From the flash of a solar flare I had versed into blackness. I thought it might be a black hole, but then my pupils adjusted and the dark receded. My night vision took hold and I could see that I sat in a decrepit room, wall paper peeling back into rolls and the floors forming small anthills and valleys where it had sagged. A lavender haze was biting at what was left of the night sky, meaning it was early morning. The stars were faint, but I could see Leo, Ursa Major, and Orion’s Belt. Looking at them, I knew I was in the lower Northern latitudes and right of center in the Western Hemisphere. I could think of the handful of cities where I could be, but the spelling of the graffiti on the wall was American. Chicago was the likeliest place.

I could hear voices on the lower floor. Hushed and clipped. The vibrations of shifting weight ungulated through the structural beams. They were directly below, but no footsteps and they weren’t in the halls. They were waiting and something was coming. I went into a battle stance, an instinctual point of battle etiquette taught to me by Hattori Hanzo, the famous ninja vassal of the Tokugawa Ieyasu, or “Hanzo the devil” to you, because for me he will always be my sensei, “Hanzo the ghost.”

I picked up my nap sack, home to all my worldly possessions. The rest had been liquidated into usable funds. As a verser I always seemed perpetually short on cash. However, I saw fit to keep a blade given to me by Miyamoto Musashi (you might know his little work, A Book of Five Rings). The plaster on the wall had too much water damage to cut away cleanly, but I opened a hole large enough for me to fit through and the space between the plaster and masonry could hold me comfortably. Seems divinely convenient (probably was) that some rotted curtains hid the hole from plain sight. If this sounds like something you’ve seen before, then you should know the idea wasn’t entirely original to the Wachowski brothers…

So climbed in and shimmied down to the ground floor where I knew the voices were coming from. I cut a small line where the the ceiling met the wall and put my eye to it. There were people huddled in rags and and aged hand-me-downs that looked to be from a homeless shelter. Then I saw it: lights swept back and forth from the front of the building. I could hear the boot steps, but no voices. They were using hand signals. I heard at least two weapons cocked, but the sound wasn’t from any automatic weapon I knew.

The door exploded with splinters and men with some variation on the U.S. all-purpose camouflage and light SAWs came rushed in screaming orders and dragging people in fours and fives through the entry way. They also had some type of rotary launcher strap to the side of their guns. Seemed silly to be so heavily armed for some smelly refugees. Seemed obvious they were looking for something more dangerous.

My question got answered, sorta. Two people came in wearing what looked like flight suits, prominently blue and red, and emblazoned over the right breast with a presidential eagle, holding lightening bolts, instead of the the arrows and olive branches. Their gate was that of trained officers; military, not civilian. They walked too regularly in step.

The crowd was thinned from thirty to about eight. The flight-suited female stepped forward and went to each person, staring at them intently for a minute or so and then going on the next. She was a psi and a skilled one. I knew the the M.O. of those academy trained types. Their professional ethics were usually some variation of the Prague Mentalist and Parapsychology Accords. Of course I didn’t know what type of wordline I was dealing with, so making guesses that far out was unwise.

She kept this up until she reached the second to the last person, a girl, probably about fifteen, mumbling and, for some strange reason, sitting very properly. The female officer got down on her level and raised her chin with a single finger, brushing away the hair gently. She stared for the longest time before speaking.

“Are you Annalise?”

“I am.” The girl with a calm that set me aback.

“Then you know what I have to do…Under Emergency Federal Code 1534c and the Diplomacy Act of 1973, I hereby commence summary judgment and execution.”

That didn’t sound right. I had gotten a hold of all the heat signatures of the people in the room and they glowed brightly against the blackbody of the background. I put up a tk shield around the girl just before one of the soldiers loosed his SAW. The bullets went straight through the upper floors, as I intended to keep anyone one from getting ventilated. The plaster gave way more like gravel and sand than any sort of cohesive building material. Glad I didn’t sneeze the wrong way before now.

The female was wide eyed and stepping back, but I could see her heart rate lowering, as did her male companion who had lifted off the ground and closed the six foot difference in the blink of an eye. He sent me back through the wall, through a neighboring alley, and through the masonry and beams of another building. My bones held. In fact they held so well that I nearly ended up in the building’s basement because I had snapped the floor joyce in two.

He came bearing down with a balled fist and an arm crooked for a flight augmented punch. I could feel my nerves crackle with speed and suddenly everything slowed. I lifted myself with tk , caught him by the arm, and swung him through the left wall out onto the street where he skidded along the asphalt into a lamp post. I followed him with my tk flight.

There was no talking or taunting. He just caught up and came at me again. I was ready to ram him with everything I had, someone through the switch on my psi. My head pounded with what seemed like white noise. The female was backing up her partner.

I fell fifteen feet onto the street with a nice thud and the flying guy bearing down on me. A ball of two fists came hammering toward my head and I caught it with the butt of my palm. I could feel the shock travel through my body into the street and then the small implosion of the asphalt beneath my feet.

Just to let you in on a little secret: Normal human or not, human beings were not designed to do this type of stuff. I could explain why, but the explanation would be longer than what I am writing here. Suffice to say, superhuman strength is a bit like shifting gears and it requires a lot of concentration. So, if someone offers to give you the ability to tear tanks in two, think twice about it. Anyway, I knew this jackboot and I were about even and it wasn’t going to get better. The female on the other hand…

She was good, don’t get me wrong, but all of her training was was based of the concept concentration and control. My training had been in the “flow” school of psi. Without that flexibility she had an uphill battle to fight. I feel her behind the static and I had just the tool to knock her out of the game.

It feels a little bit like being right next to fire bell. Letting it go I heard a faint scream from the building and the static ended. I then took Flying Man for a tk ride and sent him sailing over the top of the building behind him.

The soldiers opened fire on me. I could feel the bullets stop at the armor beneath my skin, but the grenades were a different matter. A blasts sent me into the air again. Advice: When your being shot at, don’t try psi. It isn’t reliable enough with automatic weapons and grenades trained on this carcass.

So I used my tk one last time and got myself to a ledge, opposite of where they were shooting. I sprang outward and with one long arc I crashed through a window of the opposite building. I took a swan dive from there and landed on the street below.

I have to compliment the soldiers, they knew have to fight. They knew not to ball their fists during punches and didn’t telegraph either. Strong kicks too. Didn’t help much…

The first one I sent into a wall and by the loud deep crack I knew he had found a structural beam. I played with the others. Got some good sparring out of it and I was able to get in some practice with my spinning and leaping kicks. The last two I just gave a sound strike to the head with the flat of my foot.

The girl was huddle against the corner of the wall and looking at me with that calm…

“Who are you? Honor Guard? One of my cousin’s agents? Have you come to kill me?”

“Uh…neither. I just figured you were in trouble and what they were saying didn’t sound American.”

“Oh, one of those. Can you tell me where your comrades are?”

“I operate alone. What about the people in the street. You with them?”

“I was just hiding with the crowds. Apparently this is one of their regular sleeping places.”

I looked out into the street and everyone was gone. The soldiers hadn’t been looking for them. We needed to get somewhere else fast.

“Can we get out of here and maybe talk there.”

“Yes, do you have somewhere?”

“We can look. Get on my back.”

She gave me the most severe glare I had seen in a while, but understood what I was getting at. She climbed on and I mean climbed. She wasn’t an inch over five foot. I took off with my tk. I could hear the the heavy pulse of helicopter blades a few miles away.

“You know this city better than I do…is it Annalise?”

“Yes, it is, but my full name is Annalise Charlotte Auguste Victoire Clémentine Josef. However, Annalise will suit the circumstances.”

She spoke such excellent English I hadn’t noticed her accent until now, and that lead to another question.

“Ok, so why did they want you? Those troops were a armed for something more than a girl.”

She was silent for a second and then began slowly, working up to something.

“I…You Americans, ever since you gave up your republic, have enacted laws that prevent anyone with official ties to any government to come into your country without permission, on threat of death. I am, or was, the crown princess of of Austria. The reason why they were so well armed is that I am a Delta, like you. They hate Deltas, as I am sure you know.”

Of course I didn’t know and I just gave a grunt. I needed to set down and get out of the air space. We were heading toward the edge of Chicago. If this world was similar enough, which I wasn’t completely sure of, there should be an unoccupied warehouse. But there was know Sears Tower, so I was getting worried…

Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye and suddenly there was a man with an American flag bandanna and torn green fatigues flying beside me and another person keeping up with us, making long jumps between the buildings below. For the first time that night I took a deep gulp and began sweating…