(REWRITING) The Skylar Experiment : Coveting

Chapter Twenty-Seven (p.2) - The Train Chase

516 TUCKED HERSELF IN an alley behind a waste container, holding her bare leg closer. Stinging little blisters dappled the flesh of her outer thigh. The sky was roiling, shifting to tense shades of blue. No shooting came from the littoral, but she heard the stomps of hundreds of boots and the rasp of tires against slick road. Voices shouted over megaphones.

Teetering on her good leg, she glanced down. The blisters were shrinking slowly but surely, and the rash under the fabric started to pale.

Against an opponent such as her, there wasn't any definite strategy. Rhea was experienced, older, and an exact match.

516 needed to preserve as much energy for later if she ought to—

Boom. The container flew over her head and landed upside down, blocking the other end of the alley. Rhea surged with a firm grip on the scalp, rotated her and aimed to slam against the brick, but she maneuvered in a way to flip the blonde woman over her shoulder.

Opening her palms, she summoned broken pieces of their aircraft to them. She felt them zooming toward her back, toward Rhea at an increasing speed.

The pieces started to slow midway. A throb in her mind as she tried to push them against the artificial resistance that was building up behind the women. Rhea flicked her head, meeting her blazing glare.

"Someone's in a mood."

For an answer, 516 cried out, amplified her effort, and freed the sharp scraps hanging in the air like a wrestler turning to place a rival under them. They reeled in to the stronger call, speeding straight for Rhea who understood she couldn't stay there.

Faster than the projectiles, she ran to the back of the alley, vaulted over the container and veered the corner to gain higher ground. She found a ladder and began to scale the building, but 516 followed close behind.

She yanked Rhea off balance, threw her in such a way that her body cracked the pavement underneath, her head bouncing back.

Fury lit her up, this time. Blinking through the soreness, she stretched out her fingers. She focused on the purplish clouds, on the tangible stress striking her cords. And the skies opened. Lightning blasted, potent and charged, yet it missed 516 by an inch. It left a charred hole in the ground where she last stood, smoke wafting.

She sent a second bolt, then another, and never managed to catch the damn thing. But in the distraction, Rhea could get up without being attacked. The air reeked of ozone and scorched tarmac.

She lunged, landing a powerful punch in the abdomen and a knee to the chin. The dark-haired girl stumbled without a sound. She collapsed on all fours, heaving. One arm folded around her stomach.

"Got it out of your system, now?" Rhea said, standing over her.

Her back arched. Glowing eyes settled between her supporting hands and froze. Rhea spoke again, and the words didn't form. They were disjointed, faraway. Something else took place in her mind and it was growing, blocking out the connection of thoughts.

Thunder clapped. Under the sweeping clouds and the drizzle, her own hands looked foreign. 

"Move again and it's lights out," Rhea warned. "Do not—"

A burst of energy swelled from 516 to her, stealing the words from her mouth. Her throat dried. Her lungs collapsed, and it felt as though the oxygen was fleeing her body. Something warm spilled down her nose, and a great ache bent her over.

Veins under 516's jaw and around the eyes began to radiate. In a gust of wind, she zoomed to the roof of a compound and looked inland, beyond the base. But the older woman was not so easily overcome. Rhea soared to the building in front to block her path, wide pupils pulsing with dismay. She wiped her upper lip with a sleeve.