Awakening - The Last Science #1

Chapter 26 - Monsters - III

  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.

  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.