Two

by LeighAnn Kopans

  This time I’m walking down a hallway. Wide and bright, with a slightly curved ceiling.

  Biotech. Holy shit, I’m in Biotech.

  As more dust falls into place around me, I recognize more and more. The nameplates outside each door. The scanners that took blood when going into main gathering areas. The portrait of Charlie Fisk.

  Anger surges through me as I realize why I’m seeing this scene.

  Of course Merrin wasn’t taking care of some random thing at Clandestine Services. Of course she was going back to Biotech. I let out a shaky breath, fury and panic fighting to take hold in my chest. I trusted her, but she never promised not to go. And I know she has to make her own decisions. Even when she does dangerous shit that scares me and hurts me like hell, she is her own person.

  Then, faintly, in the corner of my brain, I hear her voice. She’s mumbling something against the background of glass vials clinking. Oh, hell. She’s back at the lab. The same lab that I helped destroy. The same one they kept me in while testing formula after formula on me — ones that made me sleep, ones that caused agonizing pain, ones that did nothing.

  The same lab where I learned to pretend to be strong even when I was terrified. That particular knowledge will have to come in handy now.

  I finally round the corner, peer into the window of the lab. Merrin is there, stuffing more vials into that damn messenger bag, her body pixelated as the grains of dust fall into a clearer picture. On the other side of the room is Gallagher.

  “Grey!” Gallagher hisses across the room. “I can hear them!”

  As soon as he says it, I can, too. Footsteps and voices.

  “Let’s just get out of here with the stuff!”

  “Okay, there was just one more formula I was looking for. I know she’ll need it. Or, at least, I wanted to check it out…”

  “Come ON, Grey! I can’t get it out of here unless I’m touching it.”

  “Shit, Gallagher, it’s pointless to break in and leave here without all the stuff we need. And I am not coming back here again. Elias would freak.”

  For one brief moment, I smile. I’m freaking out already, but at least she’s thinking of me. Then, something tugs at me from behind, ripping my gut out of my body. I scream with more force than I ever knew existed, and my vision fades at the edges. The picture, with me in the center, is being pulled from my consciousness.

  The walls around me fly away; everything behind me is white. Merrin’s face, close to the far wall, remains the longest.

  Merrin turns around, her head whipping from side to side. “Gallagher? GALLAGHER!”

  But he’s gone. He’s disappeared and left her there. Two Biotech officials approach her. Her piercing scream fills my ears, the air around me, my heart, and every part of my being.

  NINETEEN

  When I open my eyes, I’m back in the homey hallways of CSH, slumped against a wall. Half the staff surrounds me, including President Masters.

  “Elias, I was just on my way to the arena to meet with you. Are you okay?

  My breathing is rapid, even though I feel every molecule of air entering and leaving my lungs. My head spins with panic. “Gallagher and Merrin. They’re at Biotech.”

  His mouth sets in a hard line, and he snarls, “What?”

  “Check the Funnel. It’ll show both of them using their powers. Combined.”

  His mouth falls open. “Combined? What the hell do you mean? That’s not possible.”

  “They just figured it out yesterday,” I say, rushing to push the words out. “Vera did, in the lab. But Gallagher and Merrin are in trouble. We have to get to them. Now.”

  Masters’ mouth presses into a hard line. “I need more information. How do you know all this?”

  “I…I saw them,” I say, willing my voice to steady. “Just like I told you I saw my sisters, except…clearer. I could hear them. It’s like the Funnel’s inside my brain, only with the ability to see exactly what they’re doing. Their surroundings, too.” I describe the whole scenario to him in short, breathless bursts — half because my mind’s racing faster than I can get the words out and half because I have no idea what else to do.

  “You’re sure this wasn’t some weird sort of dream?”

  “No. I swear to you, I saw her. And Gallagher.” I can’t believe he’s not freaking out. Two people just left his Hub, broke into Biotech, and he’s not pissed off? How can he be so calm?

  President Masters shakes his head and helps me up. “Breathe, boy. Breathe. Someone saw you go down, and then, Lord, you screamed like someone was shoving a hot poker up — anyway. Breathe.”

  I can’t get Merrin’s voice out of my head, telling me everything’s going to be okay. “Sir, I think…” I swallow against my dry throat. “I think the Funnel’s inside my head.”

  “Because of what you saw?” Masters shakes his head, like he’s saying it’s impossible, but the way he looks at me tells me he’s wondering if I’m right.

  Masters’ tablet sounds an alert, and he pulls it out. It shows a line of spiking activity probably transmitting directly from the computer down there “This is the only thing the Funnel shows. Is this what you saw? What caused you to black out?”

  “No, I swear to you, I was in that room with them. Right as it was happening.”

  “Dammit. This is when I wish we had a relationship with Biotech. They were so damn concerned with manipulating the abilities they knew you had that they didn’t bother to explore for new ones. I’m guessing they never put you through ability aptitude tests?”

  “No, sir.” My voice shakes. “What exactly are you saying?”

  “It’s just a theory — without further tests, I have no way of knowing — but I wonder if being in the Funnel is activating some ability for your brain to do the same thing it does. It’s the only way I can explain that real-time read. The Supers and location match up. Your brain works on electrical impulses, just like the Funnel interprets the atmospheric disturbances that detect the Supers. It seems that, somehow, your brain is mimicking the activity of the Funnel.”

  I now realize that what I saw were not grains of dust; they were pixels.

  This is completely freaky. And kind of cool.

  Of course, there’s the fact that there’s a computer simulation in my brain. And that it’s zeroed in on the one person I most want to see.

  “Are you saying that my brain is a computer?” My eyes widen, and I scan the hallway to see if anything strange happens. But my vision seems normal. I’m not even hearing any voices like I was. “How will we know?”

  Masters looks me hard in the eye. “Now that you told me what’s going on with Miss Grey and Mr. Gallagher, it’s not my biggest concern. I’m sure it’s not yours either.”

  I rise on shaky legs. “Of course not. What are we going to do to get them back?”

  “Elias, I think you should come back to my office with me.”

  This is definitely not good. A dozen people crowd around me, and they all part, making a pathway for Masters and me to leave. I stretch my back, expecting to feel pain, but it seems like that was all in my head, too. Now I feel perfectly fine.

  It’s a short walk — a couple of doors — which is good or else I would completely lose it in front of all those people. A million thoughts race through my head. Is Merrin still there? Is she in trouble? Shouldn’t I be able to see her? Since I can’t see her, does that mean she’s dead? Why were Hub officials pinning her down? What are they going to do with her? Does it have anything to do with the Cure formula? What’s Masters’ plan to get her back?

  Masters moves behind his desk. Distancing himself.

  Not. Good.

  “Have a seat, Elias.”

  “With all due respect, sir, there is no way I am having a seat until you tell me what we’re going to do about Merrin.”

  The communicator on Masters’ desk trills, and he looks at me with apologetic eyes, then holds up a finger. I actually don’t give a shit about apologetic eyes just this minute, and
even I — with all my Hub-official kids’ manners — throw my hands in the air and start pacing.

  “Yes, Amanda. Emergency briefing? No, I think I already know what’s going on. Mmhmm. Yes. Exactly. Do we know for certain Gallagher’s been compromised? Did they get an ID on him? Well, you tell them until they know I don’t want to hear any more. I’m dealing with the other half of this situation in my office right now.”

  I bristle. How in the hell can he be so calm when the Hub just captured Merrin? Again.

  Masters sets the communicator down and steeples his fingers. “Now, Mr. Van Dyne. Let me tell you about the Cure.”

  “To hell with the Cure, I want to know what you’re doing to get Merrin back.”

  “Gallagher is doing his best, but you have to understand that retrieving Merrin is not his central mission.”

  Rage screams through me. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me you meant for this to happen?”

  “For Merrin to get captured? No, absolutely not — although operatives are captured all the time in the line of duty.”

  I had stopped pacing, trying to tamp down my anger, but now I start up again. “Holy shit. Holy shit.”

  Masters’ eyebrows raise.

  “Sir, with all due respect, Merrin is not an operative.”

  “She absolutely is. She agreed to a life with CSH when you got here. No matter how traumatized you are right this minute, Mr. VanDyne, I know you remember that.”

  I stop and push my fingers back through my hair. “She agreed to training, we both did, so that sometime in the future she’d be able to… Oh my God.”

  “The future is now. Or rather, the time for this mission was critical. Merrin had knowledge of the inner workings and spaces of Biotech that were essential for success. Gallagher can go invisible, but without her, he wouldn’t have had any idea where he was going.”

  “Couldn’t he at least have kept her safe in there?”

  “You and I both know she had her own reasons for going. She would have only stayed invisible if Gallagher was touching her. She mustn’t have been too enthusiastic about listening to his instructions.”

  “She’s not enthusiastic about listening to anyone’s instructions. She has a problem with authority. If you had paid attention, you would have known that, and you wouldn’t have sent her into… God! Did she even know?”

  “She knew she was going on an information- and material-gathering mission for CSH, yes.”

  “What about what you don’t know? That the Cure was based on her genetics?”

  Masters’ eyebrows shoot up. “We knew she was carrying some formulas that Biotech wanted. We did not know that they developed the Cure using her samples, no.”

  “We didn’t either until this morning,” I admit. We stare at each other for a long moment.

  I blow out a long breath. My stomach jostles and turns, and I feel like collapsing and running a marathon all at once. I’m so pissed at her and so desperate to get her back that my mind races and I can’t think straight.

  “So what are we going to do?” It’s never okay to confront a Hub president — just another thing I couldn’t care less about right now.

  “I’m afraid there’s not much we can do.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Gallagher still has not collected some essential information. When he obtains it, if he can collect Merrin on his way back, he’ll do so. But the object of the mission was always to collect the information on the Cure and return here safely, so that’s what he will do.”

  I must be missing something. “So you’re just going to…leave her there?”

  “Merrin is performing the most crucial mission we’ve had in decades — the culmination of a long series of events. Will you let me explain?”

  I’m speechless. Breath rushes out of me like I’ve been punched in the gut, and I nod numbly.

  “We’ve had people on the inside at the Biotech Hub for years. Specifically, the Doctors Grey. They let President Fisk use Merrin’s genetic material to form a cure, bargaining for her to be kept out of the experiments on Ones as she grew. Development on that cure is nearing completion, and your escape from the Hub complicated things for us on the information-gathering front, I’m afraid. This is our absolute last chance to obtain what we sent Gallagher and Merrin in for. The Biotech Hub has been working on it for years. Did you have history lessons there in Superior, Nebraska, Elias?”

  “Of course we had history lessons. What the hell does that have to do with anything?” His calm is totally pissing me off.

  “Tell me. How were the first Supers created?”

  If I clench my fists hard enough, maybe I’ll be able to restrain myself from punching the asshole. “Uranium Wars. Spill of radioactive waste material into the Great Lakes. Water contamination, chromosomal anomalies, and genetic mutations resulted in enhanced abilities. It was passed on to future generations, and now we have Supers.”

  “Wrong.”

  My mouth drops open. I swear, if he’s messing with me, I will totally lose it. “Okay…”

  “The following information cannot leave this room, Mr. VanDyne. Do you understand?”

  “I signed a confidentiality agreement after my debrief, didn’t I?” I can’t remember the last time I was this disrespectful. To anyone.

  “Mr. VanDyne.”

  Now I’m yelling. “Yes, I understand, okay?” I stop my pacing and stare at him, waiting for a straight explanation. He takes a deep breath and leans forward in his chair.

  “The United States government led the initiative to create Supers. The government tested several formulas on several subjects and, after many years, thought they had failed. But it turns out they hadn’t accounted for the correct incubation period. It took years for some, but mutations slowly showed up in their genomes, finally hitting a critical enough tipping point to manifest as actual abilities. By the time the research team realized their folly — the idiots — the population had returned home and begun displaying a wide range of powers, as well as having children who also possessed mutated genes.

  “As I’m sure you well know, Supers scare the living daylights out of most people.”

  My chest seizes, my heart beating faster and faster. Merrin had told me that, on one of those lazy nights that we spent lying in a cornfield watching the sunset. We weren’t like everyone else, and everyone else hated it. Normals hated Supers, and we were stuck in the middle.

  I’d never quite believed her. Even with the graffiti and occasional slurs at Nelson, no one really knew about my One, so I was never a victim. I thought Merrin was just being dramatic. I silently swear never to underestimate Merrin again. For now, I just nod once so Masters will continue.

  “Social unrest happens in cycles, it seems, and once again, the presence of Supers and the possibility of what our abilities can do is beginning to cause quite a disturbance in the population at large. Before this little issue with Merrin, I was going to tell you that your sisters would have to be…how shall I say this…dealt with for just that reason.”

  This is all too much. I don’t know exactly what ‘dealing with’ my sisters would mean, exactly. But I can guess well enough, and it’s all too much.

  “About twelve years ago, our assets told us that the government was beginning a project with the Biotech Hub in Nebraska to create a formula that would, essentially, erase the special abilities of Supers with a simple injection.”

  “The Cure,” I breathe.

  “Yes, the Cure. And the small amount of information that we have been able to glean over the years tells us that Biotech has developed it, or is close to developing it, in airborne form. They plan to distribute it throughout schools and public places across the country.”

  “Why? Why Biotech?” My mind races with thoughts of my parents again. There are so many things fighting for space in my brain, and I decide I’ll have to figure out their involvement another day.

  I am glad, for Merrin, that at least her parents were always on her side.


  “Biotech had the capability and wanted more government funding. Always more government funding. So they struck a deal. Fisk creates the Cure, gasses other Supers with it, so long as the government grants him and his people immunity. They give him a big pot of cash in the end, and the Supers running Biotech are the only ones left and therefore the most powerful in the country.”

  “Oh my God.” The image of those chemicals pumping into schools, hospitals, shopping malls, and Supers unknowingly breathing them in, makes me sick.

  “Exactly. We were hoping, from the time you four escaped, that one of you would be able to help us get back inside and find our way to the relevant information. And Merrin has.”

  “And now they’ve captured her. So are you going to be able to get her back?” I clench my jaw. I already know the answer. My mind’s running through all the things I could do because, even though this is a pretty direct result of not doing a single damn thing I asked her, there’s no denying that going back to Biotech to help shut down a cure for all Supers was a ballsy thing to do.

  When I realize that, even though I might have some cool and unexpected and still incredibly freaky computer capabilities in my brain, I still can’t control them, and I slump into a chair in front of his desk. I’m useless, all over again. Just like I was back at Biotech. Just like I’ve been my whole life.

  “It’s never our goal to leave anyone behind,” Masters says, folding his hands on the desk. “But operatives are left all the time in the name of achieving the mission, I’m afraid.”

  I want to tell him where to stuff his “goals” and “I’m afraids” and “missions.” His expression of sadness isn’t fooling me for one second. I want to tell him I regretted ever trusting him. I want to, but I can’t. He’s the only chance I have to get to Merrin.

  Unless I can get back down to the Funnel and search for her myself. But the only way I’m going to do that is to stop freaking the hell out.

  I force myself to get control over my breath and my posture. I fix my gaze on his face and try to put a pleasant, if determined, expression on mine. Duty to CSH, Elias. Think duty to CSH.

  “I know the Hub is doing everything they can to get Merrin back. How can I help with the concerns regarding my sisters?”