There was nothing funny about it.
Zil would not allow there to be anything funny about it.
“What are you two laughing at?” Zil demanded.
“It was kind of—” Antoine began.
Zil cut him off. “He’s a freak. Duck Zhang is a mutant freak. Who tried to kill us.”
Hank looked sharply at him, hesitating, but only for a moment before he picked up Zil’s line. “Yeah. Freak tried to kill us.”
“This stuff isn’t right, man,” Antoine agreed. He sat up and wrapped his hands around his bruised ankle. “How were we supposed to know he was a mutant freak? We were just playing around. It’s like anything we do now we have to be worried about whether someone is normal or some kind of freak.”
Zil stood and looked down into the empty pool. The hole was ragged with broken tile teeth. A mouth that had opened and swallowed Duck and almost gotten Zil as well. Alive or dead, Duck had made a fool of Zil. And someone was going to have to pay for that.
FIVE
104 HOURS, 5 MINUTES
“BULLETS ARE FAST. That’s why they work,” Computer Jack said condescendingly. “If they moved slowly, they wouldn’t be worth much.”
“I’m fast,” Brianna said. “That’s why I’m the Breeze.” She shaded her eyes from the sun and squinted at the target she had in mind, a real estate sign in front of an empty lot pushed up against the slope of the ridge.
Jack pulled out his handheld. He punched in the numbers. “The slowest bullet goes 330 meters per second. Say 1,100 feet per second in round numbers. I found a book full of useless statistics like that. Man, I miss Google.” He seemed to actually choke up with emotion. The word “Google” caught in his throat.
Brianna laughed to herself. Computer Jack was just so Computer Jack. Still, he was cute in his own awkward, maladjusted, twelve-year-old and barely into puberty, voicebreaking kind of way.
“Anyway, 3,600 seconds in an hour, right? So about four million feet per hour, divided by 5,280 feet in a mile. So call it 750 miles an hour. Just one side or the other of the speed of sound. Other bullets are faster.”
“I bet I can do that,” Brianna said. “Sure, I can.”
“I do not want to shoot that gun,” Jack said, looking dubiously at the gun in her hand.
“Oh, come on, Jack. We’re across the highway, we’re aiming toward the ridge. What’s the worst that happens? You shoot a horned toad?”
“I’ve never shot a gun,” Jack said.
“Any idiot can do it,” Brianna assured him, although she had never fired a weapon, either. “But I guess it kicks a little, so you have to grip it firmly.”
“Don’t worry about that. I have a strong grip.”
It took Brianna a few seconds to figure out his ironic tone. She remembered hearing someone say that Jack had powers. That he was extremely strong.
He didn’t look strong. He looked like a dweeb. He had messy blond hair and crooked glasses. And it always seemed like he wasn’t really looking through those glasses but was seeing his own reflection in the lenses.
“Okay. Get ready,” Brianna instructed. “Hold the gun firmly. Aim it at the sign. Let’s do a—”
The gun exploded before she could finish. An impossibly loud bang, a cloud of bluish smoke, and a strangely satisfying smell.
“I was going to say let’s do a test shot,” Brianna said.
“Sorry. I kind of squeezed the trigger.”
“Yeah. Kind of. This time just aim it. At the sign over there, not at me.”
Jack leveled the gun. “Should I count down?”
“Yes.”
“On zero?”
“On zero.”
“Ready?”
Brianna dug her sneakers into the dirt, bent down, cocked one arm forward, the other back, like she was frozen in midrun.
“Ready.”
“Three. Two. One.”
Brianna leaped, just a split second ahead of Jack pulling the trigger. Instantly she realized her mistake: the bullet was behind her, coming after her.
Much better to be chasing the bullet rather than have it chasing you.
Brianna flew. Almost literally flew. If she spread her arms and caught some wind she’d go airborne for fifty feet because she was moving faster, quite a bit faster, than a jet racing down the runway toward take-off.
She ran in an odd way, pumping her arms like any runner, but turning her palms back with each stroke. For almost all the mutants of the FAYZ, the hands were the focus of their powers.
The air screamed past her ears. Her short hair blew straight back. Her cheeks vibrated, her eyes stung. Breathing was a struggle as she gasped at hurricane winds.
The world around her became a smear of color, objects flying past at speeds her brain could not process. Streaks of light without definite form.
She knew from experience that her feet would need to be iced down afterward to stop the swelling. She’d already popped two Advil in anticipation.
She was fast. Impossibly fast.
But she was not faster than a speeding bullet.
She risked a glance back.
The bullet was gaining. She could see it, a blur, a small gray blur spiraling after her.
Brianna dodged right, just half a step.
The bullet zoomed languidly by.
Brianna chased it, but it hit the dirt—not really anywhere near the target—while Brianna was still a dozen feet back.
She dropped speed quickly, used the upward slope to slow herself gently, and came to a stop.