by Skyler Andra
“Fucking amateurs,” Byron joked with grim satisfaction as he pushed the heavy metal door open.
Until this point, I’d thought of our mission like of those in an action movie. I thought of it as a fast pace blur: all running, panic and swearing. Inside the base though the hallways reminded me a lot of my high school, empty with class in session.
Byron hesitated for a moment then nodded. At this point, standing in the facility itself, we had very few choices but to go forward and follow the plan.
Silver flashed in his eyes again as he squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be all right.”
No. A resounding no. The only thing that hadn’t chased me away from this operation was the chance of saving Mads and Rane, as well as ending this shit once and for all.
A lone scientist wandered down the hall studying her clipboard and flicking through papers. She wore a lab coat, shirt and jeans. If she spotted us she’d know immediately that the two of us dressed in army gear were not fellow scientists.
Shit. My breath lodged in my throat. I didn’t want to have to shoot her. But if she screamed, I might have to.
“Do your thing,” Byron hissed at me.
Oh yeah. Crap.
I seized the bright red cord extending from her chest and rubbed my thumb over it, until she glanced up with eyes glazed over in a loved-up haze. Clutching the clipboard to her chest and smiling like some dumbass, she skipped away.
“Skipping, really?” I let go of her cord and it flittered behind the woman.
“Hurry.” Byron motioned for me to keep moving.
About one hundred feet and two more corridors separated us from the avatars.
Fire boiled in my stomach as I quickened my pace scurrying through those corridors like a rat hunting for food. My face pulled taut with tension.
A man wearing black tactical gear turned the corner about thirty feet from us. He had a rifle slung over one shoulder. Cocky bastard walked as if he owned the world.
I flinched when his cold eyes landed on me.
“Coming back for more, sweetheart,” he said.
I remembered his face from Paris. How could I forget it? The harshness of it didn’t stray even under good light. It was the man who threatened to rape me, before Mads put a stop to it. The mercenary had no cord just a black heart, so I made him one. I wound a thread of the same color tight around his gun.
“Dear god.” Byron frowned, pulling his head back as the mercenary cuddled his gun. His lip curled in disgust as the mercenary began licking the gun while gazing down at it with lust hooded eyes. “Did you make him want to fuck his own gun?”
“Something like that,” I said while moving on past the run-of-the-mill asshole.
Byron gave me a quick rub on my shoulders before moving on.
Right. Next phase of Operation Save Avatars was in motion.
Chapter 12
Locke
At a t-intersection of halls, Byron paused to check because motion around the edge suggested people traversed it. He held up three fingers, signaling to me. Right. Time for me to do my thing.
I repeated Byron’s instructions in my head. One thing you could say for the man was his absolutely precision. He knew exactly where we needed to be and every little step we had to follow.
Hands raised, I called to the cords of the people nearby—if any even belonged to them. One snaked around the corner, connecting to a guard, which I then traced to a young woman in Nashville with eyes filled with fear and dark bruises that ringed her neck and wrists.
Angry heat flashed inside me. Having been the verbal and sometimes physical punching bag for my mom’s bitterness, I had a chip on my shoulder about violence in any way.
Well, you won’t be needing this anymore…
Throwing my shoulders back, I severed the connection without a single qualm. In my mind’s eye I saw her straighten up, going for the suitcase she kept under the bed and the money she kept hidden in an envelope behind a picture frame on the wall.
Nope. Not a single moment of guilt. The woman was now free from this creep.
Then I turned all my fury to the man by snapping his cord and winding it around his throat. From now on he’d only love himself, and by the lust rising in him, he disappeared into the men’s room to jerk off. Hmmm… that’d only keep him busy for thirty seconds, a minute max. I added another sprinkle of love to his cord to help him take his time, nice and slow.
I glanced at Byron, who nodded as if encouraging me to keep going.
Messing with people wasn’t my style; I preferred to let bygones be bygones, but if my men were in danger, then get out of my way! Besides, I wasn’t hurting anyone this time… or so I told myself.
The next woman in the corridor, a scientist, discussed something with her colleague. I brushed her cord, instilling it with an unhealthy obsession for flames. In my mind’s eye, I watched her up and leave the conversation, intent on starting a bonfire at her desk.
Fire was part one of Byron’s plan. Set one off and activate the fire alarms.
Onto step two.
Her colleague glanced down the hall in bewilderment. For him, I yanked at his cord, programming him with a penchant for setting off alarms and delighting in the evacuation of buildings. Kind of like one the dicks at my high school who used to activate the fire alarm whenever exam time rolled around. The man wandered off in a trance, giggling with glee at his new hobby, ready to do my bidding. Twisted, yes, but necessary.
Back pressed to the wall, I flexed my hand and fingers, waiting for the agonizing moment our plan would initiate.
Again in my mind, I saw the woman adding papers and anything that would burn to the flaming heap on her desk. She cackled manically with the obsession I’d programmed her with. Smoke curled up from the burning stack, setting off the fire sprinklers.
Another vision flashed—this one of her coworker breaking the glass over the alarm. Face wild with manic glee, he smashed the button. The corridor darkened. A red light flashed and sirens wailed.
“Evacuation in progress,” a mechanical voice spoke over the speakers in the hall. “Leave your stations and proceed to the nearest exit.”
“You did it!” Byron clapped me on the shoulders.
We waited, huddled against the wall, while people in lab coats rushed down the adjacent hall. A couple of mercenaries stomped by with them, and Byron dragged me backward into a cleaning closet. When the footfalls ended, we snuck out.
“Back in a minute,” Byron said. “I’m going to check if it’s clear.”
He only nodded before running off, and I stood in the hallway, outside the door to the room containing the avatars. I took a deep breath before entering.
The large room contained seven medical beds, four occupied, three empty. One probably belonged to Byron during his stay. A hollow feeling gripped my stomach at the idea that the other two were meant to contain Rane and Mads.
Where were they? Had they escape? When I checked my chest, their golden cords darkened with blotches and holes as if moths had eaten away at them, but they still weaved into another room. What was happening to them? I’d get to them in a minute. First, I had to follow the plan.
I crossed to the twins’ beds, staring down at the connectors that Byron had said kept them asleep. Lucy and Niall Wyatt, aka Artemis and Apollo, looked seventeen at most and each were blondes with electric-blue eyes. They hadn’t had much to say to me in Louisiana, only sizing me up with their smug gazes, but that was fine. I removed the needle from Lucy’s arm, then her breathing tube and she woke with a start, fury in her eyes.
How she woke so fast amazed me. Not even my grandmother roused from her pain meds when she died. Must have been some god-like power thing.
“Where are they?” Lucy snarled.
“Evacuated,” I answered, moving to her brother’s side, waking him too.
They glanced at each other, passing some kind of strange godly twin telepathy message back and forth. Their eyes blazed and they both nodded.
&n
bsp; Lucy turned to me. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Mayhem and havoc,” I said with a smile. “Byron wants to bring this place down and make everyone who ever crossed us sorry.”
They grinned sharply and deadly like the tip of the manifested golden Artemis bow that sizzled in Lucy’s hands and the edge of Niall’s short heavy spear.
“Mayhem,” she repeated. “Who are we allowed to fuck up?”
“Everyone who’s not part of the pantheon,” I said. “Round them up and bring them to Byron.”
As silent as deer in the woods, they headed for the door. Maybe I should have felt bad for unleashing the twins on the rest of the compound, but I just didn’t care. These people entangled themselves in kidnapping and hostage offenses, so they reaped what they sowed.
I advanced to the next set of beds where Ophelia and Conor lay sleeping.
Ophelia, a tall, broad woman with fading blonde hair and a sweet face even in repose, and the avatar of Hestia, woke with a jerk when I pulled the connections out. Her whitened face, the clenching of her hands, and her ragged gasping made me want to wreak a little bit of mayhem myself.
“It’s all right,” I soothed with a confidence that I didn’t necessarily feel. “I’m the cavalry.”
“Well, I know it’s not me,” she said, sitting up. No, she was far too gentle for that. She was a homebody who loved to take care of others within the pantheon.
I left her with a pat on the shoulder before waking up the final member of the group—the one who would be hardest to help escape because he needed his wheelchair, which was nowhere to be seen.
Conor was the avatar of Hephaestus, the god of the forge. His skin dark, head bald, with a bushy beard, he emerged from his slumber with a wild look in his eye.
“Jillian… did they take Jillian?” His large hand clamped over my wrist with a blacksmith’s strength, and I knew I was not getting released until he got an answer that he could live with.
“No, no, your wife is safe, I promise!”
His grip eased up, and he looked at me closely. “You’re Locke, the new girl.”
I helped him sit up. “Yes, I am, and right now we need to get you out of here while Byron and the twins bring this place down.”
Conor snorted. “You think just because I can’t walk that I can’t cause as much damage as those idiots? I’m the god of engineers. All you need to do is to get me to a console and you will see some trouble.”
I scanned the room again for his wheelchair. Maybe I’d missed it. “I don’t see your chair.”
“I can help.” Ophelia came to the other side of his bed. “I may not have a hearth to tend, but I can at least help carry you.” She waited for Conor’s nod, and then lifted him onto her back as if she had the strength of ten men.
Damn these avatars. Why didn’t I have that strength? First thing for when I returned home… wherever that was… I would delve into all my godly powers, not just cords and condoms.
Conor grinned at me from over his shoulder. “Yeah, we’re off to cause some trouble.”
“Just don’t kill them,” I said, and the pair started leaving. “We want to question them!”
That left Mads and Rane. I paused, examining their cords stretching off into another room. With fire under my soles, I ran out of the room, finding the threads entering a door at the end of the hall. Electricity thrummed in their air and prickled my skin. Something in that room, the low drone, the vibrations radiating from it, filled me with a sickening dread. Every nerve in my body baulked at the idea of going inside there. My adrenaline spiked as more holes opened in their cords and the ends frayed, bits of it falling off and crumbling to dust.
Horrified, I clamped down on the primal scream threatening to burst free from my throat.
Something was consuming their love.
Desperate to stop it, I grabbed hold of their golden cords, but a bolt of lightning struck me and flung me backwards. My entire body stung as I held my pumping chest, gasping. What the hell was in there? Now I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had to get in there and fast.
Steeling myself for whatever came next, I opened the door and took careful steps inside.
The room was little more than a cell with concrete walls and no windows or light, which reminded me of the hole, where disobedient soldiers got thrown into in movies. Something told me I’d been here before. In Rane’s dream. When I saw him and Mads slumped against the wall, one leaning on the other, I nearly cried with relief. But then I realized that there was something very, very wrong. They had no vitals. Their skin was ashen.
“No,” I whimpered, falling to my knees besides Mads and pressing my finger the cold skin of his neck to find his pulse. His heart still beat, and he breathed, albeit shallowly. “Please, please, wake up.” I tapped his face, hoping it might rouse him.
God, I hated the sound of my voice just then. Small, desperate and lonely. I forced myself to feel angry instead. I was not going to let whoever was behind this get away with it. Fuck that. Mads and Rane belonged to me and no one was going to take them away from me.
I tried calling on the strength I’d witnessed Ophelia used, but it failed me. Dammit. I ran my mind back over the rooms I’d passed, searching the memory banks for a cart or something to carry them both out of here. Maybe I could haul them onto a bed and wheel them out. I’d need help down the stairs to the tunnel though.
Something about their gold cords caught my eye and I looked up. They traveled from their hearts up into a glowing orb about the size of a basketball, suspended above them.
“What the fuck?” I shrieked, scrambling away.
The orb looked as if it were made out of some kind of heavy glass or acrylic, its surface cloudy, streaked with greens, whites and blues. Flashes sparked within it. Fiery red and sunny yellow for what I interpreted as Rane and Mads respectively. The thing pulsed with a power that I could only describe as malevolent. Utter misery stabbed at me, but it wasn’t mine. It was theirs.
Somehow, Mads and Rane’s essences were trapped inside the orb, and by the torment bleeding from it, they were being hurt.
My fists clenched as pure rage ripped through my core. My first instinct was to shatter the damn thing into a million pieces. But I had to force myself to calm down and not Hulk out. Avoiding accidentally destroying anything in reach that might harm someone I cared about made me breathe and think this through.
Behind my men I noticed a rack of small syringes labeled with a name and containing swirling green liquid, each vial as reflectively evil looking as the orb. I crawled over to the rack, reading the names on the bottles—the names of the gods; my three gods. Someone had injected this foul liquid into Mads and Rane, forcing them to a near death state while the orb slowly killed them, possibly stealing their powers in the process.
Bells of doom chimed in my head. I couldn’t wake them and heal their cords. I couldn’t shatter the orb and risk killing them. What the hell was I going to do?
I glared at the remaining syringes filled with the foul drug. One even had my name on it. I knew what I had to do save them, no matter how little I wanted to do it. I pulled out the one branded with ‘Eros’ while biting my lip. Whatever was in that syringe, I knew for damn sure that I didn’t want it in me, but it might be the only way to get them out.
My grandma, bless her soul, was diabetic, and I’d watched her take her insulin every morning before school. I always thought she was so brave for doing that because I hated needles. I squeezed my thighs together as I uncapped my syringe.
“You guys had better be damn grateful I’m doing this,” I muttered, looking down at them.
Somewhere far beyond the door I heard a crashing sound, then shouts. Clearly Byron and the twins were fighting up a storm.
It was time for me to do the same, even if this wasn’t part of the plan. I tapped the crook of my elbow and flexed my fist to make the veins show up clearly under my skin. My stomach churned as I lowered the needle to the juicy vein on display. I whimpe
red at the sharp bite of the metal piercing me. Ice poured into my veins from the injection site. I removed the needle and tossed it aside. Then I slumped to the ground, positioning myself between Mads and Rane’s legs so I was leaning back on Rane’s chest. Nausea ripped through me and my belly felt like it turned itself inside out. Every inch of me ached. Even my hair hurt, however that was possible.
With a strange sense of rightness, it struck me that I belonged between Mads and Rane. The only thing missing was Byron. Right then I wished we were all in a cozy cabin in Maine rather than in some evil corporation’s headquarters in an abandoned military base in the backwoods of Tennessee.
My eyes closed, unable to resist the heaviness the serum brought on. A fatigue washed over me like an anesthetic, lowering me into the darkness creeping up the sides of my mind. The last though to enter my mind before I fell into the abyss was I was going to save them. It didn’t matter where they were, I was going to find them.
Chapter 13
Locke
God, I hate high school. It was another goddamn day, in another goddamn year, and I couldn’t wait to grow up and get the fuck away from all this. Away from the dicks in my classes and far from the snotty bitches in the ‘it club’. A million miles away from my mom and her dick husband Reg. Except there was always the nagging fear at the back of my mind that I never would be able to escape it all.
Slumped at my desk, I pondered this in Mrs. Griffith’s Trigonometry class, where I sat close to the door, ready for the end of class, hoping the assholes sitting behind me didn’t put gum in my hair again. I didn’t even bother to open the book, ignoring the whispers of the girls around me. People say that girls are worse than boys when it comes to bullying, but I didn’t believe that. They were different in their methods. Last year, one of the boys on the soccer team had slammed me into the locker so hard I’d seen stars and then he’d threatened to dump me in the quarry. This year, there was some sort of campaign going on among the girls to make me commit suicide. Six to one, half a dozen to the other, and all that crap.
