by Skye Genaro
"Hi, Keenan," she said flatly.
"This is Echo. Take her through Stage One testing."
She gave me a cursory glance. "She doesn't look like much."
So that was how we were going to play this, pretend not to know each other.
Roth came out of the elevator. "Keenan, we know who's got the list of gifted kids."
"Good job, Roth." He turned to me. "Remember, there's no room for weakness here." He and Roth disappeared behind the elevator's doors.
In the testing room, the boy who had fallen under Gianna's spell rolled onto his hands and knees and tried to stand. His legs gave out and he sat down in a daze.
"What would have happened to that boy if you didn't let go?" I asked.
"He would have died."
I gulped air.
She ushered me into a room across the hall and closed the door behind us. A row of human dummies lined one wall. A fire extinguisher leaned against a row of cabinets. The walls were charred with long black streaks and the air smelled faintly of heat. We were alone.
I grabbed Gianna's arm. "You have to help me," I said. Then, remembering how she reacted the last time I touched her, I let go. "You have to get me out of here. Keenan kidnapped my friend, too." My one true love, I wanted to say, the boy I'm meant to spend my life with. "Do you know where he is?"
Her face was a blank slate. Her movements were robotic, a stark comparison to the distraught girl I'd encountered at school. She had become invisible again, moving in tiny, fluttery motions, a battered bird beneath Keenan's radar.
"Stage one testing," she recited in a monotone voice. "Minor explosive techniques."
She opened the cabinet and dragged out a large plastic crate filled with…piñatas? I did a double take, giving the colorful party decorations a second to register. The papier-mâché donkey, fish, and llama fixed their dead black eyes on us.
"Tell me," I insisted between clenched teeth. "Where are they keeping Connor?"
She shifted nervously, always, always keeping one ear aimed at the door. "I don't know anything about that." She reached for a hangman's cord dangling from the ceiling and looped it over the llama's neck.
"Can you at least tell my parents I'm here? They need to know what's happening," I begged.
"I definitely cannot do that."
"Then tell your parents! Tell somebody!" I worked hard to keep my voice low but hysteria was setting in. "Dammit, Gianna. Help me."
"Pay attention," she hissed. "If you don't pass this test, you get marked down. You get enough marks and…" She yanked the cord tight around the llama's neck.
"And what?"
She spun on me, those wide owl eyes burning. "I warned you. I tried to protect you. You messed everything up. Why should I help you now?"
"I backed off like you told me to! Jaxon turned me in."
She shook her head and spoke below a whisper. "You were the one person on the outside who I thought could help us."
"Me? What was I supposed to do?"
"Like it matters now." She fixed her gaze on the llama. "All you have to do is pass a few tests, do a couple of missions, and you get to go home."
Hope flowered in my chest. "I do?"
"Don't get too excited." She handed me protective glasses, the kind we used in chemistry class. She put on a pair and settled into an open-eyed trance. She began to breath deeply, the way she had when she set the man on fire at the house. With the chip in my wrist, my aura could not pick up what she was doing. If it could, I believed I would have felt a surge of energy rising off her and into the piñata. The llama started to vibrate as though someone were shaking it to inspect its contents. Tentacles of electricity danced along its legs and head. The fine, bright paper smoldered and burned.
"You'll go to school as usual, and when Keenan wants you, he will send a soldier to get you," Gianna said. "You'll go with him, no questions asked, do the mission, and go back to your life. You don't talk to anyone about the Mutila, even when your parents yell at you and ground you for missing school. You give them whatever excuse you have to—too much pressure, or a bad breakup and so you left town for a few days. Got it?"
My heart sank again. "I'm not going to lie to my parents."
"You don't want Keenan going after them, do you?"
The piñata exploded in a ball of fire. Papier-mâché spattered the walls like buckshot. Burning tissue paper dotted the floor.
"Aw, that one was empty," she said and dropped the llama's remains into the trash bin.
"I can't do this," I said. "I can't live like that."
"You'll learn. We all do. The kids on the list that Keenan's tracking down, they'll learn to deal, too." She clipped a metal cuff around my wrist. "And don't mess with the chip in your arm. Ever. It's cause for immediate termination."
My mouth went dry.
"You don't have to get worked up about any of that as long as you do what he tells you to," she said.
When that cuff settled into place, it was as if a switch went on. A tingle lit my nerve endings and my capillaries opened. Without my power, I only felt half alive.
She strung up a donkey next. "Your turn. Do you know pyrokinesis?"
"No."
"Then use whatever you've got."
It never occurred to me to refuse. I didn't know how I'd handle the new life, but the promise of going home made me breathless.
"If you bring your concentration to a point—" Gianna instructed.
"I've got this," I said, waving her off. My energy coiled from my feet upward, spiraled through my belly and into the room. The donkey's middle puffed, growing larger and fatter until the paper began to tear. The donkey splattered with a piercing BOOM! and its contents fell to the floor.
"Ooo, prizes," she said with complete lack of expression. She scooped two handfuls of candy.
"Can you at least tell me if Connor is in this building?" I asked.
She cast a cautious glance at the door. Swallowed. Her mouth started to form an answer, and Keenan and Jaxon walked in. She quickly set her jaw in a compliant smile and thrust a candy bar at me. "Twix?"
"No," I answered in a ragged breath.
"Yes," she said firmly, pressing the chocolate into my palm. She touched me for a beat longer than necessary. She was answering my question. Yes. Connor is in the building.
Elation rippled through my chest.
"How did it go?" Keenan asked Gianna.
"She doesn't know pyrokinesis but she can ball her telekinesis and expand the energy just fine. I'd say she's ready for Stage Two."
He turned to me. "Gianna is quite something, isn't she? She's one of my best Coercion Agents."
"Thank you," she smiled, munching on a candy bar. "I've got a quiz in third period English, so…"
"Roth will give you a ride back into town," Keenan said.
I watched her go, trying to imagine slipping into my desk at school, carrying around a secret that threatened to bury me alive. Today, Gianna seemed more or less at peace with her life. I wondered what had made the girl snap, what had driven her to nearly jump to her death. Wondered if my future would end on that same bridge.
That tipping point lay in Connor's life. If anything happened to him, it would permanently stain my every breath, my every heartbeat. I wouldn't be able to live. I focused on passing their tests. If they allowed me to go home, Carina could locate me with the portal. Then I'd tell Connor's dad where his son was, and he would send a rescue team.
"You want my advice, skip all the low level tests. She's got what it takes to be Class A," Jaxon said.
"Class A isn't only about skill, it's a mentality." Keenan tilted his head, considering me from a new angle, wondering if I had what it took to become a psychic assassin.
"McCabe thought she was special. Let's find out why." Jaxon coiled a section of my hair around his finger. I swatted it away.
"Don't touch me," I hissed.
"Like you have a choice. You'll do as I say."
In the snap of a whip, Keen
an's flat blue eyes grew dull and hard. The hostile look he flashed at his foster brother sent a shudder radiating down my spine.
"Perhaps Echo is Class A material." Keenan turned to me. "When you use your telekinesis, your aura grips the edges of the object that you're moving. Did you know that?"
"No."
He placed two fingers over Jaxon's windpipe. "Apply that pressure here," he ordered.
Jaxon brushed his brother's hand away. "Get one of the soldiers in here. I'm not her guinea pig."
"Do it, Echo."
"But—"
"Remember what Jaxon tried to do to you at his apartment? How did that make you feel? Did you enjoy being overpowered?"
I balled my fists against my thighs. I knew what he was trying to do, and it was working. Hot pinpricks assaulted my fingers and embedded under my nails.
"Knock it off, Keenan." Moisture broke out on Jaxon's upper lip.
"This is your test, Echo. Will you pass? Or fail?"
Jaxon watched wide-eyed as I settled my gaze on him, wondering the chance I would follow through with this order. But he wasn't stacking up the lies he told. He didn't see himself as a traitor.
I wrapped energetic fingers around his throat and pressed. He let out a single gurgle. His hand went to his windpipe.
"Keep going," Keenan said.
Jaxon's brows strained against his hairline. He struggled to inhale.
"Harder. Do not let go until I tell you to back down."
I squeezed, watching my target's knees weaken. An unfamiliar warmth cascaded down my back and my throat opened. It was as though I took pleasure in harming him. I did, I decided. Revenge gave me a satisfying rush.
Jaxon staggered and his liquid chocolate eyes landed on mine. The hostility and cockiness that seemed to anchor his personality slipped away, and for a fleeting second, I saw inside him. I saw beyond his façade, beyond his daily struggle for recognition and power. Right before my eyes, his face seemed to melt and reappear as a frightened young boy, exposing a life filled with weakness and vulnerability.
Something inside me clicked. The Jaxon I knew came into focus again. His lips were turning blue. He pleaded for release with his eyes. I did not know what had happened to turn him into a beast and traitor. Making him suffer would not fix anything.
Despite Keenan's order, I released him. He took a long, broken inhale.
Keenan watched this, puzzled and amused. "Why did you stop? Jaxon turned you over to us. Doesn't that make you furious? Don't you want him to feel the pain that he caused you?"
"What would it change?" The edge was gone from my voice. "If I got revenge like you wanted and suffocated Jaxon, would what difference would it make? Would you let Connor and I go and leave us alone for the rest of our lives?"
"I think you know the answer to that question."
I did. Keenan would never give us up, not like that. I could not help wonder, though, given the chance, would I trade someone's life for ours? If he did offer our freedom in exchange for ending someone's life, someone who caused mass pain and misery without conscience, what would I choose?
Two days ago, the answer would have been no. Today, imprisoned and facing a future filled with agony, I was not sure.
"Do you know what Class A is, Echo?" Keenan asked.
I did, but I shook my head passionately. "I can never be a psychic assassin. I won't do it. Put me in any of the other classifications."
"We'll see."
Chapter 32
My hairbrush hit the wall with a thud, then the bedside clock, a stack of leather-bound books, and my dinner fork. When I ran out of things to throw, I ripped the sheets off my bed, yelling and cursing and calling Keenan every name I could think of.
Submission did not suit me well.
My fury extended to my dad and Kimber. They were supposed to protect me, supposed to be smarter and stronger and keep me out of harm's way. Why hadn't they seen that something was wrong in my life? Why hadn't they forced me to tell them about my ability and the madness I was slowly descending into?
This was unfair, I knew. I hadn't trusted them enough to tell them what I was going through. I couldn't expect them to protect me from things they knew nothing about. None of that mattered as I whipped the lamp onto the floor and yanked the curtains from their rods.
I'd turned my room, my cage, into a disaster zone, but I didn't feel any better. I'd gotten a whole lot more satisfaction when I was able to telekinetically rip my room apart. Sometimes, after one of my outbursts, I felt cleansed. Now the rage continued to pool in my bones.
A cold platter of food sat on the small table—a baked potato, still in its tinfoil wrap, broccoli, and steak neatly cut into bite-sized pieces so I would have no need for a knife. I whipped the potato against the wall, and then immediately regretted it. I'd refused lunch and my stomach cramped from hunger.
Pretty much everything I'd thrown had slid behind the dresser. Cursing some more, I pulled the heavy furniture forward and reached behind it for the potato and fork. My cheek was squished against the wall, my fingers playing with the fork tines, when I noticed words etched into the back of the dresser.
John Bardo was here.
So was Elsie Cardon.
Doug Laramie
Gianna Peretti
I laid my hand on the wood over their names. Its firmness reassured me, gave me a sense of permanence when my life felt so very fleeting. Maybe that was why they had scratched their names into the grain, to leave proof that they existed, that they once walked this planet, even if Keenan was to decide they had no place at Feller Industries. No place in this world.
I debated carving mine beneath Gianna's and then decided against it. Adding my name to the list of Keenan's victims was the same as giving in.
*******
The noises you hear when you are half-asleep always seem exponentially louder than they really are. So when the deadbolt on my door clicked in the dark of night, it echoed like a stick of dynamite in my head.
My eyes flew open. I strained to see. My ears picked up light footsteps and lighter breathing. I froze, groggy and indecisive, while ugly possibilities raced through my head. What if Jaxon came to take what he hadn't gotten at his apartment? Or was it one of the soldiers, coming to finish me off?
Someone's hand settled on my chest and I lashed out with my arms.
"Hey, whoa. No need to get violent." Ivan clicked his flashlight on. The ray of light lit his grotesque face, showing where the burn mark darkened his cheek near his ear and lightened where it ended at the corner of his mouth. His cloudy eye had a translucent cast.
"Just checking to see if you're breathing," he said.
"Why wouldn't I be?" I snarled.
"You don't want to know the answer to that question. It's time to get up."
I slung my legs over the edge of the bed. The rush of adrenaline had left them tingling and momentarily useless.
"Ivan?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you know anything about the guy they kidnapped to get me to come here?"
"What about him?"
"Is he okay?"
Ivan hesitated, and I thought the length of that pause would kill me. "He'll live."
That was all I needed to know. Before his answer could spark my imagination with worry and what-ifs, I asked, "Gianna said I get to leave when I finish a mission. What about my friend? And when do you think I'll get to see him?"
Ivan's eyes shot to the door. We were still alone. "I think Keenan's waiting to see how you do. What your flaws are and all that. Or if you need motivation."
"I'm motivated! I'm doing everything they're telling me to."
He sighed. "Get dressed. You're expected in the testing center." He lit a path back to the door.
"Wait. Who are…John Bardo, Elsie Cardon, and Dan Laramie?"
Ivan stopped and looked over his shoulder at me. "Doug Laramie. How do you know those names?"
"I'm psychic," I sneered.
"Everyone knows you're not," he s
aid without malice.
"Who are they?"
"They were recruits like you."
"Are they alive?" The question seemed reasonable in an environment like this.
"All but one." His voice was soft, and I had to lean in to hear. "Did Gianna say something to you?"
Interesting. He had come up with the one name I hadn't told him.
"I overheard someone talking about them."
"Not here, you didn't. Nobody would have mentioned those kids, so you'd better get your story straight."
Ivan gave me a muffin to eat on the way to the training center. It might have been early, but the tower was bustling with people. A somber group of kids left the center when we went in.
Keenan met us with a bright smile. "Good morning, Echo."
Yeah, whatever.
"You said I could see Connor if I did your tests. I want to see him now."
From the corner of the room, someone laughed.
"Is that her? Making demands already?" Luma, the tattooed girl that Jaxon had gone out with, sat on the weight bench. A large barbell rested across her knees. She puffed out her cheeks as she exhaled, the way she would if she were physically lifting a heavy load, but she was using her mind to raise the barbell. I'd seen guys bench-press that much weight, their shirts soaked from exertion. Luma didn't sweat a drop.
The barbell clanked to the floor and she slunk to us with feline grace. Her black gym tights and tank top curved over a sleek, toned physique. A studded collar glinted around her neck. She was older than I'd first thought, eighteen or nineteen. Her smile was radiant, and I swear she'd polished those collar studs to bring out their shine.
"Luma, this is Echo," Keenan said.
The girl raised a copper-colored eyebrow as she circled me. "So this is the one from the skatepark."
Luma was partly responsible for wrecking my life. Now she sniffed at me like I was spoiled meat. I wasn't looking for a reason to despise her more, but there it was.
"I think our new recruit has Class A potential," Keenan said.
"That's a little presumptuous," she huffed.
He turned to me. "Luma is my sole Class A agent."
"It means I'm the best." She pinched her fingers together and blew onto them. A coil of smoke transformed into the image of a cobra. It struck at me and I jumped back before it faded.