“From what Anna Maria has explained to me,” Dr. Ursula Keller began with only a touch of a German accent. “You people all possess the ability to directly influence the weather in some manner. She even demonstrated some of her abilities to me, which I find rather extraordinary.” She stood next to a whiteboard and had written down a list of what storm riders could do. Apparently, she had taken a lot of time to question Anna Maria.
“She said you needed someone who knew about antimatter. But why is this?”
“Reilly,” Nat said.
I stretched my thumb and forefinger, then let loose with the crazy backwards lightning. Sure enough, the fuzzy arc of miniature explosions materialized again.
For good measure, Jack did the same thing, though he made it more spectacular by stretching it between palms about six inches apart. Firecracker explosions went off repeatedly along the arc, making it chaotic.
“Madre de Dios,” Anna Maria breathed. “You didn’t tell me that something was wrong with you, too,” she said to Jack.
“It’s his fault,” Jack nodded his head at me.
“I did shoot him,” I admitted. “Because he asked me to.”
“Joaquim!”
Jack shrugged.
“Fascinating,” said Dr. Keller. “That really is not lightning as you showed me, earlier. And you suspect that this is positronic lightning, annihilating with air molecules to produce photons and gamma bursts?”
“Um, yeah, we totally suspected all of that,” I said.
“We really need more smart people that we can talk to,” Kate said.
“Definitely.”