Two ATVs careened toward the hard ground at the bottom of a drop that was around a hundred feet or so down, followed shortly by four human (or at least humanoid Biolems in two cases) figures. The quartet and their rides had been picked up and hurled off the path and over the edge of that cliff by the very edge of the incredibly powerful explosion that had just utterly annihilated the ghost town cabins where they had been moments earlier.

  There was no way Irelyn could catch and carry all three of the others in that time, even if she herself would be fine with that sort of drop. Fortunately, she didn't have to rely on only herself. Her best friend, her partner, the one who had been gone for so long, was there, and the two of them immediately acted as one. In that moment, it was almost like Haley had never betrayed their team, had never betrayed Irelyn herself. It was almost like she had never even left.

  Irelyn reached out to grab Sierra, the nearest of the other two. She yanked the girl up against herself, inverting in the air to put her feet down in order to absorb the rapidly approaching impact. Even acting instantly, the moment they went off that cliff, it was still all she could do to catch Sierra in time while the hard ground was rushing up. A hundred foot drop passed almost instantly.

  Meanwhile, Haley was already using her glider echo while catching hold of Paige. It wouldn't keep them up for long with both of their weight, especially when they were so close to the ground already, but it slowed their fall just enough.

  Irelyn landed with Sierra in her arms, dropping the other girl off to the side before falling forward onto her hands and knees. Yes, she could easily take a simple drop like that, but being hurtled off the cliff by an explosion that had knocked her off the racing ATV, and then needing to catch the other girl in time had still taken a lot out of her.

  Nearby, Haley and Paige landed and slumped as well. All four of them laid there in the dirt and weeds of that dry riverbed, not even daring to move or say anything until they had recovered a bit.

  After several long seconds while the dust was clearing, Irelyn finally picked up her head, coughing a few times. “Are… are we all alive?” One by one, the other three weakly confirmed that they were. It hadn't been pretty, and it definitely wasn't fun, but they had managed to get far enough away from that explosion that it didn't instantly vaporize them the way it definitely would have if they were still standing anywhere near Ground Zero when that rocket had hit.

  Eventually, after breathing in and out heavily for another moment, Irelyn cursed and groaned while picking herself up, extending a hand to help Sierra to her feet. “Well, apparently they don’t want to ask us questions anymore. And now they think we’re dead, so goodie for us. Maybe we can use that against the bastards. I don't know about you three, but I'm about ready to find whoever ordered that rocket strike so I can snap the fucker in half.” It wasn't just about the fact that someone had tried to kill her. Not in the least. No, they had launched a fucking rocket at Haley, Sierra, and Paige as well. Whoever was responsible for that was really going to regret every choice they had ever made that led them here before this shit was over.

  Groaning and cursing under her breath, Haley picked herself up as well, rubbing a bruise on her arm. She looked as rough as Irelyn felt. “Something's wrong. Something changed. They aren't trying to catch us anymore. They don't care about getting information. After all this, after everything they went through to find that portal, there's only one reason they wouldn't care about finding out what we know.”

  Irelyn nodded grimly. “Because they already know where it is. We have to get back there right now. But I don't think our rides are going to help much with that.” She nodded toward the burning, crumpled heaps of metal that had been working ATVs just a minute earlier. “And every other vehicle nearby that we could’ve used just got blown up.” It was all she could do not to scream right then. They weren’t in a good position at the moment.

  “So we’ll walk. You’ll jump, we’ll do whatever it takes,” Haley was saying, already starting to move purposefully. “We’re not sitting around here twiddling our goddamn thumbs while those motherfuckers hurt my friends. Let’s get off our asses and go.”

  “They should already have those troops of their own out protecting the lake entrance though, right?” That was Sierra, even as she started to follow the older girl. “I mean, after we warned them not to trust that Senator Parrs guy, they said they were gonna send out their security people to keep the entrance safe. No way they’re sitting ducks right now.”

  “Wait, what?” Irelyn found herself piping up at that, looking back and forth between the other two with an uncertain frown even as she and Paige followed them through the ravine at a brisk jog. “You warned the Adherents about who? What did we miss?”

  So, Sierra gave them the quick rundown, about the whole overhearing what sounded like Mr. Pause thing, only for the girl to realize that it was this Mr. Parrs. Or rather, Senator Parrs. He had obviously been expecting the Adherents to turn to him for help, which would have given him exactly what he needed to send in his own people to take over their whole organization. That was what this attack was about. But now that they knew better, it wasn’t like he was just going to give up on that. No, now that they knew not to trust him, he was obviously throwing all his cards into the straight-on assault.

  “And yeah,” Haley agreed with a grunt once all that was clear. “They’ll be able to hold out for a bit, especially after we--or you guys took out the speedster and the armored guy. No telling what else these bastards brought with them, but losing those two has to hurt. That’s gotta be why they decided to just throw a rocket at us. They don’t need us to tell them where the entrance is anymore, and they wanted to make sure we couldn’t get back to help the Adherents guard the entrance. But you know what, they can just go ahead and start being disappointed. Cuz we’re getting back there right the hell now.”

  “I’ve got an idea for that,” Irelyn announced, shaking off her confusion and uncertainty about the whole senator thing. They would deal with him once this situation was stable. But right now, the most important thing was to make sure the Adherents were safe. They might have their own troops out protecting that portal, but who knew how long they could hold out against the army these people had brought with them. To that end, she quickly explained what she wanted to try, then asked Haley if it sounded plausible.

  “I dunno,” the other woman replied, “but I’m done being patient, so let’s give it a shot.”

  First, Irelyn took hold of Haley, readied herself, and then leapt to the top of the ravine. She quickly did the same with the other two. Once they were back on level ground, she held Haley once again, took a breath, and jumped as high as she could manage. That took her almost seventy-five feet up with the single leap. Just as they reached the apex of the jump and before they could start to go back down, Haley started to use her glider Echo, making a motion with her hands as though holding onto the invisible bar while her body straightened out horizontally. Just like that, she was gliding forward through the air.

  The other two had been running along as quickly as they could underneath the pair, and were right there as Irelyn dropped back down. She grabbed Sierra, glanced upward, and jumped again, as far ahead and up as she could go. That leap took the two of them almost exactly to where Haley’s invisible glider had carried her. They got close enough for Irelyn to give Sierra a heave that way so Haley could reach down and catch her hand. That extra weight would, once again, pull her down sooner than she would have dropped otherwise, but it wouldn’t be there for long. Assuming this plan worked.

  Dropping down once more, Irelyn landed near Paige. With a grunt, she hauled the other girl up and launched herself back toward Haley and Sierra. So far, so good. All four of them were in the air now. But it was the next part that was actually going to be tricky.

  As soon as she saw them coming, Haley stopped using her glider Echo. Instead, she used two different ones in rapid succession. First was the parachute. Still gripping Sierra’s arm, she put her other hand through a motion like she was pulling a ripcord, before abruptly being jerked upwards and back by the invisible chute. Immediately after that, her feet seemed to come down on an invisible floor, stopping her fall completely for just a moment. But it wasn’t a floor, of course. Instead, Haley was using her large crate Echo, the thing she used to get higher without using the ladder. Among other uses.

  Obviously, the invisible crate wouldn’t stop Haley’s fall for longer than a second. The thing itself would just start to fall and then fade away. But it wasn’t there for her anyway. It was there for Irelyn. Haley’s larger, more long-term echoes like the ladder, the glider, and this box didn’t actually work right for anyone who wasn’t the girl herself. They could experience very brief physical sensation from them, like momentarily feeling wet when an echoed bucket of water was thrown at them, or getting a bruise from being hit by an echoed brick. But anything with a sustained effect wouldn’t continue to affect them. They might be slowed by the parachute for possibly one entire second before dropping normally once more.

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  Fortunately, Irelyn only needed one second, or even less than a second, of the crate working for her. She had deliberately jumped higher than Haley, ignoring the strain of carrying Paige with her. As she came down right there, the woman extended both feet, waiting until she felt the (very momentary) sensation of something solid there. The very instant her feet touched that crate Echo, before the solid sensation could fade away, she immediately kicked off it to launch herself higher. At the same time, she grabbed Sierra’s raised and waiting hand. Now she was carrying both girls, while launching off of the invisible crate in the instant before it would cease to exist for her. Yes, this was absurd.

  Meanwhile, now that she wasn’t weighed down by Sierra, Haley shifted to using her glider echo once more and angled herself upward. The wind caught the invisible (nonexistent) wings and sent her flying higher, passing directly under Irelyn and the other two. Now she was quite a bit higher than she had been moments earlier.

  After that, now that they’d gone through the process once and were in the air, the group simply repeated the last couple steps several more times in quick succession. Irelyn would drop through the air with Paige and Sierra, Haley used the parachute to slow herself and stay in one spot, then summoned the crate for Irelyn to jump off of in that single second that it would remain physical for her. She might not have been able to jump nearly as high while carrying the other two as she could on her own without any extra weight, but she could still get about fifty feet or so with each leap.

  Soon, by doing that repeatedly, they were as high as they could reasonably get. High enough for the last part of the plan to work, hopefully. All of that had only taken about thirty seconds or so, even if it had actually felt like at least twenty minutes. Then it was time for the next and final step. Which amounted to Irelyn, Paige, and Sierra all grabbing onto Haley while the latter was using her glider. Yes, the combined weight would drag them down much faster than it would have otherwise, but they were high enough by that point that it didn’t matter. They were able to glide all the way back to the lake much faster than they could have walked, or even run. And whenever they got too low, Haley would create a crate echo for Irelyn to jump off of while carrying the other two, giving the other woman a chance to angle the glider echo upward to regain lost height. It wasn’t the most graceful or easy method of travel, but at least it worked.

  Even better, it meant they approached from a direction the mercenaries couldn’t expect. Not that they would have been expecting to see them anyway, after that explosion, but still. Approaching silently from the air was easily their best move when it came to taking those people by surprise.

  Irelyn didn’t want to go into another fight this soon, especially after what they had all been through. Not only surviving that explosion, but also because Paige had barely survived her encounter with all those soldiers and the speedster. Plus, even if she didn’t want to admit it, Sierra had definitely been emotionally affected by what she’d had to do with the grenade to stop that speedster. Maybe not so much the act of killing him, though Irelyn was pretty sure she was affected by that in some way. But even if she didn’t care about the killing part at all, the stress of exactly how she had gone about it, the fear that she could have died if he didn’t fall for the trick, had to be a lot.

  Then there was Irelyn herself. Yes, she had killed before, albeit rarely. It definitely wasn’t completely new to her. But she still didn’t enjoy it. Between that and the whole fight that had led up to making that choice, she would have preferred to take a break for at least an hour or so, just to let herself process things and breathe a little bit. Instead, she had rushed back to get to Paige, only to find out that both her new sisters had gone through a lot. And then the explosion happened.

  Yes, truthfully, if Irelyn had her way she would have chosen to give all of them a break for the rest of the day, at least. They needed a vacation from their vacation. But that wasn’t going to happen. Senator Parrs’ mercenaries, if he really was the one behind all this, weren’t going to let them call timeout. They had to get back to that lake and stop these fucks before they took over that portal. From what Irelyn had heard, there were children in that place, families who stayed there. These bastards had to be stopped now, before this whole thing ended up getting so much worse than it already was.

  And there it was, just ahead of them. The lake was looming far below, and they could already see signs that their assumptions were correct. The mercs knew where the portal was, or at least the right area. A swarm of drones were flying all around, occasionally sending a small beam of bright light, a laser, down into the trees. A single helicopter, possibly the only one the mercs had left, was hovering there, the machine gunner filling the woods with bullets. Meanwhile, dozens of those mercenary troops, the footsoldiers, were trying to make their way to the water, clearly using the drones and helicopter to clear a path. Or at least attempting to. For the moment, it looked like they were being held back. Even as Irelyn took that in, she saw the helicopter swing away through the air to avoid a rocket that was fired up at it. Two of the drones weren’t as lucky when it came to a second rocket, and a third went down under a bit of sustained gunfire from somewhere within the trees.

  All of that helped, but it wasn’t enough. The helicopter was still swinging back around, even as the machine gunner opened up on the area those rockets had come from. The troops on the ground were spreading out and starting to push forward. There were more drones. The Adherents’ security people couldn’t keep up their defense forever. They needed help.

  Paige dropped first, letting go of Haley so she could dive straight into two of the soldiers who were just heading into the woods. Sierra let go right after her sister, crashing into a couple more. The two Biolems immediately began hitting the rest from behind, taking them by surprise.

  Irelyn released her friend just after the other two, aiming for the largest cluster of troops. As she fell, the woman could see Haley continuing on toward the helicopter, dismissing the glider echo at the last second so she could land inside and deal with the gunner and pilot. And from the sound of things, she sure wasn't being gentle with them.

  That was okay, Irelyn wasn't exactly in the mood to be gentle either. She came down right in the middle of a large cluster of the mercenaries, who were just turning to see what was going on as the sound of Paige and Sierra dealing with the others reached them. Suddenly, before they could react to that, the group was thoroughly distracted by a problem of their own.

  Thankfully, the Adherents’ people seemed to realize what was going on, and quickly pressed the advantage. Just like that, it was the mercenaries who were on the defensive, caught between the newcomers and the security team. There were only about ten of the Adherents, but they were wearing some sort of protective vests that projected a light personal force field around them, and carried plenty of weapons. One of them had his own suit of power armor. He was the source of those rockets that were taking down the drones.

  As for the helicopter, Haley got rid of the occupants before landing the thing properly just at the edge of the lake. As soon as it was down, she took over the machine gun and began tearing through what remained of the drones. That gave the Adherent in the power armor a chance to turn his full attention to the ground troops. One of their jeeps with a mounted gun tried to drive in, only for its driver and passengers to dive for safety just before one of those rockets blew it apart.

  Those couple of minutes passed in a blur. All Irelyn could do was keep dealing with the threats in front of her while keeping half an eye on the others and helping when they needed it. Everything was just a flurry of motion and so much violence. The Adherents had a chance now, but it wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination.

  Finally, the last few of the mercenary troops who were still on their feet had fled. Irelyn wanted to go after them, but she didn't dare risk leaving the others, just in case. It was more important to make sure everyone here was safe. They could get information out of the ones who weren't able to flee, and hopefully find out if there were any more surprises.

  The Adherent in the armor turned to face the four of them as soon as they had regrouped. The armor itself was gray and black, stood about eight feet tall, and quite a bit wider than the one Battlement had used. It looked like it was meant to be a mobile weapons platform, and Irelyn was pretty sure he had much stronger things on there that he hadn't wanted to risk deploying in this sort of close range. He was probably supposed to be artillery support.

  “Thanks,” he started, “we owe you more than we can say.” His words were met with a chorus of agreement from the security troops in their red and gray uniforms, including those forcefield vests.

  Haley introduced them. “Girls, this is Baton. Yes, he’s fully aware of the irony of the name given all the guns and missiles and a distinct lack of melee weapons. He thinks it’s hilarious.”

  Baton started to say something then, before his armored body abruptly jerked around to look back at the lake. “Oh shit, back, back, get back! Everyone move!” Even as he said that, the man was starting to lumber that way, gradually picking up speed as he waved his arms for his troops to get moving.

  Irelyn was already moving after him, the others right with her. “What? What happened?”

  Without looking back at her, Baton replied, “Someone got through while we were distracted. They’re not sure who, or… or what they’re capable of, but they already killed two of my men back on the other side. Whoever they are, they have powers. Very dangerous powers.”

  “Flea--” Haley started.

  “I know,” Irelyn interrupted. She started to look at the other two, mouth opening.

  “Don’t even,” Paige immediately put in, cutting her off. “We’re going too. We’ll help.”

  Irelyn felt like arguing, but pushed it down with a sigh. “Okay then.

  “Let’s go finish this.”

  Joke Tags: Be Honest? Irelyn And Haley? You Looked Up That Infinite Jump Glitch In The Back Of An Old Nintendo Power Magazine Didn’t You?