Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) (12 page)

“You might as well show yourself,” I said. “I know you’re there.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a slight shimmering began in the empty space near the escalator I had ridden down. It quickly flared into a sparkling luminescence, which I attempted to protect my eyes from by cycling through various wavelengths of light. By the time I found one that allowed me to comfortably view what was happening, the sparkling was already starting to diminish. In a few seconds it was gone, and – as expected – a man stood in its place.

Berran.

The courier walked towards me with a slight smile on his face.

“So,” I said, crossing my arms, “whose idea was it to tail me – yours or my grandmother’s?”

“It was more of a consensus,” Berran answered. “How long did you know I was following you?”

“Since my parley with the queen’s guards. Your emotions spiked.”

He nodded in understanding before flatly stating, “Nirdaw saw me.”

My eyebrows went up in surprise. The tech Berran employed had allowed him to shadow me on Earth for a week without being seen (although I had been able to detect some things empathically). I had assumed his emotions had erupted when I was talking with Nirdaw because he thought I was in danger, but apparently it was something else altogether.

“He could see you?” I asked. “How?”

“The stealth gear I use is highly advanced,” he replied, “but there are devices that render its effects void. More to the point, the queen’s guards are typically outfitted with top-of-the-line countermeasures for things like this.”

Now I knew what the guard captain had fixated on when he was looking to my rear. Berran’s comments also brought to mind the weird way Nirdaw’s eye had flashed, so I asked him about it.

“Most likely a cybernetic implant,” the courier said. “An enhancement over the original organ.”

I shuddered. “He traded his natural eye in order to become a cyborg?” Even with an upgrade in vision and such, it seemed like a steep price to pay.

Berran made a noncommittal gesture. “It may not have been an elective choice. He may have lost the eye in battle.”

“Oh,” I said contritely, feeling ashamed of the conclusion I had leaped to. “And he could really see you?”

“Unquestionably. I wasn’t sure if he was going to take any action, and I suppose that’s what caused my emotions to momentarily flare.”

I frowned. “What action would he take, and why?”

Berran paused for a moment before answering. “I was in stealth mode and clearly following a lone royal on a busy street. The implications could have been good or bad.”

“In other words, you could have been trailing me to either protect me or kill me.”

“Yes. Guns and such may be banned, but you don’t need a formal weapon in order to commit murder.”

I nodded, thinking how back on Earth ordinary tools could be used to commit heinous crimes: a hammer, a screwdriver, and so on. You could even do it with your bare hands if you were so inclined.

“So why didn’t he do anything?” I asked, and then the answer hit me. “Wait – you called him by name earlier. You know him.”

Berran nodded. “Our paths have crossed. He’s a good soldier, and I believe he simply gave me the benefit of the doubt in this instance. Besides, while guns are forbidden in the Acropolis, defensive measures like camouflage and stealth tech are not.”

I laughed. “So your actions were merely suspicious, not fatally incriminating.”

“I suppose so,” the courier said with a grin. “But come, Highness. We should get moving if you don’t want to be late.”

With that, he stepped onto the walkway and I joined him a moment later.

*****

With Berran now with me, I was able to disregard the GPS and take off the visor, as he knew how to reach our destination. We rode the first walkway for about five hundred yards and then switched over to a second.

Although Berran gave me an overview of their features as we went along, the walkways themselves were nothing special in my opinion. Other than being exceptionally broad – their width could likely accommodate ten stout men standing shoulder-to-shoulder – they struck me as being little more than a larger version of the moving walkways that you could find in any major airport. I couldn’t properly gauge their speed, but with the two of us also briskly striding as we moved, we made pretty good time.

We had traveled about a third of the second walkway’s thousand-yard length when I picked up the sounds of chatter. I had been engaged in casual conversation with Berran and not really paying attention to anything around us. Looking up at this new sound, I saw a group of maybe ten people approaching us on the walkway, wearing the Caelesian equivalent of work coveralls.

I was first surprised to actually see them down here. I hadn’t seen anyone other than Berran since before taking the escalator below ground. Also, it seemed odd to me that they would be taking this walkway, which was moving in the opposite direction than the way they were traveling – like trying to walk up an escalator that was moving down. Finally, despite the prattle I was hearing from a couple of them – which seemed lighthearted and gay – they were giving off a seriously menacing vibe.

By this time, Berran and I had ceased walking forward, but the motion of the walkway itself (not to mention the advancing strides of the other party) brought us closer to these new arrivals. I telescoped my vision to get a good look at them. Their appearance matched their emotional state: dark and dangerous. I also noticed that they all seemed to be carrying various implements that seemed vaguely familiar.

“Are those tools?” I asked softly.

“Technically, but in the right hands they’re weapons,” the courier said as he took a protective step forward. “Stay behind me.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to be much better,” I said.

Berran looked back towards me, obviously curious as to what I was talking about. I hooked a thumb over my left shoulder, and – glancing to my rear – he presumably saw what I had picked up empathically just a few seconds earlier: another group, dressed like the first and similar-sized (as well as carrying comparable tools), was closing in on us from the rear. It was an ambush.

I turned so that Berran and I were back-to-back, at the same time looking around to see if there were any more surprise guests we should be aware of. Unsurprisingly, there were none. Other than the junctions where you could change from one walkway to another, each of the mobile footpaths resided in its own individual underground tunnel. In other words, aside from the two ends of the walkway, there was no way for someone to come at us. On the flip side, we were trapped.

Or rather, we were
seemingly
trapped. There were a hundred ways I could use my powers to get us out of this unscathed, such as phasing me and Berran so we could just walk straight through these guys. In fact, that sounded like a pretty good plan, and I reached out telepathically to share it with Berran. The problem was, the courier didn’t seem to be there anymore.

I glanced behind me. As I feared, my companion was gone. However, I thought I could hear the rhythmic pounding of running footsteps heading towards the group of men Berran had been facing. A moment later, something like an invisible wrecking ball hit them, bowling them over like a tsunami smashing into a grass hut.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. Berran had slipped into stealth mode and charged one of the ambushing parties. I fought the impulse to go help him, since that would leave our rear exposed. Assuming he could take care of himself, I turned back to the group that had been creeping up on us from behind.

I concentrated, preparing to use my telekinesis to end this quickly. The most obvious tactic would be to psychically rip any potential weapons out of the hands of these bushwhackers, and then maybe slam them into the walls once or twice. In short, the fight would be over before it really began, which was a little sad because I hadn’t had a decent workout since leaving Earth.

And then a new thought occurred to me: I wasn’t one to take unnecessary chances, but maybe this little brawl didn’t have to be over
too
quickly…

I teleported, tearing a page out of our attackers’ playbook by popping up behind them. The group halted their advance, obviously wondering where I had vanished to. I reached out for the two rearmost guys and smashed their heads together like coconuts. They dropped to the ground, unconscious.

The sound of bodies hitting the ground made the rest of their party swiftly turn around, makeshift weapons at the ready. One fellow in particular seemed to be quick on the draw, raising something that looked like a soldering gun as he turned. I phased just as he fired, and a bolt of electricity passed harmlessly through me.

I shifted into super speed and dashed forward at an angle until I was lateral to the guy with the electrical gun (as I thought of it). I then ran at him from the side, becoming solid as I rammed him in the upper arm with my shoulder. At super speed, it was a brutal hit and I heard an audible crack at the point of impact. My target went flying, smashing into two of his compatriots like a human – or rather, Caelesian – cannonball, and all three of them went down in a tangle of bodies. I spared them a quick glance to make sure they were out of the fight for the moment, and noticed a jagged piece of white bone jutting out of the arm of the now-unconscious shooter just below the shoulder.

Five down, five to go.

I turned my attention back to the remaining assailants in this contingent of the ambush party just as one of them came at me, trying to strike me with something that resembled a magician’s wand. This was an item I recognized, because one had been among the possessions my grandmother had left behind on Earth: a stone-stick. I had no idea what its intended purpose was, but it was capable of petrifying the cells of living things.

I turned invisible and sidestepped the intended blow. Failing to make contact when he expected something solid threw my attacker off-balance. I stepped forward and slapped him across the face. Hard. The sound of it echoed in the tunnel like a thunderclap, and the force of the blow sent him staggering to the side.

My assailant spent a moment rubbing his cheek where my palm had connected. He then swung the stone-stick at me in a backhanded fashion, probably hoping to catch me unawares. I easily avoided the strike and then slapped him again.

Hot with anger, the guy with the stone-stick struck at the area where he apparently thought I was standing, only to get slapped once more. By this time, he was completely enraged. Screaming in frustration, he began swinging the stone-stick wildly in all directions, but never came close to making contact with me. (Nevertheless, I phased just to play it safe.)

Before phasing, I had spent a brief moment worrying that the other four assailants might join in, but I shouldn’t have been concerned. They were keeping well back, most likely to avoid accidentally getting tapped with the stone-stick. With that in mind, I was suddenly struck with a bold inspiration.

I became visible (but still phased) directly in the line of sight of the fellow with the wand. Grunting with effort, he came forward and swung at me as hard as possible. I stood still, as if I was going to let myself be struck. However, just before the stone-stick hit me, I used my teleportation power to switch places with one of the other attackers. As a result, it was one of the assailants – not me – who was hit by the wand.

The guy on the receiving end of the blow let out an agonizing scream and clutched his right arm, which was where the stone-stick had touched him. He then dropped to his knees, still howling in pain. The arm, which was bare, seemed to immediately turn ashen and rigid, like a limb sculpted from inorganic material rather than one made of flesh.

I observed all this while pulling the same switcheroo a second time, which resulted in one of the attackers getting struck in the neck with the stone-stick. He let out a tiny squeak, and then fell to the ground clutching his throat, unable to breathe as his neck became petrified.

The man wielding the wand was so out-of-control that he didn’t seem to realize that he had put two of his confederates out of commission. (Nor did he seem to take note of those remaining or their incessant screaming that he stop.) His purpose in life seemed to consist solely of bringing me down, regardless of anything else. He didn’t even slow down when I swapped places with one of his companions a third time, with that fellow getting hit in the chest.

Other than the guy with the wand, there was only one other attacker left out of the original ten I had faced – a wild-eyed fellow with a wicked scar across his nose. Rather than suffer the fate of his last three companions, Scar-nose took his matters into his own hands. Somehow, during the time when I was switching places with his friends, Scar-nose had gotten his hands on the electrical gun. Now, without hesitation, he pointed it at the guy with the stone-stick and fired.

I had to applaud his survival instincts; Scar-nose was obviously no fool. After witnessing me switch places with his compatriots, he had seen what was coming and wasn’t having any of it.

The man Scar-nose had blasted wailed painfully as electricity shot through him; his hair stood on end and the air around him became ionized. When Scar-nose finally eased up on the trigger, his victim dropped to his knees and then fell forward, clothes smoking.

Scar-nose immediately trained the electrical gun on me. However, he must have recognized the futility of pulling the trigger, because rather than firing, he began backing away, moving in the direction he and his companions had come from. Suddenly, he turned and bolted – a move that wasn’t completely unexpected.

Smiling to myself, I let him get about ten steps and then reached out telekinetically to trip him up.

Nothing happened. In the space in my head where I could normally feel my telekinesis like a tangible part of my body, there was a void.

The crown
, I thought, again recalling Mouse’s statement about how that stupid coronet might affect my abilities.

Shaking my head in frustration, I tried again to use my telekinesis. This time, I could feel it there, and I let out an almost audible sigh of relief as I used my power to take Scar-nose out at the knees. He planted face-first into the walkway, like an ostrich trying to bury its head in the sand, and didn’t move.

With everyone who had been in the rear group now incapacitated, I turned my attention to the area of the walkway where Berran had engaged the first gang of attackers. Five of them appeared to be on the ground, unconscious; the remainder had formed a wide circle in the middle of the walkway and seemed to be trying to close in on something centered in between them. I still couldn’t see him, but assumed that Berran was the object in the ring the assailants had formed.