Ida itched her leg with the barrel of her handgun before pointing it back in the general direction of her hostages. She watched the line of SWAT officers on the other side of the hotel’s huge windows, saw how they tensed and shifted with each of her movements. It amused her, absently, in the way someone running a mean-spirited but ultimately harmless prank might be amused.

  These cops weren’t in on the “prank.” Half of them were probably sure they were about to see a few innocent tourists get executed, right in front of them, on the job. She’d felt a tinge of guilt about that, when she’d planned this, but it evaporated when she remembered that the other half would probably be itching to execute her, the moment they got the word.

  “Can you repeat your list?” garbled the walkie-talkie clipped to her belt. An officer outside had his head cocked toward his own device, a counterpart to the one they’d tossed into the building for her. “Clearly and slowly.”

  “You don’t already have it?” Ida said. “Listen, it’s important you follow through quick, here, I don’t want this dragging on any more than you do-”

  “We’re working on it, we just want to be a hundred percent clear about your demands. We want them on record.”

  Ida sighed, tried to recall her half-memorized list. “I want an agent of the federal government, preferably somebody high-up, from one of the big 4 intelligence agencies, to have a prolonged talk with. When you’re sending word out for your agent, tell them that I mentioned Tunguska, Phoenix Above, Singapore, and the Saint Louis Stalker. I only want to speak to someone with a high enough clearance to know what I mean by that list. If they get here, and they can’t communicate to me that they understand what I’m talking about, then I start shooting.”

  The elderly man she was aiming at quailed softly at that, and she shielded her mouth with a hand to whisper to him. “Not really. The gun’s fake, look, it’s plastic. I just have to say this shit or they’re gonna take all day to-”

  Across the lobby, one of the windows near the ceiling shattered. Ida perked up, genuinely surprised by the noise, then scanned the floor. She sighed when she spotted the bullet laying on the carpet, flattened and scorched.

  “Did you just shoot me?” She turned back toward the line of cops, lips pursed. They all stiffened now, several raised their own weapons. “Cut that shit out! You’re gonna get someone hurt!”

  She heard another shot, a shrill whistle arcing through the now open window. She saw it this time, watched the bullet come to a stop half an inch from her right eye and hover for a moment as all of its momentum and force was absorbed by her aura. The bullet dropped to her feet and sizzled harmlessly.

  “Seriously!” she barked into the walkie-talkie. “Tell your sniper to cool off. He might hit a bystander.”

  She paced the line of hostages, felt her first pang of actual worry today. She’d resigned herself to having to kill a cop, maybe, if they tried gassing her and she had to make a run for it, but she hadn’t considered that a hostage might actually die. Whatever conscience Ida still had, she knew that the death of a perfectly innocent stranger would probably rest pretty badly on it.

  “Okay, new plan, new plan, everyone up,” she poked her gun toward the ceiling and nodded toward the check-in desk. “You can take your hands off your heads for this. Everybody behind the desk. Quick but orderly. Anyone tries to-”

  One of her hostages let out a strangled yelp and sprinted past her, down the hall, and after a moment of frenzied indecision, fled into a bathroom. Ida watched this impassively, a little bemused.

  “Anyone else tries to make a break for it, I shoot. Don’t make this harder than it has to be, nobody has to die here today, blah blah blah.”

  “Why are you doing this?” whispered the old man as she led the group, single-file, through the lobby. “You don’t seem the type.”

  She ushered them behind the makeshift cover of the desk, a little doubtful that it’d stop another high-caliber bullet. “If I’m not too late, and the feds listen to me, you’ll never have any idea. If not, give it about two weeks.”

  “Two weeks until what?”

  “If it happens, you’ll know. You’ll see it on the news and remember this moment and think ‘oh, yeah, I can see why that nice lady was trying to stop all this.’” Her hostages safely stowed, Ida shuffled to the side, where a corner could jut protectively between her and the broken window. She wasn’t all that worried about getting shot, they could walk that sniper guy in here and let him unload his whole clip point-blank for all the damage it’d do to her, but she figured it couldn’t hurt the situation to dissuade more gunfire.

  A huge black SUV roared into view outside and screeched to a halt. After a pause, a young man climbed out, flanked by two more armored officers. He walked briskly over to the negotiator and took the walkie from him.

  “Good afternoon. Ida Miller, my name is Liam Hatcher. I work for the FBI.” The voice crackling from her walkie was even, smooth, almost friendly. Outside, the man produced a badge and flashed it her way. The gesture was a little silly; Ida could see the badge in the utmost detail, even from this distance and through the lobby’s tinted glass, but he probably didn’t know she could do that. “I heard you wanted to talk to someone like me?”

  “Just FBI? Couldn’t get anything better?”

  The man smiled. Even at this distance, Ida could tell his teeth were dazzlingly white. “If you wanted quick access to someone like that, maybe you should’ve pulled this stunt in DC.”

  “No, it needed to be Minneapolis. Do you know what I was talking about, with my list? If you can signal to me that you know what those four things had in common, I’ll come out, I’ll surrender.”

  “Right, the common thread connecting meteor impacts, a mid-sized doomsday cult, and an urban boogeyman. It’s- I hope you’ll pardon me for using what’s probably an obscure term our agencies use internally, but it’s Fields. Or, I guess, Field Manipulators.”

  Ida nodded. He knew the magic word. She had also been prepared to accept: Auras, Shrouds, Qi, Cloaks, or, gag, “Blessings,” depending on where they’d sourced their info. She might’ve been okay taking “superpowers” or “magic,” but she was relieved to hear the government wasn’t THAT clueless.

  “Did I guess right? Full marks for Agent Hatcher?” The man outside grinned wider, a look Ida had been hoping for: the smile of somebody in on the prank.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Ding ding. Time to collect your prize.”

  Ida stepped out from behind the corner, offered her gun up, and set it on the ground. She paced forward, hands held palms-out, careful not to move too quickly. She spared a few glances toward the broken window, but no more shots rang out.

  The moment she stepped past the hotel’s doors, a SWAT officer concealed around a corner sprang toward her and launched himself at her midriff in a full-bore tackle. He crumpled into her, smashed short and hard, as if he’d thrown himself against a concrete pole. Even without making an effort to enhance her senses, Ida heard a bone break at the impact, and the man lowered himself to the ground, groaning.

  She suppressed a grin, remembered one of Mom’s go-to lectures: “I know it feels nice to be so strong, but that doesn’t make you better than anyone. Hurting people who don’t know what you’re capable of isn’t impressive, it just makes you a cheat.”

  Liam whistled: one low, impressed note. The officers around him bristled, guns raised, bewildered.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Ida said. “That’s my bad, I should’ve- Look, here, I’ll put cuffs on. Someone come cuff me?”

  Ida held her hands out. Despite herself, she felt another self-satisfied thrill when nobody from the Kevlar-mottled mass of men volunteered to step out and take her into custody.

  “I’ll do the honors, then,” Liam said. He slipped a pair of cuffs from the belt of the officer at his side and strode over, grin unwavering. Ida narrowed her hearing to listen to the man’s heart. It was steady, even, the heartbeat of a man reading a book or enjoying a walk in the park.

  She held her wrists out and he clapped the cuffs onto them.

  An officer held the backseat door for her but hesitated short of pushing her in, drawing his hand back as if he expected her skin to burn him. She sidled past him and clambered into the seat. Soon the officer and the agent were in the front, and the SUV was speeding off down the road, sirens on.

  Ida glanced out the windows at the growing crowd waiting outside the cordon line and spotted a mass of news vans already parked at corners. Busy news week, she thought, not a little pleased with herself. First the mall shooting, and now this. She wondered if this would be enough for the local stations to take some time off of the meteor coverage.

  She wanted to hope that this would be as eventful as things got in the Twin Cities in these coming weeks, but even at her most optimistic she knew that just wouldn’t be true. Forces were already in motion.

  Ida watched the line of cop cars following them as they merged onto the freeway. “You’re not just taking me to a regular prison, are you? Or a police station?”

  “You just threatened to shoot up a hotel,” Liam said, eyes smiling at her through the rearview. “Why wouldn’t we be taking you into custody?

  “No, that’s- That won’t work, it’s not secure enough.” Ida straightened, nervous now. “Nobody knows I’m doing this, but they might find out, and people like me, they kinda frown on, you know, full transparency with the government. I’m going to be spilling things that some powerful people won’t want you knowing.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with us.”

  “I won’t be fully safe unless I’m deep underground. They might be able to find me otherwise.”

  “Hmm.”

  “No, don’t ‘hmm’ me. You should know that breaking into a prison would be child’s play for an Aura- for a ‘Field Manipulator,’ even half as good as me. Hell, I could just walk out myself, but that would defeat the whole point of what I’m doing.”

  “You’d walk out of a maximum security prison?” Liam said, tone innocently curious.

  “What- Yes. Of course. Do you-” Ida sighed, took a second to reconfigure. “That I could do that should be obvious. How much do you actually know?”

  “I’m afraid our driver here hasn’t the clearance for-”

  “He can’t hear us.”

  Liam’s smile tweaked at the edge as he shot a glance to the man driving the car, seated just feet from him. “I’m pretty sure-”

  “Try yelling. He won’t hear.” Ida said, barely exerting herself. Muffling sound at this distance would be a little annoying, but not impossible. “Go ahead, come on.”

  Liam cleared his throat and barked a little half-shout. The driver didn’t visibly react, but his eyes, darting between the rearview and the passenger seat, showed that he was clearly bemused by his passengers’ apparent game of silent charades.

  Liam yelled again, louder. “Officer! Officer, say something, if you hear me. Anything.”

  The cop’s eyes were back on the road. Liam beamed back at her, thrilled, then inspected his own hands, as if he expected to see some sort of magical residue around him, a forcefield. “Energy. Sound is energy. Right,” he muttered to himself.

  “How much do you even know? Sound muffling is a pretty entry level trick.”

  Liam held his hands up in a you-got-me gesture. “To be completely frank, I got a very limited briefing on the situation, er,” he checked his watch, “a little over 90 minutes ago.”

  “How limited?” Ida grumbled. This was shaping up to be a massive waste of time.

  “The documents I saw were mostly black marker. Heavily redacted. Something something ‘energy manipulation,’ something something ‘small percentage of the population’ something something ‘medical braindeath’ something something ‘highly resistant to cooperating with federal agents.’ Sorry, like I said, the Cities are a little too small-fry to have someone with the kind of stratospheric clearance you’d need to know this material within hostage-negotiation-range today.”

  “So you don’t actually know anything about Phoenix Above, or Singapore, or-”

  “Me, no,” Liam said. “I had the answer to that fed to me by an actual expert on the subject while I got rushed down here. He’s flying in now, you’ll see him tonight.”

  Ida felt a glimmer of hope at that. “He’s meeting us at the station?”

  “Yes. I’ll let him know that you objected, and if he agrees with your assessment we’ll get you somewhere more secure. But you’ll have to hang with us, just for the night.” Liam drummed his fingers on his armrest, watched the driver, amused at how oblivious the man remained. “I’d appreciate knowing what it is you actually want from us, though, before he arrives. Don’t want to look clueless in front of the brass.”

  Ida frowned out her window at the buildings blurring past. “I don’t have the time or energy to give you a total rundown.”

  “Then don’t. Give me the jist. What was so important that you, Ida Miller, a semi-pro distance cyclist with a pristine criminal record and a new mortgage, decided to commit terrorism to get the word to us about it?”

  “Something is happening, here, in the Cities, that’s drawing other Field Manipulators over. When a few of us are in the same place at the same time, things tend to get violent. And this is shaping up to involve more than just a few of us.”

  “Oh, that’s quite noble. I presume you’re not doing all of this out of civic Minnesotan pride? It’s about Bailey, isn’t it?”

  Ida stiffened. She’d expected him to be knowledgeable about her, he was a federal agent, but she hadn’t been expecting her daughter to be mentioned by name so quickly. “Yes.”

  “Why not just get her out of town? I’m sure her father would-”

  “He’s not the type to listen to me. And besides, if things get as bad as I’m expecting them to, taking a weekend trip to Chicago won’t save anybody.”

  Liam whistled again. His eyes met hers in the rearview and glinted, cold and steely, even as he smiled. “Ominous. And you’re willing to just, what, surrender yourself to the big bad government to stop this? You’re not worried we might feel inclined to lock you up in a bunker and cut you open to see how you work?”

  “No, I’m not worried.”

  “Because you trust Uncle Sam?”

  “Because if you try that, I’ll kill you.” Ida said it matter-of-factly, because it was, on a very elemental and basic level, a matter of fact.

  Liam’s heartbeat fluttered for the first time since she’d started listening to it, but, to his credit, it didn’t show on his face. He opened his mouth to ask another question, reconsidered, then settled back into his seat.

  “Well, Ida, I’ve got to say, thank you for involving us. This is shaping up to be far more interesting than my usual caseload.”