DN - Hostages

It’s too risky to throw more bricks at him; I’ve got to close and engage. But when I drive a hard punch at his face, suddenly an innocent cook is in the way to block me. I manage to pull the attack just in time to catch the back of Sovereign’s boot with the side of my head. The cooks are screaming, pleading, and he doesn’t care. Another kick erupts from between the two of them, and I barely turn the blow with my shoulder—the wounded one where Panzer shot me. Crimson spikes of agony stab up and down my arm and I cry out.

Back up, back up fast to get distance and reconsider.

“So that’s it? Stalemate?” I call to him across the chasm between the towers. “That’s your big play?”

Princess Panzer tears between us on jets of pink flame, Kinetiq right behind her, cobalt beams lashing from their eyes.

“I don’t see a stalemate, little girl,” Sovereign says, an instant before he charges. My heart clenches—baseline humans can’t take acceleration like that! That moment of horror is all Sovereign needs. He lets one of his hostages go—

—the poor man keeps flying—

—and Sovereign clenches a fist that explodes a galaxy behind my eyes. Cool ocean air on my cheeks, and my eyes snap open while I’m still falling. My eyes ransack the sky until I find the hostage, still falling. Not for much longer. I’m dimly aware that Sovereign is closing with me, but I set that aside and focus on the lattice.

The man’s momentum is terminal; he’ll never survive impact with the bricks of the promenade below. I can use that. In the lattice, I wrap the strings of momentum around me, focus and redirect them.

Sovereign has seized my arm, is pulling me.

A few feet above the ground, the screaming hostage seems to bounce in the air. His momentum killed, I release my hold on him and let him tumble safely to the promenade.

The other hostage is falling now. There’s no time to be confused or sense any other danger. This is all happening on a timescale of eyeblinks. It’s instinct and reaction speed, not planning, not thinking.

I’m grabbing the second hostage, arresting his fall—

The bones in my arm twist and shatter into red, grinding ruins. I am stunned breathless by the pain. Sovereign has locked my arm against itself and given me a new joint. His elbow catches me in the throat and fastballs me through a window and two walls of sheetrock. Clouds of white dust kick up around me as I come to rest, crumbly bits of wall skittering away. I push myself to my feet and then he’s in here with me.

- Sovereign, Chapter 29