“Agents of the void,” Minhyun mumbled. “Are those our guys?”

“What are you talking about?” Junior said. “No, I’ve never heard about ‘agents of the void’. Why?”

“They’re coming. Here. I can hear their thoughts. They’re not letting me stay in their head, though. They… have bazookas!”

Junior looked around, either assessing the current situation or the future one. “Out!”

The boys shuffled out of the car just in time to see several trucks pull into the garage with screeching tires. The vehicles came to a halt as the breaks were slammed and the ‘agents of the void’ poured out aiming huge weapons.

The four boys jumped aside as the first explosive ammunition impacted on their car and turned it into a fireball. Junior pulled Ren to safety behind a concrete pillar. Minhyun was rolling on the ground and tried to crawl under a nearby car.

Aron strode forward with confidence. There was nothing they could hit him with.

Three bazooka hits came his way simultaneously. They weren’t even aimed well, he thought, as they slammed into the ground before him. He told the pressure and flames to leave him alone and they obeyed dutifully. No problem.

Except the aim had been botched on purpose. The ground crumbled under the boy. The parking garage had sublevels.

Since he couldn’t use his telekinesis on himself he was confronted with his kryptonite. Gravity.

Aron dropped out of sight, vanishing into the lower levels.

***

Baekho’s heart was racing. He was safe in the janitor’s closet, but for how long? He couldn’t stay in Twi for more than a few seconds before getting pulled back. And it took all his concentration to get there in the first place. No way could he fight like that.

Technically he was armed with a crowbar, but the guards had guns.

Worse still, Minhyun wasn’t answering him anymore. Oh, and he was in his underwear. As it turned out it was so hard to shift into Twi that he kept leaving even the things on his body behind whether he wanted or not. The stolen drives were gone, too, of course.

He heard steps. Clutching the bar he listened intently past the sound of his blood rushing through his ears.

The door opened as somebody pulled a valid access card through the slit.

“In here!” yelled the guard the seconds he saw the half- boy.

Baekho shifted before the man could raise his weapon.

Where was the next door? Ah, a glass door to the stair case. Perfect. The tiger slammed the bar into the glass and hopped through the moment he was forced to pop back. He had barely made it.

On the other side was another guard.

Luckily this time Baekho had the element of surprise. He threw the bar and jumped the ducking guy. A few kicks later and the uniformed man went down. Up close they weren’t that tough.

He heard a click behind his head – a magazine reloading.

“Slowly turn around!”

There were more. And they were coming from both ends of the stairs. And the one he had just run from was already waiting behind the glass door.

He tried to shift. As hard as possible. But Twi wasn’t responding right, it only gave him bits and pieces. Instead of letting him step through, there was an odd magnetic attraction between him and the other side, but he couldn’t get there.

“Drop to the ground, boy. Now!”

Baekho focused on the connection. For his own safety, he complied with the orders, but he hadn’t given up. He had never felt his ability this way. Usually it took a fraction of a second to get into Twi. He hadn’t had an opportunity to examine the precise workings of the connection in detail.

The five man around him slowly, carefully closed in. They were waiting for something. Orders or backup, it didn’t matter.

The tugging at the connection had a violent result.

Twi broke.

An indescribably strange substance - not quite liquid, not quite gas – erupted from Baekho’s body and slammed the guards to the ground. The boy held a fraction of twilight itself – a wobbling orb that was neither dark nor light – kind of a variable gray that changed with the surrounding, impossible to pin down.

“Hey, he’s doing something. Shoot him, shoot him!”

The tiger grinned. He pushed the orb forward letting it leave his grasp. It stayed in reality. The twilight orb hit the yelling man in the face, flattening his nose and knocking him out. Baekho’s grin grew brighter. He could work with that.

He’d even get the drives back. Well, first his pants, then the drives.