“I don’t know. Maybe we should, just in case.”
Cabe shifted so that his legs were turned out, giving Noah room to partially untangle himself as I sat between his thighs, my feet notched in Cabe’s lap. Noah scrolled through his phone again, selecting Silas’s contact this time.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Something’s happening at the college. I don’t know. Something about hostages and confiscating phones. We’re hiding under the desk in Miro’s office.” He paused, and I heard Silas’s muted voice on the other end before Cabe started talking again. “Because Seph went all vacant-eyed like she does when she has her visions and just crawled under, so we went with her. Right. Okay. Sure.”
He hung up, turning the phone to silent and laying it on the ground where he would be able to see the screen light up. I checked my phone to make sure that it was on silent as well, and then decided to try and call Poison and Clarin while I was at it. Neither of their phones rang. Cabe turned his own phone to silent and we waited there nervously until Noah’s phone vibrated.
He picked it up. “What’s up. What? Are you serious?” He listened for a second, and then groaned quietly. “No… they said admin building. That’s where we are. Yeah, okay. Give them Cabe’s number, he’s better at talking to people. Okay. Bye.”
He hung up and I twisted to look at him, my eyebrows arching.
“Well?” Cabe prompted.
“It’s a human.” Noah sounded shocked. “Some guy who applied to the college and got rejected. He’s got a machine gun and a few of his friends backing him up. They’ve managed to round up almost three-hundred people on the ground floor of this building and they’ve barricaded themselves in.”
“Ahh…” Cabe’s forehead pulled into a frown. “What the—Why?”
“Apparently…” Noah swallowed, seemingly unsure of his next words. “Apparently he released a statement to the human press that he was going to eradicate Maple Falls of mutants. I’m guessing we’re the mutants. Nobody knows how he found out about us, but Silas is already inside his hard-drive and he has a lot of information that he shouldn’t have.”
“What?” Cabe and I both choked out at the same time.
“That doesn’t even… how can…” I struggled to articulate myself. “Shouldn’t there be an insane level of security around here or something, like the high school? Where are Andrei and Hans? I haven’t seen them since I had my vision.”
“Keep quiet,” Noah cautioned in a whisper. “They were supposed to be waiting at the end of the walkway so that they couldn’t overhear what we were talking about in here. I’m guessing they got herded downstairs with everyone else.”
“Why didn’t we hear anyone screaming?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as low as Noah’s.
“Well… probably because nobody has been hurt yet,” Cabe replied, rubbing at his temple. “They won’t actually shoot anyone. He called them hostages, so he must be after something.”
“Probably,” Noah affirmed. “The news team is going to call you soon, Cabe. Silas is finding out what he can. He said we should stay hidden. We’re likely the only non-hostages with access to this building right now. They’re going to need us at some point.”
A shiver caught me unawares, and Noah looped his arms around my front. “Don’t worry, little ghost.”
I nodded wordlessly, but I still startled when Cabe’s phone lit up. He answered it quietly, communicating with someone I guessed to be human, as he steered clear of mentioning anything to do with the Zevs.
“They want us to stay here,” he said after the call was over. “Remain calm and all that crap. The Klovoda should be calling soon with a revised plan.”
As if on cue, all of our phones lit up at the same time. I grabbed mine, seeing Jayden’s contact, and accepted the call.
“Having a decent morning, Wonderkid?” he greeted dryly.
“You have no idea,” I muttered.
“Well, as your handler, it’s my pleasure to give you your first mission. Are you ready?”
“That depends. What do you want me to do?”
“Stay the hell where you are. Don’t try to be superwoman right now. I mean this in the kindest way possible… but this requires more finesse than your particular brand of havoc.”
Despite the veiled insult, and our current situation, I wanted to laugh. I bit it back and simply replied, “Right. Okay.”
He paused, and I could feel the tension that crackled through the phone.
“There’s something else.” He sounded hesitant… or maybe I was just growing accustomed to recognising when a person was withholding information from me.
“What is it?” I prompted.
“I think Weston set this up,” he admitted, his tone considerably lower than it had been before.