Star Wars - I, Jedi Part 35

The duracrete slab in the center had been lased down into an amphitheatre with a flattened dais at the north end where Shala spread himself out.

I've heard it said that young Hutts can be quite muscular and powerful, which must mean that Shala is older than dirt. If a rock could be described as obese and it drooled, that would be Shala. Shala tended to mumble a lot, then laugh, which made his cronies laugh, too. The 3PO droid he had translating for him did a fairly good job, but Shala hit him so often to correct him that the droid's right arm looked like it had been dragged behind a speeder bike going at high speed through Vlarnya's narrow streets.

I smiled at the droid. "Tell your master I find his hospitality most generous, but an allergy to most insects means I'll have to decline snacking on those crunchbugs." I nodded to Shala and pa.s.sed the bowl of chirping bugs back to him, licking my lips enviously. I turned my attention back to watching two little mammals with tusks trying to tear each other to pieces. They fought hard, apparently not knowing Shala would eat the victor.

The most interesting thing about Shala's warehouse was that the building was actually smaller on the inside than it was on the outside. The absolute glut of junk in the place made it difficult to tell that fact from the inside, and I would have missed it save for spreading my senses out to see if he had hidden guards located in various spots where they could snipe at interlopers. I didn't find any at that time, but I did discover people working behind false walls and in other sunken pits buried beneath piles of sc.r.a.p metal and plasteel.

I smiled and gently flicked away a droplet of tuskette blood that hit my right cheek. The victorious tuskette screamed as Shala snapped its spine and bit its head off. He offered me a raw haunch, but I declined, so he tossed it to another of the warehouse's denizens, and a fight ensued for it. I sincerely hoped for the sake of the RodJan who won the prize that Shala would be sated by tuskette, lest another victor end up on the evening's menu.

By far the most secretive of the groups in Vlarnya was the Blackstar Pirates. While they made a cantina called the Mynock Hole their home, most of them pa.s.sed through it on their way to another location. Way off in the back of the common room, in a corner where visitors never got seated, members would punch a code into a keypad and be admitted beyond a sliding door fitted into the wall. I had no idea what went on back there, though the relief of pirates allowed to leave their public station and retreat to the back radiated off them like heat off a fusion reactor.

While collecting data, I did my best to limit my uses of the Force. I wanted to avoid detection, of course, but I also wanted to avoid having things that seemed anomalous happening before I started taking overt action. The fact was that the easiest solution to dealing with the Invids was to put together a light-saber and harvest a bunch of heads. Decapping the pirates would certainly cause a quickening of the Invids' downfall, but then I'd be the only one left on Courkrus, which would provide Tavira with a big clue as to which one of us was the source of her problems.

Even more of a problem than that, of course, was the fact that I'd be committing wholesale murder. While it was true that none of these folks would ever be elected Humanitarian of the Year, they didn't all deserve death. Caet and Timmser, for example, were just good pilots who had fallen in with the Invids. Had they joined the Rebellion, they could have been plotting Tavira's downfall. I wanted to give them a chance to redeem themselves, I guess, which meant I needed to convince them that what they were doing was wrong and to walk, run, slither or fly away from it.

In this I had an invisible ally: all my targets were s.p.a.cers. Something about traveling through the vastness of s.p.a.ce, never knowing if a jump will go bad, dropping you into a sun or leaving you stuck in hypers.p.a.ce forever, that makes s.p.a.cers a bit superst.i.tious. For years I'd worn a Jedi Medallion as a good luck charm. I'd infiltrated the Invids because I read an omen in a dream. If enough things began to go wrong, if there were enough signs of impending doom, even the hardcore Invids would begin looking elsewhere for planets to plunder and places to stay.

In all of the places I went I did my best to memorize what I could.

Knowing as much as possible about various layouts was vital if I was to slip in and slip out again. The game I was going to play was very dangerous, but it was one that I had to win, so I did everything I could to control all the variables.

After a week, I had enough information to start planning my campaign. I laid everything out, figured who I would hit first and how, then where I would move next. I had to hit hard to keep the pressure on, yet I had to strike at random so I could not be antic.i.p.ated and trapped.

It wasn't going to be easy, but then if it was, it wouldn't have been a job for a Jedi.

Only one last thing needed to be accomplished before I could begin.

I needed a lightsaber.

Elegos uncovered my grandfather's instructions on how to create a lightsaber fairly early on, and my heart almost sank. The datafile was rather specific about the various supplies that would be needed to create the weapon, so I had a shopping list. Beyond that, however, the file detailed the steps needed to put the weapon together and included the various meditations and exercises a Jedi apprentice should go through with each step along the way. The process Nejaa laid out, if followed precisely, would take almost a month, and I didn't have a month. I knew impatience and haste were part of the dark side, but really hoped things could be truncated so I could actually succeed in my task.

I took the first step by collecting the various parts. The light-saber, while an elegant and deadly weapon, actually was not that complex.

Getting the parts to put one together was not difficult at all. To serve as the hilt, for example, I salvaged the throttle a.s.sembly and handlebar tube from a junked speeder bike. I took it from where the wreck hung in the Crash cantina and no one so much as noticed me make off with it. I got the dimetris circuitry for the activation loop from an old capital-s.h.i.+p-grade ion cannon fire initiation controller-won that piece of junk from Shala betting on another tuskette fight. The recharger port and wiring came from a comlink. A milled down Tri-fighter laser flashback suppressor became the parabolic, high-energy flux aperture to stabilize the blade and I pulled the dynoric laser feed line from the same broken laser cannon to act as the superconductor for energy transference from the power cell to the blade. b.u.t.tons and switches were easy to find, and dear old Admiral Tavira, with her gift of the brandy decanter and snifters, provided me all the jewels I needed to make a half dozen lightsabers.

The most difficult part of creating a lightsaber was producing the power cell that stored and discharged the amount of energy necessary to energize a lightsaber blade. That said, the parts list called for a pretty basic power cell-in fact, because of the age of the instructions, I had a hard time locating one that ancient. Newer power cells were more efficient than the one my grandfather had specified, but I didn't think that would present a problem. After all, as I read the instructions I came to realize that the nature of the battery was not as important as how it was integrated with the rest of the components.

The core of the Jedi ritual for creating a lightsaber came down to charging the power cell that first time. My grandfather ridiculed the popular superst.i.tion stating a Jedi channeled the Force through his lightsaber. He suggested that this was a misunderstanding of what it took to charge it initially and tie it to the rest of the weapon. The Jedi, carefully manipulating the Force, bound the components together-linking them on something more than a mechanical or material level, so they worked with unimagined efficiency. Without this careful seasoning and conditioning of the lightsaber, the blade would be flawed and would fail the Jedi.

Before I could figure out how to put Tavira off for another month, Elegos decoded an annotation to the instructions for constructing lightsabers.

It turned out that during the Clone Wars, Jedi Masters developed a way to create a lightsaber in two days. Nejaa included this method, noting it was to be used only in times of pressing need, but not in haste. I read it over and felt a certain peace settle upon me. I knew the words had not been written for me, but they sank deep into my core. Urgency without panic, action without thoughtlessness.

I began by calming myself and simplifying my lifestyle. I drank only water and ate noodles that were all but unflavored. I cleared Tavira's gifts from my bedroom, or hid them away in closets. I sat in the middle of the floor, with the parts for the blade laid out in a semicircle around me. I studied each one and used the Force to enfold it and take a sense of it into myself. My hands would fit the pieces together, but I wanted the parts to mesh as if they had been grown together. The lightsaber would be more than just a jumble of hardware, and to make it I had to see the parts as belonging together.

I fitted the activation b.u.t.ton into its place on the handlebar shaft and snapped the connectors into the right spots on the dimetris circuit board. I worked that into the shaft itself, then inserted a strip of s.h.i.+elding to protect it from even the slightest leakage from the superconductor. Next I snapped into place the gemstones I was using to focus and define the blade. At the center, to work as my continuous energy lens, I used the Durindfire. That same stone gave my grandfather's blade its distinctive silver sheen. I used a diamond and an emerald in the other two slots. I wasn't certain what I would get in the way of color tints from the emerald, and with the diamond I hoped for a coruscation effect.

Onto the end of the hilt where the blade would appear I screwed the high-energy flux aperture. It would carry a negative charge which would stabilize the positively charged blade and provide it a solid base without allowing it to eat its way back through to my hands. Controlling a lightsaber blade was difficult enough without having it nibbling away at fingers.

I clipped the discharged energy cell in place, then connected the leads to the recharging socket. I screwed the recharging socket into the bottom of the hilt but didn't fasten on the handlebar's original b.u.t.t cap that would protect it because I needed to charge the power cell for the very first time. I reached over and took the charging cord from the small transformer I'd borrowed from our tech bay, and plugged the lightsaber in.

With my finger poised on the transformer b.u.t.ton that would start the energy flowing, I drew in a deep breath and lowered myself into a trance.

I knew that manipulating matter sufficiently to meld the part and forge the weapon would have been all but impossible for anyone but a Jedi Master like Yoda, but doing just that as part of the construction of a lightsaber had been studied and ritualized so even a student could manage it. It was very much a lost art, a link to a past that had been all but wiped out, and by performing it I completed my inheritance of my Jedi legacy.

I hit the b.u.t.ton, allowing the slow trickle of energy to fill the battery. I opened myself to the Force and with the hand I had touching the lightsaber's hilt, I bathed the lightsaber with the Force. As I did so subtle transformations took place in the weapon. Elemental bonds s.h.i.+fted allowing more and more e-ergy to flow into the cell and throughout the weapon. I was not certain how the changes were being made, but I knew that at the same time as they were being made in the lightsaber, they were being made in me as well.

In becoming a conduit for the Force for this purpose, the final integration of the people I'd been occurred. The fusion became the person I would be forever after. I was still a pilot: a little bit arrogant, with a healthy ego and a willingness to tackle difficult missions. I was still CorSec: an investigator and a buffer between the innocents in the galaxy and the slime that would consume them.

And I was Jedi. I was heir to a tradition that extended back tens of thousands of years. Jedi had been the foundation of stability in the galaxy. They had always opposed those who reveled in evil and sought power for the sake of power. People like Exar Kun and Palpatine, Darth Vader and Thrawn, Isard and Tavira; these were the plagues on society that the Jedi cured. In the absence of the Jedi, evil thrived.

In the presence of just one Jedi, evil evaporated.

Just as with the lightsaber, the changes being made in me were not without cost. What the Force allowed me to do also conferred upon me great burdens. To act without forethought and due deliberation was no longer possible. I had to be very certain of what I was doing, for a single misstep could be a disaster. While I knew I would make mistakes, I had to do everything I could to minimize their impact. It was not enough to do the greatest good for the greatest number, I had to do the best for everyone.

There was no walking away from the new responsibility I accepted. Like my grandfather I might well choose when and where to reveal who and what I was, but there was no forgetting, no leaving that responsibility at the office. My commit-ment to others had to be total and complete. I was an agent of life every day, every hour, every second; for as long as I lived, and then some.

I heard a click and looked up, blinking my eyes. "Elegos?"

Elegos stood over me, offering me a gla.s.s of water. "It's done."

I blinked, then took the water and greedily sucked it down. I lowered the gla.s.s and felt water dribbling down around my goatee. I swiped at it with my right hand and felt the stubble of beard on my cheeks. "How long?"

"Two and a half days." The Caamasi smiled and took the gla.s.s back from me. "Not as fast as your grandfather, but acceptable."

"Anyone notice I was missing'?"

"Several people inquired, but I told them you were down with the brandy ague. They said they could understand your celebrating your change in fortune." He set the gla.s.s on my dresser, then walked back into the suite's parlor. "While you were engaged in here, I found something else to do, and made good use of one of Tavira's gifts to you. I estimated the pattern based on my merehis of your grandfather."

He held up a green Jedi robe, with a black belt and black overrobe. "I think it should fit you well."

I nodded and brandished the lightsaber. I punched the b.u.t.ton under my thumb, giving birth to the silver blade 133 centimeters in length. "A lightsaber and robes. Looks like a little justice has arrived on Courkrus, and it's about time."

I decided to build upon the excuse Elegos had fas.h.i.+oned for me by spending more time drinking-or, at least, appearing to be drunk. A little Savareen brandy spilled on a tunic will leave you reeking of the stuff, and if you keep swirling it around and are sloppy when you drink it-spilling more on yourself in the process-folks notice. The people I was spending my time around had no trouble believing I was three jumps from sober at all times.

Being drunk gave me far more freedom because, as long as I was not obnoxious, lost at sabacc, and was generous with Tarira's money or gifts, I was everyone's friend. People looked forward to seeing me, found it easy to ignore me, and even treated me as if I was not there on those occasions when I feigned sleep.

I chose the Survivors as my first targets. I knew them better than I knew anyone else, so I had an edge on getting into their minds. The Survivors were also the most disciplined of the Invids, so if I could break them, make them skittish, the nervousness would bleed over into the other groups. My move against them would be the prelude to my attacks on the other groups, so I wanted it to be especially chilling.

Elegos and I worked hard on it, programming it into my datapad, then projecting it out of the holoprojector pad in my suite. We ran it over and over again, allowing me to memorize it from every angle, and practice my part in it. I had to be careful and quick, but if it worked right, it would shake the Survivors to their core.

I took a seat in the Crash cantina at a table very much in the back.

Captain Nive normally sat there, and not too long afterward he joined me.

Jacob had not been paying me court as had the other pirate leaders-he trusted in the friends.h.i.+p we had built up during the time he commanded my squadron. I actually liked him and the way he managed the Survivors, but from the conversations we'd had, I knew he was not wholly comfortable with all he had done in his life. That confidence, expressed to me late one night, was about to come back and haunt him.

Jacob sat with his back to the corner of the room. I sat at his left, with my back toward a wall, but slightly exposed along my flank. Another chair sat across from him and could not be seen by most of the rest of the room because of a pillar. I had a bottle of Savereen brandy sitting in front of me, and a snifter in my right hand. Jacob drank lum, but never enough to get roaring drunk, just mildly suggestible. We sat there, chatting in low voices about the latest rumors concerning Shala the Hutt, when I pushed the empty chair out with my left foot, as if someone were drawing it back to sit.

I tapped the Force, letting it fill me, but turned my head toward the chair and away from Jacob. "You can't sit here. This is a private table."

As I said that, I reached out with my senses and projected an image into Jacob's brain.

Jacob's head came up and he blanched. "Not possible." The figure he saw sitting down opposite him spat out a thick golden credit coin, that bounced once on the table. My left hand swept out to grab it, then I slapped down the credit I'd palmed. My left hand recoiled. "It's cold."

The figure across the table from Jacob wore an Imperial Captain's uniform, albeit a bit too small, and had a mouse under his left eye. In fact, Captain Zlece Oonaar of the Cra ader looked exactly the way he had after the Survivors had tried him and Jacob had ordered his execution.

Jacob himself had stuffed the gold credit in his mouth, following the old superst.i.tion of buying off the evil things the dead would say about the living, then had him pitched out of the Backstab's main airlock.

Zlece Oonaar looked directly into Nive's eyes. "You can have your gold back. The dead don't speak ill of the dead."

I grabbed Jacob's left wrist with my right hand. "What does he mean?"

Jacob's mouth hung open. "I don't know."

Zlece nodded slowly. "You know. You know you should have died the day all your friends did. If you'd fought harder, they might have lived. You failed them, and now you will join them. Doom is coming to Courkrus. All your victims will be avenged."

Jacob stood abruptly, tearing his wrist from my grip, and threw his mug of lum through the phantasm. I let the image fade into a b.l.o.o.d.y mist that drifted away as the mug shattered against the pillar. Jacob stood there, gape-jawed and trembling, then looked around at everyone else in the cantina. Their attention had been drawn to him when the mug exploded, but they had seen nothing prior to that.

Jacob pointed at the chair. "Did you see him?"

Other people started to shake their heads.

He looked at me. "You saw him, didn't you, Jenos? You saw him."

I shuddered and drained my brandy snifter. "I saw him. He was that guy we took, the one we tried." I fingered the coin. "You put this in his mouth."

Jacob s.n.a.t.c.hed the coin from my grip and held it aloft.

"Right, I put this in his mouth."

"But we left him in s.p.a.ce." I poured more brandy into my s.h.i.+fter and looked up at Jacob, ignoring the tightening knot of people closing in on us. "What did he mean, 'Doom is coming to Courkrus'?"

Jacob s.n.a.t.c.hed my brandy away from me and swallowed it all in one gulp.

"I don't know." He put the snifter down again and tapped the rim for a refill. "I don't know, but it is not good. Not good at all."

Within twelve hours the story of the visitation had spread all over Vlarnya and had taken on a life of its own. I had people tell me what they had seen and got to listen to them describing a vision I know they never saw. Even when I said that was different from what I'd seen, they told me I was misremembering because I'd been drunk at the time. They knew what the truth was, and it really seemed to scare the bone right out of their spines.

No one was quite certain what it was they'd seen. Some thought it was a ghost, pure and simple, come back to haunt Nive for killing him. Others took the warning into account and wondered why a ghost would warn when he could have just struck and killed us all-if a ghost could actually do that. The warning seemed to worm its way into the minds of many, which was my intent. i wanted them to have been warned so when things started to happen, they would link them back to the warning.

I was pleased the first effort had so grand an effect, but I knew I couldn't do that sort of thing again. While I might be able to use an illusion to throw off pursuit, simple ghostly comings and goings were not going to convince the Invids that it was time to abandon Tavira. The palmed coin provided solid evidence that convinced a lot of people of the veracity of the visitation. Because of that I decided that the next actions I took required physical proof of something going on, and a coin wasn't going to do it. It was time for something a bit more direct and painful.

I waited until after Timmser and Caet had dragged me home from Crash and turned me over to Elegos before acting. Mumbling how he hoped I wouldn't vomit on the bedsheets again, the Caamasi hustled me off and the two of them escaped lest they be asked to help clean me up. Once they were away, I slipped into the Jedi uniform, donned a hooded cloak and slipped out into the night. Using the Force I was able to blank the short term memory of those hotel staffers who did see me, leaving them with an innocent eight-second gap in their memories that covered my pa.s.sage through the lobby.

Using the Force both in Crash and in the lobby was taking a risk at detection by Tavira's advisors, but I was fairly certain there were none on Courkrus. She'd never given us one before and she had no reason to a.s.sume there was going to be a problem on Courkrus. To leave one here "just in case" would be to provide any of these groups with a chance to learn her secret and strike out on their own. For that reason alone I felt very safe in using the Force as I hunted.

My previous sojourns into the city served me well as I moved through less populated alleys and byways to reach some of the seedier areas of the Aviary. I reached inside to tap the Force, so I could expand my sphere of responsibility and locate someone who needed help. My intention, of course, was to help that person and take the criminals involved out of the holograph. It was like being back in CorSec, making a sweep through Treasure s.h.i.+p Row, just without all the lights.

The difference was, this time, I had the Force as my ally. My sense of the city and the area around me became acute, allowing me to register the various life sources. Had I wanted to, I could have taken a census of crunchbugs or feral tuskettes in seconds. I didn't, though-other data drew me on into the night.

When on patrol for CorSec, I'd been a predator looking for prey, hoping I didn't find it in sufficient quant.i.ty to kill me. With the Force, I almost felt like a superpredator. I sensed where everyone was, where their attention was directed. I could choose paths of confrontation that would keep things quiet, or would make for a big display. At the moment I chose something smaller and more intimate, but I knew the day for something more spectacular would come soon.

Even though I sensed where the three of them were, I heard her sobs before I ever saw them. Two drunken LazerLords had trapped an indig woman between them and hustled her into an alley. They backed her up against a wall, trapping her hands high above her head, and were covering her face and neck with the sort of sloppy kisses the totally inebriated seem to have mastered. Except for the look of terror on her face, their antics might have seemed comical.

I moved into the alley as silent as a shadow and grabbed the first man by the scruff of the neck. I whirled him over toward the right, across my body, and smashed his face into the opposite alley wall. Something crunched when he hit, then he slumped to the ground. A half step forward and I brought the pommel of my lightsaber up in my right hand, catching the second man with an uppercut. Impact with the heavy metal pommel cap shattered the man's jaw and sent him reeling backward.

One hand went to his mouth and the other dug for the blaster holstered on his right hip. As he started to draw the weapon, I rotated the lightsaber's hilt in my hand and ignited the silver blade. Its explosive hiss filled the alley, with the light painting the LazerLord's shadow across the alley floor and up along the back wall. I arced the blade down, catching the rising blaster at barrel and grip, dropping pieces of it and two of his fingers to the ground.

A sidekick to his already broken jaw dropped him to the alley floor, then I spun and lunged at his rising partner. Before he could draw his blaster, my lightsaber stabbed through his shoulder, burning a very neat, b.u.t.ton-sized hole through bone and flesh. The oily stink of overcooked meat filled the alley. His face went absolutely white. He stared down at the silvery energy shaft sticking out of his shoulder, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted.

I snapped the blade off before his falling body could tear itself free of the blade. I didn't want him dead-I wanted neither of them dead. Two dead men would be statistics, but these men would have scars and would tell a wonderful tale. What the visitation had begun these two would continue.

I turned to the woman who cowered in a crouch. I extended a hand to her and she took it. The tremors in her flesh matched the waves of terror radiating out from her. I made my voice even and as rea.s.suring as I could. "You have nothing to fear, child. They will not harm you any more."

"W-who are you?"

I guided her to her feet and walked with her toward the alley mouth and the street light slanting into it. "It is enough that I am known to be here."

I let her walk into the light, but I remained in the shadows as I let her hand go. "Just tell them that doom has come to Cour-krus. Their victims will be avenged, and those who fear justice will never sleep securely here again." Then I projected into her mind an illusion of my fading into nothingness while I slipped past her and moved further along the street.

I shadowed her to make certain nothing else happened to her, then, when she found safety, I returned to my home.

The next morning, early, Timmser and Caet came to my suite and insisted Elegos wake me. I emerged from my bedroom looking rumpled and bleary-eyed, then sobered at the serious expressions on their faces. "What's happened? What's wrong?"

Caet growled, and Timmser provided a good translation. "Two LazerLords got badly mangled last night. Doom has come to Courkrus, and it brought a lightsaber with it."

The lightsaber made quite the impression on everyone. According to the two LazerLords, the Jedi creature that had jumped them had been two meters plus tall and had congealed out of the night itself. The lightsaber became frozen lightning and the Jedi's eyes glowed like the event horizons of binary black holes. He attacked them without provocation and promised to do the same to everyone on the planet.

My plans, of course, were less ambitious, but their reports played well in the Aviary. I heard a lot of hollow boasting about what this person or that would do if confronted by this avenger. Others might be frightened, the line went, but the speaker was not. He'd tear the avenger's head clean off, then someone else would offer yet a more terrible fate for the avenger and so on, like the bidding at an auction gone mad. Mob bravery carried everyone to the zenith of hyperbole.

Then finally someone-me, sometimes other folks most often-would s.h.i.+ver and clutch at his gunhand as if he, too, had lost fingers. That simple gesture could quiet a group. And the mere mention of the word "Jedi" was enough to send all the braggarts back to their drinks and private fears.

As a CorSec officer I'd seen this sort of bravado before, and had seen it fade in the presence of a uniformed officer, but never had it risen to such heights, nor plunged to such depths. The Empire's effort to vilify and transform the Jedi into agents of terror worked to my benefit. If the Empire, which was bad enough, had feared the Jedi enough to wipe them out, then having a Jedi here preying on the Invids was about as bad as it could get.

So bad, in fact, that the captains of the various groups in Vlarnya offered a ten-thousand-credit reward for the Jedi's head.

And I set out to make it higher, much higher.

For the next several nights I stalked and hit what I considered to be "soft" targets-bands of pirates wandering the streets in search of trouble. Each encounter occurred differently. The fact that many of the pirates reinforced their courage with lots of lum or whiskey helped me immeasurably. Drunks have often seemed incredibly lucky, and in Vlarnya they were as well-but all of their luck was bad.

One evening I let a trio of the Fastblast's crew catch a glimpse of me ducking into an alley. I'd been drinking with them earlier and had talked up how a group could go hunting the Jedi and snag him, winning themselves that great reward. The Fast-blasters-two humans, male and female, and a male Kubaz-worked themselves up into a frenzy, then I excused myself and made as if to head home. I wished them luck with their hunt, hoping they would find the Jedi before the other hunting groups, and they took the bait.

The Fastblasters came running and as they rounded the corner of the alley, I projected into their minds the image of me fleeing before them, my cloak flapping back, water from a sewage rivulet splas.h.i.+ng up with each step. The humans raced after me at full speed. The Kubaz, who didn't quite see the image I projected, slowed and raised a hand to warn his compatriots. Before he could do so, I rose from the shadows that concealed me near the alley mouth and clopped him on the head with the b.u.t.t of my lightsaber.

Bereft of his warning, his two companions ran at full sprint into the brick and plaster wall I'd hidden with my illusion. The woman rebounded hard from the wall. Her blond hair wrapped around her face as she twisted through the air and crashed down in a trash midden. The man, who had been a step behind her, had begun to twist to his right, so he took the impact on his shoulder. Even from ten meters away, I heard his collarbone snap.

He bounced back, took a couple of stumbling steps in my direction, then dropped to his knees.