by Kelly Oram
I scooped her up into my arms and when I walked out of her cell the black man was already standing there with an older woman and a boy who was maybe fifteen.
“Is this everyone?” I asked.
“It is now,” the man said through gritted teeth.
At my frown, the girl whispered, “There used to be seven of us.”
My temper exploded, causing the lights overhead to flicker. I took a deep breath and the boy looked up at the lights. “Did you do that?” he asked. Australian accent. Apparently, Visticorp was scouring the entire globe to find people like me.
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m going to do a whole lot more than that just as soon as I find my friend, so I need you guys to get out of the building and as far from this mountain as you can.”
I swiped the key for the main door and checked the hallway. It was still clear. “Follow me.”
“Wait!” the boy said.
When I looked at him, he grinned and puffed out his chest proudly.
Without words, the man gestured for me to give him the girl. I handed her over and after he adjusted her on his back and told her to hold on tight, he and the older lady each grabbed one of the boy’s hands. The boy smiled and me and said, “Well, what are you waiting for?”
The woman held out her hand to me with a smile.
Suddenly, I heard a kind grandmotherly voice inside my head that said, “Trust us.” It was a little startling, but I managed a smile and took her hand. The second I did we all vanished. I gasped and the boy laughed at me. “You didn’t think you were the only one with powers, did you, sweetheart?”
“Actually, I was hoping you all had something useful up your sleeves. And I promise you do not want to call me ‘sweetheart’ again, little man. You haven’t seen what I can do yet.”
“Whatever it is, gorgeous, I’m sure it’s kick ass.”
“You have no idea,” I whispered and then pulled them back to the ventilation room.
Once we were safely in the small room, I let go of the lady’s hand and pointed to the ladder in the service tunnel. “It’s dark and creepy, but it’s a way out. It opens into a cave. Head down the mountain toward Las Vegas. You’ll see the city lights. As soon as I rescue my friend, I’ll come find you. I have a safe place I can take you all, and a friend who can help get you the things you need to start new lives. Or you could stick around.” I smiled. “We’re thinking of buying our own island and building a real-life version of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.”
They’d all gone visible again and the fifteen-year-old boy grinned at me with admiration. “Hell, yeah! I’m totally in as long as I get to pick my own name.”
I laughed. “My friend Teddy is going to like you. Now go!”
The woman went up first and the little girl followed after her. The boy went next, and lastly, the man. He was so big it was going to be a tight squeeze for him. Before he headed up, he turned to me. “We owe you for this.”
“Just get to safety. That’s good enough for me.”
“The friend you’re looking for, is he like us?”
“No.”
The man nodded. “If he doesn’t have powers, they’ll be holding him in the detainment center. It’s on level three near the control room.”
“Thanks.”
The man nodded and then disappeared up the ladder.
Holding tightly to the key card I’d stolen, I took a breath and went in search of an elevator.
The basement—which it turns out, is where the holding cells for the test subjects are—is the dumpiest part of Visticorp’s secret, evil laboratories. The rest of the facility is clean and bright with state-of-the-art everything.
According to the sign in the elevator, level one was living quarters. Level two was home to the mess hall, rec rooms, supply rooms, and offices, but level three was where all the good stuff was. I zipped at superspeed through several laboratories, and then stumbled into the control center. There were too many people to slow down and get a good look, but even moving through it at superspeed it was like I’d walked right into a scene from Race to Witch Mountain. The entire room was filled with super computers that Teddy would probably give his firstborn child to get his hands on, and at its core there was some kind of giant generator that obviously powered the entire mountain. As Men in Black ridiculous as it was, the whole setup was rather impressive.
After that, I finally found the detainment center. It was set up much like the holding cells for the test subjects. Through the tiny window on the door—that I prayed my key card would open—I could see a reception desk with an armed guard sitting behind it. Beyond him was a hall of rooms and observation windows identical to those I’d found the others like me in.
Fingers crossed, I swiped my key and breathed a sigh of relief when the light flicked green and the door slid open.
I didn’t give the guard behind the desk time to blink before I zapped him and traded my key card for his.
Carter was in the first cell, lying on the ground, looking quite out of it. He’d clearly been on the receiving end of a bad beating.
I was a little shocked by the feelings that overwhelmed me at seeing him hurt. I may want to knock him around every now and then, but I did not like the fact that someone else had.
I double-checked all the cells for other prisoners, but Carter was the only one here. “Carter!” I whispered as I slipped into his cell. I picked him up off the floor and slapped his cheek to wake him up. “Carter! Come on, wake up, old man.”
His eyes rolled forward and he grumbled, “I’m only forty-two, Jamielynn. Stop calling me ‘old.’”
“Well,” I laughed, “I see they haven’t beaten the grump out of you.”
“What are you doing here? You have to leave now!”
“Well, duh. I wasn’t planning to stick around for tea.”
Carter winced when I picked him up, but was able to put weight on his legs, so I slung his arm over my shoulder.
I turned around and almost ran into the door. I hadn’t heard it close. I looked for a place to swipe my key card, but there wasn’t one on this side of the door. Someone had locked me in here with Carter. I cursed under my breath.
“Still easy to sneak up on? You said you were going to work on that.”
“Shut up. It’s your fault. I was here trying to rescue your pathetic behind.”
“Some rescue.”
“Do you want to get zapped?”
I set Carter down and took a running leap at both the door and the observation window, but, thick as they were, I wasn’t strong enough to punch them out. At least I made a dent in the door, but I also think I broke my hand. I let out a curse and in a fit of anger shot a bolt of lightning at the window. Whatever the window was made of wasn’t affected. I tried the walls next, but the material they were made out of merely absorbed the electricity.
“It’s no use. This room has been prepped for your gifts specifically,” a voice sounded over an intercom.
I turned around and a man that had to be the mystery voice from my school watched me through the observation window. He was maybe sixty and fit the voice I remembered perfectly. He was attractive for an older man. Tall, thin, and impeccably dressed. He had pale blue eyes and a full head of thick, silvery-gray hair. He stood a little off-kilter, leaning his weight on a cane, but the disability took nothing away from his presence. He was clearly a man you did not mess with.
Behind him stood Demakis. He looked both pissed off at me and happy to see me locked up at the same time.
I returned his angry smirk. “Huh. Guess I didn’t kill you.”
“You’ll wish you had soon enough, little freak.”
“Or I’ll just rectify the mistake.” My gaze slid to Boss Man. “Maybe take a few others out with you.”
Boss Man looked as if he hadn’t heard my threat. He simply met my stare and flashed me a smile that I think was supposed to be friendly. “Welcome to Visticorp, Miss Baker.”
Once again, I was so screwed.
“Damn it, Jamie, why the hell did you come here?”
The weakness in Carter’s raspy voice scared me, but not enough to go easy on him. “I came here to save you, idiot! Why would you try to come here alone? You told me you weren’t even researching Visticorp!”
Carter rolled onto his back with a groan. The way he was holding himself, I suspected he probably had a cracked rib or two. “I wasn’t,” he grumbled. “I told you nothing was ever simple with you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I wasn’t researching Visticorp. I was looking into your friend. I had an interview set up with his adoptive parents.” He gave a snort and waved his hand toward the window. “Meet Daddy Dearest.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Jamie, your friend is from Visticorp. He works for them.”
“No way.” I wouldn’t believe it. Not after everything Teddy did to help me escape from them. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s true. The people who adopted him were Visticorp employees. He’s been raised here since he was five.”
“Ah, yes, 4281.” The man outside the window sighed. “Like my own son. Disobedient and too intelligent for his own good, perhaps, but now with you here, I suspect he will calm down quite nicely.”
“Teddy is 4281?”
I couldn’t believe it. And yet, it made sense. Murphy showed up in the hospital after Teddy had. The device he’d been carrying that I thought had been a recorder looked like the ones Demakis and his team used when they tried to capture us. They’d been following him all along. “It was his fault,” I whispered, finally putting all the pieces together. “I thought you’d found him because of me, but all along you were only there looking for him. He led you to me.”
“He’s led us to them all, Miss Baker. That mind of his is simply amazing.”
“No! Teddy wouldn’t do that!”
Boss Man’s smile filled with pity and he turned to his left. “Come say hello, 4281. I believe Miss Baker is having a hard time accepting the truth.”
Teddy shuffled into view, head hanging low. Boss Man slung an arm around Teddy’s shoulder. Teddy flinched slightly, but didn’t pull away from him.
“Teddy? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be back at The Lair!”
Teddy met my eyes with a guilty expression.
“But!” I was still in denial. “But you helped me escape them! You kept me hidden!”
I was staring at Teddy, but it was Boss Man who sighed. “Yes, when 4281 discovered you, he ran. I believe he didn’t want to share you with us. It took us months to decrypt his files and figure out where he’d gone.”
“Then what is he doing here now? How did you find him?”
That made the man laugh. “We didn’t have to. He came to us.”
“What?” I felt sick.
“The prodigal son has returned, and we’ve welcomed him with open arms. He brought you to us too, Miss Baker. He said he could get you here with one phone call and, well, here you are. He was the one who suggested simply waiting for you to walk into this room. He knew you would come and he told us to be ready.”
“But—” I was trying to stay in denial, but the betrayal was finally sinking in. “You went through all that trouble to hide us!” I yelled at Teddy. “You built The Lair! You’ve been lying to me, stringing me along about Visticorp for a month! You didn’t want me to know where they were! You didn’t want to come back! Why would you bring me here now?”
The guilt left Teddy’s face. His eyes blazed with hurt and anger. “Because you chose him!” he shouted. “No matter what I did, you still chose your precious Ryan!”
My jaw hit the floor. “You turned us in because of Ryan?”
“I did it for us! You couldn’t let him go! But, Jamie, I can’t let you go.” His eyes cut to the man still draping an arm over his shoulder. “Donovan promised me that if I came back and brought you with me that we wouldn’t be separated.”
“I’ll keep my word, 4281,” the man assured him. “The two of you can be together.”
I stood there with my mouth hanging open. I had no idea what to say. Teddy shrugged at me. “We may not be entirely free here, but at least we’ll finally be free of him.”
When the full realization of what had just happened hit me, I lost it. I unleashed an entire electrical storm, but the walls in my cell held out. I pounded again and again on the window, but it was over a foot thick and didn’t even crack. I couldn’t do anything.
“I hate you!” I screamed.
Everyone on the other side of the window except Teddy laughed. Boss Man, who was apparently billionaire philanthropist James Donovan—though, I had my doubts about the philanthropist part—patted Teddy on the shoulder. “You sure you want her? Looks like it might be a bumpy road for you two.”
“She doesn’t hate me,” Teddy insisted. “She’s mad right now, but she’ll get over it.”
His confidence pissed me off like he’d never pissed me off before. “I will not get over it! If you couldn’t win me over before, what makes you think I’ll ever like you now? I left Ryan stranded on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon! He’s in the middle of nowhere with no way to get back! We left a note saying he was with me! No one will even look for him! He’ll die out there, thanks to you!”
“Oh, please,” Teddy scoffed bitterly. “He’s Ryan Miller. He’ll probably walk two hundred miles back and just look better for the exercise. He’ll probably get a movie deal out of it.”
“That is not funny! He’ll die out there, Teddy! At least call his parents and tell them where to look for him.”
Teddy crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. “Fine. I’ll make a call. I’ll save your stupid boyfriend’s life…if you agree to be my girlfriend.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re stuck in here together now anyway, and I know you don’t really hate me, so you may as well.”
I was so mad now that my electricity was visibly crackling along my skin. I ignored Donovan’s awed gasps and kept my glowing eyes pinned on Teddy. “You’ll do it,” I warned, “or I will kill you the first time you try to get near me.”
Teddy rolled his eyes at my threat. “Even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t.” He smiled and his voice softened. “You’re too soft, Angel.”
“That’s it,” I muttered. “I am so done with this.”
I couldn’t break out of the room, but I could still feel the energy around me. I couldn’t attack the walls of my cell with lightning, but I was pretty sure I could still control the power on the other side of them.
“What are you thinking, kid?” Carter asked. “I’ve seen that look in your eyes before.”
I was thinking that I had to do something.
“Sorry, Carter,” I whispered, “but I will not spend the rest of my life in this cage, and I most certainly will not let these guys keep experimenting on people. If I have to take this place down with us inside it, so be it.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Carter said, but he sounded resigned. “It’s been, well, not a pleasure knowing you, but it’s definitely been interesting.”
I cracked a smile at him. “Deny it all you want, but I know you like me.”
Carter smiled. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
I snorted and closed my eyes. I reached out to the energy around me and shivered. That big old reactor in the control room was such an amazing source of power. I’d never felt anything like it.
“Jamie?” Teddy asked warily when my hair began to whip around my head. “Come on, don’t try anything stupid.”
“This coming from the King of Stupid,” I muttered.
Teddy sighed. “Look, if you’ll just behave, it won’t be so bad here. Please?”
“Have you ever known me to behave?”
“What do you think you’ll accomplish in there, Miss Baker?” Donovan asked curiously.
“I’m not trying to do anything in here,” I said. “It’s what I can do out the
re. That pretty little generator in your control room’s not nuclear, is it?”
“Cold fusion, actually,” Donovan boasted.
“That’s not supposed to exist.”
“Neither are superhuman abilities, Miss Baker.”
“Very true. So, is cold fusion radioactive?”
“Not in the sense you’re thinking.” Donovan paused. “Why?”
I shrugged. “Lots of innocent people in Las Vegas. Don’t think they’d appreciate nuclear fallout. Are you ready to meet your Maker, Mr. Donovan? My conscience is clear.”
“Jamie?” Teddy asked again. His worry had escalated to fear.
By now, I had so much energy inside me I was shaking. Donovan’s eyes sharpened on me. I smiled at him, even though I was terrified on the inside. I didn’t want to die, but I had to stop him and I didn’t see any other way.
“Last chance to let me go.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Fine.”
With a sigh, I began redirecting all the energy I had in me straight back at Donovan’s cold fusion reactor. Not that anyone could tell what was going on besides me, but almost immediately alarms began sounding throughout the building.
“What are you doing?” Demakis shouted.
“Hopefully, causing a meltdown.”
“Jamie, what are you doing?” Teddy gasped when the walls began to shake around us. “You’ll bury us all!”
I ignored him and thought of Ryan. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid to leave him there. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I’d get caught. So much for being a superhero. All I did was get the people closest to me killed. Maybe, I thought as the men outside the window began scrambling in panic, I deserved to go down with this ship. Maybe the world was better off without me. At least I’d helped the others escape first. It hadn’t been a complete waste.
“She’s not going to stop!” Demakis shouted. “I told you she was unstable! The freak is going to kill us all!”
“Get in there and stop her!” Donovan barked. “Tranq her! She can’t bring the place down if she’s unconscious!”
