No, that voice shouted inside my mind. Never.
“Pleaseeeee!”
The terrible cry came from the next cell over, and the sound of it turned my blood to ice. Two steps brought me face-to-face with the woman in the next cell. For a moment, all I could do was stare.
She had been trying to pry apart the metal bars of her cell. She’d managed to bend one of the bars slightly, but not enough for it to be useful, and that small bit of progress had cost her. Her hands were covered with blood, and many of her fingers were swollen and bent in gruesome, unnatural directions. Her face was deathly pale, but it was the expression in her eyes that stole my breath.
I’d never seen such pure suffering in all my life.
“Please,” she groaned again. Her voice was scratchy, like she’d blown out her vocal cords from screaming. “Help me.”
For a moment, I thought she might be in labor. But she wasn’t pregnant—or at least, not obviously so. It was difficult to tell with the shapelessness of the hospital gown.
I forced my gaze away from her mangled fingers as the others hurried over.
“Get her out,” Kaira said after taking one look at the woman’s broken fingers.
“I don’t think—” Smith began.
“Get her out. Now!”
Bri wrapped her hands around two of the bars and stretched them apart.
They metal snapped apart under the force of her grip. It took two more seconds for Bri to break enough of the bars to create a human-sized hole.
“Get the others,” Kaira told Bri. To the woman, she said, “Come on. We’ll help you get out of here.”
The woman stayed in her cell. She even backed up a couple of steps.
“No.” The woman’s bloodshot eyes widened. “My newborn. They’ve got him downstairs. If I’m bad, they won’t let me see him. Every day at six o’clock. Have to stay here and be quiet so they’ll let me see him. Gotta be good. Gotta behave and drink my medicine.”
Her ramblings were becoming less and less coherent.
And then, with a speed that I never would have suspected she was capable of, she reached through the hole in her cell and grabbed my shirt.
I was too surprised to react.
“Find Christopher,” she begged me, her voice sounding inhuman as she forced her stretched vocal cords to the breaking point. “Get him out of here. Please.”
“Your baby?” I asked, trying to get a little distance from this woman, who was seeming more insane by the minute.
“Not my baby,” she said, tightening her grip on my shirt. “Christopher. Save him before they kill him.”
“Who’s Christopher?” I heard Michael ask the woman, although I found I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her horror-stricken eyes.
“My boyfriend,” she wailed. “If you don’t save him, they’ll kill him. Please. I can’t live without him.”
That’s when I felt something scald my chest. I looked down and saw small flames shooting out of the woman’s fingertips.
A Pyrokinetic.
I took her wrists as gently as I could and pulled them away from my shirt before she set me on fire.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
My shirt was smoking, and I could still feel the searing imprints of her hands.
“We need to get out of here,” Yutika’s nervous voice came from somewhere behind me.
“Come on,” Kaira said, her voice unsteady as she took the woman’s hand. “Come with us, and we’ll get your boyfriend.”
Any answer the woman might have given was drowned out by the maniacal laughter of the woman in the cell across the hall. The sound of it was almost as disconcerting as the other woman’s cries.
“Ha-ha-ha!” she shrieked. Giddy tears streamed down her cheeks, and her enlarged stomach shuddered with the force of her laughter. “What makes you think they’d keep your precious Nat alive?”
My gaze found Kaira’s as the sick feeling inside me spread. I wanted to reach out for her, but my feet were rooted to the spot.
“Liar!” The Pyrokinetic pulled away from Kaira’s grip and lunged at the other woman, who stepped back from the bars, still chuckling.
“Your child has been born. They don’t need him for anything anymore,” the other woman continued as she rubbed one hand over her belly. “He’s probably already dead.”
“Nooo!”
Bri wrapped her arms around the Pyrokinetic, who was beating at the metal bars on the other woman’s cell with her fists.
“A little help, Michael,” Bri said as the woman continued to flail.
Michael took one step forward. And then we were all thrown backward as a blinding flash lit up the hallway. I felt a scorching wind across my face. When I looked back at the Pyrokinetic, my stomach dropped out. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe.
She was on fire.
Her skin was luminescent, like the fire was inside her and burning its way out.
Someone let out a strangled scream.
Help her, a desperate voice in my head shouted. Help her!
But there was nothing to be done. She was being engulfed in flames. They were eating her alive, and if I got near her, they’d consume me, too.
There was only one thing in the world that could have ripped my attention from the horrible scene playing out before us, and that was the sight of Kaira going toward the woman.
I grabbed Kai and pulled her against me, dragging us both back until we were out of the flames’ range.
“We have to do something!” Kaira struggled to free herself from my grip.
My throat felt like it was lined with jagged edges of glass. I couldn’t form the words to tell her there was nothing we could do…that the woman was beyond our help. So, I wrapped my arms tighter around Kaira. Her chest heaved, and I knew she was crying.
Bri, the only one of us who could get near the flames, was trying to smother them with her titanium hands. It didn’t help. A scream was lodged in my throat as I watched, helpless, as the woman’s own fire consumed her.
I couldn’t look away. Kaira was yelling and fighting against me.
“Christopher!” The word came out garbled and choked from the flames pouring out of the woman’s throat.
And then the woman just…came apart. Bri’s arms were clasped around air as the woman she’d been holding turned to small bits of flames stuttering out all over the linoleum floor.
The only remaining sounds were our ragged breathing and the mad cackling from the woman in the other cell.
I was shaking, or maybe it was Kaira shaking. We were too intertwined for me to tell the difference. I couldn’t make myself let go of her, even though the danger to us had passed. I needed to say something to Kaira to make this better. But my throat wouldn’t work. I felt chilled to the bone, even though the hallway had become a sauna.
The laughter abruptly cut off as a bang came from somewhere past the elevators. The pregnant women who weren’t unconscious or asleep whimpered. Even the insane one who’d been laughing went to her cot as fast as her pregnant belly would allow her. She lay down and closed her eyes.
I looked up just as a door at the opposite end of the hallway burst open. Guards came pouring in.
CHAPTER 41
Go, go, go!” Bri yelled, pointing for the stairway nearest to us.
“No,” Kaira gasped. “We can’t leave them.”
I hated to abandon them, too, but there was no time. I grabbed her hand and yanked her down the hall after the others.
Michael reached the doorway first and threw it open. I looked back and saw Bri fighting against the guards. Her tiny titanium form was a blur as she felled men twice her size with ease.
I pushed Kaira into the stairs ahead of me. Her face was drained of color, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the pain in her stomach or what we’d just seen.
“What are you guys doing?” Bri demanded as she slammed through the doorway. “Move!”
We race
d down a flight of stairs to the next floor. I looked over the railing and saw more Combat Mags, these ones carrying machine guns, running up the stairs from the ground floor.
I opened the door that read Ninth Floor and gestured everyone inside.
As soon as the door to the stairway shut behind all of us, Bri wrenched the door handle until it snapped.
“Let’s see them get in now,” she said with satisfaction.
We were crowded in a small room. It felt like some sort of containment area, since the entire thing was sealed, and I noticed multiple air vents in the ceiling. There was a sliding door on one side that opened up to the elevator bank. Another sliding door led in the opposite direction, although the glass was tinted so it was impossible to see what was on the other side. There was nothing else except for two buttons next to each door. There was a red button that had “Enter” printed on it, and a green one labeled “Air.”
“It feels wrong here,” Yutika said.
“Too much magic,” A.J. agreed.
“What do you mean, too much magic?” I asked.
“It’s like the feeling when we’re in a club and there are Mags everywhere,” Kaira explained. “Except more powerful.”
“What do you guys think?” Bri asked, her finger hovering over the red “Enter” button.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
The door slid open.
We found ourselves in a room that was so large I couldn’t see where it ended. There were four rows of glass cubicles lined up one after another. Each cubicle had the same cot, toilet, and sink as the pregnant women’s cells. Except these cubicles didn’t hold women. Each one of these glass cells contained…a child.
“What the hell,” Michael whispered.
The children ranged in age from about five to maybe fifteen. They all wore hospital gowns and their heads were shaved, making it difficult to tell their gender. The kids stared at us, and we stared back
“What is this?” Kaira demanded, her voice closer to hysterical than I’d ever heard it.
“You guys wait here while I make sure the place is clear,” Bri said, her voice grim.
Bri made it to the second set of glass cubicles before she collapsed.
We all ran for her. I still had my arm around Kaira’s waist, and I could feel her limp grow worse with every step. She sagged against me. I turned to look at her, only to see her face was covered in a sheen of sweat, and her eyes were barely open.
“Kai!”
I could see her pulse fluttering erratically.
If I hadn’t been supporting her, she would have fallen. I gently lowered her to the ground and pushed up her shirt, steeling myself for the sight of her stomach covered in blood.
I found nothing except for some bruising around where the bullet had entered and left. Was she bleeding internally?
I put a hand to her cheek. She was burning up.
“I don’t feel good,” she murmured.
“Where does it hurt?” I asked her, desperate.
She didn’t answer.
“Something’s wrong with Kaira!” I yelled.
No one answered. I looked up, blinking through the haze of my panic. It was only then that I saw the others were also on the ground. They were all deathly still.
No, please, I thought, my mind scrambling with what to do.
I needed help. Every one of my people was passed out on the floor…possibly dying…and I had no clue what was wrong with them. I had to get them to safety—had to get them help—before I succumbed to whatever was hurting them, too.
“They’re not used to the chemicals,” a small voice came from my right.
I whipped around to find a little boy, maybe nine or ten years old, staring at me through the glass wall of his cell.
I didn’t wait to ask questions. My breathing was growing tighter and my joints were seizing up, but I didn’t know if that was from whatever had poisoned the others or the fact that panic was flooding my system.
I carried Kaira back to the little enclosed space where we’d been before. I shut the sliding door and slammed my hand down on the button labeled “Air.”
There was a hissing sound, and I felt a blast of cool air coming in through the vent in the ceiling. Kaira gasped and opened her eyes.
“What happened?” she demanded, her voice a little scratchy but otherwise sounding normal.
I went weak with relief. I pressed my lips to hers once, needing the contact to reassure myself she was alright.
“Stay here,” I commanded her. “Close the door as soon as I leave.”
Instead of carrying them one-by-one, I grabbed Bri and Smith’s hands and dragged them across the smooth, tiled floor. Kaira opened the door as soon as I was close, and I yanked their unconscious bodies inside. They both woke on a gasp, disoriented the same way Kaira had been. I didn’t wait long enough to hear them speak before running back out for the others.
A.J. and Yutika were next. It took all of my strength to haul Michael’s dead weight back to the little room. By the time I got Michael inside, everyone else was awake and alert.
“What the hell is going on around here?” Yutika demanded.
“There’s something in the air that’s poisonous,” I said.
“You don’t look sick,” Bri pointed out.
“Maybe it only affects Mags,” Kaira said.
I stared at her. I’d been so focused on getting her and our friends somewhere safe before I collapsed, too, that I hadn’t given it a thought. But now that I wasn’t so worried about everyone else, I realized I didn’t feel even a little weak or sick. I’d never heard of a poison that hurt only Magics, but there was no other explanation that made sense.
“You all stay here,” I said.
“Wait,” Smith said. “Yutika, I need a tablet.”
Yutika began to sketch as Smith leaned over her shoulder and made adjustments to her design. A few minutes later, a working tablet was in Smith’s hands. He booted it up, and then turned it so I could see the image that flickered to life on the screen.
“It’s connected to your camera now, so we’ll be able to see and hear. If you run into any trouble, we’ll know about it.”
I nodded. “Push that ‘Air’ button if you start feeling sick again,” I told them. “I’ll be back.”
CHAPTER 42
Iapproached the glass cubicle slowly, aware of all the kids who were staring at me with a combination of fear and curiosity.
“Can you hear me?” I asked the kid who had spoken to me before.
The little boy nodded his head.
Conscious of how I might intimidate someone so young, I sat down on the floor outside the cubicle. I tried to think about the way Michael talked to people when they were scared and channel the same kind of soothing calm.
“Thank you for helping my friends,” I told the boy.
“All your friends are Mags and you’re a Nat,” the boy observed.
“Yes. Is that why the air doesn’t make me sick?”
A nod.
I glanced up at the ceiling of the glass cubicle, looking for some kind of filtering system that would keep the cubicles free of the poisonous air. I didn’t see anything of the kind.
“How come none of you are sick?” I asked.
“We are sick,” the boy said. “The air makes us weak so we can’t fight them.”
“Who’s keeping you locked in here?” It was a challenge to keep my voice even, but I didn’t want to scare the kid or make him think I was angry at him.
The boy lifted a thin shoulder. “The Alliance.”
I shook my head. “This can’t be part of the Alliance.” The Alliance was governed by laws and ethics. And this place was…barbaric.
The boy shrugged again. “We’re the reason the Alliance was formed in the first place. The unity thing was just an excuse. It was really about Mags and Nats agreeing to hide people like us from the rest of the world.”
I didn’t know much about kids, but I could tell this child was f
ar more intelligent and well-spoken than any normal ten-year-old of either race.
“People like you?” I asked.
The kid smirked at me, like I’d said something stupid.
“We’re Super Mags.”
The woman a floor above had said her baby was a Super Mag, too. I didn’t know what that meant, but I followed the kid’s gaze to the plaque on the sliding glass door. It read,
Subject: 00391
Race: Super Magic
Primary Magic: Memory Reader, Level 16
Secondary Magic: Intellect, Level 14.
I didn’t understand. It was a rule of nature that every Magic only had a single ability. And the levels made no sense, besides. The most powerful Magics alive were Level 10s. Scores of 14 and 16 were…impossible.
“You’ve never met one of us before, have you?” the kid asked, amusement lighting his eyes.
I shook my head. “Are you all more powerful?” I glanced at the other cubicles, where the kids were still watching me.
“You mean you don’t know about the third high law?” The kid’s brow wrinkled. “Didn’t they give you the whole intro when they brought you here?”
“What about the third high law?” I demanded, forgetting that I was trying to channel Michael.
“Babies from Mag and Nat parents are stronger.”
If I hadn’t been sitting down, I would have fallen.
“Those babies carry lethal bacteria,” I said, forcing my throat to work even though I’d gone numb.
“That’s what they want you to think. Can you imagine how crazy everything would get if lots of Super Mags were just loose on the streets? I’m one of the weaker ones here. Subject 00451 has three different kinds of magic, all at Level 17.”
I was shaking my head and couldn’t stop. I must have looked like I was having a fit or something, but I couldn’t make sense of what this kid was telling me.
“There have been thousands of deaths because of DAMND babies,” I said, my voice sounding faraway and raspy. “There’s no way all of those cases could have been falsified.”
Mags & Nats 3-Book Box Set Page 30
