by Dunne, Lexie
I had a hard time swallowing. “It’s where I was kept. When Mobius turned me into whatever it is I am now.”
Jeremy’s brow crinkled. “It is? Why would Kiki send you here?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Something huge was going on. But right now, Kiki was going to fix Guy. And the minute that happened, I was getting some answers. I strode up the front steps of the house.
And I kicked the door to my old prison open.
Breathing hard, head splitting, I started to step inside, but a woman appeared around the side of the porch, her eyes wide and frantic. Kiki Davenport held both hands up to stop me. “Wait! Don’t!”
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t,” I said.
My old physician took a deep breath. The look on her face was the most terrified expression I had seen in a long time. “This place is a decoy. Trust me, you’ll understand very soon, but right now we’ve only got three minutes, and if they find you here, it’s all over.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Kiki shook her head tightly, darting around me to yank the door shut. She pulled her sleeve down over her hand—she was wearing a Cubs jersey, the first time I’d ever seen her in civilian clothing—and wiped frantically at the doorknob.
“We have to move,” she said, words tumbling over each other. “They can’t catch us. If they do, it’s all over, and I have gone through too much to let him take this, too. Go, go, go!”
She shoved at my shoulder, and I had no choice but to jump off the porch. “Is that your car?” Kiki asked Jeremy.
He only nodded, a little dumbfounded.
“Get it into the garage next door. Do it now, or they’ll think it’s suspicious, and they’ll run the plates.” She pushed on his shoulder, too, shoving him away. This time, she pointed the fob at the house next door, and the garage door began to trundle up.
I twisted, trying to follow Jeremy, but Kiki kept her grip on my arm. “Guy’s in the backseat—he’s hurt—”
“Gail!” Kiki yanked me around. For somebody who didn’t have any superstrength, she sure had an iron grip. “As soon as we’re safe, I promise, but we have to get inside.”
“Guy—”
“Will be okay. They cannot get you, and if Guy knew what was going on, he would agree.” Kiki tugged on my arm, and there was so much raw and naked terror on her face that I felt my stomach twist.
Jeremy ran for the car, leaving Naomi and me no choice but to go with Kiki as she grabbed my arm and hauled us both into the garage next door. When Jeremy pulled the car in, she hit the button to close the garage door. “This way,” she said.
I wasn’t going anywhere without Guy, and opened my mouth to say so.
“I’ll bring him. You go with her,” Jeremy said.
Kiki, worry lines etched into her face, sped into the house and hooked an immediate right, sprinting down a set of steps. Naomi glanced uncertainly at me, but we both followed her down into a basement. Instantly, cold spread over me, and I knew it had nothing to do with the temperature. Something about this place seemed horribly familiar. My stomach began to roil. My head began to pound even harder. The basement was dusty and filled with cobwebs, sectioned off by tall shelves so that I couldn’t actually see much of anything.
Kiki hurried around me, grabbing my wrist and towing me along. Tall shelves full of old books formed a miniature hallway. She pulled me into a little space ringed by even more shelves and stacked boxes. Six dusty monitors had been embedded into the wall.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“It’s a long story. Short version: next door’s a decoy—” I opened my mouth to protest that, as I knew for a fact that the house next door had been the one Mobius and I had escaped from, but Kiki shot me a quelling look. “—and we have to be quiet because they’re coming.”
She fiddled with some knobs on the wall. The monitors flickered and sprang to life.
“Who is coming?” Naomi asked as I scrubbed my nails all over the back of my neck. Why did this place feel so familiar? Mobius and I had run from the house next door, I knew that much, so why did this place feel strange? Anxious and unable to say why, I craned my neck to look around. I didn’t recognize any of the books or the old albums, or the old appliances gathering dust.
And then through a gap, I saw it. The shelves formed another little partitioned-off room right next to us. I could only see a sliver, but it was enough to give me a clear view of a scarred metal table in the center of the area, and the swaybacked shelves directly across.
My heart quit beating for a second. On the back of my neck, my fingers stilled, and I took one dizzy step forward, pushing the dusty popcorn maker aside. I had to be imagining things.
This couldn’t be real. The laboratory was next door. The house I remembered breaking out of, that was next door. I remembered the lawn clearly—or at least I did now that those memories had been unlocked. So why was there a familiar, scarred metal table right there on the other side of the shelves? I could see the manacles dangling on chains, and I felt the phantom of unforgiving metal circling my wrists.
The lightbulb overhead was even still swaying, caught in perpetual motion.
“Shit! No, don’t look at that.” Kiki leapt to shove the popcorn maker back into place, but the damage had already been done.
My throat closed up. “That’s—”
“I know. But you have to be quiet, they’re going to be here any second—” Kiki looked over her shoulder at the monitors in a panic.
There wasn’t enough air. Where had all of the oxygen gone? I clawed at my throat as I tried to gasp in a breath, but it did nothing. I was back in Mobius’s lab. Any second now, I’d be back on that table again, where Dr. Mobius had kept me for weeks, two of which I couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t I breathe?
“Gail! Gail—shit, there is not enough time for this, they’re going to be here any second!” Kiki’s face filled my vision. I tried to shove her away. “Gail. You’re okay. You’re never going on that table again. Deep breaths. Breathe, Gail. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
Naomi’s voice cut in. “I don’t think—what is that?”
Kiki looked over her shoulder and swore so viciously that it jolted me back. My eyes automatically cut to the monitors as she let go of me and leapt over to them. “Shh, they’re here. Please, for the love of god, please stay quiet.”
“I think she’s serious,” Naomi said. I felt her hand on my shoulder. I bent at the waist, still trying to suck in as much air as I could. It felt like an elephant had plopped right down on my chest, and I was fighting it for every precious breath. I felt my knees go weak. Naomi grabbed me before I could fall over. She helped me sit down.
“Damn it,” Kiki said. The fear in her voice made me look at the monitors again. I recognized the house next door, the one Kiki had called a decoy. A van rolled up to the curb. As the three of us watched, the passenger and rear doors opened. Men in unassuming dark suits and shades climbed out.
“Who—” I tried to ask, but Kiki shushed me.
The men spread out over the lawn next door in a neat pattern. They never spoke or looked at each other. Even though the monitors weren’t the greatest quality, I could see the little cables connected to their earpieces.
“What the hell?” Naomi whispered. Kiki shushed her by frantically waving a hand at her. Two of the suits climbed onto the porch. They vanished into that house while the others continued their sweep of the grounds. In the basement next door, we watched on the monitors as they searched the wrong house.
Eventually, the two suits that had gone inside reemerged. One shook his head, and the van door opened, bringing out one more person. Unlike the others, though, this man wasn’t wearing a suit. He had on a bright white polo and navy shorts, and his sneakers practically gleamed in the late-afternoon sunlight. I didn’t need to be clos
e to know that his eyes would be a pure, steely blue.
What was Lemuel Cooper doing here? What was going on? Why was his own girlfriend hiding from him?
It took an eternity, but finally the agents climbed neatly into the van and left as unobtrusively as they’d arrived. The minute they were out of sight, Kiki seemed to sag like the string holding all of her body taut had been cut. She slid down the wall and sat on the floor, closing her eyes in relief and breathing hard. “That was close,” she said. “That was the closest they’ve ever come to catching me. I didn’t think I was going to get to you in time; and then it really would all be over.”
I pushed myself to my feet. Or I tried to. Even climbing onto my hands and knees made the dizziness come swirling back in. My knuckles whitened against the cement floor.
I felt Naomi crouch next to me. “Gail? Are you okay?”
I shook my head, but before I could answer, Jeremy stepped in. He was sweating bullets and breathing hard, but he had Guy over his shoulder again. “Is he okay?” I asked.
“Put him on the stretcher,” Kiki said, voice businesslike. Jeremy panted as he moved to comply. Naomi raced over to help.
I swallowed hard against the dizziness and climbed to my feet, staggering the two or three steps to the stretcher Kiki had pulled out. “Guy,” I said. He’d stopped bleeding, and he looked pale, far too pale, deathlike and horrifying. I gripped the sides of the stretcher.
“Gail, sit down before you hurt yourself,” Kiki said. The terror had apparently subsided, leaving her doctor mode in place. She picked up Guy’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. “I can’t take care of the both of you at the same time.”
“I don’t trust you. I don’t know anything about you or why you know about this place, but I don’t trust you. I’m staying right here,” I said. The last time I’d seen Kiki bending over a stretcher, the patient hadn’t made it.
“I am on your side,” Kiki said, raising one of Guy’s eyelids and shining a penlight from her keys into his eye. She repeated the process with the other eye as Naomi and Jeremy stood back.
“Your family threw me in prison!” The words came tumbling out before I knew they were there. “Your—I guess Eddie’s your uncle, right? He said I was guilty without even giving me a fair trial, and they threw me in prison, and it sucks. Okay, this past week has sucked, and whenever I try to do anything, it only gets worse, and now Guy—”
I broke off on a hiccuping sob.
“Gail,” Jeremy said, stepping forward warily.
But I shook my head, curling over the stretcher and holding on tight. Guy’s chest was moving; he was breathing. He was alive. I had to focus on that.
“Sit down,” Kiki said. “Please, before you hurt yourself worse. Gail, you’re falling apart.”
I stayed upright, never taking my eyes off of her. “I’m staying right here until I know he’s okay.”
Jeremy stepped up beside me. “Me too.”
Kiki could have used her powers to make Jeremy do her bidding, as he didn’t have the mental shield I did. But instead she told him, “Help me get his armor off.”
With the breastplate and under armor removed, Guy’s torso revealed a road map of old scars layered with small cuts and perfectly circular burns that had to have come from Chelsea’s stinging powers. Several of them began to bleed when the uniform was peeled away.
“What did this to him?” Kiki asked. “I’ve never seen burns like these before.”
“Chelsea,” I said. “It was like she could actually hurt him, and she never has before. Not really.”
“He wasn’t on fire, by any chance, was he?” Naomi asked.
All three of us turned to face her as one. I narrowed my eyes. “You,” I said, remembering exactly why Chelsea was after her. Naomi had known something about Guy and Sam she’d been trying to avoid sharing with my psycho nemesis. “This has something to do with you. What did you find out? Why is she able to hurt him now?”
Naomi hunched her shoulders and looked for an exit. I didn’t plan on giving her one. “War Hammer and Blaze, they’ve got a weakness. Fire.”
“That can’t be right,” I said. “I’ve seen him take a blast from a flamethrower when he was fighting L’onn Dartzz.” He hadn’t even flinched.
“No.” Guy’s voice was weak. “She’s right.”
“Guy!” My knees abruptly went watery as I whipped back around. His face was taut with pain, but his eyes were open. Dried blood streaked his face and in his hair. “You’re awake, thank god. You’re gonna be okay.”
“Doesn’t feel that way, but I suspect you’re right.” He started to lift his hand toward my cheek, but he grimaced, dropping the hand. I squeezed it instead. “And she’s right. Fire did hurt me, but it wasn’t—it’s difficult to explain.” He broke off into a rattling coughing fit that made my own torso hurt. “The fire was mine.”
“But . . . but I’ve never seen you use fire on anybody.”
He made a noise that was probably an attempt at a laugh, but it sounded more like a groan. His eyes were glassy and he was bone white underneath the angry red burns, which were already starting to blister over on his skin.
“All these years,” he said, his voice hoarse. “All these years of those impossible saves together, and you never once wondered why a superhero named Blaze never used fire? I even have that little”—he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut—“flame logo and everything.”
I’d always thought his name was symbolic. His uniform was so bright that when he flew fast enough and through a floodlight, for example, it looked like a blaze of green, streaking across the sky. It had never occurred to me to wonder.
“I have fire powers,” he said, coughing again. “But when I use them, I’m vulnerable. In my flame-state, I guess. So I try not to use them. Only a few people know about it.”
“How did you?” I asked Naomi, narrowing my eyes at her.
Kiki cleared her throat and leaned over so that she was in Guy’s line of sight instead of me. “We can do this later. How are you feeling?”
“Like hell.” He coughed, which racked through his entire body. I cringed in sympathy. My own dizziness was returning in force, making it hard to focus on his face, but I stayed right there. I clung hard to his hand. At this point, I was never letting go.
“Care to tell me your name or what day it is?” Kiki asked.
“I’m okay, Doc. It’ll heal. It just takes time,” Guy said, but his voice was still weak. He looked around in confusion. He looked around in confusion. When he looked at my face, he blanched even paler. “Why are you bleeding? Gail, are you hurt?”
“I don’t know, I . . .” When something dripped down my chin, I touched my face and stared in bewilderment at the blood on my fingertips. I’d had a nosebleed earlier, and apparently it was back. “Don’t feel good.”
As if to prove my point, my brain tried to explode in my head, and everything faded to a dull gray static. I groaned and fell forward over Guy.
“Gail?” Guy’s voice seemed to waver in and out. “Gail! Kiki, something is wrong!”
My knees gave out and I half sank, half toppled to the floor beside Guy’s stretcher, my head pounding so hard that it felt like an earthquake. Through the gap in the shelf, I saw Mobius’s metal table one last time before the light grew to excruciating levels. I squeezed my eyes shut with that table burned into my retinas, and clutched my temples. Pressure built inside my head, so complete that I curled up and sobbed.
“Please,” I begged as blessed darkness finally came for me, “please don’t put me back on the table. Please don’t put me back on that table.”
I was still sobbing that when the darkness descended fully.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I felt the metal at my wrists again, pinning me down. I couldn’t struggle or even move. Every time I did, the cuffs turned to smoke, but my limbs turned to lead, and
I could do nothing but lie there without a single spark of fight left in me, helpless all over again.
Alone and unrescued.
And then I woke up.
I drew in a deep lungful of oxygen, automatically groping in the darkness to make sure my arms and legs were free. Three of them were, but something tugged at my right hand. Not holding it down, but I was definitely connected to something. I grabbed plastic tubing of some type with my free hand, and yanked.
“Son of a bitch!”
Tape ripped off the back of my hand, sending sparks across my vision. To my right in the darkness, something jolted. “Gail? Are you okay?” Guy’s voice asked.
“Ow,” I said, and several details filtered in. I wasn’t on the table. I wasn’t tied down, though I could see the silver glint of an IV pole. And even more important than that, I saw Guy. He’d been leaning back in some kind of recliner, but he sat up now. He was shirtless, white bandages covering most of his torso and some of his head. It kind of made him look like a muscular, half-dressed mummy.
I rubbed my injured hand and looked around. I didn’t recognize the room. Some kind of den, I realized, and I was currently on an ancient, battered couch wearing scrubs that felt weirdly stiff. “Where are we?” I asking, shaking my head groggily. Nothing hurt.
Why did that feel like a novelty?
“The living room.” Guy rubbed his hand over his face. “Jeremy took off, and I think Naomi is passed out somewhere. Kiki suspected you wouldn’t want to sleep in her old bedroom, so we put you in here.”
“Kiki?” I asked, which apparently served as some sort of magic word. Memories came rushing back in one overwhelming lump. Going to the bar and finding Portia. Breaking into the facility. Fighting Chelsea. Guy’s injuries. The men on the lawn, and Cooper. Mobius’s lab.
I put my head in my hands and groaned.
A few seconds later, I felt a soft touch on the hand that had been hooked up to the IV, and a tug. Guy scooted the recliner closer. “Hey,” he said, fingers slipping in between mine as I lowered my hand from my face. “How are you feeling?”
