Bright Star. Grayson Reyes-Cole

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СКАЧАТЬ a moment, he could feel it. He stopped the blood as his own veins started to burn and his muscles, all of them, started to strain. His neck tightened his back, his arms and legs, his buttocks. He could feel the tissue rethreading itself as something in his head began to rip apart. Pain. His flesh, his cells were searing from the inside out. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. His teeth were grinding painfully as if there was a vice around his skull. The pain within him was so strong that his bones seemed like they were being stretched and bowed to the point of cracking. For a man who rarely experienced pain, it was too much, and yet it was fascinating. His lungs refused breath. Blackness started to cover his vision and blanket his thoughts, but his years of training wouldn’t let him. He cut the Shift and started pounding his palm against his forehead and tears started in his eyes. He couldn’t save her.

      “Please, Bright Star.” He turned to her, an ache in his voice. “Please. If you have any strength left, then maybe we can do this together. Maybe together.”

      Jackson knew in his soul that he could not prevent her death alone. The Perma-Shift would kill him before he repaired her enough to keep her alive. Jackson knew if he persisted, they would both die. There was never anything more certain.

      “I can’t,” she wheezed. Her head started rolling from side to side as if the movement would shake away the cloud of death. “I’m not strong enough. We aren’t…” Her breath started coming faster and in the silence, the rasp was equivalent to mental friction. Jackson ran a hand across the stubble on the top of his head. It was an additional scrape to the strained cacophony. She was going to die in less than a minute. He lashed out with his mind and called to the only person he could.

      The warmth, the pattern, and the glow that was Rush flowed over Jackson. The light collected in his open heart. He felt it slipping over his fingers and filling the gaping hole in her stomach. A low, barely visible gold light burrowed inside of her. Her mouth fell open and her wide eyes seemed to beam blue light into the night sky. Her chest arced into the air. Her head tossed back, and her jugulars strained. Her fingers curled into claws. Her teeth clenched.

      Rush was saving this girl. He was saving her life and—Jackson realized—his life as well. Jackson tried to breathe but inhaled too sharply and started to cough violently because the rush of oxygen into his lungs was too much. Then, there was relief. Every muscle in his body loosened, and he buckled. Jackson turned his head as vomit rushed through his throat, filled his mouth and poured from his lips. Training had taught him to give into this. His body was righting itself from the excess of High Energy.

      As he emptied his body, Jackson started focusing on facts. Something had to anchor him before the Perma-Shift really did kill him. Parameters of Shift 101. He could see the text behind his eyelids: The brightest recorded light manifestation of Shift was approximately .96 watts, about as much as can be powered by twenty-four volts. A single Christmas tree light. The longest recorded distance for a Shift was five kilometers, just over three miles. He looked at the skyline. If he judged correctly, he was about ten miles from the apartment. And his brother was doing this from long distance. Even Jackson had only been able to affect a Shift from ten miles away. Rush was at their apartment more than ten miles away. Jackson swallowed, trying to push that thought from his mind. The youngest recorded age for someone to Shift was eleven. Well, that had been true before Jackson was born. But Jackson was the anomaly, the outlier always excluded from statistical measures. Precocial.

      Jackson shuddered and rocked. He had to focus. The average age for someone to be able to manifest a Shift was thirteen and a half months. The phrase, Permanent Shift, was derived from a permanent magnet. A permanent magnet retained its magnetism after removal of the magnetizing force. Perma-Shift was what happened when the High Energy used to create a Shift was out of balance with the High Energy required for the Shift. When there was too little Energy, the strain started to tear the Shifter apart, inside out. When the High Energy was more than required and left unrestrained, it had nowhere to apply itself but back to its source. The average time it took to recover from minor Perma-Shift was 176 seconds. The average time it took to recover from major Perma-Shift was never. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and turned around.

      Bright Star breathed normally beside him. There was no deep rush of air, no coughing as if she had drowned. Nothing. She simply started to breathe. The blood that had pooled around her slowly turned clear then evaporated up into the air in transparent flakes. Even her skin began to grow thick, opalescent. The veins disappeared, turning her skin from alabaster to porcelain. Bright Star had not been healed, she had been returned.

      The Shifter sat up. Her shiny, copper hair fell just behind her ears. She blinked. Her eyes were slowly returning to a natural, earthly blue as she pinned them to Jackson. Her first words in this rewound life were accusatory. “You didn’t save me.”

      Jackson felt the shame but was not sure if he showed it. He had been trained to hide such things, and his training had come back to him once she was safe. Her gaze fluttered to the ground at his feet and he knew she had seen.

      “It was my brother,” Jackson offered, scratching the back of his head. His brother. Funny. Jackson had not known before those moments that his brother possessed Talent, yet he had known to reach out to him. He hadn’t been the least surprised at the strength his brother had exhibited. He shook his head.

      “Is he dead?” she asked, her eyes coming to his again, startlingly clear. He was beginning to recognize the incandescence as a signal of her High Energy. Brighter than a Christmas tree light.

      “No. No, he’s not. I would know if he were.” Though he hadn’t once thought about it before, Jackson knew his words to be true. “To be honest, I’m not sure he can experience it.” Jackson pushed off from the wall and took a step toward her. Not another. He was too cautious for that. He shook his head. “I’m not sure of anything.”

      “Is he here?” Her Bright Star eyes searched around the dark recesses of the rooftops. A faint blue tint illuminated any and every thing she studied.

      “No.” Jackson replied.

      “But he is close?” she persisted.

      “No,” Jackson answered warily. He knew her next question.

      “Then how could he have—”

      Impulsively, Jackson told her, “I can Shift from ten miles away.”

      The blue gaze fell on him and stilled. Her eyes seemed to dim. “So can I.” In a soft voice she added, “I brought you here.”

      Jackson said nothing. Five minutes ago, he had been the One, the Precocial. He had broken records. He was the most Talented, most special of anyone on Earth. And yet, here was a Shifter who claimed to match his Talent. He had a brother somewhere whose power he had not known before that night. It was a power, a High Energy, he felt that could not be measured or weighed.

      In a swift and graceful roll, Bright Star came up to her feet and stood before him. She was rounder and shorter than she had looked lying down. The top of her head just barely reached his chin and he was less than six feet tall. Her face was a perfect pale apple with defined cheekbones, a broad brow, and with a shallow indention in her chin. Her lips were pink and her lashes russet.

      “You nearly killed yourself bringing me here,” Jackson mumbled.

      “Well, if you were who and what I believed you to be, that wasn’t much of a risk. You would have saved me. I realize, however, you are not who we thought you to be at all. It’s your brother we need.” Her eyes rolled upward and Jackson could almost see twin blue ribbons of light reach toward the moonless sky.

      Jackson СКАЧАТЬ