The Seeker left us in the same dark room, with only the flicker of candle light to see by. One door led to a hallway, but I'd heard him lock it as he'd gone. No windows, no other way out, and no furniture save the chair and loveseat. I'd spent the first thirty minutes calling for help, but no one who cared could hear me.
My powers flitted in and out, but even when they worked I couldn't connect to anyone. The entire school thrummed with the Seeker's energy and mental signature. Power like that scared the hell out of me. The influence he had over the men he sent to capture us paled in comparison to what he controlled here.
I had no idea how we would ever escape.
Drake groaned, and I squeezed his hand. Tears choked my throat and left wet lines down my cheeks. "Are you okay? Drake, I'm so sorry. You have to believe me. I need you. Our baby needs you. Please wake up."
"Sam? Oh, my head. Feels like a Mack truck ran me over, then backed up and did it a few more times for fun."
I helped him sit up and move to the loveseat. "What did he do to you?"
"Blew up my head. At least that's what if felt like. I can't use my mind powers. Can you?"
"No. On and off, but no one around here is open. His power... Drake, it's unparalleled."
The Seeker's voice startled us both. "Why thank you. That is the highest compliment coming from one such as yourself."
I hadn't heard him come in. The man was like a phantom. Did he have powers that we didn't even know about?
"Drake, I am so glad you are awake. It is time the three of us got to know each other—a family reunion, if you will."
I clenched my teeth. "We are not a family."
The Seeker frowned and feigned injury. "Your words hurt. My dear Sam, we have more in common than you know."
He sat in his chair and adjusted his white robes. Did he wear them for dramatic flare? "I have been looking forward to this day since you each were born. Drake, you came first, obviously. I was only a young boy then, just starting kindergarten, but my powers had already manifested. Oh, the things I could already do at such a tender age. My father, he couldn't have been happier to have a son with such talents, but.... Well, let us just say there is always room for improvement. So, he began research to create Sam."
Fear settled in my stomach like a brick. "What do you mean, create me?"
"Why, Sam, you are the most remarkable of all genetic experiments. You have our father's DNA, but you were lab-made. They used all the best bits of science they could find, I must say. They gave you power, health, longevity, beauty and brains. You are Father's perfect creation."
I could feel all the blood in my body rush to my feet. My face tingled with shock. "Are you saying that I'm... a test tube baby? And you're my brother?"
"Oh, that is just the beginning. You see, the woman in whom I had been implanted, my mother...." He spit the words at her as if they were poison. "She was in love with someone else. After she had given birth to me, she went on to get pregnant, without permission, with one of the doctors who worked in the labs. Drake, you were that baby. She snuck you out when you were an infant, and you disappeared into foster care. Father killed her, of course, but he could never find you—not until a few months ago. Admittedly, that was a clever plan of hers, to lose you in the bureaucracy. Do you have any idea how impossible it is to track anyone there? A real headache, I'll tell you."
What? Had I somehow slipped into a Twilight Zone episode? "You're insane. Truly, one-hundred-percent crazy."
The Seeker smiled and shrugged. "Perhaps, but it does not change the fact that I am telling you the truth. And do not worry about your relationship and your baby. There is absolutely no blood relation between the two of you. We made sure of that before breeding you together. Was that not a brilliant pairing? It was my idea. Father was quite pleased... until you two escaped. Now, that was not very sporting, after all we had done for you. But all's well that ends well. Here we are now, right where we were meant to be. Sam, you carry the most powerful human being to ever walk this Earth, right there in your belly. Mary, mother of Jesus, should have been so lucky."
Nightmarish memories that weren't memories flashed through my mind. Bile rose in my throat, and I ran to a corner to vomit out the limited contents of my stomach. If I never threw up another day in my life, it would be too soon.
A cold hand rested on my arm. I looked up, expecting to see Drake, and looked into eyes so pale they might not have had any pigment at all. The Seeker stared into me, and I felt him probing at my mind.
"This is a family business, Sam, and you and Drake are family. Granted, your boyfriend is more like the redheaded stepchild, but still, he has his uses. Together, there is nothing we could not do. You know only a tiny portion of what you are capable of. I can teach you, guide you, give you everything you need to fully utilize your gifts. We can be gods among men, Sam. We will rule the world."
He grabbed me, and his eyes blazed with a holy fervor. But something felt off about him, besides the whole being crazy thing. Something was draining his energy and power. Through his touch I could sense a poison crawling through him, eating him.
Crimson drops fell onto his robe. Blood.
"Your nose, it's bleeding, and... what's wrong with your eyes?"
A pink tint lined the corners of his eyes, as though he'd applied pink eyeliner. He pulled away from me and backed out of the room. "I must go. Think on what I have said. We shall talk again."
My powers crashed back into me, and I linked with Drake. 'We have to get out of here, now. I know the Seeker's weakness. He's dying.'
Chapter 27 – Lucy
With all eyes on her, Lucy had to act fast. She pulled Mr. Black to her. "Call off the guards, or I'll blow your head off."
In the last few days, Lucy had become more violent than ever before in her life. Necessity dictated her actions. Still, after years of assignments targeting some of the worst creeps imaginable, she'd never had to fight, disarm, or threaten so many people. What had her world come to?
The sphere in her backpack pulsed, and she felt Mr. Black reach for the Seeker. "Call him and I pull the trigger. You don't have to be a human lie detector to know I'm telling the truth, do you?"
"I know you're a scared girl who's trying to play grown-up, and you've never killed anyone in your life. You're not about to start now."
Lucy cocked the gun, relishing the power of it in her hand. Then she aimed and fired.
The bullet sank into the cement just an inch from Mr. Black's left foot. He bellowed like a lion and jumped away from the sound.
Mr. Black nodded to the guards. "Get away. Do as she says, you assholes."
Lucy thought about what to say to these kids who'd been drugged and manipulated for years. "Do you remember what life here used to be like? The idyllic peace we enjoyed before this invasion?"
Many heads nodded.
"It was all a lie. Even now, there's a drug coursing through your veins designed to make you, to make all of us, complacent and docile. They would have you believe we need them to keep us safe, but our lives mean nothing to them. Like you, my best friend was promised a life of college and friends, but what she ended up with was a forced pregnancy. When she escaped, they hired guns to trail her. What does your future hold if you stay here?
"I didn't know Kyle well, but I had him in many of my classes. He was a good guy, an innocent, like you. This man blew his head off from behind." Lucy jammed the gun deeper into his back.
"That's not justice. That's murder."
Her voice carried through the crowd, escalating with each word. "We have to act now, to stand our ground and say 'No more' to this tyranny, 'No more' to abuse and murder. We have to break free from the artificial bonds this school has enslaved us in. Who's with me?"
Silence hung in the air like a dying balloon. Not a single student stirred from their spots or raised their voice in protest.
A guard in the crowd raised his gun and walked towards Lucy. "Drop your weapon, or I'll be forced to fire. Don't ma
ke this worse than it already is."
Lucy shook her head, pressing her gun against Mr. Black's skull.
The guard took aim....
And his gun floated up into the air.
Darren stood behind him, arms extended and rage etched on his face. "Kyle was my best friend, and you bastards killed him."
He raised his arms, and the guard rose up into the air. Then with a flick of his hands, Darren slammed the guard into a tree. The man fell to the ground, limp.
The silence that had paralyzed everyone present broke. All around, students attacked the guards with their own brands of para-power. One soldier cried and crumbled to the ground, another turned to ice, and another became permanently entangled in a tree root.
The guards who could get away shot into the crowd without regard to where their bullets landed.
Lucy had to get everyone off the school grounds.
She tightened her grip on her prisoner. "Let's go, Mr. Black. We're going to open up the main gate and celebrate a new kind of Independence Day today."
Chapter 28 – Sam
'How do you know he's dying?' Drake paced in front of me.
"I felt the death in him when he touched me. We don't have much time. Can you break the door down?"
'Yes, but what then? I'm pretty sure this whole building is heavily guarded.'
I slumped into the couch. The recent revelations of my and Drake's births left my head spinning. The Seeker was my brother? And Drake's brother? I pictured our family tree and imagined my branch hovering dangerously close to Drake's.
"This family thing—it's a bit creepy, right? It's not just me?"
Drake sat next to me and held me in his arms. I rested my head on his shoulder and for a moment allowed myself to get lost in his warmth and comfort.
'No, not just you. This is definitely off the charts. But, good news, we aren't actually related. So, there's that.'
"Yeah, I guess. Of course, we are related to the Seeker. That's bad enough. And— Oh crap! My father is the evil mastermind behind this whole organization. Isn't that what the Seeker implied? Daddy Dearest is behind all this? Oh my God, Drake, does this make me evil?"
'You, my love, could never be evil. It's a choice, not a birthright. You are who you choose to be.'
Those words sounded good, in theory, but in reality I was a designer test tube baby, made from God-knew-what bits and pieces. Those parts could have been custom-made, Grade-A evil, and I'd never know until it was too late.
"Drake, I don't know how long we have before he clamps down on our power. I wish I knew what to do to fix all of this."
He sat up and held my eyes with his. 'I have an idea, but I'm not sure you'll like it.'
"What?"
'Mary. We mind-jack her and use her to escort us out as though the Seeker had ordered it. We find Luke and Lucy and help them with their get-out-of-jail-alive plan.'
"You're right. I don't like it."
'Can you think of anything else? Anything we can do to save your friends, and not die in the process?'
Unfortunately, I couldn't. I thought about what the professor and Father Patrick had both said about morality. Could mind control be just a tool, to be used for good or evil? And if Mary was already under the control of the Seeker, couldn't this actually benefit her in the long run?
"Okay, we can try it, but carefully. We don't know what damage he's already done to her."
With the mind link already in place, we scanned for Mary. I knew her signature and found her easily—she was just outside our room.
I expected a wall to block us out, but she had something else going on inside her mind. Rather than a shield to keep others out, what I felt was more like an energy source attached to her mind, growing into it.
It meant the difference between a demolition and brain surgery. It also meant a seriously high risk to her and us.
'We have to at least try, Sam. We have no other way out.'
"I'll see if I can pry the other energy off her mind without damaging her, but if it looks too dangerous, we're pulling out."
Tendrils of power brushed against mine. Rather than bash my way in as I normally would, I surrounded each tendril with my own power and ever so gently brushed it aside.
The whiplash slammed into my mind so hard I nearly tumbled off the couch. Pain pierced through my eyelids and blurred my vision.
Mary's mind remained unchanged.
"Drake, I can't do this. That thing is attached to her for good. We could kill her, or ourselves, trying to get it off."
'Let me try, just once. I'll be careful.'
He used the same approach, but instead of picking pieces to pull away, he created a cocoon around the entire power source before pulling back.
Blinding white light. Fierce and fiery pain. "Drake, stop! You're killing her."
'I'm nearly there, and it's our last hope.'
I could feel pain flood his brain, but he ignored it, unwilling to let go.
"No. You can't. She's innocent. We can't risk it."
He didn't stop.
I felt her mind splinter into fragments.
Her pain swam through me. Her confusion and fear, her anger and her hopelessness—it all hit me.
Heat flared in my belly. I felt my baby's power activate and merge with mine, pushing away my own pain and compounding my power until it swelled bigger and stronger and brighter than ever. No longer in control or fully aware, I knew only that I had to save Mary, an innocent, from being destroyed. Too many had already died to save us.
My power coiled inside me, coalescing into one great ball of unfathomable force, and I knew I could no longer pull it back, no longer stop what I had started. It needed a release, a command in which to dissipate, and so I gave it the only one I had to give. "Drake. Stop, now!"
As though someone had taken scissors and severed the connection between us, my mind emptied of everyone but myself. A loneliness I could have never imagined swept through me and settled into my heart, cracking it into shards of pain. I slumped forward and cried out.
Drake tumbled forward off the loveseat, and his head hit the floor.
My mind probe revealed no trace of Mary, and when I tried to connect with Drake, I couldn't.
And not in the power-on-the-fritz way.
Somewhere inside me, somehow, I knew.
I had destroyed his power permanently.
And he would never forgive me.
Ever.
Chapter 29 – Lucy
"You'll never get away with this. You have no idea what kind of power you're messing with." Mr. Black's voice grated on Lucy's last nerve.
She jabbed him in the ribs with her fist. "Shut up."
Students marched towards the front gate, following her and Mr. Black.
Like an avenging army of gods, they destroyed everything in their path. Gary pulled a metal and glass building apart, and threw it into a crowd of guards who'd aimed their guns into the crowd.
Luke followed behind Lucy as close as he could, worry and fear lining his face. She could feel the field of power her brother formed around her for protection.
Another group of guards surrounded the students and fired. Luke raised his hands and conjured a giant force field against the bullets.
A warm glow of power pulsed from the sphere in Lucy's backpack. Though no one else appeared to notice, the students around her lost the weariness and fear that had plagued them since their earlier attempt to break free. They stood taller and stronger, their energies renewed.
Gary stood next to Luke, who dropped his shield for a split second, and sent the bullets flying back towards the guns that fired them. The group of guards fell, killed by their own bullets.
A guard that had managed to slip inside Luke's field charged Lucy. Gary used his power to fling the soldier's gun to the side, but his aim was off and it crashed into a propane tank and exploded in a shower of fiery light. The guard flew back from the impact and landed, unconscious, to the ground.
Lucy s
hook uncontrollably even as she tried to press the gun to Mr. Black's head. Everywhere around her the world erupted in chaos and death. Righteous revolutions were supposed to be victorious and moral, not bloody and horrifying.
The kid with ice power, Larry, ran to the flames from the explosion. He held his hands to the fire, but nothing happened.
What little confidence the rebel students had diminished with their powers. No one had any, and so went their tactical advantage.
A cold emptiness filled Lucy where once the sphere had warmed her. It no longer pulsed. Like all the powers around her, the sphere was blocked.
Mr. Lancaster and a few other teachers intervened to defend the students as the guards rushed in to beat them. Like true cowards, they only bullied and abused the defenseless and weak, preying on those who couldn't fight back.
Some students panicked and ran away from the gates. Others wrestled with the guards, or threw rocks in misguided attempts to defend themselves. Before Lucy could react or respond, a young girl, no more than thirteen, fell to the ground in a lifeless heap. Carey. She had the power to make things grow, and now she lay dead with blood pooling around her.
And more followed. For every student who stood fighting, another lay dead at their feet.
Lucy screamed as bullets that had been held by Luke's force field now shot through the air and hit their targets. "Luke! Get out of the way!"
She pulled her gun away from Mr. Black long enough to take aim at a guard firing at them. Her bullet found its target, eliminating one threat but leaving so many others. She pressed the gun back into Mr. Black before he tried to get away, and repressed the fact that she had just killed a man. She didn't have time to let the horror of it all hit her.
Mr. Black sneered. "Still think you're going to escape, bitch?"
Lucy may have underestimated the Seeker's powers, but she refused to give up.
She forced Mr. Black to walk the last few feet to the gate. Guards lay beaten on the ground or had already fled their post.
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