Save Her

Drayden - Chapter 7-3

“The ambulance will be here soon,” her mother says. “Don’t say any more to him.”

“I mean,” I say, “I’ve heard those airbags can hurt sometimes.”

“I’m fine. We’re absolutely fine, I think,” she says. And then she flexes her fingers and looks at her legs and hips and feels her face.

“Natalie, stop it,” her mother says firmly.

Natalie seems wonderfully perfect. “Sorry about that, Natalie,” I say to her.

“Sorry about what?” she asks.

“I messed up your car. Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it,” I say.

“Where’s the ambulance,” her mother says into the phone.

“You’re being ridiculous. You need to just relax and not worry about anything,” Natalie says. “Not anything at all. The ambulance will be here soon. You’ll be just fine. Just please stay awake and don’t close your eyes to sleep or anything until the ambulance gets here.”

She’s adorable, and I can’t help but smile. “Natalie…”

“Heston,” she says. “Natalie Heston.”

“Natalie!” Her mother scorns.

“Nice to meet you,” I say. “Hope I didn’t mess up your day too much.”

I stand. She and her mother look at me like I had just risen from a wheelchair after years of being a quadriplegic.

“Natalie,” I say, “really, I’m very sorry. I hope I didn’t mess up your day too much.”

She’s so worried and so naturally stunning and caring, and I can’t seem to look away from her. She reaches towards my head and pulls out a greenish leaf that had mangled itself in my hair. “There you go,” she says. “Now you’re presentable.”

Just then the ambulance sirens near from around the corner. They’re very close, and I know I need to leave, though I really don’t want to.

“Natalie Heston and Mrs. Heston, I got to go.” The expression on Natalie’s face changes quickly from surprise that I can actually walk, to the disappointment one would expect upon learning that your prom date is going with somebody else. “I promise to pay for that!” I say as I turn toward the brick wall that lined the Northeast side of the street. I run toward it and look back one last time and see her worried face like she’d never see me again. I wave. She waves back until her mom pulls her hand down. I turn away and jump over the wall even though leaving her is like pulling a magnet away from metal. I dash across an open field and around the empty tennis courts near a grouping of trees that should provide me with enough coverage to do what I need to try to do.

I get under the trees, look around, and feel relatively confident nobody can see me. I focus on the location of the Pittsburgh library — 40°26’35.84”N79°57’02.65”W — but nothing happens. I think of the coordinates again and close my eyes and concentrate hard. In my mind, I see the top of the roof of the structure surrounded by the streets and sidewalks and the other buildings. ‘Go,’ I demand, and then suddenly I’m pixelating. Fragments of gray, morning sky appear in front of me. And then I’m suddenly falling again. Eight hundred and seven feet below me is the roof of the library. I somehow know that Pittsburgh is 696 feet above sea level at the river’s base and that the roof of the library is 975 feet above sea level.

The library nears quickly. The internal elevation meter had already dropped 140 feet by the time I realize that I had done it. I had teleported or fragmented back.

I have to slow down before I crash through the roof. In my brain are numbers mixed with numbers, each with meaning when compiled together, and the only one changing — and changing quickly — is the descending elevation. I’m at 1,222 feet above sea level. The roof is 975 feet above sea level. I focused on 980 feet. I linked that number with the latitude and longitude — 40°26’35.84”N79°57’02.65”W980’ — and suddenly find myself five feet above the roof. Remarkable. By projecting the exact desired elevation paired with the exact coordinates, I’m able to get there. I can send myself to any coordinates in the mapping software and can be as precise as the triangulation of latitude, longitude, and elevation. The five feet of distance between me and the roof is suddenly taken over by gravity, at which time I land sloppily onto my stomach and face.

The laptop. It’s below me somewhere under the roof and inside the library. Four minutes and twenty seconds has elapsed since I left it behind, which was plenty of time for three police cars and an ambulance to show. I run on the roof over the location of where I believed I had been sitting with Reginald’s laptop and can hear the paramedics and the police through the ceiling below me. One of them says, “Her eyes are opening.”

I know my current elevation. And I know that approximately 14 feet below is most likely where I need to appear, grab the computer, and then disappear. I’d have to get the elevation just right, but I second-guess myself because it might not be the most logical decision to appear and disappear in front of a group of first responders, so I jog down the roof thirty feet away and listen below me. I hear nothing, but I put my ear against the rooftop just to be sure. There are no immediate voices or nearby sounds, so I stand up and concentrate on refragmenting down twelve feet, or, 963 feet above sea level. This time it happens immediately and feels as natural as wiggling my toes or raising my eyebrows and takes just as much mental effort. I appear inside the library, fall loudly onto a metal library cart, knock it over, and make a total ruckus.

Somebody says, “What was that?” from the area where I had left the laptop. I run behind a bookshelf before the first police officer arrives. He sees the mess of books and the wheels of the cart still rocking back and forth and draws his gun and his radio and asks for backup. He closes in, and I know it’s only a matter of seconds before another shows up and has me cornered.

The laptop is about twenty-seven feet down the hallway from where I had knocked over the cart so the hypotenuse would be approximately thirty-two-and-a-half feet away. The first police officer is right around the corner from me. I think it’s a male because of his deep and nervous breathing. He stops, and I’m sure it’s because he either sees me or senses me. I hear multiple footsteps down the hall. Probably his backup. I have seconds before they see me so I force myself to refragment where I left the computer. In a fraction of a second, I’m refragged directly behind a paramedic giving oxygen to the same cleaning lady who had pulled the cord from the laptop and inadvertently sent me to England to land in front of Natalie Heston. I look down to where I was sitting and am shocked to see the laptop is gone. The cleaning lady sees me and screams through the oxygen mask and points in my direction. I wave goodbye and mouth “Sorry” just before refragging up to the roof. I had only left the computer alone for four and a half minutes. Whoever had taken it had to be close. I run to the edge, and I see two officers leaving the library, one of whom carries the laptop and the wrapped-up power cord in his left hand. The one with the laptop says to the other:

"I'm supposed to bring the computer in right away."

The other officer says: "I wonder why Dietrich wants it so badly."

Because it’s stolen police evidence, that’s why, I think to myself.

The officer with the laptop opens the front passenger door and puts the computer inside. Then out of nowhere, a man quickly approaches from the sidewalk and knocks the second police officer to the ground with one punch. The first officer turns at the noise of his comrade falling and is swiftly punched with an uppercut onto the roof of his car. He lands unconscious, and maybe, dead. The attacker runs around to the driver’s side, and I see his face for the first time. Tengen. He gets into the driver’s seat and speeds away down the street.

I refrag to a building that’s across the street and further east to keep the police car in view. I hadn’t put much thought into the teleport, but somehow I knew that I had to get to 40º26’40.69”N79º56’51.94”W934’ to land close to the roof. I fall a half a foot above it in a fraction of a second and watch as the police car speeds by on the street below me. I send myself to 40º26’39.46”N79º56’43.63”W968. Tengen turns left into a parking lot across the street from me where another car — a black sedan — pulls up from another entrance further east. Tengen exits the police car with the laptop and the power cord and gets into the passenger side door of the escape vehicle. I fragment onto the roofs of buildings as they progress west and consider the two best options I can think of: I can land on the top of the black car and pummel it into oblivion before Tengen and whoever else is inside even knows what happened, or I could continue to follow them. I opt to pursue.

The black car turns onto a highway heading west into the heart of the city. I fragment from building to building, sometimes holding onto a ledge, never letting the sedan out of my view, until it stops in front of one of the tallest buildings in Pittsburgh. The name on it is Rine International, the same Rine International where my brother had worked. Tengen gets out of the car with the laptop closed, and the cord wrapped in his other hand, and walks at a brisk pace on the sidewalk towards the main entrance of the Rine International building, and is six feet in front of the glass doors when I refrag directly in front of him.