44. The Danger of Loving a Mama’s Boy #2
One stares at me, his lips parted. His white eyes flash pink, blue, purple, then back to white so quickly I can barely track them. Everyone shoving forward at once, trying to see me. Trying to understand.
Then his eyes settle to green.
Six.
He always comes forward when the rest of them are too overwhelmed to think.
His gaze travels over me from head to toe before returning to my face. His fingers twitch at his sides as if he wants to touch me and find where the magic used to be.
"Your reflexes," Six says, "The way you learn physical skills after seeing them once. Your fixation on other people’s abilities." His eyes sharpen as another piece falls into place. "Your magic is gone, but you still mirror all the time."
He’s right. Reaching inside myself, I can still feel that ability now that there is a name, a history to it.
The way I could watch someone create an elaborate braid once and do it just like that.
How I could replicate certain fight moves from my favorite movies, how fast I was able to pick up darts after I watched the local champ play a few rounds.
That fire in my belly...the hot, hungry, covetous feeling was never about wanting my friend’s powers. I was missing what used to be a part of me. I yearned to have what was taken from me.
Six stares at me. There's a high, thin ringing in my ears, and my heartbeat has relocated to my throat. His green eyes lock on mine, wide and stricken. For once, his face gives everything away.
"Where your friend was merely a level two, you manifested at a level three and it had only just begun to express," Queenie explains, "so we had to act fast. We gave you both the treatment, and she wasn’t strong enough. And while you flew the coop, no one even thought to look for you since we hadn’t had any successful test subjects.
The other kids assured us you talked about leaving and the only reason you stayed was for your friend. "
She wasn't strong enough. Four words, and Rosie is dying in them all over again, and this woman says them like a lab note. "You used us."
Queenie’s forehead creases. "We were helping them and you."
One shifts behind me. His attention moves from Queenie to the people restrained along the wall. His gaze catches on the needle taped inside Red’s elbow, then the tubing disappearing beneath Ariel’s sleeve.
"You experimented on me," Six says, "You experimented on Rosie and Snow. And Carolee..." His expression shutters as if internally warring. "For so many years, so many people. I didn’t realize..."
Queenie’s lips thin. "The procedural details are none of your concern, but I can safely say with the mermaid, the mage who can strip powers, and most importantly, Snow here, our success is inevitable." She closes a fist and her voice drops into a cadence like one of her political speeches.
"It’s too much..." Six says so softly I almost miss it.
But I can’t think of the future she has envisioned when I’m still stuck in the past. Processing too much, too fast. "What did you give us?" My voice is low, a warning.
"The same treatment that cured you." Queenie clasps her hands in front of her. "Her body reacted poorly."
The room pitches sideways as I remember the fever. Rosie shivering beneath a pile of blankets. Her fingers gray where they clutched mine. The adults telling me to let her sleep while her breaths grew farther and farther apart. How I found her in the morning.
My stomach twists. "She wasn’t sick."
"You were both afflicted," Queenie explains calmly as if I’m slow.
"You poisoned her."
"Snow." Six’s arms tighten around me, but his voice cracks around my name.
"Let me go!"
The security guards finally move in. Six resists when the first man reaches for me, dragging me tighter into his chest.
"Release her," Queenie orders.
His arms go rigid around me.
"Six," she says.
His hold loosens.
The guards wrench me away from him and drag me toward an empty spot on the wall where restraints hang open beside a waiting IV. I kick one in the shin and catch another across the jaw with my elbow before they force my arms to the padding.
Six takes a step toward us.
Two guards block his path.
Buckles lock over my wrists, waist, and ankles. I slam my body forward, and the edges cut into my skin.
"The treatment worked on you," Queenie snaps. She strides over and snatches the IV line from its hook. "Progress requires trial and error. You should be thanking me."
"You killed my friend. You stole a piece of me. You fractured and rejected your own son." I wrench against the straps again. "I’m going to kill you, lady!"
Behind Queenie, Six flinches.
His green eyes flash white, then pink. The colors start changing faster, each of them pushing at the others as his gaze moves from the needle in Queenie’s hand to the people strapped along the wall.
Queenie feeds the IV line through her fingers. "We are on the verge of saving the world. Of putting things right."
"What is your damage, lady?" My shoulder burns as I fight to pull my hand through the restraint. "Who hurt you so badly you decided to kill everyone who isn’t like you?"
Queenie’s hands pause over the needle.
She shakes her head and gives me that same soft, pitying smile she used during every Brightpath Christmas visit.
"No one did anything to me. I’m trying to help you. Haven’t you been listening?" She gestures toward the unconscious bodies lining the wall. "The answer isn’t eradication. It requires a cleansing. That’s why you’re here."
"You mean like you helped your son?" I jerk against the restraints. "That’s what happened, isn’t it? You tried to fix him, and you ended up splitting him into pieces."
Six’s face floods with shame.
My anger cuts so sharply it hurts.
He delivered my friends here, but he was also the first child she strapped down. A five-year-old boy who brought a cat back to life and learned that made him unworthy of his mother’s love.
"She doesn’t want to save you. She wants to kill every part of you that doesn’t fit inside her perfect little box. That’s not love." I wrench against the straps until pain shoots through my wrists. "Four is already gone. I can’t lose the rest of you too."
Six’s face empties of all emotion, and I fear I’ve lost him. All of them. I can’t compete with the promise of his mother’s love.
That’s why they always warn you not to fall for a mama’s boy. It never ends well.
Queenie studies him. "Yes, I heard the redheaded mage successfully cleansed one of the abilities."
"His name was Four," I snap. "He was a person and he’s dead. You probably don’t even care. Are you happy there is one less bit of magic and life in him?"
Queenie’s attention returns to me. "If the remaining fractures must follow in our attempt to cure this horrible affliction, so be it. My son died the day this disease took hold of him."
"They are your son!" I scream. "Six, look at me."
His green eyes find mine through the colors fighting to take over.
"Seven, I think you want your mother’s love, miss it more than anything, but I’m telling you, she’ll never give it to you.
You’ll never be good enough. Not for her.
But you are amazing, and magic in every wonderful sense of the word and I wish you’d love yourself even a fraction as much as I love you. "
Queenie’s eyes dart between us rapidly. "That’s enough. The Seven, I need you to leave. We have work to get to and I can’t have you dawdling around. Now go." She moves to talk to one of the scientists.
"No." The word comes out layered, like all seven of them shoved into the same syllable.
Queenie stops, then slowly faces Six as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. Except it’s not Six.
The colors have stopped fighting and layered up instead, all seven crammed into two irises, and for the first time since I met this man, the whole of him is looking out of his own face.