Boom!

She staggered as the cell shook around her. The light flickered again, more than before, and her heart clutched. For an instant, she was certain she was dead, but … the universe continued to exist. She continued to exist.

Kira straightened and looked at the door.

Screw the UMC and screw the League. She was getting out.

CHAPTER III

ESCAPE!

1.

Determined, Kira went to the door.

She had only two options. Find a way to disarm the explosives or find a way to reroute the current so she could break down the door without ending up as a white-hot lump of slag.

The floor rumbled.

Whatever she did, she’d have to do it fast.

Disarming would be safer, but she couldn’t figure out how to disarm it. Even if she could sneak a few tendrils past the slot in the door, she wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing on the other side. Groping around blindly, she’d be just as likely to blow herself up as not.

Okay. That left rerouting the current. She knew the xeno could protect her from being shocked. Which meant it could channel electricity into conductive paths around her body. So theoretically, it ought to be able to form wires or some such that could keep the current from being disrupted if she opened the door. Right? If not, she was dead.

The light dimmed for a second.

She might be dead anyway.

She covered her face with the suit and studied the lines of electricity embedded within the polyhedron’s outer surface. A half-dozen of them crossed the door. Those were the ones she’d have to bypass.

Kira took a moment to visualize, with as much detail and clarity as she could manage, what she wanted. More importantly, she tried to impress her intentions on the Soft Blade, as well as the consequences of failure. As Alan would say, “All go boom.”

“No boom,” Kira murmured. “Not this time.”

Then she released the Soft Blade and willed it to act on its own.

A cluster of thin black wires sprouted from her chest and extended outward until they touched the spots, on either side of the door, where the lines of electricity originated. Then additional wires leaped across the door and joined each contact point to its intended partner.

She could feel the xeno drilling into the walls then, burrowing with atomically sharp tips through the paneling, toward the leads.

The cell shuddered hard enough to rock her, and her breath caught.

Just a few more microns of drilling and … Contact! The glowing, blue-white lines of electricity jumped from their established paths into the wires the Soft Blade had laid down. Around them, the translucent loops of magnetic force shifted as well, roiling and realigning as they sought a new state of equilibrium.

Kira stood frozen, waiting for the inevitable explosion. When it didn’t happen, she relaxed slightly.

Hold, she told the Soft Blade, and reached between the wires. She placed her fingers over the door’s locking mechanism and drove the suit into the door. Metal screeched, and there was a sticky, tearing sound as the seal around the door parted.