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  He brought me down to the ground and got on top of me. He pummeled me as hard as he could. I tried to fight him off me, but he was pressing down hard on my arms.

  “Tempest, this wasn’t my decision. I’m sorry,” I heard Agent York’s voice say through my earpiece.

  I couldn’t process what he meant, since Richter bashing my face in was a little distracting. I pushed my arm straight down at my side and flew straight out from underneath Richter. His fist slammed into the ground, causing a large pillar of sand to fly into the air.

  I shot myself a few hundred yards away from Richter, and it took him a moment to realize that I was no longer there.

  “York, what do you mea—” Before I could finish, though, I realized exactly what he meant.

  A blinding flash of light reached my eyes, followed by a deafening boom. I turned around and flew away as fast as I could. The heat on my back was unbearable, and I felt my suit beginning to melt away.

  I got far enough away that I couldn’t feel the heat anymore, and turned around to see a mushroom cloud a few miles away, where Richter and I had been just moments before.

  It all clicked. That was why the government agents had been so open to working with me. They were going to kill two birds with one stone, and take out both Richter and me with one nuke.

  Anger boiled within me. I couldn’t believe the people I was risking so much to protect would use me and try to kill me like that.

  I floated to the ground and watched as the mushroom cloud began to dissipate. It was strangely beautiful, and my knees became weak at the sheer power and ferocity of it.

  A large wall of dust and sand reached me, and began to pelt me. I shielded my eyes and waited for the mini-sandstorm to pass. Once it did, I looked upon the destruction.

  There was a large crater where the nuke had gone off. I flew high above and slightly to the side of the crater, and looked down. I searched for Richter, but he wasn’t down there. That meant the plan might have worked. If Richter had been disintegrated, there wouldn’t be a body to find.

  A smile crept across my face as I began to realize what had happened. Richter had finally been defeated. I’d won.

  My skin felt prickly and uncomfortable, probably from the amount of radiation that was bombarding my body. I figured it was time to get out of there, before the agents realized I’d survived.

  I turned around and saw something that made me feel as if I’d been punched in the gut. A few hundred yards away, Richter lay face down in the sand. While he’d still gotten hit by the nuke, he must have realized what was happening a split second before the missile hit him, and had been able to get far enough away that the blast hadn’t disintegrated him.

  I flew to his side and rolled him over in the sand. Blood oozed from his mouth, nose, and eyes. His skin was almost completely melted away, but it slowly began to web around his body as his healing powers began the recovery process.

  I didn’t know what to do. Nuking Richter was the only thing that had made sense, and he had been able to escape even that. If they could hurry up and nuke him now, while he was unconscious and recovering from the first explosion, that’d be perfect. No more Richter for sure this time. But firing nukes wasn’t like shooting bullets from a gun. By the time one was ready, Richter would be fully recovered, furious, and ready to destroy everything in sight. I was afraid of what would happen when he was healed. I knew it’d be unlike anything the world had ever seen.

  Which meant I didn’t have much time to figure out how I would kill Richter, once and for all.

  My earpiece crackled and rang. I brought my hand up to it, the sudden noise not only frightening me, but causing me pain.

  “Hello? Tempest? Tempest, do you copy?” a woman’s voice said, one I didn’t recognize. The voice sounded young and eager.

  “Who’s this?” I said, unsure of what was going on.

  There was a whoop of joy at the other end of the line before the woman regained her composure. “Alright, Tempest. Listen to me closely. Preliminary imaging from our satellites shows that you and Richter are still alive and well. Homeland Security has another nuke on its way, and it will be there any second.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, still confused as hell. “Who are you?”

  “Hey, Tempest. Nuke headed your way. That’s a little more important right no—”

  The line went dead.

  I looked to the sky, and in the distance, I could see a nuclear missile headed right toward me, a few hundred yards away and closing fast.

  I jumped into the air and began to fly away. That was a close one, I thought. Once I got far enough away, I turned around to see the explosion.

  Only to see the nuke was just a few yards away from hitting me.

  I almost didn’t have time to dodge out of the way. I shot straight toward the ground, and my heart shot to my throat. I looked up and watched as the missile made a wide turn. It changed its course and came straight for me.

  I took off running across the desert floor. I looked over my shoulder and saw the nuke was following me, just a few feet off the ground. It kicked up large plumes of sand, as if the sand was water and the nuke was water skiing.

  I ran faster and faster, but the nuke was always close behind, not changing its course, staying straight as an arrow.

  I didn’t know what to do, or why the nuke was locked on to me, not Richter.

  The earpiece, I thought. It wasn’t locked on to Richter, because he didn’t have an earpiece given to him by the people shooting the missile. They knew we’d be in the same place, so they figured they could just have the missile locked on to me.

  I reached inside the headgear of my suit as I ran, but before I could pull the earpiece out and throw it onto Richter as I ran past him, I realized Richter wasn’t where I’d left him.

  I felt as if I should look behind me, and as I did, I saw Richter grab the missile and begin to fly upwards, fighting the thrusters of the nuke to get it off course. His face strained and spit flew as he fought with all his might. Finally, he got it to go off course. He lifted it up, and with the missile thrusters combined with Richter’s flying, they shot over my head.

  I pulled the earpiece out and crushed it in my hand. I leaped into the air and began flying after Richter and the nuke. Richter was furious and wanted revenge. I had a feeling I knew exactly where he was going to take the nuke: Ebon, Indiana.

  I flew up behind Richter and punched him hard in the side. He had such a tight grip on the missile, though, that he didn’t let go. He and the missile went tumbling to the right. He corrected himself, and flew on to Indiana.

  I flew up behind him and grabbed his legs. I began to fly in the opposite direction, slowing him and the missile down. He fought hard against me. Technically, he was winning, because he and the missile weren’t stopping for anything. Still, it slowed them down quite a bit, which gave me more time.

  Richter kicked at me, but I didn’t let go.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted. He let go of the nuke and twisted around to punch me. I dodged his punch and gave him a hard right cross to the left side of his face. He went tumbling through the air, and I flew for the missile that was now flying straight forward, not locked on to anything.

  I wrapped my arms around it and began to pull it upwards. I had to go easy, and couldn’t fly straight up. We were both moving fast, and a nuclear missile isn’t exactly as flexible as the human body.

  I reached the apex of my loop, and the missile began to head back toward the desert. In the meantime, Richter had recovered, and he wasn’t giving up that easily.

  He grabbed my back, but I let go of the missile with my right hand and elbowed him hard in the face. Now I was only holding on to the missile with one hand, and both the missile and I began to spin uncontrollably in the air.

  I tried to correct our course. I wrapped both arms around the missile and hugged it tight. I became extremely disoriented, and my trying to do course correction turned to me just holding on for dear l
ife, praying I got my bearings before the nuke and I went slamming into something, causing it to explode.

  I felt the missile slip out from beneath me, and I scrambled for it in a panic, trying to grab hold of any part of it. I’d lost it, though, and once I got out of my tailspin, I realized that Richter had taken it back from me and was now trying to turn it back around and head toward Ebon.

  That was when he made his mistake.

  The fuel in the missile suddenly ran out, and its thrusters stopped working. That meant that the missile was now a hunk of nuclear explosive metal, and was much easier to maneuver. Richter had been in the middle of a loop with the missile, and now, without the thrusters, was overcompensating.

  The nuke hurtled toward the ground, and Richter didn’t have time to stop it.

  I turned and flew as fast as I could, feeling the heat of a nuclear explosion on my back for the second time that day.

  Plan B

  I fell into the desert floor, having barely gotten away from the blast in time. I lay on the ground, heaving huge breaths as I stared up at the sky with the intense heat of the sun bearing down on me.

  A few moments later, the sandstorm caused by the explosion began to pelt me. In a matter of seconds, it washed over me, but it was over almost as quickly as it had begun.

  I stood, out of breath and tired. I brushed some of the sand off me and shook it out of my hair.

  I scanned the area and saw a familiar body lying a good distance away from ground zero. I ran to it, and my fears were confirmed. It was Richter.

  My mind crackled and began to ring. The loud sound echoed throughout my head, and I fell to my knees, clutching my ears, trying to get the sound to stop.

  “Hello? Can you hear me?” a voice said in my head. It was the same woman as earlier.

  My heart skipped a beat. “How are you doing this?” I asked. “I don’t have the earpiece anymore.”

  The woman scoffed. “Listen, buddy, you and Richter aren’t the only ones with powers. Some of us aren’t as public with them as the two of you are. But that’s not the point. The point is, you need to get Richter into space, and fast. Without oxygen his body will take longer to heal. He still will, of course, but that will give us more time.”

  “More time for what?” I asked.

  “To figure out how to kill him. Just grab him and get into space. Now!”

  I didn’t like taking orders from a voice inside my head, but she did have a good point.

  I picked Richter’s burned and battered body up and began to fly into the air. I flew straight up as fast as I could, reaching heights faster than I ever had before.

  I didn’t know who this woman was, talking inside my head, but the fact that she had superpowers worried me. Would I have to deal with another Richter as soon as I’d taken out the last one? The thought troubled me, but I pushed it out of my mind. One thing at a time, I told myself.

  I reached low orbit and felt the terrifying sensation of not being able to breathe. It caught me off guard, and I faltered for a moment. I forced myself to stay calm, though, and pushed myself to fly even higher. With the low gravity and no wind resistance, I found myself shooting completely out of Earth’s atmosphere and into space.

  I began to feel claustrophobic, of all things. Like when I would go SCUBA diving, and I could see nothing but water in all four directions. Being in something so vast and infinite terrified me, and I felt helpless.

  I did my best to push those feelings out of my mind. I had to focus on one thing, and one thing only: defeating Richter.

  I wanted to talk to the woman, but I couldn’t, up here where there was no air to carry the sound of my voice. Then a thought occurred to me. Was she communicating telepathically?

  “Hello?” I thought, unsure if the woman could hear me.

  “Yes, hi,” the woman said, crystal clear in my head. “Look this is what I’ve got. You need something hot and powerful to destroy Richter before his body can regenerate. There’s nothing here on Earth that has enough energy to destroy all the power in his body.”

  “I can’t just throw him into a volcano or something?” I thought. Man, that felt weird.

  The woman laughed. “No, no, Tempest. That won’t work. It’s not powerful enough. The power inside of him will still be able to keep him alive.”

  I didn’t follow, but she sounded like she knew a lot more about this stuff than I did, and she seemed like she was really trying to help. “So what do I do?” I asked. I looked down at Richter’s body in my arms. His skin was very slowly piecing itself back together, and it was only a matter of time before he regained consciousness.

  “Okay, this might be a little scary, and very risky. But the only thing really powerful enough is the Sun.”

  My stomach twisted in knots, and if I had been breathing, the breath definitely would have been knocked out of me. “The Sun?! That’s ninety-three million miles away.”

  “And you can fly at super-speed, faster than any ship man has ever built. Without wind resistance, in zero gravity, you’ll be able to fly at unheard of speeds. Maybe even close to the speed of light. When you get close to the Sun, its gravity should begin to pull you in as well, bringing you toward it even faster.”

  I gritted my teeth. This all actually sounded possible, but also terrifying. “This is my only option?”

  “As far as I can tell, yes.”

  “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  I heard a sigh of relief. “Okay, great. You’d better get a move on before Richter comes to. When you get back, I’ll find you.”

  I felt as if a presence was beginning to leave my mind. “Wait!” I thought hard, hoping it would stop her. “What’s your name?”

  There was silence, and I thought I’d been too late. “Samantha,” she said. “Now get Richter out of here. When you get back, I’ll tell you everything.”

  Samantha left my mind, and I turned toward the bright, burning ball of fire ninety-three million miles away. I flew toward it, faster than I had ever flown before.

  Flight

  The speed at which I traveled terrified me. I held on tight to Richter’s comatose body as the infinite blackness flew past me. Each second that went by, I traveled thousands of miles. Traveling at speeds this fast would be impossible on Earth, and I would surely slam into a building, or something else equally catastrophic, if I tried. So even though I was terrified by how fast I flew, it was kinda nice to “stretch my legs” in a way. I flew as fast as I could, and didn’t have to worry about having to stop anytime soon, or crashing into something, or having anyone see me.

  A huge sphere zipped by me so fast that if I’d blinked, I would have missed it. Holy shit, I thought. I think I just flew by Venus. I couldn’t help but smile. I just saw Venus. That was the closest anyone had ever gotten to the planet named after the Roman goddess of love. I got so distracted thinking about it, enamored by its beauty and majesty, that I felt myself begin to slow down. I forced myself to stop thinking about it and pushed myself to fly even faster. Now was not the time to get distracted.

  The Sun grew larger and larger as I got closer and closer. A few minutes passed by, then twenty, then thirty, then finally an hour. I was getting close to the Sun, but I still felt as if I was a long ways away.

  I looked down at Richter and saw that his skin was almost completely done patching itself up. He’d be waking up anytime now.

  I pushed myself to fly faster and faster. I felt I was going so fast I might explode.

  The Sun got closer and closer, larger and larger. I was almost there. It was almost time to rid the universe of Richter once and for all.

  I felt myself begin to go even faster, and it felt like someone was trying to pull me. It was the Sun’s gravitational pull, dragging me in. I gave in to it, and in the blink of an eye, I found myself closer to the Sun than any man had ever been before—and might ever be. My body worked hard to replace the pieces of me that were melting before it was too late, but I knew I had to get out of there soon. My entire
body felt weak from lack of oxygen, and from all the energy I had used flying so far so fast.

  I took one last look at Richter. His skin was healed, and I could see his eyes beginning to move underneath their lids. It was now or never. “I won,” I whispered as I pulled my arm back, then threw Richter toward the Sun as hard as I could.

  One second he was there, the next, he was gone. The Sun pulled him in, welcomed him into her arms, and then devoured him, killing him once and for all.

  I didn’t have time for celebration. I had to get out of there fast. I turned around and began flying away. I felt the Sun tugging at me, not wanting me to leave. I could defy Earth’s gravity easily, but the Sun was massive and its gravity was so much stronger than Earth’s. I found it difficult to fight, especially in my weakened state. Still, I wouldn’t give up. I pressed on as hard as I could, and like a rubber band stretched too far, once I broke free of the Sun’s grasp, I launched into space, flying far, far away.

  Asleep at the Wheel

  I wanted to stop and admire the planets as they zoomed by me, but my whole body felt weak and I craved oxygen. I couldn’t afford to stop. Flying so fast had taken a lot out of me, as had my body constantly regenerating itself to keep me from turning into a melted blob when I was close to the Sun.

  My eyes grew heavy, and I forced them to stay open. No way I’d fall asleep at the wheel. I had to get back to Earth, and fast. I didn’t know what would happen if I passed out in space, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. I needed oxygen for energy to return, and for my body to go back to normal. If it didn’t, and I lost consciousness while hurtling through space, I might not wake up.

  I saw a familiar blue planet far off in the distance, and I felt warmth well up inside me. I was almost home. I felt my body begin to slow down, not wanting to overshoot the planet. Once it did, though, a wave of weakness washed over me. My whole body felt as if it was going to shut down. My eyes grew heavy, and this time, I really had to fight to keep them open.