Savant

7: Why Do Chase Scenes Always End on a Rooftop?

Don't lick your lips. Don't swallow. As long as it didn't get into my bloodstream the effects would be minimal. I wiped my lips furiously but only succeeded in rubbing it into them, like a toxic lip balm.

The door burst open and the Turk nearly tripped over Diego in his haste to enter the room.

"Just give her a moment, Solomon," Strauss said casually. "The girl's poisoned herself. She'll go down in seconds."

Like hell I will. I grabbed the dish of mochi, wondering what sort of mess I'd be if I had eaten them. Who knew what they'd laced it with or how that poison would have reacted with the curare on my lips.

I whirled around and flung the dish. It hit Solomon full in the face and he roared and stumbled back. Without pausing, I leaped onto the table and let the Savant in my brain take full control.

My vision altered, as if I were refocusing, my Savant eyes falling in place like a pair of glasses. Edges sharpened, colors brightened, and lines appeared. The lines were everywhere: connecting the ceiling to the floor, the measuring the angle at which Strauss stood, calculating distance, depth, and speed. My eyes had their own arsenal of tools-angles and rulers and calculators and metronomes. Numbers swirled and I read them as I could never read words. Numbers were my first language and I knew them with astonishing fluency.

I saw the path written out before me, with precise measurements scribbled along the way as if written by a dry erase marker on the thin air.

Solomon lunged at me, and I clambered onto the table and jumped up, grabbing the curving metal bar from which unlit paper lanterns hung. They shook wildly as I swung myself, gymnast style, over the bar to crouch precariously on top of it, my back bent against the beam above me. Solomon hesitated, waiting to see which way I'd go, and I took a moment to sum up every inch of the room. In an instant, I'd calculated every possible route to the door and my correlating chances of success, and I locked on to the one most likely to get me out of the room alive.

Solomon made the first move. He pulled a gun and shouted for me to stop, but I didn't-I crawled along the beam, tipping over and hanging upside down like a sloth. The lanterns hit my face and one of the light bulbs shattered, raining glass shards like deadly rain onto Strauss's head. She jumped from her chair as I let go of the bar and dropped to the floor, ducking immediately into a roll as Solomon fired.

"Don't shoot!" Strauss ordered. "We can take her alive!"

He charged at me. Beside me was a bonsai in a clay pot, and I tipped it over and rolled it toward him. As he stumbled aside to avoid it, I sprinted across the room, didn't see Strauss's arm in time, and was clotheslined by it. She caught me full across the throat. My feet flew up and my head slammed into the ground. Lights splintered my vision and pain roared through my back, but I had to keep moving. I hooked a foot around one of the chairs and jerked it toward her, knocking her off her feet.

In a trice, I half-crawled, half-ran to the opposite wall, where a coffee bar was installed. I hurled everything on it-mugs, sugar jars, empty cream pitchers, even the coffeemaker and a Japanese tea set-at Strauss and Solomon. My eyes measured distance, velocity, and the arc of my throws, so that each object his its target. My two attackers had to back away, shielding themselves with their arms crossed in front of their faces.

When I'd run out of throwing ammunition, I tossed both my shoes, and then they started forward again. I ducked beneath Strauss's fist-for a businesswoman in a pantsuit, she had pretty slick moves-and dove beneath the glass table, scurrying beneath the continents of South America and Africa, then taking a left toward Asia. Strauss's faux alligator skin bag had fallen down there, and I grabbed it by the long strap. When I popped up on the other side of the table and Solomon stepped to intercept me, I swung the bag and clocked him on the temple. Whatever was in it did the trick; he howled and toppled sideways onto the table, clutching his head.