The Ending Series: The Complete Series

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  My scream cut off almost as abruptly as it began, and I hunched in on myself, panting.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Clara asked me warily, drawing my attention back to her.

  I risked the briefest glance at Frank. Blood was leaking from his ears, too. Crimson tears started streaming from the corners of his eyes right before he stiffened and sank to the floor, releasing Camille…freeing her Ability. She didn’t hesitate in unleashing it.

  “What the hell?” one of the guards at the door exclaimed while his counterpart simply struggled in place. Their bodies weren’t frozen—they could still move, a little, so I knew Camille wasn’t restraining them by the metals in their blood—but they appeared stuck enough.

  Stunned, Clara still stood behind Mase, one hand partially submerged in the front of his pants.

  Camille pointed to her and said, “She doesn’t have any metal on her. I can’t hold her in place.”

  “Mase! Pull!” I shouted. He didn’t falter.

  At the exact instant my steel restraints snapped open, chunks of concrete rained down on Mase from the ceiling and the heavy chain clattered to the floor. Clara followed almost immediately, collapsing into a limp heap. There was blood on her temple.

  I stood, cradling my broken arm, my legs shaking. Camille’s fingers were hovering over the locks holding the manacles around Mase’s wrists. Keeping an eye on an unconscious Clara, I approached my friends. “What’d you mean about the metal? Why can she still move?”

  Camille was clenching her jaw. She didn’t look up as she said, “The low concentration of metals in the body…takes a lot of effort to hold someone that way…but almost everyone has metal on them…and holding that in place is easier…a lot easier. I can do…more…that way.”

  The iron that had been around Mase’s wrists clanked to the ground, and he rubbed his raw skin. “Thanks, Camille,” he said softly before striding around the room, knocking out each of the guards quickly and efficiently. At least, I thought he only knocked them out.

  Camille crossed her arms over her middle, her eyes narrowed with strain as she watched Mase. All of a sudden, a thick stream of blood started leaking from her left nostril.

  “Crap, Camille, did you get hit in the nose?” I lurched forward so I could get a closer look at her face.

  She turned wide, gray eyes on me. “What? No.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Tentatively, she raised a hand to her face and touched her shaking fingers to the blood. Looking at her crimson-coated fingertips, she frowned. “I wonder…it must be because…I’m holding so much metal in place…right now.”

  If her Ability’s making her nose bleed, what’s it doing to her brain? “How much metal, Camille?”

  She glanced around the room. “All of it.”

  “In here?”

  She shook her head. “In the Colony…at least, all that I can reach. Except what’s on us.”

  My heart sank, and I reached for her good arm with my good arm. “We need to get out, now, so you can let go.”

  Mase hurled his body at the door, and after several failed attempts at breaking it down, Camille asked him to stop. There was a low, metallic click. “It’s unlocked now, but…”

  “But what?” I asked, stopping midway to the door.

  Camille sagged in place, remaining on her feet for a few seconds before falling to her knees. “I can’t go with you. I can’t do anything else. I’ll lose concentration.” Raising her eyes to mine, she made a silent plea. “Leave me. I’ll hold on as long as I can.”

  “No, Camille—”

  Mase had apparently heard enough. Having already opened the door, he stomped back to Camille and hoisted her up, flinging her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He turned to me. “Let’s go.”

  All of a sudden, Clara was on her feet and sprinting out of the room.

  “Mase! She’s—” I started to say, but his hands were full with Camille, and the sadistic woman was gone before he could do anything to detain her. Damn it!

  “Forget her,” Mase said. “We need to go, now.”

  I followed him to the door…and froze. I couldn’t move.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. I could move backward—back into the room—but I couldn’t step through the doorway. My stomach soured and bile rose to my throat when I realized what was going on. General Herodson had also commanded me not to try to escape. So far, everything I’d done had been to help free Camille and Mase as much as myself. But leaving the room—that was definitely me trying to escape.

  “Shit!” I hissed.

  In the hallway, Mase turned, his eyebrows drawn down in confusion.

  “I can’t leave…the General’s commands—”

  There was the sound of a throat clearing in the hallway to the left of the doorway. “I believe I could help with that…if I could move more than my mouth, fingers, and toes.” I didn’t need to be able to see him to know it was Gabe. I wanted to collapse to the ground in equal parts relief and frustration. I couldn’t get to him, but he was alright…for the moment.

  “Ah, thank you, Camille.” Looking harried, Gabe stepped through the doorway and into the interrogation room with me. His eyes flicked around the room, taking in the five motionless bodies, but he shook his head and returned his attention to me. He scanned me from head to toe, shock and fury pinching his features.

  “I thought you might need this,” he said, holding up a small metal case. I desperately hoped it held the neutralizer. Without pretense, he removed an inoculator and a glass vial, fitted them together, and injected the neon liquid into my neck.

  Within seconds, I felt the General’s influence erode until it released me completely. Luckily, it wasn’t like the previous time, when all my old, painful memories had resurfaced at once. Unluckily, it was physical pain that threatened to drown me. I stiffened, shutting my eyes tightly while I struggled to hold on to consciousness under the sheer agony. I gritted my teeth. I won’t give in! Slowly, it abated, fading to a more manageable level.

  I reached for Gabe’s hand with my good arm and gave it a squeeze. “Thanks. Let’s get out of here.” Tugging on his hand, I pulled him through the doorway, took a single step into the hallway, and froze again. At least that time it wasn’t because of the General’s commands.

  A pretty, dark-haired woman wearing jeans and a navy-blue hooded jacket waited with Mase and Camille, her words speeding and her gestures emphatic as she spoke to them. I caught snippets of what she was saying…had a vision…slaughter…warned them…uprising…all Re-gens…so much blood…

  She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. “Gabe, who…?”

  “Ah, yes,” Gabe said. “This is the woman I told you about…RV-one. I mean, Becca.”

  “Becca,” I repeated, and her familiarity slipped into place. I’d recognized her from the photo in her dossier. I was staring at Rebecca Vaughn, the formerly dead sister of Jake Vaughn. I’d forgotten all about her, about trying to find her and taking her with me when I fled. “How’d you—”

  “Not now. Right now we need to run.”

  As if our friends on the outside heard him, the power flickered several times, then failed completely, leaving us in total darkness. It was my signal.

  “Aw…you’ve got to be kidding me,” Gabe muttered.

  “No, it’s good. It’s Carlos,” I told him. “It’s my people. They’re here.”

  “I’ve seen this,” Becca said off to the left, her voice raspy. The way she said “seen” reminded me of her Ability—prophetic visions. “We must go now. The rebellion will only distract Father and his guards for so long, and not all are restrained by CL-one’s power. They will be here soon. I know the way; I’ve seen it. Come. We must hold hands.”

  Gabe didn’t give me a chance to protest. One second I was standing, holding his hand and gaping into the darkness, the next I was pulled into a fast walk.

  Mentally, I found Ray, who I was still connected to by a thin tether. I pictured Jason a
nd showed her the image. By the time Ray reached him, drawing me to his exact location, we were outside and running down the street, the half-moon glowing like a beacon in the night sky. I was surprised to discover that my concrete prison had been in the basement of the communications building.

  My telepathy was slipperier than usual, making it almost impossible to lock on to Jason. Finally, after multiple failed attempts, I made contact. “We’re on our way,” I told him, barely managing to complete the thought before my telepathy sputtered and winked out of commission. I’d burned it out—again. Shit!

  But I didn’t have time to worry about my damaged Ability. I needed to focus on my feet, on keeping them moving. Each step jarred my arm, making invisible shards of glass stab into the swollen flesh.

  At least I’m not dead, I told myself.

  31

  ZOE

  MARCH 22, 1AE

  Jason shot up from his squatted position. “She’s coming,” he said as he started pacing.

  With a sporadic, increasingly loud hum, the electricity flickered back to life, once more illuminating the darkness beyond the golf course. My head snapped to Carlos, who was still unsteady on his feet from overexerting his Ability for the first time.

  “Fuck, they’re back in business,” Jason spat. A few seconds later, the humming dissipated and the Colony faded back into blackness.

  Carlos dropped to his knees, his breathing labored and his palms seeming to be the only thing keeping him from falling completely over.

  Without hesitation, Chris ran to his side. “Carlos! Why would you…” she asked, her words trailing off as she wrapped an arm around him, trying to soothe him.

  I began to feel strange…foggy. Is it his exhaustion? Anticipation?

  “They’re going to be looking for the source of that, now,” Harper said.

  I glanced around at the others. “What do we do?” I was growing dizzy, and I blinked the sensation away. A splitting pain shot through my mind, and I stumbled forward.

  Jake caught me by the arm and pulled me against him. “Are you alright?”

  I nodded, squeezing his hand in reassurance before pointing to a willow tree a few yards away. “I think Carlos’s emotions are getting to me. I just need to sit down for a minute.”

  Although I felt his apprehension, Jake helped me over to the tree, easing me down to sit at its base. “I’ll be fine,” I said, leaning my head back against the trunk, trying to breathe away the dense fog creeping into my mind.

  “Zoe!” Harper called from over near Carlos. “Bring me the med-kit from my saddle bag.”

  When I tried to stand, Jake’s arm eased me back against the tree. “I’ll get it.” I could feel his concern and conceded.

  Jake jogged toward the horses, who were drinking out of the pond.

  “Zoe.” In my muddled mind, I thought I heard Dani’s soft, frightened voice. “Zoe.”

  I tensed. It is her.

  The voice wasn’t in my head, though, like her normal telepathic communications, but echoing all around me. I couldn’t hear the others, my mind too fuzzy to concentrate on anything other than Dani’s voice.

  “Dani?” I whispered.

  “Zoe!” I heard the acute panic in her tone. “Where are you, Zoe? I need your help…please!”

  Oh my God, Dani! I rose unsteadily to my feet as I looked for her in the darkness—running toward me, sending me a signal, something…anything. I squinted, trying to see her, as my heart raced.

  “Come find me, Zoe!” With her words, an image of Dani hiding in a copse of trees at the border of the Colony came to mind, and I knew where to find her.

  I turned to call for the others, who were all huddled around Carlos. Can’t they hear her? But before I could call to them, I was distracted by Dani’s urgency and fear. It felt like I was the one hiding, scared and alone. I needed to get to the trees. I needed to help her.

  Without a second thought, I ran straight for the Colony…toward Dani.

  32

  DANI

  MARCH 22, 1AE

  Our crazed dash from the communications building to the golf course was the longest mile I’d ever run. It was as though the laws of physics chose that moment to rearrange, expanding distance and slowing time; the distance was endless, the time it took to cross it, eternal.

  Exhaustion clawed at my hamstrings and quadriceps while pain-induced adrenaline raged through my body, keeping me from collapsing into a trembling, twitching pile of limbs. My heart pounded, warring with my lungs for space, and my vision narrowed to a dark tunnel seeming to accent my route with silver and red starlight.

  Swollen and bruised, my face slowly stopped aching. The shards of pain shooting up my arm dulled, and my feet turned leaden. They belonged to someone else, someone who had the will to keep moving…fleeing…surviving.

  We were getting closer to the south end of the Colony, closer to the golf course and my friends and safety…so close.

  Two men dressed in brown long underwear and wearing yellow armbands sprinted directly across our path only a few yards ahead. Three more people—Re-gens, based on the scrubs they were wearing—followed them, close on their heels.

  “What—” I gasped and stumbled.

  Gabe’s arm latched around my waist, gripping so tightly that it was almost painful. Or, it would’ve been painful if I’d been able to feel a single thing in my body. I could use my limbs, clumsily, but they didn’t follow my brain’s commands well enough to keep me moving ahead. If it hadn’t been for Gabe, I would’ve been on the ground.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Gabe grated hoarsely as he dragged me along beside him. “If they’re not after us, we just ignore them and keep going.”

  “But…who—why—what’s going on?” I managed to ask between several short breaths.

  “The Re-gens rebelled. Becca had a vision of Herodson ordering and carrying out their mass-execution…and told them about it. There are enough of them to give Herodson’s forces a good fight.”

  I was shocked, or as surprised as I could’ve been on the verge of passing out from exhaustion. A Re-gen rebellion on the night of our escape was an eerie coincidence. “Good…for them,” I breathed. And then for minutes, or maybe hours, all I did was run.

  With the power down, passing through the usually electrified chain-link fence surrounding the Colony and into the overgrown golf course was easy enough. Camille was able to multitask with her Ability enough to tear a man-sized hole in the fence, allowing the five of us passage, and surprisingly, the border patrol guards were absent. They must have been called away from the fences to help squash the rebellion. It was weirdly convenient, but I wasn’t about to complain.

  Suddenly, shouting surrounded me, a chaotic miasma of sound that sent my head spinning. I couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Hurry!”

  “Get to the horses! They’re here…”

  “Dani? Holy fuck, what—?”

  “Help her! Please!”

  “What’s wrong with her? Let me see…”

  I scanned the darkness ahead of me, but all I could see were shadows. There were too many voices, too much confusion. I couldn’t tell who was saying what.

  “We need to go—now!”

  “No! We find Zoe first!”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “Becca? How did you—”

  Hands jerked me away from Gabe’s supportive hold, jarring my broken arm. The new hands shook as they traveled over my face and clothes, searching.

  “Can you ride?” Belatedly, I realized the question had come from Jason. It was his hands that examined me, tender and trembling.

  “Her arm’s broken, and she almost dropped on the way here. I’d guess she’s on the verge of passing out.”

  That’s Gabe, I realized. No matter how hard I focused, coherent thought slipped further away.

  “Uh, guys? This one’s not looking so good.”

  “What are you talk—” Jason started to snap, but his words cut off as my knees g
ave out. He eased me to the ground, cradling me against his body. “Dani.” If he said anything more, I didn’t hear it.

  There was only silence…and darkness.

  ~~~~~

  In the past four months, I’d lost consciousness more than I had in the previous twenty-six years of my life—knocked out, drugged, or fainted. It was getting old.

  “Dani?” Jason whispered softly, his warm breath brushing my face. I wasn’t surprised to find his eyes inches from mine, sapphire turned midnight-blue in the dark of night. They held so much emotion, so much fear and elation. Too much. They swallowed me, becoming my whole world.

  Heart soaring, I raised my left hand to his face. Before I reached him, before I moved my arm a scant inch, pain enveloped me, and I whimpered. But I didn’t look away from his beautiful eyes.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured as he brushed a sweaty curl out of my face. “We’ll get you fixed up as soon as we get somewhere safe. No one else is going to hurt you. I’ve got you now.” Feather-light, he pressed his lips against mine.

  Someone else licked my cheek. Not someone…Jack!

  “Help me up?” I asked, pushing off the overgrown grass with my good hand. Beside me, my dog wagged his tail excitedly.

  Jason’s arms were gentle as he raised me to a sitting position and ran a hand up and down my spine. I maneuvered my feet under me, and carefully rose first to my knees, then my feet. I wasn’t standing for long.

  “Oh my God! Camille!” I wailed.

  Chris, Gabe, Harper, and Mase were kneeling around Camille, her body stretched out on the grass. I stumbled the several yards separating us and fell to the ground beside Mase, who was holding her head on his lap. Silvery moonlight made her paler than usual. She looked almost dead.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  Shocking the hell out of me, Camille’s eyes snapped open and focused on mine. “Dani,” she breathed. Dark, thick blood streamed from her nose, staining her lips and teeth a ghastly crimson. “Come closer.” Her voice was thin, strained.