Free The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore Page A

confused, then reaches for his gun. I tear it from its holster before his hand even touches it. The metal feels cold against my palm, and I turn to the two copters and hurl it like a bullet at the nearest. That’s when I see the eyes, doleful and black in the middle of the storm. Soon the old, withered face takes shape. The same face I saw in Ohio when Six killed the beast that wrecked the school.
    “Don’t move a muscle!” I hear behind me. “Hands in the air!”
    I turn to the officer. Without his gun, he aims his Taser straight at my chest.
    “Which is it, hands in the air or don’t move a muscle? I can’t do both.”
    He cocks the Taser. “Don’t be a smartass, kid,” he says.
    Lightning cracks, followed by a roar of thunder that makes the officer jump in surprise. The officer looks towards the sound, and his eyes open wide in alarm. The face in the clouds, it’s awoken.
    I rip the Taser from his hand, then punch him hard in the chest. He sails thirty feet backwards and crashes into the side of a tree. While my back is still turned, the crack of a nightstick slams against my skull. I fall face-first in the mud and sparkling fuzz fills my vision. I turn as quickly as I can, lift my hand towards the cop who hit me, and get a firm grip around him before he’s able to hit me again. He grunts, and with all of my might I throw him as hard as I can straight up in the air. He screams until he’s up so high I can no longer hear him over the copter blades and rumbling thunder. I feel the back of my head and look at my hand. It’s covered with blood. I catch the officer when he’s within five feet of dying. I let him hover a few seconds before tossing him against a tree, knocking him unconscious.
    A loud explosion tears through the night, and the whir of the copters cuts off. The wind stops. The rain stops, too.
    “John!” Six screams from the top of the hill; and somehow in the pleading, desperate tone of her voice, I know what she needs me to do.
    The lights in my hands snap on, two glowing spotlights every bit as bright as those just extinguished. Both helicopters are wrecked and twisted, and smoke pours from them as they free fall. I don’t know what the face has done to them, but Six and I must save the people aboard.
    As they torpedo down, the helicopter farthest from me jerks upwards. Six is trying to stop it. I don’t think she’ll be able to, and I know that I can’t. It’s too heavy. I close my eyes. Remember the basement in Athens, the way you captured everything inside the room to stop the speeding bullet . And that’s what I do, feeling everything inside the cockpit’s interior. The controls. The weapons. The chairs. The three men sitting in them. I grab hold of the men, and as the trees begin to snap under the weight of the falling copter, I yank all three out. The copter crashes to the ground.
    Six’s copter hits the ground at the same time as mine. The explosions reach out over the treetops, two red balls of fire floating up from the twisted steel. I hold the three men in the air a safe distance from the damage, and bring them carefully to the ground. Then I race back up the hill to Six and Sam.
    “Holy crap!” Sam says, his eyes wide-open.
    “Did you pull them free?” I ask Six.
    She nods. “Just in time.”
    “Me too,” I say.
    I grab the Chest from Sam and thrust it into Six’s arms. Sam picks up our bags.
    “Why are you giving me this?” Six asks.
    “Because we have to get the hell out of here!” I say. I grab Sam and drape him across my shoulders. “Hold on!” I yell.
    We sprint away, deeper into the hills away from the river, Bernie Kosar in the lead as a hawk. Let the cops try to keep up now, I think.
    It’s hard running with Sam on my shoulders, but I still keep a pace three times faster than what he could run on his own. And a far faster pace than any of the officers. Their yelling voices fade away, and after both helicopters just crashed in a heaping mess, who’s to