Chapter 33 Raegan
Chapter thirty-three
Raegan
Someone gently shakes my shoulder. “We’re here.” Dane’s voice draws me from my slumber. He and Jackson help me upright as I stretch.
Aiden directs Kellan on where to park while Dane pulls his laptop out and opens it up. “I need to be within a block to find nearby cameras,” he says.
“Doesn’t that put us in the boom zone?” Alice inquires.
“Raegan’s gift doesn’t go boom,” Aiden answers smoothly. “She’ll control its destruction to land in its own footprint while Jackson contains any dirt and dust within a tight radius. It’ll be safe for anyone standing outside so long as they don’t breach that radius.”
I hope I live up to his expectation of controlling my gift so well. We’ve done a lot of practice on my control, even testing this on a smaller scale. But replicating it on something so large and with people around is still going to be a novel experience.
Kellan parks along a curb. There’s a building between us and the one we want, but we can see it stretching above this one. “This work?”
“Yeah, I think this’ll work.” His fingers fly over the keyboard at a crazy speed.
Aiden cranes his neck to find Sam in the far back. “Sam. The coffee shop is just up ahead at the corner on the right. Time to be invisible and wait for your siblings.”
Sam nods, turning invisible before he’s even finished as if he couldn't wait to be hidden away again.
“We’ll go get coffee,” Portia adds excitedly. That’ll be hers and Noah’s cover until they hear the word that it’s time to bring the building down. It also keeps their eyes on Sam—or at least on where he is since they can’t see him—to make sure he’s okay.
My heart starts to pound in anticipation as the plan goes into action. What if I accidentally kill innocent people? What if the board members don’t show up? What if Charles has another trap somewhere that we didn’t think of?
Jackson kisses my cheek, startling me from my thoughts. “Breathe. I always have your back. No one else will get hurt.” He shifts in front of me and keeps going toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
His smile is a bit manic. “To find a roost.” He leaves, taking to the rooftop in front of us and then moving to a higher one and out of sight.
After a few minutes of silence, my foot starts tapping with restless energy.
“Got ants in your boot, beautiful?” Kellan drawls, reclining his seat to get comfortable.
I almost snipe at him for being too relaxed until I notice the shimmer of gold scales at his temple through his dark hair.
He’s too covered up for me to see more, but he must have activated at least some of it to prepare for whatever might happen.
“I’ll feel better once the board members show up.” Without them, this whole plan is a bust.
“It’s a shame I don’t get a part to play in this.”
“You’re Dane’s protection and back-up,” I remind him.
He lifts a hand, and I watch it elongate and sharpen to deadly claws.
Tinsley gasps when she sees it.
“Maybe you’ll let me get the first round with Charles, then. Let me test out my new strength against his.”
“Don’t get cocky.”
Our phones ding within seconds of one another. Aiden reads the message first. “Sam says they’re all there, except for one.”
Fuck.
Dane frowns at the laptop screen. “The medical director just replied to last night’s message.”
I lean over to read it as Aiden asks, “What does it say?”
“Sounds important. Fill me in tonight,” Dane reads aloud.
Reid doesn’t look surprised—not that I’ve ever seen him show that emotion before. “Dr. James is closest to Charles. He probably felt comfortable enough to skip the request if they already had plans.”
The door opens, and Jackson slips inside to the open back row. He probably read the message of the missing member.
“Now what?” Alice demands, crossing her arms.
“We continue with the plan,” Aiden responds evenly. “If the other six are there, there’s no time to waste before they become suspicious.” He turns to Reid and Tinsley. “Check the area. Make sure Portia and Noah are starting their rounds,” he reminds them.
Tinsley fixes her wig and reaches for the door. “It'll just take us a sec.” The door opens, and then she’s gone. Reid vanishes a second after her.
Aiden’s near-obsidian eyes land on mine. “Ready?”
“I think so,” Alice answers instead. “Are we sure her gift won’t do the same thing to me while I’m touching her?”
I reply first, “I’m sure. Just don’t let go.”
Tinsley returns within a minute. “There’s no one around. I’d hurry and do it now.”
“Good. It’s up to Portia and Noah to monitor the perimeter and keep anyone new back. You and Reid focus on lower debris falling further than twenty feet from the building,” Aiden directs. She gives him a two-finger salute and is gone again.
My turn.
We shuffle around to the door. Alice grabs my shoulder.
At first, I don’t think she’s done anything.
The door looks the same, and I can see my hands.
It’s when I look at the others that I almost feel as though I’m looking through a pane of glass.
It’s transparent enough to see through, but something’s off.
.. like light catching on a hidden veil between us and them.
“We’re good. You can open the door,” Alice tells me.
I make sure to keep my movements slow so we don’t lose contact. Jackson and Aiden leave, while Kell and Dane remain in the vehicle.
“We’re going to walk fast,” I warn Alice, then break out into an almost jog. The longer we take, the longer we risk the board members becoming suspicious and calling for backup.
We stop at the nearest side of the building.
“Stand behind me,” I whisper. Jackson’s going to control any debris from somewhere above, but we’re within that radius.
Reaching for my gift, I exhale deeply as it flows eagerly through my veins. Its warmth burns and sizzles beneath my skin, making my body thrum and pulse along with it. I make sure it stays contained and doesn’t spread to Alice or get too hot on my shoulder, and then I focus on the building.
On pushing my gift into the hard brick facade and spreading to the steel beam framework.
The varying material slows me down as I have to adjust through each transition, pushing harder or slower depending on what’s there.
It brings me back to my time destroying piles of concrete.
Over and under, winding around and through it all until I’ve mapped out the area with my gift and in my mind.
I keep drawing out more and more, feeding my power into the building with hidden webs of disaster until I can feel it all in my grasp.
I’m gasping by the time it’s all there, my body trembling as I hold it all in place.
Spreading my power isn’t the problem. Holding it back, keeping it from devouring everything it’s touching, is.
As soon as I let it go, I can breathe again.
It's like releasing a leash on a rabid dog.
It immediately goes on the attack, consuming whatever it touches.
The building groans and snaps. Metal splits. Entire floors crack and disintegrate as the building caves at the center, its roof collapsing inward. I’d spread my gift in a particular pattern, focusing on the middle of the building and then the lower floors so they’d buckle first.
Wind picks up around us, whipping our hair up like a vacuum. Any debris or dust is swept into this mini tornado, pulled to its core before falling over the building.
I can’t hear anything over the destruction; the wind. It drowns out anything else around us as if we’re in our own world.
At last, the rest of the building crumbles into a heap, and the wind dies down.
Kellan pulls into an open space in a packed park-n-ride parking lot. Cars sandwich us from all sides, and a train horn bellows nearby.
“Which building is it?” I ask groggily, rising from Jackson’s chest once we’ve stopped.
After completely decimating the Gifted Enterprise headquarters, Reid took Portia, Noah, Alice, Sam, and the six rescued siblings back to Hype. Elias argued on the phone with Aiden that the rest of us should return as well, but we aren’t going back until the last one is dead.
Reid returned, and then Kellan started the long drive to the medical director’s hospital.
We're going to end this, even if we have to chase him to the end of the world.
I’ve been eating and taking naps between them to recover my strength. The world outside is dark, which means I’ve missed sunset and we’re now stretching into the night.
“It’s behind us,” Dane answers, typing something out on an old flip phone. It’s the burner phone we have to communicate with Alice’s siblings. His mouth is tight, his brows pinched together as he finishes his text.
“What’s wrong?”
Aiden responds from the front passenger seat.
“The medical director knows he’s our target.
” Damn. But I'm not surprised. When six of your colleagues are called together for a meeting and then the building collapses, killing them, it’s not a far stretch to assume it was a planned attack.
I’d hoped we might reach him before the news did, though.
Dane flips the phone closed. “He’s waiting for us. Karl—Alice’s brother—just sent that warning.”
Unease curls in my gut. It shouldn’t matter if he’s waiting for us. It doesn’t change anything. Yet, hearing the warning sets off internal alarm bells that there’s more to it. “So what’s the plan?”
“We get in, make sure he’s alone, and kill him,” Aiden replies.
I shake my head before he’s even finished. “No. The point of all this is to avoid close contact with the board. If he’s waiting for us, then it’s got to be a trap.”
Dane sighs and runs his fingers through his messy blond hair.
It looks like he’s been doing that a lot.
“It’s the only way we’ll get him. I don’t fucking like it, either.
But Karl said he didn’t go home when his shift ended today.
He’s staying there indefinitely. Or at least until we confront him. We have to get him here or not at all.”
“He’s going to use the patients against us,” Jackson muses.
We’d worried about this guy the most, and he’s already proving we’d been right to be concerned.
We can’t exactly take down a hospital with sick and injured patients inside.
He’s also been on the board longer than anyone else and seems to have a closer relationship to Charles, according to both Reid and Alice. “What was his gift again?”
“Fear,” Tinsley surprisingly answers, sounding haunted.
Right. The ability to read your fears and use them to fuck with your head.
The fact that he’s the psychiatric medical director of the hospital makes me sick to my stomach.
Metal shifts and moves in Aiden’s grip like it’s something alive.
It melds together effortlessly, smoothing itself into the shape he pictures as he outfits himself with metal gauntlets and a chest piece.
“Kellan, Jackson, Reid, and I will be the only ones going in,” he remarks while working on a whip sword next.
“Like hell you are!” I jump forward in my seat. “I’m going, too. I know I can’t use the full strength of my gift, but that doesn’t make me powerless.”
“You think we can’t handle him, beautiful?” Kellan challenges, throwing his arm over the back of his seat so he can see me.
“I can’t handle you going into a fight without me, where I can’t have your back! Aiden almost—” The words stick in my throat, emotions thrashing in my chest from the memory. I take a breath, slowing my words. “I don’t care if you’re about to fight the fucking Easter bunny. I’m going to be there.”
Kellan chuckles. “I won’t tell the Easter bunny you said that.”
Dane slips his hand in mine, weaving our fingers. “I don’t want to be separated, either,” he tells me, his voice low. “But he’s going to fuck with our heads. Our fears.”
“Let him.” My voice is hard, my stare pinning his with determination.
“It’s time I faced them anyway.” Dane’s brows lift in surprise, then sink as his gaze heats.
“The more of us there are, the harder it’ll be for him to use his gift.
I don’t think he’ll be able to get inside all our heads at once. ”
“I’m sorry, but I think I need to stay here,” Tinsley murmurs. “I thought I could, but I think I’d be too much of a liability with... my head.” She smiles softly at Reid, whose lips turn down.
He squeezes her thigh. “Don’t leave the car. Lay low.”
Reid only shared a little bit of her past with GE and that they messed with her head. It makes sense for her to pass on this if she’s only just gotten better.
Aiden’s intense stare draws my eyes to his. I can almost see the argument forming to keep us here, but a small ding intervenes before he gets the chance.
Dane passes the phone to Reid. “Karl sent through a picture of where the doctor’s holed up.”
Pulling on the seat in front of me, I peer over Reid’s shoulder. “Why is it so dark?”
Aiden extends his hand for the phone, and Reid gives it to him. He studies it for a few seconds.
“No windows,” Kellan drawls after he takes a peek. He fists a hand and grins. “Looks like I will be able to test out my strength on him.”
Aiden starts tapping the keys to send another message.
“I want the full picture, first.” A series of musical notes sounds only a minute later as messages flood in at once.
He studies the screen, his expression darkening with every click to view the next image.
He hands the phone to Reid. “He’s not alone. ”
Fuck.
“How many others?” Jackson questions. His tone is the epitome of calm and unbothered. As if Aiden could throw out a crazy number and he’d still take it in stride.
“Too many to count. But they’re all in cages or chained up,” Aiden replies.
“Test subjects,” Tinsley says, her voice low. She looks at Reid. “Be careful. If he’s already messed with their heads...”
Reid doesn’t flinch. “Don’t ask me to save them, Tins.”
She beats her hand against his chest. “Don’t give me that crap, Reid! They’re all worth saving. Like I was.”
He holds her fist to his chest. She tries to yank it back, but he grips it tight. “No one is like you.” He waits a breath, then continues, “I’ll do whatever’s necessary for us to survive, like I’ve always done. If they’re a threat, I’ll kill them.”
She raises her fingertips to his face, tracing them over his hard expression. “I know. Just... try thinking of me.”
“I always do.”
Tinsley smiles, and they release each other.
Reid takes a final look at one of the pictures. “Let’s go.”