by JA Huss
Open. Your. Eyes.
I open them. His face is handsome. Slight scruff on his jaw and chin. Dark eyes flashing with mischievousness. Corners of his lips upturned in a smile. “Thomas?” I ask, unsure, but yet still very, very sure who this man is.
“No.” He laughs, shaking his head. “I’m Sullivan, sweet Sadie. But shhhhhh.” He chuckles through his whisper. “Don’t tell him about me. He doesn’t like me. If you tell him, Sadie, he will go insane!”
The last word comes out as an evil laugh. He stops. Smiles down at me. “He can’t help you anyway. When I’m in charge, I’m in charge.” He laughs again. “But the important thing now, Sadie, is that we’re a team. We can be a team. Just the three of us.”
“The three of us?” I ask, feeling sick at what he’s saying.
“You. Me. And Thomas. Do you know what they call that in comic books?” More sinister chuckling.
I shake my head. Not at his question, which makes no sense to me at all, but at… everything. No. This is not happening.
Red and white letters flash across my field of vision.
THIS. IS. HAPPENING.
“They call it a power trio. He wants to get revenge.” Thomas—Sullivan—whoever this insane freak is—waves a hand in the air like that doesn’t matter. “We can get his silly revenge. Why not? But Sadie,” he says, slipping his hand between my legs once again as he leans down to press his soft lips against mine. “We could get so much more. You and I?” he says, pointing to me, then himself. “We could rule the world.”
I should know better by now. I should know better than to take my eyes off his hands. Because another needle stabs me in the neck. This is different than the last thing he gave me. It’s the thing he uses to put me to sleep. I feel the sting in my veins. I feel it hit my heart. Thump, thump, thump, thump. And then it’s in my bloodstream.
My eyes get heavy, even as he continues to kiss me.
I might kiss him back, I’m not sure. I’d like to think I don’t, but I’m not sure.
“Don’t tell him about me, sweet Sadie. Because if you think he’s insane now…” Sullivan laughs. “Just wait until he finds out I’m back in control without his permission.”
I sit straight up when I wake. Just like last time. “Holy fucking shit!”
“Sadie?” Thomas calls from the other room.
I’m on the bed again.
Where the fuck does that freak take me when he gives me the drugs? Not the bedroom. It’s not the bedroom. I was not on a bed. I was on like… a table. Something hard.
“Sadie?” Thomas calls, sterner now.
“What?” I call back. Habit, maybe. Or just still responding to the commands his crazy alter-ego was feeding me in my… real-life nightmare.
Good God. What’s happening?
“I didn’t want to drug you but you were crazy. Talking shit about hearing voices. I think you’re going insane.”
He says it so matter-of-factly I want to laugh.
I’m the only one who faces reality. I’m the only thing standing between good and evil right now.
Does he really think that?
I need to get the fuck out of here. I mean, maybe he’s right. Maybe wherever it was I came from was a pretty dark place. But he is the insane one.
Split personality? Is that even a real thing?
“We need to come up with a plan,” Thomas says from the doorway. He’s got no shirt on and his jeans are low on his hips, showing off the cut muscles of his abdomen.
“No,” I say, swinging my legs over the bed. “I’m leaving.”
“There’s something wrong with you.”
“Something wrong with me?” I huff, mind blown.
“I think I should take you to see Sheila after all. It’s been five days already, so—”
“Five days?” What the fuck? How the hell did five days go by?
“—I don’t think they’re still looking for us. At any rate, we need to meet up with Lincoln and Case. Make sure the plan’s still on track.”
“What fucking plan? The one where we all admit we’re insane and we’re out to destroy the world?”
His face screws up. “Maybe you should rest a little longer? You’re not all here.”
Again. Mind blown. Incredulous isn’t a strong enough word to describe how I feel.
I take a deep breath, hold it in for the count of three, and let it out. “I’m going to leave now. No need to worry about me anymore. No need to drop me off somewhere.” I get up and straighten the new shirt he bought me. “And thank you for the hospitality and clothes. I appreciate it. A lot,” I add, trying to be as congenial as possible so I don’t set him off and drag that psycho alter-ego out of that fucked-up head of his.
“You can’t just… leave, Sadie. We need to see Sheila. I’m sorry, OK?”
“Sorry for what?” I ask. Picturing his hands on my body. His lips on my mouth. His grip on my mind.
“The mind blast. I didn’t realize, I guess.”
“Realize what?”
“I mean, I couldn’t know. I had no idea you’d be in the direct path of the blast. I did it out of instinct, I guess. It wasn’t conscious, not at all. So if you’re worried I’ll do it again—well.” He laughs. “I don’t even know how to do it again. I think it was just the perfect set of circumstances.”
Yeah, the perfect moment is right. The moment when his insane double personality took over and hijacked his body.
“And I’m sorry for leaving you hanging in the shower.” He laughs again, but this time it might be genuine. “I just kinda…”
I wait for the rest of that, but he shakes his head and smiles. His eyes aren’t as dark when he smiles. Not this smile, at least. “Just kinda what?”
“Like to be in control.”
Control? He’s so not in control.
“You’re cute, you know? And I’m not just saying that because I’ve been locked in a hospital for a month. You’re just… pretty. And a little too young,” he adds, shrugging. “Which I like… but probably shouldn’t. In fact, I should just stop fucking talking because I’m digging my hole deeper with every word.”
I laugh. Because he’s… different. Not that cocky asshole he was before he drugged me this last time. He’s definitely nothing like the nightmare version. He’s just a guy right now. Just a guy trying to figure shit out.
“Let me take you to Sheila, OK? I swear to God, she will hook you up to Lincoln’s diagnostic shit and come up with a plan in less than a day. She can fix it.”
He has no clue. None. If that wasn’t a nightmare. If that other him—that Sullivan guy—if he’s real and what he said is true… then I’m compromised from within. I have something inside me. Something in my brain. Something that will let people control me.
“Maybe I don’t need to know my memories. Maybe it’s just better to start over. A new day, so to speak.”
“That’s not gonna help.” He says, stern look on his face. “You can’t live in denial. It always comes back to haunt you. Better to deal with reality than push it down into some dark crevice of your mind, ya know?”
I don’t know how much to tell him. What if he does go insane if I let him know his second personality is back? What if he loses his mind for real? What if I’m locked down here and can’t get out? I don’t even know how to get out!
So I decide on half-truths. “I had a flash of memory just now.”
“What’d you remember?” he asks, walking towards me. He sits down on the bed. Not too close. Not so close so we’re touching.
“Do you think we have these powers—this mentalist and illusionist stuff—because they did something to our brains?”
Thomas nods. “For sure.”
“And you think I was sent to kill you? How do you think they got me to do that?”
“Programming,” he says. “You don’t know anything, Sadie. It’s pretty evident you’ve been under their control your whole life.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Programming. Maybe they put something inside me
? Like a computer?”
“There’s an interface inside my brain, so you probably have one too. You’re not as developed as I am. I’m pretty sure of that. My hardware was for Alpha testing and you”—he laughs—“are clearly not an Alpha.”
“Can you see words?” I ask. I wish I knew what this was.
“Words?”
“Like across your eyes. Messages?”
“No,” he says. “That’s some real science-fiction shit right there. The interface is just impulses. It triggers neuronal pathways in your brain. Gives you… urges.”
Urges. None of this is good.
“Let me take you to Sheila. She’ll know—”
But an alarm goes off. A deep, prolonged buzzer. Ent. Ent. Ent. Something ominous. Lights begin to flash.
Thomas looks up at the ceiling as I cover my ears. “Time to go,” he says. But I can’t hear him over the repeating buzzer. I only see his lips. He leans down in my ear and says, “They’ve found us. Follow me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - THOMAS
I grab her and walk out of the room. This is just a perimeter alarm, so they’re not inside yet. I take her over to the monitors and study them.
“What’s happening?” she yells over the alarm.
I turn the alarm off. No need to broadcast what I already know. I let the buzzer ring in my ears for several seconds before I talk.
“Look,” I say, pointing to the security monitor. “They’re here.”
“Who?”
“Prodigy, most likely. Maybe Yasmine’s people. If she had those kinds of resources.”
“How will we get out?”
“Well,” I say, scratching my chin and looking around. “First I need to blow this shit up.”
“What?”
We might have an unhealthy obsession with blowing things up. I smile. “Just the hard drives. I need this fucking tower, so we’ll leave all the rest intact. They won’t blow it up. They’ll need to study it. But they’ll never figure it out. I’m the only one around here with eyes in the sky.”
I exit all the satellite programs, transfer ownership of the data to the other three towers, open the security panel, and type in the code for self-destruct.
“We’ve got five minutes before the air becomes unbreathable. If they come down here, they won’t go back up.”
“But where will we go?” Sadie asks, looking around in what might become panic if I don’t rein her in.
“Don’t worry. Do you really think I didn’t build this place with an escape hatch?”
She takes a deep breath and nods. “Fine, I’ll go with you.”
I almost snort. “Like you have a choice, sweet Sadie.”
Her whole body stiffens at my words. But I just grin and take her hand. “Come on, it’s this way.”
I lead her down a hallway, which leads to a two-foot-thick door made of reinforced steel. I key in the combination, heave it open, and wave her through.
“It’s dark,” she whispers into the blackness as I close and lock the door behind us.
“It’s this way,” I say, calmly taking the lead. She keeps hold of my hand, trips a few times over the uneven concrete below our feet, then bumps into my back when I stop at the next door.
“How can you see?” she whispers.
“No one can hear you. And I just have an excellent sense of direction, that’s all.”
There is another alarm, which makes her jump in surprise. “Why is it going off again?”
“The gas,” I say. “It’s releasing the gas now.”
“That was fast,” she says. “There wasn’t even a second warning. What if we were still in there?”
“I don’t make mistakes, Sadie. So why give the bad guys an opportunity? If you’re gonna do something, do it with winning in mind. I never half-ass my shit. If I make a security protocol, there’s no room for fuck-ups because I don’t fuck up. Here’s the car.”
“Car?”
“Train car, Sadie. Please get inside. We’re on a deadline.”
I code in the password into the security panel and the doors open, soft green lights barely illuminating the train we’ll be leaving in.
Sadie steps in. I step in after her, and then I type in the code to make the doors shut.
Another alarm screeches outside the car and green gas starts to fill the tunnel.
“Well, that was a little too close,” she snaps. “We almost got gassed!”
“Relax,” I say. “I got this. We’re fine, right?”
“Two seconds, Thomas. That’s all the time we had to spare.”
“I told you we had to be quick. Just do what I say, the way I tell you to, and you’ll be fine.”
She doesn’t like that answer, I can tell. But she doesn’t say anything else.
There’s two seats up front for a driver and passenger, even though once I program the car, it will drive itself. I take a seat in the driver’s side and start punching in codes to wake it up.
Sadie sits down in the passenger seat and looks out the window. “What if the gas seeps in?”
I roll my eyes. “I think of everything, Sadie. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
She mutters curses under her breath, but I ignore it. Just start up the computer and get things going.
“Where are we going?”
“To the west tower. The north tower is too close to the asylum for my taste. And there’s nothing over on the east side, so I’d rather not be there unless we have to. So west it is. At least we’ll be closer to Lincoln. When we get there, I’ll contact him and have Sheila come pick us up in the helicopter. Then we’ll just go up to his mansion in the mountains and try to figure out what’s going on with you.”
She huffs out some air. “Better order a double of that. You’re not exactly in your right mind either.”
“What?” I laugh.
“Forget it. How long will it take?”
I look up at her and smile. “About eight minutes.”
She looks impressed, if I do say so myself. “How the hell did you build a fucking high-speed train down here without anyone knowing?”
“Who said no one knew about it?”
“Oh,” she says, taking her attention to the window again.
“I hired workers from out of town. They each worked on different phases. Phase one did the tunnel, phase two the track and so on. So it is secret. As secret as something like this can be, anyway.”
She just stares out the window at the green gas. It’s all around the car now, the thick cloud falling down the windows like slow, twisting tentacles of an octopus.
I study her for a moment as I wait for the operating system to run through all the necessary checks before we get going. She’s not looking much better than the first day I found her. Her skin is still slightly pale and she’s hardly eaten at all.
“We’ll get some real food when we get to Lincoln’s. I’m sure you’re starving.”
She shrugs. “I don’t think I eat much. I’m not really hungry.”
Right. “Well, generally speaking, people need to eat.”
The system checks are over and the engine starts. Less than a minute later we move forward. It’s not like a regular train. It’s quiet for one. Sadie leans forward in her seat, then glances over at me. “Are you driving?”
“I don’t need to drive. It’s only one stop.”
She leans forward again, just as we begin to really pick up speed. “What’s that?”
She’s pointing to the first of many metal gates that will spiral closed like an iris less than a second after we pass through.
“Security,” I say. “In case anyone thinks they can follow us.”
We’re only going about a hundred miles an hour, but it’s fast and the iris begins to close before we even get there.
Sadie stands up, her hands braced on the dashboard. “It’s gonna close before we get there! It’s gonna cut us in half!”
“You have no trust.”
But she doesn’t hear me because we fly
through the gate and her head whips around to look out the back window to watch the iris close with a bang.
Before she even looks back we pass through another one. Bang!
Then another.
Bang!
Then the final gate on this end.
Bang!
“Holy fucking shit!” she says, holding her hand over her heart. She looks at me and says, “You’re fucking insane! Those things barely missed us! Was that… was that a blade in the center of the gate?”
I grin and soak up the impressive display of my genius. “We made it, didn’t we?”
She shakes her head and sits back down in her chair. “That’s dangerous. How does it know we’re through? We were like milliseconds from being sliced like salami!”
“Relax,” I say, easing back in my chair and putting my feet up on the dash. “It’s all math, Sadie. The physical laws of nature never let you down. Life is predictable and boring if you know the right equations.”
“Right.” She snorts, blowing up the hair that’s fallen over her face. “Because all that weird mental shit follows the laws of nature.”
“Well, what you do is just tricks.”
She huffs more air. “Whatever. I’m pretty talented.”
“I’m sure you are, but it’s a trick. Like a magician. What I do is command a force of nature.”
“What kind of force?”
“You know… like… wind, right?”
“Wind?” Everything I say seems to make her scoff. “How the hell do you get wind from that freak show of a display back at the asylum?”
“Well, wind is caused by the sun heating the earth. The air moving around it too. So it creates this force, right? You can’t see it, but it’s there. And it’s all based on natural properties because the earth has different topography so it heats unevenly. Which creates wind, or moving currents of air. When I use that mentalist power I’m creating uneven heating of things around me, which creates a force. Like wind, only… on an extreme scale. So there’s heat and air and then pressure, which makes the blast.”
“Freak,” she says again. “No one’s supposed to be able to do that with their mind.”
“Yeah, but it makes a whole lot more sense to have my power controlled by my mind than it does to have it controlled by two non-sentient forms of energy, don’t you think?”