Unity by Carl Stubblefield (epub read online books TXT) 📕

the tree, as her weight wouldn’t anchor her as she was accustomed. She also had to squint, because the wind filled the air with plumes of pollen and dust. As quickly as it started, the wind stopped, and Yuki saw that she was coated with a fine yellow powder.

She attempted to brush herself off, shaking her hair and coughing. She was never more glad she didn’t have any allergies. As she swiped her eyes clear, she noticed the branch now had five of the small little animals, all facing her. They peered at each other with curiosity. She crouched and beckoned one to come closer.

One ventured forward, looking back at his fellows, and stopped about a foot away. Yuki stretched forward her open palm, trying to keep her movements slow and unthreatening. The lemur leaned forward and sniffed a fingertip.

“That’s right, I don’t want to hurt you, little—damn it!” she screamed as the lemur gave her finger a hard bite. Its little teeth tore furrows in her skin as she yanked it away.

“What the hell was that for?” she scolded. As the little animal turned back from looking at the others, it was licking its jaws. Its eyes had become bright red and the pupils were huge. The other lemurs became agitated and hopped from foot to foot. One let loose a barking screech and the trees began to rustle all around her. The one that bit her smiled widely, revealing predatory fangs more at home on a vampire than a cuddly little teddy bear of an animal.

Drawn to its call, other lemurs began appearing from the surrounding trees. They jumped and swung with their long arms, legs, and tails. Some joined the others, while a few landed on branches above and started crawling down the trunk with eager intention.

When will I ever learn?

Darik dropped them on the rooftop of a building near the coliseum. People were already streaming out the front doorways, an obvious choke point. Despite its name, the coliseum was not typically an area where many supers congregated. The sheer number of people spilling out the entrance was alarming, and they just kept coming.

“They’re all in a panic. I can’t use Dazzle or it’ll block off the exits.”

“You see that smoke? It really is a fire!” Darik gasped.

“Why is no one putting it out? We should have some supers here with water-based abilities!

“Quiet, you two, I need to concentrate.” Anastasia scanned the crowds looking for any sign of Harmony or Grimdark.

Herd mentality, people are panicking. Thinking with their lizard brains.

There was a flash of motion and Anastasia barely saw someone slip inside a window. A zipline was anchored nearby to one of the tiers of the coliseum. Someone going into the fire?

The supers who could fly pulled above the crowd as soon as they got a little space around them. Some tried to grab them to extricate themselves from the crowd, succeeding only in pulling some supers back into the mass of people roiling out of the building. Others escaped and flew away. It was a massive free-for-all. Neither Grimdark or Harmony were flyers, so she could ignore those.

Anastasia’s eyes flitted to face after face with lightning speed. In less than ten seconds, she had determined that out of the three-hundred people that had pushed out of the coliseum, Harmony and Grimdark had yet to leave. It was much easier to scan the entrances and evaluate and discount the new faces.

Why the terror, though? Supers shouldn’t be afraid of something as mundane as a little fire. No. The faces showed something else was at play here.

As the crowd grew, she noted that whatever had overcome the supers was wearing off now that they were in the fresh air. A few began to turn back and try to make their way back inside, but they made little progress trying to fight the people pushing out. If anything, those leaving now were even more insistent and violent in their attempt to flee the building.

A flash of curly hair, lost in the crowd. Then again. And black hair with silver highlights. Jackpot!

“Keeper, come here.” She motioned to Darik, keeping her eyes on the pair. She touched his shoulder and asked, “Can you see them?”

“Whoa, how do you do that?”

“Yes or no?!”

“Yes.”

“Then go. You will only be able to track them for a short time after I break contact.”

Darik ran off the edge of the building, cannonballing into a portal two stories down. Anastasia finally took her eyes off the crowd. Aurora was assembling something from a pile of components on a cloth in front of her. She nervously peeked up at the large spire that towered over them nearby and back down at the crowd before shaking her head and turning back to her frenetic work. She snapped two halves together and flipped a switch.

“Anastasia, clip this to your suit.” Aurora backed up a step to survey her work. “Huh, that actually works. Ooh, and a blueprint dropped too. Nice.” She knelt by her cloth and started working on the next one. “The next ones should be quicker. I just wish I’d finished one for Darik. Can you keep an eye on the doors and let me know when people stop coming out?”

“Of course,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on where she had sent Darik.

Darik rocketed out of the portal. He loved inverting the portal exits and screwing with gravity. He had always loved thrill-rides when he was younger and didn’t get nauseated in the slightest. Plus he could move so much better when he wasn’t ferrying others around. He couldn’t see the pair at this height so he dropped another set of portals, this time exiting even higher. Some of those in the crowd pointed at him as he managed to spot Grimdark with Harmony in tow.

He quickly fashioned another set of portals, before he could build up too much momentum, dropping out to the side of the crowd.

“He’s one of them!” a husky