Free Tempest by Kelly Meding Page A

above the familiar expanse of Central Park, is what made me want to bend over and tuck my head between my knees. Fortunately for my flying companions, lunch stayed down and I stayed conscious.
    My last memories of Central Park were the stuff of nightmares: smoke and fire, cold and rain, the bitter taste of fear in my mouth, the scorched and withered landscape. Friends dying around me. Metal statues melting. Buildings falling to the ground. I remembered exhaustion, being cold all the way to my bones, and the searing agony of being shot by a madman.
    And then the confusion of losing our powers. Even the Banes who’d stormed Belvedere Castle in an effort to slaughter us didn’t know what had happened or what to do next. We had no powers to fight with. The Banes eventually left us alone, scared away by the gun we took off a dead man and that then-fifteen-year-old Gage wielded like the leader he became that day. He didn’t realize until later that the gun didn’t have any more bullets in it.
    Sixteen kids landed in Central Park via copter; five us were still alive.
    Simon and Aaron climbed out first. I paused in the doorway, heart suddenly jackhammering in my chest, the whir of the copter blades stirring the warm summer air and the thick leaves of nearby trees. The Park looked like it had in pictures taken decades ago, when it was alive and thriving. Grass and trees and flowers had taken over earth I remembered being brown and dead. The sun shined down—no cold rain.
    I stepped out of the copter and into a strange world that had thrived on the graves of lost lives. With a question in his eyes, “Scott” grabbed my elbow and tugged me away from the copter so it could take off again. The pilot left us alone near a low stone wall. Beyond the cracked pavement of Eighth Avenue were decrepit and crumbling buildings that had once cost a fortune to rent. On our side of the wall was that small slice of freedom Simon had spoken of.
    “Are you all right?” Simon asked.
    My ready supply of sarcasm abandoned me, and I replied honestly for a change. “I’m not sure. It’s a little overwhelming to be back here and see it so . . . nice.”
    Simon gave me what I decided was a fatherly smile. “Nothing grew the first spring, but by the next year the grass started coming back. We found seeds in different stores, but it was several summers before the ground could grow anything other than weeds. Now there’s a large community garden about a block east of here. I’ll show you later.”
    A garden. A garden?!
    “Don’t look so surprised,” Simon said. “We scavenged everything we could across the island to supplement that garbage the federal government dropped on us. Meat and dairy have always been an issue, but thanks to that garden, no one is starving any longer.” An acerbic no thanks to them dangled on the end of that sentence, punctuated by the look in his eyes. The look of a man with a serious grudge, who still held a small hope of getting even.
    Simon had been imprisoned here with the other Banes. I’d always known that, but I had somehow never put it together with the reality of my own experience in Central Park. He’d been here during that final battle, when we were running for our lives. Maybe he wasn’t part of the group that had attacked Belvedere Castle, and I don’t remember seeing him that day, but he was here. He fought our parents and mentors in those last, brutal battles. And he spent the next fifteen years paying for those crimes. He never spoke about the War or the years following, and I never asked.
    Maybe I didn’t want to know—didn’t want to connect helpful Simon Hewitt with the Bane called Psystorm who’d been our enemy. And every single person I’d meet today in the Warren had been in the exact same place.
    Coming here had been a huge fucking mistake.
    “Tempest?” Simon waved a hand in front of my face, concerned.
    I snapped my head back, unsure how long I’d been staring at him—or what my