To Be Free

  “That's impossible!” he counters, and I shoot him a withering look as we bolt past the Humvee, the door open and engine idling. I get a crazy idea, letting go of the man and bolting for the driver's seat – he catches on, pulling into the passenger's seat a second before I peel out towards the border, the Officers scrambling into the other vehicles to break chase. Pulling the door shut as I speed along the asphalt, I notice David shimmer back into existence, standing between our seats in a half-crouch.

  “Don't tell that to me! Tell that to the fucking telepath haunting me!” I snap, weaving between the traffic honking in protest at us. The others chasing after us are quickly catching up even if I'm going a hundred fifty, barely managing to control the truck as is. I pass an imposing eighteen-wheeler, shaking my head when Quinn demands a clarification. “There's this paradox clone of a man I'm supposed to know – or I will know, I think, I forget – with us right now, the future self of someone I'm going to meet someday. He's been helping me a little.”

  He looks behind us to the back, making a confused sound.

  “You won't be able to see him; he's not from our time,” I inform him, swearing as one of the chasing vehicles pulls up to my left. One of the Officers leans out of the window and begins shooting, making me swear as I slip a truck between us and our pursuers to the left. “I can only see him because I'm starting to be able to see the future. It's how I knew who their forgery expert is and saw so many outcomes where you...”

  I shake my head, refusing to finish the sentence. Quinn nods, however, accepting my explanation as fact.

  You're right, but I tend to consider myself an empath instead, David offers, and I roll my eyes, almost slamming into an SUV and barely managing to avoid it. I dabble in a few arts, which is why I ended up being so damn valuable to Prototype Ace.

  I look at him through the rear view, silently asking for a clarification just as I swerve around a line-up of three cars, crossing the grass between both lanes to the opposite side, swearing vividly. The cars veer away from me, honking relentlessly, but I forge on regardless. Quinn leans forward, looking to the GPS set in the dashboard.

  Telepathy, empathy, and I'm also a good telekinetic, he offers. My eyebrows shoot up, and I bite back the urge to whistle.

  “Ten minutes to the border,” Quinn tells me, and I nod briskly, swearing under my breath in every colour manner possible – if my mother could hear me, she'd cry.

  “You know, David, it's a damn shame you can't do anything,” I hiss, unable to help it, and Quinn looks at me in confusion. I shake my head, refusing to get him caught up to speed. “I can't fucking teleport a car to a place I've never been to, but you could throw us over the damn border at the very least!”

  Your skill isn't developed enough, unfortunately. You were able that one time, when I hit that dick – Ken, was it? - but I doubt you'll be able to do it again. Not yet anyways.

  The drive is heart-stopping, and they refuse to relent – shooting for the tires and the gas tank, trying to slam into the car I'm driving as I push the motor to one-eighty. It's taking a beating, but it's starting to go down.

  We're literally within sight of the toll booth when the back tires give out, and David shouts that the truck's going to blow if we don't leave it, like, fast. I relay the warning to Quinn, pushing my door open through the squeal of the wind, and jump out onto the grass at the same time as my companion. The truck continues on, crashing into the booth itself. I look up from where I've rolled, my leg hurting something fierce, and I shield my eyes as it explodes, the heat searing through the air and threatening to swallow me whole.

  It's Quinn who pulls me to my feet, shouting through the ringing in my ears about getting back up, running to freedom. That we're almost there and damn it, don't you dare give up on me after all this time!

  I cry out as I put weight on my right leg, tipping forward, and Quinn catches me, draping an arm over his shoulders and supporting my weight. I'm shaking my head, but he's not listening to my words.

  “Quinn, just leave me here and go!” I snap, but the man wants nothing to do with it. He glares at me as he begins dragging me along, and I follow his lead as best I can. “I'm going to slow you down, and we'll both get caught! At least, if you go on your own, you'll make it!”

  If he fucking lets go of you, I will end him, David warns, and it's at that moment I realize that David's friend Cian said the same thing, and he actually listened.

  No wonder he can't forgive himself.

  They cock their rifles, preparing to mow us down as they step out and take aim. Quinn grits his teeth, swearing vividly, and we stop in our tracks, the man at my side looking to the procession as the Officers shout at us to drop to the ground and surrender, or they will use force. I look as well, seeing the thirty-or-so men and women lined up, ready to gun us down.

  You have a gift – a special ability that people will give up anything for. Your friend, Quinn, is in even more danger; you know this, don't you? What his potential is?

  The words, the memory of a conversation I had with Johannes a while back, ring in my ears as I look to the man beside me. His hand on my waist, keeping me up, has tightened to the point of almost being painful, but I don't complain. I take a deep breath, and focus my energy, my ability, to my right leg where the pain throbs the most, willing time to accelerate, to heal the wound and fix the injury. The process takes only a few seconds, but it makes me see stars and I almost fall to my knees, the pain so unbearable I'm pretty sure I black out a second. Quinn never lets me go, holding me against him as best as he can as I try my best to keep my limp body upright. He's glaring at the Officers.

  “We're almost home,” Quinn whispers. “We're going to make it out alive, love. I promise.”

  “I know,” I breathe, my voice breaking with the strain of pain. His eyes never leave the line-up, and neither do mine. “What should we do?”

  “I have a trick,” he tells me. Before he can clarify, one of the Officers cuts him off.

  “Down on your knees! You have all of five seconds before we shoot you!” he threatens, and they each ready their weapons, the hum of the machines in their hands almost deafening as they fire up. Quinn's skin heats up, almost to the point of being painful, as the wind picks up around us, threatening, a warning.

  “Stop the bullets, love,” he requests, and I nod, swallowing thickly. I can put my weight on my leg now, but I'm still a little woozy from the experience. “I'll only need a few seconds.”

  I already know what he's doing. I can smell the ozone, the thunder rolling menacingly over our heads, and the thick clouds rolling in, promising hell. The Officer counts down from five, and when he reaches one they open fire.

  I sweep my free right hand in an arc in front of us, a wall of red smoke springing forth from the ground and looming menacingly, encompassing the scene in front of us like a tsunami about to crash down onto the shore. It does just that once the bullets are held in its snare, the shells being dragged with it to the ground and smoking faintly. Quinn turns my head to his chest, and I protest.

  “Don't look, Seb. This'll get ugly,” he warns, and with a nod I snap my eyes shut, sensing how he presses his face to my hair and mutters a quick prayer – to what, however, is beyond me. The scent of ozone and rain is stronger against his skin.

  A moment later, the ground splits apart.

  That's what it feels like, anyways, the orange-brown smell of ozone so much thicker with every ear-shattering thunderclap. My ears are ringing, unable to take the sheer strength of the sound, and even through my eyes I can see the bright flashes of lights. There's a heavy rain that cascades from the heavens, and the earth shakes with every strike of lightning touching her surface.

  This goes on for longer than I presume I could pinpoint, eventually dying down to the point where it's as if nothing happened – but the soaked clothes on our bodies tell a different story. We pull apart, looking to where the Officers stood a moment before.

  The ground around us is littered w
ith smoking crevices, the charred earth gouged out as if a giant hand pulled fistfuls of it. There's rain collecting in the shallow pools, and I see no sign of the men and women who pointed guns at us so readily. Not even a shoe.

  This is the power he has, without reaching his potential, David whispers, standing to my left, ethereal. He is a dangerous man, and his potential has the power to shatter the heavens. God help us, I hope he never falls into their hands – it's the end of humanity should that happen.

  This is the power the New Order fears – the power I rescued, and allowed to develop.

  I wonder, for half a second, if I should've left him at the facility.

  “Let's go,” he whispers, and I turn to look at him. Nodding, he releases his hold on me but takes my hand instead, looking back once to the graveyard before we walk towards the ruined toll gate. It stands in pieces, charred remains still smoking as we step around it. Quinn's helping me through the rubble when his head snaps up and he quickly pulls me through, onto Canadian soil, and holds me against him tightly. I manage to turn my head enough to see the silhouette of a man standing in the pool of the headlights of a Humvee, pointing a gun at us.

  “We're free men now,” Quinn shouts to him, holding me protectively to his person. “If you shoot, you're starting a war. Can the New Order really pay that heavy a price?”

  “You Goddamn bastards,” the man snaps, his hands shaking so much I doubt he'd get a clear shot anyways. With an angry shout he throws the gun on the ground, and I idly wonder why his voice sounds so familiar. “Don't you think this is over! We'll capture you both, and harvest that power in your mutant blood!”

  Quinn starts backing up, never once turning his back to the man. I feel as if I know this man, but I can't pinpoint from where.

  We hit a small copse of trees, and are finally out of sight. Only then does he let me go, breathing a sigh of relief before looking my way, smiling warmly.

  “We made it,” he whispers, looking all kinds of relieved. “We did it, Seb. We're free.”

  My hands start shaking, the leaves around us dancing in the trees as if to celebrate the occasion with us. The wind picks up, warm, and everything tastes so, so sweet as I fall to my knees, a heaving sob ripping through my throat. He falls with me, holding my face in his hands and pushing my hair back, laughing hysterically as it finally settles, as the wish makes itself reality.

  We're free.

  The words echo through my head, and I start laughing alongside him.

  We're finally free.

  He kisses me, hard on the mouth, and I laugh into the kiss, leaning against him and crying openly, because we made it. We survived.

  A fine rain falls, making us both look up briefly from where we kneel, before looking back at each other and our temporarily warped appearance. The changed hair colour, the altered eyes... but beneath the disguise, the joy and the relief, the love. We kiss again.

  We're free.

  Finally, he pulls me to my feet and we stand there a few minutes, holding hands and just relishing the moment. The bliss fogging our minds, showing us that we fought for it, we fought tooth and nail and we made it. It wasn't for nothing, and we're both alive and well.

  He takes back his hands, pulling the old wedding band from his partnership with his ex-wife, Meredith, and slipping it onto my left ring finger.

  “It was my Pairing ring, before I was taken away,” he informs me, as if I'm not already aware of its meaning to him. He kept it on his person, like some reminder of the atrocity he committed against the woman, a guilty reminder of the liar he'd become. “It's not much, to be honest, and I'll get you something else eventually, something that'll actually mean something... but for now, consider it a promise.”

  He doesn't catch my gaze.

  “A promise for what?” I whisper, and he smiles sadly, finally looking at me. My heart beats painfully in my chest, and even though I knew it was coming, somehow I'd convinced myself that it was just a dream, something that he wouldn't do. I swallow the lump in my throat.

  “My return. We'll be together again soon, Seb; I promise.” I nod, unable to say anything else, and the excruciating pain in my chest comes back tenfold, threatening to stop my heart completely. “I don't expect you to wait for me; it'd probably be best if you moved on anyways. I just... I need to sort some things out in my head, first.”

  I break away from his gaze, nodding again, and when I gather the courage to look back at him I force a smile that I know he sees right through.

  “Okay,” I whisper, my hands feeling cold. It's as if I'm detached from my body, somewhere else, escaping the pain by leaving my physical body behind. Locking it all away. “I'll wait for you, Quinn; I'll wait for a thousand years if I have to. Just... just come home soon.”

  “I will,” he vows, capturing my lips with his very chastely. I force myself not to sob, to keep myself from revealing how much pain I feel.

  Heartbreak is a bitch... I've never felt such a pain before.

  I survive five minutes after he leaves me in the woods before I crumple to the ground, no support whatsoever, and press my forehead to the damp earth and cry out a gut-wrenching wail. I can feel David's presence as well as Johannes', and both men are trying to calm me, but all I can do is remain curled against the earth, my heart shattering and leaving me more broken than when Sarah did all those things to me.

  To the point where I actually throw up. I throw up until there's nothing left, coughing, and when the initial panic abates I still lie there, breathing through the pain in my chest I could never hope to explain. Never hope to put into words.

  Finally, I lift my body up onto my knees and look to the sky raining down water to the earth, and I let it try to bring life back to my being. I take a deep breath, my mind jumping through everything we've been through together.

  The day we escaped the facility together, unable to stand the presence of the other; when we stayed in the lodge and he nursed me back to health; our trek through the hiking trail; going through the abandoned tunnels; passing through Yreka and fighting Recon One as a team for the first time; stumbling through the forests and plains for two days, never once getting respite with the hounds on our tails; finding Melissa and Janice, and being nursed back to health again. Going to that house and spending two surreal weeks together; finally, the drive that brings us to this point.

  Through those days, we fell in love. We loved and were loved, admitted to our pasts and were allowed to begin healing again.

  I whisper his name into the rain, opening my eyes. Both men sit beside me, cautious, and I smile sadly to the sky.

  “I'll wait until this world comes to an end,” I vow. “I will never rest until this world pays for what it's done to you, Quinn. Until the day comes where I can get my revenge for your pains, I'll wait. I'll wait and continue loving you, and I'll continue to do so even when it's over.”

  I laugh dryly then, my chest hollow. Gouged out.

  “I won't rest until they lie, broken and hollow, at my feet the same way we once did.”

  David and Johannes exchange a look, and then the blond-haired man speaks carefully.

  Are you okay? he questions, concern evident on their features. And don't just say you are, because I know what that means. Looking sad when you think no one can see you.

  “You can see me,” I remark.

  We don't count, David counters. I laugh dryly, shaking my head.

  “I'll be okay. I'll survive,” I affirm, but they don't seem to buy into it very much. I don't blame them.

  We had to fight for a fundamental human right, something that's ours from the beginning.

  From the time we are born, we are free, and it doesn't matter how strong those who would deny us that freedom are. Together, we are invincible.

  Together, we will put an end to this tyranny.

  Five years later, standing on foreign ground with three others by my side, each with the same purpose as me, is the beginning of the end for those who would manipulate us and deny
us this freedom.

  The silence has been broken.

  To be continued

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