Overtaken

by Mark H. Kruger

  “I swiped it from my dad’s office,” Chase said as he slipped it inside the door’s digital lock.

  Here I was, receiving a miraculous rescue, but it only made me question it more. He had stolen it from his dad’s office? Obviously, it was his father’s company, but Bar Tech was no mom-and-pop business. Just because Chase was Cochran’s son didn’t mean he had the run of the place.

  As the light flashed green and the door swung free with a small beep, I considered a second, possibly worse option. What if it wasn’t Cochran Senior who had pushed Chase to my aid, but Dana? As soon as I thought it, I immediately recognized it as the slyer, smarter move. Instead of Chase’s father having to reveal his true colors (what kind of good parent locks up teenagers?) and asking him to narc out his girlfriend, Dana was the perfect solution. Dana could’ve talked him into a betrayal he’d see with only undying certainty. No torn loyalties or moral choices; only a blind surrender to the lure of Dana’s snake eyes.

  His hug, squeezing the air out of both of lungs, certainly felt genuine. Chase took my hand, pulling me ahead, but my heels instinctively dug in. He turned back to look at me, incredulous.

  “Come on! We have to go now.” I could see it play across his face as he finally figured it out. “Jesus Christ. You don’t trust me?”

  I wanted to apologize and just run off into the unknown winding corridors with him, gunning for safety and trusting he’d pull me free of his own father’s maze. But I had already lost too much. I didn’t know if I was more afraid that Chase had betrayed me, or the surprise of one more person being ripped from my heart.

  “I want to,” I answered hesitantly. “It’s just . . . well, it’s a little convenient, isn’t it?” It felt like I was punching us both in the gut. “You finding me minutes after your dad has trapped me here? An eager shoulder to cry on?”

  I slowly backed out of the glass cell. If my hunch was right, I wanted at least a running chance before getting shoved back inside.

  “I don’t know what to say to that,” Chase replied, hands held up as if to say “I’m no threat” and “I come in peace.” “I trusted you when you asked me to. When you wanted to lock yourself in a room with Topher. I just stood by, no explanation. Hell, I guarded the door for you!” He clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth, trying to calm the anger worming its way to the surface.

  “I tried to get you to stay away from me,” I retorted. “I told you it might not be safe for you.”

  “And you know what that means by normal-people standards? That means ‘I have trust issues.’ That means ‘I’m not sure how I feel about you.’ That means ‘Jackson Winters jerked me around and I’m still mooning after him.’ Not ‘Kids at our high school have superpowers and I’m one of them.’”

  Did Chase know that? Or was he just assuming I was one of them? It didn’t matter anymore. Not a single resident had missed Maya’s display under Barrington’s extra-bright streetlights.

  “If you want to go it alone, fine. Take it.” He held the Bar Tech keycard out to me, an offer. “I’m sure I’ll get a lecture, but no one will lock me up.”

  I’d never seen Chase look so worn down and defeated. I reached for the card . . . but took his hand instead.

  “You promise you can get me out of here?” I asked, scanning his face one last time.

  “I promise,” Chase vowed.

  I held his gaze. I couldn’t be 100 percent sure of his loyalty, but I wasn’t ready to be quite that cynical yet. “Here goes nothing,” I announced as I used all my concentration to vanish before Chase’s stunned eyes. His mouth hung open as he watched his own hand and arm, which were holding mine, start to disappear. In a matter of seconds he was gone.

  “Whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand,” I ordered.

  Chase tugged, and this time I followed. I was light on my feet, jogging alongside Chase through overly lit hallways and down metal staircases.

  Security guards were combing the halls, checking doors, never realizing that they weren’t alone. As Chase and I silently passed room after room of labs and computers and storage, something occurred to me. I knew right away it was exactly the kind of thought I should shy away from, but it refused to be denied. Why was I running away when every answer I’d ever wanted was in this very building?

  My heels dug in once more, squeaking to a halt as my rubber soles gripped linoleum. I almost wrenched Chase’s arm out of its socket.

  “What is it?” Chase whispered, suddenly alarmed by my resistance.

  I materialized and so did he. I pointed at the keycard he was holding in his left hand. “That’s your dad’s keycard?”

  “Yes. Nica, come on. We’ve got to move.” Chase was losing patience with me. At least one of us still had their head on straight. We could hear footsteps and voices from somewhere down the hallway.

  I continued on. “Which means it will open any door in this entire building.”

  Chase didn’t like where this was going. At all. “Yes . . .”

  I had already made up my mind.

  “I can’t go yet. There are answers here, and I might never get an opportunity like this again.” I knew that I risked losing my chance to escape, but I’d already decided on this, and damn was I committed.

  “You realize this is absolutely insane, right?” Chase proclaimed, nervously scanning up and down the corridor for signs of Bar Tech Security.

  “Yes,” I acknowledged. “Completely and utterly.”

  “But that’s how you roll, right?” Chase sighed, shrugged. I nodded. He waved his arms like an overly enthusiastic college tour guide. “Where to?”

  “Where would you get yelled at the most for sneaking into?”

  Chase was sobering quickly. “The executive floor.”

  Three minutes and a special elevator later, I was in the belly of the beast. The executive floor could be accessed by only a handful of Cochran’s most-trusted employees. It also had the coolest collection of mint-condition arcade cabinets I had ever seen.

  “Always keeping me on my toes, Bar Tech,” I muttered as I scurried past them with Chase.

  “I’m not surprised. My dad has almost as many at home.”

  “You mean . . . you’ve never been up here before?” I asked, incredulous. I was confused, as Chase seemed like he knew exactly where he was going.

  “Nope.”

  “Then how do you know . . . ?”

  Chase pointed dead ahead to the double doors at the end of the hall. “Easy. That’s the biggest office.” He moved for the doors.

  “Wait,” I said, stopping in my tracks as I tried to assess the situation. “What if he’s in there?”

  Chase shrugged. Then he knocked. I winced, ready to run, but there was no response. We used the keycard and the doors swung open.

  The office was spectacularly beautiful, impeccably decorated and designed. It was all browns, blacks, and creams. Spare Asian minimalism mixed with high-tech wizardry. Everything from the recessed lighting to the wall of concealed video monitors was controlled via a remote. It looked more like one of those insanely expensive luxury hotels than a business office.

  Pushing all tangents aside, I headed straight for Cochran’s computer. It was comprised of several slim monitors on his sleek, midcentury desk. With a secure office in an entirely secure floor providing more than ample security, Cochran’s desktop was still password protected.

  I realized that I had no chance in hell of hacking into Richard Cochran’s personal computer. Still, I did have access to my own secret weapon. I turned to Chase, hoping that his status as the Cochran prodigal son had reaped some rewards along the way. “Any idea what your dad’s password might be?”

  I could see in his eyes that this was his do-or-die moment. Would he really betray his beloved father for some cause he wasn’t even a part of? Or would he come to his senses and finally stop me and protect his
family’s empire?

  “Takamori1877,” he announced. “His passion is Japanese history—specifically Samurai Japan. Saigo Takamori was one of the great samurai warriors from the nineteenth century. Some say he was the last true samurai.”

  “Funny. That was my guess,” I quipped as I typed the password on the keyboard and then headed right to the drop-down search function.

  My first search was for Blackthorne. There was a lot of what I already knew, but stark confirmation directly from the devil’s playbook. Bar Tech had bought up almost all of the public land. The files also revealed that Cochran had made several recent trips to Virginia, meeting with local politicians, contractors, engineers, and researchers from the state’s best tech school. The project was certainly gearing up, seemingly under most of the company’s noses. Only one woman, whom Chase identified as Richard’s loyal assistant of more than fifteen years, was cc’ed on any of the correspondence. The spending was coming out of a special fund Bar Tech had formed for corporate charitable donations. As no one seemed to care too much about Bar Tech’s philanthropic efforts, it was the perfect place for Cochran to hide his secret spending.

  Next I tried my own name and my father’s. As I’d suspected, Cochran had been isolating my father for weeks before Dana brain-wiped him clean and he was sent out of town.

  “Looks like your dad knows more about me than maybe I do,” I announced to Chase. Not only did he have details of my ability and its functions, likely thanks to Oliver and Jackson via Dana’s superpowered wiles, but my habits, friends, absences from school, and medical records. The rabbit hole was tempting, but I knew I couldn’t get stuck on the smaller details.

  “What about Whiteface?” Chase asked, peering over my shoulder, eager to find out every secret his father kept.

  “Jackpot,” I replied with a smile.

  This time there was not just what I already knew—the secret facility, Dana’s role, gene patents, Bluni as the program’s lead researcher—but what I definitely did not. Details on Cochran’s computer showed that the training facility was not the only atmospheric research lab that had been gutted and refurbished. While the main lab, Bluni’s headquarters, was the crown jewel, the remaining five labs were among Cochran’s collection of dirty little secrets. Each former lab had been outfitted with the most rigorous lock system and accompanying keypad, but the real kicker was in their new content. Cochran had outfitted each unit with a truckload of C-4 explosives. I didn’t know much about explosives, but for some reason Richard Cochran had been squirreling away enough to blast Whiteface into two. Unfortunately, it didn’t say why.

  When I heard the door’s lock click open, it was like I had summoned him to answer the question himself. With nowhere to go, I yanked Chase down directly under the desk. I tried to go stealth again so we could have a chance to sneak out or at least hide somewhere a little less obvious. My fingers shimmered but quickly returned to fully opaque. Chase shot me an urgent “hurry up” look. As hard as I tried to relax, focus my energy, and disappear, my body wasn’t cooperating. Which made me only more desperate and panicky. But it wasn’t happening.

  Luckily, Cochran wasn’t headed for his desk chair. He was too busy shouting back and forth with Bluni. “This Maya Bartoli shitstorm? This is all on you, Bluni. You were so caught up in your research lab you never realized how dangerous an enemy she could be to us.”

  “This isn’t my fault, Richard,” Bluni barked back. “This incident at the school has nothing to do with the science. It’s an isolated aberration.”

  “Isolated? She’s rampaged half the town. She’s the exact worse-case scenario that every researcher warned the board about before you told them every lie they wanted to hear and convinced them that these traits were safe to harvest and implant in others. I don’t know if it’s better or worse when your fearless leader drinks the Kool-Aid too.”

  “Bartoli wasn’t one of my kids,” he answered defiantly.

  “You’re right; she’s not. But Nica Ashley is. And you let her run wild.” Cochran waved his hands around the room, presenting his office in its full glory. “The keys to the castle? My job? I know what the board promised you upon delivery of genetic patents. I might be getting pushed out, but I still have my people here.”

  Holy shit. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Richard Cochran was no longer pulling the strings at Bar Tech?

  “Fine. Great, in fact. The timing couldn’t be better, because I am so tired of bailing out this ship you insist on sinking,” said Cochran. He picked his laptop up off the desk, along with the single framed photo on the desk: Cochran and an eighth-grade Chase. “Enjoy it while you can.” He departed with a smirk, leaving everything else behind him as he stormed out of the office.

  Though Bluni didn’t know he had company, Chase and I were reeling in Cochran’s wake. My brain was scrambling to catch up: Cochran’s reluctance to make the superpowered kids a real project at Bar Tech. Dana’s recruitment tear through Ski Club and their training facility on Whiteface. Blackthorne, Virginia, Cochran’s most top-secret projects. And his most recent acquisition: enough C-4 explosives to warm the heart of a Bond villain. I could feel that final piece clicking into place. It filled me with equal parts satisfaction and terror. It was time to get crazy.

  Though Chase tried to stop me with every available limb, I climbed out from the under the desk. Bluni didn’t even notice me until I spoke.

  “I know what he’s planning,” I said boldly.

  Bluni dove for the desk’s panic button. The alarm had barely sounded before two security guards barreled into the room.

  “Leave her alone!” Chase shouted, rising to my defense, but it was chivalrous in gesture alone. He was quickly in the same zip-tie cuffs I’d been wrangled with.

  He and I were being dragged away, so I shouted out as much as I could. “Cochran’s not abandoning Bar Tech. He’s going to rebuild it. He has another site in Virginia that he’s hidden from the company. It’s called Blackthorne.”

  This seemed to at least get Bluni’s attention. But why was I sharing? Why did I want to help Bluni, a man equally as vile as Cochran himself? Because I had figured out Cochran’s endgame.

  “He has all of Whiteface rigged to explode. He’s going to bury Bar Tech, the town, and everyone with it.”

  Bluni didn’t flinch, but I could see his hand beginning to tremble. He looked away, instead turning to the guards. I could see his time as Bar Tech’s grand master already ticking away. “You know where to put them. And get me a location on Cochran. ASAP.”

  Chase’s hand was warm, and I squeezed it like a charm, the only source of heat and light in the otherwise frigid cell. It was so cold and dark, that “cell,” wasn’t even accurate. Compared with the rest of the building’s architectural merit and postmodern grandeur, this felt like the dirty basement that Bar Tech had forgotten to finish. Its own Soviet gulag. The thought gave me chills. How many unfortunate people had been locked away in this place? While the realization that Chase and I weren’t the first to rot in this hole was upsetting, even worse was the fact that we were on deck to be the last. I couldn’t fix the past, but I was very focused on the future—the one that involved catastrophic destruction and the burial of Barrington. Every distant rumble and clank put me on edge, each one sounding for all the world like the beginning of the end. I sat silently, fists clenched, waiting for the reaper to arrive in the form of Cochran’s avalanche, roaring down the mountainside to pulverize us. “Your dad’s an asshole,” I blurted out. Not the nicest thing to say but a bit of an understatement in my opinion. Not uncalled for, but I knew it probably wasn’t the right time to say so. When was, though? I didn’t want to start a fight, but I had to let Chase know how I felt. He squeezed my hand back.

  “It’s just not like him. It’s not the guy I know.”

  “No one here is who you think they are,” I said sadly, thinking about Jackson and his abrupt transf
ormation. “We’ve all kept secrets from each other. I’m not proud of it, but we did.”

  “If I could just talk to him . . . ,” said Chase, trying to wrap his head around the recent avalanche of disturbing revelations about his father.

  “It’s too late for that, Chase. We have to get out of here and we have to try to stop him. Talking will just get us killed.”

  Chase scooted across the floor to the slot in the thick door. “What are we gonna do?” he asked, as if I had some magic solution to our current predicament. “Can you shrink us and slip through here?”

  I remembered that I hadn’t actually discussed the specific details of what I was and wasn’t capable of with Chase. In lighter circumstances, I probably would’ve laughed. But Chase was getting audibly frustrated—I hoped more at the situation than my attitude. A third voice interrupted.

  “I have a better idea.”

  The voice came from behind me. I turned around to see Topher standing behind us with Oliver at his side.

  “About time,” I said matter-of-factly, and then ran toward them for a hug. In my excitement, I’d forgotten that they were simply projections, and my efforts sent me breezing right through their spirit forms and nearly crashing into the wall. “Right,” I said, noticing Chase’s spooked look, triggered by our friends’ sudden, ethereal appearance. “Uh, so, Topher can—well—long story, but it’s him. Just separated from his body. Astrally projecting. This is what I was doing at the dance. I had to get to my mom.”

  “But isn’t she . . . ?” Chase shot me a bewildered look.

  “Yeah, down in the South Pole. And Topher and Oliver are in town at Ebinger’s.”

  “Oh. Duh.” Chase looked more confused than ever.

  I turned and looked at Oliver. “You saved me at the school.”

  He blushed and looked at his feet, embarrassed by the attention.