4.3
Although the north wall was closest, it would have been stupid to run across the field and straight into the soldiers' barracks, so Jelani and Echo instead directed their course to the west wall.
"Stay close to me," Echo instructed him over the rush of air.
The two were at an all out sprint, flying past streetlights, dumpsters, and buildings, but not a single person. Sirens were wailing in every direction, and the hearts of all 60,000 people in the city beat rapidly.
Every single eye was wide open.
Two distinct sounds of blades cutting through the air appeared among the blaring sirens as a pair of helicopters rose above the city, casting their shadows onto the empty streets below.
The wall was in sight. 20 feet high and made of thick pine trunks topped with sizzling barbed wire.
The intruders gasped for air as they pumped their arms, but Jelani increased his pace even more, surging ahead of Echo and straining towards the barrier.
Coming in at full speed, he slammed his iron-clad fist into the wall.
He hit it too hard, blowing a small hole through an entire trunk, which teetered backward slightly but refused to fall.
Armpit-deep in the wood, Jelani yanked his fist out and pounded the tree again, but he'd overlooked the ropes that bound the trees of the wall together. So long as those bindings remained, the trunk would never fall.
Echo reached the wall as he leapt into the air, slicing the ropes above with a single, clean stroke. Finally, the thick pine collapsed outward and a lone, narrow exit appeared.
In an instant, a storm of bullets peppered the wall all around them. As before, neither of them were hit a single time, and they clambered through the gap in the wall, once again willing their bodies to retrieve every ounce of power they had and flee deep into the safety of the woods.
Luckily for them, there was almost no gap between the wall's exterior and the thick Mount Hood wilderness. They plunged into the trees and achieved a fleeting moment of respite, increasing the distance between themselves and the wailing sirens with every passing stride.
It was as if the city was a massive beehive that had been skewered with a flaming stick. Sirens continued to reverberate within every street and every crooked shop, and the gate opened in the north wall, pouring forth hundreds of soldiers from its mouth.
A third helicopter took to the skies, and the trio of metal aircraft departed from the city, scanning the forests beneath them.
Jelani and Echo's pace slowed as their bodies began to give out on them.
"Stop," Echo gasped as soon as they'd reached a dense part of the forest.
The canopy completely shielded them from above, so the helicopters would have no way of picking them out among the trees.
"Pointless to keep running," she groaned, supporting her weight against a tree. "If they come, I need energy."
Jelani, who was hardly in better shape than she was, hauled air into his lungs and desperately fought to sort out his thoughts.
What can I do?
Echo had somehow been protecting him the entire time, but who knew how long she could hold out? He, on the other hand, had done nothing.
I'm not weak, but what can I do against guns? What power could I possibly have?
As soon as the word "Power" entered his mind, a vision of Echo's face at the summit of Mount Hood followed.
"I checked those guys out. They all had strength, growth, and healing."
Growth…
Jelani set his quavering hand on the scratchy bark of a pine tree.
Growth.
Closing his eyes, he created an image of the tree within his mind.
An organism consisting of a trillion cells, each one combining in an impossibly beautiful pattern to form the structure that happened to take on the form of a trunk, branches, needles, and roots.
But it could be broken down even further. Atoms, then the electrons and nuclei that combine to form them. Every piece of matter on earth could be disassembled into the same fundamental parts.
Naturally, a tree appeared to be distinctly separated from both the air surrounding it and from Jelani's hand resting on its surface, but what separation could really be made? Did this tree truly have a boundary that drew a line between itself and the rest of the world?
Perhaps the tree's form wasn't so fixed as it appeared to be.
Yeah, Jelani thought, why should its boundary be so definite? Why should each cell's barrier be so stubborn?
I'm limited by what I believe. Why should I listen to the losers who told me how the world works?
I can do whatever the hell I want.
The tree ballooned in size.
Its height shot upward and girth blew outward, the ground rumbling around the widening roots that dug ever deeper.
Jelani's mouth, which continued to pull in shaky breaths of air, split into a wide grin.
"hehhh heehehehheh," he murmured in a low, crazed laugh.
"Dude, what're you on?" Echo, who'd been observing Jelani the entire time, asked.
He ignored her completely, and the tree rose into the sky. Over the thick roots breaking through the surface of the ground, he slowly stepped backward, matching the tree's speed as it continued to push outward.
Once the trunk had grown to at least 20 feet in diameter and incalculably tall, Echo said, "I'm glad you figured it out, but how is that supposed to help us?"
Jelani leapt to a new tree and repeated the process, exploding its growth more rapidly this time. He inflated it until even after its base made contact with the other supermassive tree, trunks fusing together as the new tree grew around the first one.
He moved on to another, and then another.
Massive branches snapped against the growing trunks and Echo, realizing what he must have had in mind, moved closer to Jelani as he circled the area, creating a ring of five giant trees.
The final trunk's base squished against the first one's, fusing the gap and sealing the circle off completely.
Jelani and Echo stood in a small, pitch-black opening in the middle of the enormous living towers. Since the trees had grown around each other, there was no gap between their trunks until at least 100 feet above the ground, and the short stubs of branches that were left between the trees blocked out all light coming from above. In other words, they were sealed inside a wooden chamber with 30-foot-thick walls.
Echo's voice cut into the dark silence, reverberating throughout their makeshift hideout.
"This seems kinda stupid," she said, her breathing finally back to normal after the sprint, "but I guess we'll have a while before they get in here."
Jelani, who was even more exhausted than he'd been before, slid to the ground, slumping against one of the immovable trunks.
"You're feeling it, huh?" Echo asked in amusement.
She pulled off her new backpack and unzipped it before pulling out a small metal flashlight. Clicking it on, she pointed it at Jelani.
"It's great that they can't get in, but how are we gonna get out? In the worst case, they'll light your trees on fire and we'll burn to death.
Jelani wheezed, "Doesn't matter."
Echo was silent as she pointed the beam of light at his downturned head.
"Because," he continued between breaths, "I can rely," he gasped, lifting his head and staring into the light, "on my strength."
Echo's expression softened slightly. "Oh yeah? I hope you can back that up."