Sierra kept her eyes turned pointedly away from the giblet remains of the man who had been blown up by the grenade. He had been a pretty damn fast speedster, but clearly not fast enough to outrun an explosion that originated from the palm of his hand. His fault, really. His fault for hurting her damn sister, for trying to kill her. She sure as hell wasn't going to let him get away with that.

  It was a thought that brought a grimace to her face. When she had made it close enough during her headlong race on the ATV to establish a firm connection with the distracted Paige and had seen what was going on, a myriad of possible outcomes had flashed through her mind. That was one of the downsides of having what amounted to a computer brain. She really could imagine hundreds of scenarios over the course of only a bare couple of seconds.

  In all of those imagined scenarios, Sierra had seen her sister being killed by that speedster. She saw Paige being murdered and torn apart, her body destroyed, even her orb broken and irreparable. She saw herself losing Paige.

  As Biolems, they were pretty resistant to permanent damage, and pretty effective fighters. But against someone that fast, they didn't stand a chance in a straight fight. Even with two of them, the man would have easily taken them apart. Probably literally as soon as he developed any inkling of what they were. Which might have sounded unlikely, but the possibility had filled scenarios ninety-two through one hundred and twenty-four in her panicking mind before it had moved on to the next terrible idea. She had seen so many ways that Paige or both of them could die.

  It had taken her six seconds to cross the distance between where she had been and where those two were once she connected to Paige and saw what was happening. Four of those seconds had been spent letting her mind run wild with panicked ideas of how bad that could go. The fifth second had been spent realizing just how strong her emotions were and how much she would be destroyed if Paige really did die. One second of realization that she really did see the other girl as her sister in a way that she had not truly acknowledged to herself before.

  She had been created to replace Paige. She existed in the first place because their father wanted Paige to be deleted and for her to take over, because she was no longer trustworthy. Paige was a failure. He created Sierra to overwrite--kill her program and completely take her place.

  But now? Now she had spent an eternal four seconds imagining how utterly broken and grief-stricken she would be if she actually lost Paige after everything they had already been through.

  Finally, that last second had been spent realizing that if she cared that much about Paige, she obviously couldn't let the girl die. That was completely unacceptable. So, she came up with a plan. As the ATV launched itself at the guy and she threw herself off it, her hand had grabbed one of the grenades she found in the pouch on the side of the vehicle. It didn't look like a typical military grenade, more resembling the clip from a rifle. But she had known what it was.

  She had known that she wouldn't have time to trigger the grenade before the man took it from her if he fell for the bait. Which meant that she had to activate it first. Yes, she had activated the grenade even as she was tricking the man into taking it from her. With the short timer it had, she wouldn't have had time to get rid of the thing in any other way. All she had been able to do was cycle the damage of the grenade down to its lowest setting. It was a Touched-Tech weapon, capable of containing its damage radius down to within a couple feet, meant for precise explosions, as oxymoronic as that sounded. But if this guy didn't take it from her, Sierra would be the one in the explosion. And yet, that was a risk she was willing to take when it came to saving her sister. It was also another reason why she had made certain to position herself far enough away from the other girl that she wouldn't be caught in the blast as well if everything went totally wrong.

  But things hadn't gone wrong. She had correctly predicted what the bastard would do the moment she implied that she had a weapon that could beat him. Which, to be fair, she had been telling the truth about that. It really was a weapon that could beat him in the right situation, and he had managed to eagerly throw himself right into that specific situation.

  The relief that Sierra had felt as soon as the man took the grenade from her hand made her positively drunk with giddiness. Yes, she had been willing to die for the chance to save her sister's life, but she hadn't exactly been eager for it. As soon as the grenade was stripped from her hand, Sierra had felt a rush of relief. The realization that her trick had worked almost made her slump to her knees, barely able to remain standing. She had a lot of emotions going on.

  There was a rush of feelings that were still swirling through her reeling mind even as the explosion took the bastard out of the equation. He was dead. He was gone. Despite all his power and the fact that he easily could have beaten and killed both of them while not even breaking a sweat, she had managed to outsmart him, and now the man was fucking dead.

  He was dead. He was gone. He wasn't a threat anymore. He would never threaten anyone again. The motherfucker was scattered in a thousand little giblet pieces and smeared blood across the ground. He definitely wasn't going to be sprinting around anywhere anymore. And, most importantly above all else, he wasn't going to ever hurt or threaten her sister again.

  But, obviously, she couldn't let on about how nervous she had been. She couldn't let Paige know how terrified she had been over those few seconds that she was going to lose her. The girl might get an ego or something.

  Obviously, the very best way to hide that fear and make it seem like she had been in control of the entire situation in every way the whole time was to give a pithy one-liner. That was what the action heroes did, and she had absolutely been an action hero in that moment. So, she made the casual comment about how she should have warned the man that she was holding a grenade. There, now Paige would never guess how afraid she had been. Instead, she could simply be grateful for the rescue and admit how cool and amazing that whole thing was.

  In the background, meanwhile, the soldiers who had been left in the distance were already being dealt with by Echo. She had been right behind Sierra and split off to deal with those guys. So at least they wouldn't be interrupted while Paige was gushing over the rescue.

  Already anticipating that, Sierra turned to the other girl and started to give a casual shrug. “I know, I know, you're about to fall over from how awesome that was. But please, hold your--”

  She was interrupted by a quick slap across her face that made her yelp in surprise. Paige was right there in front of her, face flushed with a wide assortment of emotions. She trembled, outstretched hand shaking as she stared at Sierra for a long moment. Both of them looked at one another, barely able to stay on their feet after the events of the past few moments.

  Finally, Paige spoke up, her voice trembling with raw emotion. “You could have died! You could have died, Sierra! The only reason you aren't dead is because he fell for that trick. If he didn't fall for it, if he waited a just another second to see what was going on, if he did anything else, you'd be dead! What the hell were you thinking? What the hell were you doing? Why would you do that? Why would you risk that!?”

  Sierra didn't answer at first. She held one hand to her stinging cheek where she had been slapped and tried to pull herself together. A shiver ran through her and she swallowed hard past the lump that had formed in this stupid body's throat. When she finally found her voice, it didn't sound nearly as aloof and cool as she wanted it to. “Because you would've died if I didn't. I saw you. I saw him fighting you. I saw what he was doing, and what he would've done. I knew what he would've done. You would've died. I couldn't save you any other way. I couldn’t fight him straight up. We couldn’t fight him. We aren't strong enough. The two of us couldn't beat him, even together. If I didn't do something drastic, he would've killed you. I had to save you. I just… I just didn’t care what happened to me. I can't lose you, Paige. I just can't. I’d rather die. You're my sister.”

  Damn it, why was she saying all that out loud? She had to get a hold of herself for fuck’s sake. This wasn't the time to act like an emotional bitch and completely lose it. Not here, not now. Paige was fine, so why were Sierra’s stupid, traitorous emotions acting out like this? Just shove it all back down, put it away, and act casual. Even if it was obvious that Echo didn't need any help, considering the majority of the troops had begun to flee as soon as their speedster Touched turned into a cloud of bloody mist, this still wasn't the right time or place to start all that blubbering about her emotions or whatever. At this rate, Paige was probably gonna laugh at her.

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  But she didn't. Instead, Paige stared at her for a long couple of seconds, obviously running plenty of things through her own mind. Then she slowly raised her hands to set them on Sierra’s shoulders and squeezed briefly before pulling the other girl into an embrace. She hugged her firmly, her grip tight around the smaller Biolem. Sierra could feel a shudder run through the girl. No, wait, it was running through both of them, even as she returned the embrace as tightly as she could. Nothing else mattered right then. The two of them just hugged one another silently.

  It took a few seconds for the pair to collect themselves. It was Paige who did so first, with a gasp as she jerked upright, her grip tightening even more around the other Biolem. “Irelyn! She's in trouble, she took off with that armored guy to split him off from the rest of these bastards!” She was already pivoting on one foot, clearly about to take off at top speed to go find the woman.

  Then she stopped short, because they didn't have to go anywhere at all. Irelyn was already right there, walking toward them with Haley at her side. The two of them had finished dealing with the scattered remains of the troops who hadn't run away. It looked like they had been hanging back a bit, giving the other two time to finish hugging rather than risk interrupting something like that.

  Once she saw the two turned toward them, Irelyn moved faster, jogging up to pull the girls into a new embrace. She hugged both of them, crushing them up against herself as she stood up and literally lifted them off the ground in the process. Which looked funny, considering Paige was actually taller then she was. Still, her feet came up several inches, making the girl gasp out loud.

  Setting them back down then, Irelyn snapped her gaze back and forth between the two. “Are you okay? What happened here? Please tell me Haley is exaggerating a lot. Tell me there wasn't a grenade involved. And what happened with these helicopters?” Even as she asked all those questions, it was clear that the woman wasn't sure if she wanted to know the answers or not. She kept looking around at the signs of destruction scattered all over, her gaze lingering a bit on the splatter of blood where the speedster had been. Seeing that made her grimace a little before she reached up to take the samurai mask off so they could see her face. She clearly wanted to look both of them in the eyes, voice catching on her next words in a way that made Sierra flinch at the thought that she was the one responsible for it. “Are you girls alright?”

  Eyes closing briefly as she ran through everything she assumed had to be making its way through the older girl’s mind, Sierra came to the only conclusion she could. Seeing the emotion in Irelyn’s eyes when she looked at the smear on the ground and realized what it was, Sierra knew she couldn't let Irelyn think Paige had anything to do with that decision. She couldn't let any of the emotion or judgment for that be directed at her sister. Even if that meant it all had to be directed at her instead. She was the one who actually deserved to be looked at like that.

  So, she cleared her throat and spoke up firmly. “Listen, Paige wasn't responsible for… for the grenade. She didn't have anything to do with that.” Her hand rose to point at the smear. “I’m the one who made that choice. He was a threat. We couldn't beat him in a fair fight. If I gave him any chance at all, if we tried to have a real fight with him, he would have killed us. He was too fast. I did what I thought I had to, what had to be done to make sure he wasn't a threat anymore. I know that's not really how we're supposed to do things. I made the choice. I tricked him into taking the grenade because it was the only way I could think of to stop him for good. Don't judge her for it. If you don't want me around after doing something like that, go ahead and say so. I’ll leave and you won’t--”

  “Oh just shut it, Sierra,” Paige snapped immediately, giving her a hard elbow to the side before turning to face the girl. Her voice was firm and pointed, allowing no argument. “I’m not some innocent little flower. I--I did what I had to do too.” Her eyes flicked toward the distant remains of one of the helicopters. “I tried to kill as little as possible, because I want to be better than that. But I still killed people. I have before and I will again when necessary. And for the record, you're not going anywhere without me. I’ve seen how easy it is for you to find trouble. Hell, if you did try to go off on your own, you'd end up wandering right into the middle of a Collision Point anyway.”

  “I find trouble easily?” Sierra retorted, suddenly grateful for the return to something she actually understood more than all that emotional stuff. Arguing was so much easier than hugging and being like… well, like all that crap. “I'm sorry, why don’t you go ahead and remind me which one of us just saved the other’s life from a damn speedster Touched. Then we can talk about who manages to get in more trouble.”

  Paige made a noise in the back of her throat, head shaking rapidly. “Oh, should we start making a list of what sort of trouble we both manage to get ourselves into and then compare them? I'm not sure you actually want to start getting into that sort of math when we get right down to it.”

  Drawing herself up to her full, still rather unimpressive height, Sierra made an exaggerated huffing sound of disbelief, fully throwing herself into the chance to argue rather than let herself be overwhelmed by all those dumb emotions. “If you think for one second that I'm just going to--”

  A sudden, sharp whistle filled the air. Sierra belatedly realized that Irelyn had been trying to get their attention with a soft word here and there over the past few moments, and had finally just cut through their arguing with that piercing noise. When they both looked at her, she exhaled. “Girls, no one is being blamed for anything. I know--” She stopped, glancing to the remains of the man, then to the burned-out helicopter wrecks scattered across the ground. “I know you’ve both done things, both today and in the past, that… that you had to do. I’m not judging you. I--I can’t judge you.” She let them start to object before interrupting. “Battlement is dead. The man in the armor is dead.” With that bomb thrown into the middle of the conversation, she pushed on. “I killed him. I killed him because it was the only way to make sure he wasn’t a threat anymore. You’re right, it’s not the way we usually do things. In an ideal situation, I’d contain him, put him to sleep, make sure he could be arrested and tried legally. But this isn’t an ideal situation. This is life and death. I just--I wish you two didn’t have to be in this situation. I wanted to make your lives better. I wanted to make sure you never had to make that sort of choice--or at least make it so you didn’t have to do that for awhile. You deserve to be safer than this. You deserve better. I wasn’t judging you just now, I was judging myself for failing to give you the safe situation you deserve. I killed Battlement so he couldn’t hurt you, so he couldn’t take you away from me. Because I wanted you to be safe. And now… now it turns out you had to kill to protect yourselves anyway. I’m sorry.”

  Letting out a heavy sigh as she told herself this wasn’t just going to go away, Sierra focused on the older girl, her… weirdly accepting new sister. “Look, we choose not to kill as much as possible because--well it’s our choice, we want to be better than we were originally programmed to be. But these guys were trying to viciously murder us. I am absolutely not going to lose any sleep over putting them in the ground. And I’m pretty sure Paige won’t either. Right, Paige?” There was a moment of silence before she looked that way. “Paige?”

  “Go,” Paige abruptly announced, turning and giving both Sierra and Irelyn a shove toward the ATVs while jerking her chin that way for Haley’s benefit. “Go, go, go! Now! Get out of here! Move!”

  Only then did Sierra realize what Paige was reacting to. She had been so distracted in that moment that she hadn’t noticed the other Biolem had managed to link herself through the communication system in one of those ATVs. She wasn’t getting actual messages or conversations, but she did get what amounted to an automated ‘get out of the area’ warning for vehicles in this spot. Get out of the area because it was about to not exist anymore.

  Because they were shooting some sort of artillery at it.

  Once she processed all that over the course of about half a second, Sierra immediately grabbed Haley’s arm and started booking it to the nearest vehicle. “Go now!” Her own shouted words became a chorus with Paige’s.

  To their credit, the other two didn’t waste any time debating or asking for clarification. They moved immediately. Irelyn grabbed Paige and jumped her over to the nearest bike, then left her momentarily to start it up so she could jump back, grab both Sierra and Haley, and jumped again. She couldn’t jump quite as far with both of them, but they’d also managed to run closer in that time so it evened out.

  They took two ATVs, Paige and Haley on one and Sierra and Irelyn on the other. The ‘get the fuck out’ warning was blaring so loudly and glaringly through the communication system that Sierra was surprised the two humans couldn’t pick it up all by themselves, lack of internal computer be damned.

  And a moment later, the reason for the volume of that warning became obvious. A tiny rocket, barely the size of a bicycle, streaked past overhead with a loud whistling sound. As the two ATVs raced as quickly as possible out of that area, the rocket angled itself down, slamming into the dirt almost in the direct center of the small abandoned ghost town of cabins.

  Even with their head start, the very edge of the resulting explosion still hit the ATVs, sending them skidding off the path, through the bushes, and off the edge of a steep cliff overlooking a dry riverbed about a hundred feet down.

  Their vehicles dropped away from them, and all four figures began to plummet through the air.

  Joke Tags: And Now They Can Cross Sierra’s Request For A Family Skydiving Excursion Off The List