Altered

by Marnee Blake

  There was no way they were getting out of this. Sam Houston had amazing security. It was a military base, after all. If they tried to slink out, let alone slink out while carrying a nearly unconscious and wounded woman, they’d be sitting ducks, caught for sure.

  He stood, thinking. His brain offered him nothing that got them out—all three of them—alive.

  But when he took himself out of the equation, the outcome sifted out easily enough. He would cause a diversion, distract the security detail while Nick secreted Blue out. If they didn’t use the main gate, they’d have a good chance. Even going over the wall somewhere. Blue was hurt, but Nick was well trained, competent. He would get her out and to safety.

  They would be all right. Without him.

  He turned to Nick. “You’re going out this window. Head farther into the base. Get over the wall, find a car. Go.”

  Nick scowled. “I’m not leaving you here.”

  Blue shook her head, struggling to sit up. “No. No.”

  He gritted his teeth. “You have to. It’s the only way. I’ll distract them. You guys get away.”

  Nick looked fierce, his brown eyes angry. “This is some serious shit.”

  Seth had to get him to go. It was the only chance. “You have to do this for me,” he whispered. “This girl”—he kept his eyes on his friend—“she’s special. To me. Get her out. Get her help. Then get somewhere safe.” He smiled. “I’ll find you when I can.”

  Even as he said the words, they didn’t ring true. He probably wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long time.

  There was banging at the door.

  “Go. Now. I’ll hold them off.”

  “No.” Blue stumbled off the desk, standing, pushing off his hands when he tried to help. “No…you don’t. Stop right there.”

  He glared at her precious face. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Yeah, so stop fucking around. We do this…together.” She met his eyes, hers glazed with pain. “You have to trust me. I trust you.” She said it defensively, glaring at him. “Now put your big stupid mind to work. You know what I can do, so figure it out.” Her grip on his arm was surprisingly fierce. “But so help me God, Seth, if you don’t get yourself out of here, too, I will hurt you myself. I won’t have…this bullshit.”

  As he stared into her eyes, met her intensity, he let himself, for one moment, stop feeling guilty, stop feeling like everything was his fault.

  Stop feeling like he had to solve every problem alone.

  It was heaven. And it allowed him to see the possibilities. All the possibilities. He might have gotten them into this mess, but he sure as hell could get them out.

  He closed his eyes for a long moment, running through the scenarios. When he let himself include Blue, he could see it come together like a puzzle. “The window, Blue. Can you take out the window, make us a hole to get out?”

  She smiled, beatific at first and then rebellious, that mix of hers that he found completely irresistible. “Why, of course.”

  The gun felt heavy in his hand, and he tucked it into his waistband. He hoped he didn’t have to use it. He hated where this had come, to him maybe using a weapon against men like him, men he might have served with. But, as Blue had told him, sometimes shitty things just happened. Best to have the weapon, if he needed it.

  He faced the door, considering the best ways to slow them down and predicting their next moves. If he was in their place, he’d gas him. They knew how much he could do. He’d been an idiot and told them what he could do. They would want to disable him and then contain him.

  Yeah, that wouldn’t work for him.

  “They’re going to gas us.”

  As the banging continued at the door, louder now, he glanced around the room. A spare uniform jacket hung over the back of the desk chair. He yanked it down, finding the bars of a major. He ripped the back of it into shreds. He threw two pieces to Nick, who wrapped one around Blue’s face and the other around his mouth and nose. Seth followed suit. He overheard Nick explain quietly how the gas would affect Blue’s eyes.

  The door next to the knob splintered, and the door flew open. He didn’t wait for the tear gas grenade.

  Diving up, he jumped high in the air as the pop of the gas gun sounded. He twisted in a somersault near the ceiling, coming down on the two soldiers in the doorway feetfirst. Knocking them to the floor, he burst into a whirlwind, moving forward quickly as he punched and kicked his way forward.

  “Blue, now,” he ordered.

  He took down three, four, eight men in quick succession. He buried his fist in one man’s stomach and used him as a battering ram to knock down two more.

  Behind him a huge explosion split the air, sucking the gas out of the room like a vacuum.

  Seemed Blue really could make an escape route.

  He was holding his own, but he was taking some hits. A punch to his kidney, a blow to the back of his shoulders. And no matter how many he took down, another soldier took his place. He backed up, spinning, kicking and punching, jumping and fighting. If he’d been the sort to admire his work, he’d be amazed with himself. No fatigue. He felt pain, but it was manageable. He was a machine.

  Then a gunshot split the air, and fire burned through his calf. He stumbled but continued, determined to get them out of there. He pulled his own gun from his waist, dropped to his knee, and shot three in the legs. They dropped like stones, making a hole in the horde, and he barreled forward, pocketing his gun again. As he fought, he could feel how fast he struck out, too fast, faster than he’d ever moved before.

  Whatever else it was, this drug was really something.

  As men dived on him, he was covered for a moment. He should have been captured, but instead he stood, with a twist, and shrugged them all off, as if they weighed nothing. They flew through the air, like trash on the wind. Earlier, he hadn’t been able to avoid a zip tie. Now, he was throwing people around like they were paper airplanes.

  Something had changed. As if he’d only touched the surface of how strong he could be before and now he finally had full access.

  And it was amazing.

  He didn’t have time to admire his handiwork, though, because then he was running through the hole Blue had made in the wall.

  Bullets exploded through the air, all around him, but nothing hit him. He jumped over the rubble of the wall, sailing through the air as if floating.

  He landed twenty-five yards away, out of the rubble but not clear of the men. Troops approached, materializing from the darkness like cockroaches. It seemed like hundreds.

  That’s when he saw Blue, standing in the middle of the grounds a hundred yards in front of him, next to the parking lot. Her feet were spread apart, her arms out, and her hair stood straight up around her face, as if she suffered from serious static electricity. She was covered in grime, and blood stained the front of her shirt, but she still looked like an avenging angel as military men, weapons, and debris swirled in the air around her.

  He’d told her an escape route. What was she doing?

  Then he knew. She was saving him.

  He raced toward her as a rumbling like a freight train sounded behind him. Or maybe not a freight train—more like an…earthquake.

  Only then did he glance back to see the building crumble, large chunks crashing to the ground and windows exploding. He’d seen bombs do less damage than Blue.

  It would be magnificent if he wasn’t scared shitless for her.

  On all sides, as men almost overtook him, they would fly away from him, as if they’d bounced off an invisible wall. The few who actually reached him he tossed aside, never slowing. As he sped toward her, she started to wobble on her feet. He overtook her, tossed her over his shoulder, running as fast as he could away from the destruction. Nick knelt next to a Hummer in the parking lot, and he veered toward him. As the chaos quieted behind him, Blue’s body went limp.

  She wasn’t breathing.

  Terror coursed through him, making his head buzz,
and he wanted to vomit.

  He hadn’t told her. She wasn’t breathing, he might have lost her, and he hadn’t told her how important she was to him.

  Sweeping into the backseat of the Hummer Nick had hot-wired, he straddled her too still body, leaning over her. He placed his fingers to her neck. A pulse, faint but present. She still wasn’t breathing, though.

  “Go,” he gasped at Nick as the other man slipped into the driver’s seat. Nick didn’t need to be told twice. They peeled out of the parking lot.

  As they drove, Seth wiped the blood from Blue’s nose and started rescue breathing.

  Chapter Twenty

  There was no window in this room. The cement blocks that surrounded her should have kept everyone out. They were thick; she’d felt them under her fingers. But still, she heard everything.

  The stupid orderly Dr. Fields had hired to watch her was still here, playing Minecraft. He didn’t care at all about the little girl in the room with only a bed and a sheet and a nightgown. To him, this seemed stupid. He fed her and had to go in, every half an hour, and wake her if she slept. Then he had to think of a number and get her to guess. Like she was the bearded lady at the fair. He’d thought the last number—7532—would stump her. But, of course, she’d gotten it. She’d been tempted to pretend. But if she got it wrong, the doctor had told her he’d wake her every ten minutes. She didn’t want to be disturbed that often.

  The doctor.

  His thoughts were the ones that had roused her. She’d only been able to doze since arriving, and it was starting to take its toll. But she wouldn’t relax, not enough to sleep.

  Now she was glad. She feared what she would miss if she was sleeping. She already felt out of control. She wouldn’t allow things to happen without her knowledge.

  The door swung open. The doctor stepped in, carrying her food tray. He set it on the ground in front of him. He hadn’t gotten close to her since the day he’d retrieved her from Goldstone, and she preferred it that way. He’d put her here, in this cage, after explaining that another survivor had taken advantage of his hospitality already. She could see Parker Sinclair’s face in his mind, and she’d listened as his thoughts turned nasty toward the older man.

  Interesting. Fields had seen Sinclair as a kindred spirit, a fellow scholar. Sinclair had used that trust to steal Fields’s research, including a large supply of his drug.

  Kitty had never met the hermit who lived in the hills outside Glory. Word in town was he had left a successful career in academia to retreat into the wilderness. Like Thoreau or something.

  She wondered what Sinclair wanted with Fields’s research. Nothing good, she imagined.

  When Fields stepped back from her food, she watched him before scurrying forward to grab the cup of water, quickly returning to her bed. He rationed all her food, all her drink. Which meant she was constantly hungry, thirsty. The cup was Styrofoam, with a straw. Nothing she could use to hurt herself or anyone else. She drank thirstily.

  When he stood again, he smiled at her. She didn’t return it, pulling her knees closer to herself on the little cot in the corner. “Good evening, Ms. Laughton.”

  She could feel the zeal in him, the self-satisfaction. He believed she’d be thankful to him for these gifts. That she would worship him. She had to keep herself from gagging.

  “It’s evening?” She didn’t even hide the disdain. Why should she care? He was going to do whatever he wanted to do anyway.

  “It is.” He flipped through a chart, considering. He read through the results of the orderly’s questions. She got them all right. Astounding.

  He took credit for her actions. She wanted to scream.

  His next tests ran through his head. How strong were her abilities? How far away could the mind be before she could no longer hear thoughts? How much of her brain was used while reading thoughts?

  His eagerness was creepy. He considered himself her creator, which was even more disturbing.

  “Lovely progress, Ms. Laughton.” He rearranged the paperwork again. “I believe we’re ready to begin the next phase of our testing.”

  She got fleeting visions of an MRI tube, of a gurney and different drug cocktails. Of machines she’d never seen before and didn’t know the purposes of.

  The doctor smiled. “But first you must sleep.”

  She wanted to laugh at him. Then her eyes began to droop. In his head, she heard him laughing about the water, the sedative he’d put in it. He congratulated himself on tricking her, on figuring out that she couldn’t hear thoughts unless they occupied the mind at that moment.

  If she’d been inclined, she might have told him that. It was, after all, how Jeremy had tricked her.

  She was too trusting. People would use that against her every time.

  She’d learn, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep. She’d learn.

  Blue tripped out of the darkness in fits and starts.

  The first time she could pry her eyes open, she registered someone beside her, holding her hand. They squeezed so tightly, she thought it might hurt any other time. But it didn’t hurt now. Maybe because everything else hurt so much that she couldn’t even feel her fingers.

  The next time she stumbled forward, she heard voices.

  “Her blood pressure hasn’t stabilized yet. Kent is trying, but without better equipment there’s not much he can do.” Nick sounded worried, more worried than usual. Who were they talking about? “The seizures aren’t helping anything, either.”

  “I can go. I’ll get whatever he needs.” Seth sounded ill.

  “I know you don’t want to leave her, but…”

  “Yeah. I’m the best equipped.”

  Wait, were they talking about her? She tried to open her eyes, tried to tell them she was fine. But she couldn’t move.

  It was her. The realization terrified her and filled her with defiance at the same time. No way was she stuck here, no way was she as bad off as they sounded. But when she tried to get up, she found herself tumbling into the dark again.

  Seth’s voice, filled with panic, was the last thing she heard.

  Pain became the main part of her existence, until the time that it wasn’t. At some point in the seemingly endless agony, peace spread through her. She’d never felt anything so alluring…or seductive. She wanted to stay there in the blissful nothing, but Seth’s pleading voice told her to come back to him. He pulled at her and made her push out of it, somehow. Then she was back to the pain, but Seth sounded pleased, wherever he was, and if he was happy, she was happy, too.

  Much later, though, she didn’t know how long, her eyes opened again.

  She was in a bed in a stark room. Nearby, a machine beeped, and needles and lines ran from her arm. In a chair next to her, Seth was sleeping. She turned her head, testing to see if she’d be able to move. She’d been trapped inside her skull for so long, movement felt new again.

  Even in slumber, he looked tired. Really tired. As if he’d been the one slipping in and out of consciousness for the past eternity.

  “Seth?” Was that her voice? She sounded…wimpy.

  His eyes shot open. “Thank God. You’re awake.”

  “Yeah.” She licked her lips. “Water?”

  He stared at her, not moving, wonder on his face. “You’re awake.”

  He was acting strange. “Yeah,” she croaked. “Help?”

  “Oh.” He hopped up, hobbled out, and returned a minute later with a glass of water. He held it to her lips with infinite care, helping her take sips. She wanted to yell at him for treating her like an infant, but then she realized she didn’t have much energy after all. A little help might be nice.

  “How long?” The events before she lost consciousness were a little fuzzy. She remembered being at Sam Houston, remembered being shot, remembered running across the field toward the parking lot.

  So, fine. Running was probably an overstatement. If she remembered correctly, she’d pretty much stumbled along while Nick dragged her across the grass. T
echnicalities.

  But then she’d heard Seth cry out and turned to see him fall under a pile of soldiers.

  Right.

  The rest of the details filled in fast. The wash of pure rage. The wave of determination. Then she’d been possessed by that rogue part of her, the part that didn’t give a damn about anything except the people she loved.

  And she’d made it rain concrete and glass, sent men flying like a house of cards on the wind.

  “It’s been four days now.”

  Four days. That was a long time. “Tell me.”

  “Christ, Blue. What the hell? You took out Sam Houston. One building will need extensive renovations. From what we’ve heard, almost forty people needed first aid, at least ten people were hospitalized, and two are in critical condition. No one was killed, but…” He left that hanging in the air.

  She looked away. No one was killed. At least that was something.

  What a mess she was. She used to know, without a doubt, that violence was wrong. But sometime in the past week, she’d become someone else. Someone who destroyed entire buildings, who hospitalized people.

  But she didn’t care. She hadn’t wanted to hurt them, but they’d shot Seth. They’d shot her. They would have killed them if they’d had to.

  Violence to protect herself, to protect her friends…well, it was different.

  She was different.

  “I was worried. So many of them.” She shrugged, even as fire stole up from her shoulder. “I needed to get you out.”

  He smiled. “So you wrecked a building? Remind me not to get you mad.” She chuckled, remembering when she said something similar to him after he took out the helicopter at Kitty’s house.

  She pointed at herself. “Anger management issues.”

  “Right. You rage-filled vegetarians, scary things.”

  “Are you all right?” He’d been shot, at least twice that she saw.

  He raised his hands, showing two bandages and pointing to one on his calf, peeking out from his athletic shorts. “Yeah. I heal fast.”

  She relaxed and smiled, but as she looked at him, she had a lot of questions. “Why did you go? Why didn’t you tell me?” It still hurt, that he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her his plans. In fact, he hadn’t trusted her at all.