“Down on the ground now!” yelled out one of the men in a dramatic, Germanic accent. He fired his rifle into the air. The central courtyard of the mall was a three story well in the middle of the building, the open space between floors going up three levels to a glass dome in the roof above. The dome shattered, raining shards of glass on everyone below. One large fragment came crashing down, tumbling as it flew through the air. It landed flat on Nora’s back, shattering on impact. Glass cascaded around her like a waterfall around a protruding rock.
It hurt like hell, but the bruising Nora received was nothing compared to what she saw in her vision. Without her it would have landed on the boy, the small change in angle from a foot further drop sending shards of glass through his tiny body. She wished she could scrub the vision from her memory, but had to settle for knowing it would never happen. She was just thankful she hadn’t needed to trade the boy’s life with her own.
“Oh my god! My baby!” screamed out the boy’s mother as she leapt through shattered glass to Nora’s side.
“You ok?” Nora asked the boy in a whisper.
The boy nodded, his body shaking against her. Straightening up, Nora released him into his mother’s waiting arms. His mom hugged the boy to herself, crying in relief.
“Shut the hell up,” ordered the man whom Nora assumed was the leader of group. His short cropped blonde hair, muscular jaw, and authoritative tone was right out of old World War II military movies. He made a circular gesture with his fingers. The other nine gunmen circled the civilians, blocking every avenue of escape. Beyond them the mall was quickly emptying, people fleeing down hallways in every direction.
In moments everyone outside the ring of armed people were gone. Nora got down on her knees and urged the boy and his mother to do the same. They joined five others cowering on the floor. Huddled near the courtyard’s fountain with its statuettes of leaping bronze salmon made her imagine the gunmen as bears ready for an easy meal.
With their hostages on the ground, the gunmen relaxed. Their leader looked at his watch. “Time to turn it up,” he said aloud to no-one in particular. Nora caught a glimpse of an earpiece in one ear, wire running down his neck into his shirt collar.
Where were the security guards? Nora wondered. While some of the mall cops were more for show than not, she knew several who took their jobs seriously and were quite good at it. Yet nobody appeared to be coming to their rescue.
The mall’s sound system started crackling and popping, then blurted out fuzzy white noise that was so loud it drowned out Nora’s internal monologue. At the same time, the mall’s lights turned off, casting everything into twilight. The leader looked up at the hole he had made in the dome, waiting for something.
Nora’s stomach started to churn again, and the lights danced around her head like fireflies. Her bruised back, the noise, and the stress of guns aimed at her threatened to trigger a seizure.
She wondered if they would shoot her if she threw up, or worse, if she had a full seizure and couldn’t respond to what was happening. She had to relieve the pressure before it exploded. Rather than fight it, she gave in to the visions.
The lights gathered into two figures descending from above, one bright as the sun, the other muted in the dimness of the mall. She recognized Afterimage and Pressure, Portland’s heroes, as they flew down through the cracked dome to save the day. Nora’s ears strained at the wave of growing air pressure that heralded their arrival.
That moment of hope was dashed, however, when Afterimage’s light winked out, revealing a man caught in mid-air with a surprised expression on his face. He fell the last twenty feet to the tiled floor, landing just an arms-length from Nora. He bounced when he hit, knocking him unconscious. A dart protruded from his thigh like a flag of defeat.
Then, with a flash of light and a loud bang from the mezzanine above, Pressure reeled in the air. A spray of blood hit the air wave she rode as she descended, causing droplets to rain around Nora like water from a fire sprinkler. Pressure landed on the floor beside Afterimage with a thud. While Afterimage’s torso still rose and fell with life, the gaping hole in Pressure’s chest ensured the female superhero would never breathe again.
The leader nudged Pressure’s body with one foot. “Got you this time, bitch.” he said with satisfaction.
One of the other hostages started screaming, but he ignored them. He turned to Afterimage. “Damn, the doc was right after all. Slow was the way to go.” He turned to a couple of his compatriots. “Pick him up. It’s time to go.”
“Sir, what about them?” one of the others asked.
“Clean house,” he replied.
Nora didn’t see what happened after that. Unable to face what happened next, she allowed the world to snap back to the present. Above her she could see the two superheroes starting to drop through the broken dome.
“Dammit!” Nora cursed to herself. They were supposed to save her, not the other way around. She wasn’t a hero. But she had only moments to decide what to change before people started dying.
No, that wasn’t right, she realized. She didn’t need to save everyone. Just one would do, and then the world could go back to the way it should be. In her memory, Nora traced the flash of gunfire directed at Pressure back to its source. Looking there now she could see the silhouette of a waiting figure on the floor above, gun muzzle supported on a railing.
Nora took a quick look about, but everyone’s attention was on the heroes above or the armed people around them. Nobody would know she was gone. Recalling the layout mall, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and blinked.
When she opened her eyes again, she was on the upper level, kneeling next to a man decked out in black garb. With an eye on his gunsight, he was so focused that he didn’t notice the woman appearing beside him.
Nora took hold of the gun in his hand, but instead of trying to wrench it from his grasp she simply twirled it in place. For most people, trying to pull something from someone’s hand made that person grab all the harder. Turning it in place, however, was very difficult to prevent. The shooter yelped in surprise as the muzzle suddenly swung up and around to face him.
He instinctually let go, which left Nora holding the weapon. She then used it to jab him in the face, knocking him to the floor.
The light behind her winked out, letting Nora know that the events of her vision were playing out. She heard a yelp followed by a thud as Afterimage fell to the floor below. This time, however, there was no follow up bang of gunfire.
“Who the fuck are you?” The man exclaimed as he recovered, pushing himself to his feet. Rather than deal with him, however, Nora ran. Two steps beyond him she closed her eyes and blinked again. This time she was up another level where the mall’s executive offices were. She finished her run to stop besides a trashcan where she dumped the rifle in her hand.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Despite the white noise playing over the mall speakers, Nora could hear the rattle of gunfire from the courtyard below. She just hoped she had done enough to save Pressure and the hostages.
Looking over the railing she could see the dart gun shooter on the deck below. He was busy exchanging his non-lethal weapon for something more serious, an assault style rifle from the duffel bag besides him. Below him she could see Pressure fighting for her life. There was a bubble of rippling air surrounding the superhero, a prone Afterimage at her feet, and hostages gathered around her as gunmen concentrated their weapons against the translucent barrier. Pressure held up her hands as if warding off bullets by force of will. The gunfire made the bubble ripple like drops of rain across a mountain lake.
Nora shook her head. Pressure was good, but not good enough against the firepower arrayed against her. What Nora had done was a start, but it was not enough.
“Dammit,” she mumbled again. She closed her eyes and blinked once more.
She arrived on the deck below behind the man as he snapped a magazine of bullets into his rifle. Over his shoulder she could see the other gunman across the gap. He was waving frantically to warn his colleague about her presence. His shouts went unheard, however, drowned out by white noise of the speakers and the gunfire below.
Before he could see the warning, she smacked the man in front of her on the back of the head, smashing his face into the railing. He dropped the rifle, which she swept up in one hand while taking the dart gun with the other. Then she blinked away once more to the upper level and the trashcan.
She dropped both weapons into the can, then leaned over to cover both in a vomit slurry of half-digested pizza. One blink could make her feel ill. So many in quick succession and she was barely holding on. The lights were forming streamers in front of her eyes and she could hear a screeching like fighting cats. It would not be long before the hallucinations descended into a focal seizure, leaving her frozen like an ice sculpture.
The sounds of the firefight continued. The thought of that little boy caught in the bubble below pulled at her to do more, epilepsy be damned.
Nora considered blinking down into the bubble to carry the hostages and Afterimage away. She had never blinked with someone else, however. She did not understand the power enough to know if it was even possible, nor know what would happen to her if she tried. The last thing she needed was to seize in the middle of that bubble, trapping her there with everyone else.
That meant using her visions and the temporary relief that came with them. She allowed the lights and sounds to coalesce into a steady stream of scenes playing out in her mind. Thankful that they did not happen in real time, she considered alternate actions, causing scenes to flicker and change in hasty succession, paradoxically steadying her stomach while threatening to make her dizzy. It was like riding a rollercoaster where every twist and turn was both thrilling and frightening.
Once she had chosen a course of action, she imagined a place in the courtyard below and blinked, appearing next to the leader. He was just outside the bubble readying a small, tube-shaped launcher, having already extended the cylinder and loaded it with a small rocket. He was balancing it on his shoulder in preparation to fire when she arrived. This was a precursor to some of her most terrible visions. The rocket had been able to penetrate Pressure’s shield and explode within the confines of the bubble, cooking everyone within. This man was her first stop in preventing a tragedy.
The leader was startled by her sudden appearance beside him. Taking advantage of his momentary hesitation, she stepping in and invaded his personal space to touch him gently on the jaw with her hand. Then she flicked her wrist, sending the man’s head flying backward with his body following involuntarily after. In a feeble attempt to catch himself, he let go of the launcher to free his hands, allowing Nora to scoop it up in midair.
The visions continued as she decided what to do with the launcher. Most scenarios spelled disaster for her or others in one form or another, but one path presented itself. In real time, Nora stepped to the right to avoid a whistling bullet from the mezzanine above, dropped to one knee, aimed up, and pulled the trigger.
The weapon had surprisingly little recoil, much of the force coming out the tube behind her in a blast of air and heat. Even so, she used what was there to help her drop into a backward roll. Above her, the railing where she had aimed exploded in fire. One of the men she had disarmed earlier, who had just shot at her with a handgun, fell amid flames and rubble. He and a chunk of the balcony landed on top of yet another gunmen beneath. Her visions had given her a two for one special.
Nora could hear bullets fly over her head as she went down into the roll, but she didn’t have time to reflect on how close she had come to being shot. With complete trust in her visions to keep her safe, she went backward over her shoulder, dropping the launcher tube on the ground as she did, and then put one leg beneath her while kicking out with the other. Using the momentum of her fall, she rose gracefully back to her feet. Her kick also made contact with the face of the gunman behind her, sending him sprawling backward as blood erupted from his nose.
Nora wasted no time examining her handiwork. Turning about, she flung herself over the fallen man, going into a forward roll as she avoided yet more gunfire. Like a wheel she contacted the tiled floor, rolled over one arm, across her back, and was back to her feet in a single smooth motion, whole and unscathed.
She came up in front of another gunman, or gun-woman this time. Clothed entirely in body armor partially covered by an unzipped hoodie, she looked tough and formidable. The woman pointed her rifle at Nora as she came up. The visions warned her to turn, so Nora turned, moving her hip so that she faced her opponent edge on rather than face forward.
You don’t dodge bullets, her Sensei had once told her, you dodge the person pulling the trigger. When a person is fixated on a target, it’s hard for them to adjust once they’ve started firing, even if that target moves. The woman pulled her trigger, sending out a burst of three rounds at what had been Nora’s center of mass, now offset by the span of a hand. Nora could feel the pressure wave against her stomach as they passed by.
The woman was shocked that she hadn’t struck her target, and was even more surprised when Nora slipped forward, took hold of her hands holding the rifle, and turned them about. Using a wrist lock technique, she dropped the woman to the floor. Nora took hold of the rifle as the woman went down, disarming her before as her head bounced against the tiles.
At this point the sounds of gunfire changed. By her estimation she had taken down or interfered with half of the armed terrorists. No longer surprised, Nora had become the focus of their wrath.
That meant Pressure’s chains were off, allowing her to do what she did best. The moment those guns stopped shooting at her, the bubble transformed into a wall to ward off gunfire from the side opposite Nora. Pressure then used that wall like a ram, forcing the gunmen to the far side of the courtyard.
Nora ran over to Pressure and the hostages, dumping her latest acquisition into a nearby trash receptacle. “Run!” she yelled at the huddled, frightened people.
On seeing the mother and her son flee toward the mall entrance, Nora’s heart fluttered with relief. They were safe. The terrorists were too busy to notice or pursue as Pressure smacked them into the courtyard floor in a live action game of whack-a-mole.
With the hostages gone and gunmen busy, Nora took the opportunity to check on Afterimage. The thin, blonde man on the floor wore a tight-fitting body suit that offered no defense from the dart protruding from his thigh. She pulled it out and tossed it aside. Checking his head, the side of his face was black and blue from his fall, but the pulse in his neck was strong and steady. She didn’t know if he was unconscious from the fall or the dart.
The visions were still swimming across Nora’s eyesight. “Behind you!” she shouted over the white noise still screaming from the speakers. Pressure turned about and swatted back one of the men Nora had knocked down earlier. Others were getting back up as well. It was time to go.
Having only seen her on TV before, Nora never realized how petite Pressure was. The superhero had always appeared larger than life in news reports, but the woman before her was tiny, even with the bulk of the blue and gray armored uniform she wore.
“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” Nora blurted without thinking.
It was impossible to read her eyes through the iridescent glasses she wore, but Pressure’s smile was sly and mischievous. “I would say I’m here to rescue you, but we both know how that went. Thanks for the help.”
She got the reference. Nora’s fan crush grew tenfold. For a brief moment she imagined what it would be like to be Pressure’s superhero sidekick.