New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative Read Free Page B

happens to even a high Type Three Neolympian when suddenly subjected to a gazillion atmospheres of pressure.
    No fuss, no muss. Mama, just killed a man . 
    At the moment, a brutal migraine and total exhaustion made it easy not to dwell on her guilty conscience. The knowledge that a Neo of that power level could have killed hundreds of thousands of innocents before being put down was worth something, but not enough.
    Using the Words hurt as badly as getting clobbered by the Big Bad. Christine fell to her knees, struggling to stay conscious. Her head was throbbing, and she felt completely wrung out. The amount of energy she’d used against the nameless, and now lifeless Neo had been enormous, spent not only in crushing the man, but in containing the forces unleashed in said crushing. That much pressure generated huge amounts of heat as a by-product. The little ball contained inside the force bubble was full of hyper-dense plasma, the kind of stuff you’d find in the center of a star. Some of the atoms in there had undergone fission, others fusion, not enough of them to generate a chain reaction, thank God, but still plenty for a heck of a blast. If released, the ball would explode and turn much of the city into a blazing inferno. If she let it go, the sudden decompression would have an explosive force measured in kilotons of TNT.
     Mark’s mental voice came through their personal psychic link.
     The pain was really bad, and in the past year or so she’d experienced about every possible kind of pain there was. She’d used too much power, too quickly, and now she was paying for it. Echoes of the Words she’d used bounced inside her skull, sending fresh waves of agony through her. And she couldn’t pass out, or there would be a big boom.
    Mark was there a moment later, cradling her in his arms. She dimly sensed the rest of the squad forming up around her.
    “Can someone toss that energy ball outside the atmosphere?” she asked weakly. “Fifty or a hundred miles up should do, I think. Avoid space traffic.”
    “On it,” John said. He was gone a moment later, holding the bubble despite the way it blistered even his super-duper skin; a couple seconds later, he’d taken the cosmic hot potato into outer space and thrown it even further away, where the damage would be minimal. Good. She finally let go, barely noticing the huge explosion that lit up the sky, brightly enough to be seen by most everyone in the Eastern seaboard.
    “Happy Fourth of July,” she said, and passed out.
     
    * * *
     
    Mark’s faceless head was looming over hers when she opened her eyes again.
    “Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
    “Like crap.” Like dog crap. Her head was still throbbing and her eyes were having trouble focusing. Even her tele-empathic connection to Mark was a bit fuzzy around the edges.
    “You almost killed yourself back there,” he said. “And I mean that literally. Adam had to put you back together, and that wore him out. He’s sleeping it off.”
    “Sorry. I figured if I didn’t finish the fight quickly, the guy was going to break loose, and you saw how powerful he was.”
    “Yeah. He packed a punch like Ultimate’s, or worse, and he was at least as tough. And you crushed him like a bug.”
    “He was inexperienced, had no idea how to defend himself against an indirect attack. If I’d tried that trick on someone like you or John, I’d have dropped dead long before you did.”
    “Still, that was fucking incredible.” He sensed she wasn’t in the mood to be complimented. “And you did the right thing. You saved the city.”
    Unlike her, Mark was a stone cold killer who wouldn’t lose any sleep over taking out a dangerous Neo. But he knew her well enough to try to comfort her, to diminish the guilt that she was feeling underneath the pain of her self-inflicted injuries. He held her tightly in his arms, offering her his shoulder to cry on.
    She didn’t