“I won’t make it difficult,” I promised him as his eyes bugged out in panic. His muscles tensed, fighting against me as he struggled to free himself. It was pointless, I could have told him. We were both trapped.
Finding his heart, thumping madly in his chest, wasn’t hard. Neither was the process of stopping it. Just a squeeze of directed power around that muscle, which, though powerful and necessary for life, was no different than any other.
It’s a necessary evil to save others.
This is the least of all the atrocities that will be committed if I don’t do this.
I don’t want to do this.
But none of those thoughts helped as I watched Joseph “Joe” Zadowski, he of the freckles and the nervous fingers, recognize that something was very, very wrong. His face turned from a flushed red to a disturbing purplish blue as his heart slowed and he stopped trying to escape and worked instead to keep breathing, to keep living. His last thoughts were of his family, a flash of his mother—a woman with graying hair, round cheeks, and a perpetual but tired smile—and a younger brother sticking his hand up to block Joe on the basketball court, a triumphant grin when he succeeded.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my throat tight as Joe’s body sagged in my grip and his eyes closed.
But I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t. Not now.
TWO MORE DAYS. TWO MORE DAYS. Two more days.
I repeated that refrain in my head, over and over again, blocking the errant thoughts and memories that threatened to interrupt my concentration as I pushed myself through another round of sit-ups on the shiny white floor of my cell.
I’d kept a running countdown of days, based on the cycle of the lights in my room and the dates I’d overheard from the staff. It had been almost a month since my return to GTX.
Almost a month since the parking lot. Almost a month since Zane’s blood on my hands, so red and wet…
I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing harder on the burn in my stomach muscles and the dull ache in my head from the strain of pushing my abilities too far, too fast. I could no longer see my metal-framed cot swaying above me, held there by the force of my mind, but I could feel it pulling at that part of my brain, like a weight attached to a limb not quite accustomed to bearing the burden.
In the far corner behind me, a stack of books, a much lighter target, was also levitating near the ceiling, theoretically. I’d turned my attention away once I’d lifted them off the ground, relying on my ability to keep them up without my gaze on them, a stretch for me. A second stack waited in front of me for similar treatment, though I hadn’t managed two at once (plus the cot) yet.
I was improving but not fast enough. Time was almost up. I needed to be ready; I needed to be better. The trials would start the day after tomorrow somewhere in the Chicago area.
I was pretty sure.
One of the disadvantages of being a mouse in a GenTex cage is that people don’t exactly bother to keep you in the loop. They probably thought it didn’t matter. After all, I was just “the product.” It wasn’t as if I could do anything to change my situation.
Sometimes I thought the uncertainty would kill me before anyone else had the chance.
Until recently, I’d never thought much about dying. That sounded great, enlightened even, like a lack of concern about my own mortality was a gift of higher spiritual knowledge via my alien half. But to be honest, that had nothing to do with it.
The truth was there were things worse than death. I’d been far more worried about ending up back in the small white room where I’d lived the first six years of my life, longing to see the world outside.
Here’s the funny thing, though: once the worst has actually happened—well, what you thought was the worst, anyway—you learn that that line was only a low watermark, an indicator of your own naiveté. The idea that there is a cap to the horribleness that can happen to you is ridiculous.
It can always get worse. A lot worse. I know that now. Back in that parking lot by the Illinois border, when I was caught between Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Laughlin with Zane looking on, I’d have leaped into the black unmarked van with the retrieval team to come here—hell, I’d have driven myself—if I’d known what was going to happen instead. There is no maximum threshold for the worst that can happen to you. To believe otherwise is just daring someone to prove you wrong.
Those who would want to show you the opposite, that life can be better than you’d ever imagined, were few and far between.
One fewer now.
At the thought of Zane, a horrible pang of longing and sadness struck my heart with unerring accuracy. But I pushed it away, trying to refocus on the cool, emotion-deadened spot inside me, the one that had opened up shortly after I’d awakened in Laughlin’s facility with an IV in my arm and Zane’s blood all over my hands.