“Okay.” Her voice is thin with shock. I hear a car door open, her shoes on the pavement, and then the rustling of grass. Her breath is coming out in large, panting gasps.
I keep running. Maybe Celeste could hide for an hour while I get to her. But then what can I do? Will my adrenal powers give out before then? Will I just become a liability?
“I don’t care,” I say out loud, silencing my doubts. “I need to save her.”
A loud hum fills the air. It startles me so badly that I trip over a shrub, and do two somersaults in the air before landing on my backside. I don’t have enough weight to hurt myself, but I'm too surprised to notice even if I did.
There, ten feet away, in the middle of a forest clearing, another sapphire-blue cylinder is rising from the frost-tinged grass.
I blink a few ti
