Free Virginia Hamilton by Dustland: The Justice Cycle (Book Two) Page B

He’d erected a mighty scaffolding in her way. It was packed with quivering shapes clinging to the supports and braces. Thomas had crashlanded their space vehicle some distance from the scaffolding. Gradually he had expanded the scaffolding into a slime-coated grandstand.
    Wait till she hits that baby—it’s sweet!
    For it was one of his finest illusions. There were twisted forms, perhaps human, lying quite still in the dust surrounding the crash site. The whole scene was planted to strike terror in anyone stumbling upon it. Those who had survived the entry into earth-future sat up in the arena, shrouded in a mildewing silence.
    She’s close. Close! She’s in!
    Thomas homed in telepathically as Miacis entered the illusion.
    She would be his prey. If he could just terrify the wits out of her, she would turn tail and run. And she would become his slave.
    Something’s wrong!
    Miacis wasn’t slowing down. She wasn’t seeing anything.
    Thomas closed his eyes and saw.
    So that’s it! It hit him that Miacis simply couldn’t see a single thing. An illusion had to be seen before it could work.
    Stone blind as a bloody bat! I let her catch up and she can’t even see! Well, she won’t catch me!
    Miacis would catch Levi. Thomas would place his own aura around his brother, enclosing Levi in the atmosphere of his being. The aura of mental and physical imprints intertwined were similar to scents. Never could they be mistaken for the imprints of anyone else once they were in place.
    What of Lee’s aura?
    It was not very strong, almost never overpowering. Thomas would thin it out, expand it as far as was safe.
    Not to destroy it. Just to put his own in place over it, so you wouldn’t know it was there.
    Discovering Thomas’ aura, Miacis wouldn’t question that the boy she captured was anyone but Thomas.
    And then Thomas would blank out Lee’s brain and fill it with a fake persona. He would leave clues of himself in Lee’s thin blood and weak muscle.
    Just in case Miacis should decide to check it all out, he thought.
    Miacis!
    Legs churning in a frenzy of running. Her coat as shiny as metal, the grinding dust polishing every hair. Miacis ranging. Tracking. Never tiring. Nothing in Dustland a hindrance to her.
    Like searing steam on Thomas’ mind was Miacis’ good humor on his backtrail.
    Have to get away from here!
    Tom-Tom? It was Lee.
    Yeah? as calmly as he could trace it.
    Lee’s eyes were shut tight. Tom-Tom. He clutched at the rocks. I’m breathing through the dust, through my hood, like you told me.
    Yeah. That’s good.
    But you know I can’t breathe through anything. Because I don’t have anything here to breathe with. My flesh and bone isn’t here — right? So what is it I hear and feel breathing? What walked out here and ran — is it me in the past keeps me breathing here — ? Tom-Tom? I feel like I’m in a box. I’m afraid I’ll suffocate!
    A distance grew in his desperate thoughts, as if some part of him had snapped and separated from the other. Suddenly he was cut off from a sense of the familiar. He was overwhelmed with sadness. His squeezed-shut eyes dribbled uncontrollable tears.
    What eyes?
    He never knew the moment Thomas slipped away. But, slowly, awareness came to him and revealed that his brother had abandoned him.
    Tom-Tom. Why did you do this?
    A largeness spread out inside Levi. Huge, it forced its way throughout his inner space. The fake persona squeezed Levi into a corner. It blanketed his mind. What remained of his senses gathered on the far side of knowing in a tiny puff of nothing. Thomas’ aura was all.
    So it was that the brother waited. He clung to rocks a few inches from the ground. In case Miacis was already upon him, he pretended he needed rest. Dust gathered strangely around him, howling and blowing, streaming its way into rock crevices. With whistling force, it made its way under the brother’s fingers. Until it covered him, caking him in a putrid grime, which gave him the