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Chapter 6

I WAS TIRED and about to climb into bed, wondering when Adrien would be done with his shower. We might not be able to really touch like I wanted, but having him beside me last night … for a while it had made all my eddying fears calm into a still pool.

I smiled at the thought of him curled around me, but then I heard the crash of something falling in the kitchen area. Followed by a scream.

I scrambled to my feet and pulled back the tent flap.

No. It wasn’t possible.

Ten Regulators stood in the common area, barely able to fit in the small space. One lifted Xona off the ground by her throat. Her legs kicked in the air, heels banging spastically against the side of the kitchen counter. She tried to reach the weapon holstered at her ankle, but couldn’t lift her leg high enough to get it.

Blood already soaked the far corner of the floor where Jilia lay, unmoving. A Reg lifted his huge metal hydraulic foot from her crushed chest.

Adrien sprinted into the room from the opposite entrance, a towel around his waist. Horror registered on his face as he looked at all the blood.

“No, Adrien, don’t!” I shouted. But he launched himself at the Reg nearest him anyway. I screamed as the Reg’s fist connected with Adrien’s lean frame, slamming him hard into the tent’s struts. There was a crunch of bones breaking when he hit. He crumpled to the floor, and the Reg lifted his leg up, no doubt to crush him like he had Jilia.

“No!” I screamed. A high-pitched buzzing erupted in my ears as all the Regulators turned toward me. I felt the rage gathering in my chest, building until it pounded against my lungs. I couldn’t contain it, and I didn’t want to. My small frame shook until my teeth rattled, and then, with a sudden hard pulse, my power exploded outward. My ribcage cracked and split as the power burst from my mouth, my eyes, my fingertips, my chest. Blue light filled the room and I barely had a moment to look down and see my chest cleaved in two, my insides pouring out right as the last of the blue light left my body.

I felt myself crumble. I couldn’t even scream.

“Zoe!”

It was Adrien’s voice. I looked toward the sound, but he wasn’t there. The entire scene had disappeared. Only a black abyss remained.

“Zoe, wake up, oh god, wake up!”

I blinked and found Adrien crouched over my body, shaking my shoulders. He put his hand behind my neck and helped me sit.

“Regulators!” I gasped.

“No. It was a dream,” Adrien said. “But we gotta move, babe.” I put a hand to my chest, remembering the feeling of it splitting open.

I was whole and solid. But I’d felt the pain, it had seemed so real.

The tent was so dark I could just barely make out Adrien’s face. I felt a storm of relief at seeing him unharmed.

But then my eyes adjusted and I saw that we weren’t in the tent anymore. Or rather, the tent wasn’t around us. The sides had been blown backward and several of the trees were uprooted and had fallen sideways, the enormous trunks still taller than Adrien. The night sky was overhead. Confusion mingled with the adrenaline of the dream, and I looked around in absolute confusion. What was going on? My breath came in quick puffs, fogging up the faceplate before the suit’s defroster hummed to action.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Adrien said. “I woke up to the tent ripping apart around us.”

A loud crack filled the air.

“Another tree’s dropping,” Jilia shouted, jumping over some fallen equipment to get to where we now stood. I looked up and saw a huge shadow, darker than the starlit night sky, falling straight toward us.

“Run!” Adrien grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. I stumbled once on my blanket as I tried to direct my telek toward the falling tree. I managed to stay on my feet, but I couldn’t feel any power or detect even the hint of a buzzing noise.

Jilia was right behind us as we ran through the barely standing tent frame. The tree slammed down, the several-ton trunk flattening the remnants of the tent. The ground vibrated from the weight of the impact.

“Where are Tyryn and Xona?” I shouted, trying to clear some of the debris off my faceplate that had been blown up when the tree landed.

“Jilia!” Adrien knocked into me as he spun and turned back the way we’d come. I turned too and saw Jilia on the ground, pinned by a heavy branch.

“Are you guys okay?” Xona ran up beside us, Tyryn right behind her. “Where are the attackers?” She had two laser weapons out, and she swung them around in every direction trying to find out who had hit us.

“There’s no one,” Adrien said, running over to Jilia and straining to get the branch off her. “It was just an accident.”

I hurried over and tried to pull with him, but the branch was still attached to the tree and didn’t budge an inch.

“Is she—” Xona started, but Adrien cut her off.

“She’s alive.”

As if on cue, Jilia groaned, a small sound, but enough to make us redouble our efforts. Tyryn dropped to the ground beside Adrien, but even with all his muscles put to the task, the branch wasn’t moving.

“Can you move the tree off with your telek?” Adrien asked.

I gritted my teeth, trying to call my strength forward with my mind. But nothing happened. I felt a slight buzz of power, but then it was gone again.

I looked at the flattened tent bits barely visible in the moonlight and then at the mangled trees all around us. Realization slowly dawned. Adrien had called it an accident, but only now did I realize what he meant. It was me. I had done this. When I’d used my power during my nightmare, I must have accidentally unleashed it in reality.

“I think I used it all up.” I met Adrien’s eyes. He swallowed and nodded, taking a quick look around and then turning his attention back to Jilia.

“Move out of the way,” Xona said, pulling a weapon from her ankle.

“Back up, back up,” Tyryn said. Adrien and I pulled back as Xona pushed the trigger. The stream of bright laser cut a shocking red in the darkness. After a couple of minutes, the laser had sliced through the thick branch and Xona set to work on the other side. Finally she’d cut through it, too.

Tyryn and Xona grabbed both ends of the log left behind and hefted it off Jilia. Jilia coughed and sputtered a few times, blood on her lips.

“What do we do?” I asked frantically.

Jilia’s face was pale, but she was blinking and looked alert. Her chest rose and fell easier now that the branch was gone. “I’m healing what I can,” she whispered, closing her eyes tight with her hands on her abdomen. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She worked until rivulets ran down her face.

She finally exhaled again and looked back up at us.

“Are you gonna be okay, Doc?” Xona asked.

“A few broken ribs I can’t fix right now,” Jilia wheezed. “But the internal bleeding is stopped.”

Xona helped her up while Tyryn looked around anxiously. “What the hell happened here?”

“It was me,” I whispered. The weight of guilt sank in even as I said it. “I had a bad dream.”

Xona looked back and forth between the damage and me and took a step back. Tyryn just stared.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Adrien said, unfazed. “We’re completely exposed.”

Tyryn nodded. “The Sat Cams will have caught the disturbance, even all the way out here. They’ll come to investigate. We gotta run.”

“Shunt,” Xona kicked hard at a fallen tree branch.

Tyryn bent down and gently lifted Jilia. “Xona, go get the transport started.”

She nodded once and then sprinted off.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“This is how life in the Rez goes.” Adrien hurried forward with Tyryn and waved for me to follow. “Midnight escapes, running with only what you got on you. We’re used to it.”

“But it’s my fault—”

“All that matters now is that we get out of here safely.” Adrien took my hand as we ran.

Xona already had the transport up and hovering by the time we got there.

“Won’t they be able to track us?” I asked, jumping inside and buckling the strap across my chest.

“The outer hull on the transport is built to deflect infrared screening,” Tyryn said. “In the night, we should be almost invisible.”

I felt my stomach rock as we lifted higher through the trees. Leaves and twigs scratched down the windows, but soon we were up past the tree line and off into the night sky.

“Where do we go now?” Xona asked.

“Henk knew we’d be headed his way in a couple of days for transport to the Foundation,” Tyryn said. He glanced down at the console screen. “As long as we don’t bring any heat his way, he won’t mind us showing up early.”

I glanced out the back window at the tops of the trees. By moonlight, I could see that the circular area I’d flattened stood out like a giant target.

I turned away again and saw Adrien watching me, but I didn’t meet his eyes. Guilt ate like a worm through my stomach. This was all my fault. I closed my eyes, wishing there were a way to rewind time.