the rooftop looking for something, anything that would help him save her. He turned back. “Bright Star,” her eyes were closed. “Bright Star!” he called again, clapping his hands over her face. Blood spattered on her milky skin and her eyes came open gradually.
“Bright Star, I need you to keep your eyes open,” he told her in strong clear words. “Can you do that for me?”
There was barely a nod, but there was one just the same. Jackson leaned over to look her in the eye even while his hands eased up to her abdomen. “Please just keep your eyes open. Please. And keep talking to me.”
Her eyes widened and they snapped to the hand at her waist. She started to shake her head violently. Her chest rose and fell quickly with her increasingly rapid breathing. “Don’t.” she told him. “Don’t!”
“I’m not going to do anything,” he told her, stroking hair from her face. He grimaced when he realized he had smoothed more blood into her skin. It was a red crescent over her forehead and cheek. “I just need to check your wound.”
“Don’t!” She pleaded again. Clear drops began to collect in the corners of her eyes. They balanced precariously on her cheeks then melted down her face. “Don’t,” she begged raggedly.
Jackson stopped gazing into those tortured eyes. He couldn’t do this if he had to see her looking at him like that. Slowly he slipped his hands up to the tender, opened flesh around the knife. He tested the thick syrup around the wound. It was clotting already. That was good. Clotting was good. He checked the knife: tapered, edges smooth, not serrated.
He leaned toward her again. His face nearly pressed against hers again. This time he tried to hold her mesmeric gaze. He would have to distract her from what he was about to do. He would have to see if the knife came out freely, without causing any more damage. Ever so careful, he eased his fingers up the black, plastic handle, barely touching it. Then, just as slowly, he wrapped his fingers around it.
“Please stop,” she cried. Her eyes were luminescent, drowning pools. “Please stop.”
“Look at me,” he softly urged. She didn’t. “Look at me,” he commanded more firmly. Her blazing blue eyes turned back to him and he found himself lost in them again. Only for a second. Jackson knew what he had to do. He firmly took hold of the handle and pulled. He sickened at the sound of the knife cutting away at her insides. He looked down and his pulse quickened as he realized the bleeding had started again and now her entire abdomen was soaked in blood. It was flowing from her as if her body was a scarlet fountain.
“Oh no,” he heard himself say. “Oh God, no.” The blood was so fast and so abundant. Hot and sticky, it bathed his hands when, on impulse, Jackson pressed his fingertips to the wound, applying pressure. He hoped the pressure would stop the blood, but he also needed to touch her to release as much power as he could stand into her at full strength. He closed his eyes and shook his shoulders loosely, trying to relax, to block everything but the wound and repairing it.
For a moment, he could feel it. He stopped the blood as his own veins started to burn and his muscles, all of them, started to strain. His neck tightened his back, his arms and legs, his buttocks. He could feel the tissue rethreading itself as something in his head began to rip apart. Pain. His flesh, his cells were searing from the inside out. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. His teeth were grinding painfully as if there was a vice around his skull. The pain within him was so strong that his bones seemed like they were being stretched and bowed to the point of cracking. For a man who rarely experienced pain, it was too much, and yet it was fascinating. His lungs refused breath. Blackness started to cover his vision and blanket his thoughts, but his years of training wouldn’t let him. He cut the Shift and started pounding his palm against his forehead and tears started in his eyes. He couldn’t save her.
“Please, Bright Star.” He turned to her, an ache in his voice. “Please. If you have any strength left, then maybe we can do this together. Maybe together.”
Jackson knew in his soul that he could not prevent her death alone. The Perma-Shift would kill him before he repaired her enough to keep her alive. Jackson knew if he persisted, they would both die. There was never anything more certain.
“I can’t,” she wheezed. Her head started rolling from side to side as if the movement would shake away the cloud of death. “I’m not strong enough. We aren’t…” Her breath started coming faster and in the silence, the rasp was equivalent to mental friction. Jackson ran a hand across the stubble on the top of his head. It was an additional scrape to the strained cacophony. She was going to die in less than a minute. He lashed out with his mind and called to the only person he could.
The warmth, the pattern, and the glow that was Rush flowed over Jackson. The light collected in his open heart. He felt it slipping over his fingers and filling the gaping hole in her stomach. A low, barely visible gold light burrowed inside of her. Her mouth fell open and her wide eyes seemed to beam blue light into the night sky. Her chest arced into the air. Her head tossed back, and her jugulars strained. Her fingers curled into claws. Her teeth clenched.
Rush was saving this girl. He was saving her life and—Jackson realized—his life as well. Jackson tried to breathe but inhaled too sharply and started to cough violently because the rush of oxygen into his lungs was too much. Then, there was relief. Every muscle in his body loosened, and he buckled. Jackson turned his head as vomit rushed through his throat, filled his mouth and poured from his lips. Training had taught him to give into this. His body was righting itself from the excess of High Energy.
As he emptied his body, Jackson started focusing on facts. Something had to anchor him before the Perma-Shift really did kill him. Parameters of Shift 101. He could see the text behind his eyelids: The brightest recorded light manifestation of Shift was approximately .96 watts, about as much as can be powered by twenty-four volts. A single Christmas tree light. The longest recorded distance for a Shift was five kilometers, just over three miles. He looked at the skyline. If he judged correctly, he was about ten miles from the apartment. And his brother was doing this from long distance. Even Jackson had only been able to affect a Shift from ten miles away. Rush was at their apartment more than ten miles away. Jackson swallowed, trying to push that thought from his mind. The youngest recorded age for someone to Shift was eleven. Well, that had been true before Jackson was born. But Jackson was the anomaly, the outlier always excluded from statistical measures. Precocial.
Jackson shuddered and rocked. He had to focus. The average age for someone to be able to manifest a Shift was thirteen and a half months. The phrase, Permanent Shift, was derived from a permanent magnet. A permanent magnet retained its magnetism after removal of the magnetizing force. Perma-Shift was what happened when the High Energy used to create a Shift was out of balance with the High Energy required for the Shift. When there was too little Energy, the strain started to tear the Shifter apart, inside out. When the High Energy was more than required and left unrestrained, it had nowhere to apply itself but back to its source. The average time it took to recover from minor Perma-Shift was 176 seconds. The average time it took to recover from major Perma-Shift was never. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and turned around.
Bright Star breathed normally beside him. There was no deep rush of air, no coughing as if she had drowned. Nothing. She simply started to breathe. The blood that had pooled around her slowly turned clear then evaporated up into the air in transparent flakes. Even her skin began to grow thick, opalescent. The veins disappeared, turning her skin from alabaster to porcelain. Bright Star had not been healed, she had been returned.
The Shifter sat up. Her shiny, copper hair fell just behind her ears. She blinked. Her eyes were slowly returning to a natural, earthly blue as she pinned them to Jackson. Her first words in this rewound life were accusatory. “You didn’t save me.”
Jackson felt the shame but was not sure if he showed it. He had been trained to hide such things, and his training had come back to him once she was safe. Her gaze fluttered to the ground at his feet and he knew she had seen.
“It was my brother,” Jackson offered, scratching the back of his head. His brother. Funny. Jackson had not known before