by Jena Leigh
“I will accomplish my goal or I will die trying, Director.”
“Good girl.”
The screen disappeared and the soft crackle of the PA cut out.
Cil sobbed and beat futilely against her door. Grayson remained silent while Linus muttered something unintelligible.
Aiden stared at the unbroken stone at the base of the wall. With a roar, he hauled back and kicked it with every ounce of his remaining strength.
Something in the middle of his foot snapped and Aiden’s shout of fury morphed into an agonized howl. He staggered back and sank down onto the bench.
He stared dumbly at the base of the wall and the still unblemished obsidian as silence descended.
Cassie was gone.
Cassie was gone… and nothing else mattered anymore.
Time slipped by. Minutes. Maybe an hour or two. Aiden was too lost in his own miserable thoughts to even attempt to mark its passage.
A strange sound carried down the hallway—the repetitive creak of a squeaky wheel growing louder as it approached his cell.
Standing, Aiden hobbled to the door and stared out the window as the noise grew closer. Eventually a wheelchair rolled into view.
In the chair sat a figure dressed in a pair of white nurse’s scrubs, a black hood draped over their head, arms and legs held in restraints. Despite the fabric obscuring her face, Aiden immediately recognized the girl’s tanned skin and the hint of blonde hair escaping from beneath the head covering.
“Cassie!” he cried out.
The girl’s head turned toward his voice underneath the hood. “Aiden? Is that you?”
At the sound of her voice, Aiden drew a ragged—and relieved—breath.
She’s alive.
“Cassie?” Cil’s face appeared in the window to her cell. “Oh, thank God!”
“You alright, beautiful?” Aiden asked. “I’m gonna get us outta here, Cass, I swear. Just hang on, okay? I promise we’re—”
The unassuming woman in a lab coat who had been pushing Cassie’s wheelchair through the hall hushed him with a frantic shake of her hands. She stole a worried glance back the way she’d come.
“Quiet!” The woman’s voice was a harsh whisper, her mousy face lined with worry. “All of you. If you value your friend’s life, you’ll keep your communication with her to a minimum.”
Aiden tried to see further up the corridor, expecting to locate at least one or two guards escorting the woman and Cassie through the cells, but found no one.
The woman was alone.
Grayson approached his window, whispering, “The Director is… unaware?”
The woman nodded, answering in a soft voice. “She assumed the girl was killed during Alex’s final test. I patched Cassie up in the infirmary the best I could, then brought her here to keep her out of sight.”
“How bad are her injuries?” Aiden asked, keeping his voice low.
“I’m fine, Aiden.” Cassie’s voice was a bit weak, but entirely lucid. “It’s okay.”
“How bad?” he repeated.
“She took a nasty blow that knocked her unconscious and dislocated her shoulder.” The woman snuck another nervous glance back down the hall, then turned and graced Aiden with a tight smile. “She’s a bit disoriented from the concussion, but other than that? She’ll be alright.”
Aiden nodded. “Thank you.”
“Just try not to draw too much attention to her.” The woman guided Cassie’s wheelchair into a cell beside Aiden’s. “I was only able to sneak her down here because the Director has everyone preoccupied with the upcoming Bay View mission. They aren’t monitoring the prison feeds as closely.”
Eventually, the woman wheeled the empty chair back into the hall. Aiden listened to the heavy door close and lock behind Cassie.
“We’ll be cautious,” said Grayson.
Stealing one last look at Cassie’s cell, the woman spun on her heel and hurried back down the hall and out of sight.
“I don’t understand,” Linus whispered. “Why would the Director care that Cassie is alive?”
“Because I shouldn’t be,” Cassie hissed. “Lexie’s orders were to kill me. She didn’t.”
Her voice was quiet, but Aiden recognized a familiar undercurrent of determination. She might be a little banged up, but her fiery spirit was completely intact.
And that, more than anything, gave him hope.
“And since she didn’t,” Grayson continued, “it means there’s still a chance Alex will be able to resist the device.”
If the Director found out Cassie was still alive, she’d likely scrap the Bay View mission and repeat her earlier experiment over and over again until Alex successfully obeyed orders and Cassie wound up dead—for real this time.
“The woman was right,” said Grayson. “For now, no more conversation. We’ll just have to wait… and hope.”
Screw waiting, Aiden thought.
Shifting his weight onto his injured right foot, Aiden braced himself against the wall, lifted his left foot, and kicked at the obsidian with everything he had.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Now that he knew Cassie was alive, Aiden’s resolve to escape returned tenfold.
One way or another, he needed to find a way out of this cell.
Twenty-Four
The fog crept into Alex’s thoughts, blurring her vision at the edges and dulling her emotions as it threatened to overtake the final vestiges of her awareness. A mutinous, self-indulgent corner of her mind wanted nothing more than to surrender to it.
Disappear into the gray.
Stop fighting.
She hadn’t been strong enough to save Cassie. Why waste her energy now, trying to resist the push, when she would inevitably lose out to Carter’s device?
The memory of Cassie’s final moments would haunt Alex until her own dying day. And with Carter’s new orders still burning like an ember in her mind, it was clear that if she didn’t surrender to the fog—and soon—she’d be adding more horrific and unwanted memories to her growing collection.
As instinct and compliance reigned supreme, her movements turned involuntary. Her body still drew breath. Her eyes still blinked slowly to combat the dry air permeating the black site’s hangar bay.
But other than those necessary motions, she stood rigid and silent across from Jezza, awaiting further instructions.
The massive hangar was full of vehicles and assorted equipment, but nearly devoid of personnel. Aside from the three Agency employees Alex spied on the far side upon entering, there was only the two of them and their armed escort. Seeing as their guard was nearly as still as they were, the hush in the massive room was unsettling.
They’d been brought to a stop in an open area near the middle of the hangar, a few feet apart, and stood facing each other as they awaited further instructions. A full head taller than Alex, Jezza stared blankly over top of her at some spot in the distance. Alex, in turn, found her sight fixed on Jezza’s throat, just below her chin.
Despite Alex’s relaxed gaze, she could easily read the empty expression on her friend’s face.
The hollow echo of high heels cut through the silence, and Alex would have sworn she saw Jezza’s face twitch.
“Are they ready?” Carter asked as she approached.
From the corner of her eye, Alex watched the guard nod in reply.
Carter moved to stand between the two girls, eyeing them critically as she spoke.
“I had hoped, Miss Parker, to send you out this first time with someone other than Miss Stone by your side,” she said. “But I’m afraid that spectacle will have to wait. Samuel’s acquisition didn’t go quite as planned and Bay View’s Summer’s End celebration is too perfect an opportunity to pass up.”
Whoa, whoa, wait.
Carter planned to use Masterson this way?
Had she still been capable of it, Alex would have laughed in Carter’s face. Instead, her eyes blinked lazily closed, then
open again.
The woman was officially certifiable.
Controlling Alex was one thing… but did she really believe her device was powerful enough to enslave someone like Samuel Masterson?
“He’ll be safe in a cell soon enough, however. Not to worry,” said Carter. “My psychic has seen it… And we all know how visions go. Don’t we, Miss Parker? Your little jump to the past ought to have taught you plenty about just how unwavering the timeline can be.”
The reminder of her earlier failure weighed down Alex’s already murky thoughts and she slipped a little further into the gray. She continued to watch as the Director looked them over, but her observations were growing distant. Clouded.
Uncaring.
Carter paused in front of Jezza, brushing a few errant braids over the girl’s shoulder and tugging at the short sleeve of Jezza’s T-shirt to flatten out a wrinkle.
And there it was again.
That twitch in Jezza’s expression. A sudden flash of emotion, bleeding through the mask.
She was still fighting.
The movement drew Alex’s own thoughts back toward the surface. Jezza hadn’t given up… and neither would she.
The pain in her head turned excruciating as she fought to regain awareness, to see the world clearly through the haze.
Excruciating, but manageable.
She’d experienced and endured pain far more agonizing than this, Alex reminded herself. Not that it made the experience any less miserable.
Carter’s attention shifted back to Alex. “Well then, Little Miss Most Wanted. I think it’s time you brought that violent nature of yours home to Bay View.” She clapped her hands together with an expression resembling delight. “Local youth snaps and uses her terrifying supernatural abilities to seek vengeance on the community that once ostracized her? Why, the news story practically writes itself.”
Carter reached up and pressed a small device in her ear resembling a Bluetooth headset.
“Alexandra. Jezza.” Carter’s echoing voice burned through the lingering fog. “In a moment, Harrison will escort you outside the range of the EM shield. Once free of its confinement, he will teleport you both to the Bay View boardwalk. You are to follow any instructions he might give you to the letter. Upon your arrival you will use your abilities to inflict as much collateral damage as possible. Also, feel free to kill or maim any norms you encounter—so long as there are still a handful of survivors left to tell the tale when all is said and done. Do you understand your orders, girls?”
“Yes, Director,” they said in unison.
She reached up and turned off the device. “Excellent. Now go.”
Her directives in place, Carter turned on her heel and walked away.
“Ladies,” said Harrison, his voice a low rumble. “Follow me.”
The large man led them toward a white door at the far end of the hangar and then out into the glaring sunlight of the afternoon. It was cooler than Alex expected—much cooler than it had been in Montana—and she wondered just how far north the complex was located. Were they in Canada? Europe?
Or perhaps somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere where winter had not yet given way to spring?
The towering trees surrounding them were no help, seeing as most continents probably held dense forests just like this one—and anyway, they blocked her view of potential landmarks.
Alex supposed it didn’t really matter where they were. What mattered now was that she’d seen it. And if she could just break free from the device, she could come back and attempt to free the others.
They passed through the front gate, their escort nodding to the guard in the tower as the rolling metal barricade buzzed closed behind them, and continued walking down the gravel road. Roughly twenty yards out, Alex sensed the pressure of the EM shield dissipate.
Harrison turned to face them and Alex looked him over as best she could without being able to shift her line of sight.
He was big. Burly. Presumably a jumper. The sprawling Navy Seal tattoo on his exposed bicep confirmed he had high level military training.
If she managed to overcome the device—and that was a pretty farfetched “if”’—she’d need to take him down using her abilities. There was no way she’d be able to best him fighting hand to hand.
Speaking of hands… Harrison’s right wrist was enclosed in a stabilizing brace. It looked like the one Cassie’s older brother Thomas had worn for months after shattering his hand in a skateboarding accident.
It wasn’t much, given the man’s military experience and the gun holster disappearing from view as he slipped on his leather jacket, but Alex made note of it anyway. It was a weakness. One she might need to exploit later on.
She fought her way past the unbearable pain, struggling against the will of the device.
Alex had an idea, but it would take a minor miracle to resist her programming long enough to carry it out—and from the looks of things, she only had moments to prepare.
Harrison put a hand on each girl’s shoulder… and they jumped.
They reappeared on an empty strip of beach in Bay View, roughly a quarter mile from the pier, in a spot Alex knew well.
“What the hell?” Harrison muttered, looking around. He swore, then spat. Then, seemingly for good measure, he swore again.
Alex felt like joining him in his cursing. Her plan hadn’t worked. At least, not in the way she’d intended.
She managed to summon the willpower to hijack Harrison’s jump—but couldn’t narrow her focus enough to teleport them to the Montana police station she’d been aiming for. Alex had noticed the small building with its row of police cruisers parked out front during her one and only supply run a few weeks prior. Without a safe place to run to, she figured the next best thing would be to run somewhere she was bound to be recognized.
If she was lucky, the cops would manage to arrest her before Harrison got the bright idea to use Alex and Jezza as weapons against them.
It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.
In the end it didn’t matter. Instead, just as Alex hijacked Harrison’s jump, a memory of Bay View snuck to the forefront and she sent them exactly where she didn’t want to go.
Having spotted the pier—and the Boardwalk—in the distance, Harrison wheeled on Alex, lifted his uninjured arm, and backhanded her across the jaw. Her head snapped back, causing the constant ache to spike sharply before settling back into a familiar throb as her head lolled back into its former position.
He stepped closer, stuck an accusatory finger in her face, and growled, “I don’t know what the hell you just did, or how in God’s name you did it, but if you try something like that again I will not hesitate to put a bullet through your friend’s heart and four more through your kneecaps. Even with that healing ability of yours, it should still hurt like a bitch.” Harrison’s face twisted into a scowl. “Now start walking. Both of you.”
They made their way slowly across the beach, the Florida sun setting in the distance. After having been away for so long, the smell of the beach was warm and familiar.
Alex had finally come home again.
Had the circumstances been different, that briny ocean air might have been a comfort—instead, the night felt muggy and a bit stifling.
Once they reached the crowds of the Boardwalk, she would look out of place in Declan’s gray jacket. So would Harrison, for that matter, with his heavy leather coat. Only Jezza looked dressed for the warmth of the late summer evening.
Even from a distance, she could see the colored lights strung up for the Boardwalk’s yearly Summer’s End celebration, hear the up-tempo music filling the air, and smell the greasy food being sold by assorted food trucks and street vendors. The event itself marked one last gasp for that year’s tourist season and the local businesses ritually celebrated with two days of clearance sales, live music, performances, and a festival-like atmosphere.
They were approaching the wooden ramp that led from the shoreline up to the Boardwalk when so
mething caught Harrison’s attention.
“Stop,” he ordered. “What’s that bright light further on down the beach? The one where the shoreline curves, in front of that row of McMansions.”
Unbidden, her neck craned in the direction of the aforementioned scene.
“Well?” he asked.
Alex studied the flickering illumination of the bonfire roaring further down the beach, shining like a beacon in the gloaming and singing through her veins even from this great distance. Though she couldn’t identify any of them individually, a couple dozen people were scattered around its light.
They looked to be having a party.
Immediately, Alex knew what she was seeing. She clenched her teeth, trying to stop herself from answering Harrison’s question.
“I order you to answer me, Alex,” said Harrison.
You are to follow any instructions he might give you to the letter.
Unable to resist Carter’s directive, Alex began answering against her will.
“Sum-mmm-mer… Fling,” she stammered.
“And what is that?”
“Pa-party for… Bay View High… Ki-ki-kids.”
“Your classmates?”
“Y-yes.”
Dammit!
Harrison gave a low whistle. “Hello, promotion. The Director’s going to love this.” He smiled. “Looks like you two will be cutting your teeth on a quick appetizer before moving on to the main course. Let’s go.”
Their walk down the beach must have taken close to five minutes, but it still passed far too quickly. Even fighting her own body, flat out, every step of the way, Alex couldn’t slow her pace—much less stop.
As the sun dipped fully below the line of million-dollar beachfront properties and night descended, they arrived at the outskirts of the party.
Alex longed to break away and run toward that row of expensive houses—the coastal edge of the Bay View Heights community—and head straight for the Grayson family’s Florida home. No one would be there to greet her, of course, but the instinct tugged at her anyway.
“You ladies know what to do,” said Harrison. “Join me back at the pier when you’re finished. And do yourself a favor, Alex. Don’t fight the device. Even if you do overcome it, you still won’t be able to overcome me, got it? Now be a good little girl and go kill your friends.”
