A pink tint lined the corners of his eyes, as though he'd applied pink eyeliner. He pulled away from me and backed out of the room. "I must go. Think on what I have said. We shall talk again."
My powers crashed back into me, and I linked with Drake. 'We have to get out of here, now. I know the Seeker's weakness. He's dying.'
Chapter 52 – Lucy
With all eyes on her, Lucy had to act fast. She pulled Mr. Black to her. "Call off the guards, or I'll blow your head off."
In the last few days, Lucy had become more violent than ever before in her life. Necessity dictated her actions. Still, after years of assignments targeting some of the worst creeps imaginable, she'd never had to fight, disarm, or threaten so many people. What had her world come to?
The sphere in her backpack pulsed, and she felt Mr. Black reach for the Seeker. "Call him and I pull the trigger. You don't have to be a human lie detector to know I'm telling the truth, do you?"
"I know you're a scared girl who's trying to play grown-up, and you've never killed anyone in your life. You're not about to start now."
Lucy cocked the gun, relishing the power of it in her hand. Then she aimed and fired.
The bullet sank into the cement just an inch from Mr. Black's left foot. He bellowed like a lion and jumped away from the sound.
Mr. Black nodded to the guards. "Get away. Do as she says, you assholes."
Lucy thought about what to say to these kids who'd been drugged and manipulated for years. "Do you remember what life here used to be like? The idyllic peace we enjoyed before this invasion?"
Many heads nodded.
"It was all a lie. Even now, there's a drug coursing through your veins designed to make you, to make all of us, complacent and docile. They would have you believe we need them to keep us safe, but our lives mean nothing to them. Like you, my best friend was promised a life of college and friends, but what she ended up with was a forced pregnancy. When she escaped, they hired guns to trail her. What does your future hold if you stay here?
"I didn't know Kyle well, but I had him in many of my classes. He was a good guy, an innocent, like you. This man blew his head off from behind." Lucy jammed the gun deeper into his back.
"That's not justice. That's murder."
Her voice carried through the crowd, escalating with each word. "We have to act now, to stand our ground and say 'No more' to this tyranny, 'No more' to abuse and murder. We have to break free from the artificial bonds this school has enslaved us in. Who's with me?"
Silence hung in the air like a dying balloon. Not a single student stirred from their spots or raised their voice in protest.
A guard in the crowd raised his gun and walked toward Lucy. "Drop your weapon, or I'll be forced to fire. Don't make this worse than it already is."
Lucy shook her head, pressing her gun against Mr. Black's skull.
The guard took aim....
And his gun floated up into the air.
Darren stood behind him, arms extended and rage etched on his face. "Kyle was my best friend, and you bastards killed him."
He raised his arms, and the guard rose up into the air. Then with a flick of his hands, Darren slammed the guard into a tree. The man fell to the ground, limp.
The silence that had paralyzed everyone present broke. All around, students attacked the guards with their own brands of para-power. One soldier cried and crumbled to the ground, another turned to ice, and another became permanently entangled in a tree root.
The guards who could get away shot into the crowd without regard to where their bullets landed.
Lucy had to get everyone off the school grounds.
She tightened her grip on her prisoner. "Let's go, Mr. Black. We're going to open up the main gate and celebrate a new kind of Independence Day today."
Chapter 53 – Sam
'How do you know he's dying?' Drake paced in front of me.
"I felt the death in him when he touched me. We don't have much time. Can you break the door down?"
'Yes, but what then? I'm pretty sure this whole building is heavily guarded.'
I slumped into the couch. The recent revelations of my and Drake's births left my head spinning. The Seeker was my brother? And Drake's brother? I pictured our family tree and imagined my branch hovering dangerously close to Drake's.
"This family thing—it's a bit creepy, right? It's not just me?"
Drake sat next to me and held me in his arms. I rested my head on his shoulder and for a moment allowed myself to get lost in his warmth and comfort.
'No, not just you. This is definitely off the charts. But, good news, we aren't actually related. So, there's that.'
"Yeah, I guess. Of course, we are related to the Seeker. That's bad enough. And— Oh crap! My father is the evil mastermind behind this whole organization. Isn't that what the Seeker implied? Daddy Dearest is behind all this? Oh my God, Drake, does this make me evil?"
'You, my love, could never be evil. It's a choice, not a birthright. You are who you choose to be.'