by Eaton, Pam
“I think I broke Xavier’s nose,” I say, pacing in front of his door.
“What?” he asks, his face scrunched up.
“I went and saw Gregory. Somehow, I got pulled into his dream. His nightmare, really.” The words are rushed, choked.
Tiberius leads me over to his bed to sit with him.
My eyes stay fixed on a spot on the wall, completely unseeing anything except for the constant barrage of images from Gregory’s dream. “The things they did to him. I can’t even…”
Tiberius lightly touches my chin, and I turn to look at him. “He’s here now. He’s not in that place anymore. He’s safe.”
I shake my head. “But he’s not even safe from his dreams.”
So through tears and anguish I tell him everything I saw, everything that Gregory went through, all the questions they asked him. I leave nothing out, nothing.
Tiberius leans forward, bracing both elbows on his knees. He drops his head between his hands, and I listen to him take deep, controlled breaths.
Finally, he sits back up and brings me into his arms again. “I’ll kill him.” The unbridled rage in his voice startles me. “No one should have to endure that. No. One.”
“I don’t know what to do for him,” I tell Tiberius, desperate for him to give me guidance on this.
“The only thing you can do is be there for him. He’s going to need a professional to get through this. But from what I’ve heard, he’s a strong man, and he’ll conquer this as long as he has support from those he loves.”
I wipe at the tears falling down my cheeks. “I need him to wake up. We need to put an end to all of this. I feel like I’m falling apart, and I can’t do that, but I don’t know how much more I can take.”
“He will, and we will end this.” He grips me tightly. “I’m so proud of you. You’ve been so strong. Stronger than any seventeen-year-old I’ve ever met. But it’s okay to fall apart. You’re human. You have suffered more trauma than anyone should. And yet you keep fighting. You keep moving forward. Give yourself this chance to mourn. Mourn the lives that are lost, the ones that have been changed forever, and the future that will be different than what you hoped.”
I look down, but he gives me a little shake. “But you, my dear, you get to decide your future. Let no one take that from you. You fight with everything you have to gain the future you want and deserve. You have to make your dreams come true; they don’t just happen.”
His words surround me like a comforting embrace and a reminder. I know I haven’t mourned my grandparents properly. I know that I can’t keep putting that off. And I know I need to realize that Gregory, Tony, and I will never be like we were at the cabin in the woods. But maybe we can be something better, if we fight for it.
“Dig deep, Becca. You’re going to need a lot more strength to get through all of this. You’ll need all you can give.”
I hear him, and I want it, but… “I don’t know how.”
He gives me a little shake. “Yes, you do. You could have fallen apart after your grandparents, but you didn’t. You found a problem and went about solving it.”
“More like avoiding stuff,” I mutter.
Tiberius shakes his head. “Yes, you avoided dealing with the pain. But that’s normal. That’s part of the process. Now you’re feeling everything.”
How true those words are. “It sucks.”
He lets out a low laugh. “I know it does. You and me, we’ve got a lot in common. More than anyone should.”
“Yeah, we’re part of the ‘whole family is gone’ club.”
“Unfortunately yes, but you also make your own family. And for the most part you’ve built a loyal one. Luca wanted nothing more than to be here helping you.”
I think about Luca, and how he didn’t have a single person when we found him. “Should have brought him, would have scared everyone.”
We both laugh, because we know how much of a softy Luca is, but those teal scales scare the crap out of everyone.
“What do you want to do now?” he asks me.
I take a deep breath and wipe the residual moisture off my face. “We need to talk with Mr. Smith. We need to come up with a game plan. And we really need Gregory to wake up so Mr. Smith knows that Rivers is behind all of this.”
Tiberius stands from the bed and grabs his hat to camouflage his appearance. He reaches his hand out towards me. “Then let’s go pay a visit to Mr. Smith.”
Twenty-Six
Thank goodness for Tiberius’s power or we’d be looking all over the place for Mr. Smith. He’s always in his office, so I head that way, but Tiberius stops me, and we head back to Gregory.
I don’t bother with all the security measures. I grab Tiberius and we transport straight into the room, right next to the door.
Mr. Smith doesn’t jump this time at my appearance. “I’m glad you’re here. I just sent someone to get you. Gregory’s awake,” he says, sounding like he’s desperately trying to choke back his emotion.
I rush around him to Gregory’s bed. His eyes are closed. “I thought you said he was awake?”
“I am, I’ve just got my eyes closed.” The most amazing sound I have ever heard hits my ears. And I can feel the tears pooling, but I do my best to keep them at bay.
His eyes blink open and look straight at me. So many emotions flitting through them. I want to fall to my knees and thank God, because I never thought I’d get this chance again. I thought they took him from me forever. I want to dive on him and hug him tightly, kiss him, but I’m afraid I’ll hurt him, or he won’t be able to handle that right now.
“I can take it,” he says to me.
“Guess I need to start wearing my earrings again, huh?” I say with a watery laugh, trying to fight back the tears.
I sit on the edge of his bed and lean closer to him. He raises a hand and softly touches my face. “Can that wait a little bit?” he asks as his eyes move over my face. “I’ve missed hearing you in my mind.”
How can I say no to that?
“Guess you didn’t stop seeing each other, did you?” Mr. Smith asks as he approaches Gregory’s other side.
“No, we didn’t,” Gregory says, his eyes trained on me. “And I don’t think we’re ever going to follow that rule.” His eyes leave mine and he spears Mr. Smith with a look of complete seriousness.
Mr. Smith sighs. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Tiberius steps into view, and Gregory tenses.
“This is my uncle—”
“Uncle?” Gregory asks, looking confused and a little wary.
Tiberius takes off his hat and his true face shows.
“It’s a long story, but the short of it is that my dad had an identical twin that I didn’t know about until recently,” I tell him.
Gregory’s eyebrows raise at that.
“I know, it’s like a bad soap opera. But he’s answered so many questions. He’s a good guy. I promise.”
Gregory squeezes my hand.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Mr. Smith interrupts.
Gregory turns his head on his pillow, spearing Mr. Smith with a serious look. “You’ve got a lot of traitors in your midst,” he says, sounding sad.
Mr. Smith hangs his head. It’s one thing to think it; it’s another to have a mind reader confirm your fears. He puts his hands on his hips and takes a couple of deep breaths before he looks up again.
“Where do we start?” Mr. Smith asks.
“Mr. Rivers is the puppet master of this whole mess.”
Mr. Smith curses and kicks out at a stool next to him, and my whole body tenses.
“And this thing stretches the globe. He’s been working on this for years,” Gregory tells him, eyeing the stool he just kicked. “He’s trying to build an army. And these experiments”—his voice shakes on the word, and I wonder how much they did to him—“some have been successful.”
“It’s true,” I say, turning to Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith motions with his hand to
tell him more.
“We’ve been ambushing his facilities and rescuing the captives for the past couple months,” I tell him.
“And burning them to the ground?” Mr. Smith asks.
I shrug, not really caring that those buildings burned. “Seemed fitting,” I say, my voice deadly calm.
“What happened?” Gregory asks beside me.
I look down at him and I watch his face crumble at whatever he’s reading in my mind, but I voice it anyways. “When I left you at the tarmac, I got a text.” I let the tears fall. I can still see the flames climbing the walls. The scent of smoke still lingers in my nose. And the image of them in their beds…that’s always in my mind when I fall asleep at night. “They killed my grandparents and set their house on fire with their bodies inside.” There’s so much more to that story, but I still can’t talk about it in detail.
“I’m so sorry, Becca,” Gregory says. He pulls on my hand to get me closer, and I bury my face into his neck. “I’m so sorry.”
He holds me for a bit, and the room stays quiet, until I pull back and wipe at my eyes. “We didn’t leave anyone in those buildings,” I tell him and Mr. Smith. “I know I’ve caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, but I can’t begin to care.”
“She’s been a one-woman army in many respects,” Tiberius adds, pride lacing his words.
“How did you even find them?” Mr. Smith asks, looking between Tiberius and myself.
We share a look. I’ll leave this up to Tiberius. It’s his power, his secret. “I don’t think we should disclose that here,” is the answer Tiberius settles on.
“Too much at risk to let that kind of information slip here. Too many ears,” I add in. “We’ll need to take you somewhere remote for that chat.”
“You’re going to need me to ferret out any moles,” Gregory says, trying to sit up in his bed.
I put my hand lightly on his chest. “You’ve been in a coma for who knows how long, and I don’t know if anything is even broken. But you need to rest before you start dismantling the entirety of Project Lightning.”
Gregory grits his teeth. “We don’t have the luxury of time right now. Henderson kept taunting about some big plans they had.”
I put a little more pressure on his chest, and he lies back down. “Where we found you. They had these canisters with names on them. I think they’ve found others with powers that have passed away. I think they’re going to try to merge the powers of the dead with the living.”
“You think they disturbed graves?” Mr. Smith asks.
I nod. “When we found Gregory, he was under the church where Nostradamus is buried.”
“They want someone to tell the future,” Mr. Smith says, sounding horrified. Which he should be. Because if Mr. Rivers get his hands on that power, we might not be able to stop him.
And if he finds out about my other power…game over.
Twenty-Seven
“I’ve got to get back to Lucy,” Tiberius tells me in a low voice.
We left Gregory a few minutes ago so the doctor could run some tests on him and also so he could get more rest. “I can take you back now,” I tell him.
He nods and I grab his hand. In a blink we’re standing in his living room.
“You’re back,” Lucy yells before she throws herself into Tiberius’s arms.
He bends down and she goes up on her toes to meet him. His arms engulf her, and he holds her close to his chest. They don’t say anything, as if they don’t need words to communicate. It reminds me a lot of my grandparents. How I would find them some mornings in the kitchen, their arms wrapped around each other, swaying to a song only they could hear. I’d forgotten about that, and I smile at the memory.
Tiberius pulls back, but his hands don’t leave Lucy. “Did you hold down the fort while I was gone?” he asks her.
“Like there was any doubt,” she says, smiling up at him. “And I’m happy to report that the U.S. government was not about to scramble my technology. I was still able to track you, even in the building.” She sounds totally smug, but she should be.
He steps back, dropping his arms. “Gregory’s awake,” he tells her.
Lucy’s shoulders drop, and she looks at me. “I’m so glad.”
“Yeah. But Lucy, the things they did to him…” I take a deep breath. “I don’t know how he’s going to come back from that.”
She steps away from Tiberius and walks over to me, taking me by the hand and leading me to the couch. I sit down, and she positions herself in the corner so she can face me.
She folds her hands in her lap, and then unfolds them. Her eyes look at something over my shoulder, but I don’t think she’s actually looking at anything particular. But I wait, because I can sense something heavy is coming, and after witnessing Gregory’s dream, I don’t want to force anyone to live their own hells.
Tiberius comes and sits on the arm of the couch behind her and lays a hand on her shoulder. She takes slow, steady breaths and then finally focuses on me. “I can’t speak for him, but it was almost like they forgot I was human. Or maybe they just called me experiment twenty-five to dehumanize me to themselves.”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t really matter. But for them I was a human test rat. They starved me. They would lock me in a room alone for hours. They burned me. They fed me all sorts of drugs. All with the purpose to try and activate my powers after they had injected me with something to try to merge my DNA with someone who had powers.”
I want to rage at the man who kidnapped her. He isolated her, he groomed her for this. She was already an orphan, but he pushed out her friends too. She was just a young, naive girl in love.
“But what I never let them know is that the day after they had changed me, my powers started emerging. I think they believed if they made life awful enough, it would be a trigger like when a person with powers’ parent dies. But I wouldn’t let them know it had worked. Because I was afraid they’d either kill me or grab other people off the streets like me and subject them to the same thing.”
Tiberius rubs her arm gently, and she takes another deep breath. I watch her hands shake a little as she brushes her hair off her face. “I wanted to die for a while. I couldn’t see a way out, and my body just couldn’t handle it anymore. But I think it was when they brought in this new guy, that my mind shifted. I watched them do to him what they did to me.”
She looks me dead in the eye, and I brace myself. “He didn’t survive. And I decided then that I would live, and I would escape, and I would find a way to make sure this never happened again. And that’s when your uncle found me.”
She looks back at him and her whole face lights up, like she put aside all the horrible things that happened.
“I got sucked into his dream,” I say, and she looks back at me. Tiberius’s face loses all its warmth, and I experience a twinge of guilt for darkening that moment.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “He relives his time captive in his dreams.”
Lucy sucks in a breath.
My hands grip the edge of the couch. “I had to sit there and watch them torture him. I tried so hard to talk him through it. It was a dream, so he knew I was there, but the fear overpowered everything. When Henderson came and got him, Gregory tried so hard to stay with me, but he couldn’t do it. And when his screams started…”
Tears streak down my face, but I don’t move to wipe them away. “It’s already horrendous what was done to him, but now he has to relive it constantly. How can someone survive that without going insane?”
She reaches out and pries my fingers away from the couch, clasping our hands together. “For the most part, the Gregory you know is gone,” she tries to tell me gently.
I try to tug my hand away, desperately wanting to cover my ears, but she holds firm. “No. You need to listen. This experience changed him. Just like your grandparents’ deaths, and what we thought was Gregory’s death, changed you. But we get to decide how we live now. We get to decide to take back our pow
er. These people do not control us anymore. They do not get to take our powers from us.
“Gregory’s going to need counseling, just like you will. Tony desperately needs it too. But you are all strong. I know that. I’ve seen it. This fight is not over. But we aren’t alone anymore. It isn’t you against the world. It isn’t me locked in a room like a lab rat.”
“It’s why I’ve called the people here the Blessed Many.” I turn at the sound of Tiberius’s voice. “What we all have gone through was a nightmare. But now we can take what was given, either forcibly or from the loss of our parents, and bless those around us. Make this world better.”
He’s right. And I’m pretty sure those principles are what Mr. Smith believes Project Lightning was founded on.
Lucy squeezes my hand one more time and puts it back down on the couch. “Right now, we don’t have the luxury of time. And that might help Gregory not to dwell on what’s occurred. But someday soon, it’ll need to be dealt with,” she cautions me.
“I know,” I tell her, rubbing my hands up and down my thighs.
She shakes her hands out. “All right. Heavy feelings pushed aside for the moment. What’s the plan now?”
Tiberius stands from his spot. “I think we need to fill Mr. Smith in on my power.”
“If we do that, we’re going to have to tell him about me too. There’s no way around it; he’ll know my dad had one.”
“We could tell him you don’t know,” Lucy offers.
I shake my head. “That won’t work. Mr. Smith’s power is that you can’t lie to him.”
“Do you trust him?” Tiberius asks me, his voice deadly serious.
Do I? I lay my head back on the couch and stare at the ceiling. “Gregory would have read his mind the minute he woke up,” I say, voicing my thoughts out loud. “And if Mr. Smith was behind this at all, Gregory would have told me. He would have warned me.” Plus, my mom vouched for Mr. Smith as well.
