"Sure", Thunderbird said. "Hope this works, Valentine".
Gide returned from her sniper perch, hugged Valentine. "Long time no see".
"Thanks for keeping the Reapers off me".
"They're your fancy bullets. You want the gun back now?"
"I think it's in better hands with you".
Miss L. checked her watch every two minutes, reading the time to Valentine. They heard trucks pulling up on the roads around the plaza.
Then the mouth opened. Rafferty came out, crossed the bridge from the scaffold, carrying a little girl wrapped in a blanket. "They're coming! They're coming! Turn off the bombs!" Rafferty called.
Seven other humans who emerged, rather shakily, still glistening with the solution they'd been suspended within, must have been favorites to the Pacific Command soldiers. Some of them cheered.
"I don't see any of the Lifeweavers", Valentine said. "Maybe this is a down payment against our leaving".
"Somehow or other, we'll make it back with the real thing", Thunderbird said.
"What is that, a kite?" Gide said, pointing up.
Valentine followed her gaze. Four shapes, reminiscent of jellyfish, drifted, circling down on air currents.
"Creepy-looking things", a Bear commented.
"Depends which side they're on", another said.
"What's that coming down now?" Thunderbird asked.
It was Silas, camel-hair coat flapping in the wind. Gide screamed. Valentine turned away when he hit.
"What was that, a bonus?" a PeaBee asked.
The four Lifeweavers drifted to earth, too exhausted to mask their native form. They couldn't even speak. It didn't stop the Bears from cheering them, nonetheless.
But one figure did not rejoice.
Valentine couldn't say how he crossed the plaza without being noticed. Perhaps he crawled from body to body, hiding among those police killed in the organized riot. But nevertheless Silvers stood over the body of his master. Valentine saw tears wet his eyes, felt his own throat tighten. Even Ahn-Kha wasn't one for tears.
Except once.
The Grog went down on one knee, put a hand against Silas' crushed face, bent down, and listened to the chest. He came away with the side of his face wet with blood.
A deep growl started in his throat. He took a blade out of his kilt and checked the edge with his thumb. For one horrible moment Valentine thought he was going to plunge the blade into his hairy breast, but Silvers made a quick, shallow cut, crossing the angled scar straight up and down, an even longer cut than the old wound. He went down on all fours and hurried to the limo, extracted his twin-barreled cannon from the cupola, and snapped on the harness.
Then he gripped the blade between his teeth and turned for the tower.
As he passed Valentine, he pulled back his lips and one ear flicked up. Valentine, unable to imitate the gesture, thumped his chest three times with his left hand.
Silvers snorted and chambered a round in each barrel. He climbed up the scaffolding, and a loud report echoed as he blew a hole in the door-creature. He worked the bolt on his cannon; then he jumped inside.
"Let's get out of here", Valentine said.
"I'll go talk to the troops outside the plaza", Miss L. said.
"Tell them that anyone who wants to march out with us is welcome", Thunderbird said. "No reprisals. No trials. No more Action Groups. We'll choke Seattle the old-fashioned way, with our bare hands".
ire: Ask twenty different Bears to describe the feeling of Bearfire running through their bodies and you will get twenty different answers. Some speak in terms of space and time, everything slowed down and yet compressed. Others describe it mentally, as a determined form of psychosis, where every obstacle, from a minor vexation to a hail of machine-gun fire, is overcome by boundless violence. Most describe physiological changes: heat, euphoria, a terrible driving energy.