Reckoning (The Variant Series, #4)

by Jena Leigh

  “Alexandra,” said Carter, her voice echoing through the speaker in the girl’s cell. “Kill your friend.”

  Alex shook her head and gripped the back of her neck. “No way,” she said. “Not gonna happen, lady.”

  “Kill her,” Carter ordered.

  “No!” Alex shouted.

  “Dial it up,” said Carter. “Include your alterations, Knightly. For your sake, I hope you got it right this time.”

  Knightly was silent as she entered the necessary commands into her tablet.

  The ensuing scream carried over the speakers, echoing throughout the room, but still Alex didn’t move to obey. Instead, she lowered her head, causing her long hair to fall forward and obscure her face.

  “Again, Knightly,” said Carter. “To the limit.”

  Alex abruptly stopped screaming. She raised her head slowly, locks of her dark hair still hiding her eyes.

  Carter took a step closer to the monitor. “Kill her, Alexandra.”

  Obediently, Alex raised her right arm—and the Harper girl’s face filled with sorrowful acceptance and muted fear, tears streaming steadily down her cheeks.

  “I love you, Lexie,” she said. “I forgive you. Do you hear me? I forgive—”

  Her body took flight, slamming mercilessly against the obsidian wall before she crumpled, unmoving, in a far corner of the cell.

  Seconds passed and still the girl didn’t get up. It was difficult to tell, given the distance between Cassandra and the camera, but Carter was fairly certain the girl had stopped breathing.

  Her orders carried out, Alex lowered her arm.

  Carter smiled. “Excellent,” she said. “Good work, Knightly.”

  Knightly didn’t reply. The room full of technicians had gone silent, many of them staring at the display with troubled expressions.

  Carter returned her gaze to the monitor, saying, “Now is not the time to lose sight of the bigger picture, ladies and gentlemen. We knew from the outset that some sacrifices would need to be made in order to achieve our primary objective. The girl was a member of the resistance. A criminal. We can take one life here in the actualization of our ultimate goal, or we can take thousands more on the battle field while waging a full-fledged war. Remember why we’re doing this.”

  The device worked.

  Now she faced a decision. Deploy Alex immediately and set the final stages of her plan into motion—or wait a short time to see if her latest lead on the whereabouts of Samuel Masterson proved fruitful.

  If she could send them out together and make it appear as though the girl and Samuel were working in tandem… Well, not only would the humans find twice as much to fear in the shocking display—but the Variant community would likely be twice as hesitant to stand against them as well.

  Seeing the Parker girl under Agency control was one thing. Seeing the man they’d collectively feared for more than a decade under Agency control could frighten many Variants into instant obedience.

  A few more hours of waiting couldn’t hurt, she supposed.

  Before she called this experiment to a close, however, Carter still had one more test in mind for her new toy.

  She studied the monitor, then raised the microphone to her lips. “Now I want you to escape from your cell, Alexandra.”

  The girl’s head tilted to the side, like a dog puzzling over the meaning of its owner’s command. Even though the back of her head now faced the camera, Carter doubted she’d find any emotion in her expression.

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” said Knightly. “But the subject must already realize that escape isn’t an option.”

  “Exactly,” Carter replied. “I want to know what she’ll do when faced with an impossible order.”

  The girl stood still for another moment, took six steps backward until she was up against the wall… and then ran flat out toward the hallway. A wave of telekinetic energy hit the cell’s bars first, shattering the obsidian and causing the metal bands hidden underneath to curve outward.

  It wasn’t enough.

  The bars held fast—and the girl ran headlong into the partitions, knocking her skull against the metal rods with a ringing report.

  She bounced off and fell to the ground, senseless and immobile.

  Knightly adjusted the camera slightly downward.

  Alexandra was bleeding profusely from the head, her eyes closed, apparently unconscious. Or, as was more likely, dead from the force of the blow.

  Carter hummed. “Interesting.”

  The device had successfully overwritten the girl’s desire for self-preservation. Useful for what Carter had in mind—but potentially dangerous, as well. They would need to ensure that Alexandra’s healing ability remained at full strength or they might risk losing their newest weapon.

  “Sir?” Knightly asked with a small waver in her voice. “Should we send in a medic?”

  “No need,” said Carter. “The subject will revive herself and heal quickly enough on her own.”

  “I was, ah…” Knightly cleared her throat. “I was referring to the other one, sir.”

  “What?”

  Carter looked back toward the screen. Cassandra was still lying in a motionless heap in one corner of the cell.

  “Oh. Right.” She turned away. “Have the body removed. And do it quickly. Before the Parker girl regains consciousness. In fact, go ahead and shift our new asset to a solitary cell down the hall. I don’t want her exploiting a potential weakness in those metal rods after we deactivate the device.”

  “Yes, sir. Are you ready to shift the others to solitary as well? The larger holding cells aren’t equipped to hold them this long. They’re going to need facilities, eventually.”

  “Give it a few more hours. Keep listening in on their conversation. They could still slip up and provide us with something useful.” Carter hesitated in the doorway of her office. “How is our other asset faring?”

  “Jezza?” Knightly asked.

  Carter narrowed her eyes at the use of the girl’s first name. “Yes. I was told Miss Stone attempted to harm herself this morning.”

  Knightly nodded. “She, ah… Well, she… remembered. It seems she was able to recall her actions at the resistance safe house last night. Hurting her friends, I mean. Thankfully, the guards were able to stop her before she caused too much damage. We’re keeping her sedated in the lab for the time being.”

  “No need to waste the sedatives, Knightly,” said Carter. “Nor your valuable time. Simply put her in restraints and return her to a cell. Or turn the device back on and place her in standby mode. Both should prove effective—and neither one will distract you or Dr. Bowman from your other duties.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Knightly’s voice was faint, but Carter knew she’d follow through with the order.

  “Inform me the moment we receive word on Masterson’s whereabouts,” she added, stepping inside her office.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Knightly?”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t forget why we’re doing this.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  Carter closed the door behind her. Now that Alex was finally ready for her unveiling, she had a spectacle to plan.

  Twenty-Three

  Alex stared through the window built into the door of her new cell. Like the walls and the bench, the door was lined with a slick coating of black obsidian.

  The dark stone drew much of the light from the room, leaving her lost to the shadows. The only illumination came from the pale fluorescent lights in the hall, creeping in through the gaps between the bars of the window.

  With the exception of a fourth wall and the door, this new cell was identical in size and layout to the one Aaron Gale had been shot and killed in while trying to escape.

  Hours earlier, when the device was finally turned off, Alex returned to her senses and found herself sitting cross-legged on the bench, facing the door. Even after being released from its control, she still didn’t try to move
.

  She couldn’t.

  She remembered.

  Each and every wretched moment.

  Determined to protect Cassie, Alex resisted the push with everything she had—until, eventually, even her will to fight was ripped away.

  Her only consolation in those initial seconds was that she managed to avoid sinking back into the fog. At the time, Alex counted it as a minor victory.

  Now, she wished she’d surrendered to oblivion.

  She wished she didn’t remember. She wished she didn’t know.

  Through the opening in the door, a small portion of the hallway and the opposite cell were visible.

  But that’s not what Alex was looking at.

  Eyes open, eyes closed, it didn’t matter. The only thing she saw now was Cassie.

  Alex watched her mutinous arm reach forward. Sensed her telekinesis grasp Cassie in its invisible hold. Felt her own heart break as Cassie’s bones shattered upon colliding with the slick black wall. Heard her own scream echo in her thoughts as her best friend went silent and still.

  “Do you hear me? I forgive—”

  Alex closed her eyes.

  There had been a moment just before Cassie’s body had taken flight—just a flicker of an instant—where Alex had overcome the push just enough to will her strength to lessen.

  It hadn’t made a difference.

  Even at half strength, her telekinetic volley packed a fatal punch. After fighting the push with every ounce of willpower she possessed, Alex still hadn’t been able to disobey Carter’s order.

  Somewhere in the back of her thoughts, she recognized that Carter had just won the war. Because if Alex couldn’t summon enough strength to defy the device in order to save someone she loved, then what hope did she have of defying it to save anyone else?

  Angry shouts drew Alex’s attention back to the present. A hollow thunk-thunk-thunk joined the chorus and, without consciously deciding to, Alex got to her feet and walked closer to the window.

  “Quiet, Miss Stone,” said a man’s voice over a speaker in the hall. “We’ve deactivated your device as a courtesy. Any more sudden movements, and we’ll happily turn it back on.”

  One last thunk and a furious roar emanated from the cell across the hall and then… silence.

  “Jezza?” Alex called through the bars. “Is that you?”

  A face appeared in the window of the opposite cell. Jezza’s eyes were wild and bloodshot. A combination of mascara and eyeliner ran in gray rivulets down her pale cheeks.

  “New Girl?” she said, her fearful expression morphed into one of outright despair. “Oh, God, no… No, no, no. Not you. You were supposed to be free. You were supposed to be fighting them.”

  “Are you hurt?” Alex asked, noticing the bandage on her forehead. “Did they hurt you?”

  Fresh tears filled Jezza’s eyes and she shook her head. She reached a hand up and felt tentatively at the white patch of gauze.

  “I did it to myself,” she said. “When I woke up in my cell earlier and… and remembered what I did, I… I just couldn’t…” She shook her head again. “But there wasn’t anything sharp. There wasn’t anything, so I … So I just ran into the bars and…”

  Jezza began to sob.

  “I killed Trent,” she choked out. “They made me… I killed him, Lex. I loved him and I… I still…”

  In that moment, Alex understood exactly what Jezza was feeling. She understood the pain and the regret, the self-loathing and the hatred, the fear of what was still to come—what she might yet be ordered to do.

  Alex understood, and still she couldn’t find the words she needed to comfort her friend.

  Alex wasn’t sure such words actually existed.

  Instead, her voice quiet, she could only say, “I know.”

  Jezza must have sensed something in Alex’s tone, because she looked up and fixed her with a sorrowful, questioning gaze.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Cassie,” Alex whispered.

  Jezza shut her eyes and rested the uninjured side of her forehead against the bars.

  For a handful of minutes, neither of them spoke, each lost in their own thoughts.

  “If you get the chance,” said Jezza, her voice startling Alex from her reverie, “I want you to stop me, Lex. I don’t care how. All I know is that I’d rather die than hurt another person I care about.”

  Eventually, Alex nodded.

  “Say it, Lex,” said Jezza, her voice hard. “Promise me you’ll do it. Promise me you’ll end this.”

  “I…” Alex swallowed the lump in her throat. “I promise. But only if you swear to do the same for me.”

  Jezza nodded. “I swear.”

  The agreement made, Jezza stepped back from the window and disappeared into the darkness of her cell.

  Alex turned away from the door and walked to the bench. Laying down on the cold stone, she curled up on her side, and finally—finally, Alex started to cry.

  * * *

  Aiden landed a few solid kicks against the wall of his prison before pausing with a grimace. He needed to give his aching foot a rest, but he was way too stubborn to stop now. He had to be getting closer. The stone must be about ready to break.

  He rested his sweaty brow against the cool, slick rock.

  Aiden’s concept of time had always been terrible, but in this place it was practically nonexistent.

  They’d brought him two meals since shoving him inside this new solitary cell. Two days might have passed. Or less than one. Either way, it was too much time.

  Cassie still hadn’t been returned to the group.

  Grayson, on the other hand…

  With a scowl, Aiden kicked the wall five more times.

  The others were scattered in cells up and down the long hallway. They could still communicate with each other by calling out through the windows in their cell doors, although no one had spoken for at least a few hours.

  Or maybe just half of one.

  Didn’t matter. There was nothing left to say, anyway.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Something about the rock lining his cell was … off.

  Obsidian was a lot like glass. When met with a strong enough force, it typically shattered to pieces. His repeated blows ought to have broken it to bits by now.

  Really sharp bits that he fully intended to use against their captors once he finally made his escape and went to find Cass.

  Aiden could only assume the Agency had managed to dig up an earth-wielder and used him to blend the brittle stone with something a bit tougher.

  Christ only knew where they’d found the poor bastard. Earth-wielders were at the top of the Variant community’s endangered species list. The ability was rumored to be next in line to go the way of the weather manipulators.

  Even still, the obsidian couldn’t be too diluted if it was still effective enough to block Grayson’s gift. Which meant that if he just kept kicking at the damn thing…

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Aiden stopped, swallowing a groan of pain.

  He’d been aiming his blows at the same spot on the wall since the moment they locked the door behind him. Either that damn stone would shatter first, or his foot would. Until then, he had no intention of stopping.

  There was no escaping from the room. He’d already tried everything else he could think of.

  The door wouldn’t budge. The bars in the window wouldn’t bend. His shouts to the guards went unanswered. The only furniture in his cell was built into the wall.

  Even more frustrating, the small pools of liquid in the bottom of the toilet and lurking in the pipes hidden in the walls were so befouled with chemicals he couldn’t even begin to separate the water from it.

  Meals were delivered on a Styrofoam tray, without utensils, and shoved through a small slot at the base of his door. And with those meals, they brought him milk in a small paper carton. He couldn’t sense usable water anywhere nearby.

  There was literally nothing in that
room that could help him.

  At least, not yet.

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  Aiden kicked through the pain, focusing instead on finding Cassie. Getting her out of this hellhole. Getting her somewhere safe, and then never letting her out of his sight again.

  He had to get out of this cell.

  He had to find her.

  And he refused to believe that she might already be gone. Grayson could be wrong. Alex might have resisted the device. Cassie could still be okay.

  He had to believe it.

  He had to.

  And damn, what he wouldn’t give for a pair of steel-toed boots right now. These old sneakers he wore were a joke.

  In an adjacent cell, Cil gasped in surprise.

  Aiden paused mid-kick and glanced toward the window in his door.

  “Are… are you guys…” Linus’s nervous voice drifted from the next room. “Are you seeing this?”

  Puzzled, Aiden scanned the small confines of the room and found an image being projected onto the back wall.

  A face.

  Alex’s face.

  Only wrong. Unnaturally still. Devoid of emotion. And her eyes—they were as black as his cell’s obsidian walls. Pools of ink in a porcelain visage.

  She looked like a doll. And a creepy one at that. It was the sort of special effect you’d only expect to see in a horror movie.

  The sight of her filled Aiden with more than just fear. It filled him with an overwhelming sense of dread.

  Because if Alex’s eyes were any indication, then she hadn’t been able to fight off the device after all. And that meant…

  “No,” he said, surprised by the strained sound of his voice.

  In the projection, Alex blinked.

  “Alexandra,” Carter’s voice carried over the PA. “What are your orders?”

  Any hope Aiden harbored that the image was merely a still shot taken during their earlier attempt to turn her against Grayson evaporated. This was live.

  “Return to Bay View.” Alex’s voice was as empty as her expression. “Infiltrate the Summer’s End Celebration at the Boardwalk. Kill as many normals in attendance as I can, by any means possible.”

  “And how far will you go to achieve your objective?”