Root of Unity Read Online Free PDF Page A

trigger.
    Grenades aren’t quite as fast as bullets. I had a precious millisecond to see just how it was going to impact us. I saw the explosion, shock waves, concussion, outlined in concentric circles of force like it was a diagram on a map of the impact. I saw the overlapping patterns of death depending on what type of grenade it was, and how far we would have to move to be outside the radius of danger.
    Saw the infinite options of how I could move the car in the split second I had, and that none of them would be enough.
    I jerked the wheel one last time and bounced us into the wall of the concrete channel. And then fell as the car flipped.
    Metal screamed and glass shattered as the car skidded up onto its left side and screeched down the riverbed. I clung to the steering column like a monkey to avoid being scraped off with the side panels; behind me, Arthur jammed his fists against the roof.
    The grenade hit.
    I’d mooned it with the bottom of the car to protect us. The impact exploded against the river wall and the concussion cannonballed into our undercarriage—
    —with way, way, way more force than I’d anticipated. Even with the most generous estimates. Even for a high-explosive round.
    The shape of the blast imprinted itself mathematically in my brain as it clipped the sedan and slammed us into a barrel roll. But the equations didn’t do me any good. I found fancy ways to obey the laws of physics; I couldn’t rewrite them.
    A rolling car is sheer mass. So massive its momentum can’t be stopped, so massive the force of gravity smashes it into the earth like a rag doll, so massive that a person, no matter how strong or skilled or mathematically-knowledgeable—a person couldn’t stop it. The sides and top of the car imploded alternately as we crashed into the concrete again and again, and there was nothing I could do. I tried to brace myself but only managed a local optimum—I saved myself from being crushed to death but didn’t avoid a three-hundred-sixty degree beating by twisting, reaching metal.
    The car teetered in what I knew would be its last roll, balancing on its side in an infinite moment of indecision, and then pancaked over onto its roof.
    My body smacked down into concrete and metal and glass in the twisted hole where the windshield had been, and everything stopped.
    My ears rang in the silence. I tried to roll over, glass crunching beneath me. Arthur was upside down, hanging from his seatbelt, blood smeared across his skin from minor cuts but no major injuries visible. He was scrambling at the seatbelt release, yelling something. Yelling my name.
    “Hey,” I said. “Look at that. I saved us.” I passed out.

Chapter 4
    “Hey, girl. You with me for real this time?”
    I batted weakly at the wet cloth being dabbed against my face. “ I was going to be that,” I slurred.
    “Russell? You was gonna be what?”
    I came more fully awake and tried to sit up. The room spun immediately. Lines of space and time crisscrossed each other in sick, twisted, impossible ways. I had no warning before I was turning to the side and vomiting up every meal I’d ever eaten, and then vomiting up stomach lining. At least, that was how it felt.
    “Whoa! Whoa, sweetheart. Lie back down.” I kept my eyes shut, listening to Arthur’s voice as his hands guided me. The stench of sick filled the air. “I’ll clean up. Lie still for a touch.”
    I heard him start moving around and cautiously tried cracking my eyes open again. Everything was still squiggly and strange, but at least it wasn’t so wrong anymore. I was lying on a pallet in the corner of some sort of empty industrial warehouse.
    Arthur finished what he was doing and came back; he supported my head and tilted a cup of water against my mouth. “Easy, girlfriend. Take it easy.”
    I took a few sips and then pushed it away. “Status.”
    “Got you out, grabbed another car, got you back here. Ain’t seen no one on our tail.”
    God bless bad LA traffic