Predominance

by H. I. Defaz

  “NOOOOOO!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, popping up from beneath the plastic cover. The shooter, who didn't let go of the trigger until his magazine was exhausted, recognized me the second he saw me. My slow motion trance ended the second my feet touched the ground. I held Denali's mangled body in my arms while the shooter hastened toward me.

  Denali gargled blood for a long second before his eyes closed forever. A lone tear escaped the corner of one eye, and in that moment I hated Damian more than I had ever hated anyone in my life.

  New heights of pain and anger roared through me. I tried to control my rage, but it was useless; I could feel it soothing my pain, taking control. My eyes began to burn again, this time with the same intensity they had back in the Lab during my first escape. I directed my blazing gaze toward the shooter, who was now just a few feet away from me. “I've got Bellator,” he said, pressing his earpiece. The empty magazine he'd used to kill Denali dropped to the ground as he reached for a new one behind his belt.

  Everything I saw from that moment on I saw as a spectator only, sitting behind my eyes, with absolutely no control of the actions my body took—or of the secondary reasoning I felt gearing up in the back of my head. My hand rose before the shooter, who was just about to fire his weapon. I glared at him and clenched my fist tightly, so hard my arm trembled with the strain. The shooter dropped his gun then and brought his hands to his throat, as if trying to remove invisible hands from around his neck. With his face reflecting nothing but pure horror and desperation, he began to gasp like a fish out of water. I could feel the connection that my mind had established between my hand and his windpipe. And though my anger was in control of me now, I still understood the consequences of what I was planning to do, and how easy it would be. All I had to do was squeeze a little tighter, and my friend would be avenged.

  But something blocked me, resuming the game of mercy in my head once again. Suddenly, I found myself stuck in the middle of a mental conflict. Part of me condoned the change I was undergoing and even saw it as just, while the other part dreaded and hated it. Should I fight it? I asked myself. Why? It's going to happen anyway. And if I let it go now, I might just be able to avenge all the innocents who had suffered at the hands of Dr. Walker and R.C. Labs. As these thoughts stoked my anger, my fist tightened. The shooter's eyes turned bloodshot as tiny vessels burst in the whites.

  It was then that Damian's voice caught my attention—a growl, similar to the one I'd used to address the guard during my first escape from R.C. Labs. “Ready to kill yet?” he asked as he emerged from behind the woodpile, his eyes an opaque sulfurous hue—a color that no longer seemed human, but rather a representation of pure evil.

  As my glare returned to the shooter, I caught my reflection in the truck's wing-mirror—and saw that my eyes had changed too. A dark and unnatural cloud of gray had erased all the humanity from the honest brown eyes I'd inherited from my father, and a streak of my dark hair had turned dead white, as if part of the innocence of my youth had been taken away by the unnatural anger I felt.

  “NO!” I snarled to myself, refusing to accept what was happening to me.

  The imploring look on the shooter's face sparked a hint of mercy that made me stall—if for only a moment. Then I thought of Yvette, and the promise I'd made to my father flashed into my mind. Their voices began to echo inside my head…

  “I love you, Victor.”

  “You have to live, son. You're destined for something greater than you can possibly imagine. I've known it ever since the moment you were born; since the very first time I held you in my arms...”

  My fist released the soldier then, allowing him to gasp in a huge lungful of much-needed breath. He dropped to his knees as soon as the connection was broken. I lowered my hand and breathed slowly myself, feeling the burning sensation in my eyes slowly subside. The soldier was frozen in fear, yet he kept glancing at the machine gun in front of him, undecided about what to do. I looked into his uncertain eyes and uttered one word that helped him make his decision. “Run!”

  He looked at me, frightened and confused, then opted to follow my suggestion and got back on his feet again, his eyes wider than any I'd ever seen in a human being.

  Damian, who was watching from the corner, didn't seem too happy about my decision. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “Finish him off!” Another look from me was enough for the shooter to flee like a whipped dog. A quick glance into the wing-mirror proved that my eyes had returned to normal. I slowly laid Denali's lifeless body on the ground while Damian kept screaming at me, like a kid throwing a tantrum. “What's wrong with you? He's getting away! “

  “Damian!” I shouted back. “Get in the truck! We can still make it out of here!”

  “NO!” he roared. “It's their time to run!” His eyes follow the shooter, who was about to rendezvous with five more soldiers coming our way. He turned to the stack of logs next to him; each was about three feet long and a foot in diameter, and weighed at least thirty pounds. He raised his hand before the nearest log and shut his eyes. The log began to vibrate on top of the others; Damian's hand vibrated too. I got up from the ground slowly, watching a disturbing expression distort his face. “Damian?” I called. “What are you doing?”

  His answer was to jerk his hand upward, levitating the log before him. As I ran the numbers in my head, I saw his intentions. The log was aimed at the soldiers, who had stopped roughly a hundred feet away. He opened his sulfurous eyes; maintaining his evil smile, he swung his hand forward, mimicking a baseball pitcher's delivery. The log flew in a beeline toward the soldiers at an incredible rate of speed. It reached them in a fraction of a second, impacting one man dead center in the chest. Blood splattered out of his mouth as the strike hurled him back ten feet, into the trunk of a tall fir tree. The other soldiers hurried to check on him, but it was obvious he was dead.

  One of the soldiers pressed his earpiece. “Man down!” he shouted.

  I heard the voice of Captain Black then: “Weapons free! Fire at will!”

  The crackle of gunfire started again, chewing into the front of the cabin. I took cover behind the truck, while Damian cackled behind the wood stack, pleased with the battle he'd started—though in his defense, we hadn't started this war. It was never my intention to engage, but now I was running out of options.

  A brief lull allowed me to peek from behind the car door and study the opposition. The squad consisted of ten men, and they were all moving forward carefully. They spread strategically through the woods, but I could still sense their presence, even behind the thickest cover. I could only assume Damian could do the same.

  Damian smiled and raised his hand again, taking control of more than one log this time—a half-dozen more. One by one, the logs sped through the air like wooden gigantic bullets, striking the soldiers one at a time. Gunshots, screams, and blood were all I heard and saw for the next sixty seconds—the longest minute of my life. Damian paused for a moment as he took his time pinpointing the last three soldiers standing, among them Denali's murderer. Raising their hands, those three dropped their weapons and bolted for the woods.

  But Damian didn't accept their surrender any more than they would have accepted his. With one swing of his hand, he took control of exactly three logs and aimed them at the retreating soldiers. I took advantage of the opportunity, darted from behind the truck, and jumped Damian from behind. The logs crashed to the ground like puppets with cut strings as soon as I restrained his arms. “Enough!” I yelled, holding his hands down.

  His face went dead and his sulfurous eyes pierced into mine, bearing nothing but contempt. He then escaped my grip as easily as an adult would break the grip of a child. It was obvious he was somehow manipulating his telekinesis to boost his physical strength. I stood stunned in front of him as he squared off to confront me.

  He brought the palm of his hand to the center of my chest and growled, “I told you to stay the hell out of my way!” Next thing I knew, I was flying backward throug
h the air toward the side of the truck. All I remember before I impacted it was feeling the power of a crushing wave exploding between my chest and Damian's hand as he finished his little speech, tossing me away like a piece of crumpled tin foil.

  Damian turned back to the fleeing soldiers, but they were no longer in sight. They must have regrouped somewhere in the woods with Captain Black before retreating. I was glad to feel the jolting hum of danger finally subside in my mind. Damian, on the other hand, was miffed at having missed the opportunity to kill again. I slowly got up from the ground, shaking my head at the big dent my back had left in the truck's fender—not because I cared about the vehicle, which was already destroyed, but because I realized Damian could have really have hurt me if he'd wanted to. I was lucky he hadn't.

  “Are you done?” I asked sarcastically, rubbing my knuckles against my lower back. He turned to me and gave me that piercing glare again. I ignored his unnaturally yellow eyes and tried to talk some sense into him. “Did you forget the reason we came here?” I demanded, hoping he'd fight the evil trance and beat it back, just as I had.

  My words shook him up, making him stand down from his aggressive position. Snapping out of his stupor, he ran inside the cabin. I followed him inside, just to discover the cabin was exactly as I'd sensed it to be—empty. Damian, however, didn't rest until he checked every room and closet in the place. “Sonya! Sonya!” he kept calling, without getting any response. As I walked into the living room, I noticed that there were no signs of a struggle anywhere, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible had happened in this place besides the massacre I'd just witnessed outside.

  I looked around the elegant living room, searching for anything unusual. The only thing that caught my eye was a framed picture on the glass coffee table. I stepped in closer and picked it up. Damian was in the picture, hugging a beautiful woman from behind, his chin over her shoulder. They were both laughing. Obviously this was Sonya, Damian's wife. She was very pretty; short dark hair, hazel eyes, olive skin… In the picture she was wearing the same thick silver wedding band Damian wore on his ring finger. Her look was the one of a woman in love.

  “She's not here!” I heard Damian shout frantically. “She's not here, Victor!” He dashed into the living room, his yellow eyes almost sad now.

  “Is this her?” I asked, handing him the framed picture. He reached for it and looked at it for the longest moment. I watched as his eyes, now filled with tears, gradually faded from that sinister, ugly yellow to their original dark brown. I realized then that neither of us had yet reached the point of no return—that somehow, there was still hope for us both. Damian staggered, picture in hand, and collapsed miserably on his knees, as if all the evil energy that had driven his will through the battle had been yanked right out of his body.

  “Help me,” he said, his voice breaking, as he reached out to me. “Victor, please. Please!”

  I couldn't believe that the defenseless man pleading before me was the same unstoppable monster who'd just killed seven people outside. I refused to believe he was. So I grabbed his hand and helped him up. “I promised I would,” I reminded him. “We'll find her.”

  A phone rang then, breaking the ominous silence in the room. Damian rushed to an alcove beside the door and pressed the speaker button on the phone there. “Hello?” he answered, his voice hopeful.

  “Damian?” a terrified woman's voice asked.

  “Sonya?” Damian yelled desperately. “Sonya!”

  “Well, hello, Damian,” Dr. Walker's voice said smoothly, stunning us both. “I hear you've been having fun with your new gifts.”

  “Where is she?” Damian snarled.

  “She's safe,” Walker said calmly. “For now, that is. Keeping her that way is up to you.”

  Damian's brows knitted in confusion. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “My most precious asset, of course.”

  “All right,” Damian bargained, “I'll turn myself in. Just let my wife go.”

  “Aw! Isn't that the romantic gesture?” Walker mocked. “But I'm afraid you're mistaken, Counselor. You see, you were no more than a tiny piece of the puzzle, and I've already taken everything I need from you. One of the subjects you have befriended, however, has something I want; something I never had the chance to… dissect.” His tone took a more serious turn. “Bring me what I want, and I promise to let your wife go free.”

  Damian looked at me, probably mirroring my thoughts about who the subject was. “Why should I trust you?” he demanded. “You've already tried to kill me twice.”

  “I think you're missing the point, Damian,” Walker said. “You're not in any position to disagree with me, son. But if it makes you feel better, I'll let you in on a little secret: My men did not withdraw. I called them off. After all, I can't risk destroying the most important piece of the puzzle. So you can rest assured, there will be no more shooting. So… do we have a deal?”

  Damian met my gaze and waited, as if he knew it was up to me to finish the deal. After all, it was obvious to both of us that the last piece of the puzzle—the one scheduled for vivisection— had always been me. And though I knew what this meant for me, I couldn't let anyone else get hurt on my account. So I did what I thought was the right thing to do. “All right, Dr. Walker, we have a deal,” I spoke up, giving myself away.

  “Victor?” he asked with a hint of surprise.

  “Yes, Doctor, it's me. I thought you might want to deal with me directly.”

  “Oh, yes.” His voice sounded bitter now. “I knew I'd eventually have to deal with you to get what I wanted. The question is, are we going to have a problem?”

  “No, Doctor,” I responded. “I promise to turn myself in, without a struggle, as long as Damian's wife is unharmed. After she's released, and with the condition you leave the rest of our group alone.” Damian's face lit up at my words. “Now you tell me, Doctor. Do we have a deal?”

  Dr. Walker laughed. “Oh my, you certainly live up to the hype, Mr. Eagle Scout. That's by far the most noble and heroic gesture I've ever heard in my life!” Damian and I exchanged confused looks as Walker cackled over the speakerphone. “There's only one problem,” Walker continued. “Who ever said I wanted you?”

  His words felt like a bucket of ice water dashed in my face. Again, Damian lost his cool and began to rant at the speakerphone like a crazy man. “Who, then?!” he demanded. “Who do you want?! Tell me! “

  Walker waited a beat before he spoke again, and then he ran me through with an answer that created an immediate conflict between Damian and me—an answer that left me completely at my wit's end. “I want Yvette Montgomery.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Roger's Foresight

  DEAD SILENCE FOLLOWED Dr. Walker's demand. Damian and I exchanged uneasy looks, our own personal conflicts showing in our faces. Walker, of course, had been suspicious of my relationship with Yvette. Otherwise, why would I risk my life by going back to rescue her? His ploy was simple and easy to read: he knew that Damian would do anything to get his wife back, and my silence had just confirmed my position on protecting Yvette. He was counting on it. Now Damian would have to eliminate any obstacles between Walker's prize and his wife's freedom. Walker was looking to kill not two, but three birds with one stone.

  “Oh my!” Walker suddenly exclaimed. “It seems the two of you have a lot to talk about all of a sudden. Only, I wouldn't waste too much time talking if I were you, Damian. Because your wife could end up paying the price for your noncompliance.” His voice hardened. “Midnight. R.C. Labs. Ms. Montgomery for your wife. Or I'll see to it personally that she takes Ms. Montgomery's place on the table. Oh, and before I forget: if you'd be so kind, Victor, please tell that double-crossing bitch Sarah Grey that I haven't forgotten about her. As soon as I'm finished with you gentlemen, I'm going to concentrate all of my efforts on finding her.”

  A loud click followed Walker's last word, leaving us with nothing but decisions to make.

 
“Son of a bitch!” Damian hurled the speakerphone against the living room wall and began to hyperventilate. I knew we couldn't have that. I couldn't afford to lose Damian to another tantrum. In order to make this work to our advantage, I needed to keep him calm—and on our side. I couldn't risk having another confrontation with him. Not after witnessing the unstoppable power of the dark energy he already had inside him. But on the other hand, there was no way in hell I was going to let him take Yvette. I needed to think of something, and fast. So I ran my numbers again.

  “Damian,” I said quietly, “please calm down. Remember the change. We can't afford to fall apart now. That's exactly what Walker wants: for us to lose our cool and turn on each other. You understand?”

  He stopped and leaned against the couch, his eyes clenched shut as if in pain. “I can't lose my wife, Victor.”

  “You won't. But you have to stay focused, all right? If we work together, maybe we can turn Walker's expectations to our advantage.” I paused. “No one else needs to get hurt, Damian.”

  Damian's eyes flew open, his look quizzical, as if trying to decide whether or not to trust me. “All right,” he said finally. “What's your plan?”

  “We need to go back to Denali's cabin and regroup. Sarah knows the ins and outs of that building like the back of her hand. She might be able to figure a way to outsmart Walker before he realizes what hit him. We did it once. We can do it again.”

  “All right,” Damian agreed wearily. “Let's do it.”

  ***

  As we laid Denali's body in the truck bed, I couldn't help thinking about the conversation we'd had when he first picked me up from the airport. All of his dreams of getting married and starting a family were gone now. His unconditional goodness, his integrity, his decency… lost forever. And although part of me blamed Damian, I couldn't help thinking that it was me who had brought them together. It was me who came knocking on his door asking for help.