“No problem,” she calls back. “Reno’s only thirty or forty miles away. Imagine the cowardly damage I can do there.” She takes off like a streak of light into the sky. Blasts of lightning and thunder in her wake.
“Damn,” I curse, kicking at the dirt. “So much for that great idea.” And take off after her.
•
I smile when I hear her curse and come after me. She’s no rocket scientist either, it turns out. That said, I’ve no idea what the hell to do with her. I’m pretty confident about the strength thing being a bit unequal now and I need to find a way to even the odds.
She’s right on my heels by the time I get to Reno, I can practically feel her breath on my neck. I put my clenched fists out in front of me and fly right through the “Biggest Little City In The World” sign, which I’ve always kind of wanted to do, even before I knew I could fly. Sparks and pieces go flying everywhere as the structure collapses to the street. Bonnie’s forced to stop and rescue a bunch of tourists too stupid to run when the debris falls toward them. I laugh like the maniac I’ve become and veer off course, crashing into the corner of Circus Circus and taking a big chunk of it with me. Bonnie’s caught up to me again however, so I turn slightly and crash through the thirteenth or fourteenth floor of the Silver Legacy. I’m bathed in green as I go straight through it, almost as if it wasn’t there, crashing through walls and wires, doors and stairwells. Bonnie still follows me, so close and accurately that she doesn’t crash into anything, just follows perfectly in the hole I’ve made for her. When I reach the hallway I turn up and fly through floor after floor. Crashing through everything slows me down though, while Bonnie just drafts me, so by the time I get to the roof, she’s got my foot. We climb out of the roof hole together, into the rain, but she’s on me before I can even get all the way out. She smashes my head into the tar of the roof over and over again. I black out on the fifth or sixth smash and wonder if she’s ever going to let me wake up.
°
She won’t be out for long and so I’m determined to get her out of Reno while I have the chance. I stand up and drag her the rest of the way out of the hole and look around. I pick her up by the ankle and begin swinging her around like an ice-skater.
“We’re. Not. Doing. This. HERE!” I shout as I check my internal map and let her go. Security bursts through the door and onto the roof just as she goes into orbit and I follow suit.
When I catch up with her, she’s right where I want her to be and on track to crash right where I want her to crash, if she doesn’t wake up first. I shield my eyes as her back crashes into the edge of a cliff and she drops a hundred and fifty feet to the ground, landing in the pile of metal.
•
I wake a split-second before hitting the ground but am unable to stop myself and land roughly on some sharp pieces of metal. I can’t believe for a minute that she’s managed to get me out of the city until I realize exactly where I am, inside Delia’s destroyed old car at the bottom of our cliff. I see a tiny bit of bone from the corner of my eye and scream at the top of my lungs before bursting through the partially intact roof towards Bonnie.
She doesn’t even flinch. “We’re not doing this where people are,” she says, a clap of thunder punctuating her words. “If you want to try to kill me, you’re going to have to do it out here. That shouldn’t be too hard for you, should it?” she says, her eyes shifting almost imperceptibly to the car.
“You know that’s the car that I killed my mother in?” I screech. “You get that from taking a little trip inside my head?”
She nods. “I thought maybe it’d give you some perspective.”
“On what?!”
“On us. On what we are. Were you happy after you killed me? ‘Cause I’ll be honest, you seem like a disaster area since I saw you last.”
“I wasn’t happy after I killed you – but maybe that was just because you WEREN’T REALLY DEAD!” I scream.
“Well, whatever. Have you ever bothered to think about what happens if one of us dies?”
“Yes, I’ve thought about it a lot. You’ll be dead, and I’ll be unstoppable.”
“Maybe,” she says thoughtfully.
I sigh through the rain, tired of being wet. “What does that even mean, ‘maybe?’”
“Well, I don’t know for sure but I’m willing to bet it isn’t that easy. There’s two of us for a reason,” she says, motioning between us. “I don’t know if the world will bear just having one of us, whether it’s the good guy,” she pauses, “That’s me by the way, or the bad guy, which I’m sure you know, is you.” She’s being all ‘funny’ which is annoying the crap out of me. I’m about to kill her again and, as always with people, she’s just not taking it seriously enough.