AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Thirteen
Found
We crossed the roof to the second building where Logan helped me across. It was attached at a different height, and we climbed up to find skylights, vent pipes, and massive metal boxes covering the rooftop. Logan held my hand, crossing to a large hatch door to kneel down. It was secured with a lock, but Logan just slid a tool under the old hinges and popped them free. He flipped the cover open and peered inside.
“It isn’t that far to the joists. There are plenty of pipes and beams to get you to the first platform, or I can lower you.” He placed a hand on the carabiner at his waist.
“No,” I said, shuddering at the reminder of my attack. “I’ll climb.”
He took my hand. “Get to the platform and wait for me. I’ll be right behind you.”
I dropped my legs into the opening, feeling blindly for the first step. When I got my footing, I reached down to find no lack of handholds. A latticework of wires, cables, and pipes zigzagged their way through the narrow ceiling space all the way to a rusted steel platform. I navigated the network of wires carefully at what I considered a pretty impressive pace, only to hear Logan’s boots slam down onto the platform before me.
“Nice job, Brianna.” He gave me a hand down. “We can take the stairs from here.”
I brushed rust and grime off my jeans, taking a look at the factory-like space around us. “What is Morgan’s obsession with warehouses and factories?” I asked.
Logan shrugged as he walked forward. “I don’t think that’s it, really. It’s more likely that the abandoned buildings give him a privacy he couldn’t get anywhere else. No outside surveillance, and on paper, it would just look like another investment.”
The thought made me feel a little bad for Morgan. It must have been horrible to grow up under the eye of so many, to know what they expected of you. But when the echo of metal from our footfalls rang in my ears with far too much familiarity, the pity was gone. “This is it,” I whispered to Logan’s back.
He stopped, and I realized he’d been focused on a small block room on the floor below us. “Are you sure, Brianna?”
He wasn’t asking if I was sure this was the right place. There was no question we had found it, and somehow, Logan knew it, too. He was asking if I could handle it, if I could walk into the room where Morgan held my mother. The room where she took her own life.
I nodded. “I have to, Logan. This isn’t one of those choices.”
We navigated the maze of steps to the bottom floor—concrete and open. Any equipment had been removed, nothing except a few containers and cabinets lined the walls. Metal bars covered the blacked-out windows, and the exterior doors all appeared to be welded shut.
The block room was centered on the front wall, no windows or openings, so it must have been something like a boiler room. The door wasn’t even locked.
The cold metal of the handle hit me with a force that might have been unbearable a few weeks ago. But I was ready. I had to do this. The only light was from the three feet of open door, and it cut a distorted rectangle across the dusty floor. There was a faded blue blanket in the corner, like an unzipped sleeping bag. Dark shapes marked the back wall, and I knew they were the hooks and pulley system. It would be a solid wall, metal plate, and cool to the touch. The corner was all shadows, but I knew, too, that there would be scrapes across the floor there, marks from Morgan pulling his chair through. To watch her.
Logan drew an LED flashlight from his pocket, and I laid my hand over his. “Please,” I started in a whisper, but my voice broke. I couldn’t see it in the light. Not yet.
He stepped closer, wrapping an arm around my waist as we let our eyes adjust. “She hung there,” I said after a long while, “because he had to touch her to use his sway.” Logan squeezed me tighter. “It wasn’t easy,” I continued. “She fought him with everything she had. She hurt him, even.” I glanced up at Logan, his face in darkness, dim light from the warehouse behind him. “But he healed. He always healed.”
Logan pressed his face against my hair and I closed my eyes. My hand came up to cover his over my waist, my fingers trembling. Morgan did this, he put my mother in this place. Trapped her here in an empty room, nothing but a single blanket on the floor for comfort. I wondered how the Division had supplied him in his own captivity. Surely he had heat, a bed, or at the very least clean water and light. None of us were monsters, not in the way Morgan had been. And what of him now, had captivity made his madness worse? They wouldn’t have allowed anyone access to him, no one to see or touch him, to even stand near the thick walls that held him in place. Wesley would see to that.
The boy would be a kinder captor for certain, but even Wesley couldn’t allow himself within range of Morgan’s power. I’d found a connection in him, an ability unique to his makeup. It had taken some time to bring it out, to get him to fully understand how to use it, but he had the capacity to create a kind of barrier for his body. I wasn’t confident even I fully comprehended how it worked, but it seemed to be his own electrical impulses, and they were able to block that pulse that gave the others control of the humans.
It wasn’t foolproof by any means. If Morgan was close enough to overpower it, or if they were to touch, to physically breach that shield, Wesley would be powerless, no matter how hard he concentrated. But it had been a step forward, one more connection that I’d found and repaired that might save them from the fate that was coming. From the chain of events Morgan had set into motion.
The chain that brought us here, where my mother had made her last choice, one she hoped would spare us.
I opened my eyes with the thought. Logan had said she had a choice, but she must have seen the outcome of that decision. She must have known there was only one way, known that this was the best way. And she would have seen the endgame, seen us standing here.
“Turn on the flashlight, Logan.”
He pulled free of our embrace, clicking the penlight on to illuminate the floor in front of us.
“She left me a message, right? That’s why we’re here.” I fell to my knees on the sleeping bag, the only thing left in a barren room, and felt through the fabric for a lump or the crinkle of paper. “She wouldn’t have done it for nothing. She waited, she suffered through those final days to make the choice that would best help us.”
Logan knelt beside me, drawing a small knife from his pocket to cut the liner free. He split it and I tore, ripping it open to the matted cotton fiber below. My fingers dug in, threading through and tearing apart the filling. There had to be something. She had to give us something.
And then I caught the edge of a folded document and froze, the frantic clawing ceased as the unmistakable sound of paper popped beneath my hand. It was narrow, a crumpled strip, and just a few pages. She must have rolled them up, tucked them in through a small hole in the material and they’d gotten smashed flat.
“Logan,” I whispered, but the sound of his pocket buzzing interrupted me as it echoed through the still room.
