Jan Caufield's keen eyes were locked on the back of the blue monster truck in front of her. Heather was off to her right only strides behind the yellow one. They'd run a ways since those trucks had broken through the doors of the collapsing armory building but that building and its all consuming fire were only a orange glow on the horizon behind them. Jan had been tired and sore before, but as her super human legs churned, she didn't feel anything except the need to catch the truck in front of her.

The men in the blue truck didn't feel anything as Jan jumped and gripped the sidewall hard enough to crinkle the steel beneath her fingers. She climbed to the roof and held onto the spot lights to keep from flying off when the truck jumped into the air after traveling over a sandbar. When the truck landed Jan pulled her arm back, tightening her hand into a fist and punched a hole through the sheet metal roof. She peeled the steel back. Both men in the cab looked up with fright and one of them pulled his pistol. The first shot buzzed past Jan's face. The second grazed her cheek. There wasn't a third shot. She gripped the shooter's wrist breaking it then pulled his face near the ceiling. Another punch through the sheet metal knocked him senseless. Jan was in no mood to play around with these idiots. Her uncle wasn't in this truck but she was going to find him and quickly.

The driver reached for his gun and jerked the wheel in the process which was more effective than the gun would have been in the first place. Jan lost balance and tumbled down to the swamp. The driver spun the truck in a circle and gunned the engine heading straight for her. Jan pulled herself out of the mud, but didn't dodge as the truck approached. She stood her ground and readied for the impact.

The truck roared out of a creek bed and onto dry land causing the front end of the monster truck to rise up like a beast about to devour prey. The driver grinned and put the truck in reverse. The rear wheels spun in the other direction which caused the front end to speed towards the ground with car crushing force. It was a move he'd done hundreds of times. Jan barely had time to get her hands up as the front end sped towards her.

She sank knee deep in the mud as the weight plus the horsepower tried to crush her flat. Jan's arms didn't waver holding the front axle a couple of inches above her head. The driver couldn't believe it. He'd seen some of boss' enhanced guards do awesome feats of strength, but none of them could do anything approaching this. He put the truck in first gear and tried to go forward again. Maybe he could simply get away. Jan held firm. Her long lean body withstood the best the engine could dish out. Her skin blushed, but it was her muscles that demanded most of the blood. She thrust her chest out and pushed forward against the power of the big motor. It bellowed as the driver changed gears and pushed his foot to the floor. The rear tires threw mud and muck back for a hundred feet trying to push the truck forward. They only succeeded in digging twin furrows in the swamp. The driver changed gears again and the engine note changed, giving every ounce of power it had. Jan's muscles flexed into living granite, unmovable, harder than everything around her. Her shoulders and triceps were deeply striated and bulging, but then Jan began to push back forcing the truck up like was a massive incline bench press. Her already flexing triceps exploded, tearing out the remnants of her already ruined uniform until her shredded arms were completely exposed.

Jan looked at her arms marveling at their size and shape, how each muscle flowed seamlessly to the next. Jan's muscles had no weaknesses in form or in function. She was a perfect fighting machine. She senses were at their peak too. She actually heard the driver's heart racing in his chest, even though the screaming engine was right next to her head. She heard the passenger's even breathing knowing that he had yet to wake up. Jan could taste their blood and imagine it rolling hot across her own silky skin. Jan's power called for blood, for carnage. Jan's strength increased. The monster inside her wanted its appetite satiated. Jan felt herself being overwhelmed, becoming a slave to her own rage. Her left arm almost doubled in size and definition when she pulled her right arm off the axle and pushed the truck up with only one arm even as the rear wheels tried to force the front end down. Jan looked at this motor as a test, a weak one, but a test just the same. It was also an annoyance, and Jan's rage only knew one way to get around annoyances. It killed them.

Jan drew her fist back to her hip then unleashed a thunderous uppercut to the bottom of the engine block. Cast iron shattered to powder beneath Jan's knuckles. The crankshaft was special high grade steel that buckled from Jan's single punch. Lifters, rods, and seals failed after that first blow, but the engine kept running, roughly, but the rear wheel still spun. Jan's beautiful face twisted to mirror the rage inside her and anger at the defiance of this motor. Her long fingers curled into a new fist and her muscles pumped hot and hard in anticipation of the hardest punch she'd ever thrown in her life, harder than the punches she'd launched against the Aceros that she'd killed. This sputtering motor was about to experience Jan's full wrath. The punch detonated as much as landed. The entire front third of the truck blasted apart with fenders, shocks, struts, body panels flying in different directions. The engine itself, the source of Jan's ire, flew up and out of the hood. It landed in several pieces some distance away. Jan threw the barely recognizable front end of the truck to the ground and stomped towards the driver's door.

She punched her fist through the center of the door and yanked her arm back. She felt the feeble resistance from the hinges and the lock. Her arm over came them quickly. The door caromed into the swamp. The driver sat in the racing style seat with his hands on the steering wheel and his foot still pushing the accelerator of this engineless truck. With her power flowing unchecked, Jan wanted to tear this man's body to pieces, but her mind reasserted a little control. It was a struggle. Jan had to remember her uncle to keep from killing this man where he sat. She blinked rapidly and worked to force some of her power back into its cage before she completely unraveled. With that sort of accomplished Jan trusted herself to grab this man by the throat. She gave a tug and realized that he actually had his seat belt on. She could have pulled him through the five point racing harness breaking every bone in his body in the process. Instead she grabbed the seat.

Six tempered stainless steel bolts kept this seat firmly attached to the chassis and Jan overpowered all six of them with only the strength of her right bicep. The jagged dual headed peak soared. A mountain range rose from her pulsing deltoids and across her biceps and forearm. The cab and chassis warped as she curled. Loud bangs came from beneath the truck as steel destroyed itself trying to resist. When the last bolt snapped in half the seat with the driver firmly attached, flew off into the swamp. He bounced and rolled to a stop with his face buried in a muddy puddle. He turned his face to find some air, but he didn't need to worry about drowning.

Jan yanked him up by the head with the seat still hanging from his shoulders and lap. The weight threatened to decapitate him. He put his hands to Jan's forearms and pulled downward. Her arms didn't yield, but he succeeded in taking some strain off his neck. Jan pressed her thumbs against his cheek bones while her fingers pressed hard from his ears to below his jaw on both sides of his head. He wanted to scream, but couldn't open his mouth with Jan's hands crushing inward. A high pitched whoop came out instead. Jan let him suffer for nearly thirty seconds before she stopped screaming and raised him to her eye level. He saw her power dancing around in her haunting blue eyes. The maddening rage of her power mixed with the anger and desperation from her search for her uncle. The driver's life hung in the balance and he understood that balance was tenuous. This young woman was fighting herself more than any threat around her. The driver could only hope that the merciful side of her won, if she had one.

Jan swallowed and tried to calm her racing heart. Her rage wanted blood, but Jan wanted answers. "I'm only going to ask you one time", she warned in a hoarse whisper and the man looked like he'd already lost control of his faculties. "Where has DeBraya taken my Uncle?"

"Dude, somebody's following us", Dewy told his friend Johnny in the driver's seat of the yellow truck. His voice was softer and breathier than his usual boisterous self.

"I don't hear an engine anywhere near us. I don't even hear Freddie in the other truck anymore."

Dewy shook his head still not believing what his eyes were seeing. "No, dude. I think it's a woman and she's on foot. She's fuckin chasing us on foot!"

"Bullshit", Johnny exclaimed but checked his mirrors just the same. "We're going 30. Even you can't run that fast and you've been taking those elephant steroids for a couple of years now."

"They aren't elephant steroids", Dewy replied quickly then paused to look behind them again. "The strength serum I take is purely synthetic and it turns you in a beast!"

"If you're so beastly then why are you getting spooked?"

"Dude, I am a beast, and if I'm spooked then you damn well better be terrified."

Johnny laughed and slapped his friend on his big muscular shoulder. "I know that strength stuff shrinks your balls, but I think it shrinks your mind too. There's no way somebody's running behind us on foot!"

Heather landed on the hood with a bang just as the last words left Johnny's big mouth. He screamed and Dewy reached for his gun. Heather grabbed the top and bottom of the windshield and gave a tug. The glass cracked and broke. Heather's muscles were barely warmed when the windshield came loose in her hands. She tossed it into the swamp and reached for the driver. Dewy was quick on the trigger. A bullet slammed into Heather's neck. Blood sprayed for a second, but she kept reaching for the driver. Dewy leaned forward and sent a punch to this bitch's jaw. Where the bullet had failed the punch got her attention. She stumbled and fell to her knees, but her balance was amazing. Dewy grabbed Heather's arm in his big meaty hand and yanked her to the side of the hood. She couldn't hold on and slid to the swamp. Johnny spun the wheel and gunned the engine.

Heather had barely looked up before the truck was at her. The brush guard grill hit her just below her chin. Her forehead shattered the headlamp as her body quickly disappeared beneath the expansive hood. Johnny felt the truck rise a little as her body got dragged beneath the tire. He was sure the truck had done his job. He checked his watch to see how much time they'd lost towards the rendezvous point. Then the engine's note changed. Gears in the front axle ground and the truck pulled hard right. The passenger side tire wasn't spinning anymore. Something had stopped it cold.

Johnny steered left to compensate, but the right side tire didn't turn with the left. The steel steering linkage snapped. The steering motor overheated sending white smoke into the cab. The truck continued to go in a circle as the sounds of tortured steel and grinding gears filled their ears.

Being run over by the truck had further soured Heather's already foul mood. She'd held onto the tractor style tire treads as the truck attempted to crush her. She'd turned her sore head in anticipation of being run over and sucked in a breath just before her face had been pressed hard into the soupy ground. She shook the mud off after she'd emerged and when her body was atop the tire she let her boots touch the inside front of the wheel well and held firm. Heather's legs were always beautiful in their lush athletic thickness, but when she'd flexed them a new world opened up. Her quads pushed against each other creating a gap between her knees. Her hamstrings were tighter than bridge cables and her calves splayed out thicker than a regular girl's thighs. The tire stopped spinning.

The engine sent all the power it could to this wheel, but it couldn't overcome Heather's might. The smell of burning oil and heavy grease was like perfume. She grinned deviously and allowed the tractor style tire to turn… just a little. The truck wanted to spin the wheel at thirty miles an hour, but Heather bent her arms at the elbow so the tire could turn only a couple of feet. She stopped it again. When her hands were beneath her chest, Heather pushed down. Her back hit the top of the wheel well, but Heather's pushup continued at the expense of the axle. Her hands made a deep dent in the oversized tires. Her hands were more than the max load of this tire, threatening to explode it, but the axle gave way first. Overthick struts and shocks were no match. She stretched the coiled struts until the springy steel started to straighten for good and hydraulic fluid leaked from the shocks as Heather's pushup ruptured the internal seals. Heather's muscles wanted to flex to their maximum, but this axle wasn't worthy of it. A shower of sparks flew from beneath the kneeling truck even before Heather's arms had gotten halfway straight. Heather pushed herself free of the wheel well and watched the truck roll over its own amputated tire then sink to the mud for good. Johnny jumped from the cab hoping to make it to the trees, but knowing he wouldn't be fast enough.

Heather ran across the mud so quickly that the thick sludge couldn't grab her. She was a stride away from overtaking the driver when out of nowhere Dewy came running at a full sprint. He tackled Heather like an NFL linebacker. He rose up on his toes and drove her to the ground as hard as he could. He heard a satisfying grunt when she impacted the ground. Dewy didn't waste a second. He kneed Heather in her recently broken ribs. He reveled in the look of pain on her muddy face. He pulled his arm back and unleashed a punch to the exact same spot. Heather curled away from the blow giving Dewy enough time to unholster his gun. He didn't aim it though, or even put his finger on the trigger. He smashed it against the side of Heather's head, using the gun as an iron bludgeon. The pistol survived the first blow intact, but the second bent the gun's frame and opened deep wounds her Heather's face and forehead. Dewy thought he was moving for the kill, but Heather raised her arm and deflected his third swing then sent a quick strike to Dewy's unprotected neck. He clutched at his throat. Heather rolled away and huffed as she stood up, looking unfazed by Dewy's pistol strikes. Dewy was angry now. It showed all over his big body. He screamed as he charged Heather, but he didn't realize that he wasn't half as angry as she was.

Thomas stood looking at the ruins realizing how huge this building had once been. Piles of twisted rubble stacked more than forty feet high with smoke billowing out of cracks in the broken roof and wall. The thirteen year old felt like a bit player in one of those post apocalyptic movies. People ran all over and there were terrible things in every direction. One of DeBraya's men had his arm caught beneath some fallen debris. He had to be one of the super strong enhanced guards because every time he tried to free himself the rubble on top would bounce and shake. A couple of federal agents ran up and tugged with all they had. The arm was covered in dripping blood and broken in three places, but as soon as it was free the enhanced guard threw his rescuers off and ran towards a couple of unprepared agents standing near a Humvee. Thomas ran towards the man at a sprint. No one was close enough to stop the bushy haired kid, all wondering if he had a death wish.

The enhanced guard rose up to slam his fist into a helpless agent's chest when Thomas jumped on his back. He wrapped his legs around the man's thick middle and put his hands to the man's grimy neck. A split second later Thomas' hands flashed a pale blue. The huge guard shook violently then dropped to the ground.

"You better put those special handcuffs on him if you have some", Thomas said to the stunned men around him. "That guy's going to wake up really pissed." Thomas backed away so the grownups could do their jobs. He looked up at the fallen building now that he was closer to it and shook his head. "I hope everybody got out alive."

On the other side of the building Jack Caufield made quick sense of the chaos around him. He gave orders to the men he could see and sent one agent to retrieve a replacement radio for him. His had taken a bullet during the fighting. He couldn't get in touch with Jan or Heather or Alisha. They'd disappeared into the swamp and hadn't come back.

Jack tried to recall everything he'd seen and realized quickly that something was wrong. Those two monster trucks had taken off into the swamp heading southwestward and a few seconds later three airboats had skidded across the hard packed dirt before splashing into the swamp and speeding away. Those boats had been going due west. Jack hadn't been able to see a single person on those boats, but he knew. Those trucks had been a diversion and the girls had fallen for it. There was no way Martin's bodyguards would have allowed him to come out first in those easy to track monster trucks. And there was no way Martin was going to let Ted get more than three feet away from him. Jack had to find a way to track those boats. The agent ran back with his new radio. Jack tried Sara, but got no reply. He jogged towards the back of the building hoping to find Sara before Ted got too far away. He tried her on the radio again and cursed when she didn't respond.

Sara didn't hear a thing. Her ears rang like church bells and her chest burned hot like the smoky air around her. She pushed herself up to her elbows with inches of dust and ash sliding down her face and clothes. Her vision was blurred and her head pounded. People ran all around her and she tried to focus, but all she saw was smoke and ankles until some hands grabbed her under the shoulders. Those hands pulled her off the ground. "You're okay", CIA agent Kevin Bechet told Sara with a reassuring smile, but she didn't even recognize him. "I've got you. Let's get further away from the building. The rubble might shift or something."

Sara stumbled as Kevin got her to cleaner air so she wouldn't have to fill her lungs with smoke and dust. "I was trying to stop you. It's a good thing you weren't any closer when that building came down. Nobody could have survived that."

Sara stopped suddenly and grasped Kevin's arm hard enough to get his attention. "What did you say?", she demanded blinking her eyes rapidly.

Kevin frowned. "I said nobody could have survived that."

Sara looked confused and lost for several seconds, like she was trying to remember some thread of a memory or remnant of a thought. Then she had it. Her eyes opened wide and her lips pursed. "Oh my God!", she yelled. "Oh my God!" She took off running.

"Where are you going now!?!", Kevin shouted thinking this girl might have gone crazy.

"Taylor!", was all she said as she ran towards the building. The huge mass of rubble was made up of little bits of bricks, stones, cement, and wood, but also of massive chunks that still stuck together. Smoke wafted from deep inside the smoldering building as Sara stared up trying to will her eyes to focus. Kevin stepped in front of her, forcing her eyes to refocus yet again.

"What in the hell are you so excited about?!?"

"Taylor's under this somewhere and if we don't save her, she's going to die."

Dewy put his bulk and enhanced strength behind a looping punch towards Heather's head. His aim was good and his technique was solid, but he made the fatal mistake of thinking that this was a fair fight. Heather didn't block his punch or attempt to dodge it. She let it come. The crunch at impact sounded like bones might have broken or at least that her jaw had dislodged, but after her head spun towards her shoulder from the force she turned to Dewy and glared. Her face was perfect. There wasn't a mark from the pistol whips or from this even harder right hook. Dewy's courage faltered but his anger kept hold. It just wasn't enough.

He pulled his fist back for another punch, but Heather's was already on its way. She was so fast and so precise that Dewy didn't even have time to react. Her knuckles broke Dewy's nose flat against his face. Blood splattered like a smashed tomato. He stumbled back a half step, giving Heather all the room she needed. She spun on the ball of her left foot and delivered a brutal spinning kick to the side of Dewy's head. The impact sounded like a mini-explosion. Dewy flailed towards the truck. Heather screamed and spun to deliver another bone jarring kick that cracked Dewy's sternum in half. Blood sprayed from his mouth. Dewy rocked the big monster truck when he hit against it. He slid towards the ground, but Heather caught him. She wrapped all ten of her fingers around Dewy's neck. Her lips curled in effort as she lifted him off the ground and squeezed his neck at the same time. "Talk and I'll let you live", Heather offered with a growl.

Dewy spit in her face. "Fuck you bit…", Dewy's voice was caught short behind Heather's squeezing. She bore down with renewed energy and anger. Dewy's next was about to rupture like a pipe with too much pressure in it. He thought she might be reaching the edge of her strength, but she wasn't even close and that's when Dewy started to panic.

He grabbed her forearms hoping to pry her hands off, but he'd never felt anything as hard as Heather's muscles. His big hands slid to her upper arms and even he couldn't reach all the way around the thick biceps and striated tris. His went to her chest feeling both her big breasts and her even bigger pecs. Then his hands went to Heather's face. He was nearing the end. His lungs burned for air and his muscles were already growing weaker. He put the heel of his hand against the side of Heather's chin and pushed with all the strength he had remaining. Cords stood out along the length of Heather's neck as she tried to resist Dewy's arms. Her head shook from the strain, but she leaned back to take of some of the strain. Dewy's arms were long, but not so much longer than hers that he could hope to do much more than he was already doing. His vision dimmed. His hands ended up in the center of her determined face. In a moment of clarity he saw his last chance. He hoped it worked. He extended it thumb and poked it into Heather's left eye.

She howled in pain and Dewy grinned evilly. He head went back and the rest of her upper body did too. Blood and fluid coated Dewy's thumb easing its journey to the back of Heather's eye socket. Her ball was shoved aside and compressed causing a pain that Heather had never quite felt before.

Dewy had the edge and he pressed it. He forced Heather back as her hands clutched at his arm. He slapped her hands away and pushed his way off the truck. His chest hurt and his face was swelling, but from the looks of it his pain was nowhere near her pain. He forced Heather back. Her shrill scream rose an octave when he curled his thumb forcing Heather's eyeball against the sidewall. Her left eyeball with its luminous blue iris ruptured, popping like a unripened grape.

A grotesque mix of blood and ocular fluid ran down Heather's cheek before Dewy snatched his hooked thumb out. Heather tried to sink to her knees as the ruined eyeball and her optic nerve were yanked from the socket. The snap was audible when the ball tore free from the nerve which dangled from her socket like loose wires from some fixture. Heather fell back and covered the empty hole with her shaking hands. Dewy moved forward once again thinking that he was the predator. He didn't know that something inside Heather snapped. She looked up at the imposing Dewy with her one eye and jumped to attack. Her first kick carried all her fury and considerable skill. Dewy hadn't seen it coming and wouldn't have been able to stop it if he had. It cut through the air like a sickle, able to cut down anything in its path. The kick hit Dewy in the side of the head and knocked three teeth out of his head. One more kick like that might have taken Dewy's head off but she had other plans. She snatched him off the ground and draped him over her shoulders back down. She hooked her left arm over his neck and her other arm over his knees. Dewy tried to regain his senses, realizing soon that he was draped across this crazy woman's shoulders. He didn't know what she planned to do until the pressure began.

Heather's biceps blossomed and her deltoids erupted. Her lats unfurled like wings and her face set into a snarl. She didn't want to bring the pain on slowly. She wanted it to consume him until she finally ended his miserable life. Her muscles thickened, swelled and flexed until veins and arteries fluttered to the surface of her reddening skin. Two thick veins branched out from her neck down her shoulders, throbbing in time with her racing heart. Heather bent Dewy's body against his every effort. His muscles stood out prominently, but they were pale imitations compared to Heather's still growing sinews.

From a distance Johnny watched his friend struggle, wanting to do something but fearing to move. Dewy's big muscles were huge and prominent, but her muscles were superior. Her thick full bellies teamed with striations and straining muscle fibers. Her abs were a perfect grid of female brawn chiseled and hard. Dewy's head was forced back at an unnatural angle now. His knees were below the level of her shoulders and getting lower. Then the first vertebra disintegrated. It made a muffled boom inside his skin. Heather wasn't simply breaking this strong man's back; she was destroying it. Dewy muscles flexed from returning desperation, but Heather's biceps only grew thicker, harder, bigger.

Another crack signified another vertebra had shattered. Dewy looked like a bow strung too tightly. He fought to the bitter end, which was exactly what Heather wanted. She wanted to know that her upper body was defeating this man's entire body. She hadn't even planned to kill Dewy, but he'd hurt her, scared her and he was going to pay with his life. Johnny wanted to turn away but Heather's power wouldn't let him. She was so strong and so beautiful. Johnny had always thought that his friend was so strong, but this woman was so much more. She was on another plane all together.

Heather pulled her arms down until her elbows touched her side. A series of cracks were the end of Dewy's back. He was as spineless as a snake. Heather raised him over her head slowly. His spineless back wanted so sag like an old sheet down towards the top of her head, but Heather pulled her arms apart stretching him straight. Dewy's eyes rolled from pain and his mind flicked in and out of consciousness. Heather didn't really see Johnny hiding, but he believed that this display of ultimate power and conquest was for him. Heather's chest rose and fell evenly until she drew a breath and held it. Her muscles flexed. Her face twisted up and her arms started down in a powerful arc. She dropped to a knee. Dewy's body hit her leg so hard that he split in two. His guts spilled out, but she wasn't done. She pushed against his ribs and his hips. Her mountainous muscles flexed until she tore Dewy's body in half. She brushed the two halves of Dewy off her lap and stood up. Her single eye found Johnny behind the truck and started towards him.

Jan lowered her gaze and dropped the former monster truck driver and the seat to the swampy ground. She'd tortured him enough. He didn't know anything. He had no idea where Martin DeBraya was or where that bastard might take her uncle. Jan didn't know what to do. She couldn't face the idea that she might have allowed her uncle's captors to get away. She wished that she'd never thrown him to that woman Carri, but wishing and hoping weren't going to bring her uncle home safely. She dragged the beaten man by the shoulder towards the broken down truck. He was mostly conscious, completely terrified, and not nearly as injured as he feared he was. His face felt broken into hundred pieces, but it was only fractured in three or four places. She handcuffed him to the bumper and sighed. Jan felt her eyes watering, but she blinked back tears. Now wasn't the time to cry. She heard a man's horrified scream. It came from beyond a bank of cypress trees. Jan ran towards the sound.

Johnny scooted backwards along the ground with a pistol shaking in his right hand. "You stay back!", he warned sternly but that beastly woman kept coming. The gun was useless and he knew it, but he pointed it at her just the same. Heather strode towards him through the churned up mud. Blood stained her shredded uniform, but her body beneath was utterly perfect. Her face was beautiful even if only her right socket held an eye. She gathered some of her muddy red hair from her face and tied it behind her head with practiced ease. It was like watching a working man roll up his sleeves in anticipation of getting dirty.

Johnny waved his gun. "Don't come any closer!", he screamed like a man at the very ragged end of his rope. Heather could have rushed the guard and been on him before he could have even pulled the trigger, but she wanted this asshole alive. Whatever answer Dewy'd held had died with him. She wasn't going to let this one get away so easily.

Johnny backed up through deep puddles of swamp water and over mud. She got closer and he knew his time had come. He looked down his pistol's sights at muscles so rock hard that they looked like bullets couldn't have even penetrated them, but he pulled the trigger. The gun barked four times. Two bullets buried into the pit of Heather's stomach. One shot hit her left shoulder and the fourth struck Heather's beautiful face. The bullet blasted through her right cheek opening a messy entrance wound. Johnny'd expected a gaping exit wound appear with bits of broken jaw bone and teeth flying out, but there was no exit wound. The entrance wound close up as quickly as the bullet had formed it. Some blood sat on the surface of her unblemished skin as Heather stood over him. She opened her mouth and let the bloody bullet fall on his lap. Johnny's mind shattered and he screamed at the top of his lungs.

That was the sound Jan followed through the trees. She splashed to a stop about fifty yards away. Heather stood over a man on his ass before bending down and lifted him off the ground with one hand. Jan gasped when she saw her cousin's face. Heather was always so sweet, but that was gone. Jan started towards Heather seeing Dewy's bisected body off near the ruined monster truck. Looking at Heather's face was like looking in a mirror. The rage was running rampant inside Heather worse than it ever had, and unlike Taylor or Jan herself Heather hadn't learned to deal with it. Jan hurried.

Heather's anger seemed to grow with each other Johnny's answers to her questions. Her muscles were pumped to bursting and veins like hoses ran all over. She looked like she had to reroute strength away from her hands to keep from killing him. Johnny was mesmerized by every flick and movement from her awesome body. He felt her heart beat rising. He wondered if she was about to kill him. Her muscles pulsed rhythmically. Her expression was faraway. Then Johnny's mouth dropped open. He watched her stomach produce abs like he'd never seen in the instant before both of the mushroomed slugs he'd pumped into her reemerged. Twin tracks of blood flowed out behind the bullets until the skin grew solid behind them. The bullet in her shoulder hit Johnny's shoe before it dropped to the ground beneath him. Cold sweat dotted his forehead as Johnny finally came to understand how insignificant he was against her. He knew that his end was about to come. If he'd known how to pray he would have, but then another woman ran up from the side.

Jan came at Heather from her newly blinded side and her cousin didn't know Jan was there until she put a hand on Heather's shoulder. Heather turned to Jan ready to attack, her face lost in the rage of the moment. She looked like a feral animal. Jan understood. She'd been in that state of mind before. Then she gasped when she saw the opaque sphere in Heather's left eye socket. Jan stepped closer and put her arms around Heather's shoulders realizing how that must have hurt her. Heather wanted to push away from Jan and launch the asshole in her arms like an artillery shell, but she dropped him. Jan pulled away and looked Heather in the face as a brilliant blue iris formed on Heather's new left eye to match the one on her right.

"We went after the wrong things", Heather spilled out. "Dad was on some airboat! What are we going to do, Jan?", Heather asked while trying to calm herself and catch her breath. "We got fooled like a couple of children."

It was true and Jan felt ashamed. "Sara can find Uncle Ted", Jan gave voice to what she'd been thinking for the last several minutes. She should have run to find Sara instead of going off after some stupid monster trucks, as if Martin DeBraya's guards would have put their boss in brightly painted easily tracked vehicles. "Let's get back. She's probably tracking him already", Jan said to reassure herself and her cousin. They started back towards the armory at a jog, but Jan kept wondering why Sara hadn't used her power to contact her.

"Die??", Kevin exclaimed. "Taylor's damn near indestructible. You're freaking out. Listen, I've seen her survive…"

"Stop!", Sara shouted then doubled over and put her head in her hands trying to hold it together. "We don't have time to argue."

"I know you believe she's trapped under this stuff, but you need to settle down."

"I was in her head", Sara declared. "I was talking to her when she allowed the building to collapse. She tried jump out of the basement, but she didn't make it… She didn't expect to make it, but we're going to save her!" Sara looked up to Kevin's skeptical face.

"How do you know she isn't digging her way out right this second?"

"Because I can't feel her! That means she's more than just unconscious. Don't you get it?!? If I can't feel her then we're running out of time!" She sucked in a breath to yell again, but suddenly spun away from Kevin and retched. Her head swam and ached. Sara was tired of trying to convince Kevin. He was going to help one way or another. "Look, Taylor's strong, one of the strongest people I've ever met, but she's going to die right here right now if we don't save her."

Kevin sighed and looked down at Sara. "What do you need me to do?"

"Put your rifle down. You're not going to need it."

Kevin set his sniper rifle on the ground and looked up to the forty foot pile of debris. It would take a construction crew weeks or months to clear this crap out of the swamp. "Maybe I should go find Heather, or maybe Jan", Kevin tried, but Sara ignored him. He was about to say something else when Sara's power coalesced around him. It was nothing he'd ever experienced. Then Sara's telekinetic power touched him like a thousand fingers. His feet left the ground. He floated towards the top of the rubble completely at Sara's mercy. Soon he was high enough that a fall probably would have killed him, but she set him down gently. Some baseball sized chunks of broken bricks and concrete fell to the ground as Kevin got his balance.

"Start digging right there", Sara yelled up and Kevin obeyed. Normally he'd at least have protested, but after feeling just a taste of Sara's power he figured correctly that arguing wasn't a good idea. Kevin still didn't think Taylor was under this rubble and even if she was there was no rush at finding her, but Sara was insistent. The Caufield/Matthews family wore their power on their sleeves. One look at Taylor or Jan, and even Heather was enough to convey their authority and strength, but Sara was subtle. Her easy Southern drawl and refined manners belied the raw power inside her.

Kevin put his little flashlight between his teeth and moved some debris out of the way. He tossed pieces as big as hams down the front side of the pile to avoid hitting Sara on the backside. He shoveled some pebble sized debris over the side making his hole progressively bigger. He came across a chunk of concrete and bricks that used to be part of the roof parapet. He dug material from beneath the refrigerator sized piece until it started sliding. He got to the backside of the chunk and used his legs to help its slide off. He had to scramble for a grip when he started falling behind it. When he got a grip, caught his breath and looked back towards the top of the pile he saw a single strand of sandy blonde hair floating in front of his face.

His mind came up with a thousand reasons for that hair to be there, but there was one overwhelming reason that Kevin couldn't ignore. Maybe Sara was right. He quickly climbed to the hole and made it bigger.

On the ground Sara waited impatiently. Every second it took to find Taylor was a second too long. They might already be too late. Sara put herself in Heather's place. The thought of her losing a sibling was enough to make Sara sick to her stomach. She dry heaved for almost a minute since her stomach was already empty.

Kevin cleared broken rubble from his every widening and deepening hole until he came to a solid slab of concrete that couldn't find the edges of. He dug in every direction but just couldn't find where this slab ended. After clearing more than ten square feet, he realized that it wouldn't matter if he did find the edge. This slab was too heavy. He leaned over the side. "This piece is too big. I can't move it."

Sara nodded slightly. "Okay, just back up."

Kevin backed up as far as he dared. "I don't want to fall off", he said as he looked down an almost vertical four story drop.

"Don't worry. I'll catch you if you fall", Sara reassured Kevin while she tried to stop her head from spinning. She'd never felt like this in her life. There was something wrong, but Sara didn't want to think about it. She had to concentrate. She found the edges of the roof slab and lifted.

The slab was more than twice as big as Kevin thought with two or three feet worth of loose debris on top of it. None of that seemed to matter to Sara. She lifted alone what it would have taken a gang of men to move. She pushed it all towards the front causing an avalanche of debris to smash to the ground.

The hole was four feet deeper now and way bigger than it had been before. "Ok I'm back to look some more!", Kevin yelled and started searching the area with his flashlight. He looked off to his right and immediately his heart jumped into his throat. "My God", he breathed and rushed over, tripping on a stone before crawling on his hands and knees to the spot where he saw a tangled pony tail blowing in the breeze. He dug through blood soaked rubble. She was on her side suspended in tons of debris. Only a small crest of her body showed above the surface of the fallen building. He uncovered the side of her head and gasped at what he saw. Her long elegant neck was covered in deep cuts and angry purple bruises. "I found her!", Kevin shouted down to Sara who felt likes she could finally exhale until Kevin pressed his fingers against Taylor's clammy skin and yelled, "She's has no pulse!"

Thomas wondered why he hadn't seen Sara or Kevin. He heard his father trying to contact Sara on the radio, but she hadn't said anything. He started to worry. Thomas was about to go looking for Jack when an agent stopped him. "Kid you need to get out of here." Thomas looked up and recognized Agent Fiero from back at the command center. "I thought you were supposed to stay on the hip of that short blonde one."

"Sara", Thomas told the agent. "And I can't find her. I can't find anybody."

"Doesn't matter. You can't stay here. It's not safe for a kid!", Agent Fiero said with a huff and looked around for a spot to stash the kid. "They shouldn't have brought you here in the first place."

No sooner had the words left the agent's mouth than a twenty foot section of fallen debris blasted off the building like something had exploded inside, but in the dim light Thomas thought he saw hands, big metal hands.

"Oh shit!", several men screamed and ran around like roaches. An Acero pulled itself out of the collapsed debris. Some men had never seen one and stood in awe and disbelief while the ones who had seen one of the monsters and lived ran for their lives. Some of DeBraya's captured guards went delirious trying to get away while some of Joelstine's men forgot about their orders and ran. Thomas drew in a breath. These were the things that had scared his father and his sister. These were the metal skinned beasts. They were every bit as scary as Thomas had imagined and more. Bullets flew at the monster, but they weren't even like gnat bites. The Acero picked up a truck and threw it at a group of men without the slightest hint of strain. Most of the men dove clear, but the truck rolled over one man's leg nearly severing it. A rocket blasted towards the Acero and hit it full in the chest. The blast was impressive but the monster took it with only a half step backwards.

"My God", Agent Fiero breathed as the monster started walking. He hadn't seen one inside the armory, but he was seeing one now. He was completely out of his depth. He backed away firing his weapon until he felt a tap on his back and looked to see Thomas motioning for him to step aside. Fiero frowned at the kid's cool demeanor. He watched Thomas step forward and pull his sleeves up his arms. He took a deep breath and rubbed his hands together, but the agent didn't see what happened next. The flash of light made him close his eyes and turn away.

Twin bolts of electricity shot from Thomas' palms. The roar of pure energy rivaled the sound of jet engines and the heat eclipsed that of a blast furnace. The wave of power hit the Acero in the chest and head causing an explosion that made the rocket's explosion look anemic in comparison. The blast wave knocked strong men onto their asses and made hair stand on end from 200 feet away. The Acero staggered. The night got dark again when Thomas' bolts stopped shrieking towards the Acero. The glowing red eyes remained though and they focused on Thomas. The beast started towards the teen.

Thomas didn't retreat. Not yet. He took a calming breath and raised his hands above his head. They glowed a pale blue. No lightning shot out this time. Spheres of electricity floated to the left and right of the charging Acero. Another sphere glowed above its head then more in front and behind it until at once lines of pure electricity connected the glowing spheres creating a net. The monster slammed into the front of the net and stopped in its tracks unable to continue forward or backwards.

Hardened soldiers actually cheered. The Acero looked at its cage before pulling its fist back. It threw a punch so hard that Thomas' electric net buckled. Thomas reinforced it, adding more spheres and more layers of webbing between the spheres. His net was triple thick in less than a second. The Acero punched again and Thomas started sweating. He thought he might be able to hold the beast until it grabbed the net with both hands. The flash was like a photographer's bulb, then the electric net dimmed. Energy flowed into the monster's arms and down its metal body and into the ground. The beast kept its hands on the webbing and started walking forward despite Thomas' efforts to keep it still.

"It's getting out!", Agent Fiero yelled as the net began to distort. "That's not going to hold him!"

"No crap, mister", a frustrated Thomas shot back and wiped sweat from his brow. More spheres appeared closer to the monster and the net thickened again, but the energy kept flowing from Thomas' net into the ground. "Man!", Thomas finally exclaimed. "That thing must be internally grounded and shielded!" He took a step back as the monster started forward again.

"Kid", Agent Fiero began in a shaky voice. "Do you have any more ideas?"

Thomas looked up at the agent and sighed. "You better hope I do."

"Wake up", Kevin shouted directly into Taylor's ear. She didn't move. He dug furiously, but the pieces around her were like sand and filled in the spaces faster than he could clear them. He switched sides and tried from the front. He dug an inch before his fingers hit something big, solid, and heavy. He jumped to his feet and grabbed Taylor by her shoulder trying with all he had to free her. He strained and pulled and cursed to the heavens. He'd have destroyed a normal person's shoulder, but Taylor wasn't normal. That was the only reason he kept working so hard to free her. Kevin laid Taylor's arm down and rushed to the edge. "She's wedged in against something heavy and I can't move her. You're going to have to do something!", Kevin shouted in a tension filled voice.

Sara sighed gravely and swallowed the lump in her throat, hoping she'd be able to do what was necessary to save her best friend's cousin. "Find something near Taylor that's solid and hang on tight", Sara told Kevin without looking up. "It's going to get a little rough."

Agent Fiero looked at Thomas wondering what he was cooking up inside his mind, and was sorely disappointed when those little glowing spheres appeared again. Instead of making a web, bolts of electricity shot out hitting the rampaging metal beast almost once a second. Those blasts might have killed a human but only annoyed that damned Acero. The creature simply absorbed the blasts then grabbed a sphere. It melted into his hand and flowed down his arm and body then into the ground. Thomas made more spheres. Each was destroyed and everybody figured that this kid was out of options. He was shooting spitballs at that damned thing.

The monster kept destroying spheres and Thomas kept retreating, but the young man had a plan. The floated spheres rose a little higher each time the monster destroyed one. After one bolt had hit the Acero between its red glowing eyes the monster extended its arm but couldn't reach the offending blue ball. The monster stopped walking and jumped. As soon as its feet left the ground a light bright as the sun assaulted men's eyes and a thunderclap equal to any storm's forced men to cover their ears.

Thomas' hands were thrust palms out. Lightning started at his shoulders running down his arms to his finger tips where ten separate strands knitted into a cable of electricity two feet thick and hotter than a welder's torch. The ground beneath it caught fire and the water vapor in the air flashed to steam. The Acero's metal skin boiled at the point of impact.

The monster hung in the air while Thomas poured a generating station's worth of electricity into it. For the first time the monster looked helpless, like a bug trapped by a spider. Thomas kept up the blast until he ran out of juice. His hands glowed even after the power had stopped flowing from his fingers. The monster clanged down to the ground smoking and stinking. Thomas sank to his knees sucking in breath as quickly as he could. Sweat ran down his forehead in rivers. Agents approached the roasted Acero warily while Agent Fiero stood next to Thomas. "That was quite a show you put on kid. Do you think you killed it?"

Thomas gave a tired smile. "I just had to burn through its internal shielding. The rest was cake."

There were no smiles on the other side of the building. Sara's head wouldn't stop spinning. Concentrating made her head ache and hard effort made her nauseous. She wiped some blood from her nose and dried her watering eyes. She wanted to look up and see the enormity of her challenger, but almost fell down from dizziness. She looked at the ground instead. She reached out with her power and invaded the tangled rubble like an invisible worm burrowing into the deepest recesses, going places that no person would ever go again. She scouted the rubble like a deep sea diver scouted a wreck. She had to know where to go and what might break when touched.

Sara didn't move things with her mind all at once. She had to make points of contact and in a manner of seconds she'd made hundreds of thousands of them, more than she'd ever made at one time in her entire life. The building was a mess inside with no wall, floor, or ceiling maintaining intact. When she solidified her hold on the places she thought were important, she paused to clear her mind. One stubborn thought remained no matter how hard she tried to forget it. Could she do what she planned to do, what she had to do in order to save Taylor? With that doubt rattling inside her brain, Sara took a deep breath then slowly closed her eyes fearing the spinning world would distract her. She waited a few heartbeats to recheck her contact points and when she was sure they would work, she released her power… all of it.

The barometric pressure dropped and the air got so thick that Kevin could hardly breathe it. Way below him, deep inside the building, things cracked apart sounding like a thousand rifle shots, but he knew it was solid stone being pulled apart. Then the rubble began to tremble which caused the ground itself to quake. People stopped whatever they were doing and turned. Small bits of debris cascaded off the top of the pile like water off a cliff. Kevin rode the shaking madness like an insane rodeo cowboy wondering what in the world Sara was doing. He thought she'd just pull Taylor out, but Kevin didn't know the half of it. Taylor's body was caught between three pieces of the lateral building supports. Those steel and concrete beams used to brace the building against hurricanes. During the collapse those beams had broken and Taylor had unknowingly jumped into the midst of them. Her super strong bones were usually one of Taylor's best assets in a time of trouble, but this time her bones locked her in place like a keystone holding everything around her in place. That massive weight was too much though and unless Sara could remove the pressure Taylor wouldn't make it.

Taylor's body shook with the rumbling but stayed in the same place. He wanted to get a better look, but dared not let go. Then he saw an uneven line draw across the top of the pile. The line was barely noticeable in the relatively low light, like it had been drawn by a tiny pencil. Then that line got thicker and thicker. It was a crack not a line. Kevin face set in awe and amazement. Sara was splitting this damned building in half. His mind wouldn't accept it but the crack turned into a fissure and before long it would be a damned canyon. She'd split the building into two halves and those halves were getting about an inch further apart every six seconds. The shaking got worse the harder Sara pulled. Kevin thought he saw Taylor's body shift a little.

Besides the teeth jarring sound of a massive building being forced into two parts, another sound started from deep inside the building. It was a terrifying sound like a runaway freight train barreling down the tracks, and that sound grew louder until Kevin heard nothing except that sound. Suddenly two geysers of super heated air burst through Sara's fissure. Kevin ducked as the air rushed towards him. It would melt his skin seconds, but it didn't reach him or Taylor. The air diverted up and away from him like it had hit an invisible shield; for all intents it had. Sara'd stopped prying the mountainous debris apart long enough to keep the air from killing Kevin and adding more injury to helpless Taylor.

The effort of it all put so much strain on Sara that her body wanted to quit and her power tried to give out. Sara's gift had never failed her and compared to other powerful telepaths it was Sara's almost unheard of mental endurance that set her apart, but she was rapidly draining that reserve. Jan often said that every person has limits no matter how strong they are, and Sara was pretty sure she'd passed her own healthy limits some time ago. She kept at it though. When the dual blasts of hot air turned to trickles, Sara went back to shoving the building apart. The pain was evident on her face. Her pretty features were twisted and grotesque with the strain. Her heart beat weakly as she forced every ounce of her prodigious power into breaking this huge pile of rubble in half.

Kevin couldn't see the toll this was taking on Sara he felt it. The crack was only widening at half the speed and the shaking was even more violent like she was losing the ability the control the small things. "Sara hold on!", Kevin shouted as loudly as he could hoping she heard him. She did. "Taylor's slipped a little. Let me see if she's loose enough for me to pull her out."

Sara didn't reply. She couldn't have spoken if she'd wanted to, but the two foot wide crack stopped widening and the shaking lessened. Kevin jumped across the fissure to Taylor's side. He grabbed her exposed shoulder and pulled with all his might. Taylor's body jumped from its burial so quickly that Kevin fell to his back with Taylor's limp body across his chest.

He stood up with Taylor dangling from his arms. He glanced at her slack soot covered face and had to look away with a twinge in his gut. In all the time he'd known Taylor, Kevin had never witnessed a moment of physical or emotional weakness from her. He didn't realize until this moment how much he admired and even feared Taylor. She was bigger than life itself. She was something permanent like the stars in the sky or the water in the oceans, but in fact she wasn't. Taylor hadn't been a person to him and he regretted that as she hung from his arms helplessly. Kevin had been wowed by her beauty and strength like almost every other person who came in contact with her, and missed her best trait completely. Her humanity. Kevin shifted her weight across his arms and stepped warily towards the edge of the pile. "I've got her! Bring us down."

Sara's power gathered around him again, but her touch wasn't gentle this time. When Kevin's boots left the top of the rubble he didn't feel weightless. He felt like a nut inside a closed fist. He looked beneath him when Sara released her hold on two halves of building. Gravity reformed a solid pile almost instantly. What had taken Sara so much effort to do was undone in a snap, but with that burden off of her Kevin thought her grip on him might ease. It didn't. The damage had already been done and it took all she had to lower him relatively slowly to the ground. His boots hit with the slightest hint of a drop. Kevin stretched Taylor out of the ground and gave the quickest of glances over his shoulder at Sara, before turning back to Taylor. He didn't notice that she was white as a ghost and had sweated herself to the point of dehydration. Kevin worked on Taylor even as a crowd of medical staff gathered around them. He opened her mouth and pulled caked mud from her throat. In less than thirty seconds there was a team of medical personnel around Taylor, but no one noticed Sara's eyes roll to the back of her head before she crumpled to the ground in a heap about twenty feet behind them.

Jack made it to the back of the building but didn't see Sara. There were people milling about in the distance and closer there was a clump of people with flashlights furiously working on somebody. He approached slowly not wanting to get in the way of the medical staff while they were so busy, but he wanted to know whose life they were trying to save. He walked in a big arc to give them room and only approached slowly. He leaned over the kneeling medics to see who the source of so much action was. The his world stopped.

Taylor lay in the center of a ring of people, some working on her, but most just looking on. To them they were watching a superhero die, like Wonder Woman, but for Jack, horror didn't begin to describe it. He'd been at the hospital when Taylor was born, at the insistence of Taylor's father Ted, but now Ted was kidnapped and Taylor was dying right before his eyes. There was nothing at all he could do and his thoughts instantly went to his sister Katherine. She might lose her husband and her oldest child in the same night. The thought was almost more than he could bear.

The lead paramedic checked Taylor's body for visible wounds and there were many. Even with the cuts, gashes, gouges, and bruises her body was distractingly perfect. None of her visible wounds were life threatening though, but she had no respiration or pulse. To his trained eye she was clinically dead. He checked his watch and looked up to see the faces around him and knew that he was going to have to keep going. He didn't know who this woman on the ground was, but he wasn't going to risk the ire of these people by stopping. "Back up!", he ordered everybody and waved his arms for room. He ordered one of the other medics to bring the defibrillator. He snatched open Taylor's tattered uniform charged the electrodes to what would be normal for a person about Taylor's size. When the chime sounded the medic put the electrodes to Taylor's skin and pushed the triggers. Her muscles didn't even contract with the discharge of electricity.

"Is the machine working?", the paramedic demanded with a frown.

"It's working perfectly!", his assistant shot back.

"She's not normal!", someone in the crowd shouted and the paramedic turned up the juice. He zapped Taylor again and this time her back arched off the ground. It was the first time Kevin had seen her move in half an hour since she'd gone into the armory, but the movement only lasted as long as the jolt of electricity. The medic checked her heart and heard nothing. He started CPR. He pumped her chest, but her ribs wouldn't compress. He rose up to gain leverage and pushed against Taylor's chest with all the strength in his arms. Her ribcage just wouldn't bend. He tried even harder, but a sweating brow was his only reward. He backed up and pounded Taylor's chest with sharp downward blows. The sound was like a hollow drum. Taylor's body bounced, but that was all. The doctor put his lips to hers to push air into her deflated lungs, that didn't seem to work either. He went back to chest compressions with no more results than the first time.

Jan and Heather were smiling by the time they came to the west side of the fallen armory. Jan had worked to cheer her cousin up during their jog, and it seemed to have worked. The chaos from earlier was gone. People moved like they knew what they were doing, going from place to place with a purpose. There weren't that many people in sight though. There seemed to be some commotion on the back side of the building. "I wonder what's going on?", Heather asked as she and Jan started heading that way. The crowd was made up of some agents who had gone inside the building and by some miracle had survived the collapse while others were support staff called in after the battle had ended. Military ambulances bounced along the rough road in front of the building and snaked around behind the building loading up wounded. One medical vehicle sped past the two cousins. Heather saw Joelstine himself in the passenger seat. Heather wondered if that asshole understood just how much he'd screwed up this operation. It might not be his fault that Heather's father hadn't been rescued, but it was his fault so many good guys were dead or dying.

Jan and Heather independently planned to stop at the back of the crowd. Getting some perverse entertainment from watching someone else's suffering wasn't inside either of them. Jan looked off towards the swamp wondering how in the world they could track Martin on his airboats while Heather glanced through the crowd of people. She saw her uncle standing a couple of inches above everybody else around him, but he wasn't standing up tall and strong like usual. That was odd. Heather'd always thought of her uncle as a pulp hero, a larger than life guy with matinee idol looks and a levelheaded cool. Tonight she'd learned that she was more right than she'd known. He was more than though. Her uncle was a real life action hero. He'd always looked the part, but Jack had skills to end life that put him just this side of the Angel of Death. He was probably the most dangerous man she'd ever met, and he was a born leader. He radiated a confidence that Heather hoped she might gain with age, but knew she probably wouldn't.

Her uncle's shoulders were slumped as he stood at the front of this group and he might even have been tearing up. That got Heather's attention. She politely pushed her way through the crowd towards her uncle aiming to comfort him, never once thinking that he was looking at her lifeless sister lying on the ground.

Kevin got fed up. He spun away in anger and disappointment. Taylor had been someone special. Kevin didn't have to be a close friend to realize that. Her loss would affect more than just her family. He pushed his way towards the back of the crowd. He wanted to punch some of these bastards who were angling for a better view. Taylor wasn't a show! He took a deep calming breath and went in search of his rifle. He'd set his trusty M40 down somewhere back in the darkness near the fallen building. He was fishing in his pocket for the flashlight when he tripped over something. He slowed his fall with outstretched arms and finally got his hands on his flashlight once he was on his back. He shined it towards his feet and got a shock. "Corpsman! Corpsman!", Kevin shouted like he was back in the Marines. He scrambled on his sore knees to Sara's side and shined his light over Sara's blood covered face. Blood had flowed from her nose, mouth, and ears too. A paramedic started barking orders and before long Sara had a group around her.

"I need more light!", the paramedic working on Sara shouted hoping to get some work lamps set up, but instead a ball of blue glowing light about the size of a volleyball floated above him giving off all the light he could need. The medic didn't even waste time wondering where the light had come from. Thomas was behind him covered in helpless tears. He wanted to do something, but could do nothing. As he looked at both Taylor and Heather so hurt he remembered something Sara had said to him and it was true. The worst part of having great powers was dealing with your limitations. Then Thomas started to get angry. There were people in the world who could help Taylor and help Sara. Where were they! Why was no one here to help them when they needed it? Thomas started to cry all over again, but the light from his glowing ball never faltered.

The lead paramedic pounded Taylor's chest, hitting her for all he was worth, then he switched back to compressing her chest. People gasped at his efforts. They would have injured a normal person rather than saved them, but even his extreme efforts were having no affect. He took several deep breaths, knowing that any life this young had left inside her was slipping away by the second. He wasn't strong enough and he was going to fail her and everybody who cared for her. He growled in frustration and pain and landed the hardest heel strike he could against Taylor's chest. It was like hitting a stone wall. The paramedic was seconds away from admitting defeat and pronouncing this unfortunate woman dead, when he heard a wail. He looked up to see a tall young woman with wavy red hair wearing a tattered blood stained uniform burst through the wall of people.

"You're not strong enough", Heather exclaimed and shoved the doctor out of the way. She put her hands on her sister's chest and began chest compressions. Heather's big triceps worked hard to make Taylor's ribcage actually bent. She pumped her sister's chest furiously while tears streamed from her bloodshot eyes falling down on her hands and across Taylor's chest. "Please Taylor!", Heather cried out and suddenly every gawker felt a blanket of shame. "You can't leave me like this!"

Tears rolled down a couple of unsuspecting cheeks as people stopped wondering if a superwoman would die and realized that the woman lying on the ground was indeed a real person. Heather's face was beyond stricken when after nearly a minute of chest compressions her sister looked just as dead as she had at the beginning. The first flicker of doubt hit Heather harder than any blow ever had. That pain struck Heather like a spear through her soul. Losing Taylor would make a wound that Heather could never recover from. She pounded Taylor's chest so hard that people standing close actually bounced off the ground. "Please! Please! Breathe Taylor!", Heather wailed and went back to compressing her sister's chest. It seemed like desperation now. Love doesn't know when to let go.

Jack's foot left the ground to go over to his niece when at the bottom of his vision he saw Taylor's finger curl. Instead of attempting to rescue Heather from more torment at losing her sister, Jack cupped his hands and yelled, "It's working!"

Filtered through her grief Heather almost thought that voice had come from the heavens. It made her push harder. Two of Taylor's ribs fractured and a third was on the verge of breaking when Taylor's face suddenly contorted into a mask of unfiltered and unimaginable pain. Her arms drew in close to her body and her abs flexed, creating a landscape of crags and ridges from her hips to the bottom of her ribs. She opened her mouth like she wanted to yell. Nothing came out. Her superhuman muscles tightened until every single one from her calves to her shoulders was striated beyond all reason. Her bloodshot eyes bulged in their sockets. Taylor writhed, the agony only mounted with each passing moment. Her shoulders pressed hard against the soggy ground and her back arched. Taylor's face pointed towards the moonless sky. She opened her mouth wide and this time a spray of grime, soot, dust, and dirt spewed high into the air as a compression from mighty diaphragm worked to clear her filled up lungs.

Heather fell back away from Taylor as her sister coughed violently, banging her fists against the ground as the pain only got worse. Each cough forced more contaminates from her lungs. Taylor's face went from deathly pale to purple as her body fought to take in just one gasp of life giving air. Finally Taylor was able to inhale a wheezing breath. Her racing heart slowed and she settled down on the ground. Heather pulled Taylor's head to her chest and hugged her so tightly that it looked like she'd never let her go.

Heather laughed and cried at the same time. Tears dropped onto Taylor's bare back as Heather rocked back and forth holding her sister in her trembling arms. "Please tell me you won't do that to me again. I thought… I thought…"

"You can't get rid of me that easily", Taylor croaked in a voice hardly her own. "But at least now you know how you make me feel all the time." Taylor tried to laugh, but Heather only cried harder. Taylor managed to raise her arms high enough to embrace her sister. "It's okay", Taylor whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."

Jack suddenly lost strength in his legs and started towards the ground. Jan tightened her arm around her father's waist, but had to step wide to keep balance as her father's threatened to take her down with him. He spun towards her and threw his arms around her neck and hugged her as tightly as Heather was holding Taylor. Not six months earlier Jack thought that he'd lost his little girl, and watching Taylor fight for her life brought all those emotions back. He couldn't fight them. Jan had never actually seen her father cry, and she didn't now. Jack wiped his eyes before the tears fell and gave Jan a squeeze before backing away.

"Are you okay?", Jan asked her father who nodded and stepped away towards a group of agents.

"I need a roster now", Jack ordered as he continued to walk away. "I need to know who we have left." Jan watched her father walk away and start to take command again. Jan was stronger than her father even knew. Her amazing body was capable of things that might even boggle her father's mind, but as Jan watched him work, she wished that she had just half of his emotional strength. He kept his head no matter what, but she realized that it wasn't easy for him. He struggled as much as she did, but where Jan often lost that struggle, Jack rarely did.

Jan turned towards her cousins, who were still in each other's arms. If unbreachable love had a physical manifestation, it was right there. Jan took a step towards them, but stopped short when she saw a blue light out of the corner of her eye. She could recognize one of Thomas' electric orbs as easily as she could recognize his face. He was off to the right of a circle of medical people with a grim look on his face. Jan frowned and walked towards him but before she'd gone very far one of the medical staff stood up to meet the approaching ambulance and Jan saw.

The relief she'd felt after Taylor's brush with death melted away. Sara lay in a pool of her own blood with people working on her frantically. Jan froze not even able to blink. The ambulance backed to a stop and four men quickly loaded Sara onto a gurney and shoved her into the ambulance. Jan didn't remember when she started running after the ambulance. Thomas went after her, but it was Kevin who caught her. "She's in good hands."

Jan turned towards Kevin with the dread all over her face. "What happened!", she demanded.

"She saved your cousin's life!", Kevin replied equaling Jan's intensity. "If it wasn't for Sara Taylor'd be dead. She must have pushed herself a little too far, but those medical guys think they can help her if she gets to the hospital quickly."

Jan nearly got hysterical. "There isn't a hospital anywhere near here!"

The words had barely left her mouth when the chopping cadence of helicopter blades sounded from somewhere near the main road.

"They just have to drive her to a clearing so the helo can land. Joelstine himself ordered a helicopter to evac her." Kevin thought he saw Jan relax, but she was just thinking.

She took him by both arms and looked him directly in the eyes. Jan was intense. It was hard to stare directly into her piercing blue eyes and she knew it, but Kevin hadn't got to where he was by being timid. Whatever Jan read in Kevin's dark eyed stare must have satisfied her. "You have to go with Sara."

"What?", Kevin didn't understand. "I just told you that they're taking her to the hospital."

"Joelstine's coordinating the medical care and all these people are under his command."

"And?"

"I don't trust him. There's something off about him and it has nothing to do with him trying to arrest me earlier. She'll be in his men's hands, and I'd rather her be in yours. I get the feeling that if Sara goes in that helicopter alone, I'll never see her again."

"I'm on this operation to help rescue your uncle and bring down Martin DeBraya's organization. I'm supposed to meet with your father and get assigned to a new unit in just a few minutes."

Jan let go of Kevin arms and sighed. "Kevin, we're going to rescue my Uncle Ted no matter what, but we almost lost Taylor, and I'm not going to trade my best friend's life. If she's going to make it, it won't be because of Joelstine's medical staff. It'll be because of you."

Jan smiled when she saw the answer on Kevin's face before he'd even opened his mouth. "You'll straighten this with your old man?"

"Of course."

"Good I don't want to get on his bad side. He told me he might need some distant coverage."

Jan smiled and started walking with Kevin towards a parked Humvee. "My dad's a big teddy bear. Besides Alisha can snipe in a pinch", Jan said before she realized that she hadn't seen Alisha since right before the building had collapsed.

"Something wrong?", Kevin asked as he sat behind the wheel.

"No, nothing. You hurry up." Jan watched Kevin race after the ambulance then she ran to find her father. She ran into Thomas first. "Have you seen Alisha?" Thomas shook his head. Jan wiped Thomas' eyes and put her arm around his shoulder as they hurried towards their father.

Kevin jumped out of the still running Hummer and onto the helicopter skid just as the rear doors were closing. Two medics Kevin hadn't seen before were inside the rear of the copter. "What the hell are you doing?", one of them asked.

"Riding along", Kevin informed him in a tone that left no room for discussion. He pushed his way to a seat next to Sara's gurney. She had tubes running down her throat and iv's in her arms.

"It's too crowded back here for us to work", the same man stated, hoping that would get Kevin off the helicopter.

"Ok", Kevin agreed a little too easily. He pushed towards the cockpit. "Which one of you is the co-pilot?" The man on the right raised his hand. "Get the fuck out." The man unbuckled his seatbelt. The pilot started to protest. "I'm certified in this type. If anything goes wrong, I got your back", Kevin said and strapped himself into the seat. The pilot looked over his shoulder at the medic in the back who shrugged. A moment later they were air born. "Which hospital?", Kevin wanted to know.

The pilot looked over his shoulder again. "Umm… Presbyterian", the man in the back answered.

"That's in Tampa", Kevin said as he looked down to make sure they were clear of the taller trees.

"I know where it is", the pilot nearly growled.

"Good. Then let's get going."

"We have no way of tracking DeBraya or your brother-in-law through this swamp", Robert Joelstine told Jack as they stood near the west side of the fallen armory. "It took those two Indian guys just to get us here. We'll lose even more men if we try to trek through the damned Everglades."

"We wouldn't have lost anybody if you'd listened to me", Jack fired back.

"That's your opinion against mine. I wanted to end this operation quickly."

"Some operations end quickly and some boil slowly. This should have been the latter", Jack said through grinding teeth.

"It was a nice try Mr. Caufield", Joelstine began flippantly. "Your strategy of relying on these gifted people yielded some results, but it didn't yield success. We're further away from capturing DeBraya now than we were before this operation started and your best chance to save your brother-in-law has passed."

"You can't say that for certain."

"Be honest. We don't know which direction DeBraya went, and without Miss Hewitt's ability to find people out of thin air, I don't think we ever will. Speaking of Miss Hewitt, I thought she was supposed to be tougher than that. You know really, really powerful. Martha made it sound like Sara was the next thing to an Olympian. She didn't look like much when they were stuffing her in the back of the ambulance."

Anger rolled up Jack's spine. "Don't make me put my hands on you", Jack warned. "That girl just saved my niece when maybe nobody else on Earth could have and she saved my daughter before that. Another disrespectful word about her might be your last."

"Tread carefully Mr. Caufield", Joelstine warned in return. "Look around you. My men are everywhere and yours are weakened and scattered."

Jack smirked and pushed his anger aside. He could kill Joelstine before anybody could react, but this wasn't about brinkmanship. Jack had a mission to complete. He swallowed his pride and his anger. "There has to be a way to track DeBraya to his destination."

Joelstine sighed. "I think this mission's over, Jack. Once again you're grasping at straws. I'm about to call Washington and pull the plug. There's been enough loss of life and I deem the chances of success to be almost zero."

"You're wrong", Jack countered.

"Oh am I? How so?"

Jack was at a loss once again. Then Jan and Thomas came up to them. "Have you seen Alisha?", Jan asked her father.

"No, now that you mention it. I haven't seen Montez either." Jack looked to Joelstine who shrugged dismissively.

"They'll turn up eventually but it doesn't matter. I'm shutting this operation down. Without a way to track DeBraya or his men there is no chance of success."

Jan wanted to protest and Thomas wanted to cry. Jack was out of solutions. He thought that despite his personal feelings maybe Joelstine was right. Several agents had already died and his own niece had almost lost her life too. Sara was in a fight to stay alive and to make it worse Ted was at DeBraya's mercy somewhere out there in the wilderness. Jack didn't have the power to stop Joelstine from shutting down the operation, and he was half a second from agreeing with the Deputy Director when a rustling came from the tree line about twenty yards away. Jack pulled his pistol and several agents trained guns and spotlights on the trees. The rustling continued. Trigger fingers were poised until a voice shouted, "Friendly coming out with a prisoner!"

"Hold your fire!", Jack shouted and holstered his weapon when Montez pushed his way out of the trees with one of DeBraya's personal guards obeying commands at the point of Montez's carbine. The large man had his hands ziptied together and was wet to the bone.

"Where have you been?", Joelstine demanded to know with annoyance.

"I took off after those boats when they came out of the armory. This idiot here tried to shoot me and got knocked off the boat. They turned around to try and pick him up, but after I put about a hundred bullets in their general direction they thought better of it and left this genius to his own devices. We played cat and mouse through the swamp for a little while. I guess you guys already figured out who was the cat and who was the mouse."

"Does he have an information?", Jack asked.

"Yeah, DeBraya's escaping on a airplane at some small airport. Might even been a private airport that's not on any maps or charts."

"Do you know where this airport is?", Joelstine inquired with a raised eyebrow.

Montez shook his head.

"Then this operation is over."

"The hell it is!", Montez declared. "We've got a line on DeBraya right now."

"What line is that?" Joelstine was skeptical.

"Alisha", Montez replied with a grin and admiring shake of his head. "She was amazing."

"We haven't been able to get in touch with her", Jan shouted. "Where is she?"

Montez's grin grew to a full smile. "She's on Martin DeBraya's airboat right next to Ted."

Mouths hung in disbelief until Jan started laughing. "I should have known she'd pick up the pieces after me and Heather blew it."

Jack slapped Joelstine on the shoulder. "Get your guys together we have a strategy meeting in two minutes. Thomas you come with me. We have to talk to Heather and Taylor. Jan and Montez, you guys talk to this prisoner. I bet he knows more than he's telling us. Asap people, we haven't got a spare moment!" People scurried about, but Joelstine remained still. This night was going from bad to worse.

conclusion coming soon...

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