by Tracey Ward
Liam lowers his hand slowly. “I didn’t lie to you. Not this time.”
“Bull! You tried to convince me that girl is your sister.”
“She is his sister,” Dr. Evans says lightly.
I scowl at him, ready to make another attempt at another Evans’ face, but the guard holds me tightly. “Liar.”
“It’s nothing but the truth, my dear.” Dr. Evans steps into the room. He walks past me as though I’m nothing. As though I’m not struggling against his guard to get a shot of connecting my foot with his junk. He stares dispassionately into the cell on the other side of the glass. “That is Naomi Amelia Evans. My one and only daughter.”
“How lucky for her,” I spit.
“She’s really rather amazing,” he continues, ignoring me. “Her abilities are incredible, though her mind is destroyed. She’s like a priceless wine in a cracked bottle.”
I can see her around Dr. Evans’ tall frame. She’s staring up at him with wonder. It’s the first expression I’ve seen her use, and it’s heartbreaking. She looks so much like a child. Like a perfect, beautiful doll that’s locked in a glass case never to be played with.
“I should really get rid of her, but I haven’t had the heart,” Dr. Evans continues. “She looks so much like her mother.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Liam move. It’s a twitch. Like an action he planned to take but put in check before it could happen. One directed toward his dad.
“Is her mother alive?” I ask Dr. Evans, but I’m looking at Liam.
“No. She passed away when Naomi was still very young.”
“How did she die?”
“Natural causes.”
Liam bites his lips together hard, his eyes on his father’s back. I’ve never seen him so angry.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Dr. Evans turns his back on Naomi. “No need. It was years ago.” His eyes fall on Liam, his face turning stern. “I’m disappointed in you, Liam, though I can’t say I’m surprised. Your attachment to Naomi has always been a cause for concern. She’s very distracting, which is why I think it best I separate the two of you until you can get your head on straight.”
Liam’s chest rises and falls rapidly. His eyes dart to the blue room, then back to his father. “You promised you wouldn’t.”
“And you promised that you would stay focused. You have not. You haven’t been honest with me, either—I suspect not for quite some time.” Dr. Evans wanders around the room until he’s standing near Nick by the doorway. “Imagine my surprise to find out we had Mr. Carver in custody. Don’t you think that’s something I should have been made aware of?”
“I brought him in but I didn’t have her yet. I was going to tell you once—”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear the lies. I know exactly what you were going to do. Everyone in this room knows what you were going to do, and the fact that you almost go away with it tells me you need more guidance. More focus. More incentive.”
“No,” he replies, his voice cracking.
“She’ll be gone within the hour and you’ll be better for it. I promise you.”
“No, don’t send her away.”
Dr. Evans frowns, looking almost sad. “You’ve already done everything you can to save her. You’ve focused more time on her than I ever should have allowed. It’s time to move your attentions to more important matters. Bigger pictures. It’s time to fill the role you’ve been preparing for your entire life.”
“I won’t work for them,” Liam says bitterly. “I won’t become their slave the way you have.”
“Slaves aren’t paid half as well as I am,” Dr. Evans replies, with such a pompous air that I want to laugh in his face. Or beat it unrecognizable.
“I won’t do it.”
“Once she’s gone I believe you’ll rethink your position on the matter.”
“Where will you send her?”
“Nowhere.”
Liam frowns. “Where am I going?”
“Nowhere. You’ll stay right here with me where I can see you.”
“Then how…” Liam’s voice trails off as he understands.
“It’s for the best,” Dr. Evans assures him gently. “It’s best for everyone, especially her. Do you really want her to continue her suffering? Wouldn’t it be better if it was all over—if it was behind us and she was at peace and we could move forward together? Just you and me and our memories of these beautiful, angelic creatures who touched our lives?”
Liam’s eyes are fixed hard on the ground. He doesn’t say a word for the longest time, and the room is fogged heavy and thick with the tension as we all wait. Finally he nods his head twice, so painfully slowly.
Then he’s gone.
I gape at the space he left behind. We all stare at it as though it will explain to us where he’s gone. What he was thinking. How he could leave his sister behind like that.
Dr. Evans turns to me, shaking his head. “I always knew he was weak, but I never thought he was a coward. I suppose—”
Liam appears in the space between Dr. Evans and I, startling us all. His back is to me. His shoulders are set firmly. When he raises his arm his movement is slow and methodical. It reminds me of Nick in its absolute confidence—in how precise, how assured he is.
Even as he levels a gun at his father’s face.
The guard releases me instantly, tossing me to the side, where I stumble to the floor. Nick moves toward me but the guards with him go to hold him back. He fights with them and I want to look, to help him if I can, but my eyes are glued on Liam and the gun.
He fires.
I scream, instinctively covering my ears with my hands and clamping my eyes shut tight. The sound of the shot in this small, nearly empty room echoes angrily until my ears ache. Everything sounds strange after that. It feels like I’m underwater, and I’m afraid to open my eyes. I know what I’ll see. I know what Liam has done.
I know I don’t want to see it, but I can’t hide. Not now, when Nick’s life is on the line.
I open my eyes to find the gray walls covered in dark red, darker than I would have imagined. Darker than TV and movies make you think it will be. It’s nearly black as it drips down the walls onto the floor, but I don’t look too low. I can’t hide, but I’m not going to go looking into the face of horror either. Instead I turn to find Nick, and I’m not surprised to see that he’s scuffling with the two guards closest to him.
I stand up to help him but immediately cower and cover my ears again when another shot goes off.
One of the guards attacking Nick drops to the ground in front of me. My breath comes quick and shattered through my mouth and I taste copper on my tongue like I licked a penny, but I know what it is. I know what’s in the air because it’s a fine mist over just about every surface. A running river over others. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I want to close my eyes against it but I can’t. They’re glued open, wide and scared, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same again.
Another shot. Then another. Two more bodies fall to the floor and so do I.
I drop to my knees, my hands held tightly over my ears, and I try to focus on a single spot on the now filthy floor. If I see only one drop I don’t have to see them all. I don’t have to know what they mean. Where they came from.
I don’t know how long I sit there like that, but it can’t be long. Eventually Nick is there beside me, his hand on my back so lightly I wonder if I’m imagining it. When I look at him, I’m terrified because I can’t see him. He’s a blur of motion, a disarray of colors that refuse to come together and I worry I’m so freaked out that I’m Slipping. That I’ll leave him behind.
It’s not until he wipes a gentle thumb under my eye that I realize I’m crying. That’s he distorted by my tears. By my fear.
When I can see him clearly again he raises his eyebrows, silently asking if I’m all right.
I shake my head severely.
He nods in solemn understanding. Then he takes my
hand, lightly kisses the clean back of it, and helps me rise to my feet.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nick
I hate that I know what this is going to do to Alex. She’s not ready for this. She’s not equipped to deal with it, probably ever. Not even with all of the prep and training in the world would she be okay after a fight like this. She’s just not the kind of person that can take this kind of violence and waste, and it’s not a weakness on her part.
I see it as a virtue.
She holds my hand vise-tight when I help her stand. It’s my right, and that’s a problem if I need to use my gun, but I don’t even consider telling her to let go.
Surveying the room, I count four bodies on the floor—Dr. Evans and all three of his guards. Liam stands in the center of it with his gun still raised and pointed where his father used to be. The guard who held Alex, the one who tossed her to the floor, nearly killed him. I don’t know if he or Alex realizes I saved his life.
“Liam,” I say firmly.
He doesn’t respond.
“Liam!”
He turns slowly to face me, and I wish I’d turned Alex away before I called out to him. His face and the entire front of his shirt are covered in blood splatter. He was only three feet away from his dad when he shot him, and it shows. I expect his eyes to be vacant and detached, but when he looks at me he is crystal clear. He only ignored me the first time because he simply didn’t hear me—not surprising, because my ears are ringing from the shots as well.
“What’s his name?” I demand, finally asking the question I came here to have answered.
He surprises me when he laughs. It’s a short bark but it puts a smile on his face for a split second, and between that and the blood, it’s like being face to face with a Stephen King character.
“After seeing this,” he spreads his arms open to the now red room, “you still want to climb higher?”
“This isn’t even the worst day I’ve seen, so spare me the theatrics. Give me the damn name.”
“I’ll do you one better,” he says, dropping his gun to the ground with a muffled clatter. “I’ll take you to them.”
“Pass. Just give me the name.”
“Sorry, friend. All or nothing. And Alex still needs to complete her task before we’re all squared away here.”
I pull her closer to me, grateful to find she’s not shaking. She hasn’t slipped into shock entirely yet. “What was she supposed to do?”
“He wants me to get her out of there,” Alex whispers.
Her eyes are locked on the other side of the glass. They’re staring into the open, calm face of the girl on the other side.
“Why is she in there?”
“That’s what I wanted to know.”
I look to Liam, who avoids my eyes. Instead he looks at the girl. “She was meant to be like you, Nick,” he says matter of fact. “And a little like Alex.”
Alex turns to him, surprised. “She was supposed to be a combination of the two of us?”
“Not deliberately. It only turned out that way by accident. After the first success shown in reducing fear in Nick, my father needed a new test subject. One slightly younger. More malleable. There were none on hand in the trials, so he did what he always did—he turned to his children. He modified her amygdala, but in his excitement he went too far. Instead of turning her fear response down, he turned it up.”
“She started to feel fear all the time?” I ask.
“Almost constantly. She was afraid of everything—light, sound, darkness, silence. I couldn’t console her. I tried, but I could never make the fear go away. It was around that time my father started noticing the problems with you, and he realized it was all pointless anyway. So he walked away.”
“He just left her like that?” Alex asks, horrified.
“He did. He moved on to the next project, searching for his next success, but he couldn’t find it. Two years later he decided to revisit an old failure to see if he couldn’t turn it into gold. He couldn’t try it on me because he already had and it’d failed in his estimation. Again he needed a younger subject, and again there were none to be found. He returned to Naomi.
“She was already broken as far as he was concerned. If he broke her further, what harm would it really do? He started trials on expanding her perceptions—the same thing he did to me and later would do to Alex. And it worked. She was finally a success, and the research he conducted with her would lead to his breakthrough with Alex. But Naomi’s ability to reach out with her mind, combined with her escalated sense of fear, became a problem. She began broadcasting her emotions. Her fear. People began having nightmares. Suicidal thoughts. Hallucinations. That’s when he locked her up.”
Alex looks at him in disbelief. “And you want me to let her out?”
“She’s not broadcasting as she used to,” Liam replies defensively. “I’ve worked tirelessly to try and cure her. I’ll never be able to undo everything he did, but I’ve made progress in minimizing it. She has some control over it, the same way you and I have managed control over our abilities.”
“She’s Freddy Krueger!” Alex shouts at him, clenching my hand hard.
“She’s my sister!” Liam shouts back. “I would think you of all people could appreciate the weight of that fact!”
“Let’s get her out,” I tell Alex.
She turns to me, her face full of hesitance. “Are you sure? How do we know this isn’t a trick?”
I nod to the room behind us, hoping she doesn’t turn to look at it again. “It’s a pretty elaborate trick, don’t you think?”
“They’re capable of anything.”
“Not rising from the dead. You can’t fake that. And besides, busting her out is the only way he’ll give up the name I need and I’m tired of waiting for it. If it’s a trick, if he traps you in there with her,” I center my gun on Liam’s chest, “I’ll kill him.”
“All right,” she agrees warily. “I’ll do it.” She looks suspiciously at Liam. “Is she going to hate me coming in there? Will she try to hurt me?”
“No,” he says, his eyes darting between her and my gun. “I’ve shown her your picture. I’ve talked to her about you. She’s been waiting for you.”
“Oh, good,” Alex mutters.
“Take her straight from that cell to Campbell,” I tell Alex.
“What about you?”
“I’ll leave with Liam. You taking his sister should keep him honest.”
“I’ll follow anywhere you take her, just so long as you get her out of here,” he agrees.
Alex looks at him long and hard. I know she doesn’t trust this. She doesn’t trust him. But she does trust me, so I’m not surprised when she nods to him. “Campbell, Brody, and Beck are all at the Mall of America waiting for me to come back. I’ll take her there.”
“I’ll bring Nick there immediately after.”
“Don’t screw me on this,” she warns him severely.
“You have my word I will not.”
“Your word means nothing to me.”
“But she means everything to me. Even if you don’t trust me, you can trust that.”
Alex nods weakly, turning her back on him. She focuses her eyes on mine and I know why. She’s blocking out the blood all over Liam’s face. All over the walls. The floor.
“Are you going to be okay to do this?” I ask her quietly.
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t know. I don’t think I… I don’t know.” Her lip quivers slightly before she bites it hard between her teeth. Her eyes are full hazel pools of everything. Of the unashamed, honest emotion she always holds there. Of all the things she’d never hide from me. “Will you help me?” she whispers.
I feel my chest pinch. I didn’t expect her to ever want my help again—not after what I did in the dream. I thought it was a piece of trust I’d thrown away and we’d never get back. A bridge I’d burned to ash, unrepairable, but here she is rebuilding it.
I put my free hand
to the side of her face, run my thumb softly along her cheek. “Of course.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding rapidly. “Okay.”
“Stay calm. Breathe. This is easy. You’ll Slip in, take her hand, Slip out. Nothing to it.”
“And you’ll be right behind me?”
“Once you’re safely out of that room, Liam and I will follow. Right, Liam?”
“Precisely that,” he agrees.
“It’s the easiest thing you’ll do today,” I promise her.
“No,” she whispers. “Leaving you behind is the hardest thing I’ll do.”
She pushes past my hand to kiss me. It’s fast, it’s soft, but it’s sweet. There’s something in it that feels different, something pure and light, and it’s when she steps toward the glass with my hand held loosely in hers that I know what it is.
It’s faith.
Faith in me, faith in herself. Faith in us.
“Are you ready?” I ask.
She nods, her movements still jerky. Nervous. “I’m ready.”
I give her the nudge she asked for—just a gentle push of power, but that’s all it takes. I feel the hum in the air immediately and I pull my hand away so she won’t take me with her. And I don’t feel like a crutch when I do it. It doesn’t feel like I’m weakening her to help her. It feels like I’m part of something bigger than myself. I’m a piece in a puzzle that’s me and her and our crazy, messed-up world, but when you look at it all together, when you combine every piece, it all comes together. It all makes sense.
The strange heatwave shimmer hovers in the air around her, then she’s gone. It’s only for a split second before she’s on the other side of the glass, just the blink of an eye, but my heart skips a beat when she disappears.
I cast a sideways glance at Liam, my gun still leveled steady with his chest. “This better be legit. If anything happens to her I’ll end you, and I’m not squeamish. I’ll do it slowly.”
“I believe you, mate,” he replies, his eyes fixed on Naomi. “I feel the same way.”
I can see his dad’s body on the ground behind him. The splatter cast across the wall. His own face still bathed in his blood.