Shit. What if whatever new fumes are riding the air are flammable?
We can’t risk yet another explosive in this powder-keg.
The first haunted face peers through the crack in the door with fever-bright eyes. More and more doorways fill with similar sights until all but maybe ten doorways remain empty. Then the first brave souls step into the smoke.
Their faces are gaunt, the skin hanging grotesquely off their bones. Their bodies are little more than sheathed skeletons, whatever muscle mass they processed eaten away by Rose and whatever variants Cooper has been giving them. Clothed in little more than rags and carrying more of that mind-penetratingstench, they look like monsters from some horrible urban legend. Cryptids.
“Kill the man,” Cooper commands. “Bring my sister to me by any means necessary—Any. Means.The first to do so will receive an extra injection per day, permanently.”
Hunger lights in their eyes, burning hotter than the fire behind us. Fuck. These people will literally eat us to get what they crave.
When I look back at him, Cooper’s gone, disappeared into the flames and smoke again. He’s still somewhere around here, though. I feel it. His ‘patients’ are here, his research. And me.
I sever the last bond holding Zane in place and pull him to his feet beside me. His face is so full of emotion, it hurts to look at him. I don’t feel the relief he feels. The love. I can’t. So I turn away and face the haggard foes circling around us instead, sending a silent prayer up to the heavens that this deathtrap doesn’t detonate before we can get the hell out of here.
Zane is warm and solid behind me. His left hand hangs beside my right and, pushing aside a flash of fear and panic, I entangle our fingers. His power snakes into me immediately, like a python slithering toward warmth.
I am flush with power, mine and his, so when I feel that thread crawling into my veins I send one of my own. Zane’s fingers slacken at the unfamiliar sensation, so I wrap mine all the tighter until I feel myself enfolded in his pulse, pounding that ancient course through his heart. Until our power entwines, mine pinning his in place in an unbreakable connection.
His back stiffens behind me, every muscle going rigid as he fights against my hold. “What are you doing?”
“Relax.”I try to mimic the voice that echoes in my head, there one moment, then lost in the forgotten abyss before appearing again. It is calm, controlled. I envy it.“Stop fighting the hold.”
It’s strange. The panic drains from his voice as the command takes hold. “I don’t understand.”
“I need your power, Zane, as you need mine. I just don’t trust you anymore.”
“Please, Kaye. Don’t do this.”
In my memories, I hear my own pleading cries, begging the same of him, and my resolve hardens.
Cooper’s patients have formed a loose circle around us. I would have expected them to work together, come up with some kind of strategy to reach us, but I guess that’s the power of addiction. Nothing else matters but the object of your desire, to the point where you would even line up, weaponless, to face off with two of the strongest superhumans in the city.
I raise my left hand, feel Zane’s shoulder blades shifting as he mirrors the movement behind me, and focus our combined power into one goal.
“Stop,”we order, our voices ringing out in tandem, as one. The order is bolstered by the thread of serum racing through our veins and amplifying our skills. They don’t stand a chance. They obey the flow of power even without a direct connection to it. I don’t know if or how long the instruction will last. I never want these poor people locked up in dungeons like this one again, subjected to a madman’s experiments.“You never saw us here. You want to leave this place immediately and never return here or anywhere else you might find Cooper Grace ever again. There is nothing left for you here.”
The group doesn’t move immediately. What if it didn’t work?Could I fight them, knowing with as weak and unhealthy as they are that any blow could take their lives?
My relief is palpable as one—then two—then three peel off from the group. Then more, with such precision that I worry that I might have turned them into mindless zombies. Did I commita crime on them worse than the what Zane did to me? But as I watch them walk away from the flames, one of them looks back. Her eyes meet mine. She nods before walking away.
It’s a filthy feeling to withdraw that thread holding Zane’s compulsion in place. Worse than guilt. And the worst part is I deserve the shame that stings my throat and brings tears to my eyes, because I don’t regret it. Not one bit.
Zane’s injuries heal as I withdraw. He refuses to look at me. I want to apologize, beg his forgiveness, but those words die unshed in my throat, launched into the wall his betrayal built around my heart.
“Will you make sure they all get out?” I ask instead. I reach into my boot again and pull out another earpiece, warm from my body heat. “Show them the way. Fulton can help you.”
He nods, taking it gingerly. A wince crosses his face as his skin brushes mine. “Be safe.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m alone in that powder-keg of flame with a brother I can’t just leave to die.
“Cooper!” My voice thunders through the roar of fire. Glass shatters in the distance and I brace myself for that to be the last sound I ever hear. That impact never comes.
Instead, I find my brother standing before me, his hammer forgotten somewhere along his travels in favor of an emergency ax. Overhead, the fluorescent bulbs flicker and die. The smell of sulfur is so strong I feel like the air itself could ignite at any minute, and yet here we are. The ax’s red head glints in the red and orange glow around us. My palms turn golden again as I gather power in them.
“Please don’t make me do this.” My voice catches on the lump forming in my throat.
“You’re doing this, Kaye. Not me,” he snarls. He takes several steps toward me, full of menace and purpose, his shoulders heaving with every step. Dirty white wraps cover the hand Iburned earlier. “I brought you here to make us a family again. You—you—did this to us.”
