He was there, in that room, and there was the helicopter. There was no Maya there.
But there were figures in the copter, moving.
He was in the copter, and there was Maya, struggling and writhing, as Nuwell Eli, in a furious concentration of savage energy, bound her into one of its seats with a length of rope.
Dark touched her mind, and her mind grasped his, desperately.
Dark, he followed us up here, and hid until you left. He crept up behind me and seized me. Hurry, Dark, he's taking me away!
Hurry? Down those corridors, up those steps, when Nuwell already was sliding into the pilot's seat of the copter?
Frantically, Dark grasped at his only chance of reaching her in time. Teleportation.
He clamped down with his mind on himself. With a frenzied burst of strength, he sought to lift himself bodily, to be there in the copter with them. He put every ounce of energy he possessed into the effort.
And he failed.
He was standing in the dim, dusty corridor, two marsuits under his arm, straining futilely toward a place he could not reach. And now he actually heard, with his ears, the muted vibration above him as the copter's engines roared to life.