“Kaveh!” She scanned the ground for him, confused. Had Nikola already gotten him onto a plate, ferried him to safety? After another round of bullets, she looked at the ground and saw a black, rumpled mass half-sticking out from behind some brush. A mass that looked like a pair of human legs.

No.

“Kaveh! Answer me, Kaveh!”

“He is gone.”

Nikola was standing now, had turned around and had his attention on the body that had collapsed next to the brush. Gunfire was ringing far too rapidly to keep count of the shots. Multiple guns. Multiple assault rifles.

“Save him!” Cora yelled, her voice tremulous with terror and disbelief. “Ampersand, I know you can do it. Save him!”

“I can’t.”

Cora noticed the air was thickening with bullets, not zipping by but stopping, caught in the air like flies getting stuck to flypaper, hanging in a cluster in front of Nikola.

“Please, you have to try! Please, I’m begging you, save him!”

“I cannot revive him. He is already gone.”

There was a disagreement among the shooters. One of them was still firing, another several were yelling. Perhaps they knew that they’d not hit one of the invaders but a human. But whoever was still shooting did not care. The ends justified the means.

They were close now, perhaps fifty feet away. She could hear their voices, probably should have been able to make out what they were saying, but all she heard was gibberish. Nikola had not moved, was just staring down at Kaveh, all the while every round fired getting caught in the cloud in front of him.

Then Nikola’s head snapped up toward the militia, his focus narrowing, what little light there was to be absorbed concentrating in his eyes like pulsars. The militiamen got a few more rounds off before, perhaps, they realized their mistake, that none of the bullets were connecting. But it was too late for all of them.

Nikola’s posture became antagonistic, head down, fingers splayed out like barbs in a briar patch. The air itself trembled. Then everything lit up, every piece of brush within a hundred-foot radius ignited, and in seconds, they were surrounded by fire. The cloud of bullets was terrifyingly clear now in the light of the blaze, and then the cloud began to spin, turning into a tornado of fire and metal. The tornado at first took the form of a whirlpool directly in front of Nikola, but then the whirlpool spread. Soon the tornado enveloped all of them—Nikola, Ampersand, Cora. Kaveh.

The bullets continued building up momentum, swirling in a circle of fire and smoke and heat around them until they were going so fast she could no longer see them. Then Nikola released them, so fast she could hear them zipping overhead, cutting up the air in their wake. She heard several voices cry out, but only briefly.