The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(81)

“Show me your hands!” a cop shouted.

Amanda eyed them with savage defiance. “Call your other men back here.”

“Show me your goddamn hands!”

“You call your other men back here right now!”

Blood rushed to Mia’s face. She scrambled to the exit, only to be caught by her shirtsleeve.

“Let me go!”

“No,” said Theo, grimacing in pain. “No more bad ideas.”

It was Theo’s bad idea to grab her with his wounded arm. She broke free and sprinted toward the doors. David rushed after her.

“Mia, don’t!”

It never occurred to Mia that she already saved Amanda’s life, or that she was making the very same mistake she helped Amanda avoid. The moment she burst through the ghosted doors without warning, the policemen aimed their pistols at her head.

One of them fired.

Mia Farisi never considered herself a lucky girl, any more than she considered herself tall or svelte. And yet there were a few scattered nights on this world when she marveled at the miraculous circumstances behind her continued existence. She’d been spared from apocalypse by mysterious forces, saved from asphyxiation with the help of a future self. And then just twelve minutes ago, she was rescued from death by a brave and beautiful boy who, for reasons she’d love to hear one day, preferred a world with her in it.

She was lucky, never more so than now.

The bullet flew past Mia’s face, brushing her cheek with warm air before passing through the van and piercing a hole in the windshield.

The moment the shot rang out, Amanda stopped thinking about her sister. Her skin turned hot. Her mind went blank.

She showed the policemen her hands.

The tempis exploded from both palms, launching up the highway in two jagged cones. In the half-second journey between Amanda and her targets, a giant white hand had bloomed at the end of each projectile. They grabbed the policemen like rag dolls, pinning them down to the concrete. Amanda could feel every button on their shirts, each newly broken rib in their chests. She idly began counting the fractures as if she were merely having a strange dream.

“Amanda, stop!”

The tempic arms vanished at the sound of David’s voice. Amanda cast a stunned gaze at the cops, then David, then her own twitching palms.

“What . . . what did I . . . ?”

“Come on!”

David seized Mia and Amanda by the wrists, pulling them back inside. Zack hit the gas pedal. The van traveled a hundred feet before the fog of Mia’s shock cleared away.

“Wait. What happened to the barrier?”

“It’s down,” said Zack. “Hannah did it.”

Amanda looked through the grate, at the empty passenger seat.

“Where is she?”

—

Hannah heard the loud standoff between the cruiser cops and Amanda. Even in her muddled state, she could tell her sister had once again become Madmanda—unyielding, unforgiving, impervious to fear or reason.

When the gunshot was fired, Hannah finally broke her paralysis. She jumped to her feet and scanned the area. Amanda was still standing, thank God, but the cruiser cops weren’t. The sight of her sister’s giant tempic arms was enough to rattle the two motorcycle patrolmen. They retreated from the edge of the woods and raised their pistols at Amanda.

“NO!”

Hannah shifted back into high speed and rushed toward them, thumping the barrel of each gun with her nightstick. As the weapons fell to the earth in a slow-motion twirl, Hannah noticed the twisted bouquet of broken fingers she’d left behind on each patrolman. Their faces were already beginning to contort in pain.

“Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” she yelled, hopelessly incoherent.

She ran to the tempic barrier, smacking the metal post with her baton. The reverberation shot all the way up her arm, rattling her bones. The barrier seemed no worse for the wear.

“Damn it! Come on!”

Hannah ran to the other post and noticed a metal protrusion on the outer edge. It was the size of a salt shaker, and sported three tiny green lights. Maybe Zack was right after all.

“Come on. Please.”

She struck the protrusion. The barrier flickered for a moment, then recovered.

“COME ON!”

A final desperate swing, and the generator exploded in a ball of sparks. The nightstick broke in half. Hannah de-shifted and clutched her throbbing hand, then scanned the results of her last strike.

The tempis was gone.

Zack didn’t waste a breath hitting the gas pedal. Hannah watched the clouds disappear from the driver’s-side window as the van screeched past her. Zack caught her gaze and pointed straight ahead. Hannah threw her arms out, flummoxed.

“Wait. What does that mean? Where are you going?”

The vehicle moved on without her, a fact that hadn’t gone unnoticed by the others.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

Zack threw a quick glance back at Amanda. “We need to get off the highway before those other cops get back on their motorcycles. It’s the only chance we have.”

“You left her back there!”

“She’ll catch up.”

“Not if she’s hurt!”

“She’s not hurt. I saw her.”

“Zack, turn around and get her! Now!”