Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(83)

The wires screamed.

My calf cramped up. I yelled out. Ballington was hurt as well. He was under me, and caught the worst of it. He let go of my arm, taking the skin with him. Shreds of tissue smoldered on his fingertips.

He rolled over. He got into a crouch, ready to stand. I pushed myself away from him. The elevator jerked. The door slid back. I couldn’t walk. I fell out, rolled. Then Angel grabbed me, dragged me free.

“Again,” I told her. “Hit him.”

I slapped the floor, trying to ease the torment in my arm, my leg. I pushed my toes down, stretched the muscle. “Again,” I said. “Again—”

She didn’t look at me. She was good: she didn’t get distracted. Not for anything. She was back at the control box—and not working the fourteenth floor, as I’d let everybody think; working the elevator carriage.

Ballington shrieked. He scrambled back into the corner. He’d seen the flask. He scuttled like a spider, shrinking from it. But he couldn’t leave. We’d got him. If we were lucky— “Again!” I said.

She was ahead of me. She pumped it, and he roared, a horrible, inhuman sound, the sound a hurricane might make inside a human larynx.

Somebody was beating on the stairwell door.

The door was locked. I only hoped it held.

Ballington shook. His limbs twisted. His head went back. It was as if the bones had melted in him. He flowed, he writhed. He pushed against the walls. He eased himself up, seeming to stretch out, long arms sliding from his suit sleeves, reaching for the power lead.

Angel saw it, shot another blast through him.

Then the lights blew out.

In the gloom, we could see him, crouched there in the middle of the carriage, suddenly still.

He whimpered.

He cried—not that awful, elemental sound we’d heard a moment earlier. Now he was weak, and quavering.

“Please—”

She blasted him again.

He huddled there. He moaned.

My cramp had eased. I pulled myself onto my feet.

She said, “I got him.”

“Ease off,” I said.

His breath came, rasping like a saw through timber.

“I got him!”

“You’ve done great. Don’t kill him, please. I want to finish this.”

She hesitated for a moment. Then she stepped aside.

I’d thought of saving lives. Being a nurse, a doctor or a paramedic. I’d never thought of this. I pulled back on the power. I saw the tension dropping out of him. He slumped down on the floor, and his long, strained breaths became a rapid panting. I remembered poor, frail Melody Duchess. This was different, but in my head, they seemed to overlap, as if whatever I did now might somehow undo what had happened to Melody, send the days and weeks into reverse, time rushing backwards, helping me unsee, unfeel.

Helping me forget.

I hoped that Ballington was every bit as tough as he’d made out. I let him catch his breath. Then I jabbed him with another charge.

I had to make it rough, drive out the god, but keep the man alive.

I eased back. Jabbed again.

There was something happening to his face. His mouth stretched open. It stretched and stretched. For a time I thought that it was some distortion in the air, like looking through a piece of twisted glass. His face bulged. His skin rippled like water. Time stuttered, moved in spasms. I saw the image of my arm repeated, on and on, as in a time-lapse photograph, each instant locked into my vision, and I slid the controls back up, ran another charge around him . . . His head blew out like a balloon. His shoulders came up and his face sank to his torso. Limbs, weirdly flattened, slithered like snakes over the floor— The thing was using him, using the fabric of his body, twisting it, reshaping it. How much of that could anyone survive?

I cut the power.

“Jesus—”

He was breathing hard. He looked human again, but his chest heaved and his throat tore at the air, as if he couldn’t get it fast enough.

The man was choking. Dying.

He raised one arm. It seemed to take a dreadful effort. Was he reaching to me? He lay on his back, and his hand stretched out, shaking, helpless—then dropped.

Light ran through the cables, dancing round him. Sparks of light. They seemed to pass straight through him, weaving through the substance of his body, in and out—

I left the controls.

There was a crash at the stairwell door. Someone was trying to break the lock off.

Angel caught my arm.

“Chris—”

Ballington raised his hand again. A bloody tear ran down his cheek. The makeup on his face was smudged and melted, his features crumpled like an old rag.

His lips moved. Begging me.

I took a step towards him.

“He’s not human, Chris.”

“Part of him is.”

He reached to me. I reached to him. Sparks snapped between our fingertips. The sight of them amazed me, fascinated me. I felt them in my hand, my arm—a tingling that was almost painful, yet the instant it had passed, I wanted it again. These leaps of light. These sudden surges of excitement . . . I was taking the power from the wires. It was running through him, into me. Through me, into the floor. Into the walls. Into the building itself.

Away from us.

He pushed himself up on one elbow. His mouth moved. His shirt was dark with sweat. He kept his arm out, level, hand reaching for mine.