Trust me, Writer Gideon.
Veronique broke my concentration on Grace’s voice when she stripped the handle from the door, tearing out the keycard entry system and the retina scan.
“You don’t have to join us, but we will be taking you away from this facility,” Grace told Adam when we stepped inside.
While a part of my brain – the analytical part – started pointing out flaws and how this would play out in the end and the fact that if we let this kid loose on the streets he may pose more danger to himself and others than if he were kept in our stewardship, I silenced those thoughts.
I understand, he thought to us all.
And the others as well.
“What are the others’ abilities?” I asked aloud.
One has super speed, one controls water, one morphs into a terrible monster, one manipulates vectors.
Manipulates vectors? I thought to both of them.
I used the app again, typing the word ‘vectors’ into the search bar. It came back with one option, a woman named Stella.
She was eighteen going on nineteen, and a quick recap of her abilities had me a bit giddy. I didn’t know if Professor X ever got this way when he discovered a new mutant that could possibly join his forces, but I definitely felt this way when I saw that she was pretty much able to manipulate anything.
Stella, Subject St
Build: 002
Base height: 172 Centimeters
Base weight: 48 Kilos
Strength: 5
Intelligence: 5
Constitution: 4
Wisdom: 4
Dexterity: 6
Charisma: 4
Main: Vector Manipulation
* Kinetic Energy Manipulation
* Quantum Manipulation
* Vibration Emission
* Inertia Negation
* Telekinetic Regeneration
* Tactile Telekinesis
* Deflection
* Velocity Manipulation
* Aversion Field Creation
* Overcharge
I’m not going to lie. I had to pull up a different window and search what a ‘vector’ was, but when I found that it was basically the matter around, between, and part of everything (or as Wikipedia summarized it, ‘an element of vector space’), I realized that the potential for Stella’s power was unheard of.
She would also be the hardest to fight … if she didn’t agree with our little operation.
“And the names of the other three?” I asked Adam.
As I was quickly realizing, Adam never spoke with his own voice; the answer to my question came in a Grace-like dialogue in my mind.
I believe Grace already knows the answer to that question.
Okay, if you’re listening, Grace, enlighten me. At least give me their names so I can look them up.
Michelle utilizes her speed; Ingrid is the shifter who can shift into only one thing; and Fiona manipulates water and can create psionic weapons, Grace thought to me.
What’s that?
A terrible beast.
“Let’s get going,” Veronique said, interrupting our dialogue.
As we moved down the hallway, I tried to use my phone to search the names, but it was a little difficult because we kept taking corners. I decided to do it later, once we got out of there.
We came to another hallway and found a single door at its end. This door was reinforced with steel, and the walls in this section also seemed thicker. There was a viewing glass on the front of the door, but looking through it didn’t reveal anything.
The room seemed completely bare.
Ingrid, Grace thought to me.
“Okay, who’s going in after the Beast Girl?”
Dorian gave me a funny look.
“What?”
“I just have a feeling that calling this one ‘Beast Girl’ may not go over so well.”
“You’re probably right, my mistake. How are we doing this?” I nodded at Adam. “How hostile is she?”
Very.
“He says that she’s very hostile,” I told everyone.
“I heard him,” said Grace.
“Me too,” said Veronique.
“Same,” Dorian chimed in.
“So he’s speaking in all of our heads?”
Yes, said Adam.
“Okay, what if we all go in?”
As before, Veronique stripped the keycard reader off the door and did the same to the eye recognition system.
The door decompressed as it opened, and we entered a large room, easily twice the size of my garden apartment back in New Haven, with high ceilings too.
“Ingrid?” I called.
A teenage girl stepped out of the bathroom and shrieked when she saw me.
This shriek caused her body to hunch forward, her thin arms ballooning in size as muscles formed beneath her skin, veins appearing, strips of hair forming, more muscle stacking along her shoulders, tearing through her clothing, revealing her chest, which had gone from developing teen to straight up bodybuilder.
Parts of her body were almost like one of the Titans in Attack on Titan, the muscle exposed or covered by hardened bone; other parts were like the Wolfman, thick skin covered in slick black hairs.
Her face was the worst of all, an utterly terrible visage with exposed muscles, bulging eyes, and more teeth than a crocodile.
I almost shit my pants, almost, but Adam subdued her, his voice ringing out in our minds.
Ingrid, turn back to your other form. They are here to help us.
“Help us?” she hissed. The beast shifter was panting, chest heaving as she tried to contain her anger, her animosity.
“I know it’s not what it seems like, but we’re actually here to help. To rescue you,” I said in a way that didn’t sound convincing even to me. “Trust me?”
“Trust you?” she growled, saliva dripping from her lips.
“Yes, it seems crazy, but that is why we’re here.” As I said these words, I thought to Grace, Help me, help me, please help!
“Ingrid, please, turn back to your other form and let’s talk about this,” Grace said in just about the sweetest, most gentle voice I had ever heard.
Ingrid’s red eyes softened; I could see her pupils starting to reform in the sunken eyeholes. The muscles that had just appeared began to decompress, sucking back in as if they had come from her bones, the skin reforming, the coarse arm hair disappearing, her posture straightening, and the teeth in her face melting away.
About ten seconds later, she was the same brown-haired girl who had come out of the bathroom, although now she was completely nude.
And she wasn’t ashamed of it.
Without saying a word, she walked over to a dresser against the wall and opened it, revealing several dozen sets of the same clothing, a getup at odds with Adam’s look. While the young telepath wore loose-fitting pants and a T-shirt, Ingrid’s clothing was mostly prison-style, with a matching top and bottom and that was it.
My guess was that she tore through enough clothing to warrant having a ton of cheap sets of backups for her.
I averted my eyes, always a gentleman.
“I’m sorry about that,” Ingrid said in possibly one of the most beautiful voices I’d heard in a while. It was melodic, sweet, and hardly matched the monstrosity she had so quickly become. “Let’s get the others.”
I glanced at Grace and thought, Well, she sure jumped on board real fast.
She trusts Adam.
It’s true, she trusts me.
Is there any way we can have a private channel that doesn’t have Adam on it? I thought to both of them. I don’t know how this whole psychic thing works, but you get why that would be important, right?
I’m sorry for interrupting, Adam thought back.
“Where’s the next one?” I asked aloud rather than deal with any more voices in my head. Damn, it was hard to think out loud with those two around.
Grace turned to the exit, and my eyes jumped from her blond hair, wh
ich was partially tucked under her ballistic helmet, down to her waist and then her hips. I tried not to look, but as she walked, I just had to watch for a second.
My private viewing was interrupted by a sharp elbow from Veronique. “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” I smiled meekly at her. “Yes, I’m ready for whatever happens next. Let’s just get the other two and get out of here.”
Dorian appeared in front of me, walking in a stilted way. She looked over her shoulder at me and laughed, “Enjoying the view?”
Dammit, all of you, I thought, realizing too late that Grace and Adam heard me.
But Grace didn’t say anything, and Veronique was not at all in the mood to kid around. She was all business, and once we reached the hallway, she took the lead.
The metal-wielding vampire swiftly found the next room, which had a much lighter door than Ingrid’s.
It’s Michelle, Adam thought as he waited for Veronique to disable the door handle and retina scan.
The door swung open and we stepped into a room that was half the size of Ingrid’s. There were a couple differences though: two treadmills were in the corner, and a slight breeze circulated around the room.
We’ve come for you, Michelle, Adam thought.
“That’s no breeze, is it?” I asked.
“Nope!” said a voice that I could only assume belonged to Michelle.
She skidded to a halt in the center of the room, and a quick glance at the floor told me this was something she normally did. But the floor didn’t seem as beaten up as it should have, which made me think that they replaced the flooring routinely.
Upon second glance, I saw that her room was designed for this. The bed was in the far corner, in practically another room, as was a chair to sit on and a tiny, flat screen television.
There was something cruel about it, to be honest – like watching a hamster run on its wheel.
But Michelle was cheery, and if she was depressed, she wasn’t showing it in the way she greeted us. Her black hair with a pink stripe cutting through it partially covered her face and she grinned from behind the dark strands.
“Is everyone ready to go?” she asked, all gung-ho. “I really like your outfits. He’s not a Super, right? You two clearly are – you too, punk rock lady. By the way, I’m Michelle.”
“Dorian.”
“Grace.”
“Veronique.”
“Call me Gideon, and no, I’m not a Super. What gave it away?”
I swear, everyone in the room raised an eyebrow at me. Rather than tell them I had a propensity for superpowers, I threw my thumb over my shoulder and said we should get to the next room.
We continued down the hall, Adam in the lead and Veronique at the back, ready for anything. There was some definite tension in the air, which was at odds with Michelle’s cheeriness.
“What are all your powers?” she asked as we turned onto another corridor. “Oh, I see,” she said when Grace relayed the information telepathically.
We came to another door, and Veronique opened it in a matter of seconds. She was on edge, and as the others entered, she placed a hand on my elbow and pulled me aside.
“Let’s wrap this up,” she said.
“Trying – whoa!”
I stepped aside as a wave of water brushed past us, splashing into the center of the hallway. It formed the outline of a young woman, no older than sixteen. She looked more or less like Michelle sans the pink hair stripe, and as her form stabilized, I saw she wore a bathing suit that reminded me of the consistency of tar.
The teen swept her black hair aside and tucked it behind her ears.
“That was awesome,” I said, no other words for the person who’d just formed out of water right in front of my eyes.
“Thanks! I’m Fiona.”
“Gideon. This is Dorian, Grace, and Veronique.”
“Cool. Hi everyone.”
“One more to go,” Veronique said, hurrying us along.
To recap, I thought as we walked, Ingrid is the beast girl; Adam the telepath; Michelle the fast one; Fiona the water user; and Stella is the last of the group, the vector user.
Correct, Adam thought back to me.
We stopped in front of the final hallway and saw that Stella’s room had no door.
There’s no point, Adam explained to us.
“Yep, she’s the strongest,” Ingrid added.
“Pretty cute, too!” said Michelle, who was in front of me, pivoting from foot to foot.
Her practical twin sister, Fiona, was on my right, an annoyed look on her face. “Calm down, Michelle,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Sorry, excited!”
“What are we waiting for?” Dorian asked as we gathered around the entrance to the room. Even though she stood in front of me, her rear touching the front of my pants, I could see over her shoulder and what I saw definitely had me curious.
The room was almost as large as Ingrid’s, completely sparse, with high ceilings. A woman floated in its center, laid out horizontally, and unlike the others, she wore black MercSecure clothing, similar to what Veronique had worn when she first attacked us.
Dorian stuck her arm out, not letting me pass. Veronique, who had been at the back of the group, stepped forward, her hands charging red.
“What’s she doing?” I asked as Grace stepped in front of me too.
“Relax,” said Michelle, “She’s just sleeping!”
The thin teen squeezed through our ranks and approached Stella.
“People are here to see you!” she said, startling the woman awake.
Stella righted herself in the way Frankenstein’s monster would be swiveled to an upright position on the laboratory table. Her hair was bleach blond, her locks arranged in a Dutch braid. Her face was a mixture of Grace and Veronique’s, almost an amalgamation of the two. And there was something otherworldly about her, something almost godlike in the way she held herself as she lowered to the ground.
I had to know more about her power, but whipping out my smartphone didn’t seem appropriate as she approached us, sizing the CBGs up.
“Why have you come?” she finally asked.
As if to answer her question, the ceiling in the corner of her room exploded, sending chunks of concrete, steel, and gravel in our direction.
Dorian was struck and immediately went down.
Then everything stopped as if it had hit an invisible barrier.
“Run,” Stella whispered, her hands pressed in front of her body as she held back more of the crumbling debris. “Now!”
Chapter Eleven: The Great Escape
“Come on!” Grace yelled, grabbing my arm.
I dropped down beside Dorian, oblivious to Grace’s cries and the chaos swelling around me. Through her matted black hair, I could see she’d been struck by a dislodged piece of concrete. She was still breathing, but with our teleporter out of commission …
“I’ll carry her,” I told Grace.
Veronique helped me lift Dorian and place her over my shoulder. Stella wouldn’t be able to use a vector shield to contain the explosion and debris much longer.
Similar to Dorian, she seemed to be heating up, stress evident on her red face.
I snapped back into it as we took off down the hallway. Grace and Veronique led the way, with the younger supers and me at the back.
When we were far enough away, Stella moved toward the exit after us and the ceiling collapsed. She barely made it out in time. I turned to her as she stumbled into the hallway, reaching out for her as if I didn’t already have Dorian thrown over my shoulder.
“I’ll be fine,” Stella said, swallowing hard. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Gideon.”
“Stella.”
“I know.”
“Who’s she?”
“Dorian was our ticket out of here,” I said as we headed after the others.
“She’s a teleporter?”
“Yep. The one with long hair is a p
sychic shapeshifter; the other one wields metal and can drain people of their lifeforce. Well, sort of. It’s a long story. But it works out like this: we’ve come together to rescue supers in captivity and destroy the facilities, to stop their experiments on humans. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but those are the deets.”
If she had any opinion about our poorly-worded mission statement, she didn’t air it. “And you have no abilities?”
“I’m a fast writer,” I told her as we took a sharp corner. We had nearly arrived at the elevator.
“That’s definitely a trap,” Veronique said, breathing hard now. “Where’s the other way up?” she asked Adam.
The young telepath glanced from Grace to Veronique, and then to his other superpowered peers.
“I’m serious, kid.” Veronique approached him with a dangerous look on her face. “If you’re holding out on us, now is the time to say something.”
We’re really doing this? Adam thought to the group.
Ingrid bit her lip; Michelle pivoted from one foot to the other, licking her lips as she nodded nervously; Fiona gave him the thumbs up.
Adam turned to Stella.
“We’ve made it this far,” she said.
Even though Adam was a telepath, he was still a ten-year-old, and part of the reason he’d helped us seemed to be that he’d gotten wrapped up in the moment, inspired by the fervor and intensity of it all.
But now he was having second thoughts, evident in the way he stood with his hands at his sides; not quite battle-ready, but definitely not a neutral position.
I would be very careful what I do next, Grace thought to him, or to all of us.
Shit, I had no idea, but I definitely heard it.
“Everyone chill out,” I said. “Let’s bring this down a notch!”
Adam lowered his head.
This way, he finally thought, turning to a different hallway. I’d seen the hallway when we came in, but it looked like it just looped around to the main corridor.
“It’s hidden in plain sight,” I said as we entered a room labeled ‘lab.’ But rather than a lab on the other side, it was a wide stairwell heading to the top. “Where does it come out at?”
Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set Page 50
