The Escape

by Teyla Branton

  “No!” I reached for the image of my machete, slamming it down on the connection between the two hit men and Lew Roberts. The connections severed and calling up my reserves, I flashed light into their minds. The men faltered, but didn’t collapse.

  Lew laughed. “Thought you’d try that again. We can’t shield them completely, but you’ll find besting them won’t be so easy this time unless you use a lot more power.”

  Jace took advantage of his opponent’s momentary disorientation and slammed a foot into his chest, knocking him against the wall where his head slammed with a sickening thump. Down, but for how long? The other hit man roared in fury and lifted his sword.

  I had the satisfaction of watching Jace use a lamp to wrench the sword from the other man’s hand. They began trading punches. Lew raised his own gun and fired, but the shot hit the mental shield I’d erected around my brother and did nothing more than add strength to his last punch.

  “Get her out of here,” Lew said to Patrick with a grimace. “Be careful. She might still be armed.”

  “But what about—” Patrick began.

  “Now. She’s what we need. The other is unimportant. Thurston can take care of himself. Move!”

  “Relax. I’m coming.” Patrick shoved me toward the bedroom as I struggled.

  I thrust light into his mind, but the black snake absorbed it before it did much damage. Patrick swore and shoved me harder, knocking me to the ground. “Don’t,” he said, spittle falling from his mouth, “do that again.” He yanked me to my feet and pushed me once more toward the bedroom door.

  I thought about resisting further. A gunshot to the head wouldn’t kill me, but it would hurt like hell and put me out of commission for at least a day. Not a wise choice if I wanted to escape. And before I did anything, I had to warn Ritter and the others. They might be too far away to help me by the time they got here, but Stella at least might reach Jace in time. She was amazing in combat for a technopath.

  Another thought came immediately after. I’ll discover their full plan and send that to them. My capture won’t be in vain. Releasing my fury, I followed the urge that had pressed ever harder on me since entering the room. The mental image of my machete appeared inside Patrick’s mind, and I slammed it down on the undulating snake in his thought stream.

  An explosion wracked my mind. Images both raced and fluttered past my awareness. My life. Lives I’d only glimpsed from others. All jumbled together in an unintelligible heap. I collapsed under the assault. A tortured keening filled the room. Was that me?

  The detailed plans I’d been seeking were right there—I was right about the information being hidden inside his mind—but I couldn’t decipher much of it. Standing in my way was the black image of a robed woman, the edges of her mental outline shining like an eclipse. I knew that outline. Sickness filled my stomach. I had to get out of here!

  Patrick’s gun shifted to my leg. “Get up or I’ll give you something to whine about.”

  But I couldn’t move. Not a single muscle obeyed my command. I couldn’t even withdraw mentally from his mind.

  Lew’s hand stopped Patrick from firing. “Wait,” he said in his nasal voice. “Delia wants you to wait.”

  All at once Lew was in my mind, past any barrier I’d erected. Ha, he told me. Delia knew you would be unable to resist that block in his mind after you saw it at the fundraiser. That’s why she added a little something just for you.

  A trap! I needed to warn Ritter. Get them out of the hotel before reinforcements arrived, if they weren’t here already.

  Oh, you want to reach out to them, do you? a voice said in my mind. I can help there. Horror swept over me. It was a voice that had filled every nightmare since my Change. Delia Vesey, whose life and experience made Dimitri look young by comparison. How nice of you to accept my invitation, she added. I know it was unconventional, but I can’t wait to continue your training.

  How was she in my mind? She had to be nearby. Either that or she was coming through Lew, somehow forming a link of communication.

  Now let’s tell your friends there’s been a delay. Delia pushed out with me, finding Ritter easily on the main floor. Her range was greater than mine, and I saw that together we’d be able to extend even further. Ritter hefted a Secret Service agent he was stashing in an unused conference room.

  Run! I wanted to scream. Get out! Delia’s here. I pushed the thoughts, but they didn’t make it past my own brain.

  Tsk, tsk. No spoiling the fun.

  Her enjoyment of my torture was all too apparent. I pushed against her will, and when that failed, I tried to bend around her, to reach Ritter on my own. But each way I turned was met with a shiny impenetrable black barrier.

  Slight delay, Delia put in Ritter’s mind. Not channeling my ability so much as forcing me to do and say what she wanted. Some annoying hotel guests. But everything’s a go. We have Patrick Mann.

  No! I moaned, but Ritter didn’t hear.

  Delia laughed at my despair. How long do you think he’ll wait before he realizes you are no longer here? Long enough for me to trap him? Even as she spoke, she directed Lew to order Patrick to pick me up. In my mind, I fought him, but in real life, I was as immobile in his arms as a sack of flour.

  My last view was of Jace blocking his larger opponent’s right hook as the first man he’d knocked unconscious struggled back to his feet.

  In the bedroom, the dresser had been shoved aside to reveal a gaping hole. Stella may have been right about the rooms not connecting, but apparently the Emporium agents had made their own door. It was to this that Patrick carried me. Into another suite and through a connecting door to yet a third hotel room.

  Lew opened the door to the hallway. “Did you take care of the camera?”

  That’s when I noticed Patrick was now wearing something that resembled Stella’s neural headset, only smaller. He nodded. “They have control over the cameras already, but I inserted another feedback loop. By the time they discover it, we’ll be gone. But how am I going to explain this to Secret Service?”

  “No need. I’ll come back and clean up the mess, once our reinforcements lock down the hotel. The agents won’t remember a thing.”

  That was an awful lot of cleaning up the Emporium was willing to do, but we’d probably do the same if we had an agent posing as the vice president’s son.

  Patrick shifted me to his shoulder as they opened a door and headed up some stairs. The roof, I thought. Jace was right about checking out the roof. Was that the sound of a helicopter?

  Delia cursed in my mind. He didn’t buy it. He’s heading up to the room. Why is he doing that?

  Because you’re not me, I told her, though I didn’t really know.

  Impossible. You can’t have that kind of connection.

  Ignoring her, I pushed out. Ritter!

  He can’t hear you, she said.

  My world went black.

  DARKNESS TUMBLED IN MY MIND, greedily eating everything in its path. Only occasional flashes of light relieved the scenery, but these moments of near lucidity were accompanied by terrible scenes of Jace fighting for his life, of Stella weeping after losing her baby, of Ritter being tortured. Someone was laughing, a horrid, nasal sound that scraped my nerves.

  I jerked awake, only to see nothing but more darkness. A hard carpet made up my bed. Where was I? At Emporium headquarters or at the compound? Or perhaps somewhere worse. My first thought was to reach outside myself in search of clues to my location and a way to escape, but I stifled the impulse. First, I had to make sure I was mentally free.

  Gingerly, I explored my mind. Was I alone, or was Delia and her assistant poised to control me again? I did the equivalent of mental tiptoeing as I looked around. Everywhere I turned, I sensed soreness, as though the fabric of my mind had been wounded during the mental blast. But no other presence was near, and tentatively, I threw up a shield around my thoughts. The barrier was a weak, flimsy, Swiss cheese kind of thing, but I felt triumphant to have managed that
much.

  Piece by piece, I repaired the damage, working by feel and hoping I was doing it correctly. Whatever Delia had done to my mind didn’t seem permanent. Or would I know if she’d damaged me forever? Others I’d met hadn’t known, like Tom, my former fiancé. I’d have to let Dimitri and Ava explore later to see if there was anything the hateful crone had left behind. No way did I want her touch staining me.

  Had Jace gotten away? I shuddered as I remembered the dream. If they’d captured Jace, Delia would have one more pawn against me and against her colleague Stefan Carrington. Maybe she would mess with Jace’s mind. Was he strong enough to withstand her?

  Later, I told myself. Worrying about Jace wouldn’t get either of us anywhere. Better to focus on healing and getting out of here. Reaching out, I began absorbing. I’d been more than full before the attack, but now even the effort of thought sent hunger pains raking through my stomach.

  Wait, what was that? A small, shiny, black snake coiled in a corner of my mind. I dropped my shield and tried to push it out, but it eluded my grasp. A present from Delia, I assumed. But what was it? A way to control me or to spy on me? A time bomb ready to destroy at some given point in the future?

  Regardless, I wasn’t going to sit back and let it control me. Time passed as I considered the snake. It seemed to be of the same construction as the one in Patrick Mann’s mind, only smaller, as though made for concealment. If I hadn’t been lying there in the dark taking careful assessment, I might have missed it altogether.

  If I couldn’t get rid of it, I wouldn’t be able to return to the Renegades, even if I escaped. I would never know if this little present would get them all killed. Then again, if I could hide it, lock it away so that I couldn’t access it, maybe Delia couldn’t either.

  Piece by piece, I constructed another black box like the one that housed my fear of heights. I’d learned to lock it away so that I could function, so why not the snake? And since I couldn’t grasp the loathsome thing, I’d build around it. The construction process was slow and tedious, especially the bottom of the box, where I had to push back the illusion of a floor to build under the snake. When I was done, the seamless box glowed as shiny as the snake ever had. I pushed at it tentatively and found I could move both the box and the snake inside it. I could see no signature other than my own. It would have to do until I reached Ava.

  Exhausted, I pulled in more nutrients through my pores, receiving the sensation of alcohol and peanut oil. Well, whatever gave me energy. When I felt strong enough, I left off conscious absorbing to search for any clue to my whereabouts.

  A presence glowed brightly not far from me, but the absence of a shield and thoughts signaled an unconscious person. Wherever I was, I wasn’t alone as I’d first assumed.

  Reaching beyond my immediate vicinity, I found the consciousnesses of the five Renegade prisoners, which meant Delia had me taken to the compound. Why? She knew I wasn’t the real biological daughter of Stefan Carrington, but she had gone to lengths to hide this fact and my true ability from him, so she should have taken me to him.

  Unless she wanted something more from me.

  I sat up quickly, my head spinning. How long had I been here? Had they already performed tests? Impregnated me? Given where I was in my cycle and how long both Unbounded sperm and eggs lived, it wouldn’t be impossible, especially as I thought of the two gravid women prisoners they were already monitoring. Bile rose in my throat as I pulled the borrowed hotel uniform skirt as far down as it would go and tucked my knees to my chest.

  A quick intake of breath several feet away helped me put my panic under control. “Who is that?” It was a man’s groggy voice, one that was familiar somehow.

  “My name’s Erin,” I said into the darkness, “and I seem to be the prisoner of some very nasty people. Guess you are, too. What’s your name?” He was Unbounded, that much I could tell, and by the fear and mistrust radiating from him, he had no idea who I was. I suspected he was the prisoner Dr. Tunns had shown me on her monitor, but it was entirely possible that they had captured others since my last visit.

  He hesitated. “So you aren’t with them?”

  “No.”

  “Then what did you do to get tossed in here?” He wanted to believe me, but he was afraid the Emporium was playing with his mind. He half thought I was an illusion his fevered brain had conjured up to torment him.

  I had nothing to lose by telling the truth, and it was far easier to remember. “Actually, I was trying to kidnap the vice president’s son, Patrick Mann. He’s one of them and with the president on his deathbed, the vice president will be moving up. My friends and I were trying to protect the vice president because something about his son isn’t right.”

  “You have no idea.” A note of irony entered his voice.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Because I’m Patrick Mann.”

  So he was the prisoner I’d seen on the monitor. I scooted closer to him on the carpet. “We kind of figured the other guy was a fake. That was why we tried to grab him. What are you doing here?”

  Now that he’d decided to take a chance, the real Patrick Mann was full of information. “A year ago, I decided not to pursue politics,” he told me. “I wanted to start an information business of some kind. I’d always loved working with computers, but suddenly I understood everything about them.”

  “You’d Changed.” As a technopath, he’d have made it huge in computer software.

  “That’s when they first approached me—a woman who claimed to have given birth to me and a man who was supposedly my uncle. They said my father had been killed in an ongoing war involving near immortals and it was time for me to step forward and do what I’d been put in place to do.”

  “What was that?”

  “To become my father.” He hesitated before continuing. “I know it sounds crazy, but they’ve figured out how to use these really impressive nanites to completely change someone’s appearance. Not just subtle changes, but a total makeover. I mean, it’s easier with people who are the same height and have other similarities, but really they can do anyone.”

  To hear our suspicions verified so casually astounded me. “So they wanted you to become a puppet president.”

  “Something like that. They’d find a way to get rid of the president or they’d assure that my father was elected next. Either way I’d step in. Apparently, since I knew my father and politics so well, I’d be able to fool those closest to him for however long they needed. Even my mother. They said it was my duty, a legacy given me by right of my birth.”

  “I’m guessing you decided not to go along with the plan.”

  “No. My parents—” He made a choking sound. “I mean, the Manns taught me that it was important to make a stand for what we really believe, even if it came with a cost. Betraying them wasn’t an option. I love my parents. I want them to be proud of me even if they never know the choice I made.”

  “They will know,” I said. “We’ll make sure of that. But if you’re Patrick, who did I just try to kidnap?”

  A sharp, bitter laugh. “I don’t know. But oddly enough it makes me feel better, less forgotten. They told me my parents hadn’t cared enough to look for me, that they didn’t accept our disagreement about my career choice and wanted nothing to do with me.” He paused and let out a sigh. “I didn’t believe them, but after so long, it’s hard not to begin to wonder. I mean how could the vice president’s son go missing and no one notice? Now it makes sense. Of course they used their nanites to put someone in my place. They were going ahead with the plan, with or without me. And now that we’re talking about it, I think I might have some idea as to who the guy is. For weeks straight they had this one man come in and talk to me for hours. Then suddenly he was gone. He was also a technopath.”

  “He’s had a whole year to become you and get to know your father.”

  “They’re going to kill him.” The anger in Patrick’s voice grated on my ears. “My father, I mean. They never said as
much to me, but I know that was the plan after I became him.”

  “No. We’re getting out of here, and we’ll stop them. My friends will come for us.”

  “How will they know where to look?”

  With the machine shield in place around the compound, Ava wouldn’t be able to contact me, even if they suspected I was here, but I took comfort in the fact that they would eventually come to free the other prisoners. I couldn’t tell Patrick that because the room might be bugged, and I didn’t want to freak him out yet by speaking in his mind, especially with the possibility that Delia and her assistant were still around.

  “They’ll come,” I said. The belief would be a natural one and wouldn’t give anything away no matter who overheard me.

  “I just hope it’s not too late.”

  His words sent a chill crawling over my skin. “How long have I been here? Do you know?”

  “Well, you weren’t here when they brought me back from their so-called therapy this morning, and they usually bring me something to eat once a day around what I think is dinnertime. Or maybe bedtime. Hard to say when they keep me in this room with no windows or light. They haven’t come yet.”

  I forced myself to relax. Since we’d been at the hotel until well after three, if he was right that meant I hadn’t been here long, maybe only a few hours.

  We sat in dark silence for a few minutes, with me probing for other life forces in the building. Besides the five prisoners, there were four other Unbounded that I could sense, with one of them being the guard outside our room. With another guard watching the other prisoners, that left the director and two others who were either doctors or more guards. That didn’t mean Delia and her assistant weren’t here, as their impenetrable shields would hide their life forces completely from my view. So possibly six inside. There would also be at least two guards in the lobby where I couldn’t get past the machine-generated shields and however many more soldiers around the perimeter of the building. There was no sign of my brother, though they could have taken him elsewhere if he’d been captured.