by Emme DeWitt
“Liar,” I muttered.
Mags’ Future eye shifted toward me, which spooked me. She couldn’t possibly be seeing me right now, could she? This was just a vision from who knows where. The Future eye shifted back into the room in general, and I brushed the hairs on my arm back down. Goosebumps could not be a good sign.
“I thought you said she just passed out from exhaustion. This doesn’t look like exhaustion.” Colm’s desperate face was inches from my unconscious body. “She looks like…me.”
“Your coma was induced by the doctors to regulate the swelling in your brain after a traumatic football injury,” Mags said, the only tell for her agitation being the vice grip she held on the door handle. “And I hardly think you know what you looked like when you were under all those months.”
“I don’t expect you to understand out-of-body experiences,” Colm said under his breath. “She might be here.”
The Future eye swung back at me menacingly.
Luckily, Mags herself did not seem convinced.
“Look, we have to go,” Mags replied. “I have to sneak you back out before anyone comes to check in on her.”
Mags’ good eye went to the clock on the wall, but she didn’t seem in that much of a hurry. It was like she was waiting for something. Something like a predetermined time. My stomach dropped lower as I realized her lack of conviction about hurrying could mean only one thing.
“Bitch,” I said, walking up to her face, staring down the Future eye with all the burning hatred I was feeling toward her right now.
The Future eye seemed to look back at me, boring into my core.
“If you let anything happen to him,” I threatened, “and I do mean anything—it will all be your fault. One hundred percent of his blood will be on your hands. You are making the choice right now to lead him into a trap. And for what? He doesn’t know anything. The worst you’ll do is hurt yourself.” And me, I added in a small voice.
The Future eye shifted away, but I touched her face, drawing its attention back to me. My hand seemed frozen, the pain of the coldness leaking through to me, but I held it there.
“Do not let this happen. If this is some ploy to win me over, I don’t even have the time to tell you how wrong you’re going to be when this backfires. Let him live. Me for him. Let him go, and I’ll be your ally. You have my word,” I said, my voice heavy with the warmth drawn up from my core. If she did anything stupid, I was ready to blast her Future eye with as much banshee noise as I had within me. It was not going to be pretty.
Mags stepped away from me, giving my spot a wide berth. Another expression flickered over her face, but all that remained was slight annoyance, which was pretty standard for her general demeanor.
“We really should go, Colm,” Mags said a little more convincingly. “This floor is locked for a reason, and they take security very seriously. She’s fine, but we’re about to not be if we don’t move it.”
Colm shook his head slowly, his hand enveloping mine.
“I can’t leave her. Not here, not alone like this,” Colm said, his hip resting against mine as he sat on my bed.
“The hell you can’t. I’m not going to be killed because of you and your sappy determination.” Mags grabbed his shoulder. “Time to go.”
“Go,” Colm said, shaking Mags’ hand off. “I’ll be fine.”
“Dammit, Noah,” Mags muttered under her breath, only loud enough for me to hear.
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. Had she heard me? Did I change the vision with my promises?
Mags stepped in front of Colm’s face, snapping her fingers to draw his attention from my sleeping body toward her.
“Hey,” Mags said, her odd eyes even with Colm’s. “I’m about to let you in on a secret. One I really shouldn’t, but clearly, one that may save your life.”
I held my breath.
“Noah here,” Mags pointed directly at me, “is special. Special sort of like your out-of-body experience comment earlier.”
Colm squinted his eyes, as if trying to read through Mags’ sincerity.
“Well, I am, too. Special. There’s a lot of special going on at Windermere, and it’s really not safe for you to know any more details. I’m breaking so many rules even hinting at it, since you’re not special. In that way,” Mags qualified. “You know what I mean.”
“Not really,” Colm said, his tone even and honest.
“Ugh.” Mags growled in frustration. “The baddies are coming, okay? Does that help? Special baddies. The evil villains, if you prefer. And if we’re here, we’re going to end up in beds right next to Noah, or worse.” Mags flung her hands out, her face angled to emphasize what exactly she meant.
Colm’s face darkened. “Then I really can’t go. What if something happens to Noah? I couldn’t live with myself,” he admitted, his gaze shifting back toward me.
Mags’ hands flew to her face and she released another frustrated growl. “If you don’t leave with me right now,” Mags said in a low tone, “I will be forced to endanger Noah.”
Colm stood up, trying to guard my body from her threat. “Don’t you dare touch her. She warned me about you,” Colm said.
“You remember?” I whispered, stepping between him and Mags. I tried to catch his eyes, but he looked right through me and at Mags. If he remembered the warning, what else did he remember, and how?
“Yeah, well,” Mags said. “I never said I was a good person. Clearly, trying to be is not working in my favor, so I’ll have to rely on my tried-and-true methods. Get your ass out of this building now, or so help me you’ll get reacquainted with your old friend, Coma Colm.”
I frowned at her threat. Man, she was not very good at influencing strong personality types. And I thought my people skills were lackluster.
“Colm,” I said, pushing as much energy as I could toward him, begging him to notice me and what I was trying to say. “Go. You need to go now. Forget about me. You shouldn’t be involved in any of this.” I pushed at his chest, and this time, instead of ice picks attacking my hands, I felt a warmth nearing volcanic proportions.
Colm took a step back.
“Is it working?” I asked, turning around to the Future eye. It pulsed at me once, which I took as a yes.
I turned back toward Colm, and he wore a confused expression. He turned back toward my body, his fingertips brushing mine. “Noah?”
Mags looked at the clock and cursed. “We have a little time before it’s too late, but I need to stress the word little,” Mags said through her teeth. “Can we go now?”
Colm still looked a little unbalanced, as if unsure if what he was feeling was real. He looked down at his fingers and flexed them. I reached out, wanting to press against the barrier again, but I hesitated.
“Noah,” Mags said, squinting at Colm’s dazed expression. “We really really really have to go. I can’t promise to keep him safe if we don’t leave right now.”
I swung back to the Future eye, my hand curling back to my side.
“The deal is void if he dies,” I warned.
Mags nodded her head once, looking directly at me.
“Come on, boy scout,” Mags said, grabbing Colm by the forearm and dragging him to the door. “We’re about to miss our window, and your girlfriend can be really scary, even when she’s just a vision.”
“Girlfriend? Did she say she was my girlfriend?” Colm asked, turning the corner of the door.
I let out a laugh, thinking of the check yes if you like me notes we had passed around the classroom in grade school. It was so much more complicated than that.
I stayed in my room, listening for their feet retreating down the hall. I was curious, so I slowly approached the hospital bed. Evangeline and I, had we been awake, would be wearing matching pajamas. Somehow I was a little disappointed I couldn’t run around with my bare ass cheeks flashing the staff.
My eyes were closed, and my hair was spread loosely around the pillow. Definitely a no-no when sleeping, but I guess there wa
s very little possibility of tangling your hair with tossing and turning if you were stiff as a board. The monitors beeped quietly in the background, proving I was still alive at some near distant time in the future.
Then I heard gunshots.
Even out of body, the vibrations punched me in the gut, one after another.
My head whipped around to follow the noise. The monitors in the background were freaking out, but I was out of the room and running down the hall before I could even blink.
I found the staircase I had used for Colm’s second floor visits. I pounded down them, cursing that my vision body couldn’t just float through walls and blink into rooms on a whim. Damn physics slowing me down.
The landing came too soon, though, and I was not prepared.
Colm lay slumped against the wall, a pool of blood growing larger as he struggled to sit up, struggled to say something.
“Colm!” I yelled, falling to my knees next to him. I counted the holes. Four in the chest. I frantically tried to press down to staunch the bleeding. My touch did no good. My hands remained clean as the blood fled its host’s body.
I looked around for help and saw two security guards on the landing below, one talking calmly into the radio strapped to his shoulder. The other, although bigger, was having a hard time restraining a blur of arms and legs.
“Intruder subdued,” guard number one said lazily into his radio. “Gonna need maintenance in Stairwell Four.”
“Don’t. Touch. Me!” Mags screamed, bucking and twisting in the grip of the second guard.
“Also gonna need a psych team stat. We’ve got a witness,” the guard continued. “Says she’s with the program. ID not found.”
“Roger,” the radio squawked back.
I pulled my horrified eyes back to Colm, whose breathing was shallow.
“Colm?” I whispered, my hands still moving from wound to wound, trying to do something to stop the inevitable. “Oh my God. No. This can’t be happening.”
“Noah,” Colm whispered, his head turning in search of my voice.
“No,” I said firmly. “No, this is not how you’re going to die. I fixed it. You can’t go!”
The stairwell door opened below us, and I heard a new voice enter the din of Mags’ screams and the radio static.
“I can’t follow you if you die,” I said, the lump in my throat making my voice sound froggy. “You have to stay here. You have to stay alive.”
“What happened to the plan?” Mags screamed behind me, her rage cutting through my last moments with Colm. The words pinged dully on the back of my mind.
“I should be asking you the same thing,” the voice replied coolly. “The dean will not be pleased. This was not what you promised.”
“You don’t know a damn thing, Adair,” Mags said, spitting more venom at him than I’d ever heard her use on him before. “You don’t know what you’ve just done.”
“I seem to be doing a lot lately. I don’t appreciate picking up your slack,” Adair said brutally. “Getting my hands dirty is tiresome.”
“First Sean, and now Colm,” Mags roared. “And what do you have to show for it? Any closer to scaring Noah straight?”
“She’ll come around. She just needs some isolation away from the meddlers,” Adair replied. “I’ve got everything under control.”
“The hell you do!” Mags shouted, kicking out a new wave of anger and striking one of the guards.
I looked back to see the Future eye as it whizzed in my direction and pulsed. Once. A pause, then once more. I couldn’t have gotten a bigger hint if Mags had brought her very own flashing neon sign.
So the show had been for me.
They had set me up to take the fall for Sean, but I had wriggled my way out of that one. With both Colm and Evangeline subdued, and Ms. Xavier trying to keep a low profile, only Adele would care to look for me. Even so, she was no match for the several Elevated masterminds that wanted me cooperative. I was at their mercy now.
“Go let her cool off,” Adair said to the guard. “She’s in my way.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard replied, dragging Mags still kicking and screaming out into the adjacent hallway.
My eyes, locked on Colm as the light drained from his eyes, flickered as a dark shadow entered my peripheral vision. My thumb brushed away the blood trailing down Colm’s neck, but the stain remained.
“Don’t you dare touch him,” I growled at Adair, unsure if he would be able to hear me.
Adair approached, undeterred, bending over to peer into Colm’s dying eyes.
“If you had just died the first time, Colm, you wouldn’t have gone through so much pain. I tried to save you from it a few months ago, but you just wouldn’t cooperate. Now, I get to clean up your mess,” Adair said, lifting his hand to cover Colm’s face. “I am not a fan of messes.”
“I said, don’t touch him, asshole.” The lump in my throat dissolved with the fire streaming up from my core. “One finger on him and I will become the scariest nightmare you never saw coming.”
Adair, deaf to my threats, began pulling Colm apart from his consciousness. I could practically see Colm’s soul being pulled through his skin, and I screamed.
Colm jerked, his soul shrinking back into its dying shell. Adair frowned.
My eyes flashed in an epiphany, and I gathered as much rage and air in my diaphragm as possible.
Adair leaned in closer. Colm’s eyes had shut in the failed attempt. Adair’s fingers jabbed into Colm’s neck, and I could see the disappointment on Adair’s face grow darker and darker. His plaything had died prematurely.
Just as the flicker of a pout began to form on Adair’s face, I lost it.
My agony burst from my mouth, shredding my throat, mixing with the fiery trail of tears marching angrily down my cheeks. I felt my hair blow back and rise, crackling with electricity. I screamed so loudly, Adair jumped back, falling down the stairs in a mass of elbows and knees.
I planted myself in front of Colm’s body, daring the crumpled body of a former friend to touch the only human I had truly cared about more than even myself. Adair remained huddled, bracing himself against the cacophony of noise I was forcing upon him.
Slowly, my mind became heavy. The scene around me blurred like a watercolor painting blended with too much water. The colors, shapes, and noises muddled into a grey scene darkening slowly into black, but I was still screaming. I took a deep breath when it all became too dark to see. Too dark to know if I was still me or if I was trapped once again in a nightmare.
Then I felt a flicker of sensation on my fingers.
Footsteps.
The beeping of a monitor.
A series of rumbling crashes. Was there a thunderstorm outside?
My eyes searched in the darkness for something, anything. Slowly, my fingers moved. Twitching first, then a few bends. I still couldn’t see anything, and the noises were muffled now.
I felt a punch to my gut. No.
Colm.
And I screamed.
Epilogue
I convulsed on my bed like a crash cart victim. My eyes flew open, and I braced myself against the high thread count sheets, pursing my lips and forcing my accelerated breathing through my nose.
Count to ten. Easy in, silent out. Lower your heart rate before they notice, I heard in the back of my head. Elevated levels like that will get you medication that fills your head with cotton balls that itch more than you ever thought possible.
My pajama top was twisted up, baring my torso to the cool room. It stuck everywhere else, giving me goosebumps in the heavy gusts of air conditioning. I was losing feeling in my foot, so I squinted through the darkness, noticing the sheets were coiled like a boa constrictor around my entire right leg, providing ample evidence of this evening’s nightmare.
Perfect. Situation new normal.
I tried to straighten my top, the only manageable thing to do in a darkness so complete I often forgot which way was up and which way was down. I still felt too e
xposed, but there wasn’t much else I could do.
Much better, the voice said, commenting on my normalized breathing. Now quit fidgeting. They’ll notice you’re awake. They’ll put you under worse next time if they know you can break out of the nightmares on your own.
They’re idiots if they think I need any help with nightmares, I flung back, sending the heavy sigh I so desperately wanted to release into the stillness of my room.
Don’t let them figure that out, the voice said in mild amusement. You’re the only interesting one to talk to in here. I’d hate to have to resort to conversing with Uriah. He still thinks I’m some demon taking over his brain.
Gee, thanks, I said.
You’re welcome, the voice replied.
Tell me, how are you not dreaming right now?
Oh, I don’t sleep much. I find it counterproductive to my sanity. Not much of it left, so I’m trying not to squander what’s left. You’ll have to let me know if it’s working.
Not sure I’m the best person for that, I replied with another internal sigh. I can’t even tell what’s a dream anymore.
Come on, now. That’s not the fighting spirit I know. You’ve got to think outside the box. Or outside of outside the box. You know what? Forget there ever was a box. That should help.
How am I supposed to forget the box we’re trapped in? That’s the stupidest advice I’ve ever gotten.
Maybe, but you’ll figure something out. You’ve got so much to work with, it’s really a surprise you’re even still in here with us wackos. I would’ve expected a break out weeks ago.
Sorry to disappoint. Why aren’t you coming up with an escape plan?
I defer to the experts, in most things. You’re also better equipped. You know, being a people person and all.
I laughed internally, a smile leaking onto my face. Is that what we’re calling it?
Well, it’s not wrong. Do you want to get out of here or what? the voice said, posing an excellent question.
If I did get out, what would I do? Where would I go? There were a multitude of options and infinite possibilities in not only getting there, but also figuring out where there was. I couldn’t just think of the right now. I needed a master plan. Preferably one concocted after a good night’s sleep, whenever that was going to happen.