Tears out pipe under speed bump

I could see the artificial speed bump in the road. A hump of dirt, painted yellow.

My eye fixed on that. Yellow paint where the dirt sloped up against sidewalk, to mark the rise, to let people know to watch their step, and-

I retreated, flying over the cars. The tinker broke away from Sveta, saw me heading one way, and started to take the long way around, the front door in his sights.

I dove for the ground, and I had the Wretch dig its hands into the earth. I couldn't rely on it to do as I wanted, but I could do something else. Faced with a second methat reached out and lashed out mindlessly, I could deny it, I could allow it to work…

Or I could at least make it lash out in a predictable way. I could lean on the fact that the Wretch outlasted a sustained hurt better than it outlasted a sudden, sharp kind of hurt.

I spun. Each outstretched arm swiped at the earth. A sustained battering, spread out across the Wretch's limbs.

I carved my way a few feet into the ground near the speed bump, drove my hand into the fissure that cracked the hard earth there, and found my prize.

The tinker had escaped Sveta, and he had escaped Rain. He found his orientation, and he lunged.

I lunged too. Wretch active, I tore the flexible pipe out of the ground, flying along it, so the Wretch skimmed along its length, raising it up. The hump wasn't just a speed bump, but earth covering the pipe that had been set in a shallow trench and then covered. Water or power to the Lyme Center.

A tripwire for my quarry.

- Polarize 10.8