Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(84)

Angel was behind me.

“Back off, Chris.”

I tried. My legs weren’t moving.

Ballington had pulled himself up. He was kneeling. There was nothing human in his face. The human part of him had been forced down, driven back and buried. I was looking at a mask, a film of skin below which something stirred, firing the nerves, tugging the sinews, pulling the face into a semblance of humanity. There was light in his eyes. A power, surfacing. His lips pulled back till he was beaming like a skull.

To Angel, I said, “Don’t touch me.”

She didn’t touch me. She said, “He’s not stopping.”

“Any power you put through him he’ll send through me. It’s all switched round. My fault.” I couldn’t turn my head to look at her. “You should get out,” I said.

“I’m shutting off the power here.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m shutting off the power. Over the room downstairs.”

“Angie—”

Ballington was on his feet. He couldn’t leave the elevator yet—we’d got a good perimeter—but he was close to it. The sparks went flashing and he seemed to haul himself along them like a rope.

Then Angel cut the power.

Not to the elevator. To the hallways and the suites behind her.

The thing downstairs—she’d given it an exit route.

And I was fine with that, except for one small issue: the fact she, and I, were standing in its way.





Chapter 67

The God Is Free




She’d cut the power on fourteen. The roof of our containment field. But down below, on thirteen, I’d left the circuits running. All those little nudges that I’d shot into the big room, all those jolts to stir things up, and rouse the power there.

How did a god feel that? Like an itch it couldn’t scratch? A toothache, nagging at it, driving it half-crazy with the pain?

There was respite for a second. Like a fist unclenched. Ballington caught it, too—Ballington, or whatever else was in there, using his face, his hands, his eyes. He seemed to stretch himself, reach out, get ready— The god came from below.

I felt it, even before it reached us, a bow wave, pushing up, ahead of it—a prickling in the skin, a swelling of sensation—emotions without clear, objective cause. I shook, I trembled. A sob broke from my chest. Ballington knew what was happening. He shoved against the confines of his cage, desperate to get away. His hands were up, testing the barrier. And then the god was there. It moved quickly, racing upwards. It was all force, all movement. It slipped through walls and floors, through furnishings, through all the cheap solidity we think of as the world. Rushing and yet always present. Constant, but already gone. It felt as if my insides would be sucked straight out of me. There was a roaring overhead, the flapping of a thousand wings. I looked up, and saw the ceiling panels jumping on their frames, clattering and booming. I saw the walls around me, I felt the floor below. But they were just illusions now. In my mind, I hung above the abyss, ready to fall.

And in that moment, I found that I could move again. The link with Ballington was cut. He stood there for a moment, reaching out to me, then reeled back. His body smashed against the carriage wall, flying from this sudden, liberated force. The power lead came loose above his head. It danced there, and in seconds, I knew that he would see it, grab it, rip it from its link, and then we’d lose him. He’d be free.

That woke me, finally. That fear. I ran to the control box, rammed the sliders all up full, before he’d had a chance to think. His mind was human still, and slow. I held the power in the wires. Held it, dropped it. Slammed it up again. Compassion didn’t touch me now.

I heard him whine. A tiny, human sound.

I hit him again.

He threshed. He threw himself from one side of the elevator to the other.

He tried to claw the wires from the wall, to tear the tape off, break the links.

I hit him, and I hit him, and I hit him.

The god of Second Eden filled the fourteenth floor. It filled each room and every space between, it rode through solid matter like a whale through water. It was everywhere—except the elevator carriage. The containment we’d put up was good. Ballington was trapped, and what trapped him kept him safe. The new god seethed before him. Dust and debris boiled into the air. He shrank into the corner, hands flapping, pushing at a force that couldn’t reach him—yet.

I glanced at Angel. She had fallen back against the wall, fingers flexing for a handhold. But there was nothing there to grasp. McAvoy’s god was loose now, released upon the world. It poured past us. The air began to twist, a million tiny mirrors, every atom polished, gleaming, and I saw her panic-stricken face repeated time and time again. I reached towards her, and my own small, frightened form was there as well, and all the ghosts that had been loose across the city, I saw them, pieces of them, racing through the air, dissolving into nothingness, and vanishing.

Then gone.

I slumped down on the floor. I was breathing hard. But there was quiet, now. A soft, extraordinary quiet. Wallpaper hung, scoured from the walls in strips. Half the ceiling panels had been torn away, a checkerboard of empty squares.

We were alive. Me, Angel.

Ballington.

I got up, stumbled to the elevator. Ballington was lying on his back, chest rising and falling rapidly. His mouth sagged, spit and makeup smeared across his face. I ignored him, went over to the flask, closed it, sealed it, peeled it from the wall.