Page 99 of Static/Cling

The grin that crossed Leif’s face was cruel. Angry. Not his grin at all. “Al Lewis,” he snarled, in a voice also not his own. It was his, yes, issuing from his voice box, his lips, but the tone, the anger, the finality and coldness of it, was not him on any level. “You remember that name for the last second of your life, and know that your experiment is over. Understand me? Over. Thelab is gone. The notes are gone. The men who worked on it are dead. You brought this on yourself.”

A quick jerk of his hands, and Laurier’s neck snapped with a loud, jarringcrack.

Leif slumped, sitting on the man’s chest, head hung, shoulders shaking.

The dog whimpered, let go of the man’s arm, and nuzzled his way under Leif’s hand until Leif scratched behind his ears, and he laid his head against Leif’s chest.

No one else dared move.

Whining when Leif stopped petting him, the dog wiggled free to grip Leif’s sleeve and tug gently until Leif glanced up at him.

“Hey, Dash,” Leif whispered.

The dog kept pulling until it got Leif moving, crawling off the dead man and creaking to his feet.

Before Kassian could move or try to stumble forward for him, Bjorn was there, appearing from behind the smoking servers to gather Leif into his arms and squash him into a bear hug.

“I’ve got you,” Bjorn said into his hair. “I’ve got you, babe.”

Leif melted against him.

“We have to get out of here,” Rufus told Kassian.

“What is happening?” Kassian turned to him. “That had nothing to do with a list of people with powers.”

Rufus nodded. “Yes. It did. Tangentially. The list was of people like Leif. People with undiscovered or low-level mental abilities. People they could use to recapture an escaped…”

“Escaped what?”

“Soul? Ghost? I don’t know, exactly, but right now, we have to leave. You hear the noise?”

Kassian frowned, but then it came flooding back, all the sound he’d blocked out. Distant gunfire. People shouting. Crackling, groaning, whining, like the building itself was complaining about it all. “What’s happening?”

“If I had to guess? George’s people trying to escape our people, and the building is on the verge of burning down.”

“What do you mean, our people?”

“You think I was the only one in here trying to stop all this?”

“Sal said you had a plan.”

“Never mind. We can talk after.”

They rounded a corner as they were talking, and Rufus stopped at a steel door, reaching for the code panel. He’d only punched in a single number when the panel shorted and sparked and sent up a trail of black smoke.

“Shit.” He deposited Kassian against the wall and started to pry at the front of the panel. He’d gotten it free and hanging from a few wires when there was a loud, resonant thud against the door from the outside.

“The hell?”

Kassian grabbed his shoulder and hauled him back from the door just in time, as the heavy metal panel flew inwards to crash against the wall on the other side of the hall.

The dog streaked past them all and flung itself into Roger’s waiting arms.

Next to Roger, a gigantic man stood, gripping one elbow in his opposite hand, looking sheepish. Even slightly curled in on himself like that, he dwarfed Kassian and Rufus.

“Hey.” Roger grinned at them. “We got them, Sal.” To Kassian, he waved a hand. “Let’s jet. Bus is waiting.”

Kassian let Rufus drag him from the building, and checked to make sure Leif and Bjorn were still following.

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