“It’s fuckingGroundhog Day,” I muttered as Griffin pulled open the door to the classroom for me and held it for our friends.
he said.
Because then they’d probably just kill us and hypnotize us while we were coming to. No need to convince us to fall in line. And if that wasn’t an option, they’d just do something else I doubted we’d like. Maybe it would be worse.
Brady said.
Hunt agreed.
It wasn’t a plan yet, that was for damn sure, but it was the start of one. Or the start of how to find one anyway. Beggars can’t be choosers, and all that.
For once, I settled into my seat two-thirds of the way through the classroom with some pep in my step. We had fifty minutes of time during which no one would expect us to be talking—that was fifty minutes to work everything out, and by every standard, we were geniuses.
For the first time in a long while, things were looking up—Groundhog Dayor not.
24
A Vengeful Bitch, Out to Get Us
So much for our genius statuses …
We talked telepathically during the entirety of our five classes that day, discussing every aspect of what we’d learned through the failed hypnosis, our impressions of the two other students with abilities we’d seen at the institute, everything we knew about our supposed parents, Magnum, and his staff, about our burgeoning powers, and everything else we could think of—andstillwe didn’t come up with a single winning plan. We hadn’t even come up with acame in fourth placekind of plan. All we’d get was a participation trophy.
The five of us were waist-deep in a pit of quicksand, with no rope nearby to save us. The more we examined the conundrum, the more the pit sucked us farther down toward an inevitable conclusion: as long as Magnum possessed unlimited influence and wealth, there was nowhere we could go that was far enough. No place we could hide. No way to avoid the long arm of his constant threats of death.
It didn’t matter that the blinders were off or that we could at last speak to each other privately again. Whatever advantages we had this time around were nothing when compared to our many disadvantages and limited knowledge. We didn’t even know how many times we’d been rebooted, how many times they’d adjusted this and that about our life stories and sent us back out into Ridgemore to be studied.
And Magnum had already proven he’d kill us as many times as he wanted, no matter where we were, even surrounded by other people.
In the age-old scenario offight or flight, if we couldn’t run, our only other option was to defend ourselves.
But how exactly did one fight someone with such a massive upper hand?
It was during our run after school that day, which we’d gone on solely to work off some of our mounting frustration, that we’d eventually agreed: we had to face off with the monster and lop off its smugly handsome head.
If we killed Magnum, there’d be no more funding, no more labs, no more sneakyparentsor gun-toting soldiers to carry out his orders.
We ran an extra three miles just to cruise on the high of finally reaching a decision. None of us wanted to kill anyone. Unlike Magnum, murdering wasn’t part of our life plans.
But we’d do what had to be done.
To protect my crew, I’d break through his chest and rip out his still-beating heart with my bare hands. I absolutely would.
I refused to let any one of my crew die again.
Now, grinning in anticipated relief, we crowded onto the porch to our treehouse slash ninja training space, chests heaving, before spreading out to cool down. We’d run nine miles, and Layla hadn’t complained once.
Bobo was panting from the run and lapping up water beside me. My sweet boy was thankfully healed enough for the exertion since as far as we were supposed to know, he and I had never jumped from a moving Clyde. According to Jackie’s hypnosis, the thin scar on his leg was from a bad scratch.
I was stretching out my hamstrings when steady footfalls warned of someone approaching. Many someones, actually. Bobo stiffened as he came to full alertness.
From the winding path my crew and I had carved through the forest that surrounded our homes, our traitorousparents, all together, emerged into the clearing in front of the treehouse; they led Homer, Yolanda, and Armando toward us.
“Hey, kids,” Celia called ahead with a friendly smile splitting her face. Had I not known better, I would have believed it was genuine. “We have an awesome surprise for you!”
Layla commented into what I was beginning to think of as our “group chat.”
“You’re going to be so excited,” Porter claimed, rubbing his hands together in what I now couldn’t help but notice was high theatrical fashion.
