.

  I swear and reach back for my rifle.

  When I turn back around, three more SUVs, twins to the one I’ve stolen, slither into the Yingling’s parking.

  Right. Good.

  I step out past my vehicle into the open space between their evil little caravan and the helicopter.

  It makes sense. I guess if you can’t make it to the airport and you have the means, you can make the airport come to you. The pilot might not be a Sidorov. That’s an important point to remember. Maybe he’s like an air-Uber.

  The SUVs lurch to a synchronized halt. Doors open. Some of them slam. Seven men and women approach me, various scary-looking assault weapons aimed in my direction.

  My gun’s been pointed down the whole time, so they don’t seem to expect it when I shoot from the hip, Pushing hard, because they only get a few shots off.

  One of them hits me in the belly, taking all my air from me, sending me to my knees. It hurts, like it always does. I think I fired three bursts?

  They’re all down. All of them.

  I hear something behind me and turn in time to see the pilot falling out onto the tarmac, his nose a ruin.

  Monica gets out of the middle SUV, blood all over her head. I’m terrified she’s been shot, but she doesn’t seem in pain.

  I think she must’ve headbutted the pilot and got him in the honker. He isn’t moving. Dead or unconscious. The man had a helmet on.

  She seems mad.

  My lungs still won’t work, but I want to meet her on my feet.

  Her anger grows as she gets closer, her luminous eyes large and sparking, her teeth bared. There are tears on her cheeks and her face flushed. She rubs her wrists, which are marked with livid red lines.

  I manage to stand. I make my lips move. “Mon—.” I start to mouth her name, but she socks me in the gut, and now I’m back on my knees.

  She stands a little behind me, facing the airport, not looking at me. I hear her labored breathing. She’s shaking out her hands like they’re wet or asleep or something.

  She hit me a bit to the left of where I’d just been shot, so I have that going for me. And I don’t think I’ll puke, though it was a near thing.

  I reach into my vest and pull out her glasses. I tap her hand with them.

  She barks a laugh, sighs, hesitates, and then takes them from me like they’re something fragile and precious. Then she walks away.