Unravel (25 page)

LIN WAS
staring at the commander, her chin up and her eyes bright with a look that made Elissa automatically think
danger
.

“
We're
saying yes,” she repeated. “We came here to help and you're not going to stop us.”

Commander Dacre gave her a look that almost seemed like one of hatred. “Oh, for God's sake. Do you think I take orders from teenagers?”

Lin narrowed her eyes.
“Too many.”

“What? Too many what?”

“Too many times you've said ‘teenagers.' ” Lin smiled at her, a look that would have been almost kind had it not been for the flat gleam in her eyes. “Maybe you'd understand stuff better if you stopped being so worried about our age?”

Out of place though it was, a ripple went through the room. A ripple of not-quite-audible amusement.

“That's enough! I'm not here to argue with—” The commander broke off.

“Teenagers?” said Lin, her smile wide and bright.

“
Civilians.
I'm warning you, girl, step away.”

A sudden prickle, a feeling of the hairs lifting, ran along Elissa's arms, up the back of her neck. She shot a look at Lin and saw her sister's eyes still fixed on Commander Dacre, her hands whitening as they clenched.

“No,” said Lin.

“Who do you think you are? You don't get to say
no
to IPL.”

“
I do.
I get to say no to
anyone
.” Something edged Lin's voice. Not quite a tremble, more like the prickling shiver that had run over Elissa's skin. The haze rose further through her head. There was heat in her chest now, burning, and in her hands, too, making them tremble.

Attacking the ships back at the base . . . that was something she hadn't consented to and hadn't wanted. But this was different. Elissa reached out, curled her hand around Lin's.
Make her stop.
She didn't know which of them the thought came from, but she did know that the sudden flare of energy came from both. It sprang from their joined hands, licking up Elissa's arm like invisible fire, burning in her throat like strong alcohol, in her face as if she'd thrown open an oven door.

The commander's gun jumped from her hand, flew across the room, and hit the far wall. It bounced off and fell to the floor.

Make her stop!

Elissa's hands prickled, every nerve humming, a sensation
like superstrong pins and needles. The fingers of her free hand curled. There was a feeling of weight in them, a feeling of grasping something. . . .

The commander staggered against the side of the doorway as suddenly as if she'd been pushed. She made a half-choked sound, something that might have been a cry if it hadn't been strangled by the shock Elissa could see in her face.

Lin giggled, and at the sound some of the haze cleared from Elissa's brain.

We're not going to hurt her! Lin, we can't hurt her!

Jeez, I know.
Elissa wasn't looking at her twin, couldn't see her expression, but all the same she knew she was rolling her eyes.

“Okay,” said Lin. “We're going to the roof. You”—she pointed at the commander, as imperious as the conductor of a full symphony orchestra—“can come too if you want, but you have to walk behind everyone else. And if you try to interfere we'll move you all the way back here.” Her voice was calm and strict—the voice of a teacher or a law officer—but underneath it, like an undertone only Elissa could hear, there was amusement. Far too much amusement.

Elissa was unexpectedly reminded of an early memory, so early she scarcely had the words to frame it, of going into Bruce's room and finding him leaning out of his window with a magnifying glass, systematically frying the bewildered trickle of ants that had been threading their way up the side of the house. She'd screamed and cried, and her mother had come in and scolded Bruce for being cruel, for taking advantage of being so much bigger and stronger than the ants.

Horrified denial swooped through her. That was nothing like Lin was doing. Lin wasn't even
hurting
anyone. And
using force on the commander, in this emergency, it was so
beyond
justified it was insane that Elissa was even thinking about it. She pushed the thoughts into oblivion, and when Lin glanced at her she smiled at her twin and squeezed the hand she was still holding.

They went through the corridor into the sitting room, then out into the entrance corridor. Cadan, Felicia, Markus, and Mr. Greythorn, all with their weapons out, then Elissa and Lin, hands clasped tight, then the others, a huddle of the Spares shepherded by Mrs. Greythorn and Ivan. Then, finally, Commander Dacre.

Cadan hit the front door panel, and it sprang open to let them through. They went back through the corridor they'd come through last night, out to where they could climb the staircase. Elissa hardly felt the stairs beneath her feet, was hardly aware of when they rounded the first corner, then the second, climbing from floor to floor. She was aware of Lin's hand in hers, of a feeling like static electricity on her skin, like a buzzing she felt rather than heard.

A few more seconds, and she realized that she and Lin, as they'd done once before—or maybe more than once, and she hadn't noticed—were walking in perfect time, as if joined by invisible rods. Another few seconds went past and she realized something else.

“Oh!”

Cadan didn't slow his pace or look back, but his voice was sharp. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing's wrong. I just—Lin, back there, we were
talking to each other
.”

“I know.” There was a smile running all the way through Lin's voice. “Useful, huh?”

Unexpectedly, Elissa found herself laughing. Her head was spinning, but in a good way, a kind of post-adrenaline euphoric rush. A trickle of an underneath thought came:
Maybe it wasn't even amusement in Lin's voice back there. Maybe it was just this—this light-headedness that comes from using our power.

“What are you talking about?” said Felicia, ahead of them. “If you mean you were communicating telepathically, what's new about that? Isn't that what you've done your whole lives?”

“No.” They said it simultaneously, which made Lin giggle and Elissa choke back a burst of wild laughter. It was insane: They were in so much danger and the world was falling apart—
again
—around them, and yet somehow, right now, this discovery she and Lin had just made was the only thing that mattered.

“No,” said Lin again. “We could read each other before—pick up stuff, kind of hop into each other's minds. We never managed to consciously
talk
before, though.”

Elissa laughed again, knowing she sounded a little drunk, not caring. “Even when it would have been so
useful
.”

A door rose before them. They'd reached the top of the stairs.

The euphoria dropped away. Elissa's heart was all at once thumping in her ears, high in her chest.

External fire doors were usually low tech, in case a fire knocked out all the electricity in a building. Cadan leaned hard on the bar across it, and the door swung smoothly open. Sunlight poured in on them, bright and hot, golden as syrup.

“Wait,” said Cadan, and went out first, gun in hand, scanning the roof from behind the partial shelter of the open door.
He should have a real gun. The others—the people coming after
the Spares—they'll have real guns and all he has is a blaster that's okay on the ship but it's not enough out here. . . .

Then, as he glanced over his shoulder, gestured them to follow him, she saw the weapon in his hand and realized she'd been wrong. Either his dad had given it to him, or he'd had it before and just hadn't been able to use it on the ship, but either way, the weapon he was holding wasn't a short-range blaster—it was a real gun.

They came out onto the roof. It stretched out before them, flat and gray, striped with sharp black shadows from the shoulder-high railings around its edge. Tall poles, topped with solar panels that rotated and tilted to follow the progress of the sun across the sky, stood at each corner, and halfway along one side of the roof, the railings' shadow-stripes were sliced into curves and crescents by the shadow of the spiral fire escape where it jutted up just beyond them. It ended in a caged platform, from which a short flight of metal steps led back down to the roof.

Cadan pointed. “That building's the closest. Can you do it?”

“Please.” Lin's gaze skimmed the roof. “It's easy.” Where the skin of her palm touched Elissa's, static electricity built again under Elissa's fingernails, running hot through the veins in her wrist. The fire escape quivered, filling the air with a low metallic sound. “Lissa . . . ?”

“Yes?”

“I can do it myself. If you don't want—I mean, I didn't ask . . .”

Elissa shot her a smile. “No way. I want to help.”

Her smile was reflected back at her from her sister's face, as bright as the sunlight. Another quiver ran along the fire escape. Elissa felt it run through her hands, too, as if she were
physically holding the handrail that followed the spiral of its steps, as if the smooth metal were actually touching her skin.

Then, with a shock she felt all the way up her arms into her shoulders, the platform snapped away from the steps that led to the roof. The brackets securing it pinged loose.

The fire escape bent away from the railings, away from the roof, curving out over the empty space between their building and the next. The caged platform clanged against the railings on the far roof. Elissa felt it bounce, vibrating up through her hands. Except she
wasn't
feeling it through her hands, she was nowhere near it, she was just standing in the middle of the roof with Lin's hand in hers.

She'd linked with Lin before, to fix the
Phoenix
after it was damaged, and later, to make those hyperspeed jumps. But now, for the first time she was doing it fully consciously, not out of blind instinct, not just reaching out as if to steady her twin but giving her whole self to the effort. And for the first time she realized how hard it was, how
physical
it felt.

With the only bit of her mind she had to spare, she thought,
Lin did this sort of thing over and over when we were escaping. She was exhausted and terrified, and she just kept doing it.

Then she had no bits to spare at all. Another instant of focused effort, moisture breaking out on her forehead, between her shoulder blades, and the bars of the cage tore away from the platform. More brackets came loose, screws clinking as they scattered over the metal surface of the platform, then rolled to fall off the edge.

Are you okay?
The question came half like her own thought, half as if she were hearing Lin's voice out loud.

Yes.
It wasn't totally true—the sweat was trickling down her back, and her hands were aching as if she really were moving
the metal with them—but she was okay enough. And it was worth the discomfort. She was being useful . . .
being superpowered
.

As she refocused on what they were doing, as she willed herself to be okay, to finish the job, an image flashed up in her mind. The next thing they had to do. She clenched her teeth—and, somewhere in the distance, her hands—then she and Lin bent the broken edges of the railings that had enclosed the platform, curling them around the bars of the farther fire escape, weaving metal with metal, making the bridge steady, making sure it wouldn't come loose.

The last thing was to flatten the spiral of the fire escape they'd bent across the gap. A feeling like squashing an empty can between her hands—but an empty can that fought her, that tried to spring back into shape under her sweating palms.

As they finally managed it, as the fire escape flattened into a surface that could be safely walked on, the connection between them fell apart. Elissa's hand, slippery with sweat, slid from her sister's. An instant of nausea swept over her. The sun didn't feel hot any longer, and the air seemed icy on her skin.

“Lissa?”

“Elissa?”

“Lis?
Lis?
”

For a moment the voices swirled around her, unconnected to anyone. Then the nausea withdrew. The sun was suddenly boiling hot again, and the sweat on her skin warm rather than cold.

“I'm fine.” She looked up, seeing black shadows on a gray roof, and bright sunlight bouncing off the bridge—the bridge she and Lin had made—lying waiting for them to cross. “Oh
God, we have to go. We have to get across. That took way too much time—”

Cadan threw a quick, amused look at her. “You're joking, right? It took less than a minute. But yeah, you're right, we do have to get across.” He looked at his father and Felicia. “You can lead, right? I'll bring up the rear. Guys”—his gaze swung to the rest of them—“go quickly, okay, but carefully. Lissa and Lin got us a few minutes' grace—we don't need to risk our necks.”

As Felicia took the first step onto the steel of the fire-escape bridge, Elissa had a moment of throat-closing conviction that she and Lin had missed something, that it would collapse and fall beneath Felicia's weight, that she'd go plummeting into emptiness—

It didn't. Her feet, then Mr. Greythorn's, then Sofia's and El's, clanged, echoing, as they started across.

“More like
half
a minute,” said Ady, behind Elissa and Lin as they followed Sofia and El onto it. “Can I just say?
Seriously
impressed.”

“Honestly?” said Elissa. “Half a minute?”

Lin shook her head. “I don't know. It felt longer to me, too.” She shot a shining grin over her shoulder to Ady. “Seriously impressed, did you just say?”