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shout for him to stop before firing. The shock-sticks click, then bolts of iridescent blue slam into Leather Jacket’s chest. He stiffens and makes a kind of grunting noise. Shock-sticks only make you unconscious for a short period, but I’ve heard stories of the electric jolt killing people. Suddenly, I’m rigid with fear that we’re going to die in this dirty alley, all for a lousy fifty credits.
    Leather Jacket grabs my arm again. This time, it’s an iron grip and I can’t get free. I try to keep him upright, but he weighs a ton and I find myself being dragged back into the shadows with him, my balance failing. In all the fuss, I forgot to withdraw my talents and my TK reaches to help me. But my TP gets there first and spears Leather Jacket’s mind before I can stop it. Panicked, both my talents zip through the organic network of his mind, going deeper than I’ve ever reached before. I try to stop, because I know it’s wrong to enter a mind so deeply. It’s wrong to see everything about someone, to read their fears and dreams. But denied exercise for so long, my talents ignore me, until they find something I’ve never seen before and it burns in the middle of his neural tissue like a mini-sun. Acting on some instinct I don’t understand, my talents twist tight around it.
    We both tumble to the ground, but instead of hitting the cold pavement, the shadows swallow us whole and then we’re freefalling. I realise then that Leather Jacket is a slider and he’s somehow dragging me into the shadows with him. A roaring fills my ears and an icy wind whips my body. Leather Jacket’s body is limp, unconscious, and my face is buried in the crook of his neck, my legs wrapped around his waist. I don’t know much about sliders, other than it has to do with quantum tunnelling through the outer layers of the shadow biosphere. Any research I’ve ever done about talents has always been about espers. What I do know is I’d rather be back in the alley than here in this hellhole.
    We move at a terrifying speed and when I peek out from Leather Jacket’s neck, I see a bright alien world of lightning streaking by. I try to scream at him to wake up, but my lungs are being squeezed too tight and I can’t get my breath. My vision narrows and my limbs relax as we reach terminal velocity. Leather Jacket’s body gives a jerk as my legs start to slip. His arms wrap around me like bands of steel, but I barely feel them past the freezing air and the pain in my head. His hold tightens and a blazing warmth beats through me like a blast of summer. But it’s not quite enough and I slip into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER 4
    The first thing I hear is mechanical beeping. My eyes fly open and I find myself in some sort of hospital bed. My skin feels raw, my clothes are gone and I’m trussed up in a stiff hospital gown. A headache takes up a pounding tempo and when I lift my hands, I see they’re both bandaged. The door to my room swishes open and a woman in a white coat breezes in.
    â€˜You’re awake,’ she says. ‘Lovely. I’ll let everyone know.’
    I watch her warily, instantly on guard. ‘Where am I?’ My voice is a painful rasp.
    She gives me a professional smile and pours water into a glass from a pitcher beside the bed. ‘I’m a nurse and you’re in a safe place.’
    I take the glass from her, the bandages making me clumsy. Is this some sort of halfway house before I get sent to jail? Horror fights with my rational inner thoughts, which point out the rather nice surroundings, including a vase of flowers by the window. If I was in that kind of trouble, I doubt anyone would bother to check me into a hospital. Especially not after—
    The memory of the tunnel of blazing light sweeps through me like a tremor and I spill water on myself.
    â€˜Careful,’ the nurse says. ‘Your body has suffered quite a shock.