CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - SULLIVAN
Sadie slumps to the ground and I go with her. Her whole body is limp. The thick green gas is all around us. I breathe in, feeling the heaviness of it entering my body. For a few seconds, I wonder if we really are immune. If Thomas, and Lincoln, and Case and that weird computer, Sheila, got it right after all.
But we are. I exhale just fine. I am fine. Thomas wouldn’t make a mistake like that.
I hold Sadie in my arms, staring at the small hole in the gate as the sparks from the blowtorch light it up. We’re so close to it, it’s sad, really. We aren’t more than thirty feet away. My escape plans were pathetic.
There is no hope for escape.
“Thomas,” I say out loud. I want him, I realize. I want him to take over and deal with this. He’s the one who always took care of things. I’d never admit it to Sadie, but Thomas is the strong one. Thomas is the one with the plans that always work. Thomas is the one she needs right now, not me. “Come back,” I whisper.
But he’s not there. I look for him in my mind. I search for him as I watch the future unfolding before my eyes. He’s just gone.
I don’t hear voices, but I do hear clanging. They are pounding the metal with tools. Prying the small opening into a larger one.
After a few minutes of that, I see a face. A gas mask, actually. They are wearing something akin to a biohazard suit.
They knew about the gas. Or maybe they watched a few people die when they broke into the tunnel and reassessed. Reorganized. Got the right equipment to take us down.
I have powers. I am not helpless. I am a level ten mentalist, for fuck’s sake.
Well, not really. Thomas is the one who knows how to use it. Thomas is the one with all the power. I can do a few things. I’m the one who had it first, after all. But I’m not the one who perfected it.
Still, one has to try.
So I wait. Patiently. I let them make their doorway. I let them come through, one and then the next. They have flashlights. Very powerful flashlights that illuminate the entire tunnel.
The full carnage of wreckage stands before them. The ruined train car, torn into so many bits of twisted metal. All of it glowing slightly in the shadow of the green gas. The beams pan back and forth over it. They are talking, I realize. On some kind of internal communication system. There are two of them, about the same size. Huge men from the size of their biohazard suits.
They split up, sweeping their light over everything—only halfway penetrating the green cloud and making the entire scene appear unearthly. I watch from the floor of the tunnel as one gets closer and closer.
His beam of light finds me. Shines right in my face, rendering me blind.
I don’t blink. Just wait, absolutely still, as he makes his way towards us.
He stops a few feet away, still shining that fucking light into my face.
“You have something of mine,” a tinny voice says from a speaker in his gas mask.
“Is that right,” I say, my voice different as it makes its way through the thick cloud of green gas. It winds up his legs and around his body like a snake.
“Don’t make this difficult, freak. You can’t win,” he says.
“Maybe not,” I say. “But I can go down fighting.”
The mind blast doesn’t exactly burst forth. Not the way Thomas does it. But it still has power and it sends him reeling backwards with his arms flailing and his back bent. He crashes into a piece of sharp wreckage, and even though I can’t hear his scream, I know he screams.
I smile at that and get to my feet, taking my attention to the other guy, who has his flashlight out in front of him as he does his best to run towards us.
I blast him too, but he braces himself. It rocks his whole body, but when the wave is over, he’s still standing.
A tinny laugh from his gas mask. “That was weak, Thomas. I expected more from a guy like you.”
He comes at me again, and again, I blast him. This time the force is even less powerful than the first. It doesn’t even stop him, just makes him lean his body forward, like he’s walking into a strong wind and nothing more.
“Weak,” he says again. And then he raises his arms and unleashes his superpower.
His mind blast pins me to the concrete wall behind me. It’s so powerful. More powerful than anything I’ve seen Thomas do, including that day at the hospital. The shockwave hits my mind, making me struggle to stay conscious.
Then it’s gone. Like he flipped a switch. He’s very in tune with his power.
Prodigy. Only Prodigy has powers like this.
“I’m gonna make you pay, asshole,” the masked man says. “I’m gonna make you pay for what you did to my brother, Thomas.”
I have no idea who his brother is, or what Thomas might’ve done to him, but it no longer matters. He aims a weapon at me and a dart bursts out of the barrel, hitting me square in the chest.
I look down, see the dart sticking out of my heart, and immediately know what he’s done.
It’s a drug dart.
The effects start before that thought is even through forming. I feel the chemicals inside me. They burn their way through the chambers of my heart, then empty into my bloodstream. Seconds later it’s been delivered to my entire body.
I fall to my knees, laughing. “You fucked up, asshole,” I say, crumpling to the ground, unable to control my body. I’m gonna turn back into Thomas and he’s gonna power up his own mental ability and put up a good fight.
A great fight.
“You fucked up. You just wait.”
My threats are ignored, but I have no time to wonder why.
The darkness is back.
I go into it relieved.
It really sucks being wrong. And I know I’m wrong the whole time I try to wake up. Because I’m not Thomas, I’m still me.
Asshole, I try to say. But it comes out as a groan. The one fucking time I need the guy to take over and he’s not here. Asshole.
“Not time to wakey-wakey yet, you freak,” a deep voice says off to my left. A sharp jab to my heart tells me all I need to know.
The chemicals flood my body and…