Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

“It’s working!”
I shout out toward the peepholes.

“Shut . . . up,” Infinity seethes. “You’re not helping . . . by bleating inside my head.”

“Sorry,”
I whisper, and I can feel the heaviness of the void gradually decreasing as the blood inexplicably ripples and moves as if it were alive, sliding across the shiny black floor as it’s absorbed back into our body.

Out of the corner of Infinity’s view, I can see the fight has become a savage, animalistic clash. Nanny Theresa’s arms have morphed into blades once again, and my mother is ducking and weaving as Nanny Theresa’s glossy black weaponized limbs slash and slice through the air at her. Every one of my mother’s moves seems practiced and focused—a sure sign that she’s been taught how to fight in the past. She’s not holding back, either, and it couldn’t be more evident as my mother blocks one of Nanny Theresa’s arms at the bicep and brutally head-butts her right smack in the face. Brittle chips of my mother’s skin splinter and fly from her forehead as Nanny Theresa’s entire nose shatters into a dozen pieces. They clatter onto the ground and melt into the floor as Nanny Theresa staggers backward and glowers at my mother, her empty eyes staring with rage from above a jagged hole where her nose used to be. But there’s no blood, no cry of pain, and no heavy breathing or any sign of fatigue from either of them at all. It’s like two realistic statues are facing off in stoic silence, unfettered by pain or fear, forever locked in a battle that can’t be won, only postponed until the fallen rises again.

Infinity takes a huge, revitalizing breath as the pool of blood gets smaller and smaller. The void has almost returned to its normal consistency, and I can feel the lost strength coming back, coursing through our body in satisfying waves. The last of the blood finally disappears beneath Infinity’s hand, but then something very bizarre catches my attention. The shiny, clean floor around Infinity’s palm is beginning to warp and move and creep up onto Infinity’s fingers. She quickly pulls her hand away from the floor, hastily flapping it up and down, like she’s just withdrawn it from a sewer pipe, flicking globs of black liquid from her skin and back onto the ground, where they instantly solidify into a hard, glossy surface again.

“What the hell,” Infinity mutters as she glares at the floor. I can feel her bewilderment, mirroring my own. Did that really just happen?

Infinity gets to her feet, and she’s still looking from her hand to the floor and back again, when out of the corner of her view, I see Nanny Theresa glare in this direction, and sudden panic grips my stomach. I think I have a fair idea of what’s coming next, and I yell a loud warning toward the peepholes.
“Infinity! Look out!”

Infinity quickly looks up and only just manages to dodge to the side as a hissing spike thrusts out of the floor and spears past her head. Another spike erupts from the floor, and another and another and another, but Infinity’s reflexes are renewed and razor sharp as she spins and weaves and then leaps ten feet straight up into the air, arcing into a graceful straight-legged backflip before landing lightly on the floor in a low crouch.

“Break the barrier!” my mother shouts as she lunges at Nanny Theresa. “Get out of here!”

“There, against the wall of the dome!”
I shout.

“I see it,” Infinity says as she dashes past a motionless Dr. Pierce, but she skids to a halt and kneels beside a groaning Gazelle, who has pushed herself up onto one elbow and is massaging the side of her jaw where Nanny Theresa swatted her. “Are you OK?” she asks, putting a hand on Gazelle’s shoulder.

“A little dizzy, but I’m fine, Commander,” Gazelle says as she tries to get up, but she falters, and her eyes roll. Infinity pushes her back down.

“Stay down, and keep an eye on those two.” Infinity indicates Nanny Theresa and my mother. “Give me a heads-up if the fight goes bad. I’m gonna bust us out of here.”

“OK, Commander,” replies Gazelle.

As Infinity glances back toward the fight, I see my mother do a textbook foot sweep, kicking Nanny Theresa’s legs out from under her and sending her sprawling onto her back. My mother pounces toward Nanny Theresa and brutally stomps on her face, cracking the top half of her head clean off. Nanny Theresa’s body instantly turns to liquid, and my mother glares over at us.

“Hurry!” she shouts.

Knowing full well that Nanny Theresa will re-form in no time at all, Infinity takes off immediately and dashes toward the wall of the dome, skidding to a stop about ten feet from the barrier. Infinity pulls up her sleeves and takes a series of deep breaths as she claps her hands and rubs them together, eyeing the blockade with careful consideration as she psyches herself up to strike it. Then, with a little hop and a jump, she swings her leg and twists her torso. Her whole body spins so quickly her view becomes a blur as she plants her foot back onto the floor and kicks out with her other leg. I gasp in awe as I feel the raw power surging through her muscles. It’s like they’ve been replaced by hydraulic pistons, and combined with the momentum of the spin, her heel whips through the air with ludicrous force and slams into the barrier like a sledgehammer.

The crunching sound of bones breaking inside Infinity’s shoe is immediately followed by waves of pain and injury alarms ringing out all around me. Infinity has badly broken her foot, but the damage was well worth the effort, as the entire eight-foot-high, four-inch-thick barrier splinters in a huge cobweb of cracks from top to bottom. All we’ve got to do is pull the broken pieces away, and we’re home free.

Infinity hobbles on her injured foot, and I can feel the darkness beginning to thicken as she tries to concentrate on healing it.

“You take that barrier apart!”
I yell out toward the peepholes.
“I’ll take care of our foot!”

Without even thinking, I splay my legs out into the darkness beneath me, and I can feel them suddenly grow to their full size, filling the inside of Infinity’s legs as if I were slipping them on like a pair of skintight jeans.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Infinity says in confusion, but the broken bones in her foot are already moving back into their proper places, and the pain is already waning.

With the repairs done in only a few seconds, Infinity lets out a bemused grunt and stands there, rolling her ankle and flexing her freshly healed toes inside her shoe.

I shrink back inside her head and shout toward the peepholes.
“Infinity! The barrier!”

“Right,” she mutters as she flinches back into action and begins pulling pieces of the barrier away and tossing them to the floor. “I don’t know how you fixed my foot so quickly,” Infinity says as she hurriedly pries more fragments loose. “But you’re gonna have to teach me that little trick.” It was only slight, barely more than a momentary twitch on her lips, but I’m certain that for a fleeting instant I felt Infinity smile.

She wrenches a decent-size piece of the barrier loose and heaves it onto the floor with a thud. The cool night air outside wafts in through the hole. We’ve broken through, and I spot Bit’s worried face a few feet away on the other side.

“Finn!” she screeches.

“We’re here, too,” Jonah’s voice says from outside. “Percy, get in there and help Finn. I’m too big to fit in that gap.”

“Right away, Major,” says Percy’s voice. When Infinity topples another piece from the barrier, I see his face as he shuffles into the breach and reaches out to pull a fragment from his side.

“Hi, Finn. We’ll have you out of there in a jiffy,” Percy says, smiling with his perfectly straight white teeth. Percy dislodges a small shard and hands it back to Brody, who has stepped up behind him. Brody cups his hands to receive the shiny black piece of the barrier, but as soon as Percy passes it to him, it instantly disintegrates into a handful of fine dark powder and runs through Brody’s fingers.

I can hear the scuffling and thudding blows of the fight between my mother and Nanny Theresa still waging behind us, but we’re making good progress as we dismantle the barrier from both sides. We’ve already exposed a three-foot-high section of the breach, but it’s mostly the tapered top third of the gap, and it isn’t quite wide enough that we’d be able to climb up onto the jagged remains of the barrier and climb through. Infinity grips the edge of another piece, but as she pulls it free, I hear Gazelle yell out behind us.

“Heads up, Commander!”

Infinity quickly looks over her shoulder to see my mother lying on her back on the floor. When it comes to fighting, my mother far outmatches Nanny Theresa, but there’s such a thing as a lucky blow, and that’s the only thing that can explain what I see, because my mother’s left leg has been cut clean off at the knee, and one of her arms is completely gone from the elbow down. Keeping the breach open means that my mother has lost the ability to repair herself, but that didn’t stop her from giving it everything she had to try and hold Nanny Theresa back and buy us some time.

Nanny Theresa’s blade arms morph back into their normal human appearance as she stands over my mother, looking down at her victoriously. But her attention quickly snaps in our direction.

“Leave my daughter alone!” my mother shouts. Despite her missing limbs, she still tries to scramble across the floor and grab at Nanny Theresa’s ankle as the glowering old woman purposefully waves her hands through the air toward us. That gesture could only mean one thing; I can tell by Infinity’s stance that she’s already preparing herself to evade more of Nanny Theresa’s attacks.

But there aren’t any lances erupting from the floor, no spikes thrusting toward us; there is only the telltale hissing sound of a construct forming right behind us. On full alert, Infinity dives away from the wall and rolls across the floor up onto her feet. But as Infinity looks back toward the source of the undulating hissing noise, my heart sinks into my stomach. I see every one of the cracks and splinters and holes in the busted barrier quickly healing shut, until soon the entire eight-foot-high blockade has repaired itself back to pristine condition, exactly like it was before Infinity kicked it.

“No!” yells Percy’s muffled voice, and I can hear thudding and grunts of effort coming from the blockade as he tries to break it from the other side.

A crouching Gazelle springs shakily to her feet and adopts a fighting stance.

“No!” Infinity shouts at her. “Back away. She can kill you with a single thought.”

“That’s good advice. I’d take it if I were you,” Nanny Theresa says without even so much as a glance at Gazelle.

A clearly frightened Gazelle does exactly what Infinity says, and with a quick leap, she bounds fifteen feet to the side. She stares wide-eyed at Nanny Theresa, who slowly floats just above the floor, drifting through the air toward us.

“Any suggestions?” Infinity asks.

“You’re asking me?”
I reply.

“You’re the one that went to school,” Infinity says mockingly.

“Well, you know we can’t beat her in a fight. She can’t be hurt, and she can’t die.”

“Yeah,” mutters Infinity. “And even if we broke that barrier again, she’d only fix it faster than we could take it apart.”

“Who are you muttering to, child?” Nanny Theresa asks as she drifts to a stop and settles on the floor a few feet away. “The other little voice in your head?”

I can see Gazelle slowly creeping as quietly as she can behind Nanny Theresa.

“The only little voice that woman loves is her own,”
I whisper.
“Keep her talking. At least it’ll buy us some time.”

Infinity sees Gazelle moving into an attack position and nods in agreement at my suggestion.

“Yeah, ah, look, Theresa. Can I call you Theresa?” says Infinity. “I know that you and I never really got along, but surely there’s no need for all of this violence?”

“You’re beginning to sound a lot like me,”
I say toward the peepholes, and a ripple of annoyance shivers from Infinity and reverberates around the void.

Nanny Theresa’s eyebrows rise with bemused surprise. “Is this the final speech of the condemned?” she asks. “A plea for clemency perhaps? Come now, child. Do you honestly think that there is any combination of words in the entire English language that could earn you a reprieve?”

“Well I can speak eight other languages,” Infinity says. “French is particularly nice, so how about,
laisse-moi partir
?”

Nanny Theresa smiles as her arm slowly begins forming into one of the large blades she’s clearly become so fond of. “Very amusing,” she says. “But I’m not going to let you go, and there’s no point attempting to appeal to my humanity or the better angels of my conscience. I don’t have any humanity left, and my conscience is clear and righteous. Oh, and by the way, your friend is wasting her time.” Nanny Theresa waves her hand behind her, and Gazelle suddenly begins sinking into the floor as if it had instantly become glossy black quicksand.

“Help!” she screams out as she sinks deeper and deeper. The liquidized floor laps up over her legs, then hips. It rises up to her chest, then her neck, and floats up to her chin.

“Don’t kill her!” Infinity screeches. “I’m the one you want. Please, leave her alone.”

The glossy floor has covered the lower half of Gazelle’s face when it instantly freezes solid again, and all that can be seen of her is one of her hands, the top of her pixie-cut hair, her wide, terrified eyes, and her flaring nostrils.

“She can live,” Nanny Theresa says emotionlessly. “She will be a witness to the moment I saved humanity . . . with your justified execution.”

With another wave of her hand, the view from Infinity’s eyes suddenly falters, as if she’s been knocked off balance, then it suddenly drops. Infinity looks down at the floor, and I can see why as the glossy black surface has turned to liquid beneath her feet, just like it did with Gazelle. Infinity is steadily sinking into the ground, as if it were a pool of tar.

“Theresa! Please!” my mother screeches. “Listen to me! Don’t kill her. This is not her fault! She’s a victim, too . . . she’s innocent!”