by JA Huss
“Take it or leave it,” Uzi says. “I have dozens of people lined up, Samuel.”
“Just relax,” Samuel says. “I just needed a little clarification. How do I make her look like Azure then?”
“That’s the beauty.” Uzi laughs. “She just does it. You show the picture and hold the image of Azure in your mind and she just… becomes her.”
Samuel thinks about this for a few seconds. “How do you keep her so… docile? Will she wake up from this trance—or whatever you have her in—and try to kill me? She’s one of you, right?” Samuel shakes his head with doubt. “And everyone knows what you four are.”
“Hey,” Uzi says, getting angry now. “I’ve been doing this for two years. No one’s died yet. You’ve got five seconds to take your turn and then I’m moving on to the next client on the list.”
“Fine,” Samuel says, pulling out his wallet.
Uzi takes his money and places my hand in Samuel’s. He leads me to an open door and we enter, closing it behind us.
I walk to the bed and start getting undressed. When I’m naked I turn to look at the man who wants me to be his dead wife. He’s holding out a picture of a woman. Early twenties, blonde hair, green eyes, pretty face. I drag my eyes away from the picture and find it in his mind too.
He smiles at me. “Azure?”
I nod, but don’t speak. He’s got a few more seconds on this trip and I don’t want to end it early with speech.
He doesn’t care. He takes me over to the bed and I lie down. He slides in next to me, but doesn’t remove his clothes.
I flicker in and out between Azure and Sadie. But Gordon adapts as we lie in bed looking at each other. He closes his eyes when I become Sadie. He learns to wait a few seconds before opening them again so he can see his wife. And each time he opens his eyes, he smiles at me.
At Azure.
He talks. That’s it. He talks to Azure. He tells her all the things he’s been holding inside since she died years ago.
It’s a disjointed conversation with all the trips I have to throw to make it as believable as possible. But Gordon doesn’t care.
“I’m sorry,” he keeps saying. “I’m sorry I didn’t save you. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough to save you from them.”
He’s talking about Prodigy. Somewhere in my head I know this, but I’m not supposed to think about them. And Uzi always knows if I think too hard. He’s always in my head, poking around to steal all my thoughts and keep them for himself. So I try not to think at all. I just concentrate on being Azure. On making Samuel happy. On giving him his money’s worth.
Most of them want to fuck me, all the while pretending I’m someone else.
Uzi interrupts his quiet confessions of guilt, and unworthiness, and regret as a voice through a speaker. “Five-minute warning.”
Samuel stops talking and this time when I flick back into Sadie to restart the trip, he keeps his eyes open. “Why do you let them use you like this?”
I’m confused for a second. But I don’t respond.
“You’re strong, Sadie. The best illusionist this place has ever seen.” Samuel is whispering now, probably wondering if Uzi is watching. Or listening through some recording device. “You could get out,” he says. “You could trip them all and—”
The door flies open and the next thing I know, Samuel is being dragged out of the room by a whole gang of men.
“Fucking asshole,” Uzi says, watching as he disappears down the hall. He turns and tracks me with his eyes as I get up off the bed and start getting dressed. “I hope you don’t get any funny ideas, Sadie. You’re mine, honey. And I have big plans for you.”
“Sadie?”
I sit up, breathing hard, sweat running down my face. I look around wildly, expecting Uzi to be here. Expecting to be dragged back into that prison cell they keep me in.
But I’m not there. I’m in Lincoln Wade’s creepy dungeon, sitting on his supervillain operating table. I break out in tears from the relief. “I’m not there,” I say, to no one in particular. Lincoln, Case, Lulu, Molly, and Sheila are all looking at me with shocked faces.
“Are you OK?” Molly asks.
I just stare at them, the memory of what Uzi was doing to me all these years still way too fresh in my memory. How he used me.
I look down at my trembling hands and shake my head. “No,” I say. “I’m not OK.” And then I remember everything that happened. I’m at the Alpha lair. I came here with… “Thomas? Where’s Thomas?”
“Uzi has him,” Lincoln says. “And I know whatever that nightmare was you were having, it’s a pretty big deal. You were thrashing and screaming. But we need you now, Sadie. I cannot stress how badly we need your help right fucking now or everything we’re doing is gonna go to shit.”
“You tripped into hundreds of people,” Lulu says, ignoring Lincoln’s plea for help as she rubs my arm. “What was that?”
“It’s her superpower,” Case says. I don’t know him, I just know of him. And everything they told me—everything they made me believe about these Alphas—was wrong. They’re not the bad guys in this story. They’re the only good guys I’ve ever met.
“Sadie?” I turn my head to see Iziah standing on the other side of the room.
“He’s one of them,” I blurt. “Don’t let him near me! Please—”
“No, Sadie,” Iziah says, walking forward into the room. “I was with you. These past few years, I was with you. I was down in that cell too. Remember?”
My head hurts when I think about my missing years. So I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I don’t want to remember.”
“You don’t have to,” Lincoln says, grabbing my shoulder. “Not yet, anyway. But we need you, Sadie. But somehow Cyan… she took over his body.”
“The memories,” I whisper. “Sullivan told me that Thomas can collect memories from dead people. And Thomas is a mentalist, so he can form a link to Uzi. Shit,” I say, rubbing my aching forehead. “When Cyan was shattered she jumped into his head and formed a link with Uzi.” I look up at them, so much fear coursing through my veins, I suddenly feel cold. “She took control of him. She’s got them both now. Thomas and Sullivan. We’ll never get them back!”
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Sheila says. “But Lincoln’s right. We need your help, Sadie. We need you and Iziah. He’s already told us what he knows.”
“They had me too, Sade,” Iziah says, forcing his way into the tight circle of people who surround me. “Cyan was controlling me too. But when Lincoln scattered her and she… died, I guess—I don’t know, maybe she forgot she was controlling me. Or maybe they thought I was never going to recover. I took two hits, from two of the most powerful mentalists to ever come out of Prodigy.”
But he’s not dead.
No, he says in my head. I’m not dead. Neither are you.
He’s in my mind.
“We’re linked now, Sadie,” Iziah says. “If they can link two mentalists, well…” He smiles. “We can link two illusionists. It took me years to figure this out. I wanted to help you. While we were still at Prodigy… but….”
Iziah trails off. I feel his sadness. His regret.
“We need you, Sadie,” Lincoln says. “We can’t pull this off without you. We need Thomas back and we need to get him before those fucking satellites align and rain a shitstorm of chaos down on Cathedral City.”
“I don’t know what they’re planning to do with my SpyGlasses,” Case says. “Or Thomas’s satellite phones. But I can tell you this—it’s not what we had in mind. And now that we’ve unleashed this plan and can’t stop it, it’s our duty to make sure it’s carried out properly.”
“Will you help us?” Lulu asks, still holding onto my arm. “Will you help us get Thomas back and take down this totally fucked-up city, once and for all?”
I look at each of them, one at a time. “Who are you people?”
All of them laugh, even Iziah.
“We’re Alphas,” Case says, smiling.
“And ill
usionists,” Iziah adds.
“And a fucked-up Omega detective,” Molly says.
“I’m just a lawyer.” Lulu laughs. “But I got your back.”
“And don’t forget about me,” Sheila says. “I have control of every computer in that city. Every phone, every tablet used in the schools, every bus-stop map, every jail cell. I’m inside all of it. Every device with Spy or Sky in front of the name is me.”
“Cathedral City belongs to us, Sadie,” Case says. “It’s ours. And we want it back.”
“We can do this,” Lincoln says. “With your help, Sadie. So what you do ya say? Wanna join the team? Wanna be on Team Take Down the Assholes? Wanna get Thomas and Sullivan back? Wanna get your revenge and help us get ours at the same time?”
I picture it in my head. What would it be like to be in control again? What would the world look like with no Uzi controlling me?
Paradise, I decide. No matter what these supervillains have in mind, it’s got to be better than this. And there’s no fucking way in hell I’m gonna let Cyan have what’s mine. She will not take Thomas from me like she’s taken everything else.
“Yes,” I finally say. “Yes, I’d very much like to be a part of this team.”
“Good,” Lincoln says with an evil, crooked smile. “Now listen carefully, here’s the plan…”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - THOMAS
“Are you ready?” Uzi screams the words at the top of his lungs. We’re in a large warehouse in the Merchant District. All around us are hundreds of people dressed in black holding up baseball bats and tire irons. They scream back, waving their clubs in the air, nothing but confirmation in their echoing replies. Yes, they’re ready.
Sullivan and I have retreated to his safe place. The place he’s been hiding for fifteen years. The place I put him.
I’m sorry, I say.
Don’t worry about it, he says back. If you hadn’t put me here, we’d have nowhere to hide. We’d be dead in all ways but one. But we’ve still got a chance, Thomas. We’re not out of this game yet.
He’s right. If he didn’t have this little compartment we could retreat to, we’d be slaves. Stuck here in our own mind, watching Cyan and Uzi make us do… well… What do you think they’re gonna do?
I think we’re about to find out.
“In exactly thirty minutes,” Uzi yells. The whole place goes quiet to hear his instructions. “Every Sky and Spy device in this city will start a protocol. Courtesy of Alpha Thomas and friends.”
Shit, Sullivan says.
Fuck, I reply. They’re gonna use our own tech to get what they want.
Can’t Sheila stop it?
No, I say. It’s all automated until the program stops running.
So it’ll work like we planned?
But before I can explain the finer details of what Lincoln and Sheila have set up, Uzi explains his side of things.
“In thirty minutes, every device in Cathedral City will start flashing. And you, my friends, will be the first to experience what revolution really means.”
Tell me you didn’t use Lincoln’s flashing lights to reprogram people.
We did. Well, he did. Asshole. I told Case to keep him under control and now look, all that shit he did last year is what’s finally gonna bring us down.
“Now the Alphas,” Uzi continues, “thought they’d use this little scheme to open eyes and make people see the truth. But we’re not Alphas, are we?”
“No!” his minions scream.
“We’re Prodigy!” he yells.
“Prodigy!” they scream.
How? Sullivan asks. How the hell did all these people come out of Prodigy when you blew it up fifteen years ago?
I never saw it coming, I realize. I remember the flyers all over the city. I remember the news articles. The parents, desperately seeking their missing children.
All those missing kids didn’t go missing. They became part of the Prodigy program.
Sullivan is silent. What can he say? We missed it. We all missed it. Prodigy was never gone. It was here, right under our noses, this whole time.
“And we’ve got the Red Robber on our side!” Uzi continues.
Ecstatic, raving cheers at that little revelation. Hundreds of people are shouting and screaming as…
Fuck. Sullivan and I think it at the same time.
You have got to be kidding me, I say.
Randy Shits walks out and joins us at the front of the warehouse. Smirking at me like he’s the most evil genius on the planet. He’s dressed in black from head to toe, just like everyone else except Uzi and me. Motherfucker even has a goddamned logo splashed across his chest. A red anarchy symbol outlined in blue.
He stole our fucking anarchy sign! Sullivan says.
That asshole was setting Case up last spring. All that bullshit about the banks and the power plant. The water treatment center. The coffee shops. All of it is…
He’s corrupted the Spyware, I suddenly realize. The flashing lights in the police station. The way all the monitors and lights started to blink out Lincoln’s unauthorized program to make people violent. He did all of it and he used us the entire time.
“We have control of everything,” Randy yells. “Every SkyEye phone. Every SpyGlass tablet. Everything in this city will be ours!”
He’s going to make the whole city crazy with violence. Just like the riots he most certainly started last spring. I picture what this will mean. Total chaos—no. Total anarchy.
I still have the images of all those people in my head. How they turned on each other. How they tried to kill each other. How they walked around like zombies and…
“All thanks to the Alphas!” Randy continues. “Lincoln Wade made our little light show possible. Case Reider delivered it into the hands of every citizen of this city. And Thomas Brooks…” He cackles. “Well, he gave us the ability to do all this without any government interference. Welcome to the winning team, Mr. Brooks.”
The crowd goes insane with cheers. “Prodigy, Prodigy, Prodigy,” they scream, arms in the air, bats and tire irons pumping with the beat.
I think we just lost, Sullivan says.
I try to remain positive. I do. I try to talk myself up. I’m the mastermind here. I’m the brain. I’m the plotter of plots. I’m the most evil genius on this planet. And I’m teamed up with two more, with powers and intellect almost as equal.
But they have no idea. None. They have no clue this is what’s happening. So even if they’re coming for us, even if my friends have a plan… it won’t work.
Sullivan’s right. We just lost this game we’ve been playing. Fifteen years of planning can’t prepare them for what’s coming. Because you don’t know what you don’t know.
Lincoln, Case, and Sheila will show up. They’ll come with false bravado that we, and we alone, are the most badass motherfuckers this town has ever seen… and they’ll be wrong.
Because this was never our plan. This was never what we intended to do with all our carefully curated resources. With all our evil ideas.
This is some real bad supervillain shit right here.
I miss the rest of the speech, too busy imagining all the ways this day can end. All the ways we will lose. All the ways this city will go down.
I have nothing left. There is no brilliant mad scientist idea that can stop them now. I sent the codes last night and in just a few minutes, the program will start.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - SADIE
“I have him,” Sheila says through the helicopter headsets. Case, Iziah, Lincoln and I are crammed into the small space. I’m practically sitting in Iziah’s lap. Lulu and Molly had to stay at home. They only have one helicopter after some crash a few months ago. So no room. “He’s in a warehouse in the Merchant District.”
“Motherfuckers,” Lincoln says. “That’s my hood, goddammit.”
“Well, it’s theirs at the moment,” Sheila replies. “There’s hundreds of people in there with him, and I’ve got to tell you, just from my limited view
from a security camera mounted inside, I think we might have a big problem.”
“What are they saying?” Case asks.
“No sound,” Sheila replies. “But Uzi and Thomas are addressing the crowd and… oh, shit.”
“What?” Lincoln asks, banking the helicopter over the top of the last mountain we need to clear before Cathedral City comes into view.
“That DA, Randy Shultz, is there with them.”
I shudder at the name. Randy.
“Shits, you mean,” Case laughs into his headset.
“It’s not funny, Case. He’s dressed in black too. And…”
“And what?” Lincoln says.
“And he’s wearing our logo. The anarchy symbol. It’s like… he’s a—”
“Fuck,” Lincoln says.
“What?” Iziah asks, just before I can do it myself.
“He’s one of us,” Case finishes for Linc.
“He’s Prodigy,” I say.
“How do you know that?” Lincoln asks.
“I know that name,” I say. “He came to the…” I almost say school, but that’s not what it was. “He came to see me. Uzi made me…”
Iziah puts a hand on my arm. I don’t know if he knows what Uzi was making me do while they were controlling us, but I appreciate the gesture.
“He made me turn into someone for him.”
“Well, I, for one, have no clue what that means,” Lincoln says. “But fuck that guy. Sheila, how long do we have?”
“Three minutes until initiation,” she replies.
“In three minutes, we’ll have control over the entire city,” Lincoln says. “We didn’t plan it this way, and it sucks that we have to do it, but we gotta use everything available to get Thomas back. Prodigy cannot have him again. Ever.”
But they already do. They have him and Sullivan too.
The helicopter dips suddenly as Lincoln takes us south towards the Merchant district. My stomach flips, and not just because of the quick descent.
Something is very wrong here. I can feel it.
Then the letters start flashing across my vision.
