The Scorned (The Permutation Archives Book 3)

by Kindra Sowder

  Still no reaction except for her choppy movements. Then the room began to warp as if I were dropped into a surreal world. My legs felt heavy. Gravity took over, and I nearly fell to the ground as my knees began to buckle under its weight. Closing my eyes, I shook my head and felt my body moving through the crowd again, being pushed this way and that as I struggled through.

  A flash of the people surrounding me pushed through my mind, but only for an instant. Searing pain, like electricity shocked through my skull, screeched through my brain. My hands clasped the sides of my head, but then something changed.

  The pain disappeared. And then I was falling. After what felt like an eternity of weightlessness, my body slammed into the ground. Not concrete or linoleum like the interior of the Paradigm. This was softer, more forgiving. Screams, rapid gunfire, and explosions shattered the air around me. Streaks of air whizzed over my head. Without opening my eyes, I reached out and dug my fingers into the ground. It was wet, gritty, and pliant.

  Warm.

  My eyes shot open, and I realized my fingers had dug into soil. I had somehow gotten outside. And it didn’t take me long to see that the soil was soaked in blood that now coated my fingers in stark crimson.

  A sharp whistle, one that I recognized as a missile, shrieked in my direction. I shrieked, lowered my head back to the ground, and covered my head with my arms. It shot over me, air pushing past me with such force I felt my body sink centimeters into the soil beneath me. Within seconds, it exploded and rocked the ground, causing it to tremble. Screams of terror and agony pierced the air, becoming so loud that it was as of ten million voices had converged into one singular cry of havoc. Looking up, I turned my head to look at the chaos around me, easily spotting those I had been searching for. All of them fought for their lives with guns and weapons in hand. There was only one that seemed to be losing the fight, and her flash of bright blonde hair caused me to rise to my unsteady feet. Not only in recognition of my mother on her knees, blood clashing against her pale flesh as it seeped from the corner of her mouth, but the man standing before her.

  Nero, face twisted in rage, indignation, and pride, stood before her with fists clenched at his side. His knuckles were covered in the crimson of her blood. I took a feeble step toward them but felt as if my feet were rooted to the spot. I could barely move, making the single step I was able to take in their direction almost completely disabling. My legs trembled as I watched helplessly.

  Then my own scream coming from off to my right pierced the air and the chaos around me. I saw myself, tears streaming through the black grime on my cheeks, and frozen to the spot, as I watched what unfolded in shocked horror.

  “Nero, please,” I shouted over the gunfire. The other me took a step closer to where he stood before my mother. I wasn’t certain why I hesitated or why I hadn’t killed him yet.

  He shot the other me a sadistic smirk as if he was telling me something. Telling me that now I would know what he felt being helpless to stop the murder of someone he loved. Cato, the friend that had been a brother to us all our entire lives.

  Then it happened so quickly I barely had time to register it.

  With one strong arm, he took my mother by the throat and lifted her off the ground, her hands coming around his wrist with a gasp. Her eyes pleaded with him but did nothing to stop what happened next.

  Her breath wheezed out of her, sharp, as her skin began to pale and then turn the blue of oxygen deprivation. Her lips purpled. The oxygen left her body so quickly her body went limp within seconds. I heard the last of the life-saving air leave her body with a snap.

  Nero inhaled deeply, seemingly replenished by what he had taken from my mother. With a smile that dripped with disdain, he dropped her to the ground. It crumpled lifelessly to the dirt, and neither myself nor the other version of me could move. She didn’t scream, but I did. My grief shot out of me in a blast of energy that I couldn’t hold onto. But it had no effect on my surroundings.

  I reached out to her and cried, “No!”

  No reaction from Nero except for a glance toward the me that existed here. She couldn’t react. She stood there frozen, almost as lifeless as our mother’s body on the ground.

  “Nero, you son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!” I yelled.

  He didn’t react. No one did. He turned away from me, his gray eyes resolute and withdrawn. In slow motion, I stared in horror while anger worked its way through my veins, his form became smaller and smaller as he moved away.

  Another screech moved through the air, another missile, and I couldn’t look away as I watched the smoke from the back of the projectile streaked past me and toward the other version of myself. The one that existed here.

  With another scream, my perspective changed from where I had previously stood, watching everything unfold, to where the other me stood. And it was too late. It barreled down on me, and all I could feel was the numbness of what that version of myself felt. The loss and the despair covered in numb recognition. Then my own terror pushed through, and my scream became hers.

  Then there was only massive pain. Pure agony greater than any I had ever experienced before. Another agonized scream ripped from my lungs and into the open air.

  Everything went black for a moment, and then I could feel everything around me. I jerked into consciousness, sitting up straight in my bed with a loud gasp and a startled cry. Sweat beaded down my forehead and over my chest and belly. Ryder lay next to me, frightened awake by my sudden reaction to what I had just dreamt. And it all felt too real. His gasping breaths fluttered over my chilled flesh when his hands came to take my face and turn it, so I was looking at him in the darkness. I could barely make him out except for the wet shine of his eyes.

  “Mila, what is it? Mila?” he asked, panicked.

  I couldn’t answer. All I could do was listen to the racing of my heart and the hum of it as it thrummed in my ears. Hot tears threatened to spill over and down my cheeks, the terror of what I had seen and felt threatening to escape through them. Every breath I took came in a sharp wheeze, followed by a quick and whistling exhale. All the while, he stared at me with wide eyes filled with anxiety.

  “Mila?” he said one more time.

  “Oh my God. They’re dead. All of them. All of them,” I was finally able to reply. “We’re all dead.” I pushed out a shuddering breath that made my entire body tremble with adrenaline.

  “What?” His face distorted with confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re all going to die,” was all I could say, stunned.

  I wasn’t even certain if what I had seen was just a dream brought on by our circumstances, or if it were a product of the ability Cato had chosen to share with me.

  “Oh, baby,” he breathed while pulling me against his broad chest. “It was a nightmare. Everything’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

  My head shook. “No, no,” I insisted. I wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. As we sat there, his arms cradling me in my terror, I could still smell everything. I could smell burnt gunpowder, sweat, blood, and sizzling ozone. It hung in the air and clung to my skin like a deathly perfume. “It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t.”

  I felt that if I didn’t continue to repeat the words that he wouldn’t understand even though, as I pulled back and looked into his eyes, I saw the horror of my words strike him like a bolt of lightning.

  “It wasn’t a dream, Ryder,” I swore.

  “How do you know it wasn’t just a nightmare?” he asked with a sigh of frustration.

  “I don’t know how to explain it, but I know it wasn’t. It felt too,” I paused, trying to think of the best word to explain myself, “real.”

  The room went completely silent, his face a mixture of confusion, frustration, fright, and a willingness to believe. He didn’t understand it. I didn’t expect him
to. But he had to know that this wasn’t just something my unconscious mind cooked up. He had to know. They all did. How could I make them believe me? They knew that I had seen the future at least once before when the rain came down upon us in the forest while we ran for our lives for the Fallen Paradigm. They had proof, in a way, that this was what Cato had bestowed on me. They knew, but did they believe? How could they not when the heroes in the comic books before the Wall had come to life in the Specials?

  Not exactly that way, but close enough. It was no radioactive spider or science experiment, but genetics and evolution. Did I know why? No. Would we ever? Probably not. But did that matter?

  Absolutely not.

  All that mattered was that we were here now, and we were here to stay. And that we would not be taken advantage of by King so he could gain world dominance. Once that happened, who knew how much longer our kind would last? I wasn’t interested in finding out.

  Jerking myself out of Ryder’s grasp, I threw the blankets off and shot out of bed to run to the door. I was barefoot and only in a tank top and pair of cotton shorts. I found that I didn’t care in the least. All I knew was that I had to make my mother aware of what I had seen. No, experienced. Experience was a better word for what I had been through in the immaterial world my mind created. Swinging the door open, I shot out into the hallway. It was completely empty of people, the lights dimmed to more of a yellowish hue than blaring white.

  “Mom,” I shouted down the hallway while I sprinted to where she slept. It was at least a few hallways away from my own, but that didn’t matter. And I didn’t so much care about how many people I stirred from their slumber. She needed to know. “Mom!”

  “Mila,” I heard Ryder call after me. “Please, stop.”

  “Mom,” I shrieked through the empty air.

  I was now two doors down from hers, and two hallways away from where my room now lay empty. The click of a door opening made its way to my ears, but I didn’t stop moving. She had to know. Everyone did. We had to be ready because, soon, King’s men would be bearing down on us. Ready to take what they felt belonged to them. So self-absorbed that only their own needs and wants mattered.

  “Ryder? Mila? What’s happening?” Gaia questioned.

  “I wish I knew,” Ryder answered with an exasperated sigh.

  I glanced back at her just long enough to see that she was wearing the same white tank top to bed, but her legs were covered in a pair of thin gray sweatpants. As soon as I looked back at where I was headed, I was upon our mother’s door and slamming on it with the heel of my closed fist. The door rattled under the impact, but I continued anyway.

  “Mila, stop. You’re going to wake everyone up,” Ryder stated matter-of-factly.

  I kept pounding on the door. “Mom, wake up!”

  I didn’t slow and I didn’t quiet, no matter how much Ryder begged me in a hushed whisper. The warm palm of a small and slender hand came to rest on my upper arm attached to the fist that pounded unforgivingly on the solid piece of wood that separated me from my mother. Turning slightly and lowering my arm just barely, I spotted Gaia next to me. Her blue eyes looked eerie in the dull yellow light. Her skin was flushed and her blonde hair completely unkempt as a few strands made their way into her eyes.

  “Mila, please, what’s happening?” she practically begged.

  “I saw something,” I replied with a gentle pull of my arm from her grasp.

  “Saw that?” she asked.

  “It was a nightmare,” Ryder insisted.

  “Are you sure?” Gaia asked him.

  No one was speaking to me now since I had obviously lost my mind. My mind was quite intact and quickly becoming panicked when my mother wasn’t answering.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” he rejoined.

  “It wasn’t a nightmare,” I almost snapped. Pulling myself back a fraction, I spoke again. “I swear, it wasn’t a nightmare, and I’ll keep saying it until someone believes me.”

  I began to beat on the door again, and the door rattled on its hinges. Finally, I heard soft movement beyond the door and began to pound on it more feverishly.

  “Mom, please. Open the door.”

  “Mila, you have to calm down,” Ryder persisted.

  As soon as the last word left his lips, the door swung open and my mother stood just inside the threshold. Her hair had been thrown up into a quick and messy ponytail, the shirt that covered her was disheveled. She had been sleeping, and that was the reason she had taken so long to come to the door. Although she had always been a heavy sleeper before now. With the stress of the war and leading the Fallen Paradigm full time, the half-moons of purple underneath her wide eyes said it all. I was certain the only one of us that looked even remotely presentable and the least frightened was Ryder.

  “What the Hell, Mila? Is all the noise necessary?” my mother scolded.

  “I need to talk to you,” I started.

  “Can it wait…?” she interrupted.

  Before she had a chance to ask if it could wait until the morning, I pushed into her room and said only one word. “Now.”

  There was no reason to be polite anymore. To ask rather than do. At that point, I was utterly convinced that what I had seen, or dreamt, was of such importance that that moment was the only time we had. And who knew if my mother would feel the same way. Anxiety blossomed within my chest, causing my heart to sink into my stomach and turn into a heavy pit. My mother’s room was tidy. All except for the bed, covers in such a disarray I knew she had to have been tossing and turning while she slept restlessly.

  My mind raced as I watched Ryder and Gaia file into the room, my mother closing the door while carefully taking me in with a skeptical eye. She shut the door softly behind her and took the few steps it took to stand at the end of her unmade bed. The room that surrounded us was standard issue, but she left her walls white, which made the hairs on my entire body stand on end. I shook the unwelcome thoughts and images away in an attempt to focus on the vision I had had. What I was certain would happen. And soon.

  “This better be good,” she said as the lights flipped on with our movement.

  Ryder took a step forward, toward me and placed a shaking hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Horatia. I…”

  She held up a hand to stop him, taking a deep breath and crossing her arms over her chest. This was her way of closing herself off to him without outright telling him to stop speaking. It was all too obvious, but no one would tell her that.

  “We need to step up our security,” I stated.

  Gaia’s eyes went wide, but she remained silent, letting our mother handle the situation I had caused.

  “We don’t have the manpower, Mila. Not here on Kiawah Island. It’s a miracle we have what we do now,” she explained. Then her eyes narrowed at me, and her lips formed a straight line of determination.

  “I know. I’ll go out there if I have to. I’m sure all the Specials would if it meant saving the Paradigm and ourselves.”

  “From what, Mila? What happened that’s making you so determined to make me do this?” she questioned.

  I didn’t even know where to begin but, while I stared at her, I saw understanding and recognition cross over her features, turning her cold blue eyes into melting glaciers. That made my breath hitch in my throat, almost leaving me completely breathless. I couldn’t answer her. My voice had abandoned me once I recognized the emotions sliding across her face like a slideshow. After what felt like an eternity, her emotions finally settled on pride mixed with just a small amount of fear that I could barely register if it weren’t for the fact that I had seen it on every single face within the walls of the Paradigm since I arrived.

  “You saw something, didn’t you?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yes,” I paused, swallowing the lump that formed in my throat, “I did.”

&
nbsp; Tell her. Tell them.

  My mother walked toward me while Ryder and Gaia remained quiet, watching us in stunned silence. Her hands gripped my forearms tight, threatening to leave bruises in the shape of her fingertips.

  “What did you see?”

  Her eyes bore into mine, and she held me there. She had no intention of letting me leave that room until she knew what I knew. All I had to do was open my mouth and trust that the words would come spiraling out in a stream of syllables they could understand. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out except empty air.

  “What did you see, Mila?” she pushed through gritted teeth, shaking my slightly like that would cause the words to come tumbling out.

  Hot tears stung my eyes and threatened to spill over while I felt sobs build within my chest.

  “Mom, you’re pushing her too hard.” Gaia came to my defense, moving to stand beside us with her hand resting on my mother’s outstretched limb. “How can we even be sure this wasn’t just a nightmare? She’s been under a lot of stress lately. We all have.”

  “I see it in her eyes, Gaia. She had a vision, and I want to know what she saw.” Looking straight into my eyes, her gaze focused even more on my face. “Her pupils are dilated.”

  “Adrenaline, Horatia,” Ryder clarified.

  “No,” she insisted, shaking her head just. “Not adrenaline. She saw the future of the Fallen Paradigm, and I want to know what it is. I have to know.” She stared at me. “I have to know, Mila. So I can try to save us.”

  It was too much pressure, but I kept myself from jerking away from her and running out of the room toward the outdoors. Heat rippled in my belly and moved into my chest. If I didn’t get out of there, there was no telling what would happen. Would I kill them? Would I cause the building to topple down around us? No, I wouldn’t allow it. I pulled air into my lungs, making certain they were filled to the brim with oxygen, causing my heartbeat to slow marginally.