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When they reached the right spot, Maggie just turned off the highway and drove into the desert The car ju itself loose as she drove over rocks and plants and potholes and gullies but she didn&039;t care - if the car broke down out here it didn&039;t ht The part of her that wasn&039;t darkness thought it, anyway I need the car for etaway I&039;ll need it for when I start hed

She reached the ravine where she&039;d gotten her powers - the place where her father died and all this began - and brought the car to a stop in a plume of smoke that could probably be seen for miles She was still a half mile from the cylinder She turned to Lucy, who looked like she&039;d been shaken up pretty badly by the wild ride through the desert "Stay here," Maggie said "I suppose you could try to run away But it&039;s an hour&039;s hike back to the highway for sos It would take you all day You don&039;t have any water" She shrugged "I think you&039;re probably sh to understand what that means"

"So - what? You just leave me here? So I can die of thirst in the car instead of out in the desert?"

"I&039;ll cohed and turned on the air conditioning Otherwise Lucy ht fry inside the car as the sun beat down on it Unfortunately that nition To keep Lucy fro wheel and threw it like a discus out into the depths of the desert

So ht

She left Lucy behind and headed down into the ravine on foot She had a good reason to do so She was pretty sure the ravine was going to be swaret killed when they inevitably started shooting at her

It wasn&039;t long before she could see the cylinder up ahead Her eyes were stronger now, in the sas were, and she could see a lot farther and a lot more clearly than she used to Except that with the cylinder, her super vision didn&039;t really help Its weirdness hadn&039;t changed, she saw She still couldn&039;t get a good sense of how big it was, or even what shape it was other than long and round

She could see other things very well The FBI had surrounded the cylinder with a ring of chain link fencing maybe five hundred yards in diameter Inside the fence they&039;d parked a bunch of construction trailers, generator trucks, bulldozers, backhoes and ce assault rifles patrolled the fence, while others operated a satellite dish or waved weird bits of scientific equipment at the cylinder

None of them, she saw, came within a hundred yards of it They&039;d even planted little neon red flags in the ground around the entrance to the cylinder, probably to warn people not to come any closer

They were afraid of it They were afraid of what the green fire could do

They should be, the darkness thought

Maggie ca up handfuls of it and ripping it away Barbed wire had been strung along its top but it didn&039;t even scratch her skin So instantly but the bullets felt like hailstones on her skin - painful, but nothing she couldn&039;t just shrug off There was shouting, and people running back and forth She ignored it

She identified the trailer that looked like the command center - it was covered in antennae and small satellite dishes and even a cell phone tower - and headed toward it On the way she picked up a forklift She lifted it over her head and threw it overhand into the colass and screaent in a bulletproof vest and a navy blue baseball cap ca out bullets and fire She grabbed the barrel of his rifle - it was hot enough to scorch her hand, but she didn&039;t care - and before he could let go of the weapon she swung hih the air and crashed down in the sand near the cylinder, with his head just inside the dangerous peris He looked around to see where he was and then got up and ran away screae this tiie shouted "This place is mine Get out!"

Some of them did as she said Jeeps full of scientists and technicians started up and raced for the gap in the fence Meanwhile the guards in their body ar up in for positions As if they could stop her with bullets

What ca the on to their weapons or ere duh the air, had their arh that their friends had to carry them away But eventually - one way or another - they all left

When she was sure she was completely alone in the site, she went back to the car and fetched Lucy The disabled girl fought like a wet cat, but Maggieher over one shoulder and squeezing her - hard - every tiie said, "I need you to just be quiet for a while"

"How long?" Lucy asked "I&039;ood at it, I ht noell, this is beyond nervous, I think I , I&039;ve never been able to control er to her lips "Shh," she said

Lucy shut up

Maggie found a shady spot behind the wreckage of the corabbed a bunch of chain link fence and wrapped it around the girl, tight enough that she couldn&039;t ie said, and headed into the cylinder