Alden took the quickest route he remembered back to the apartment complex. He needed to get at Jessica's collection of gemstones if he was going to have any hope of holding down Omega.

  When he tore around the corner of the building, he found himself face-to-face with a college guy he didn't know, with short brown hair and a deadly expression. Alden took an instinctive step back, then another as he noticed the knife in the guy's hand.

  "Who are you?" he asked, eyeing Alden suspiciously.

  "Just looking for a friend," Alden answered.

  Given the shattered state of the apartments—shattered windows from their frames collapsing or being ripped from the walls, objects shot through ceilings with terrifying force and metal rivets torn out of wood—Alden thought it would be a simple, reasonable deflection. To his surprise, the knife rose up to find his chest. Alden froze in place.

  "You're that guy," he muttered. "The one tagging along with the witch. You caused all this."

  "No—" Alden started, but he kept talking.

  "My friends are dead because of you," he snarled. Alden tensed up. He could feel where this was going. The guy suddenly lunged forward, knife leading the way.

  Alden pulled himself backward with magic, flinging himself through the air faster than the guy could follow. He landed easily a few dozen feet away.

  "Don't do this," Alden warned. His opponent let out a incomprehensible shout of rage and charged forward. The knife was coming for him. The blade was only a few feet away.

  Alden grabbed desperately for it with his mind and managed to take hold. He flung it sideways, trying to send it out into the distance. The guy's grip was too strong. The knife was pulled backward, but his grip on the handle caused it to spin out as it flew away.

  The blade sliced a length into the guy's palm before it vanished into the grass outside the apartments. He cursed in pain, but he didn't slow down.

  The guy tackled Alden to the concrete walkway. His head bumped painfully on the ground, while the wound in his shoulder began to twinge again. He threw a punch at his attacker's face, but he didn't have enough room to get any real force out of it. He may as well have flicked the guy.

  Alden switched tactics, grabbing himself with magic and sliding his whole body out backwards. The guy didn't weigh enough to hold him back, letting Alden free like he were skidding across ice. As soon as he was free of the guy's grip, Alden scrambled to his feet again.

  He didn't want to hurt him, but the guy wasn't giving up. He bolted for the grass where the knife had fallen. Alden tried to find it with his mental grip first, but he couldn't see anything. As the guy picked it up with a much tighter grip than before, he swung back around to charge at Alden.

  "Stop, please!" Alden shouted, but the guy didn't look like he'd heard a word.

  Alden sent his mind down to that pool of energy inside him, opening it tenfold above what he'd ever managed before. He leapt along the line he perceived as time itself, slowing down the world around him. As Rika had said, he managed to keep it stable, so that the lights weren't flickering and the world was still perceptible. He could already feel it drawing massive amounts of his reserves, but Alden had to do something before he got stabbed outside Rika's apartment having accomplished nothing at all.

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  Alden ran forward at the guy, currently inching toward him in slow motion. He took the knife out of his hand and tossed it away again, then reluctantly punched him in the gut. As he retracted his fist, Alden released the line of energy he'd been grasping and flitted back to the normal line of time.

  The world became a fast-forward mess to catch up with him, as the knife twirled away into the distance. The guy he'd punched flew back a full six feet and tumbled over backward. Alden hadn't realized how much his punch would be amplified by the speed he'd moved at.

  "Are we done?" Alden asked, panting.

  "You killed my friends," the guy gasped, rolling over and struggling back to his feet. "Dropped a fucking building on their heads."

  "I didn't do anything," Alden gasped, almost apologetically. "I'm trying to catch the guy who did it."

  "All of you did it. You're all fucking monsters." He started advancing again. Alden didn't have much strength left to fight him, and the guy was in much better shape.

  He didn't have to. A loud popping sound had Alden clapping his hands to his ears. The guy's head snapped to the side as a burst of dark red substance coated the grass. He collapsed to the ground.

  Someone screamed. It took Alden a few moments to realize what had just happened. It was only when he heard another shout of surprise from a familiar voice that he finally caught up. He looked around and saw Julian Black lowering a hunting rifle, calm as could be. He wasn't the one who screamed.

  Hailey and Jessica emerged from their apartment door behind him. Hailey rushed forward to Alden's side. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah," Alden said, watching Julian carefully. The man walked over to join them, still uncomfortably calm. "Why did you shoot him?"

  "He was gonna try again, and I finally had a clear shot," Julian replied. "Nice trick, by the way. How'd you do that?"

  "You just killed him! Unarmed! We could have stopped him!" Alden shouted, feeling hysterical.

  "He was tryin' to kill you," Julian replied, annoyed. "You're one of us. I ain't gonna let a psycho like Logan Bowerson take out one of our own."

  Alden shook his head. "Hailey could have stopped him."

  "We ain't got time for this." Julian slung the rifle on his back. "I'm goin' to look for Rachel. Phones are all dead. You comin'?"

  "Go. We'll catch up," Hailey answered, before Alden could speak. Julian nodded and walked away.

  Alden twisted around, still reeling from the adrenaline of the fight. He briefly wondered how long he could keep going before he'd run dry and collapse. "What happened with the ritual?"

  "He interrupted it," Hailey reported grimly. Jessica was checking Alden's shoulder, refastening the bandage that had been unbound from the fight. "We came back here for supplies. I'm not giving up that easy."

  "Neither am I." Alden nodded gratefully at Jessica. She smiled and stood up, watching the empty street while Hailey and Alden went inside and gathered up as many of the gemstones as they could carry, as well as any other materials they thought might be useful. "Rika left town on that helicopter."

  "With the guys who tried to kidnap you?"

  "Yeah, no kidding. She made a deal with them."

  Hailey shook her head in disbelief. "She's insane."

  "She gave me something before she left though. She let me read her Scrap. It was Time magic."

  "Seriously?"

  "Yeah, you guessed right."

  "Not time travel though, I'm guessing."

  "I hope not." Alden grimaced. "Anyway, she told me how I could maybe trap him again. If we can get him somewhere." He hesitated. "I don't want to kill him, but…"

  "But some people just have to be killed," Hailey said quietly. "I don't like it either, Alden. But he tried to kill us first. He's a threat to everyone, humans or awakened."

  Jessica shouted from outside. They hurried to join her.

  The day was ending, the sun dipping low, and a mob of people was roaming down the street with murder in their eyes and rage in their voices. They carried any weapons they could find. The mob was moving away toward the main thoroughfare. Hailey started to move, as though she meant to stand up to the whole group, but Jessica grabbed her arm.

  Hailey twisted back in alarm. Jessica held up one hand with two fingers, and the other with five. She repeated the five several times over, then had that hand crush the two like a rock crushing a bug.

  Hailey hesitated, but nodded. "You're right, Jess."

  "So what do we do?" Alden asked.

  "Rachel said everyone would be safe inside the Market, right? We get people there, as many as we can."