Lylyss: Okay, here's my response to your Dare. It turned out a bit longer than I anticipated…oh well. I enjoyed writing it anyway.
This was a ludicrous idea.
I strode toward Wall 18, flexing my fingers. Soon, they’d see me. Soon, the rebels would open fire. And as every Hero who’d fought the rebels of Wall 18 testified, these marksmen were good.
So this was a ludicrous idea. So what. I didn’t have a reputation to spoil, anyway.
Mud squelched under my bare feet. Before the superwar, this region had been grassy, verdant—now torn up by innumerable charges and weeks of rain. I rubbed my thumb against the deep green nail polish on my forefinger. Perhaps the plants would return if Wall 18 fell.
I saw the flash before I heard the bang. My fingers twitched. The nail polish smoked. Centimetres in front of my face, a plasma blast exploded on my invisible shield.
I kept walking. They’d figure it out sooner or later.
Across the wide grey panorama of Wall 18, flashes lit up. I smoked my nail polish harder, making the shield transparent, visible, stronger, and broke into a run. The blasts from the rebels’ pulsers splashed against my shield, failing to penetrate.
I smoked the vivid red nail polish on the other hand and pointed at a flash of light indicating a rebel’s presence. A thin line of light launched itself from one finger, laser-straight, and exploded on my target. Smoke billowed outwards from Wall 18.
A low droning began, an approaching engine. One of the rebel planes, I guessed. That meant I had about ten seconds to get under cover. My shields couldn’t hold up against a plane’s firepower.
I rushed for the wall, skidded to a stop in the mud, and smoked the creamy blue nail polish on my toenails. I lifted one muddy foot and pressed it against the wall. The bare skin of my foot stuck to the stone.
Excellent.
I scrambled up the wall, my hands and feet sticking to the stone and metal at will. Men shouted on the other side, their voices muffled. Evidently they hadn’t expected a Hero with this much power.
But Evictress was concerned. If Evictress was concerned, I went.
I reached the top of the wall as a fighter jet zipped overhead. The gust of air swayed me backwards and blew my hair, but the adhesion between my feet and the stone remained strong.
For the briefest moment, I saw the pilot’s surprised expression and grinned. Smoking green nail polish in case a rebel decided to take a shot at me, I stepped to the edge of the wall and began to descend.
The rebel camp below bustled about. I squinted at a tarp covering a few suspicious shapes. Pulsers? Entrenchments? Skylights? Were they preparing for an extended assault? They hadn’t had those last time I was here.
Shouts rose beneath me. I glanced down. A squad of men in khaki uniforms spilled from a door in the wall and pointed pulsers at me.
“Really, you should have learned by now,” I said, though they couldn’t hear me for distance. “You can’t kill me with pulsers.”
I smoked the nail polish on the little finger of my right hand—black, the most devastating shade I’d ever found. Quelled the blue, and let go of the wall.
Air whistled past my ears, blowing my long hair free of its ponytail, flapping my clothes. I closed my eyes. I could almost imagine I was free, free of the superwar, free of Evictress.
I opened my eyes and sighed at the reality below me. But I wasn’t.
Then I hit the ground.
Around me, the earth erupted outwards like a volcano of mud, blasting rebels in all directions. Some hit the wall and slid down it, limp bodies, reminding me of dolls. A few managed to roll to their feet and loose a few shots, but their aim was wild, pulses buzzing overhead like annoying flies.
I straightened in the depression I had created and extinguished the black nail polish, now almost gone. “I have come for your captain.”
“The captain is here,” said a voice behind me, a hard, familiar voice. “Speak your piece, Hero.”
I spun to face the captain, my hair tangling around my face. He wore black, unlike the khaki of his men, the same colour I remembered from my years here. “Evictress offers you one last chance to surrender Wall 18, Captain Davison.”
He leaned toward me, his eyes narrowing as if searching for a memory. “I know you, somehow, Hero.”
I flicked the hair out of my face with a toss of my head. “I’m surprised you’ve forgotten. I am Unguis now. But once I was Elizabeth Emmett.”
“Elizabeth!” Shock registered on his face, breaking the hard mask I could see he worked to retain. “Your parents…do they know?”
“My parents are not my parents,” I said, my voice sharp like a broken window. “I found my real mother. After you and your men abandoned me to Traveler.”
Davison’s mask returned, his eyes going cold, his mouth pressing into a thin line. “You seem determined to believe that lie, Elizabeth.”
“Unguis.” I took a deep breath. “Evictress offers you one last chance to surrender Wall 18. Her terms have changed since the last challenge. Every living person may go free and take clothes and food, but you must surrender the wall and all your armaments into her hands.”
Davison waved a hand. “Tell Evictress not to send a slave next time.”
“I am not a slave!” I took a deep breath. “I have the power to kill you, Captain, as I’m sure you’ve seen. I found my powers when my mother found me. My mother is Evictress.”
The captain’s mask broke again. “
Evictress is your mother?”
“Do you agree to the terms?” I snapped.
The captain’s chest heaved. He looked around at his men, the muddied rebels gathering with weapons in their hands. They recognised me too. And by the weapons pointed at me, they recognised that I was a threat far superior to any they’d ever faced. The fighter jet zipped low overhead, ruffling our hair.
Davison finally returned his gaze to me. His face hardened, and I knew what he’d say before he said it.
“Kill her.”
“So I was right,” I said. “You did abandon me.”
The first wave of pulses bounced off my shield. I marched toward the captain, risking a swift glance downwards to see how much green I had left. Not much. I’d have to finish this quickly.
“War is cold, Elizabeth,” Davison said. “War is hard. We retreated that day. I sent a man to get you. Evidently his message didn’t get through.”
“It amounts to the same thing.” I stopped a metre from him, marvelling at his boldness to stand within arm’s reach of death. “You abandoned me. So I abandoned you.”
He smirked. No humour. “So you’re just as bad as I am.”
I stared at him. No humour. “I’m going to kill you now, Captain.”
“Go ahead,” he said. “I know your weakness, Elizabeth.”
“Unguis! Not Elizabeth!” I pointed my red fingernail at him. The nail polish smoked, a finger of scarlet smoke trailing upwards. The line of red light ignited and pierced the captain’s chest.
No change.
My eyes widened.
Davison scowled at me. “As I said. I know your weakness, Elizabeth.” He stuck both fingers into a pocket and pulled out a small white object. “I was expecting you. So I decided to buy cotton balls.”
“Cotton balls?” My thoughts raced back to one night, one fateful night, the night I had first discovered my powers after the rebels of Wall 18 abandoned me to Traveler’s forces.
A prison matron had tried to clean me up. Cosmetics weren’t allowed in the camps. I had painted my fingernails the night before, the one luxury I’d enjoyed among the rebels. Painted them vivid red.
The polish had lasted long enough for me to break out of the camp. The only fingernail I’d found myself unable to smoke was the one the camp matron had begun to clean…with a cotton ball.
Davison lunged for me. I flared my invisible shield. He bounced off it and grunted. “Shoot her!”
The pulsers ripped into my shield. Energy blasts danced around me in a cacophony of colour, but I stood in the eye of the storm, unmarked, unharmed.
I could kill them. I could kill them all.
Then my green ran out.