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<p> Two of them. I didn’t know them, but they clearly knew me. The smaller one, female and prone to piercings, circled around to face me, while her partner, the tall, dark, and silent type, shadowed Ve
<p> “Warden Baldwin?” the woman shouted over the wind and pounding surf, and held out her hand, palm out. Lightning flashed, hard and white, and illuminated something like a stylized sun on her palm. “I need you to cease what you’re doing!”</p>
<p> “Hi,” I said. “I can’t do that.”</p>
<p> “Warden, I’m not messing around with you. I know who you are, and there’s a warrant out for your detention and return to the headquarters in New York. So, please, let’s not make this hard, okay? Nobody has to get hurt!”</p>
<p> I sighed. I felt grimy, tired, and angry. Too much had been taken away from me, and if Ve
<p> “Jamie,” she yelled. “Jamie Rae King.”</p>
<p> “Weather?”</p>
<p> “Yes, ma’am.” She looked cautious, and she kept flicking looks at her partner. “That’s Stan. He’s Earth.”</p>
<p> “Hey, Stan,” I said.</p>
<p> “Hey.” He nodded, and the wet sand suddenly went soft under my feet and dragged me down to my knees, trapping me. “Sorry, ma’am. But we’ve got orders.”</p>
<p> Ve
<p> “No,” he panted. “Probably don’t. But I don’t have a lot of choices. You’re Dji
<p> She didn’t answer, but then again, she didn’t really have to. She walked up to him, a force of nature packaged in a pinafore, and put her small hand flat on his chest.</p>
<p> She blew him twenty feet. Stan impacted the wet beach, rolled, and flopped to a limp stop. He groaned and tried to get up, but she held up a finger.</p>
<p> One finger.</p>
<p> And he shuddered and went flat.</p>
<p> “Hey!” I yelled at her over the boom of thunder. I was soaked to the skin, shivering, and more than a little scared by the fact that Jamie Rae was standing there looking from me to Ve
<p> “Oh, relax; he’s not dead,” Ve
<p> Whatever Jamie was doing-and in the chaos of the storm that was quickly getting worse, I couldn’t tell-she kept doing it, because Ve
<p> <i>Bang.</i> She went down, coldcocked. I felt bad about that. She and Stan didn’t seem like bad types, comparatively speaking.</p>
<p> At least they weren’t trying to bring down a building.</p>
<p> “We should hurry,” Ve
<p> I nodded, and followed her into the aetheric. In Oversight the storm was a glittering layered network of tight-spi
<p> It was intoxicating. Freeing. I heard myself laugh, and reached out to touch a glittering chain of molecules. Lightning sparked through the net and flashed in my eyes down in the real world.</p>
<p> It was like playing God. Beautiful and terrifying.</p>
<p> The first lightning strike hit the roof, and the concussion was so intense at this close range that I went temporarily deaf and blind, and every hair follicle on my body seemed to rise in the electrical aura. When it passed, I barely had time to draw a breath before the next bolt hit steel, and then a third. Hammer of the gods.</p>
<p> When the wind hit the smoking, glowing structure, spi
<p> Ve
<p> “What?” I yelled over the roar of thunder and pounding, wind-driven surf. I stumbled toward her and swiped wet hair back from my face. “Balance what?”</p>
<p> “The scales,” Ve
<p> “You mean it’s not <i>over</i>?”</p>
<p> Ve
<p> I had no idea what she meant, but Ve
<p> I turned my attention to the storm.</p>
<p> “The Wardens teach you to do this from science,” she said very softly; I didn’t know how it was possible to hear her over the wind, but she came through as if it were a still, silent day. “Science can fail you. Learn to listen to it. Sing to it. It doesn’t have to be your enemy. Even predators can be pets.”</p>
<p> I struggled to make sense out of what I was seeing. So much detail, so much <i>data</i>, all in spectra the human eye wasn’t meant to see, much less understand. <i>I can’t do this. It’s too big. It’s too much.</i></p>
<p> I took a deep breath, stretched my hands out to either side, and stepped into the heart of the storm.</p>
<p> It <i>hurt.</i> Not only physically, though the windblown sand and debris lashed at me like a dozen whips. It got inside my head, and howled, and I flailed blindly for something I could touch, could control, could stop…</p>
<p> And then, when I opened my eyes on the aetheric, it all made sense. The swirling chaos became a shifting puzzle of infinite intricacy, and where the pieces met, sparks hissed through the dark, bright as New Year’s fireworks lighting the sky. I reached out and moved two of the pieces apart; the spark leaped and died in midair. I tried it again and again, until the grand, gorgeous pattern of the air was whisper-quiet, glowing in peaceful shifting colors.</p>