“Don’t,” was the immediate response. “Don’t touch the bomb.”

“I’m not touching the bomb,” I said. “Get away from the door and the wall to the right of the door.”

Snag had felt secure enough to stick his arms through the wall and not jar the bomb too badly.

I’d take his cue.

I put my arm through the wall, felt my forcefield go down. I heard the exclamations. Once I was sure I was good to move, I dragged it to one side, tearing a hole, felt one of the studs, moved it to the other side, and felt another. About two feet of clearance between the studs.

I saw the faces on the other side. Worried. Angry.

The window shattered. Snag reached through, seizing me by the throat. He swung by one arm outside the building, dragging his other arm through the windows and slats, shattering them with explosive force, as he drove me toward the wall opposite the hole I’d just made.

I still had my forcefield up. He hadn’t grabbed me that hard. Flight and forcefield together helped to stop me in my tracks. Floorboards shattered under me, and a window beside me broke as the force was transferred out.

Seizing his arm, I swung it like a bat, hurling him into the room. I maintained my grip on him as I did it.

He touched the ground with one foot, then changed trajectory. Dust fell from the ceiling as he landed on it, upside-down, his arm still extended my way.

I felt the machinery hum with activity, and tore the hand away, pushing it away from my throat and face. The emotion effect grazed me, minor, but I hadn’t recovered from the last hit.

A small kind of loss, this. The hit didn’t do what the first had, rounding out a memory. It did buzz through other memories. Ones that were more minor, that I’d never put to rest.

Being in the bus stop with my mom. Weird, because it had once been a happy memory. She’d been stitching up a cut on my forehead while I suppressed my forcefield. The rain had been pouring, streaking the graffiti-covered walls of the bus stop. A moment for just my mom and me. She’d paused midway through the first aid to tell me that she was proud of me. We’d got the guy we were after. Then we had talked about how I’d have to change my hair for a short while to hide the stitches. One of my first times officially out in costume.

It was a memory I kept going back to. One I’d brought up several times in the hospital. Bittersweet somehow, and it had become more bitter and less sweet over time.

It bothered me, brought me down just a bit, because it was something unresolved that had weighed on me, because I was already down a ways.