My legs ached, my muscles burned, and the heat was climbing my exausted body. Even tough I had lost count a few moments before, I couldn't be too far from the hundreth floor. And despite the fact I wasn't running up those stairs since ground level, it sure as hell felt like it. At some random point, between one set of stairs and the next, I glanced through the corridor window and discovered, to my relief, I was already high enough. I could jump to the next building from there.
Nearly twisting my ankle, I spun on my axis and made it towards the window. It was closed and I didn't have time to force it open. It was also made of glass, which certainly wouldn't stop me. Much harder things hadn't. Just as certainly, would hurt immensely - which could be seen as a great thing. Pain always enhanced my powers, and I would need every inch of an advantage on the next few seconds. For now, all the effort I could muster during that short sprint was to shield my face with my left hand: I would also need working eyes. Then I invited myself out through the glass.
Maybe it was the adrenaline from the last hour, maybe I had grown some kind of natural armor after the physical abuse I had put myself through on the last few days. Maybe it was the fact that, looking down, I was nearly half a kilometer away from the ground. No matter what caused it, but I was surprised by the absence of feeling. Don't get me wrong, the broken window had cut my skin in at least two dozen places, and the blood was already dripping out, but the only sense that told me this was my sight. The rest was probably shut off by now.
Instead of worrying about my confort, tought, I had to worry about my life. Placing both arms paralel to my body and stretching my hands horizontally, imitating some sort of hover engine, my mind allowed me to levitate to my target building. Looking straight forward, though, the scene before my eyes was more complicated than I had foreseen. Kahra was kneeling on the middle of the flightpad, her clothes torn and ripped and an expression of defeat on her face. Beker was holding his rifle loosely with his left hand, and pointing an active pistol at her head with the right one. There were a bunch of goons in body armor cicling them, standing near the edges, but I hadn't really paid much attention to them. On the far end, Beker's last space-faring vessel had its engines on and was spurring the wind all around, generating enough noise to make my suicide glass-fight a completely silent ordeal to the lot of them. Which was the only reason I actually reached the flightpad without a storm of pellets fired at me. A scene flashed through my imagination as a last, desperate empowerment of my pain, my rage and my abilities: I imagined, for a split second, my failure. If Beker actually pulled the trigger, the only thing I've ever loved in this world would have its cranium split and would fall to the ground like a wet sack of rice, and I would watch its neurons and blood spilling on the floor aside my hopes of ever nurturing something good in this world. That could not happen. That would not happen.
My feet touched the edge of the the building's roof. With my left hand, I pointed at Kkara and froze my fingers in place, incasing her in the most powerful energy barrier I've ever created. She wouldn't feel a scratch from what was about to come down if I had my way. Which was probably the only good decision I had made the entire week - Becker pulled the trigger not a second after that. The over-energized pellet bounced off her head effortlessly back into his chest and penetrated his own armor between one plate and another. I would laugh if I had the time, but I was satisfied by the astonished look on his face. I could nearly read his mind. "What the hell, she isn't a biotic, how did she do that?". Then, I was doubly satisfied by answering his unspoken question. He noticed me approaching the center of the roof, biotics all flared up, ripples of blue light sparkling and stretching half a meter away from my body. He didn't have time to raise his hand and point the pistol at me. The half-a-second his chest pain held him back was all I needed to wave my right hand in the air and let a gust of nearly solidified air toss him out of any hopes of surviving that encounter. He flew way beyond the limits of the pad and fell to his death. Once again I cursed the lack of time to properly enjoy my peer's pain, because by this moment every goddamn person on that roof was raising their rifles to point at me.
Releasing the grasp of my left hand on Kahra, I trusted the energy field protecting her would last long enough. I also didn't have a choice. In order not to have my physical form transformed into a cheese grater by the careful kisses of a thousand pellets, I needed both my hands to raise a barrier powerful enough. I only needed a few seconds. Walking towards my girl, frozen in her kneeling position, the heavy metal sound emitted by the rain of bullets my magic trick was taking could nearly make my ears bleed. Somehow, my magic seemed alergic to high-powered, automatic weapons, and that sheet of hardened air keeping me safe would soon collapse, as would I and half a dozen unfulfilled promises.
I got into position. I reached the center of the pad, standing right above a big fucking "S" for "spacecraft" drawn on the floor, and right aside Kahra. I could feel her skin, shielded by my powers, brushing against my left tight, which had been naked for the last minutes after that last grenade nearly ripped off my pants. I had to win. I had to keep her alive. I had to kill all of them. Pushing my arms alongside my torso, I compacted my shield into my body, so no effort would be wasted protecting the emptyness around me, and with an elbow-twisting effort, I threw my arms out, tossing every person present, except me and my loved one, down on the floor with a gust of wind. Of course, that left me totally exposed, so my last step needed crucial timing: it wouldn't take two seconds before one of them got up and shot me dead. I guess I was getting used to betting every damn thing on well timed-moves. Shame I had a horrible biological clock. At least, I had had so far. Time to find out if my real life experience was making me better - or worse.
I looked towards the landed ship, now not 20 meters from me, on the edge of the pad. I felt like the pilot was reading my mind when I saw him staring at me through the window and desperately trying to lift the thing up.
"Not this time."
I tried to extend both arms forward, but my next biotic power would have to be single-handed. Literally. My right arm was broken, and the pain was excessive. So I pointed my left hand towards the engine of the ship, exposed by a hole in its armor created the day before by our last encounter, and imaginatively grasped the fuel tank, clenching my fingers to compress it. A last time, I looked into the pilot's eyes, eager to see him burn to death. That would be my vengeance: even if me and that asshole of a cow I called "love" were to be killed, so would everyone up there. Remembering a centuries old movie flick, I held my grasp for half a second to be as cliché as I could and pronouce a last threat.
"Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker."
With that, I stretched my fingers, as my mind attempted to disrupt the very atomic mass of the fuel tank. Before it all happened, I remember the last thing I thought. "Damn, I did it. I'm not shot. I'm not dead. I'm standing. I did it." Then all hell broke loose. The fuel tank predictably exploded, completely destroying the aircraft. The pressure of the blast tossed me back god knows how far, but mercifully not enough so I would fall from the building. Every edge-standing brainless moron, despite their body armors and myriad of weapons, was thrown away to be judged, condemned and executed by gravity. As I hit the floor and spun, twisted and broken, and bounced, once, twice, thrice, I felt the skin on every inch of my body burning by the Devil's judgment for my sins. I could feel bone splitting, muscle ripping and probably an organ or two being exposed to the agonizatingly hot air. Smoke and heat chocked me, my head hit the floor a couple of times, and when I finally stopped moving, I realized I had never actually met true pain. If there really was a Hell were the souls of the damned were sent to by God, then that being couldn't possibly love anybody. Not if he made anyone go through that of his own free will.
I was still conscious, tough. I was still alive. I remember briefly opening the only eye I had left and watching Kahra stand up groggly as the stasis left her. She instantly grasped the situation as she always had. "Smart girl", I thought. She had always been. I'm not sure if she recognized my barbecue-ready facade or if she ran towards the only person left there besides her, but I saw her coming after me in a jog among the billing smoke, while my eye closed and I my consciouness began to slip.
I finally let go. For once, I released control of my life, I relaxed. I couldn't move a muscle or find words in any of the languages I had learned to describe the suffering I was going through. Yet, I let go, because I realized she was safe and unharmed. Maybe not brand new as in a store's shelf, but she would live. I had made sure of it, even if I had paid for with my life. The Horned Beast had never been known to offer gifts for free, had he? And God certainly wasn't the one spreading his blessings upon me. Besides the agony of my ordeal and the relief of her safety, of the calm that took over my heart for the first time in memory, I also remember a dry laugh coming up my ruined throat looking back at these last weeks. "How the fuck, out of the peace of my book reading and bird watching... did we come to this?"
