Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Aiden
Concrete rushes toward us. I reach for my gift and instinctively seek out Raegan. But Jackson’s already wrapped around her instead of slowing our fall, and the truth hits me like a punch—we’re giftless. My gut hollows out, the power that was flooding my veins a heartbeat ago gone. Completely.
We slam to the ground before I can do anything more than cover my head. Pain shoots through my left arm, and my head bounces and smacks the concrete. Another burst of pain erupts in my head, ricocheting through my body as the injuries begin to register.
“Jack! Jack!”
I crack my eyes open at the sound of her voice.
She’s on her hands and knees over Jack, whose eyes are closed.
I roll to my side, biting back a groan and forcing myself to stand.
Severe throbbing nags at my left temple, momentarily blinding me before I attempt moving again.
Kellan’s sitting up and rolling his wrist.
Dane’s not here.
Neither is Harvey’s sibling nor the two dead men who’d been in the bedroom with us. It was a targeted attack, exactly where we’d been standing, to make sure only we fell through.
“Jack! Wake up!” she begs, stroking his face and running her hand through his hair. She freezes, lifting her hand and staring at it in horror. I move behind her to see it.
Blood.
Raegan dives forward and angles his head to one side, lifting his hair and stroking her fingers along his scalp to find the source. I drop to his other side to help her until we find it.
“It’s just a scrape,” I reassure her, checking its size and depth. It’s what we can’t see beneath the surface injury that worries me. I’m sure he angled himself to avoid his head hitting first, but it clearly got him anyway, as it had me.
Kellan walks around us to a wall of thick metal bars, cursing under his breath. “They dropped us in a prison cell.”
“Where’s Dane?” Raegan asks breathlessly, her gaze scanning the ten-by-ten concrete box we’re in and coming to the same realization as me.
They’ve taken him.
Kell cups his hands over his mouth as he presses his forehead against the bars. “Dane!”
Nothing.
I leave Jack with Raegan and join Kellan, walking under the sets of chains and shackles dangling ominously from the ceiling.
I reach for one of the bars separating us from what looks like a narrow, rectangular office.
The metal is cool in my grip. So familiar, so comforting, and yet it betrays me.
It doesn’t bend, doesn’t even flicker with a response when I try to force my will over it.
What usually feels so alive, so right, is now cold and rigid.
“The darts we were hit with must be what shut down our gifts,” I muse aloud.
Vera told Raegan they were weaponizing gifts.
This is just one terrifying application of that.
They don’t even have to be within reach and holding still to get jewelry on.
They can fire from a distance, from a hiding place, and immediately get the advantage over any gifted person, regardless of what they can do.
“Do either of you still have yours?” It’s wishful thinking to hope one of us got missed, but it’s worth asking the question. Both shake their heads, and I already know the answer about Jack. If he’d had his gift, he would have caught all of us before we hit the ground.
“What if it’s permanent?” Raegan holds one of Jack’s hands in hers, her other hand cradling his face and trying to wake him. “The collar and cuffs are on all the time. If we got injected with it, does that mean...?”
Jackson’s hand twitches, then twists and snatches her hand as his eyes fly open.
“Jack!” Raegan gasps with relief, but it's short-lived when he pushes himself upright and her brow furrows with concern. “Wait. You could have a concussion.”
His eyes do a quick sweep around us, taking account of our situation in a single glance, then focus on Raegan. “Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head. “No. But your head—”
“It’s fine.” He looks at me, ready for my assessment of our predicament since he’d been unconscious.
I pick up where we left off, knowing Jack will fill in what he missed easily enough.
“There’s no telling how long the effects will last or if it’ll be permanent.
If it’s temporary, then I’d assume the effects will wear off either by fluids flushing it out of our system or by time lessening its strength.
” I don’t bother going into what it’ll mean for us if it’ll be permanent.
At the very least, we’d no longer be a threat to Charles. A more optimistic person might hope he’d let us go, but the realist in me says otherwise. We know about Gifted Enterprise and what they’re really doing. We’re a liability.
But then, why drop us in a cell unless he’s planning on holding us for some reason? Why not just kill us immediately after making our gifts inert?
It’s that thought that tells me our gifts will be coming back.
And Charles has plans for us.
I lift my phone from my pocket, checking for service. As expected, there is none. We’re either too remote for our phones to pick anything up, or it’s being blocked by something. That removes the option of calling Dane or others for their whereabouts.
It’s highly unlikely the tracking app will be able to pinpoint our location, let alone Dane’s, but I open it anyway to make sure.
After Vera stuck Dane with something and I’d brought him to the infirmary, we’d decided it was best that he receive a tracker, too.
And then we did the same with Kellan, Jack, and me.
A warning window pops up on the screen:
No service.
Jackson and Raegan stand when I return my attention to the cell, and Kellan runs his hand down her spine where he’d moved to her other side.
“Dane and the others who went after board members could be here,” I finally continue. “We can’t leave until we know where they are.”
Jack nods, his hands toying with something in his kangaroo pocket.
His lock-picking kit, I suspect. He never goes anywhere without it.
Which means we can leave here whenever we want, but will we get information faster by waiting for Charles or his agents to tip us off on the others as an attempt to scare or upset us?
“There’s a camera in the corner there”—he tilts his head toward the office-looking room outside of these bars—“and another on this side there.” Jack indicates the opposite side of the room, but on the same wall as us.
Both are small and the same color as the concrete walls, blending in to hardly more than what would appear to be a mark or chip at first glance.
It takes concentrated effort to identify them.
Only one of them points into our cell while the other covers the rest of the room and the single door.
If the cameras obtain audio, we’ll have to be careful with our planning.
Kellan stiffens, then shifts himself between Raegan and the bars so he’s blocking her from sight. “Someone’s coming,” he growls.
I widen my stance in preparation, but there’s only so much I can do without my gift or a weapon in hand. The metal I’d molded to gauntlets or weapons wrapped around me had dropped back to their original form once the dart struck and didn’t come through with us.
I can hear the heavy clomp of boots behind the door draw closer and count at least two sets. Jackson passes Raegan a small throwing knife out of the corner of my eye. She relaxes her hand around it and holds it at her side just behind her leg to keep the blade hidden.
Good girl.
The heavy door swings open and bangs into the wall as two agents dressed in typical black GE gear stroll in.
“There she is,” the taller one with a brown military cut drawls, his thumbs tucked into his vest as he leers through the bars and stomps down the three steps to the room.
Heat burns in my chest when he says she and looks her way. I clench and release a fist at my side, my body tense and at the ready. My mind turns a mile a minute, running through scenarios and trying to figure out what to say to swing this to our advantage.
“Where? I don’t see her,” the other one gripes, his beady eyes scanning the cell and likely only finding three men.
“You blind, Stephens? Behind the big one.”
“How the hell am I supposed to see anything behind him? I’m not tall like you.”
“Fuck, you idiot. Can’t you see her legs there? Never mind. Just go and grab her, will ya?”
Stephens mutters to himself, stalking over to the lock. I go there without thought, adding another barrier between them and her. The agent startles when he notices me there suddenly and yanks his pistol free to aim it at me.
My heart thrashes at the memory of Charles shooting me. At the pain I’d felt. The fear that I’d failed her. Failed everyone. My lungs seize as my body remembers being unable to breathe underwater.
“No!” Raegan cries out, wrenching me back to the present.
I take a deep breath. Exhale. Then raise my hands nonthreateningly.
“I’m unarmed and giftless,” I remind him slowly, like speaking to a frightened animal.
He seems like the weaker of the two, but that means he might act more rashly.
I’d prefer not being shot again if I can help it.
“I’m just wondering what you need her for and not the rest of us.
Aren’t we all your prisoners?” I keep my voice a calming croon.
He doesn’t lower his gun, but the tremble of fear in his arms eases. It’s a small consolation that I won’t get shot from a twitching finger, but one I’ll take, nonetheless. “You are,” he affirms a bit harder than would be normal. Like he’s still convincing himself that he’s the one in control.