A roll of my eyes and I’m annoyed, exasperated, amused.
“Ignoring that.”
Not a hacker, I’m telling myself, even if that’s the only thing I’m good at. Not a criminal, even if what I’m doing right now is very much illegal. I’m just a computer genius. I just happen to know where to find all the enemy’s secret plans.
“Hurry, Zane,” Narcissa is saying. “I can’t imagine you have a lot of time before they catch up to you.”
“Is that concern I hear in your voice, Izzy? I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. I’m worried about Misti’s sanity, Idiot.”
My face is a tomato. She’s so good at reading me.
I’m all but panicking. What if he doesn’t make it in time, what if he’s caught, what if I was wrong to let him do this, what if, what if, what if?
“Fair enough,” Zane answers, struck serious by the thought of a terrified girlfriend. “I’ll let you know when I’m in.”
It’s a promise. One of when’s and not if’s. He’s promising me he’s going to make it, he’s promising to win this battle, he’s promising to escape.
I watch Zane run past cameras, a flitting figure moving across the screen before disappearing down the hall for a few more seconds. One two three and there he is again. He’s almost there.
A flicker of hope.
He might stand a chance. He hides in the storage room, I fake him leaving the building with footage of him running, sent to the wrong camera. The guards give chase, assume he’s running for an exit. He sneaks into their boss’s office and kills him. It’ll be over.
Things are never over.
My door swings open, a man with a gun in its place. Dread slams into me and I shrink back into my seat. Fear has never been so tangible.
Narcissa is turning, her sunglasses falling, her eyes turning into surprise. “What—”
No time to worry about me, no time to worry about the man with the gun, no time to worry about herself.
Her door is jerked open and another armed man is grabbing her by the hair, fistfuls of dark locks in his fingers, and her head is slammed against the steering wheel. She’s still and her hair is everywhere and there’s blood.
I scream.
Narcissa. Izzy. Unconscious, with a concussion or dying or dead. Her head is bleeding out from the force of the blow. My Izzy. She has to be okay, she has to live, she has to wake up.
Her door slams shut and the man who opened mine is reaching for me and I’m in hysterics. Because Narcissa is dying and Zane is somewhere inside and they’re going to kill me and—
Adrenaline kicks in. I feel aware, awake, alive. Everything is shiny and new and clearer than I know it should be. My mind is working so much faster than I thought possible, like a brand new computer turned on for the first time. My breath comes quick, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten.
Beefy fingers snatch up my wrist and he’s tugging and pulling and yanking.
Monsters.
I won’t cooperate. Not after what they did to my Izzy.
I reach, desperate and afraid and vengeful, latching onto the nearest object. Cool metal beneath my fingers, my most prized possession. There’s no choice, none at all.
I throw my laptop, swinging it hard, harder than I knew I could. Its corner to his temple and he slumps against the ground, sliding out of the van, falling into the road.
I run, falling as I jump over him, out of the van.
Get up, get up, get up.
I scramble, start to run. I won’t make it far. Ten twenty thirty paces. I only knocked out one soldier. One took out by a computer. One still standing on the other side of the van. The one that knocked out Narcissa. Still there, still awake, still alive.
Somehow, I still have my earpiece in through the chaos of our small war. My finger is on my ear. “RUN, ZANE!” I’m screaming through my tears. They found us, they knew we were there, they’ll find him.
“Misti?” Surprise. “Misti!” Alarm. “MISTI!” Terror.
Gravity catches me before I can answer. A knee pressed into the small of my back, pinning me down. Adrenaline fails me. I gasp out rattling breaths and I’m sobbing and I’m screaming. Hysteria is all I know.
The pressure on my back lessens and my attacker is standing, looping an arm around my waist, dragging me toward the building. But I’m still screaming.
“No! Izzy! Izzy! Narcissa!”
She won’t come. I know she won’t. Why am I screaming for her? What good is it going to do?
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
I don’t know how. My lips are stuck and my throat is gone and I can’t stop. Because Narcissa is unconscious, Zane is freaking out, I’m going to die.
I’m ragdoll now, thrown back against the wall, a hand slipped over my mouth.
He’s pointing to the car and Narcissa. He’s glaring at me. “You see your friend over there?” he’s asking me. “You don’t start cooperating and I will personally go back there and shoot her in the head. Got it?”
I do. I nod and he’s dragging me to the door. I’m hyperventilating, hysterical with terror I didn’t know anyone could feel without exploding under the pressure.
I can’t stop seeing it. Izzy. Blood on the steering wheel. Mess of black curls. Limp body.
He carries me down a set of stairs and we’re heading down the same hallways I saw Zane running through. Comforting. He was here. But terrifying. I know where we’re going.
Zane knows, too. He must. The moment I screamed for him to run, the moment I fell silent, he started analyzing the situation and the men who work here. He will go down to that storage room too. He will, even if he knows they will kill him. He will let them, if only they let me go.
I’m thrown to the ground, left to the dark storage room, my captor standing over me like an executioner ready to deliver the final blow. My elbow stings from my fall, scraped when he dropped me. My breathing becomes more and more erratic.
I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t stop crying.
I sink, falling into habits that will do nothing for me. I’m counting.
One. I hug my knees to my chest. Two. I start rocking myself. Three. It’s soothing but I look crazy. Four. Zane. Five. What will happen to him? Six. What will he do? Seven. Izzy. Eight. What happened when she wakes up? Nine. Will she come here? Ten. Will she wake up?
I look across the basement. The door slides open and shut, illuminating everything for a couple of seconds.
I start to panic. Zane. Here. Just across the room.
I have to do something. I can’t let them use me against him.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
The door was open long enough. I know where my captor stands. I know how to tell Zane where I am.
My heart is a drum. I lunge forward, ramming my body into the shelf I could only see for four seconds when Zane opened the door. It tips over, falling back, crashing to the ground. The sound echoes through the room and my abductor is cursing loudly.
My only chance.
I lunge, away from my captor, for safety, for Zane. But it doesn’t matter. Because the man that hurt Izzy and kidnapped me has night vision glasses, just like every soldier in this place.
I feel an arm around me and he yanks me back. Fingers over my lips, around my waist, holding me back, keeping me quiet. That shelf was heavy and my body aches but I don’t care. I buck, screaming through his hand, praying it won’t be useless, hopeless, pointless.
I’m ripped out of his grasp and there’s yelling and cursing and a gunshot. A hand in mine, right around my fingers, and I’m running.
Out in the hallway, out in the light, I can see him. Zane. Locking the door, cupping my face in his hands, checking for injuries.
I start sobbing, out of control, overwhelmed, exhausted. He pulls me against his chest.
“Hey,” he whispers, crushing me against him. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay now. You’re safe.”
Shaking, sobbing, clinging
to him, I know I’m not meant for this world. Not a fighter. I can’t take it.
Violence, danger, always on the run, always making sure no one is following. I can’t do it. I don’t know how he can.
Zane holds me, patient, waiting. He doesn’t ask what happened, doesn’t try to make me sensible, doesn’t do anything. He just lets me cry.
“Izzy,” I whisper when I can string together coherent sentences. “They knocked her out. She’s bleeding.”
Zane rocks back on his heels, pulling back, away from me. He looks so calm. How does he do that? How can he be calm when everything has fallen apart? Why can’t I have that kind of composure?
“Let’s go,” he says. “I’m not staying here. I’ve got to get you out of here and we’ve got to help Izzy.”
I let out my breath.
He’s coming. With me. We’ll get Narcissa. We’ll deal with the secret stealer. Izzy will live. I’ll be free. Zane will be safe.
Zane smiles casually, like this is just as safe as a hundred miles away. He’s reaching for my hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
We run.
Zane pulls me through snaking hallways, leading me to the exit with his usual confidence. I can hear angry voices somewhere behind us and Zane is ignoring them and I’m trying to breathe. Count. Count your breaths. Focus.
In, one. Out, two. Three four five six seven eight—
“They’re going to catch you, Misti Fort.”
No, no, no.
I force myself to keep moving, to pretend I’m not terrified. It’s him. He’s talking to me. He’s hijacked my earpiece. He’s heard everything, secret plans, screams, escapes. He knows about Narcissa and my capture and Zane and, oh, please just leave me alone.
“You’ve been a busy girl.”
He’s amused. My attempts to get away, to save Zane, to stop him, all hilarious. It’s a joke and I’m the clown.
“I was surprised to learn you told Narcissa Steele,” he’s saying. “I warned you I’d kill anyone you’d told. I told you I would make your life miserable. You shouldn’t play when you don’t understand the rules. You should have walked away.”
I wasn’t playing. I knew what I was doing. I heard about a threat and I followed the trail. But I never expected it to lead me here.
Zane jerks me back into reality and he’s pulling me to a door and I can see the parking lot and the car is still in the fourth spot on the tenth row. I want to cry. We’re there. Freedom is three strides ahead.
“Don’t do it, Misti,” the voice in my ear warns. “You step outside and I will kill Zane. Even he can’t survive a bullet to the head.”
I stop.
Death. Torture. No options. Zane can survive torture. He’s trained to. But he won’t survive more than a minute on the streets of Chicago.
I don’t know what they will do to him but I know what I have to do. There’s no choice. Maybe there never was.
Zane steps toward me. Confused, uncertain, worried about my sanity. “Misti?”
Clarity attacks my senses. I understand. What it means to love someone. I can’t throw my heart around but he deserves to have it. The man who would risk his life to save mine, quit to see me safe, aches to see me smile. He deserves more than my heart but it’s all I have to give him.
I touch his cheek with my fingertips. “I love you.”
Zane wrenches me closer and I know it’s because he won’t endure the torment of my body so far from his for a minute longer.
I gasp, sliding my arms around his neck because I can’t take it either. He kisses me and I have to think to remember what I’m doing or where I am.
“Misti Fort,” he breathes, “I love you too.”
I can’t believe I’m going through with this, sentencing him to a life of torture. I don’t know what they do to people here but it scares him. It must be a terrible fate, becoming one of their monsters.
Pressing my forehead against his, kissing him back, I try to hold the tears back. “End the chaos,” I whisper. “Stop the corruption.”
He won’t understand. But if I don’t make it through today, if Narcissa dies, he will be the last thing standing between the secret stealer and Chicago. He has to find him, he has to stop him, he has to end it.
I step back. “I’m sorry,” I mouth. I turn, run, head back the way we came. Zane is calling after me and I’m crying and the world is backwards, upside down, all wrong.
I stumble to the side, shoved into a wall, thrown into a standstill. Hands grab my wrists and my arms are pinned to my sides and I can feel cold metal against my head. It fits right into the indent of my temple.
I was always meant to die this way.
Thirteen seconds and Zane appears in the hallway. My fault. He would never run without me, never leave me behind, never let me go. And now a life of torture awaits him. Because of me.
Zane stops and my heart shatters like broken glass at the defeat in his eyes. This is not a side of Zane I ever wanted to see. Not the broken boy who lost everything.
“Mr. Tanner Swan,” sneers the man holding a gun to my head.
Tanner Swan. Fake identity. Supposedly brilliant student. Prepared to join the ranks here, ready to help in their cause. All lies. Nothing but a cover, blow to bits today.
“I was surprised to learn your real identity,” the man continues. “Pride of The Dragon, Zane Rothstein.”
He shouldn’t know that.
There are no records of a Zane Rothstein anywhere. He’s the perfect spy, completely invisible, utterly nonexistent. No one should know his real name. To all but the organization, Zane Rothstein died for years ago.
“Tell me, Mr. Rothstein, was it really your brother’s death during 9/11 that drove you to join the Dragon?”
Zane grits his teeth.
How could they know about that? I barely found out a few weeks ago. Zane doesn’t talk about it. Not to anyone. There’s no way they could find anything about his twin. That’s not a secret. It is buried so far in the ground that Zane wouldn’t even consider it part of his reality anymore.
“Let her go,” he’s saying through his teeth, glaring at my captor. “I will do whatever you want. Just let her go. She’s harmless.”
“Harmless?” The man snorts, like there is something funny about my talentless body. “Do you think I’m stupid? I know who she is. Misti Fort, genius hacker for the Dragon. She gets her hands on a computer and she’s just as dangerous as you. No. She’s not going anywhere.”
Just as dangerous.
I’ve never been described as dangerous, not by anyone, not to anyone. But I think he just labeled me a threat. He thinks I could ruin them. He thinks I can do just as much harm with a computer as Zane can with a gun.
“Now, Mr. Rothstein,” he’s saying, “You are going to tell us all about your employers or Miss Fort will pay the price for your silence.”
I’m shaking my head. No, no, no. Don’t. Just let them do what they want. I will gladly take whatever pain I can. If one of us is destined to die, if one of us is meant to lose all humanity in this place, let it be me.
But Zane would never let me suffer for his sake. He would never let them hurt me. He would never endure my screams. Even if it should be my torment to bear. I brought this on him, forced him to come after me, forced him back into the center of this awful place.
But he doesn’t see it that way. He doesn’t know how to see it that way.
Zane sighs. Resignation. Defeat. The death of the hard fighting rebel.
“Okay. Just drop the gun.”
“You don’t give the orders here,” he replies. Signals another guard. “The boss will want to see you.” And now he’s chuckling and I’d do anything to make it stop.
“Well done, Misti,” the secret stealer says, like he’s impressed, like a father complimenting his daughter on a test score. “You’ve managed to make the most rebellious man you know into an obedient prisoner. Thank you. Getting rid of Zane was much easier with your help.”
&
nbsp; I close my eyes.
No. No, no, no. This can’t be about him. I can’t let it be about him. There has to be some way for me to change that. There has to be a way to make things better. They will use me as a weapon against Zane, like the secret stealer has. If I stay here, if I live, they will use me to break him.
With the gun against my head, my captor’s grip is loose. He sees no reason to worry about me or what I might do or how I might try to help Zane. He’s forgotten that he’s supposed to see me as a threat. He doesn’t understand that I don’t value my life more than my freedom.
He doesn’t understand that Zane’s life is worth more than mine.
I lash out, pushing against his arms, breaking his grip with a shove. I want to run but it’s too late for hope disappearing before it can form. The gun goes off and thunder crashes through my body. I feel it. Red running down my skin. It’s everywhere, sticky and hot.
No time.
Not for a scream or a look in Zane’s direction or last words. I feel my body drop and I’m falling, dropping, sinking.
I close my eyes, breathing in one two three shaky breaths, unsure of my lungs, of my heart, of my head.
No one will use me as a weapon. Not the men that will soon torture Zane into a monster, not the secret stealer who would kill him for leaving this place. No one will use me to hurt him ever again.
I’m fading but I have strength to let out a last, heavy sigh.
I win.
1 Year Later
Dr. Pelletier
“Glass Tech is a science and technology company, built by Richard Glass, for the purpose of curing disease, ending pain, and easing the lives of humans.”
-Glass Tech information pamphlet
Two
“Doctor?” asks the feminine voice on the line. She’s a songbird, her voice high and soft, singing every word. There’s nothing harsh, nothing cold, nothing angry about her voice. Its springtime and she’s warm with sunlight.
“Doctor,” she says, “Mr. Glass would like to see you in his office.”
A moment of panic and I wonder. How can the owner of such a hopeful voice work for the epitome of fear itself?
The Invincibles (Book 1): Trapped: A girl. A monster. A hero. Page 2
