After Flux (The Flux Series Book 2)

by Marissa Farrar

  I focused back on the man who’d brought me here. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “Take a seat, please,” he said, gesturing to the chair, much like one I’d expect to see in a dentist’s office, in the middle of the room.

  I didn’t sit. “What are you going to do with me?” I said again.

  “Nothing for you to get excited about. I just want to take a blood test, check your vitals, that kind of thing.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Are you going to inject me again?”

  “Not for the moment. Show me you can behave yourself and be cooperative, and it won’t be necessary.”

  “What will me being cooperative entail?”

  “Let us run the tests we need to, and answer any questions I have for you.”

  My scowl deepened. “And I suppose some of those questions will include me telling you where the others are?”

  A smug smile tweaked his lips. “That would help, yes.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “You can inject me ten times a day, and I still won’t tell you.”

  His face contorted in an expression I couldn’t read. “How about a hundred times a day? We could just keep you unconscious, Arianna. You belong to me now. I can do anything I want with you.”

  His words caused the hairs on my arms to stand to attention, and a fist seemed to close around my heart. I couldn’t give in to his threats, though. I had to stay strong. “Then you wouldn’t be able to study what I can do, and I know you want that more than anything.”

  He stepped toward me, not threateningly, but relaxed, calm, more curious than anything else. “Have you heard of intraoperative brain mapping, Arianna?”

  I hadn’t, but I also didn’t like the sound of it.

  “It’s brain surgery done while the patient is still awake. They’re given a sedative, much like the one I injected you with in the parking garage, so they’re completely conscious and aware of everything that’s going on. Of course, the one I gave you before was a little strong, as I’d still want you to be able to talk and have some movement, but I promise you wouldn’t be able to feel anything as one of my doctors cuts into your skull.” Middleton paused to assess my reaction, and I forced myself to turn my expression to stone. Middleton continued, “He’ll then use electrodes to stimulate the different parts of your brain, and in doing so, we’ll be able to locate the exact parts of your brain you’re using when you move objects by only thinking about them. That’s kind of incredible, don’t you think, Arianna?”

  I was staring at him, my breath lodged in a painful ball inside my chest. I felt sick, and this time it wasn’t because of whatever he’d injected me with. The thought of being awake while someone cut into my skull absolutely terrified me.

  I shook my head. “I won’t let you do that.”

  He laughed. “I don’t think you have much choice.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “I’m really not. I wouldn’t have gotten so far in this world if I was.”

  I looked around me, desperately hoping for some help from one of the other people in the room. Surely they couldn’t just stand by, listening to all of this, without doing something to help. I looked at the younger female scientist, hoping she’d perhaps see a little of herself in me, and it would soften her to my plight, but the woman glanced away, deliberately not meeting my eye.

  She’s seen it all before, I realized. I wasn’t the first person he’d had this conversation with, or delivered these same threats to. Perhaps the others kept in here weren’t as strong as I was with their abilities, but they’d still be powerful—Kit and Hunter kind of powerful, at least. I needed to get to the other captives. That suddenly seemed even more important than getting free of this place myself. I was joined to these people, despite them being strangers, and I felt for them in exactly the same way I would if they were a member of my family.

  “Okay, you win,” I said, moving forward to the chair. I slid onto it and sat back. The cushioned leather felt impossibly soft after so long spent on the metal floor of the box. I felt exposed and vulnerable lying there, and I took a breath, trying to steady myself and keep the tears at bay. I wouldn’t cry in front of this man. I refused to give him the satisfaction.

  A smile of victory traveled across his lips. “Good girl.” He motioned to the people in lab coats—the older man who’d brought me here, the young woman, and a man in his thirties. They surrounded me, the older man behind me, attaching things to my head, the woman to one side, working on one arm, and the younger man on the other.

  “How long has it been since her last dose, Earl?” Middleton asked.

  “Almost three hours now,” said the older man, Earl. “I think we’re reaching the correct dosage to keep her awake and also keep her abilities under control.”

  Three hours? Was that all? It felt so much longer since I’d been outside in the fresh air. It felt like a lifetime. What time was it in the real world now? There were no windows in this room, and none that I’d seen on the way between my box and the lab either. If it had only been three hours, it must be the middle of the night.

  Something sharp stabbed the inside of my wrist, and I sucked air in over my teeth and snatched my hand away.

  “We just need to take some blood,” the woman said. “This won’t take a moment.”

  I stared at her, trying to get a feel for who she was. Did she have a family? Did she give any thought to who we were and who was missing us back home? Why were these people doing this to us? Were they paid huge sums of money, or was it simply that they believed in their science? Did they somehow think we’d bring about world peace or an end to disease, and so our suffering would be worth it for the greater good? Or were they just money and power-hungry sons of bitches like Middleton?

  “Thank you, Amanda,” he said to her.

  I had the feeling world peace was the furthest thing from Middleton’s mind.

  I held still while they completed their studies, marking things down on clipboards and printing off sheet after sheet of graphs of what I assumed were my brainwaves. Inside, I wanted to tear the electrodes from my head and scream at them, and smash up their equipment, but all it would do was get me sent back down to the metal box with no more information than I’d come up here with. Ironically, if I’d had full use of my abilities, I’d have been able to smash up this entire lab without ever having to lift a finger. For the first time since I’d woken up with these abilities, I was actually missing not being able to use them.

  “Okay,” said Middleton, slapping down a clipboard onto the counter. “I believe we’re done. Arianna, since you’ve been so well behaved, I will reward you with dinner tonight. I doubt you’ll have eaten.”

  I pressed my lips together and remained silent. I was hungry, but in that slightly nauseated way you got after an illness, where you can’t tell if you’re starving, or if eating will only make you want to throw up again.

  “That’s how it works here,” Middleton continued. “I’m sure the lack of comforts in your room didn’t escape your attention. Show us that you’re willing to cooperate, and things will get a whole lot easier for you. Misbehave, and we’ll take any comforts you’ve earned away again.”

  I wasn’t about to be bribed with the promise of a hot meal and a blanket.

  Something occurred to me, and I looked up at him, deliberately fixing him with a cool gaze. “You missed your award ceremony.”

  He chuckled. “I never planned on attending. I’d already let them know that. They played a pre-recorded video of me accepting the award. I had, however, planned on staying close to the location of the ceremony, watching for Kit to show up. I know my son better than he thinks I do.”

  But he hadn’t guessed where Kit had been hiding out all this time.

  “Anyway, enough chit-chat. It’s time for you to go back to your room now.”

  I lifted a hand. “Wait. I have one more question for you.”

  His gray eyebrows lifted. “Do you think you’re in the position
to be asking questions?”

  “You want me to be cooperative, and there’s nothing I can do from in here. It’s just something I need to know—for my own peace of mind.”

  A slight frown. He was curious to know what I was going to ask. “Okay, then. What’s your question?”

  “Did you have anything to do with the attacks on San Francisco? The bombings?”

  He shook his head. “No, that wasn’t the Myriad Group. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a little more discreet than that.”

  “Do you know who did it? We saw people there, and they were definitely looking for another one of—” I almost said the Kin, but then realized he might not know that term, and if he didn’t, it was something I wanted to keep to myself. “One of us,” I finished.

  Middleton pursed his lips and glanced away from me. I could tell he was trying to decide whether to tell me anything else. I plowed on with what I knew, hoping to show him how I’d managed to piece these things together by myself anyway, and that giving me a little more information wasn’t going to make any difference.

  “Someone else knows which people have the potential to manifest these abilities,” I said. “There must be a list somewhere of the women your company gave the medication to.” I didn’t want to add the tie-in with the women all dying of a brain hemorrhage. Had they made that connection yet? I thought they probably had, but if not, I didn’t want to be the one to put that thought in his head. “Who would be able to get their hands on that list? Who else would know what we can do? Is it the government?”

  Middleton shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. But it might be a rival. I had a scientist back in the early days who was thinking well above his station. He refused to follow protocol, trying to undermine me at every turn. I’d already been planning on letting him go when he quit and vanished. Of course, he’d been made to sign a non-disclosure agreement before he came to work for me, and I never heard anything from him afterward, but the way he tried to make demands before he left makes me think he always had something else planned. I suspect he’s behind the bombings.”

  “Surely there’s an easier way to do it than bombing the city. Couldn’t he cause a car accident or something so there weren’t so many other casualties? They’re innocent people! Plus, how does he know the explosions won’t kill the exact people he’s after?

  “Because no one asks any questions if people go missing afterward. Everyone just assumed they were killed in the attack. No one thinks there are other motives surrounding the missing people.”

  If that was the truth, they hadn’t come for me, I realized. After the bombing, the only people who’d tried to track me down, that I was aware of, were the same people who had me now. Had they made a mistake? Or was there a chance the two bombings weren’t even connected, and the second explosion, where we’d found Zane, had been done because they’d known it would be automatically linked to the first?

  I didn’t know what to think. “What’s the scientist’s name?” I asked instead.

  He laughed. “Arianna, you can’t actually think I’d tell you that?”

  I shrugged. I’d figured it was worth a try.

  “Okay, that’s enough talking for one evening. It’s time you got back to your room.”

  “Can I have a blanket or something? That cold floor isn’t exactly comfortable.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “A blanket for you to hang yourself with? I don’t think so. I have experience with you people. You can’t be trusted with anything. And anyway, you have to earn those kinds of things, remember?”

  I wasn’t going to argue with him. I felt like I’d gotten some information out of him tonight, and I hoped there would be more. I got to my feet, pulling my sleeves down over the wad of cotton that had been taped to the spot where they’d taken blood. Already, a small spot of dark red had bloomed to the surface. It would look black within a few hours.

  “I’ll take you back,” said Middleton, already turning his back on me to leave.

  I glanced back at the three scientists who were all busying themselves with my results. The woman, Amanda, was using a pipette to place droplets of my blood onto a slide to look at under a microscope, while the older man, Earl, was checking out the pages and pages of brainwave printouts. The young guy, whose name I hadn’t caught yet, sat at the computer, absorbed in whatever he was looking at on the screen. None of them paid any attention to the fact I was leaving.

  “Arianna!” Middleton barked, making me jump.

  I hated following him like some pathetic child, but I didn’t have much choice. I caught up to him as he exited the lab, and fell in to walk beside him. The whole time, my mind was processing different ways I could cause him some damage—push him off the walkway, use a fire extinguisher to bludgeon his brains out—but what I really wanted was some of my abilities back so I could spring open each of the metal boxes and free the people locked inside. I didn’t want to think what sort of state they would be in, how long they’d been here, or if Middleton had even managed to carry out that awful thing he’d threatened me with—intraoperative brain mapping. What if they were injured and in pain? My heart ached just thinking about them.

  “So, how has my son been?” he asked, unaware of the thoughts

  “Fine,” I replied tersely.

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say to that. After everything you did...”

  “Kit is no innocent. Don’t allow him to make you think that. He killed his little brother, or has he kept that piece of information from you?”

  “No, he told me. But he said it was an accident. An accident you blamed him for.”

  “What else was I supposed to do? His brother had everything going for him. He was the perfect son, and Kit ruined everything.”

  “But you’d already tried to ruin Kit. You used his mother, your own wife, as part of a science experiment.”

  “It’s a strange thing, you know, to be expecting a child. When I found out my wife was pregnant for the first time, all I could see was the opportunity that presented. As scientists, experimenting on pregnant women is an extremely difficult thing to do—”

  “There’s a reason for that!” I interrupted, but he lifted a hand to silence me.

  “But when I found out she was pregnant, I couldn’t think of the life growing inside her as my son. It was a ball of cells, changing at a miraculous rate. I couldn’t connect it to being an actual person one day. To me, it just felt like the perfect opportunity. I guess I struggled to ever completely connect Kit to me because of what we did to him. Yes, he has my genes, but he doesn’t completely have my genes.”

  I frowned, confused. “No, he is half of your wife’s genes as well.”

  Middleton gave a cold smile, and a shiver wracked through me. “Anyway,” he said, not elaborating upon his comment, “when she became pregnant the second time, it was different. I wanted that boy. I wanted him to be a real son to me. I never gave her the drugs with the second pregnancy, but the damage had already been done. She died only six months after having our second son. Of course, I never wanted their mother to die. That was an unfortunate side effect that took years to come into effect and would have been impossible to predict.”

  I clamped my mouth shut. Nothing I said would ever make him see what a horrific thing he’d done.

  As I walked, I wondered where Hunter and the others were. Had they worked out where I was yet? The desert was a massive place, and I doubted this facility would be openly running under the Myriad Group. Even if they were able to find it, they’d have to get inside. Yes, they had their abilities and could open locks and fight if they needed, but there were still armed men here, and they could still get hurt. In fact, both Hunter and Kit had already been hurt, and I struggled to see how that wouldn’t also slow them down. Surely they’d have needed to stop and get their injuries looked at. Kit would have to report a gunshot wound. There would be tape they’d need to cut.

  “Here we are,” said Middleton, dr
awing me from my thoughts.

  We came to a halt. I glanced to my right to see the open top of my metal box, the platform of the lift still raised and waiting for me. My stomach churned at the thought of going back down there, but I didn’t have any choice. I hadn’t spotted any opportunity for escape, and I knew if I tried anything, I’d end up with another shot of whatever drugs they’d injected me with. As far as I could tell, my only chance was waiting this out and hoping the drugs would wear off enough to allow me to fight back.

  I moved past Middleton and stepped onto the platform. As soon as my feet were steady, it started to move down, lowering me into the metal box, and leaving Middleton towering over me.

  I stepped off the platform and onto the floor of my container. Behind me came the faint whir of mechanics, and the lift rose back up again. When it was high enough, the roof of the box started moving.

  Middleton stared down at me as the roof slid into place and blocked me from his view.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Something stabbed me in the thigh, yanking me from sleep and making me cry out. I’d barely managed to wake fully before my head grew foggy again. I made out the shape of the older man in the white coat, Earl, standing above me. What had happened dawned on me. The son-of-a-bitch had sneaked down here while I’d been sleeping on the floor, using a couple of folded towels as a pillow, and injected me with some of that drug again.

  “Come along,” he said. “Middleton wants to see you.”

  “Why?” I said groggily, lifting myself from my makeshift bed. I swayed, though I was not yet standing. “Didn’t he get enough blood out of me already?”