Power Play (Book 2)

Chapter 26: View From Above

Recap: After having his nanobots' power boosted, and finally gaining access to their full abilities, Brandon sped to Chicago to help Nicole and her team. He found one of her team injured by the river, where he obtained a chemical spray that the Samsara duplicates were using. In front of a crowd of police and bystanders, Brandon rescued several people from a crashed train, and defeated several duplicates in a fight. Nicole was badly injured, and as the military headed his way, Brandon struggled with what to tell the crowd before he fled.

Winning Choice: Tell the crowd to not fight there, but to return home, start organizing, and wait for his lead.

"You think a brawl in the streets will change anything? We will fight, just not here. Go home before they catch you... or worse. Then prepare. Spread the word. Organize. I'll call for you, and together we'll break their power hold over us."

They look at me for a moment, police and civilians alike, and a rumble spreads through the crowd. Nobody fires at me, which I take as a good sign. Corrales and whoever else is on those inbound jets are going to be in a really bad mood when they see this mess, so the fewer people here when they arrive, the better.

I scoop up Nicole and sling her across my back. Holding her with one hand, I grab one of the unconscious duplicates with my other hand and take to the air. Most of the crowd seems to be pushing away from the scene, and the rescue workers are swarming into the rubble.

I wish I could stay longer to help, but I need to be long gone before the jets arrive. I fly south, speeding through the streets until the skyscrapers start to fade away.

"I'm coming back," I tell Tyler over the radio. "We're going to need a holding cell set up, and Nicole's going to need a medic. She's pretty beat up."

"I'll have Calvin meet you," he says. "He'll take care of her." I feel her dead weight against my back and hope he can help, but it won't matter if Corrales manages to find Nicole's warehouse base outside of town.

"Gather the whole team together," I tell him. "We need to move."

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I love the view from rooftops. I always have.

You're not supposed to be on the roof, and since nobody is supposed to be up there; people don't look up. You can watch people and, if you're quiet, they'll never know you're there. It's a secret place, and it gives you a different view of the world. It's a perspective of how things fit together. A peek above all the chaos.

When I was a kid I used to climb up on the roof of our house and just sit and watch our little neighborhood. People going off to work, my friends playing in the street, the mailman coming and going. I had a lot of time to myself, and when things got crazy at home, it was a place to escape. It was quiet and peaceful, and I could think.

There was an empty field across the street from our house. The house there burned down when the dad fell asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette. Afterwards they cleared the rubble away but nobody ever rebuilt. I think the family was renting and just moved on to escape all the legal hassles. Who knows.

Anyway, after a few years it got to be pretty overgrown. Two trees survived the fire, and there was a tangle of long grass and shrubs to play and hide in. It was also home to a horde of small animals, like squirrels and rabbits. A duck even built a nest there once. When I'd sit on the roof, sometimes I'd watch the grassy yard to see the animals going on about their animals lives.

One day after school, I was up on the roof watching the empty lot. There wasn't much else going on in the neighborhood. A small bush moved, and a little rabbit poked out. He looked pretty young and scrawny, but they were fast little things. We'd tried to catch one a few times and never did.