“Can I try the ray gun?” Bill asked, putting his second beer down and passing the chips to Gloria. I shrugged and handed him the weapon, returning my attention to Keep just in time to watch him use the box cutter to slice open his wrist.

  “Keep!” I snapped in surprise. He had strapped the belt around his arm to help slow the blood flow to his wrist, but the wound he created still bled enough to make me a little queasy. It made me a lot queasy when he shoved disinfectant-covered fingers of his opposite hand beneath the flesh, looking off to the side as he felt around.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Bill asked, my shout getting his attention.

  George had just fired the energy rifle at another hay bale. He turned his head to look, too.

  I heard an audible click beneath Keep’s skin, watching as he pulled a strip of lighter gray, malleable metal an inch wide and nearly four inches long out of his wrist. I saw the sigils etched into it right away, as well as the needle that had been impaled in his vein, which bled more profusely after the removal.

  He dropped the sigiltech sleeve onto a dish towel on the workbench and applied pressure to the wound.

  “What is that?” Gloria asked.

  “The source of my magic,” Keep replied.

  “Why did you take it out?” I asked.

  “I need it to silence the helicopter. It’d drain me too much to do it internally. It needs to be exposed.”

  “Keep, this is a terrible idea,” I said.

  “I told you it would be, kid. Gloria, can you help me bandage this up?”

  “Sure,” she replied.

  “Bill, I need you to clean off that strip of metal and figure out how to attach it to the underbelly of the Black Hawk with the needle coming up through the floor with enough extension that it can draw blood.”

  “You’re kidding,” Bill said, staring at Keep. “You aren’t kidding.”

  “No. Preferably, position it so I can drive it into my foot and shoot out of the open side of the helo at the same time.”

  “It’s covered in blood,” Bill said.

  “Pour some whisky over it and get moving.”

  Bill bit his bottom lip, visibly unhappy at having to take orders. “This is going to cost you extra,” he said as he picked up the bottle and dumped some of the alcohol on the sleeve, washing the blood off. Once he was satisfied, he picked it up and carried it to the Black Hawk, along with the bag of chips and the rest of the six-pack of beer. “Give me an hour,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  “How are you going to silence the chopper with it?” I asked.

  “I’m going to use push and pull to move the air beneath the helicopter, sending the soundwaves off into the distance. The defenders will still hear them, but they’ll think it’s a helicopter flying past further off.”

  “That’s awesome.”

  “Yup. It really is,” he agreed. “By connecting the sleeve to the helicopter’s belly, I can use the surface area around it to help amplify the action. Steel sheet metal isn’t a great catalyst, but it’ll suit our needs. As for you, Bennie. Your first lesson in how to use sigiltech with better control. Are you ready?”

  I glanced at the ring. “Definitely.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Keep’s instructions to control the sigiltech ring were simple. The forcefulness of the thought controlling the action determined the forcefulness by which the action was executed. In practice, it was like so many things.

  A lot easier said than done.

  There was nuance, of course. The devil in the details. Most importantly, once the action was triggered, the forcefulness of that action couldn’t be adjusted. Rather, increasing or decreasing the effect meant starting a new action at the appropriate level. That made it extremely important to understand the power needed to complete an action before activating it or being prepared to adjust it on the fly. Easy for someone with Keep’s experience. Much, much harder for me. Especially because it turned out I was, as Keep put it, wound tighter than a guitar string. Too tense. Too overbearing. It was great when I needed to take action to devastating effect. It allowed me to do things like knock over a bunch of trees and remove the Frasier’s house from its foundation with relative ease. But as Keep kept drilling into me while I practiced outside—nearly blowing over one of Bill’s silos in the process—the vast majority of uses for sigiltech required a much lighter touch.

  In other words, I was unexpectedly, unbelievably powerful.

  Too powerful.

  It figured.

  Keep didn’t know why I seemed to catalyze better than he had even believed possible. There was a DNA component involved, which was why not everyone could use sigiltech, much less excel using the hemolytic. He suggested that maybe I was a predecessor to one of the original crew members of the colony ship that wound up in the Spiral. The Empress’ many times great-grandfather, perhaps. It was a fun notion to toy with, but I had a different opinion on the source of my strength.

  “It’s the cancer,” I said to him, taking a break in my effort to push one of the empty beer cans off a tree stump. I’d succeeded plenty of times already, but not without ripping the stump out of the ground on my first try and sending it tumbling. Every other try had knocked both the can and the stump over.

  “No, it's not the cancer,” Keep countered.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because cancerous cells in the bloodstream would be like sediment in gasoline. It would make it less efficient, not more.”

  “Or maybe it’s like a higher octane,” I countered. “Giving things a turbo boost.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What about the numbness? You said that doesn’t make any sense either. Maybe it’s related.”

  “I suppose it could be. You’re definitely an oddity.”

  “Have you ever known an archon who had cancer before?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever known any other archons?”

  “They died out a long time ago, kid.”

  “Then how did you become one?”

  Keep smirked and pointed at the can. “Try again.”

  “I’ve noticed how you always evade that question, you know.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “So are you ever going to answer it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “The can,” Keep said. “Try again.”

  I laughed before taking a deep breath, trying to calm my mind so I hopefully wouldn’t overexert myself. Activating the ring was easy. I sensed the power flowing to it and tried to slow it to a trickle. In my mind, I pictured flicking the can away with my finger as I whispered, “distra.”

  The can launched from the stump. The stump lifted and tumbled ten feet. The grass went flat, and a residual wind again hit the side of the silo, shaking it.

  “Damn it!” I cursed, shaking my head in frustration. I pointed to the sky. “Do you think they’re watching and laughing at me?”

  “I’m sure they’re watching,” Keep said. “I doubt they’re laughing. Your lack of control makes you more dangerous.”

  “To everyone around me.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  “How are we going to get away from the farm and all the way to the target without their satellite tracking us the whole time?”

  “The thing about the eyes in the sky is that they can’t be everywhere at once,” Keep replied. “That’s why we pulled the van into the barn. Gloria and Marie will take the car and the van out and head on two different paths toward the target. Even if they’ve got two satellites trained on the location, they’ll be looking in the wrong place if they follow either of them. Misdirection. Badabing badaboom. Pass me the ring.”

  I handed it over. He put it on his finger and quickly reset the stump and can with the sigil before giving it back.

  “I hate how easy it is for you,” I said.

  “You’ll get it with time. Practice and patience.”

  “I’m sorely lacking in those two things.”

  “Right now, you and me both, kid. Again.”

  “Are you trying to tire me out before we head out?” I asked.

  “You don’t seem tired to me. If anything, I’d say you’re getting stronger.”

  I paused. “Come to think of it, I do feel a little more stable physically. Probably because I’m more calm than before.”

  “Not that you’d know it by looking at the can. Try again. Imagine just the lightest touch. Like a feather. ”

  I repeated the same process as before, this time making an effort to just barely tap the can. The power flowed out of the ring, blasting the can from the stump. The stump wavered and lifted off the grass before dropping back down in place.

  “Yes!” I shouted in victory.

  “Better, but if you were trying to peel grapes, you would have made wine,” Keep said, raining on my parade.

  “It’s progress,” I countered.

  “Absolutely,” he agreed. “Not bad at all.”

  “Hey, Avelus,” Bill said, shouting from the inside of the barn. Keep and I both turned to face him. “I finished adding your bracelet to the helo. I made a bracket to hold it in place, fitted into a hole I cut through the floor. I hate mutilating my chopper that way.”

  “Can’t be helped,” Keep replied. “Any other way, they’ll know we’re coming.”

  “Yeah, well I think we’re pretty much ready to go. Or at least to get the women on the move.”

  “Did Sally and Kyrie come to the barn?” I asked.

  “Yep. They’re having a little party before we head out.”

  We walked back to the barn, joining Bill inside. The others were gathered around the workbench, eating potato chips. At some point, Marie had added soda and pretzels to the bill of fare.

  “Gloria, Marie,” Bill said. “It’s time for you two to head out.”

  They both nodded. Gloria and Kyrie went to George. Marie and Sally to Bill. They embraced and said their goodbyes while Keep attacked the snacks.

  “You be careful, Sergeant,” I heard Gloria say to George. “Don’t go playing the hero and dying on me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

  “You’re a good man, Bill,” Marie said. “You have a big heart. Bring it back to me in one piece.”

  “I will, darlin’,” he answered. They kissed and embraced.

  “Be safe, papa,” Sally said to her father.

  “I always am,” he replied, kneeling to hug her. “No matter what, your papa loves you very much."

  “I know. Love you too.”

  “Good.” He let her go as Kyrie hugged her dad and then ran after her mom.

  Marie and Sally got into the Mustang. and Gloria and Kyrie took the van, starting their engines at the same time. They would stick together until they got to the main road before parting ways. We waved to them as they drove out of the barn.

  “What if there are three satellites?” I asked Keep.

  He dropped another handful of chips in his mouth and talked as he chewed. “Then we’re screwed. But let’s not think about that.”

  “Come on, you two,” Bill said. “We’ve got about twenty minutes for me to teach you how to use the FRIES. Avelus, since you need to stay on board, I’ll show you how to operate and spot it.”

  After shoving one last handful of chips into his mouth, Keep acknowledged the summons with a wave of his hand before breaking into an easy jog to the Black Hawk. I hurried after him.

  No matter what happened from here on out, it felt good to finally be going on the offensive.

  CHAPTER 26

  Bill had used a tractor to tow the Black Hawk into the barn when he first purchased it. Keep used the sigiltech to push it back out through the open rear doors.

  He stood next to the FRIES attachment, his bare foot planted on the floor, the needle of his sleeve jabbed into his heel. Unlike when he used the sleeve in his wrist, there was little outward sign of its use in his expression or body language, save for the slight movement of his lips when he activated the device.

  “We’re clear,” Bill announced.

  Keep let up on the push and the helicopter rolled to a quick stop in a patch of grass just ahead of the fields of wheat and corn swaying gently in the breeze. Bill started the engines and then engaged the rotors, their whine gaining in ear-splitting intensity as the rotors built speed. Air off the airfoils sent hay and debris swirling around inside the barn as the closest stalks of wheat bowed to the windy onslaught.

  I sat with George on a seat across from the FRIES, both of us already dressed in green flight suits over our street clothes. Headphones and goggles went over our helmets, and we shoved our hands into tactical gloves. The heavier pair of gloves we'd each laid over a knee would go on to fast rope down from the chopper, and we each had an energy rifle secured to the side of our seats.

  I’d never ridden in a helicopter before, and despite my anxiety over Mom and Sheri, and to a lesser extent Nick, I couldn’t help feeling a little elated as the Black Hawk lifted off the ground and started gaining altitude. It seemed kind of silly after all the places I had been in the last month, after flying around in a starship and a starfighter and teleporting halfway across the universe, but a new experience was a new experience. I was sure somebody out there with terminal cancer had riding in a Black Hawk on their bucket list. So this one was for them.

  We climbed to about five thousand feet, steadily gaining forward velocity as the climb leveled out. Keep stepped off the needle, taking two steps to drop into the seat facing opposite George and me, and strapping in.

  “Clear sailing from here to the target,” Bill announced from the pilot’s seat. Looking forward, he seemed almost too big to fly the chopper, poured in behind the controls and oozing off the side of the seat. He seemed to realize it too. “I definitely need to go on a diet when I get back if I want to fly this thing full time.”

  We followed a different route from the one the enemy expected us to drive. At this point, we didn't think they knew we had a chopper. Our flight plan took us further west than the highway, toward the mountains, where we skirted over the national parks on our way south. Because Bill had formed Filmhawk LLC to purchase the chopper, it made it easier for us to get flight clearance over the parks.

  I watched the landscape pass beneath us from the open side door of the Black Hawk, the ride smooth and relatively uneventful. I enjoyed it as much as possible under the circumstances. In fact, it probably would have been one of the most relaxing and fun things I had ever done until the initial excitement wore off and the distance between us and them closed.

  We'd planned to do a quick recon of the area from overhead before making our approach. Once there, George and I would fast-rope down, eliminate the kidnappers, and liberate my family. Then Bill would land the chopper and we'd all make a quick escape.

  As if it would be that easy.

  By the time we approached our destination, my nerves were as frayed as an old scrap of weathered cloth. In truth, I probably should have felt more nervous than that, but George’s involvement turned out to be surprisingly comforting. As a Marine, Bill explained he had done two tours in Afghanistan, including a handful of special ops that had a similar profile to what we were trying to do. He had experience with both unit command and all kinds of firearms and other weaponry, and he had the quiet confidence of someone who had kicked ass and taken names on more than one occasion. He had originally intended to reup for a third tour, but the death of his father and his inheritance of the farm had changed those plans.

  “Avelus, we’re ten klicks out,” Bill announced a little over an hour after takeoff. “I’ve got eyes on the target. A recycling factory, plus a whole shitload of junked cars waiting for processing. Infrared shows eight tangos watching the perimeter, another four on the doors to the factory. Two on the roof. There’s a nice flat spot about thirty feet away with HVAC access where you can rope down.”

  “Copy that,” Avelus said, looking at me. “You ready for this, kid?”

  I nodded. My heart hadn’t stopped thumping since we’d taken off, but it moved into the next gear now that we’d nearly arrived. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “You’ll be fine,” George said. “Stick tight to me, remember the hand signals I taught you. Follow my lead.”

  “Copy, Sarge,” I replied, forcing a smile.

  “Prep the FRIES,” Bill said. “Make us silent but deadly.”

  “You’re good at that on your own,” George joked.

  Keep returned to his original position, dropping his foot back onto the needle. He winced slightly this time, but didn’t complain, even as blood ran out onto the floor. Turning his upper body, he grabbed the ropes and put them in position for a quick drop to the factory roof. Meanwhile, George and I put on the heavier gloves, stood up and slung our rifles over our backs.

  “Remember, Bennie,” Keep said. “If you need to use the ring, light touch.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied. We both knew the intensity of the moment would make it harder to keep the activation under control, and I was already so bad at that. Too much force would also numb my hand and arm, leaving me at a disadvantage for the rest of the fight.

  “Bill, I’m setting the sigils,” Keep announced.

  “Copy that,” Bill replied.

  Keep whispered under his breath, activating multiple sigils at once. I thought I felt a tingle through my boots as the energy of the sleeve spread through the helicopter’s metal hull, spreading the effect across a greater surface area.

  “Nothing seems any different to me,” Bill said a moment later.

  “Nope. The effect is below us,” Keep replied. “Move in.”

  “Yes, sir. Moving in.”

  My stomach dropped as the Black Hawk accelerated, descending quickly toward the target. I held on to the seat while George crossed to the doorway, ready to deploy as soon as we were in position. Keep’s face was hard as if set in stone, his concentration sharply focused.

  From inside the helicopter, I could hear the muffled whump-whump-whump of the rotors grabbing bites of air, the engines roaring, the air tearing past. Keep later claimed everything, for him, remained silent around the chopper, the bird sinking toward its perch as silently as an owl, the guards outside the factory building completely unaware.