“Looks like you made up your mind.” Noah gave me a bitter smile.
“You’re going to help me,” I said. “Elemontera will send me on a mission, probably very soon, because they’ll need more agents to capture those elementals. If I have something to tell you, I’ll look at one of the city surveillance cameras. I’m sure Lily and her team will be trying to monitor my every move outside Elemontera. You’ll just have to find me and meet me somewhere when other agents are away.”
“Can’t someone else do that? I’d rather look after the others than be your personal messenger.” He clenched his jaw.
“You can do both. I assume you’re strong enough now to fly from the city to Roivenna and back. And if you somehow get captured, you’ll have better chances of escape than any of the others.” He had experience in dodging Elemontera’s agents, and I knew he wouldn’t let himself get caught.
“Okay, fine.” He clasped his hands tightly, his knuckles white. “But I still think you could find your way into the lab without Jaiden. He’s only trying to save his skin, so he’d promise you now whatever he thought you wanted to hear.”
I shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.” With a cold smile on my face, I walked out of the room.
Chapter 6
My insides wanted to flip inside out as Elemontera’s headquarters came into view. It had taken me four days to regain my full strength and mind-control everyone so they didn’t reveal any info that could put us all in danger. But now that Jaiden and I were supposed to walk back inside that damn building as if nothing had happened, my heart thudded loudly in my chest, my throat constricting.
Jaiden slipped his fingers into mine. “Nothing bad will happen to you. I promise.”
I straightened my shoulders, giving his hand a little squeeze, then let go. Lily had sent one of her men to tip Elemontera off about the location of Sheridan’s body. It had been Lily’s idea to distract Elemontera and get their best agents out of the building. If we were lucky, maybe the boss wouldn’t be in the headquarters, so I could find the lab before he came back, and infect the main computer in the lab, but that sounded too much like wishful thinking.
My arm still stung like hell around the spot where Lily’s team had pierced my skin so they could slip a tiny chip-like device underneath. Apparently, that was the only way I could sneak in with the device without triggering any alarms. The problem was that I’d have to open the wound again to push the device out when I needed to use it. The sole thought of digging through a fresh wound made me nauseous.
As soon as we stepped through the door, the guards pointed their guns at us, their eyes wide. Jaiden raised his hands, a smile spreading over his lips. “Really? We go through all the trouble to come back here and this is our welcome?”
The guards looked at each other, checking something on the computer behind the desk next to them. They must have used facial recognition to see we were just agents, although I was sure they knew Jaiden very well. They had to have seen Elemontera’s best agent before.
“Where are your bracelets, agents?” one of the guards narrowed his hazel eyes at us.
“Didn’t anyone tell you? We were captured. The enemy took the bracelets.” Jaiden waved his hands, inviting them to take a better look at us. We’d made sure to rip our clothes and have some cuts and bruises so everyone would believe we’d indeed run away from our captors. I was glad about that, because at least then no one would ask why I had a gash in my left arm.
The guard sighed after one of the devices behind his desk beeped, making me jump. “Okay, go on. And make sure you report to your superiors.”
We immediately started for the elevator, hoping we wouldn’t run into many people. I gritted my teeth to stop myself from reacting as the eyes of familiar cameras stared at me once again. God, I hated this place so much, and now I had come back to destroy it. But when we reached our floor, I noticed glowing yellow devices at each side of the elevator door. “What’s that?”
Jaiden swore under his breath. “Elemental detectors. They constantly monitor the levels of elemental energy. The alarm goes off if you use your element around them.”
So Elemontera had upgraded their security. Wonderful. But not entirely surprising. The rogue elementals had torn through Elemontera’s agents, and I was sure the boss and the others wondered what would happen if those elementals found their way into the building. Luckily for us, the hallway was empty, and it seemed like Lily’s plan had worked. Most of the agents had to be outside, so only a couple remained, but the guards were still here, which meant we couldn’t exactly do whatever we wanted.
“Follow me,” Jaiden said, going straight for the hallway that led to another elevator. We got inside without any trouble, and he pressed a button for the floor I’d never been to, because I wasn’t allowed to go there, but nothing happened.
“Shit.” Jaiden slammed his hand against the buttons. “We don’t have the bracelets. Of course we can’t go to any floor other than the main one. Wait here.”
He hurried outside and waved at a guard who was just coming around the corner. “Hey, a little help here. We need to get new bracelets from the lab, so can you just press the button in the elevator? We can’t do it ourselves.”
The guard hesitated, but he must have recognized Jaiden, so he strolled toward us and pressed the button.
“Thanks.” Jaiden gave him a wide grin.
My heart thudded in my chest as we found ourselves in a long hallway with red walls and thick black carpet that covered the floor completely. Aside from two or three doors, it looked empty. What the hell? The main lab was somewhere here? The cameras were everywhere, along with multiple glowing yellow devices. Would even a little bit of elemental energy trigger an alarm? I didn’t want to find out.
Jaiden stopped in front of an empty wall, pressing on it with both hands. Before I could ask him what the hell he was doing, a triangular piece of the wall pulled itself in, revealing a keypad. Jaiden punched in four numbers, and I did my best to remember them in case I had to come back here alone. The whole wall parted and let us into a new metallic-looking hallway. For some reason, I had a feeling that whoever had built Lily’s hideout house had participated in creating this mechanism too. The whole ‘secret passage in a wall’ thing seemed so similar.
We followed the hallway that was full of various yellow devices and alarms until we reached the end. A huge glass door stood in front of us, showing another hallway with numerous doors, and people in white coats hurrying around. Six guards were in front of the door, and that was when I realized this was the place I was looking for; this was the entrance into the lab. The main computer had to be somewhere behind that door.
“We need new bracelets. Ours are gone,” Jaiden said to the guards, his voice light and friendly.
“You can’t go inside,” a tall guard said, running a hand through his short black hair. “Boss’s orders.”
“So we’re supposed to walk around without bracelets? Come on, we can’t even get to our rooms.” Jaiden crossed his arms, annoyance creeping into his voice. “And if we can’t get anywhere, then we can’t do our jobs. Somehow I don’t think the boss will be pleased when he hears that.”
The guard trudged closer, a smirk on his face. “Well, looks to me like you got here just fine, and as far as I remember, you’re not allowed to set foot anywhere near this lab, Jaiden.” He spit out his name like a curse.
I considered using my element to mind-control the guards, but the energy detectors were all over the place. One wrong move and the whole building would be alerted, and then we’d never get to do what we had to and escape in time.
“Then at least let her go in. She won’t break anything,” Jaiden said, curling his lip.
“No.” A vein pulsed in the guard’s neck as he glared at Jaiden.
“If the boss were here...” Jaiden started to say.
“Oh, he is here, all right,” a voice behind our back said, and we turned around, finding ourselves face to face with the boss. His b
lack suit was slightly wrinkled, his dark hair disheveled as if he’d been in a great hurry. His cold gray eyes were pinned on Jaiden. “My office. Now. Both of you.” His gaze raked over me as he turned and started down the hallway.
“But the bracelet...” I started to say, and Jaiden caught my arm, shaking his head. I closed my mouth. The boss wasn’t supposed to be here, but now that he was, we had no other choice but to follow him. I glanced once at the glass door, hoping I’d get back here sooner rather than later. Lily had been so sure the boss would go see Sheridan’s body himself, based on what Jaiden had told me about his father’s affection for her, but now I didn’t know what to think.
I was lightheaded as we stepped through the door of the boss’s office, and I realized this room had the same element-blocking walls as his private office. Even the desk looked the same as the one on which Jaiden had been kissing me when we were looking for that device.
Making sure my elements were safely tucked inside of me, I wiped all expression off my face. The boss seated himself in his big leather chair, his face grim. We stood there in front of him, unsure what to do. The boss opened one of the drawers, but I couldn’t see what he was doing.
“So you two came back...” he said coldly. “We’ve been looking for you all over the city. Where have you been?”
“Anton Marlau’s men kidnapped us,” I said. “They were after me.”
The boss regarded me for a moment. “I believe that man is dead. Did his ghost order your kidnapping? And how come you couldn’t have fought off a few regular elementals? I assume he couldn’t have found an army of tainted elementals.”
“It was Sheridan, sir,” Jaiden said. “She was a spy. A traitor. She took control of our bracelets, and then it was easy for Marlau’s men to overpower us and take us to an abandoned building. Sheridan wanted Moira to take over her grandfather’s company or something. She was loyal to Marlau, not to us.”
The lines around the boss’s mouth tightened as he glared at Jaiden. “Were some of those tainted elementals that we’ve been hunting there too?”
“No, sir” Jaiden said. “We...”
The boss stood up so suddenly that I took a step back. His face was a mask of fury. “You couldn’t have known if she’d been mind-controlled, could you?”
Jaiden licked his lips, lowering his gaze.
“She wasn’t,” I said. “She knew things about my grandfather that no one could have known if they hadn’t been close. A bunch of teenagers couldn’t have found that out. And she had this strange symbol with lions’ heads on her uniform just like the guards.” I hoped mentioning the symbol would revive the boss’s memory. He had to have seen the tattoo on Sheridan’s back. There’d be no doubt about her betrayal.
An emotion flickered through the boss’s eyes, but it was gone in a second. His jaw was tight, his teeth clenched. “All right, let’s assume you’re right. What happened? How did you escape?”
“She wanted to take me away. I’m not sure exactly where,” I said. “She disabled my bracelet completely and took it off after I agreed to do what she wanted. I mean, I was pretending... I...”
“What about our other agents?” the boss asked. “Nick Elinders and Noah Boine?”
“They weren’t with us when we were taken,” Jaiden said. “We haven’t seen them. When Sheridan took off Moira’s bracelet, we used the opportunity, and Moira freed me, so we fought our way out of there.”
“Ah, you fought, of course.” The boss let out a laugh, then his face darkened, his right arm tensing. “And yet, those men you mention weren’t there when our team arrived. Only she was... dead. Heart attack, they say.”
“What? But they were knocked out or dead. It’s impossible...” I feigned surprise. We couldn’t have handed the men we had captured to Elemontera because they’d have ended up dead. Lily would make sure the men ended up in jail, and I’d already manipulated their minds so they wouldn’t remember a thing.
“You should have stayed where you were! Waited for us! Captured them all!” The boss was yelling, his face red, but he didn’t move; his whole body was rigid like a statue. “Instead you decided to fly all the way across the city to come here for no good reason and ruin everything!”
“Sir, we didn’t know how many men Sheridan and Marlau had hired. If we had stayed, we could have been recaptured. It took a lot of energy to...”
“To kill her. To take her from me!” He raised his arm, and I gasped as he pointed a gun at Jaiden’s head. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t just end your life right here right now. Sheridan might have been involved with strange things, but you should have let me deal with it. Instead you killed her and you let the others escape! Who knows what they’ll do now!”
My whole body was shaking, my elements wanting out even through the block of the room. I dug my nails into my skin, ready to rush the boss if needed. Jaiden was barely breathing, standing perfectly still.
“You need me,” he said, his voice so full of certainty that I wanted to punch his father in the face, hug Jaiden to myself, and tell him that this was all wrong. That his ability shouldn’t be the only thing keeping him alive here. But his father wrinkled his nose, and lowered the gun. I let out the breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding.
“You’re right. I do need you, but I don’t want you here right now.” He pressed a button on what looked like a phone, and the door swung open. Two guards walked inside. “Take him away,” the boss said calmly. “Room One.”
Jaiden flinched, his jaw tight, but he didn’t say anything or try to fight the guards as they grabbed him by the arms and dragged him out. I had no idea what or where that room was, and dread filled my stomach.
“He said you had freed him. Why?” The boss ran a hand over his desk, his eyes locking with mine.
“I didn’t want to make a wrong choice that would put my parents’ lives at risk.” I lowered my eyes, hoping he’d believe I was just a scared little girl who wouldn’t dare disobey Elemontera’s orders.
“Well, you made the right choice. Thanks to you, your parents will keep on breathing,” he said. “We have eyes on them every second of the day.”
I wondered what he’d think if it were discovered that Lily had been fooling them and feeding them false information about my parents. “Am I dismissed?”
“Yes,” the boss said. “You’ll be escorted to your room and you’ll stay there until we make you a new bracelet. Surely you could use some rest.”
I inclined my head and hurried to the door before he could change his mind and ask more questions. I wasn’t looking forward to being stuck in my damn room again and getting a new bracelet, but I knew that the idea of completing my secret mission on my first day back was too good to be true. I’d have to be patient and find the right opportunity. At least now I knew where the lab was.
“Moira,” the boss said just as I was about to pass through the door, and I slowly turned around. “I see potential in you. If it weren’t for my idiot son, I’m sure you would have done better.” He watched my face carefully. “I see you’re not surprised, so I take it you know he’s my son, as I expected. It would be wise if you kept your mouth shut about all of this, especially about Sheridan. You’re not irreplaceable here. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” My head throbbed because my element was begging me to release it and just crush the boss’s brain, but whatever that was protecting the room was pretty good, because all I could do was make myself dizzy.
“Good. Now go.”
I didn’t have to be told twice. A guard waited for me outside, and I had to breathe deeply and shove my elements down, or I’d have triggered all the alarms on the way to my room.
Chapter 7
I turned off the alarm clock on my nightstand before it could pierce the air with its annoying sound. It was my second day in Elemontera. How wonderful. It seemed as if I’d never been out at all. Sitting up in the bed, I stared at the metallic-looking wall. I had to find a way to get into the lab, and I real
ly, really needed to get myself on some kind of a mission because I had a feeling I could burst from all the energy stored inside of me.
I pressed my hand to my forehead, my skin unusually warm. My fire must have been trying to get closer to the surface. And I really had to stop myself from thinking about Jaiden, because the whole thing had been his idea and he must have known what he was doing. But I wished I at least knew whether he was okay.
His father might not want to kill him, but that didn’t mean Jaiden wouldn’t get hurt. Pushing the thought away, I jumped to my feet. Maybe a cold shower would clear my mind and calm my elements. It was a good thing one of Elemontera’s techs tweaked the door so I could get out of my room without a bracelet.
“Moira Arnolds,” a guard said as I emerged from the bathroom, “come with me.”
I followed him down the hallway, wondering where we were going. My heart sank when I realized the guard was taking me straight to the boss’s office.
“There you go,” the boss said, his face cheerful. He’d forgotten his grief over Sheridan rather quickly, or maybe he’d finally gotten it through his thick skull that she’d tricked him and betrayed him. That must have been a huge hit for his ego. Getting up from his chair, he twirled something shiny in his fingers. “Please sit.”
I settled myself in one of the soft chairs and carefully watched him as he rounded the desk and stopped in front of me.
“Your arm,” he said, reaching out for me, and I realized that the shiny thing he was holding was a bracelet. I reluctantly lifted my arm, trying not to cringe when his fingers wrapped around my wrist. He was humming something to himself as he secured the bracelet in its place. I pulled my hand back as soon as he let go, and he smiled at me, grabbing a device off the desk. He carefully positioned the device against the bracelet. A soft red light started to pulse on the device.
“Your energy levels seem a bit higher than before. That’s quite interesting,” he said. “The bracelet was tweaked a bit so it could handle all of your energy, but I hope we won’t have to block your elements anytime soon.”
Monster (Tainted Elements Book 3) Page 4
