Silver and Gold (Red and Black Book 3)

by Nancy O'Toole Meservier

  Jailers?

  “Now, let’s see,” she said, shifting until she was perfectly framed by the large window in the background. “Why could you be here? For answers? Perhaps revenge?”

  My mouth twitched into a scowl.

  “You said answers,” Lilah said after a pause. “Are you willing to give them?”

  “I can see the writing on the wall,” she said. “My time in this story is coming to an end. Might as well tell it before the final page is turned.”

  Dawn

  “Sam?” Bixby asked, eyes wide.

  A pool of blood had begun spreading beneath the man’s head. As it flowed toward Anna, she scrambled back in horror, tiny whimpering noises escaping her mouth.

  Several shots came flying through the double doors. I jumped forward, reaching for Bixby, who still stood in the center of the hallway. I yanked us both back and to the left through a broken doorway.

  “Move!” Diego hollered.

  Gerry scrambled after me. The rest of the party bolted to the other side of the hallway, through the door that Gardiner had recently leapt out of. I made eye contact with Karen as she dragged a sobbing Anna over the threshold. Diego darted in last, slamming the door behind him. Gerry did the same on our side of the hall. I sprang to my feet, running to a nearby cabinet, massive in size. It let out a screech as I dragged it across the floor.

  “Hope that works,” I said, straightening up.

  And then froze when I realized that the red on my chest wasn’t entirely due to my costume.

  Bixby lay on the floor, at least two bullet wounds peppering her chest. She reached out to touch the damp blood, her mouth opening and closing in little gasps.

  I hadn’t been fast enough.

  “S-shit,” she said.

  “Bixby,” I said, reaching for her. “We need to stop this. Gerry, do you—”

  I looked up at the bespeckled biology teacher. He frowned in response, shaking his head.

  “Fuck,” Bixby said. “With all this talk of dying I didn’t think…” She paused, swallowing. “No, I did. Dreamed about it every damn night. I knew I was going to die behind these walls. I just didn’t know that it would hurt so much.”

  “Bixby, don’t—”

  “Guess it’s why I’ve always been kind of a bitch.” She let out a strained chuckle. “Because I’ve been so damn scared. Casey helped, some. But since he died…”

  Which was when she began pushing for the escape. And I had thought it had to do with my powers.

  She reached out for me, smearing her blood across my arm.

  “Tell my daughters,” she said. “Don’t leave them thinking that their bitch of a mother just left them at the bus stop. They need to know I didn’t give up trying to get to them. They had to know I was a…fighter. They need to know that I still—”

  And with that, she died, eyes wide open. I swallowed and looked away.

  That’s two, I couldn’t help but think. And it had happened in a matter of minutes.

  Shots rang out in the hallway, causing me to jump.

  “Eventually, they’re going to stop shooting and head this way,” Gerry said, looking around. “These rooms should connect…right?”

  I felt my stomach sink at the uncertainty in his voice. This was his plan, after all. He had been concerned that we wouldn’t just be able to head straight down the hallway, had known that we might need a contingency plan. Circling through the labs was one of them.

  And now he couldn’t remember?

  “Yes,” I said, trying and failing to sound in control of my emotions. “There’s a door over here.”

  I pointed across the room to a white door. It was one that required one of those handy dandy access codes.

  I tore it off its hinges instead, hoping there was no one on the other side.

  The second room was completely dark but, just like the last, the second we stepped inside, the lights switched on, illuminating a man lying in the center of the room on one of those tables. Only he wasn’t restrained.

  Of course, he didn’t need to be. If the machines around him were any indication, he was in some sort of a coma.

  “Is…he another prisoner?” I asked Gerry. “Do you recognize him?’

  “Not at all.”

  We moved across the room, and I instantly felt silly for my question. Based on what Gerry had told me about the rest of the subjects at Project Regen, he didn’t match the profile at all.

  For one thing, he was way too old. His hair was pure silver. Combine that with the weathering on his face, and I’d put him in his fifties. Of course, the fact that he was literally wasting away probably added a few years to him. He was on a respirator that filled the room with the sound of his slow, steady breaths. IVs marked his arms, including one connected to a bag of blood. At the edge of his bed was a chart, just like in the hospital. Gerry picked it up and began thumbing through it.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “His name is Leonard Haywood,” Gerry remarked. “And I…this is a little beyond what I teach, but if what I’m reading is correct…”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I think,” he said, “we’re looking at the source of the vaccine.”

  Alex

  “Does this mean you’ll answer honestly?” Lilah stepped forward. “About Project Regen. Everything.”

  Dr. Hale let out a small smile. “Of course.”

  “You’re being awfully cooperative.” I crossed my arms.

  “I heard about your break-in to the facility earlier today,” the doctor said. “The last time something like this happened, I stayed silent and took all the blame. This time, I’m making a different choice.”

  “Fairview Chemical.”

  “Fairview.” She chuckled. “Child’s play. Although without it, we never would have had a Project Regen.”

  “So much for research on Parkinson’s.”

  “It’s not terribly surprising, is it? Corporations like SynergyCorp have been trying to figure out a way to make Actuals ever since you and your partner came on the scene.” She nodded to Lilah. “We just never had the proper means and the appropriate subjects until a couple of years ago.”

  I’ll admit. That one made me angry. That was Dawn she was talking about, after all. Sparks began to form at the edges of my vision.

  But Lilah picked up on something else. “Appropriate subjects. You’re talking about the dead tree list.”

  “Of course. The Forgers’ unique problem. Figuring out how to trigger powers in people who were too old, or otherwise failed one of your Awakenings. How to stop those bloodlines from fading into obscurity. Of course, we had to go beyond the list when we ran out of easily accessible young and healthy individuals.”

  “Bobby Donnelly. But how did you—”

  “It amazes me how shortsighted your people can be. Did you not think some of the people denied Awakenings, some of your exiles, would not desire retribution? Especially for a good cause.”

  “A good cause?” I felt my temper rise. “I just watched a video of you torturing a man. How the hell can you call that a good cause?”

  “Why Faultline,” she said, tilting her head to the right. “Can’t you see how the world is changing?”

  “How—”

  A shadow leapt from the nearby wall, aiming for Dr. Hale, tackling her to the floor. A split second later, a figure burst through the large window that had been framing her, shattering the glass into a thousand pieces. Lilah and I jumped back instinctively, drawing away from a man dressed in dented armor. I immediately recognized him from Dawn’s description. This was the guy she had faced off with in the park the other night.

  And if I remembered correctly, he had been more than able to take a punch.

  Dawn

  “What do you mean he’s the source of the vaccine?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, we heard a thud behind us. I looked through the now-gaping threshold to the other room. The cabinet I had placed in front of the hallway
door shook.

  “Yeah, kinda regretting tearing that other door off its hinges now,” I said.

  “Your barrier will be able to hold them, but not forever,” Gerry said, tucking the chart beneath an arm. “We need to keep moving.”

  He nodded at a door to his right.

  It led us straight into an all-too-familiar lab. I did my best to ignore the instruments we passed, the scalpels and hammers that had been used to cut my skin and break my bones. They wouldn’t help us much against firearms anyway. Instead, we pushed through a series of rooms, eventually circling back toward the main hallway.

  Almost running into a trio of guards in the process.

  “Look out!” Gerry shouted as a Black Hat swung his firearm straight toward my chest. I grabbed the barrel of the gun and wrenched it upward. I winced as I felt—and heard—the weapon fire before tearing it from his hands. Shoving the guard aside, I threw him into the other Black Hats. They collapsed like bowling pins.

  I grabbed Gerry’s hand and pulled him down the hall. My sense of direction had always been strong, and it was telling me that we were close to the exit. So close!

  “We’re almost there,” Gerry said, confirming my thoughts. “We just need to take a right up here and we should be near the entrance of the garage.”

  “Perfect,” I replied.

  I followed Gerry’s direction to a T, running around the next corner. And then immediately came to a halt.

  Because on the floor, propped up against the wall, was one of my companions, a bullet hole in her forehead.

  “Anna,” I said softly at the sight of the woman’s face, frozen in fear, her blood a deeper red than her hair.

  “That’s…troubling,” Gerry said.

  The look I gave him must have been horrified.

  “Beyond the obvious, I mean,” he said. “It appears that Anna had another one of her panic attacks. At this point, she was clearly not in any condition to flee.”

  “Yet they killed her anyway,” I said, the obvious dawning on me. “That means that they’re not just killing us to keep us from leaving.”

  “They’ve started the purge a little early. And we can expect no mercy. Look.”

  He nodded farther down the hallway to where Luiz lay, his back riddled with bullet holes. I felt a pang. Had he tried to stop and help Anna? I walked up next to him and searched for a pulse. His body was still warm, but the damage didn’t lie. Luiz had likely died seconds after Anna.

  Before I could respond, a crash sounded on the other end of the hallway. I jerked in response.

  “Goodbye Anna, Luiz,” I said, wishing that I had bothered to learn the word in Portuguese. I turned back to Gerry and nodded.

  He nodded back, and we started to run. There was no time to mourn, despite the ache in my chest.

  Fortunately, the last stretch of our journey was Black Hat-free. We jogged up to the end of the hallway toward a room that should be located right off the garage. I reached for the door, only to have it swing open in my face.

  “Whoa!” I said, gearing for an attack.

  And then paused when I saw Mark, blinking on the other side.

  “Do I look like an enemy now?” he asked.

  For a moment, I felt a twinge. Just two months ago, that line would have been delivered with humor. I could even picture the smile spreading onto his lips, the way his blond hair would fall just in front of his eyes. Now his face was blank, and he sounded almost confused by his own words. If we got out of here, was there a way that we could bring back the old Mark?

  “Sorry.” I lowered my fists.

  “We locked the door to keep out the Black Hats,” he explained.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  In response, he took a step back, allowing me to step inside.

  It was more than enough to answer my question.

  A short stairway led me down into a sort of a control room, filled with various black and white screens revealing parts of the garage and the lab itself. Karen stood in front of those screens, her gun resting on the desktop. Diego, next to her, turned and nodded to Gerry and me as we came in the room.

  And in between the two of them was a Black Hat—no, some sort of security guard—slumped over the keyboard, completely still.

  “We found Anna and Luiz,” Gerry said. “The people who took out Sam…they got Bixby too.”

  Karen started slightly, then shook her head.

  “We’re glad to see you two aren’t dead,” Diego said. “Pod Four needs to stick together.”

  I looked up to where Karen stood and saw that even though her eyes were on the screens, she shifted back and forth. Her arms were crossed over her chest. As I approached, her head immediately jerked toward me, her red hair swaying slightly.

  “Glad to see you two are okay,” she said with a tense smile.

  “Karen,” I replied. “Are you—”

  My eyes darted toward the body, unable to finish my sentence.

  “We’ve got company,” Diego began, his eyes not on the screens but the garage itself.

  I looked up and nearly swore, because across the garage were a good half dozen Black Hats. And they were headed our way.

  “They’re armed,” I said, finding my eyes darting to the semi-automatic rifles at their sides.

  “Well,” Diego replied. “We aren’t exactly harmless—”

  I spun around at the sound of a dull thud. It had come from behind the door. Mark frowned at it, pressing a hand against its solid surface.

  “Do your powers work through glass?” Karen asked Diego.

  “No.” He scowled.

  “Regardless, we need to move.” Gerry looked out the windows and pointed toward a pile of crates at the bottom of a set of stairs. “We can take cover over here.”

  “I can serve as a shield,” Mark said, removing his jacket and crossing the room. “Everyone get ready.”

  “Wait,” I said, resting a hand on his arm. “Mark, there’s a pattern. The more injuries you sustain, the more you end up losing yourself. Taking more damage at this point…I don’t know what the results would be.”

  He hesitated before responding. “I know. But I can’t just give up. Perhaps that means there’s some of me left.” Something like a smile quirked on his face, but only for a second. “Can you cover the rear?”

  I swallowed, then nodded. “Of course.”

  “Then get ready,” Mark said, and reached for the door.

  He was only out three steps before the bullets started flying. I watched as they tore through his clothing, his face, Karen and Gerry huddled behind him, Diego behind me. We made our way down the stairs and crossed the twenty feet between us and the crates as quickly as we could. I jerked back as something hit me in the shoulder but kept moving, my sights trained on those sets of crates.

  I looked at my shoulder and found myself strangely shocked. Of course, I had felt the bullet hit, but it wasn’t until I saw the blood that the pain hit me. I let out a hiss, then covered it with my cape, hoping that my healing powers would kick in soon enough.

  And when they did, just seconds later, I noticed something strange. My body seemed to blur, the red and black costume disappearing for a fraction of a second, to be replaced by the sweats I had been wearing for the last couple of days.

  “Dawn?” Mark asked. “Why did you do that?”

  I turned toward him and held back a gasp. The skin had been completely removed from his right cheek, revealing a deep brown-red exoskeleton underneath. I couldn’t help it. I reached out in shock and brushed my fingers against his face.

  “Karen!” I heard Gerry gasp from behind me.

  I turned around to see both him and Diego crouched around Karen, who lay on the floor, her already-pale skin rapidly getting whiter. I looked down and found myself gasping.

  Mark and I hadn’t been the only ones to get shot.

  Karen reached out for the multiple gunshot wounds in her chest, her fear awakening her abilities. The white of her sweater turned
purple as she touched it.

  “Oh,” Mark said. “Sorry.”

  And then the gunfire tapered off.

  “It’s okay,” Karen said. “I—shit!”

  She gasped, her body writhing in pain. Next to her, Gerry took off his thinning button down and tore it in half.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get you out of here.” Gerry turned to Diego, his eyes bright. “Weren’t you supposed to do something impressive? Quick, before they reload.”

  “Right,” Diego said, beginning to stand up.

  I followed suit, only to have him rest a hand on my shoulder.

  “Not now, brave girl,” he said. “I don’t want you caught up in this.”

  And with that, he moved forward, hands pressed together in front of him. And then he shoved them outward, the familiar blue bubble expanding.

  And expanding, and expanding…

  I heard gasping and couldn’t help myself. I peeked over the crates to see the six men from the security footage. They were gathered around a car, some of them hiding behind the vehicle’s doors. Not that that helped now. They collapsed to the ground, grabbing at their throats in the universal “I’m choking” indicator. Their bodies stopped moving, and Diego drew the blue sphere back into himself. Faster than before, I couldn’t help but think, remembering how Diego had taken down the guards at the glass doors. Maybe a little too fast, in fact.

  “Diego?” I asked, looking up.

  He looked down at me, blood pouring from his nose like a waterfall. He let out a gory smile.

  “Phew,” he said. “Didn’t think I could hold that many at once.”

  He let out a sudden, harsh cough. Blood flew out from his mouth. He coughed twice, three times.

  And then collapsed onto the ground, his eyes frozen open in death.

  Alex

  Lilah didn’t waste any time. She threw herself toward the armored man, her fists flying in a flurry of gold. He dodged them, but was clumsy about it, and her last strike hit true. I watched as his head jerked backward.

  Looked like she could take care of him, at least for now.

  Which left me with Dawn’s brother.

  It felt wrong doing it, protecting Dr. Hale after everything she had told us. But I could also see the writing on the wall. As much as I might not subscribe to Dawn’s theory that everyone was worth saving, I could see that this woman had more value alive than dead.