23. Aiden
Chapter twenty-three
Aiden
When the backup generators don’t kick on immediately, I unbutton my suit jacket and reach for the handle strapped to my back beneath it. As I pull the handle out, the metal unfurls. I snap it at the ground and the pieces all straighten at once into a long sword.
“Get Kellan, get your cuff, and throw on a hoodie,” I order softly. “Then meet at the exit hatch.”
Dane’s fingers fly over his keyboard as he locks everything down and deletes any local files, then he jumps out of his chair to get Kellan. I run to my room to don more metal.
A spray of gunfire attacks the windows and Kellan roars in pain.
I grab two of my thick broad swords that are a foot in width each and put them side by side between me and the windows. I focus on their shape, using my gift to bend the metal at will until the two swords become one large metal shield with their pommels turned into a handle.
Bullets clang against it as I grit my teeth and lift it before running back into the main room to look for the others .
They’re both waiting for me at the escape hatch on the floor, crouched behind the coffee table. Dane’s wearing a hoodie with the hood up to hide any distinguishable features and his hand is glowing against Kellan’s chest. Kellan’s hunched over Dane should any bullets get through. His scales are on full display.
Dane can block someone from using their gift or he can turn the gift on full through touch. The former part is what GE is most likely after, but the latter…well, only Kellan’s gift has benefited from it so far.
“Get through the hatch!” I shout. “I’m right behind you.”
Kellan yanks the hatch open and waits for Dane to drop down first. He looks at me like he might wait for me to make it over to them.
I snap, “Go! Dane needs you at the bottom when he gets there.”
Priority one is to get Dane out without anyone realizing he’s been here this whole time or with us.
Two is getting the Guild members to safety and hoping that GE doesn’t realize there are gifted people here.
Three is the safety of Kellan and I, and making sure Jackson is safe.
Raegan’s face appears in my mind, and I shake my head.
Crouching behind the table, I re-curl my sword back to its whip-like form, then sit on the edge of the hatch and grab the handle to pull it down over me when I drop. The shield rests over me as I fall down the long, winding slide we had made when the building was renovated. It goes halfway down the Tower to the Guild’s main floor and dumps me onto my feet in the kitchen’s storage closet.
Dane’s holding Kellan’s upper arm to keep the scales activated while they stand by the door to wait for me.
“We should go for a sneak attack,” Dane starts. “I’ll cancel their gift and you can knock them out.”
Kellan growls and shrugs his arm away, starting his one-hour time limit with his impenetrable body. After the scales appear, he has an hour with them before they retreat and he’s vulnerable again without some rest. “It sounds like there are too many. Hide here while Aiden and I take them out. We can’t let them see you.”
“Someone could find him here when we aren’t looking,” I consider aloud. “He stays with one of us.”
“You take him then. I’m going to go bulldoze through them all.” Kellan throws open the door and runs out of it.
I curse his brashness and hand Dane a dagger. I split my shield into a halberd and a smaller shield and give the latter to him as well. “Watch my back. Don’t go far or chase after people.”
He clenches his jaw but nods. It’s difficult for him to be a primary target by GE, especially with a gift that doesn’t let him fight back himself. But there are other ways he can fight, so long as he doesn’t get separated from us.
We walk out the door and through the kitchens into the great hall where chaos has broken out in the massive, three-story room.
It’s gifted fighting against gifted, with only the clothing separating GE from Guild members. Our members are being dragged or carried away and my hands clench over my weapons.
It looks like our secret’s out.
Or was it already out somehow and that’s why they’re here?
I hook the halberd across my back and snap my whip sword out. Then I flip it up and swing it at the first line of GE fighters. The blade slashes across them and knocks them down. I keep the edge blunt so I’m not cutting everyone in half, but injuring them enough to keep them out of the fight.
I keep moving through the hall taking out anyone in my way, but it’s never fast enough. I stop one Guild member from being taken, only for two more to be whisked away. For as many as I’ve taken down, another swarm floods in until we’re outnumbered three to one.
Most of the gifted here don’t use their abilities to fight. The difference in skill and training between the Guild and GE is glaring, and I know we will lose if we keep fighting.
“Code Blue!” I shout out. “Code Blue!”
Our members start to move when they can, mobilizing as they’ve been instructed for that escape plan. But too many are still stuck in a fight and can’t turn their backs.
I pull the extra metal from my sword back into my other hand and mold them into throwing knives. I start targeting the fighters keeping the Guild members from escaping, either taking them down or distracting them enough for our members to get the upper hand.
I’m forced to change the halberd into more knives, and then the remaining metal on my body until only my sword is left.
Kellan’s in the thick of them, knocking through them two at a time. But a circle is closing in around him. His chest heaves with exertion, and it’s only a matter of time before his skin reverts and he’ll be vulnerable again.
“Dane.” I turn to check on him for the hundredth time and freeze when he’s not there.
Sharp pain sears into my shoulder, and I fall to the ground. A man steps forward with a spear of ice in his hand as he readies to throw another one. I yank my whip sword behind me. Where it would normally curl and fall short, I curve it back and sharpen the blade, then score it across his chest and shatter the ice.
The man screams and falls back. I hurriedly search for Dane where he’s fighting off two men who have blocked him off from getting back to me.
I pull the ice from my shoulder and push back to my feet to start toward him, but the ice man yells behind me, and I spin around, flicking my wrist up in time for my sword to crash into the next spear of ice.
Fuck. I don’t have time for this. I’m not losing anyone else in our group.
I whip my sword out and sharpen the blades. It crashes back to the ground and cuts the floor in the impact. “I don’t have all day. Let’s go.”
He starts conjuring and throwing ice at me left and right. Damn it, do I wish I could conjure metal like that. I swing my sword back and forth in a tiring but effective maneuver to keep cutting through his ice until he’s tapped out.
I throw my sword one last time and stretch it thin so it reaches him and cuts his head clean off.
I try not to kill them if I can help it, but if he’s going to get in the way of me getting Dane back or helping Kellan, then it’s an easy choice to make .
Screaming erupts behind me, and I pivot hard as Raegan ravages the two men who had Dane from behind. They drop to the ground with skin so fractured and split it looks like parched dirt in a desert with blood running through the cracks.
She doesn’t even give them a second more notice before she’s rummaging through their gear and pulling two guns out. She tosses one at Dane and runs toward the crowd around Kellan without waiting to see if Dane would catch it or not.
He does, but he stares at it and the men at his feet.
“Dane, move!” I snap at him. Gunfire echoes behind me as Raegan takes on the men surrounding Kellan while I wait for Dane to catch up to me. When I turn around, I notice the large group of GE fighters who I’d been blocking from the Guild members is long gone. Probably while I’d been distracted by the ice guy, dammit.
Our members should be gone by now though.
I grab Dane to make sure he stays with me and because I’m not sure if Raegan saving his life will qualify her for a free pass from him right now. We start working through the crowd around Kellan when a voice cuts through the fighting.
And then everything stops.
Everyone steps back. I look at Dane, who is as confused as I am, and then we push through to Kellan’s side. Raegan is standing in front of him. I turn to snap at her for running blindly to him without backup, but the words catch in my throat at her pale face. It reminds me of how she looked when I confronted her about her secret. I swing my head around to look for the cause.
“Ah, pet. How I’ve missed you,” a man says as he steps through the parted fighters. Then he comes into the light and recognition dawns on me. He was one of the scientists on the island. He ran the tests on us and made us complete different exercises for his research.
Gordon?
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Raegan whispers fearfully. I look back to her and her body’s taken on a full tremble.
“On. Your. Knees,” Gordon demands slowly.
She drops to her knees instantly, and a sob slips free.
What.
The.
Fuck.
The scientist walks confidently up to Raegan and then he strokes the side of her face. My muscles clench with anger and the desire to intervene, but I force the urge at bay to wait for the right moment.
It’s like there’s no one else in the room but them right now. All of us are just flies on the wall as she stares up at him and he smiles down at her. His finger curls under her chin and lifts it so she’s looking right at him, and I catch tears sliding down her face.
It’s him.
I don’t know what or how, but he’s the reason she freaked out.
“You’re so weak right now without me, it’s pitiful,” Gordon murmurs with disgust.
Raegan grimaces and then she keels over and vomits at his feet. The scientist sneers and steps back.
“Disgusting. I think we’ll have to start from scratch, if you’re even worth the trouble.”
Kellan’s on his feet again, though his scales are gone, and rushing toward him with a roar. “GET AWAY FROM HER!” He throws his body into a swing aimed square in Gordon’s face.
His fist flies through him and Kell stumbles off balance.
Gordon ignores him and the way Kellan’s body literally fell through him and snatches the back of Raegan’s hair to drag her back up on her knees again to look at him. “You’re dirty and worthless and—”
She spits on him. Rage twists and contorts his face, and my feet move before I can think. Then he shrieks and releases her.
A throwing knife is embedded in his wrist and his other hand grips around it. We all—except Raegan who’s still staring at the ground—look up.
Jackson has an entire host of knives hovering in the air behind him. He flicks his hand forward and they sail down at their targets on their directed paths. Everyone screams and runs for it, Gordon included, as the knives follow their every twist and turn until they find their homes or they make it out the door and Jackson’s eyesight.
He jumps off one of the wooden beams and barely slows himself before he lands next to Raegan.
Jackson and Kellan help her up to her feet. Her face is blank. Empty.
That man abused her on the island. Before Vera’s death? After?
Does it matter?
He is marked for death either way.
I glance over to Dane to read his reaction to all of this. He’s glaring at her, but he’s also not attacking or aiming his gun at her either.
At least there’s that .
“Jackson, where were—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“Safe house. We’ll talk at the safe house.”
It’s a good idea if anyone else is around. We can regroup, check in with the Guild, and figure out what in the actual fuck just happened.
The safe house is a mini version of our Loft hidden in a disgusting building no one would ever think to look twice at.
It’s where I saw Raegan for the first time in five years, sneaking through the back door like a thief in the night.
Now she’s sitting on our couch with her arms wrapped around her legs and a haunted look on her face that’s been there since we left the Guild. My mood borders on murderous the longer I see it.
I should have attacked him sooner. As soon as I realized what that was, I shouldn’t have waited.
That won’t happen next time.
Kellan brings her a cup of water, which she takes with a barely audible ‘thank you,’ as she stares at nothing. Or at least nothing we can see. She doesn’t even move when Kell tries to offer her a warm washcloth and then wipes any remnants of her bile from her face and clothes himself.
I grab some gauze to wrap my shoulder before joining them on the large sectional couch.
Dane’s still staring at her.
The entire walk back, he watched her like a hawk. Now that we’re all seated in the living room, he hasn’t taken his eyes off her. But now his expression is unreadable.
Jackson is perched on the back of the couch on the other side of Raegan from Kellan, a throwing star flipping between his fingers while leaning his face on his other hand. He’s scratched up and bruised as if he’d been in a scuffle, but none of us has brought it up yet.
No one has said anything yet.
To give Raegan more time, I focus on the other catastrophes of the day.
“Any ideas on how they found us?” I finally start. When no one answers right away, I turn my focus on Jackson. “What happened to you?”
He smiles and shrugs. “You know what they say. You go looking for trouble and you usually find it.”
I frown to show my complete lack of amusement, but he isn’t bothered in the slightest.
“It was a trap, actually. I was ambushed. I think to keep me busy while they attacked the Guild.” He shoots me a look that tells me he has more to say later and I give the barest of nods so he knows I understand.
“Did they want Dane?” Kell asks, tossing the washcloth on the table and leaning back into the cushions with one arm stretched above where Raegan sits.
“I don’t think they realized who I was when they tried to grab me. They may have just assumed I was another member of the Guild, is all,” Dane answers .
“So, an attack on us? Or a snatch and grab of more gifted people?” I muse aloud.
“You,” Raegan chimes in, and I practically jump to attention. The fear is gone from her eyes, but her face is guarded now instead. Her blue eyes latch on to me and my blood heats. “That was courtesy of the congressman. You remember him, Aiden? The man I was gathering information from before you kicked me out?”
I scoff at that, pleased by the flicker of annoyance she sends my way. I’ll gladly take that over her haunted look. If I have to push her and be the bad guy to snap her out of that trance she was in, so be it. “Gathering information for you, maybe. Don’t try to pretend anything you were doing was for our benefit.”
“At least having me there only puts me in danger. Apparently, you guys know a bunch of other gifted people and you just led GE straight to them.”
My jaw ticks at her brazenness, but I feed on it too. “How are you so sure it was that scum and not someone else?” I challenge back.
“Because I was in his office with him when he told me.”
There’s a pregnant pause as we absorb what she’s said.
Kellan grabs her arm. “Alone?!”
She throws her legs to the ground and tries to tug her arm away, but his grip is too tight. “Of course, alone. I’m always alone.”
“What if he—”
I interrupt Kellan, “Is he dead?” If she left him dead in his office with evidence all over the place, then we needed to be working on a clean-up now . The last person she got information from ended up with a knife in his skull .
Raegan finally yanks her arm free and then crosses them. “I left as soon as I heard he had a hit out on you from GE. He said you might be dead already, so I didn’t stick around.”
“Why?” Dane speaks up. “Why drop what you’re doing just because you hear we might be in trouble?”
I decide against pointing out that ‘dropping what she was doing’ was putting herself at risk against someone I doubt she realizes has some pull at GE and focus instead on how Dane’s eyeing her with confusion like he thinks he might figure her out in one night. It’s laughable, but I wait to see how she answers him.
She bites her lower lip as she realizes what she’s admitted to.
She cares about us. For all of the betrayal and enemies talk we’ve been throwing around at each other, there’s no other explanation for her coming to our aid and abandoning her own mission.
“I wasn’t going to let them kill you, that’s all,” she tries to brush off. The four of us watch her intently, and I know none of us are fooled by it.
Rather than let that train of thought continue, she sends her ire back my way.
“By the way, your home invasion stunt has awarded him a child chained to his desk and brainwashed to protect him.”
Shock ripples through me, followed by anger.
“I’ll handle it,” I swear to her. I’ll save the child and get them the help they need, if it’s not too late. Then, I’ll gut that piece of shit and Gordon and bring them to her to hang on her wall. The scientist hasn’t done anything specifically, but he was on the island. That and something about him has me wanting to shred him to pieces .
Raegan sets her empty cup down and stands. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Just thought you should know.”
Kellan scowls from the couch and stands to block her way. “No. Stay away from him. I mean it.”
She jabs a finger into his chest, which I’m sure hurts her more than him. “You don’t tell me what to do. No one does,” she snarls. There’s a glimpse of fear in her eyes again, but she blinks and it’s gone.
His face falls like something just clicked for him, and he lets her pass.
Rae walks right by him, but I keep watching Kellan’s face darken with rage the longer whatever is on his mind stews.
“You apparently all know where I live, so you know where to find me if you need me.” She waves and leaves, and we’re left with more questions than answers.
Again.
Jackson stands and walks across the back of the couch, then hops off and opens the window.
“Following her home?”
He turns to me and nods. “I’ll fill you in once I know she’s safe.” Then he’s gone.
“What’s the matter with you?” Dane aims at Kellan.
He turns to look at Dane and then at me as well. “There’s more to what happened on that island than she’s letting on.”
“No shit, dumbass. She still hasn’t explained why she murdered my sister .”
“Then we need to get her to tell us what happened! I won’t believe she just did it on a whim. And whatever the fuck was going on with that guy has something to do with it. So, stop pretending you’re going to hurt her and help us figure this shit out!”
“Then how do you explain the birth certificate, Kell?! She’s been one of them all along. There’s no need to hunt for another explanation, because we have it ,” Dane snarls.
“No. She’s not theirs. Why would she be fighting them then? Coming to help us? You’re too blinded by what happened to Vera that you won’t see what’s right in front of you!”
“Of fucking course I am! That’s not something I’m ever going to let go of. She killed my sister. She’s gone. Forever. So, sorry I’m not going to rush to help her. You saw her obeying that guy’s orders. What more proof do you need than that?”
Kellan swipes his hand at a dining chair and throws it across the room. “Did you miss everything else ? She didn’t want to be near him! She threw up at the sight of him.”
“What if she was the agent they sent to kill your parents and sister? Would you still defend her then?” Dane spits out.
Kellan freezes. “Don’t bring them into this.”
That’s it. I step between them. “We need to focus on getting the Guild members back.”
They’re quietly seething at each other, chests heaving as they catch their breaths from the screaming match. Dane caves first, going to his nest of computers to work.
Kellan’s glare follows him there, then pins on me. “And what about Raegan?”
I want answers as much as he does, but I can’t admit that in front of Dane yet. He’ll do something stupid like storm off where GE can easily pluck him off the streets as they’ve been trying to do since we escaped. I have to keep him safe and out of GE’s hands. I owe him that.
“What about her?”
He steps toward me, finger shoved into my chest. “Why did you tell me she made it off the island? You left her behind and alone to face fuck knows what for five years while we had each other. What if that’s when he got to her? Did you think about that? You owe her more than anyone to find out the truth.”
Fuck.
My chest tightens as the idea takes root.
He grabs a jacket from the wall and storms out, slamming the door.
Dane looks up from his desk with a scowl directed at the door.
I give it an hour before I head out myself.
Kellan isn’t the only one seeking answers tonight.