After Flux (The Flux Series Book 2)

by Marissa Farrar

  “Get the gun,” I yelled to Greg, as I went for the other guard. I didn’t need to physically touch him, instead mentally pulling the weapon from the holster on his hip and whipping it through the air toward me. I reached out and snagged it, but couldn’t help flinching as I did so. I wasn’t good with guns. Just being around them made me nervous, and I definitely didn’t like holding one. Having it in my hand rather than the guard’s made me feel better, though now I had the syringe and vial in one hand and a gun in the other. I wanted to get rid of the vial, but I needed to destroy it. In normal circumstances, I could have lifted my foot and stomped on it, but I was barefoot and terrified of getting any of the contents into my system. I figured I’d hang onto it for the moment.

  I turned back to the others, still lurking behind me. “We have to keep going.”

  With Greg at my side, and the four others behind us, we ran on.

  We were approaching the labs now, and I hesitated, unsure what to do. I didn’t think we had much time, but I hated the thought we were leaving people behind. Nadia wasn’t here, and there were most likely others I hadn’t come across yet. I could tell those following me to keep going, but I was their weapon. Without me, they’d end up shot and back in those boxes again.

  And where was Middleton?

  It didn’t matter, I decided. I needed to get those with me to safety before thinking about doing anything else. I could come back for Middleton, make him pay for what he’d done then.

  “Ari!”

  Greg’s shout distracted me from the labs, and I glanced around to find another couple of guards I hadn’t seen before running toward us. They already had their weapons drawn. Before I could act, the crack of shots fired echoed over the wails of the sirens, and instinctively I flinched. They’d missed, but they wouldn’t keep missing, and we were heading directly toward them. I still had the gun in my hand, but I didn’t want to fire it. Instead, I fixed my gaze on the guards’ weapons and snatched them from their grip. They both drew to a halt, confused about what had happened, glancing at each other and then the guns which came skittering across the floor toward me. I didn’t want to have to carry more weapons, but equally I didn’t want the guards getting hold of them either. Instead, I scooped and picked them both up and handed them to Greg and Hannah. I hoped they weren’t too trigger happy, but I wanted them to be able to protect themselves if they needed.

  Seeing us all armed, the guards exchanged a look of alarm and turned and fled. If only they knew the guns in our hands were the least of their concerns.

  We’d turned down the corridor which I hoped would lead to the front of the building and the exit. We passed more doors, and with each one I ran past, guilt twisted inside me. Who else was I leaving behind?

  “We’re nearly there!” I yelled back to the small group chasing after me. “Keep going.”

  I hated to see that they looked like they were struggling. One of the guys had his arm around a pretty, dark-haired girl and was helping her along as her legs appeared to be buckling beneath her. Another guy, who was big in stature, to the point where I wondered how Middleton and his cronies had managed to control him, staggered slightly from side to side as he ran, clearly woozy from whatever concoction he’d been given to keep him sedated. Were they all Kin, like me and Hunter, and Dixie, and Kit? Did my friends already know these people? Had they been taken before my own abilities had become apparent? I knew some had gone missing during trips out into the city, so there was a chance they already knew the others. It occurred to me that I was about to put some serious pressure on the resources of the Cavern, assuming we all managed to make it back alive.

  A sudden hissing below the wail of the sirens caught my attention. What was that? I automatically looked at the walls, the noise guiding me. What appeared to be white smoke drifted out of vents in the walls. What the hell? Was the place on fire?

  “Cover your nose and mouth,” Greg shouted. “It’ll knock you out if you inhale it.”

  My stomach dropped.

  He’d obviously come across it before.

  I yanked the bottom of my t-shirt up to cover the lower half of my face, not caring that it exposed my stomach and the lower half of my breasts. “Cover your faces!” I yelled back to the others, making sure they were doing the same.

  The vents must have opened in order to let the gas out. This must be a final measure in preventing us escaping, and perhaps explained the lack of guards running to take us down. Knocking us all out and simply dragging us back to our boxes would be far less messy.

  Each vent was about a foot across, and I focused on the one closest and willed it to shut. It did as I’d instructed, and the grills of the vent flipped, blocking off the gas. But there were too many of them to close, one by one, to stop all of the gas being filtered into the corridor. I did what I could, flipping each one individually, but we needed to keep going. Already, too much of the gas had been released, and I could feel it making me dizzy. If we stayed in this corridor, we could all end up unconscious within minutes.

  The big guy who’d been staggering hadn’t covered his mouth yet. The gas was affecting him worse, perhaps mixing with what was already in his system. He staggered and fell, dropping to his knees.

  I turned to go back to him, but Greg caught my arm. “We have to leave him. If we stay here, we’ll all end up unconscious.”

  It killed me, but he was right. I could try to mentally drag him along with us, but then all my focus would be on him, and I wouldn’t be able to shut any of the vents further ahead. A couple of the others bent to try to lift him, but they were weak themselves, and couldn’t manage it.

  “Keep going,” I called out to them, running back a little so I could give them a shove in the right direction. I felt horrible leaving the other guy on the floor, but I told myself we’d come back for him. Him and Nadia. Now we knew where this place was, we wouldn’t let what Middleton and his cronies had been doing here continue.

  We kept going, and I mentally shut off each vent as I saw them.

  Flip, flip, flip, flip ...

  The gas wouldn’t be pumped into the whole of the building; it would knock out all of his staff otherwise, too. Unless they all had access to masks, of course. I didn’t want to think too hard about that.

  We reached a corner and had to take a sharp turn left. I was relieved to see there were no other vents here, and as we ran a little farther, the corridor opened up into the large glass expanse of the entrance hall. Here, two sets of staircases rose to a second level, one on either side of the foyer, but most importantly, we were faced with the front of the building. The glass doors and windows which rose two stories revealed daylight and the desert beyond, plus the white pathway I’d been brought up when I’d first arrived, and the ornate boulders either side which I’d used to throw at the man who’d been carrying me.

  The glass doors at the front of the building were shut and I assumed locked, too. I needed to find out for sure, though, and broke into a run toward them.

  “Stop right there, Arianna!”

  My heart caught. I recognized that voice. Middleton!

  I spun to face him. He was standing halfway down the staircase on the right-hand side of the foyer.

  “No!”

  A blast from my mind sent him flying, and he hit the staircase with a smack that must have been painful, but he immediately started to get up again. He lifted a hand to tell me to halt.

  “I have others, you must know that,” he called out to me. “You can leave with those you have, but I promise you I’ll make sure the ones you leave behind pay for your mistakes.”

  So, this was how he was going to do it—emotionally blackmail me into staying.

  I waved the gun I was still holding at him. “I’ll kill you first, and then you won’t be able to hurt anyone!”

  He laughed. “You think I’m the only one who will continue my work? I’m a whole corporation, Arianna. The scientists who work for me believe in what they do. They’ll continue even if I’m
not around. In fact, they’ll probably work even harder in my memory.”

  Not all of them, I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t, knowing it would get the man who helped me in trouble.

  “I won’t let you manipulate me,” I said instead. I glanced over my shoulder at the doors, at where the small group of Kin waited. “And what you do to us is already bad enough. Drugging us. Starving us. Threatening to torture us. How could you possibly make it any worse?”

  “You have no idea.” He shook his head. “Don’t push me, Arianna.”

  Greg stepped forward, cocked the gun I’d given him, and pointed it at Middleton. “I’ll shoot the son of a bitch.”

  “No, wait!”

  Yes, I wanted to see Middleton dead, but as far as I was aware, he was the only one who truly knew what we were and how we’d been created. If he died, would the truth die with him? Would we never find out how our existence had come about? Did I want the truth more than I wanted him dead?

  I needed to get the doors open. More security guards would be coming any moment. They’d want to protect Middleton. I could deal with him, or I could open the doors and get the others to freedom. But I couldn’t do both.

  I looked at the doors and gave them a mental shove, but they didn’t budge. How did they unlock? I couldn’t figure out the locking mechanism, and I was running out of time. I still held a gun in my hand, but I didn’t want to use it. The glass might be bulletproof, and if I tried to shoot at it, the bullet could ricochet and hit one of the people I was trying to free. Besides, my mind was a far more powerful weapon.

  “Where are you going to go?” He mocked me, guessing at my motives. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Are you going to walk to safety?”

  “Shut up,” I snapped, trying to concentrate. Had these locks been designed deliberately, hidden so someone with my abilities wouldn’t be able to figure out how to open them?

  Screw it. If I couldn’t open them, we’d go through them.

  “Step back,” I cried to the others.

  Arms around each other, they hustled back, putting space between them and the glass.

  Focusing all my energy on the huge glass doors, I felt it build up inside me, the power growing. I didn’t want to lose control as I had in the past, but I wanted to cause destruction. I wanted to bring this whole goddamned place down. But I couldn’t. There were people still inside who needed our help. If I tore this building to the ground, they’d never survive.

  My power built, spreading outward, my fingertips and scalp tingling, the hair on my arms standing to attention. I opened my mouth and let out a roar of... what? So many emotions pouring out of me at the same time—anger, release, frustration. In front of me, a crack split down the glass of one of the doors, like ice breaking on a frozen lake, a cracking that moved slowly at first, and then ran in rivulets as it spread. I gave a final yell, and the whole door exploded outward, glass bursting out over the white pathway leading into the desert, a gap where the glass had been.

  “Go!” I shouted to the others.

  They glanced back at me, hesitating for a moment, perhaps wondering if they should stop and help, and then they went.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “No, stop!” Middleton yelled.

  He reached out a hand as the Kin I had freed ran for the hole in the glass I’d created. With the force of my mind, I held him there, preventing him from descending the stairs any farther.

  He could see twenty-plus years of work running from the building, and I knew he hated it. That in itself was enough to make me give a smile of triumph. But the battle was far from won yet.

  Footsteps pounded toward me from both sides—lots of footsteps, from the sound of it. People were coming. A split second later, more guards appeared from both corridors, though I didn’t know where they’d been hiding. They were too many for me to deal with alone. Too many places to focus. My head whipped back and forth, trying to figure out what to fight first. I still had Middleton in front of me, but now two teams of armed men were running at me from both directions. All I wanted to do was protect the people escaping through the front.

  “Freeze!” one of the guards shouted.

  I told myself they wouldn’t shoot the Kin. They meant years’ worth of experiments, and as much as they wouldn’t want them to escape, they also wouldn’t want them dead.

  I had no choice but to take my attention from Middleton. I spun to my right, giving a mental push to send the security men at the front flying backward into those behind. I flinched at the crack of shots fired, though I couldn’t be sure where they’d come from.

  Twisting back around, I fixed my powers on the second group and repeated the process. More gunshots shattered around me, and bullets hit the high ceiling, raining down on me.

  With my desperation rising, I glanced over my shoulder to check on the others. They were out, running to safety, I hoped, though I didn’t know how far away safety would be. If all these security people came after us, we might find ourselves back in the exact same position.

  Greg turned back to me. “Come on!” He waved an arm, beckoning me.

  I didn’t know what to do. If I stayed where I was, they’d overwhelm me. I needed to go with the others, but if I turned my attention, Middleton and his team would be free to do whatever they wanted.

  “Hurry up!” Greg voice shouted again. I recognized it from the British accent.

  I could try something. I didn’t know if it would work, but it would hold them back for a moment. Shifting my attention to the ceiling, I spotted the holes in the white paint and plasterboard where the bullets had found their homes. I fixed on them and willed them to open, to spread. Pieces of plasterboard flaked down, then the ceiling fractured.

  “Watch out!” yelled a male voice I couldn’t place. “The roof is coming down.”

  I turned and fled, but as I did so, I heard a crack, and then something or someone punched me in the back. The impact pitched me forward, throwing me through the hole in the door I had created.

  I managed to push myself up again, wanting to get to my feet.

  Behind me, the lobby ceiling was giving way, huge chunks of it crashing to the floor, forcing Middleton’s team away from the front doors. Would anyone be crushed? I told myself the Kin were all at the back, that they would be okay. But I had other things to worry about. My lungs were tight, burning in my chest. I glanced down to see a bloom of red on the white of my t-shirt. I didn’t understand. Something had hit me in the back, why was my chest bleeding? Had I caught it on the glass?

  Hands were on me, trying to lift me, but sudden exhaustion flooded over me. I didn’t think I could stand, even with their help.

  “Oh, God, she’s been shot!”

  At first, I thought they were talking about someone else and instinctively looked around for who had been hurt, but then I realized they were talking about me. That had been the smack against my back. That was why my chest was bleeding. The bullet must have passed right through me. I figured that meant I wasn’t so immune to injury, after all. I almost laughed.

  “Someone’s coming!” a voice cried.

  We needed vehicles to get out of here. I wanted to move forward, to continue with our escape. What I’d done to the building had only taken out the front entrance lobby. There would be other ways out, and anyone, Middleton included, who hadn’t been trapped under any rubble would still be coming after us.

  I lifted my head to look.

  Across the expanse of the desert, I saw a spot in the distance. Getting closer, taking shape. It was a car. More people here to help Middleton? I didn’t have any fight left in me.

  Go, I wanted to tell the others. Find some vehicles and get out of here. But when I opened my mouth to speak, the words caught in the back of my throat, and coughing wracked through my body, causing fresh pain to burst up inside me.

  The car got closer, and I managed to lift my head, wanting to see who we’d have to deal with now.

  But I recognized the vehicle, and
my heart swelled with hope. Could it really be them?

  It swung up in a shower of dust and sand. Car doors opened and people jumped out.

  “Oh, God, Ari!” Dixie’s voice.

  I looked around for the others and spotted Kit, Hunter right beside him. I’d never been so happy to see them.

  I phased out for a moment, relief at seeing them mixed with the fear that I had been shot, losing consciousness and blood.

  “Hunter?” I managed to say, reaching for him.

  People were surrounding me. I couldn’t figure out who was who. I wanted my friends, but I also wanted to know where Greg had gone, and the others? Were Middleton’s men trying to find another way out?

  The roar of an engine approached, and I barely managed to turn my head toward the sound. A large black transporter van pulled up right beside me, and I had to blink several times to see that Greg was behind the wheel. Where had he gotten it? I remembered how Middleton had left the keys in the car when we’d arrived. No one was around to steal it. Or at least there hadn’t been before we’d arrived.

  He leaned out of the open window. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here!”

  One of the Kin I’d freed ran up to the side door and yanked it open, sliding it back.

  “Get her into the van!” someone yelled.

  Hands grabbed at me, lifting me. The pain condensed in my chest, and I wanted to cry out, but found I couldn’t even catch my breath to make a sound. I was lifted into the back of the van and laid across the seats. People climbed in all around me. Someone sat beside me and took my hand. I looked up, my vision blurring, but managed to make out Hunter’s face looking back down at me, fear and worry in his dark eyes. I tried to squeeze his hand in return, but my fingers wouldn’t work, and though the voice inside my head said, I’m so happy you’re here. I missed you so much, I couldn’t get my lips to form the words.

  Bangs sounded from outside the van, and someone shouted, “They’re shooting at us from that window!”