Page 12 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

Motherfuckers. I was just getting excited about this shit.

The chair slides underneath me as I stand and make for the door. I open it, peek out, then type, Send me a face to steal in case I’m seen. Assholes. I can’t use any of the faces from before. Those people clearly do not belong on this floor.

A picture flashes on my vision screen and I memorize it, slipping back out into the corridor at the same time.

I go back the way I came, looking around. A face appears in a window, the man’s hand slapping against the shatterproof glass. I do not jump or scream. But he definitely makes my heart skip a beat.

This hallway is creepy as fuck.

A loud buzzer blares and the doorway leading to the stairs opens. I trip into the face Prodigy sent, but the woman scowls at me when it… fucking fails to take.

What the hell?

“Who are you?” she demands. “What are you doing on this floor?”

Abort, abort, abort, my vision screen is flashing.

No shit, assholes. I am aborting.

Three things happen, almost all at once. First, the woman leans into her shoulder, clearly about to speak into a radio. Second, I move forward with speed, reacting out of instinct now. Third, she says, “We—”

But she doesn’t get any farther than that because I’ve snapped her neck.

Her body slumps to the floor as her radio squeaks static, then words. “Say again, Mona?”

I’m Mona now. I grab her face, tuck it away in my memory for later, and enter the stairs.

Footsteps below me. Running up.

Shit.

My stupid screen is still flashing, Abort, abort, abort.

“Mona?” someone calls.

I am frozen in place. I cannot call back. I cannot capture voices. So I’ll have to wait until they reach me, or risk going down to meet them, in order to start a new trip. And even then—fuck—it hits me then. My trip didn’t work. What the hell?

But I’m saved again by another blaring alarm. I pray that it does the job, since we just used that tactic a few minutes ago.

“Forget Mona,” another voice says, one floor below me. “We’ve got a riot on three.”

Their footsteps recede, going down again. I take my chances and go up to the top floor just as more people enter the stairwell down below.

What’s happening? I type.

You were told to abort.

I am aborting! But if you want me to get out of here unseen, then I have to take the long way back.

Proceed to the garage level.

Fuck them, I decide. I’m on six. But there has to be another stairwell. Probably on the other side of the building. I have Mona’s face now. I can be her on my way out. If I can manage to get a clear path. And—I don’t want to think about this part, because it unsettles me—if I can make the trip work.

What the hell happened back there? It was like… I was… normal. I don’t want to be normal. I do not do normal. I am Sadie Scott, the best motherfucking illusionist this world has ever seen.

I like it that way.

I open the door for the sixth floor and peek out. It’s quiet and silent. I slip out, walk casually, Mona’s face at the ready so I can throw a trip. But then I see the room I’m almost looking for. Six-nineteen. Dr. Yasmine Bates.

Inside that room is my objective, Thomas Brooks.