I drop to my knees and crawl along the wall. The window in the center of the door is covered by tightly closed blinds. I’m just inching up to peek through when I hear it. A scream so pained, so tortured, that I swear it chills the blood in my veins. Every hair on my body stands at full attention.
I freeze. Another scream rends the air, this one even worse than the first. Adrenaline pours through me. My chest tightens and it’s hard to drag air into my lungs. I move to a kneeling position and search the window, desperately looking for a split in the blinds so that I can see something, anything.
There’s a gap at the right side of the window where one of the blinds is bent. It’s small, but it’s enough.
I peer through, and my heart stops.
Rebel’s boyfriend, Dante, is tied to a chair in the middle of the room. He’s badly bruised, his head hanging down, shoulders slumped. I can’t be sure, but it looks like the only thing keeping him upright is the strap around his torso and arms, pressing his shoulders against the back of the chair.
All kinds of cables are hooked up to him, and as I watch, his entire body jolts and shakes, almost like an electric current is running through him. My hand covers my mouth to keep me from crying out as he jerks and shudders and screams.
Oh God, does he scream.
I’m not sure how much time passes before the shaking stops and his body goes limp. But it’s right after he vomits all over himself.
Somebody I don’t recognize hits him hard on the side of the head. He barely reacts, his body listing to the side under the pressure of the blow. But that’s it. His eyes are blank, his face slack. Then he starts to jerk again.
I can’t watch anymore. I whirl around and sink my butt to the floor, my hands still clenched tightly over my mouth. Oh my God. Oh My God. OH MY GOD! What is going on? What the hell is going on?
My mind races and my eyes sting. This must be what shock feels like.
I sit there for a minute, two, trying to get my head together. Trying to make sense of what I’ve seen. But there’s no sense to be made. What’s going on in that room isn’t an experiment—which would be bad enough. No, it’s torture, pure and simple.
Another scream rips through the quiet. This can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening.
But it is.
It really is.
I take a deep breath. The hall spins around me, but I force the nausea down and climb back to my knees. I peer through the slit in the blinds again, then wish I hadn’t. Huge fists rain down on Dante’s shoulders, his chest, his back, his head.
A movement in the corner of the room catches my eye, and I press my cheek against the glass. Mr. Malone and the gray suits are watching, observing casually, like they’re looking at a painting in a museum.
The look of pride on Mr. Malone’s face turns my veins to ice.
I want to rewind time by ten minutes and not find the entrance to sub-level three. I want to stop this guy’s pain. I want to open the door and scream at them at the top of my lungs. But I’m smart enough to know that would get both of us killed. By heroes.
The knowledge turns me inside out.
All my life there have only been three absolutes: ordinaries are useless, villains are evil, and heroes are good. Heroes are supposed to be the people the rest of the world looks up to, the very best examples of humanity.
I’ve spent my whole life distrusting villains—hating villains—and now I find out that some heroes are just as bad. Maybe worse. This kind of brutality is worse than anything I’ve ever heard villains accused of. This is worse than what they did to my father. Worse than murder.
Heroes are the good guys, the ones who stop things like this from happening. The heroes I know would never do this. But they are. They are. So what’s going on?
Hypnosis? Mind control? I don’t know. Somebody is responsible for this. There’s no other explanation.
But who? What are they getting out of it?
Another scream pierces the air, and I shudder. I’ve never felt so useless in my life. There is nothing I can do to help him, to save him. Nothing I can do to make it stop. What I wouldn’t give to have any superpower.
I’ve been powerless my whole life, but nothing prepared me for the horror that crawls through me.
I have to do something. I can’t just walk away knowing what they’re doing to Rebel’s boyfriend. Villain or not, he’s a human being and no one—no one—deserves to be treated like that.
With that one thought clear in my mind, I pull myself together. Crawl out from beneath the window. Race down the hall. I want out of here. Now. It takes every ounce of my self-control not to run full tilt back to the elevator. I have just enough awareness to remember the cameras. So I pause at the corner of the hallway and count. Then I run.
Pause. Count. Run.
Pause. Count. Run.
I do it again and again, until I’m at the stairwell.
I fling open the door and fall inside. I’m sobbing now, close to hysterical, but I make myself think. I drag myself up the stairs to sub-level two and press the elevator call button. When the door opens, I stumble inside. I swipe Mom’s security badge and jab the button for sub-level one.