"So why's this thing so important?", Tony Cosolini asked his old friend while pouring himself a glass of water from a chilled pitcher.

"I don't know the whole story", Hayfa said truthfully. "All I know is that this little tablet holds a lot of crucial information."

Shah Ali had set up his headquarters in a vacant, soon to be torn down building right across the street from Tony's warehouse. He was mere seconds from launching his attack. His men were in position and there hadn't been any reports of problems. Shah was an experienced soldier who'd fought for years against the Russians before joining Karim's drug cartel. He was smart enough to know that sometimes in war unexpected things happen. This attack would turn out be one of those times.

Cliff, a former Marine and Chicago city police officer was one of Tony's best security men, and despite trying to break the habit for years, when he yawned he tended to raise his head. This was a good long yawn and as his head remained rested against his shoulders. When Cliff opened his eyes they were pointed towards the skylight. He immediately saw the shape of a man and of a gun. The rest of his actions were automatic. He rushed into Tony's office, pulling his pistol as he went. His eyes never left the target as the pistol rose into his field of view. Tony and his guest looked shocked and confused, but in only a fraction of a second both Tony and Hayfa looked to where Cliff was looking. Just then the security guard pulled the trigger of his Sig. Glass shattered and the shape on the roof with the gun shook from taking a wound. Amer tried to aim, but he didn't have a chance. Two more bullets from Cliff's gun clipped his aorta and he slumped against the rim of the broken skylight.

"Attack now!!", Shah ordered his men after hearing the shots fired. Fifteen men came out of hiding and rushed the building from the front. The element of surprise was gone, but they had overwhelming firepower. Tony's front door guard squeezed off a few rounds before disappearing back into the building. Two more men ran to the back of the building, up the stairs and onto the roof. Cassie saw their shoes, but she doubted they saw her. If one of them had been merciful, a bullet to the head would have been better than the choking agony she was enduring.

The new men on the roof shattered a skylight in another part of the warehouse and roped down to land on the top of one of the artifact shelves before opening fire. One of Tony's men took a bullet to the shoulder.

Three security men tried to hold the door, but there was too much firepower so they retreated slowly towards the back of the building. Four of Shah's attackers entered the door, but didn't advance. They formed a perimeter and allow the other eleven men to come in behind them. When they were at full strength, they started moving forward towards the middle of the warehouse. The security guards kept up resistance in little pockets as they moved.

Bullets and fragments from ricochets flew all over the place and Tony's office windows were all broken in a matter of seconds. He and Hayfa were on the floor taking cover behind the bricks of the lower wall while Cliff had his gun at the ready trying to keep an eye on the door and on the skylight. Hayfa was as scared as she'd ever been in her entire life. She flinched and shuttered with each gunshot, but to her surprise, her thoughts remained clear. She got to her knees and peered over the edge to look though the broken windows out to the warehouse floor until there was a tug on her arm. "Stay down, Miss", Cliff said more politely than the circumstances warranted.

Tony's men were putting up a fight but she knew that they weren't going to stand a chance against whoever was attacking. Hayfa didn't know what these men wanted, but she did know that she needed her powers and fast. She'd wondered how she'd fare in a real fight. She'd been training for this for her whole life even if she hadn't known it for most of her life. Her mother had taught her daughters everything she knew, and now it was time for Hayfa to put some of those lessons to use. Firstly she decided that the tablet was going to have to be put away. She couldn't use her powers with it's noise affecting her. She slid along the floor with the tablet in the fold of her arm to pick up the wooden box where she'd dropped it when the shooting had started. She carefully put the tablet inside, shut the box and held it close. Her face grew distant, and Tony wondered what in the world was going on. He thought maybe she was meditating to deal with the fright of this attack. He was only half wrong. It was hard for Hayfa to deal with the deafening noise of the tablet and concentrate on infusing the box with the correct properties to muzzle the sound at same time. She finally exhaled. The tablet's roar had been reduced to a muffled shout. That would have to do. She slid the box to Tony. "Could you put that back in the safe, please?"

Tony nodded and maneuvered over broken glass to his still unlocked safe. He kept his head down as he pulled the door open and stuffed the box onto a shelf next to a stack of money. He'd just managed to close the door and engage the lock when a trio of bullets flew right past his hand. "Shit!", he exclaimed as pieces of hot copper and lead fell down on top of him. Those bullets couldn't begin to penetrate the safe door, but when little pieces of circuit board fell down with them, he looked up to see that his keypad had been completely destroyed. "Great!"

Shah and his men saw the people in the office and figured that anything as important as Karim's tablet would be there. He sent three men from his reserve force that way. Tony's men tried to keep Shah's from reaching the office stairs, but they were so outgunned that they barely delayed their movement. Their situation wasn't hopeless though. A group of Tony's men had made it to the brick house where the bianzhong was held. It was time to use Tony's secret weapon. One man pulled out the written instructions he'd gotten from his boss and picked up the mallet. He struck the first bell and quickly the next one and then the next one in the sequence. Nothing happened. He tried again and for a moment the men nearest the bell paused. Unlike with Cassie's attempt to control Amer's emotions, the men who heard the chimes, felt the power of the bianzhong in their head. It was as if their brain was itching. The sensation didn't last long. By the third attempt, Tony's men knew that the secret weapon had failed. The look on the guards' faces showed the crushing disappointment. What that Chinese guy had said was true. They were protected from the weapon. That made Shah and his men feel invincible.

Tony heard the muted sounds of his bianzhong, and waited for the shooting to stop, only it never did. He lost hope along with his men when his bianzhong didn't work. He wondered if he'd given his men the wrong sequence or whether his guard hadn't done something right. Then he looked over to Hayfa. Who looked like she hadn't taken a breath in more than a minute. "Hayfa. Hayfa, are you okay?" He shook her shoulder and she looked at him, finally taking a breath.

"We have to get to that!", she yelled.

"To what?"

"To the instrument I just heard", she replied between deep, calming breaths.

"To the bianzhong? It didn't work. My men just used it, but goddamn it! It didn't work!"

Hayfa shook her head, causing glass to fly from her dark locks. "The people attacking us have been protected."

"By what? I thought that thing was supposed to work against anything!"

"Not against the power that created it", Hayfa explained. "I've only heard of things like your bianzhong, but I do know that one of the descendants of the people who created it, must have protected those men who are shooting at us."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Once I get to it, I'll know", Hayfa said cryptically. Tony just shrugged. He only had a rudimentary knowledge of the bianzhong in the first place, so he was in no position to argue.

Cliff's radio crackled and a muffled voice screamed something that neither Tony nor Hayfa even understood. Cliff did and aimed his gun towards the door. One of Shah's men took a peek into the office and nearly got his head blown off. He pressed his back up against the wall and pulled out a smoke grenade. He'd have rather used a real one, but destroying the tablet was out of the question. He pulled the pin and tossed it inside the office.

"Grenade!", the ex-police officer yelled and scrambled to move away. Tony cut his hand on broken glass trying to take cover. The only person who didn't move away was Hayfa. She was tired of this nonsense, tired of cowering, tired of seeming helpless when she was anything but. She locked her eyes on the grenade, and it stopped completely. It no longer rolled. It didn't bounce, and the fuse didn't burn. She turned to Cliff and said simply, "Throw it back." He didn't hesitate. It bounced down the steps before exploding next to some boxes of shredded documents which began to smolder. The attackers on the stairs were more than confused as they coughed and gagged on the smoke. They didn't suffer long. Cliff covered his mouth with a handkerchief and ran out to the stairs. Five shots and all three men were dead or dying.

"That was a nice trick, whatever you did, Miss", Cliff began, "but we still have to get to the other side and there was a gun battle going on."

Hayfa just smiled. She hadn't even scratched the surface of what she could do. Shah saw a couple of bodies fall from the smoke on the office steps and realized that they were some of his. He ordered more men to the office.

Freddie McLemore loved banks. He got to keep his legitimate money in an account and got to keep his illegal money in a deposit box. That's where he'd gone to get Tony's payment. He had it in a laptop bag on his seat. It was a significant portion of his current stash, but it was worth it. Freddie was a long term thinker and down the road this payout would just be a blip. He was in a hurry to deliver the payment, and get back to work as quickly as possible. That was why he didn't notice the car following him.

"Man you're good. There's Freddie's car right there", Ian told Lisa as she followed from a safe distance. Freddie parked about a block from Tony's place and started towards the warehouse. Unfortunately for him, he approached during a lull in the gunfire.

"One man approaching from outside", Shah said through the radio. "Remove him."

There was a three foot space between two buildings and Freddie walked past that gap oblivious to the man hiding in the darkness. Freddie got two steps past it before a man pressed a gun to his temple and grabbed him around the shoulders. Freddie nearly wet down his leg. "Dude take what you want", he exclaimed and put up his hands, letting the bag dangle from his wrist. The gunman didn't even look at the money.

"Damn it", Lisa mumbled and opened her car door.

"What're you doing!", Ian demanded and grabbed Lisa's arm.

"I told myself that I wouldn't sit back and let something bad happen if I can prevent it", she explained after a sigh. "Besides if that guy, Freddie, can help fix the super soldiers then I might as well keep him from getting killed." She started down the sidewalk, her stylish high heels clucking along the concrete with each purposeful step.

"Someone else approaching. A woman", Shah said with some disgust in his voice at the way the American women exposed themselves. The gunman removed the muzzle from Freddie's temple intending to point it at Lisa, but didn't get the chance. She put the toes of her designer shoes to the pavement and pushed off hard. Her long jumping stride covered more distance, faster, than any human should have been able to.  Both Freddie and the gunmen were too shocked to react.  It didn't hurt Freddie, but Lisa grabbed the barrel and snatched the gun from the Afghan's hand with an easy tug. A flick of her wrist sent the submachine gun flying up three stories to the roof of the building behind her. She didn't give the would-be gunman a chance to reach into his coat for his pistol. She grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed so hard that the attacker yelped in pain before she slammed him face first into the façade of the building.

"What the fuck", Freddie demanded, adrenaline still flowing through his body.

"A thank you would be nice", Lisa said then took Freddie by the arm. "We need to talk."

"About what?!?", Freddie asked just before four men stepped out from behind a dumpster across the street and opened fire. Lisa dragged Freddie behind a parked Buick and tossed him near the front wheel well while she crouched near the rear. The bullets ripped through one side of the car and out the other, but the heavy steel near the brakes and axles kept them safe for the time being.

"What in the hell are you into?", Lisa shouted down the length of the car and Freddie shook his head.

"Nothing this fucking bad!", he exclaimed. "I don't know what these guys want."

Lisa looked around for a weapon, anything. Then she looked at the flattened tire. She repositioned herself and put her hands on the cold steel wheel and her shoes against the inside of the wheel arch. She took a deep breath and pulled. Freddie frowned, wondering what she could possibly be doing. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a lug nut failed. Her body was as taunt as bridge cables. Another lug nut fell to the pavement. The last one simply disintegrated as Lisa pulled the wheel off the car. When one guy stopped firing to reload, she stood up and threw the wheel like a Frisbee. It hit the man like some ancient weapon. Blood, snot, and teeth went flying as the man fell to the ground in a puddle of rapidly freezing blood. She ducked, but without the wheel she was more vulnerable, so with a single quick movement she hopped the length of the car to snuggle in next to Freddie who couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Lisa tried to think about her next move, wishing that Jan was here. She didn't mind drawing fire while Lisa was pretty much as afraid as anyone else of being shot. She heard an engine start up down the street, but didn't give it much thought until that engine revved to the redline. She looked to her left in time to see a twenty year old Grand Marquis with broken exhaust gaining speed. The shooters in the middle of the street didn't take that threat seriously until it was too late. A trail of bullets punctured the front windshield of the old Mercury before it plowed into the three remaining shooters. One man flew over the roof while another had his legs shattered when the front and back driver side tires rolled over them. The third man flew to the sidewalk near the dumpster. The car kept rolling until it bounced onto the sidewalk. Lisa stood up to see the passenger side door open and Ian begin sliding out towards the street.

He looked at Lisa, but didn't see the mostly uninjured shooter getting to his feet next to the dumpster. She did. Lisa bent down and snarled as she jumped hard over both cars and the street to land on the sidewalk next to the shooter, breaking both heels off of her shoes in the process. She didn't even notice. The shooter swung his gun towards this strange woman and pulled the trigger. The first shot sparked against the sidewalk. The next shot hit where Lisa had been, but she moved so fast that there wasn't a third shot. She slapped the gun so that the barrel pointed at the sky, then she snatched the submachine gun, breaking the strap and the shooter's shoulder in one motion. She dropped the gun and gathered the front of the man's coat in one hand and lifted him off of his wobbly feet.

"Who in the hell are you!!!", she screamed. "Why're you shooting at us!!!"

"Bitch", the man spat in a language that she didn't understand and her blood ran as cold as the frigid wind around her. Terrorism was in the news a lot, but it something she only ever expected to think about, not something she thought she'd experience. There had to be more of them. She looked first to her left, and then mercifully to her right. She turned with the man suspended as another attacker further down the street opened fire.

Shah screamed as one of his men died from friendly fire. The woman dropped Kabir like a piece of garbage then grabbed the driver of the car who had plowed into three of his men and jumped to the sidewalk behind the bullet riddled Buick.

"KILL THEM! Everyone attack!!!!", Shah ordered with a spit flinging yell. Twelve men came from the vacant building and hurried towards the Buick. He had a foggy idea of people with special powers, like that Chinese kid, but seeing it in front of his face was different. He was proud that that strong women didn't make him scared, and that his men kept fighting despite seeing her feats. She'd die just like anyone else.

"We have to go now!", Lisa yelled with the fright of the situation. She wrapped one arm around Ian's waist and the other around Freddie's.

"Go that way", Freddie pointed down the street. Lisa didn't argue, she just ran with two grown men hanging from her arms. Both men felt her harder than steel muscles tighten around them as she gained speed. Bullets shattered windows and made splinters out of wood, but Lisa outran it all. The shooters didn't change their aim as fast as she accelerated.

"Turn in here!", Freddie yelled like a man on an out of control roller coaster. He wasn't even sure this woman had heard him until she dived through the open door of Tony's warehouse. The three of them bounced on the bullet casing covered floor and instantly knew that they'd traded one shootout for another. They saw two dead bodies and then the barrel of a gun pointed at them.

"No, they're with me!", Freddie said and held up his hands. "This chick saved my life and that guy works with me", Freddie told Tony's desperate looking guard. Bullets blasted into the already shot up walls and doorway, barely missing everybody.

"Come on", the guard yelled and moved past over turned shelves and destroyed antiques. Freddie followed him on his knees, Lisa shoved Ian to get him to go. She brought up the rear, not because she was bravest, but because if one of these gunmen got close enough, she could kill them faster than a bullet could.

Lisa was fifty feet into the warehouse when her vision wavered and her head swam. Ian turned with concern when he didn't hear Lisa moving behind him, but the spell seemed to last for only a moment. She started crawling again.

On the roof, death circled Cassie like carrion birds around a carcass. Some of her ribs had to be broken and the rest weren't far behind. Her lungs burned like they'd been filled with lava and she had a headache so bad that it hurt to looked at the now cloudy sky. Her muscles had long since lost strength and only the slowly bending steel controlled the speed of the sliding heating unit. The loss of air and of hope had broken down the barrier she'd built up to shield herself from the tablet. It was afterthought. She could barely feel that tablet anymore anyway. She realized that her mother must have done something to quiet it. She remembered something one of her cousins had said once about how to deal with invasive objects, but Cassie didn't have the will left to remember the details of that particular conversation. She felt her mother though. Hayfa was alive and surrounded by her gift. Cassie had never witnessed her mother use her gifts under any kind of stress, but she must have been doing well. That made Cassie smile despite her impending death. She knew she was at the end of her rope, and that she should probably do something like pray. Her smiled returned when both Islamic and Episcopal prayers entered her mind and would not leave. This was just like the rest of her life, two seemingly legitimate paths to take and indecision was going to keep her from taking either.

Darkness clawed at the edges of her vision.  Wet snow was piling up making her shiver all the more, taking up what little energy her body had left. She was terrified of what was going to happen next, but then she felt something out of place. She thought that perhaps it was a figment of her oxygen deprived brain, but Lisa Sanchez's power was unmistakable. Cassie made herself focus. She done it only once before, but linking without touching was her last hope. It had to work or she died. It helped that she'd linked with Lisa almost a dozen times in the last couple of months. Their gifts were used to each other. Once Cassie's gift touched Lisa's the connection was strengthened. Like a thirsty man in the desert Cassie grabbed hold of this link and drew from Lisa's power like a leech.

Cassie felt the vastness of Lisa's gift, but she didn't need much of it. Just a taste was enough. Her nearly crushed ribs went back to their natural shape, actually pushing up the weight of the heating unit on their own. She took a quick shallow breath before putting her once bleeding hands on the bottom of the rusty steel support beam. She took one more breath then pushed.

Her muscles flexed with definition and strength that they'd never had in her life. The heating unit's weight didn't change, but the harder Cassie pushed the easier it became to move. Her muscles flexed into rugged, diamond hard perfection as she threw her arms up. The heating unit and its support structure flew off of Cassie and crashed down onto the roof twenty feet away. She thought that she'd be filled with joy, but instead she curled into ball and cried.

Hayfa, Cliff, and Tony had heard the rumble on the roof, but only glanced back at the office. Cliff moved on ahead and peeped around the corner and drew his head back quickly before it got shot off. "The way's blocked completely. There are at least six guys between us and the brick house. If we're careful though we could make it to the front door. It doesn't look guarded at all."

Tony shook his head. "No. There's bound to be more of these guys outside." Cliff looked out of ideas and Tony looked desperate. Hayfa was still surprisingly calm.

"Stand behind me", she said and marched to the bottom of the steps. Cliff wanted to snatch this woman from the stairs where any stray bullet could have killed her instantly. Tony didn't understand it either. Hayfa could feel their doubts, but it was time to prove to herself that all the lessons she'd learned over her lifetime weren't legends. She closed her eyes and balled her hands into fists as she gathered her strength, tapping into ancient powers that her family hadn't had to use in generations. This time Hayfa's efforts weren't invisible to the ungifted eye. Her hands glowed a dark purple. That glow spread up her arms and soon her entire body shined dimly. Streams of sweat rolled down her regal neck. A little gasp escaped her lips as she fought to gather more strength. Suddenly she thrust her hands into the air.

The flash should have blinded Cliff and Tony, but it didn't hurt them. The concussion wave should have knocked them to the ground, but it didn't. Their ears popped and their eyes felt ready to pop from their heads from the extreme pressure change, but that only lasted a moment. When the noise and flash were gone Tony saw that nothing had moved, nothing at all. Bullets had stopped along their paths, leaving little contrails in the air behind them. Flames from the fire behind them looked like they were painted in the air like wall art. Plaster and glass hung in the air like snow. The rats in the sewers beneath the building and the birds flying above it were as frozen as the ice on the Chicago River.

Tony had to reach out and steady his old friend. "You okay?", he asked with both awe and concern in his voice.

"Yeah. We have to get to that instrument. This isn't going to last long." The group ran past bullets and around frozen men heading towards the brick house. Hayfa hadn't known the instrument was encased in a building, within a building, but that was something she'd have to worry about later. They were only steps from the brick house when the disruption shattered with a crash of noise.

For a moment everything moved like a fast forwarding movie as this little ripple of time synched with the rest of the universe. Hayfa ducked flying bullets. Tony grabbed her by the shoulders, and shoved her through the open door. "Holy Fuck!", one of Tony's guard's exclaimed. "How'd you get here boss?"

"Magic", Tony said with a grin then looked to Hayfa who seemed to have mostly recovered. He didn't understand what had just happened, but knew that to his men that little pause in time hadn't happened. "If you could do that again, my men could finish this", Tony told Hayfa.

Hayfa shook her tired head. "It'd be ten times harder to do again so soon if it would work at all", she explained while catching her breath. She had been worried that using some of these old power hungry techniques would drain her strength quickly, but unlike her body, it seemed that her gifts had actually strengthened over the years. Hayfa turned her attention to the bianzhong.

The only thing that hadn't been affected by Hayfa's disruption of time had been Cassie on the roof. She'd felt the release of so much power, but her own gift had shielded it from it. It did snap her from her bout of crying though. She got to her knees and turned to look at Amer's dead body with a snarl of contempt. She walked over to the skylight and grabbed Amer by the neck to move him out of the way. He looked up at her with dead eyes. She hated him so much that she wished that she could have thrown him all the way to the lake, but Lisa's strength was gone. She used her foot to knock some of the remaining glass from the skylight then dropped into the office.

Shah realized that his front line couldn't advance against such stiff resistance. The security men had lost most of the warehouse, but their defense was more spirited than expected. Shah didn't have unlimited men, but it was time to increase the pressure.

Inside the brick house, Hayfa approached the bianzhong slowly, admiring everything that had gone into making it. Each bell was its own piece of art and each tone was a piece of music unto itself. Then she touched it and got a taste of the instrument's immense power. Her mouth fell open without her noticing. She'd guessed at the power of the instrument that she'd heard and felt, but realized that she'd been wrong. This bianzhong was much more than even she'd figured. It couldn't have been made by one person. It had taken generations of extremely talented and gifted people to make this instrument. Their dedication was breathtaking. As awesome as it was to her, the attackers would still have to hear the bells to be affected. She looked around the brick house trying to see how to get the sound out when there was some commotion at the door. A weasely looking man on all fours pushed his way inside, and was followed by two people Hayfa actually recognized.

"Mrs. Redwine?", Ian exclaimed with shock. Lisa looked up from the rubble covered floor and frowned. "What are you doing here?", she asked.

"I had an appointment", Hayfa said then rushed over to Lisa with a big grin. "I'm so glad you're here. I need some help."

"Anything."

Hayfa put her arm around Lisa's shoulder and led her to the back of the room. "I need those men out there to be able to hear these bells, but the sound won't escape this little building. Can you take the roof off of this place?"

Lisa took her coat off then ran her hands along the seamlessly poured ceiling. It was made out of high strength concrete and reinforced with at least inch and a half thick bars of steel. It weighed tons. Lisa went to the edge where the ceiling met the wall then turned to Hayfa. "Yeah. This shouldn't take long."

She went to the back, chose a spot about three feet off the floor then punched the solid concrete wall. Tony, Cliff, Freddie, and several others gasped when she pulled her grey coated knuckles back only to send another punch. The concrete block shattered almost at once dropping chunks down to the floor, but the poured section was tougher. Lisa's eyes actually narrowed a little as she pulled her arm back this time. A little air hissed from between her sexy lips as this punch flew straight though the wall. The brick house shook and chunks of it ended up behind the building. Lisa hit it again. This time her punch pulled so much air with it that she created a gust of wind inside the little building. She kept knocking holes in the back wall, making the opening bigger and bigger. Her blouse was trash by the time she opened up ledge for her to stand on and reach the ceiling. Some chucks of wall clung to the smooth concrete of the ceiling, but that wouldn't matter much to Lisa. She put her palms flat against the foot thick concrete and lifted it.

The sounds of cracking concrete added to the din of the gunfire as thickening arms burst through the material of her blouse. Her top tore in a hundred places as her lats pushed through the sides and her traps obliterated the collar. Muscles bulged beneath beautiful copper toned skin as she continued to extend her arms, making the mass of concrete rise like a huge lid. The solid construction of the brick house picked up and amplified the beating of Lisa's super human heart until the entire warehouse resounded with the slow thumping of it.

When she looked at Tony before, he'd only seen a beautiful woman somewhat ruffled from being in the middle of a gun battle. But now as she looked at him, it was like a gaze from a goddess. Tony wasn't the type of man to cower easily, but if Lisa had told him to, he'd have bowed down at her feet. Instead she said, in a normal tone, "Tell your men out front to come inside. I think this thing is going to fall right where they are."

Shah got the wrong idea when Tony's men began a fighting retreat. They entered that little building one by one. It had to be getting quite full in there. Perhaps they were running out of ammo and had retreated in there to find safety. Either way it freed some of his people to start looking hard for the tablet. He was just moments away from ordering his men forward to keep the guards pinned inside that little building when he noticed it changing shape. He felt a booming deep in his chest as the roof began to rise. Shah worried then. Maybe Tony did have a secret weapon other than the bells if he'd put that heavy roof on hydraulics. Shah felt something else entirely when saw arms lifting that mass of concrete and steel. He didn't know the names of all of the muscles jutting sharply along the lengths of her arms and legs, but they were the hardest muscles he'd ever seen in his life.

Freddie did know them all, and despite his lingering fear, was drooling at the display of both shredded muscle and strength. Seeing this woman lift that concrete was the most amazing experience of his life, but he hadn't seen anything at all yet. Her face, just slightly strained at first, twisted up a bit and she began to lean back while holding the ceiling/roof up. Veins showed all over her body now, even her exposed midsection was crisscrossed with them. She legs shook a little as she demanded more from them. The two heads of her lower quads loomed like cliffs and the two upper heads unfurled like a striated bloom. Her hip flexors were a tangled mess of ligaments and tendons, but her arms were the most impressive. Her definition grew to insane, inhuman levels of detail until each hyper flexing fiber showed through her skin.

The steel door frame began to warp and Lisa's face showed just a little strain as the ceiling began lifting at the front of the brick house. Some people shot at the rising slab of concrete causing bullets to crack past Lisa's head. She had to ignore them. The most important thing was getting that slab off without crushing the people beneath her in the process. The remaining wall beneath Lisa's feet began to crack and crumble as all the weight of the ceiling channeled down Lisa's arms, through her amazing body, down her powerful legs and into the concrete. She felt it giving way, and knew that it was time. She drew her arms back and with all the power she could muster, threw the slab forward. It flew like an impossible sail towards the center of Tony's warehouse, only it didn't make it that far. Attackers in the front line of the attack dove and scrambled out of the way as the slab's shadow fell on them. The ceiling exploded into massive chunks when it crashed to the floor and little bits of rubble bounced along the floor. Lisa heard some cries from injured men, and there was a time when that sound would have left her mortified, but she'd learned that she needed to keep her emotions directed in the right places, and not the wrong ones.

Hayfa was already standing at the bianzhong when one of Tony's men extended a mallet towards her. She shook him off. She wouldn't need it. She put her hand flat on the largest bell and all of the bells began to chime softly. Everyone heard the sounds, but to Lisa there was something else. She felt pressure pushing all over her body, popping her ears even. She turned to look at Hayfa and at the bianzhong. To Lisa they both glowed. She blinked rapidly and was about to jump down from her perch on the wall when something to the right caught her eye.

Cassie came down the stairs slowly, wishing that she was still linked to Lisa. She'd snatched Lisa's gift like a thief earlier using their familiarity to her advantage, well more like a leech really, she corrected herself. Lisa was alert now and her gift had its own defenses. Another long distance use of her gift would require Lisa's permission, and unfortunately they were too far apart for her to easily ask. She could have yelled, but Cassie didn't want to draw attention to herself. She thought that she was moving unseen, but she wasn't. Three of Shah's men were on their way to the office to help the two men who were already there. If Cassie had been trained she might have noticed them as they encircled her.

"CASSIE!!!!", Lisa screamed and jumped so hard she broke the concrete beneath her feet to dust. Hayfa took her hand off the bianzhong and looked just in time to see Lisa streak out of sight. She fully opened herself up for the first time since she'd taken hold of the tablet. And at that moment dread filled every fiber of her being.

The first bullet slammed into Cassie's chest, just to the right of her sternum. The sensation was like being kicked by a mule with molten hot hooves. The second bullet tore a chunk out of her beautifully sculpted quad just as the first bullet exited the left side of Cassie's ribcage but only after damaging several organs and cracking her spine. She fell down, looking up towards the warehouse ceiling. That was when she saw Lisa, in the air, moments from landing and ending this attack, only she'd be too late. Cassie had escaped the icy clutches of Death by the slimmest of margins only minutes before.  This time she wouldn't.

She felt her life slipping away just like before, only quicker. Her thoughts turned angry, vile, and evil even before the third shot was fired.  A cold sweat clung to Cassie's skin as that bullet tore through her abdomen. She didn't feel the pain this time, not like with the rest of them. This bullet just made her dark anger grow. The heat of this shot was nothing at all compared to the inferno burning inside of her. Her eyes were as red as the blood spilling from her wounds. Her expression was one of savage determination as she extended her hand towards the men who'd killed her. They had no notion of who this woman was, and it cost them dearly.

Lisa was ten feet off the ground when a thick, heavy, swirling, mass of black energy spewed from Cassie's outstretched hand. It spread like both an uncapped oil well, and like the darkest smoke anyone had ever seen. It gathered with a purpose, coalescing around the legs of the three men. They tried to move, but they never really had a chance. Cassie's pain was completely gone now, replaced with the supreme need for a murderous revenge. Her life was nearly over, and these men were going to come along with her.

Lisa's eyes opened wide as she landed in the midst of the energy. It swirled and gathered around her legs before creeping up towards her waist, but just when she was about to try to run, her power rose up inside of her in fiery defiance. The energy around Lisa retreated then was blasted away. Even though the darkness still spewed from Cassie's hand, it couldn't get near Lisa. There was an empty circle around her. The three shooters were not so fortunate.

Their faces were masks of tortured pain as the energy entered their bodies through every opening, pouring into their open mouths and in through their ears and eyes. Cassie's mouth curled into a wicked grin, a bit of glee showing at their agony, as she used the last moments of her life to end theirs. When the energy stopped coming out of Cassie's hand it started to blow away like smoke in a breeze taking tiny bits of the shooters with it as it wafted into nothingness. The shooter closest to Lisa stared with frozen eyes and a terrified face as he began to look like a digital image with pixels missing. The others looked the same as more and more pieces of them floated away. Their unraveling continued until they were gone. There was no blood, no gore, and no sound. Only buttons, zippers, guns, bits of plastic and piles of scattering piles of black dust remained.

Lisa rushed towards Cassie, the lingering energy dispersing before her. She bent down, catching Cassie's head before it hit the floor. She frantically checked for a pulse at Cassie's wrist and then her neck, feeling only the faintest throb. The wounds didn't gush or spray blood. They simply leaked, and sometime in the past Lisa had heard that it was a bad sign.

Tony tried to pull Hayfa down from the top of the brick house wall, but she clung on with desperate strength even as bullets zipped past her head. It was Ian though who climbed out of the hole in the back of the brick house and yelled to get Lisa's attention.

"Bring her here!!", he screamed then aimed a borrowed pistol at Shah's men and pulled the trigger over and over again making the attackers put their heads down. This was her chance. She cradled Cassie's body and ran as fast as she possibly could. She rounded the back corner of the brick house and slid to a stop on the remnants of her designer shoes. Ian had climbed back into the brick house and motioned for Lisa to bring Cassie to an open spot on the floor. Hayfa broke down in tears, crying and sobbing inconsolably. Tony put his arms around her, but even that felt cold and empty.

Ian put down the gun. He wasn't much good at shooting it anyway and got to his knees at Cassie's side. He tore open her shirt and saw the wounds for the first time. She groaned and gurgling blood ran from Cassie's mouth as Ian quickly rolled her over so he could see the exit wounds. He took off his coat and rubbed the blood away as best he could. "Fuck", he breathed after a few moments and looked up to Hayfa's stricken face. "I'm sure they hit the celiac trunk. Her lung is punctured at least once and these fluids back here are acid from her stomach and bile from her gallbladder."

"What does that mean!!!", Hayfa screamed.

"She needs immediate surgery, Mrs. Redwine. There's nothing I can do here. I'm so sorry", Ian said, meaning every word of it.

Hayfa stumbled a few steps away from Tony and fell against one of the thick support beams of the bianzhong. She slipped to the floor despair coming over her. A mother's grief is debilitating in it's power, but just like before, Hayfa's mind stayed remarkably clear. She thought back to her mother, to one of the last lessons she'd taught her. It was the highest level of Hayfa's inherited gift. That particular technique hadn't been used in ages and even then it had been performed by one of the most powerful people who'd ever lived. Hayfa looked up at the bianzhong before putting her hand against one of the bells. There were several lifetimes worth of power stored in these bells. She knew the cost of failure, but for Cassie, Hayfa was willing to risk it. She'd have risked anything.

"Move her closer!", Hayfa screamed and Lisa moved Cassie closer then backed away. Hayfa put one hand on Cassie's head and the other on one of the bianzhong's bells.

The non-gifted once again heard the bells tone, but this wasn't the sweet musical sound from before. It was a single droning chord that became as sour as an out of tune guitar after a few moments. Once again for Lisa it was different again. This time there wasn't the pressure from before. Hayfa wasn't trying to broadcast the bianzhong's vast power. She was channeling it. Lisa heard a roar like a mighty river being funneled into a narrow canal. Lisa felt the full power of the bianzhong now and it humbled her too. Despite her heightened experience, Lisa was as confused as everyone else in the brick house. The ground began to shake and sunlight streaming in from the shattered front windows and broken skylights began to show dark. The cold air around them turned as hot as a summer's day. Lisa saw Cassie's body grow hazy, nearly transparent. To everyone else it looked as if her body was covered in some sort of smoky shroud. Lisa rubbed her eyes when it looked like there were two Cassies lying on the ground in front of Hayfa. The two forms seemed to switch positions several times before merging. Hayfa's expression showed the pain and extreme effort. She cried out as if she was being murdered herself. The pain became too great to hold in. Finally she let out a long breath and collapsed to the floor. The droning note stopped. The cold air returned, so did the light, and despite the gunfire the room felt quiet. Nobody knew what to make of what had just happened until with a collective gasp of disbelief, Cassie sat up and took a breath.

Some men stopped shooting and at least two made the Sign of the Cross with trembling hands as Cassie looked around the brick house wondering how she'd gotten there. Her hands shook until she placed them against her chest, feeling the places where wounds had been. They were gone, all of wounds were gone.

"Oh Mommy!", she cried and threw her arms around Hayfa who fought to sit up. She was almost too weak to smile.

"Is she okay now?", Lisa blurted frantically. "Cassie are you okay?"

The nineteen year old responded by jumping to her feet and throwing her arms around Lisa's neck and shoulders. "You saved my life", she declared with tears running down her dirty face.

"No", Lisa began gravely. "You saved your own life."

The memories from minutes before barged into the front of Cassie's mind with the relentless certainty of waves breaking against the shore. "I… I killed those men", she uttered as if she couldn't trust her own memories. "I killed those men", she repeated and sank to her knees, remembering it all in intricate detail. She remembered the cold, murderous hate that she'd felt as she'd done something to kill them in the most horrible way. How had she done that? What power of hers was that? She couldn't believe that such an ability lurked within her, and that even if it did, that she couldn't believe that she'd have used it.

"You did what you had to do", Lisa said knowing that words alone wouldn't calm Cassie down.

"Nobody has the right to take your life. If it's your life or theirs, make it theirs", Tony chimed in, not knowing exactly how she'd killed three men.

Cassie only partially heard him. Each second her normally under control emotions punished her more severely. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She almost wished that her mother hadn't saved her and had let her die. Death was peaceful. This was torture.

Tony left his position near the door to go to Hayfa's side. "That was amazing! It was a real miracle. I've never seen one in the flesh." He stopped and looked towards the door when some sustained gunfire came it's way. He turned back to Hayfa. "I think you should go on and use the bianzhong to break through the block you were talking about."

"Umm, there's a problem, Tony. I drained all the power from your instrument saving Cassie", Hayfa managed through deep labored breaths. "But before you say anything, I've got another plan."

"Well it better be good Hayfa because we're running out of ammo!!!", Tony yelled.

"Well when I first started using the bells, I managed to get into the heads of a couple of the guys close to us. They want the tablet."

Tony shook his head. "Damn it I knew it! So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to give it to them", she replied. He couldn't believe it.

"I… I thought you said that the tablet was some awesome special thing! Do you know how much trouble I had to go through to get it?!?"

She rubbed his arm to calm him. "Trust me." She glanced over at her nearly catatonic daughter, the strings of motherhood tugging hard. She wanted to comfort her child, but this wasn't the time. The battle was still raging and Cassie was going to have to play a part, but first Hayfa needed another favor from Lisa.

Several of Tony's men slipped out of the back of brick house, crept towards the front before with a countdown, all of Tony's security men opened fire at once. Some guys fired with guns in each hand. Even Ian and Freddie shot through the doorway. Shah's men ducked behind anything solid enough to stop a bullet. Mission accomplished. Lisa ran out of the back of the brick house towards the office stairs like a blur. She wasn't faster than a bullet, but none came her way. By the time the covering fire ended, Lisa was at the top of the steps, walking into Tony's office.

Omar and Sayed had been in the office with hammers and pry bars trying to break into the safe for three minutes. They'd dumped every drawer and cleared every shelf looking for the tablet. They assumed correctly that anything as valuable as their target would be in the safe. Omar went to the far side of the office to an upright table to prepare some explosives while Sayed stayed working on the safe with his hands. He turned when he saw motion behind him, dropping his hammer and grabbing the gun hanging around his neck. He was quick, but not quick enough. Lisa was too good with her powers now, able to manipulate her body and her strength to get what she wanted. Right now she wanted speed.

She lunged forward and pressed Sayed's barrel towards the floor. He pulled the trigger but the bullets just left a trail of concrete dust in their wake as flew off harmlessly. Sayed tried to raise the gun, but it was like pushing against a mountain. He reached with his other hand and pulled free the knife that all of Shah's men carried. He stabbed with a short motion towards Lisa's stomach. She only saw it at the last moment. The tip of the blade poked through dress and pricked her skin before she caught his wrist. He tried once to pull his arm back, but Lisa'd had enough of this man trying to kill her. Her beautiful face twisted into a frown. She spun, dragging Sayed along so quickly that his feet left the floor. She gathered speed then threw him through the already broken office window. Sayed screamed as he flew towards the front of the warehouse like he'd been shot from a circus cannon, only there was no net to catch him. His jaw shattered at impact with the concrete floor, followed by an orbital bone, his shoulder, collar bone, seven ribs, his right leg, and his spine in four places.

Omar glanced at the gun he'd left sitting next to the safe knowing that he could never reach it in time. He grabbed the pry bar and ran behind this strange woman and hit her head so hard that the solid steel bar bent a little. The impact sounded like a single gunshot and the vibration shook Omar's hands so much they hurt, but to his shock the woman didn't fall to the ground. Her hand went to her head as she stumbled slightly. Her skull should have cracked open. He didn't see any blood though, so he pulled back and swung again, as hard as he could. The bar whistled in the air. He thought he was inches from killing this bitch when her arm moved. The bar hit her palm, and it felt like he'd hit a concrete pillar. Her hand didn't even move. He drew back for another swing, but she grabbed the bar.

"That hurt", she exclaimed. Lisa took him by the front of his jacket and forced him back to the wall. He'd expected her to be angry, but instead she looked down at the crowbar and smiled. She threw Omar to the ground and bent his body so that his knees were pressed to his forehead. He fought with all of his strength, but this woman wasn't human. She was too strong. It was as if she didn't even feel his struggles. That blow to the head should have killed her, but she didn't even have a mark. Then her muscles began to flex and he knew she wasn't human.

She bent the crowbar like it was cardboard rather than tempered steel. The metal barely had time to groan as her biceps peaked and her forearms bulged with inhuman definition. The individual fibers of muscle seemed to multiply by the second. She bent the bar into a circle enclosing both of Omar's wrists and knees. Some stitches torn in what had been one of her favorite blouses as she brought the ends of the bar together. She stood up straight and smiled down to Omar, who was too mad, too confused, and too terrified to speak. She wasn't going to take any chances though, so she ripped a long strip of cloth from his pants and stuffed it in his mouth. Now it was time to get to why she'd come.

Lisa immediately worked her hands down the sides to the rear and pulled the 7000 pound behemoth away from the wall with a sustained tug. Her back muscles came alive. Even the usually small muscles at the base of the spine bulged with powerful intent. Her quads jumped up flexing harder and stronger by the millisecond. Her calves forced the balls of her feet to the concrete as her perfect body channeled all of its force down into the floor which popped and shifted under the strain. All the gunfire behind her in the warehouse made her think that it was a good idea to work below the level of the windows so, like an expert mover with a crane, Lisa wrapped her arms as far around the safe as she could, and laid it down onto it's back. Air rushed from beneath the massive hunk of hardened steel as the back plate touched down. Lisa climbed onto the door and ran her fingers along the tight seams between the door and the safe body around it.  The gaps were barely big enough to slide a credit card through. Hayfa's friend had certainly spared no expense on this safe. She could have simply beat her way in, but there was something valuable inside. This was going to take not just brute strength, but a bit of finesse.

She kneeled atop the safe then leaned forward and put her hands on either side of the body.  Omar had recovered from his initial shock to be shocked again when this woman had moved the safe. He and Sayed hadn't been able to make it move it all. They'd told Shah that it was bolted to the floor. He had no idea what this woman was doing, but then her perfectly straight teeth set on edge and for the first time to day, real effort showed on Lisa's beautiful face.  Omar shifted a little so he could see the entire show and he was watching as her already sickeningly defined muscles seemed to get harder by a factor of ten.  Every single muscle and vein, artery, tendon, and ligament jumped up like they were a million soldiers trying to escape from beneath Lisa's bronze colored skin. Omar didn't know what was happening. His mind couldn't comprehend any of it until he felt a deep rumble in his chest and he saw her hands move inward. His eyes opened wide and he prayed for God to protect him. The steel was actually bending beneath her hands. This metal was so strong through that it didn't groan like the crowbar or screech like the heating unit supports on the roof. The safe sounded like some sort of dying monster as Lisa pressed with ever increasing force.

Her blouse was stuffed with muscle and Lisa's pecs were continuing to well like they were hooked to a fireman's hose. A thin sheen of sweat coated her flexing muscles and her body steamed in the shivering cold, but Lisa didn't notice the air around her, or the muted sunlight that glinted off the ever changing surface of her muscles like they were facets of a diamond. The sweat gathered in the ever deepening rift between her surging pecs. Lisa's very nice 'C' cup breasts were lost in the sea of muscle now, just one component to her thickening chest. Her eyes were locked in on the safe, at a spot on the top that Omar couldn't see. She paused. Omar wondered was she tiring? Was the evil sorcery that had made her strong running out? All the buttons flew off of blouse when she filled her lungs like they'd been repelled by the strongest magnet ever made. Both sides of the blouse now hung at her sides. Omar should have looked away. Everything in his upbringing had taught him to, but he'd never seen anything at all like Lisa's uncovered body. Only her black bra was still holding, but just barely. Her shoulders were wide and her pecs thick and surfaced like corrugated steel. Her abs were chunks of pure striated muscle arranged in rows along her undulating belly. Her waist was amazingly the same size as before, but now it was stuffed with muscle instead of with simple feminine curves. Then she gave a sustained squeeze. All the muscles he'd seen flexed now as if their very existence depended on it. Her biceps ballooned and her triceps pressed off the backs of her arms like sprouting wings.  Spit flew from her mouth and her eyes narrowed to slits. Omar wished that he could have run away. He could feel the power radiating off of her muscles like heat from raging fire. The room was full with it. It was undeniable and it so dwarfed his idea of what strength could be that finally, after watching for less than a minute, Omar fainted.

Lisa kept her eyes on the shut line between the door and safe body, not caring about anything else happening around her.  Her sustained effort wasn't quite sustained. She'd doubled her pressure since the beginning. Then she tripled it. The safe was strong and steel was a top of the line alloy, but it had a limit. Lisa's muscles finally reached that limit then easily exceeded it.  Her muscles flexed with definition beyond all reason. Even the tiniest capillaries were pressed hard on the surface of her craggy, muscle stuffed skin. Lisa's hands sank into the steel and the top of the safe mushroomed like a blister. The metal hummed as Lisa's hands moved inward by inches now. It looked like Lisa was about to hulk out of her body, then she stopped.

Her breathing was almost normal, like she hadn't just done something amazing. She looked down at the safe. The top of it now looked like a sucked lollipop rather than like a precision crafted piece of equipment. She was far from finished though. She'd made the shut gap big enough for her to slide the fingers of her right hand inside. The door was thicker than she'd hoped but she should have figured that. Nothing about this safe was easy. She put her left hand flat against the rim of the safe and twisted her body. Her already lusciously thick triceps blasted outward and the steel began to surrender at once. Lisa had already felt the safe's best resistance and already knew how hard she had to work to defeat it. The foot thick door warped like wet biscuit dough.  The carbon steel locking pins were something altogether different. They were even harder than the rest of the safe, and they were set into equally hard carbon steel rings. Given enough time, Lisa could have defeated them too, but time wasn't something she had a lot of. Instead with one more muscle bursting tug and with a sound like an underground explosion, Lisa pulled all ten carbon steel pins and the carbon steel rings right out of the mangled safe body itself. She stopped the door from flying open and making even more noise. She scanned the inside of the safe seeing some cash, some guns, and the wooden box right where it was supposed to be. Lisa tied her top together under pecs, grabbed the box and tucked it under her arm before edging towards the door.

"That's a top of the line jewelers safe", Tony told Hayfa. "I had it made to the highest specifications."

"Didn't you see what she did to the roof of this place?", his old friend countered.

"I'm not sayin your girl isn't strong. But it might take her hours to…", Tony stopped mid sentence when Lisa landed in their midst holding the wooden box.

"Great", Hayfa said and patted Lisa's hand. "Thank you!"

"No problem. It was kinda exciting actually", she admitted with a grin that fell away when she looked at Tony. "Sorry about your safe though." Tony just shook his head and looked out at the battle. Shah's men were inching closer.

"Cassie!", Hayfa called and shook her sobbing daughter by the shoulder. "I need you to pull it together."

"I can't!"

"Yes you can! We have to give these men what they want."

"Why?", she yelled. "I don't care what they want!"

"Yes you do! If we don't do this then everybody around us is going to die, right here, today. Is that what you want!?!", Hayfa asked without any trace of pity or sympathy. "It's either that or we have to kill all those men out there, and believe me sweetheart, you'll do some of the killing for sure."

"I won't!!!", Cassie yelled at her mother defiantly.

"Some people in our family wouldn't learn to do what you did with thirty years of instruction. You figured out how to do it on your own. And now that you've used your gift like that once, it'll be easier for you to it again."

"I don't understand", Cassie exclaimed, almost crying again. She just shook her head. It wall so much.

Hayfa walked over and put her arm around her daughter's shoulder.  "I'll explain it all when this is over", Hayfa said tenderly. "But we have do this."

"I'll try to help", she agreed weakly.

Hayfa was still extremely weak, but she steeled herself for what had to be done.  Cassie was plenty strong, but the tablet was too. They needed even more power than the two of them had together. Hayfa looked up and said, "Lisa, I need you too. Bring one of those broken cement pieces, a kinda small one will be fine."

They sat cross legged on the floor with the box and the piece of broken concrete block sitting in front of them. Hayfa took Cassie's hand while Cassie took one of Lisa's. Ian was riveted as he watched Hayfa use her free hand to open the box. Lisa looked directly at the decorated stone while both Hayfa and Cassie recoiled. Ian had no idea what was so special about the tablet. It looked old and such, but this gun battle seemed a little much for something like that. There were hundreds of items just like down at the museum, but then he remembered Lisa reaction to the stuff he was working to replicate. To him it had looked like a dry piece of corn bread, but to Lisa it had looked like a supernova. He couldn't see it, but Ian knew that there was some extraordinary going on right in front of him. He hadn't known that special powers even existed until one day Lisa had told him that she was stronger than she should have been, and over the last couple of years he'd studied the phenomena pretty intently. Now as he watched this, he realized that was much more to these gifted people than he'd observed so far. There was a whole layer of truth running beneath everything that he didn't begin to understand.

Hayfa and Cassie had opened themselves up to the tablet. Together they could just barely handle it but just like Cassie had done some weeks earlier to help wrangle Jan's explosive gift, they  used Lisa and her nearly bottomless well of power as a generator. Her gift was so vast and deep that they'd never found the edge or the bottom of it. This time, they'd come mighty close.

After less than fifteen seconds, the ground was wet with Lisa's sweat. She looked like she'd run a marathon in that short span of time and the drain only got worse as Hayfa and Cassie pulled more power from deep inside her. Lisa trusted the Redwines so she didn't fight them, but the urge came up several times. Like with so many other things, the struggle was almost unbearable and then suddenly it was over. "Wow", Lisa murmured and fell back to the floor, exhausted. Ian crawled next to her and put her head in a better position for respiration.

Hayfa moved like she was thirty years older as she took the tablet out of the box and placed the broken piece of concrete into it. She was trembling noticeably until she finally managed to close the lid. She sighed then and looked up at Tony. "Tell your men to stop firing", she said and struggled to her feet. Cassie's arms could barely move as she lifted the tablet to hand it to her mother. They'd exchanged thoughts during the operation so she already knew her mother's plan. After the order was given, Tony's men stopped firing. Shah's men shot a few more times, but when Hayfa held up the tablet, Shah jumped up and shouted, "Stop shooting!!!", as loudly as he could.

"I've got what you want!", Hayfa announced and stepped from behind the bullet riddled wall into the open. "Tell your leader to come here if he wants this." She held up the tablet. "Or I'll smash it to bits."

"I'm here", Shah called from near the center of the warehouse. He slung the gun over his shoulder and approached cautiously. "This better not be a trick."

"No tricks", Hayfa said. "Is this what you want?"

"This is the item that was stolen", he confirmed.

"Then take it and go", Hayfa warned. "Or I swear to God, I'll kill you all", Hayfa said in Arabic. Shah hesitated a moment. This woman might be a believer despite her decadent American appearance. If he was right about that, then he was also right to believe that any swear she spoke, she meant.

"I won't be back, and neither will my men", Shah declared and took the tablet from her hand. He had to suppress a smile as he turned and ordered his men out. He'd lost some soldiers, but they'd died to achieve a great victory.

"Don't forget the guy in the office", Lisa called out.

Shah turned. "There were two men in the office."

"Well… now there's only one."

Shah motioned for two of his men to run to retrieve Omar, they didn't have time to find Sayed's body.

"I just can't believe you gave him that tablet", Tony said once Hayfa had come back near the brick house. "Those guys were willing to kill us to get it. It has to be important."

"It's useless now. Me, Cassie, and Lisa transferred the information that was inside the tablet to that piece of concrete I put in the box. The tablet was a vessel for information… like a computer drive. But now that its empty, the tablet's just a rock with pretty pictures on it. You did a great job by the way", she said and patted Tony on the cheek. "If my purse is still intact upstairs, I'll give you your money."

Tony couldn't help but laugh. His smile faltered when he looked at his warehouse. The fire had burned itself out, so that wasn't a concern, but everything else was ruined. There was over a million dollars of merchandise strewn over the floor. Tony doubted if he'd be able to salvage any of it. "Speaking of useless", he began to take his mind off of his merchandise. "So you drained my bianzhong?"

"I had to use the power inside it to restore my daughter."

"I didn't even know this thing could do that", Tony said looking at the instrument noticing some bullet damage to the wooden supports but none to the bells themselves.

"It couldn't… not by itself", Hayfa said. "I repurposed the power inside it. There are at least two elements involved in making an item like your… bianzhong. Power and purpose. It's like a cellphone and the battery."

"So you took the energy from the battery and used it to heal your daughter?"

Hayfa nodded. "Something like that." It would have taken a while to explain exactly what she'd done.

"You know, we could have gotten out of so much trouble if I'd known you could do this stuff back in the old days."

Hayfa laughed weakly. "I didn't know how to do all this stuff back in the old days."

Tony steadied his shaking hands on the bianzhong's largest bell. "I wonder what price I can get since this is just an old set of bells now."

"It's most certainly not just an old set of bells", Hayfa began. "This instrument isn't so easily destroyed. It'll regain its full power. I can't say when. Maybe a month, maybe a year, but it's still just as dangerous now as it was twenty minutes ago or twenty centuries ago. You should be careful with it. Its power can cut both ways."

Tony heard her, but didn't take her words to heart. To him all she'd said was that he couldn't use this thing to take over minds and make money until it recharged. He wanted to be upset that she'd used its power, but he looked over to the girl, Cassie, and realized that it was worth it. Tony wasn't heartless. He loved his kids too, even more than he loved money. That thought was on his mind, until a sudden wave of nausea hit him when he heard a flood of police sirens.

Shah's men had long melted away when a hundred cop cars showed up. Swat teams and helicopters came ready for war. Only they'd just missed it. After hours of investigation, the official line was terrorism. It was funny, but Tony and his men were hailed as heroes although they refused to talk to the media. Ian, Freddie, and Lisa were counted as innocent customers caught in the crossfire. Hayfa was Tony's old friend, and Cassie had just come along to see the artifacts. The FBI and Homeland Security people knew that there were holes in the story, but all real life stories had holes. Regular people didn't live their lives trying to create alibis or narratives. The only piece of truth in the whole report was that the terrorists were after something precious that they considered stolen. Tony handed over the paper work on the tablet, and was cleared of any wrong doing.

Cassie had received medical treatment in the back of an ambulance, but wasn't taken to the hospital. She and her mother had a lot to talk about, but neither said a word on their way home. Cassie curled up in the passenger seat of her own car while Hayfa drove them back to Kenilworth.

"So this was just an average Lisa day huh", Ian said once he and Lisa were on the road after being cleared to leave, which had taken several more hours.

Lisa laughed. "No, this was an average Jan day. My days are usually busy, but normal." She laughed again, the stress of the day was finally bleeding away. She tapped on her brakes as traffic began to slow on the Dan Ryan Expressway.

"I'm really glad you didn't get shot full of holes doing all that super hero stuff", Ian uttered with more seriousness than he'd intended.

Lisa patted her best friend on the hand. "Yeah", she breathed and looked out at the road. "And I'm glad you ran over those guys in the street. I mean I'm fast, but who knows. Thanks too, for not using my car."

"Well I saw the doors unlocked on that Mercury. I figured you didn't want me to wreck your Benz. I think you love this car more than you do most people."

"I don't love my car like a person, but I do appreciate not having its front end caved in… I'm not finished making payments yet", she chuckled. "I didn't know you had time to keep your hot wiring skills sharp, being a medical doctor and a big time researcher and all."

Ian smiled. "I don't get as much practice as I used to back in Southie, but that was like a '85 Merc. That is in my wheel house. I could splice those wires with my eyes closed."

Lisa laughed even as traffic came to a complete stop. "If only Moira knew what a rogue you are."

Ian's laugh was therapeutic, tension bleeding off of him too. "I've told her that me and the local beat cops back home were well acquainted in my youth. I'm living proof though that a night in jail will scare a good kid straight."

"One night?"

"Okay. Six nights spread over a couple of years, but it worked."

"Uh huh", Lisa said then had to slow down again.

"What was all that stuff Mrs. Redwine was doing? I didn't know she had the power to heal people. I mean you said that guy healed Alisha back in Oklahoma, but…"

"This was different", Lisa answered quickly then shook her head. "Hayfa didn't heal Cassie. She just sort of made her whole. It was… I'll just say lots of stuff was happening that you guys had no idea about."

"You didn't ask her about any of it? After that thing with the tablet you looked exhausted."

"I was. And to answer your question, no. I didn't ask Hayfa anything. I've realized over the last couple of years that there are places where my nose does not belong. If Hayfa wants to tell me, she will." She pushed the brakes hard when the traffic stopped again. "So, on a different note, did you get a chance to talk to Freddie, since he was the whole reason we went to a war zone in the first place?", she asked as she touched the gas pedal to gain some speed.

Ian groaned. "That little weasel faked his way into an ambulance. Last I saw they had oxygen on him closing the doors. I'll try to talk to him cause I don't want to talk to Dan, not first."

"That makes sense", Lisa said and inched her car to the left to allow a fire engine to pass. "There's a lot going on in the city tonight."

"Yep", Ian agreed and looked to the side of the road. The guardrail was twisted and only the bottom of what had been an suv was visible.

"Don't look. That's not nice", Lisa chided her friend.

"Who said I'm nice", Ian countered and Lisa slapped him in the shoulder.

"I can't get you home fast enough. Then I'm gonna go home myself and go to bed… no I'm gonna eat then I'm going to bed."

Usually Jeremy Redwine would have been at his flagship restaurant in downtown Chicago, but the call from his wife brought him home. Cassie sat on the sofa with her knees pulled to her chest looking scared and confused. It broke Jeremy's heart. He'd never wanted this for her. She was such a sweet person. He and his wife held hands while sitting near their youngest child. Hayfa had been near 40 when she'd gotten pregnant with Cassie. She and her husband both thought that they were finished with having kids, but then Cassidy had come and they couldn't have been happier. Her adolescent years hadn't been as seamless as the Redwine's other kids. She'd turned her life around over the last several years though. In truth Jeremy had always known that his Cassie would right her life. She was that kind of kid. It broke his heart to see her like this.

Tony stayed at the warehouse until it was boarded up then went home. He was completely drained, mentally and physically. The shock of it all was wearing off and the wonders he'd witnessed jumped to the front of his mind, but didn't stay there. He'd dabbled in the world of the metaphysical for a while. Today had taught him just how much of an amateur he was. He'd talk to Hayfa later and see if he could get some information from her. She might slip and give him some way to make a little profit.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out the money he'd gotten from Freddie. At least that little asshole did what he said he was going to do, minus $50. He'd told Tony, just before they carted him off to the ambulance, that he was going to use that money to have a drink. Tony didn't begrudge him a Grant. As he thought about it, Tony pulled out a bottle of Canadian whisky and poured himself a double shot. While he drank, he formed a plan to rebuild his warehouse because he wasn't leaving the neighborhood. His men had done their jobs well, but he'd spend some money to give them a little more help. He had some connections with security companies. He'd get them something special.

The next morning Ian got to Warrmer's early, hoping to beat Dan and catch Freddie. He went to the fourth floor and knocked on Dan's open door. He couldn't help but glance at the magnets welded to the door frame. Lisa had bent them out of shape the day before, but she'd flattened them before leaving, and it looked like she'd done a good job. Ian thought of knocking again, but walked inside instead. He saw Dan sitting on his stool in front of his computer with his head in his hands. A frown formed on Ian's face as he approached.

"Hey are you ok? It's not something with Pam or the kids is it?", Ian asked hoping it wasn't as the words left his mouth.

"No", Dan said quickly then shook his head. "Thank God, they're fine. It's not them…" He sighed deeply. "Freddie's dead."

"What!?!", Ian yelled. Freddie had survived the gunfight without a scratch. "I don't understand."

"I got the call from the police early this morning. He didn't have much family, and back when I hired him I told him to put me down as a contact. I'd forgotten about it." Dan's voice trailed off and he shook his head. He didn't realize just how close he'd gotten to Freddie over the years, but he felt like he'd lost a family member.

"How'd it happen? Did they tell you?"

"Yeah", Dan began and cleared his throat. "He lost control on the Dan Ryan. They found receipts from a liquor store and an empty bottle of vodka in the passenger seat with an unopened one in the back." Dan got up and walked over to Freddie's desk. "I wonder what the hell happened to him yesterday that made him want to drink then get behind the wheel?"

"I don't know", Ian forced himself to lie. "You know where to find me if you need someone to chat with", Ian said and left quickly. He couldn't bring himself to tell Dan that Freddie was working on the a super soldier program, that he used his knowledge to help end lives by erasing and rewriting human brains. He couldn't tell Dan that his former assistant had gone to a warehouse to do business with a somewhat shady character who worked with one toe in the legitimate world and the other nine in the underworld. He didn't want to tell Dan that he and Freddie ahd been in the middle of the gun battle that was all over the news.  Ian made it into the hallway before he stopped and turned around. He exhaled slowly then turned back around. He knocked on Dan's door and stuck his head in. "Actually Dan, there is something we need to talk about."

to be continued....

Recent Chapters

There are plenty of others where this story came from.  Please check out the bookshelf for all the past chapters of Power and Fury and my other series.

comments and criticisms welcome: dem2@hotmail.com