In the middle sara chron.., p.10
In the Middle (Sara Chronicles Book 2), page 10
Probably some sort of force blast being gotten ready.
Sara blinked, then brought up the image of herself, as she looked at that moment. There were wounds, some of them bleeding, though nothing was that serious. She had rips in her clothing, in a few places, as well, when she looked down at her actual body. That wasn’t a thing she could do anything about, at the moment. As she got ready to change herself, she looked at the powers of the others around her. Not grabbing them for herself, just seeing what they did. That was part of how her power worked, but she thought it might be allowable, under the rules. It wouldn’t make a lot of waves, energy wise, at least. Not that her government was going to know what she did there, that day. Her book bag was at home, with the special camera in it. Still, she was doing her part, rules wise.
The blond boy was alive, and human, but had an energy manipulation power and the ability to produce a force that worked with the other system. The slightly Japanese seeming man who had come to help, interestingly enough, had powers that were a lot like a weaker version of her own. He could change shape, manipulate energy and so forth, but wasn’t that powerful. Which was a relative thing, she understood, looking at him. The man was naturally strong, and fast. Basically a class three. Truly, he pretty much had the same abilities as her friend, Fox. What was different there was that the man had used what he’d been given at birth to become far more than that. In practice he was probably a class seven. Because of what he’d made of himself, starting from much less.
It was impressive to see.
Interestingly, some of the others there had powers as well. Avery, who came back in jeans and a soft blue t-shirt, barefooted, was able to change into two additional shapes. One was very large. A dragon, it seemed. A real one. The thin dark-haired boy who was standing there uneasily, was incredibly flexible. His very bones would bend to a hundred and eighty degrees before being damaged. It didn’t make him powerful, but it was different and an actual power of a sort.
The busty girl, as she’d mentioned, seemed normal, on the surface. She also clearly had some abilities with shape changing and precognition, but all of those were totally dormant. As in, Sara had to doubt that she knew about them at all.
Touching the image of herself, standing in front of her, as if real, caused her wounds to vanish, instantly. If she’d been growing into a dragon, it would have happened in about three seconds, or possibly a bit less. Shifting little bits of herself, on the same frame, just seemed like she’d flicked over to healthy. In less than a blink.
When that happened, Zack, her new friend, smiled at her.
“Neat trick. These men are Vampire hunters. A local branch of the Brothers of the Sun, out of Portland. They were told that if they came now, they could punish the Vampires, by killing some of their human servants.”
She snorted, allowing it to be derisive.
“Human? I’m pretty sure I don’t count as that here. I’m not certain what I would be, by your rules. Still, I bet it wouldn’t be regular. You don’t have Infected here, right?” The man nodded, moved to her and then, slowly, reached out.
“May I touch you?”
That meant taking her shield down, but she did it, with a tap at her neck, and then held her left arm out. True, he could have meant he wanted to do more than just that. They were in public and no one else was having sex or anything, but she didn’t know their secret and weird rules, either. The man simply took her arm, then used the contact to read her mind. All of it, from the feeling of the tickle through her brain. It was an interesting trick.
Taking his hand back, the man was quiet for a while. Then he sighed.
“I think, by our rules, you’d be called a god here. Don’t let that go to your head. I mean, you could and most of them did, eventually, but it’s annoying.”
Several of the people around her stared, for some reason, so she nodded.
“Right? No one wants to be around a person who’s full of themselves. Now, we… What do we do here? We have all these men… Do we call the police? Or… I don’t know, did we take them as slaves? We don’t do that back home, but I can’t argue with how you want things done. These are people from your world.”
She waited, kind of suspecting that the answer might seem strange to her. It was just the police coming, however. They were all in blue, and the uniforms were a bit different than in her world, but she would have guessed who they were without being told. As soon as they got there, much like in her own world, they saw the men on the ground, and then started pulling weapons and screaming at them all to lay on the floor, face down, while also not moving, and of course, to kneel and put their hands over their heads, as well as behind their heads. All at once.
Sara decided to go with freezing, and moving slowly. Luckily, one of the men there was on the phone. Those were, interestingly, bigger than what her friends at school had. By about twice the size. It would still fit into a pocket, but was longer. The one she had was thicker, but still about half the size.
“Got it Chief. Let me… Is Zack Hartley here? Wise One Zack?”
Her new buddy waved a bit.
“That’s me. What may I do for you today, Officer?”
That it seemed was talking on the big phone. After that was done, about a minute later, the police were given orders to stop being morons and start actually arresting the shooters. It took a while. There were a lot of them outside too, apparently,
Sara was a problem for them, when they got to her. Mainly in that she didn’t have I.D. yet.
“Um, I’m from a different reality. I should have some of that coming. It’s in the mail? I was told that, at least.” For some reason they didn’t seem to think that was good enough.
One of the cops, a woman with constant frown lines, tried to arrest her, even. Sara simply smiled, as the woman spoke the words, panicking a bit, inside. As the cuff came around, her arm being grabbed rather forcefully, Zack smiled at the woman.
“Oh. No, this is fine. She’s allowed to be here. This isn’t a problem. I can speak to your chief about it?”
There was no sense of power being used in the words, but the female officer stopped at least, and then scowled.
“She’s an illegal alien.”
The man nodded.
“We don’t really arrest people for that here, do we?”
“No…”
There was a bit of an argument about her refusing to show I.D. but young people weren’t normally expected to show their papers, or even have them, at her age, there. She was let go, and it was annoying, but she ate the indignity of the situation. When the officer finally walked away, Zack patted her on the shoulder.
“There we go. Sorry about that. This is kind of big and she doesn’t want to make a mistake. It would be the wrong move, with you, and cause problems, but she honestly has no way of knowing that.”
Sara could see that. It was scary, being arrested, or nearly so, but she tried to fake being calm. It took a bit of work, and mental skill.
“I understand. Now… I’m pretty much the worst temp ever. I let the shop get shot up. It’s a mess and I didn’t even make any sales.”
Instead of coddling her, Zack waved at the place.
“So, you currently aren’t allowed to use any powers of note, and have a mess to clean up. You should arrange for the new windows, as well. I’ll show you where the big blue binder is, in the back. That thing with your President… That almost has to be a set up. Possibly not by him? Something like this?” He gestured to the remaining men, still sitting on the floor, to illustrate what he meant.
She nodded.
“Probably. We can’t find anything yet, saying that it is, for certain. It won’t be a few guys with guns, whatever the real plan is. Only, if they hit me with something more than that, a real threat, I’ll just break their rules. I mean, they can’t really punish me, personally, can they?”
The man, the first person she’d talked to about the topic in that way, agreed. There wasn’t even a pause first.
“Not even a tiny bit. Really, they miscalculated there. Almost. If you decided to take umbrage at their punishment of you, their entire political structure might fall because of it. It’s probably just that they don’t realize you could simply remove them, or even take over their minds. You’ve been nicely small with what you’ve shown, so far. That probably won’t hold forever. Like with your friend Bridget? They were fine with her, until she showed them what she could really do. Eventually that will happen with you.”
She got that part. At least in theory.
“I’m sort of hoping that I can show them that I’m a good person now and follow reasonable orders, and that they’ll look past that part, later. It won’t work, but it’s what I’m going for here. Plus, I really don’t want to fight with the President, if I can help it. Even knowing that I’ll win… It’s… Everyone always thinks that because I could do anything that I want to. I mean, I can beat up my principal at school, so what’s to stop me from doing it?”
The guy, who looked to be about thirty, gave her a look that seemed amused.
“It isn’t that you could take her in a fight, Sara. Most of her charges could. No, it’s that, after you paddled her, in front of the whole school, and they sent the police to stop you, you could paddle them, too. The entire force. You move right past everyone’s safety net that way. Sure, I get that you’re no more likely to touch another person in anger than anyone else, but if you wanted to, or decided it was time for it, no one in the world could functionally stop you. Not even the other class tens, possibly.”
The other gods. At least by the rules in the world she was standing in. That seemed a bit over the top, to be honest. The kind of thing that people called themselves because they were insecure about their place in the world. They had a bit of power, so made far too much of it.
Sara was able to be strong, but while she could destroy all life on Earth, she doubted she could move a whole planet. Not very far, at least. The Universe was vast, outside of that, too. She was a big fish that way, but the pond was tiny. That didn’t get mentioned. After all, it sounded kind of self-important.
As the men were taken out of the hallway, four at a time, they moved back to the store. She grabbed a broom and started to sweep the glass up. There was a lot of it, from the two broken windows and the bent-up door. The walls had bullet holes as well. Even the ones outside the store. When she looked, the first silver yogurt machine had been hit, as well. Only once.
The thing was still working, so she just had to recover the bullet, to make certain the lead wasn’t going to get into anyone’s food and poison them. She did that first, with Zack not even asking why she’d stopped working, as he got a large binder from the back, with a lot of names and numbers in it. She found the bullet, which was lodged on the outside of the inner steel hopper. Away from the food. It was stuck really well, however, so she didn’t mess with it, just leaving it alone, instead of trying to empty the machine.
A phone was passed to her, the number dialed. It was a bit mean, but she got the idea. She was moving too slowly, and needed to get things flowing in a faster pattern.
“Anderson Glass.”
“Hello! We need to replace a glass front door, and two windows. Can I get an estimate for that?” She needed to get the measurements, and the amount, while high for her, probably wasn’t that bad. She called all the glass companies in the book, after that. Dialing a phone number was, nearly, the same as doing it at home. She didn’t have to add a one first, but that was the only difference.
All of the numbers she collected were written down and set on the desk in the tiny back office, next to the broom and supply closet. The binder went back as well. Then she simply cleaned. For the first half of the work, Zack and Avery helped her, along with her other friends. They left after half an hour, as did Zack, with only Rome standing by her. To face the music when the Vampires came back to find their shop half destroyed.
That was a bit nerve wracking. After all, her first day at a real job and she’d kind of let the whole thing fall apart.
Chapter seven
Instead of yelling, or hitting, the people who stormed in from the back, through the node, stopped, looked at her and then Avery, and smiled. Even after seeing the broken-out windows and twisted door frame. The place was already clean, since they’d had a few hours to see to everything. Sara faked a smile.
“Hello! I have four estimates for the glass work and to replace the door frame.” She pointed to the back office. “It’s on the desk?”
One of the woman in the group, Lenore, was dressed in a way that seemed real and expensive, but also about a hundred years out of date, being a nice, but efficient, dress. It wasn’t a ball gown or anything. She did have makeup on however, so her face wasn’t exactly as pale as say, Eve’s was. Sara hadn’t noticed that before. Eve had something on her lips. It was pink, not red. Almost like a gloss, instead of something more significant.
The first woman, who looked about right for high school herself, perhaps seventeen or so, smiled again and sat in the center booth. It was probably the one that the staff claimed as their own, most of the time.
“Thank you, Sara! I see that you’re alive? We, the Vampires, lost fourteen people so far today. How did you manage?” The question was spoken softly, as if she might not want to know the answer.
She took a breath, slowly, going deep. Fourteen people was a lot to lose in one day.
“Luckily, Avery and her friends came in just before that. She transformed into a combat form, and I noticed that there were weapons cleverly hidden on the bottom shelf under the phone.” That was close, but not exact directions to where they were kept. She shrugged. “So I followed her out, hoping my magical shield would hold. It covered the blades, so the men I hit all lived. I think they all did? Then Zack and… I didn’t get the other name… Tobin?” She looked at Avery, not knowing if she’d know at all.
The attractive woman looked back at her, directly, settled right by Lenore.
“Troy. Lopez. He’s my husband.”
Sara schooled her face then, not having thought that would be the case at all. It was strange, hearing her own original last name like that, but not so much it shook her. Lopez was kind of common, after all. At least in her world.
“That’s the one, then. They came and cleaned up the remainder. There were more trying to get in the back. Avery’s friends blocked the door and kept them from getting us in a pincer movement. Then the police handled things. Well, them and duct tape.”
Ambassador Rome looked around the room, then locked eyes with the man there, not one of the others.
“Sara incapacitated five or six of them. We would have won, even without the extra aid, even though it was helpful.”
Making a bit of a face, looking away, Sara sighed.
“We would have won, even if they’d brought a hundred more people. They were regular men, with firearms. That can be dangerous, but these were mainly handguns. Small caliber things… I don’t know what they were thinking.”
Eve snorted.
“That you were here alone, and probably a regular school girl, who would go down to a concerted attack? They were probably shocked when you did anything other than die. The other groups took out seven locations like this, and most of the people they injured and killed were kids. People in our employ. Worse, the event thing was a trick, the whole time.”
She nodded, but asked anyway.
“How did it work? Or do you not know? I know some people who can help with investigations, if you need? Normally I could do that for you, but there’s that thing I mentioned before?”
Eve went wide eyed, then nodded.
“Okay, that’s good. Christian Poures and Cindy Mableton, maybe?” She turned to look at Lenore, and grinned. “Imagine two people who are about five times more powerful in telepathy than the Mind Taker and you’ll be in the right ballpark. How do we get that going?”
Sara had a good idea on that one, actually.
“Start with asking? Really, ask after that with Dave Wilson. He’s in charge of our official IPB outreach program, I think.” She knew that for certain, but not everything the man actually did. “That’s mainly for our government, so they can work with us, but if you reach out, I bet your hand won’t be slapped away too hard, if nothing else.”
The Vampire sitting at the table, near the edge, preventing anyone from trapping her in place, closed her eyes.
“That sound beneficial, perhaps, but is also a lot to ask, isn’t it? We already owe those people much. We have no real way to repay them, either.”
That was a constant problem, between realities.
Sara shook her head, just a little.
“We just had an attack on the base, and in other locations. The DHS headquarters in Washington D.C. lost a lot of people. That was Fifth Armored. Um, a special unit, mainly designed to fight the Infected. The IPB in particular. So far, they haven’t gotten close to being able to really do that. I think we were being distracted to keep us from going to help anyone else, really. We know who did it and I submitted a report this morning with Richard Drake, on that topic. Desk work for me. Calling and a bit of typing. I wasn’t really needed for it.”
That was true, but Lenore shook her head.
“There is more to management than hitting people, though at times it can be tempting. Your leadership seems to be attempting to educate you in that? We do that too, on occasion.”
The words had Eve, who had gone behind the counter and was looking at the bullet holes in various places, nodded.
“True. Ed had me walking everywhere, for the first few years I was a Vampire. I still do that, but he’ll let me ride in a car now, if I’m on a date or something. It was to force me not to be reliant on outside forms of transportation. Telling you not to use your powers might work that way, too? You change shape?”
