Page 10

10

TREY

“You monsters!” Arella keeps me tight against her body, and I’m grateful for it. “How could you do this to him? He’s barely breathing.”

“The kid knows it’s for the greater good.” Victor stomps toward her and stops only to yank her up by her arm.

I tumble out of her grasp and onto the battle box’s floor, too weak to catch myself. I still can’t feel my limbs.

“Ruby! Do your thing.”

I cry out as the invisible snakes sink their teeth into my skin again.

“Stop!” Arella collapses next to me. She cups my face and shuts her eyes. It takes a moment before the agony disappears and my body stops shaking.

“Are you stinging him?” Victor asks.

“Yes,” Ruby hisses.

“Outstanding! That’s twice in a row.”

I can’t open my eyes enough to see it, but I know Victor’s grinning. I’ll bet this is one of the happiest days of his life. He gets to see me suffer while he performs tests on an Immune. Win-win for him.

“Pixie, how ’bout you give it a shot?” Victor says.

“No!” Arella cups my face tighter. She presses her forehead against mine, whispering something I can’t make out. I wait for the ear pain to come. It never does.

“She’s blocking it,” Pixie says.

I pry my eyes open just enough to see my girl with tears streaming down her cheeks. With a quivering hand, I wipe one away.

I’ve always been amazed by this woman. At first because she was immune. Then because of her inner strength. Then because of how she got me to fall in love with her so effortlessly. Now she’s projecting her immunity onto me. She’s absolutely incredible.

For the second time, Victor pulls Arella up by her arm, snatching her away from me.

Arella punches him in the chest. “Let me go!”

Panting, I twist onto my side, then hoist myself onto my elbows. It takes a few breaths before I’m able to push myself onto my knees.

“Quit manhandling her!” My voice comes out coarse, like I’ve smoked a pack a day for fifty years.

Victor ignores me as he shoves Arella toward the Asian woman.

The flames between my fingers flicker.

“Hold hands with Pixie,” Victor orders.

Pixie grabs Arella’s hand and keeps her there.

“Ruby, do your thing on Pixie.”

Screaming, Pixie falls to her knees. The stings mirror onto my body for a second before I draw back my Empath power to avoid it.

“Stop!” Pixie shouts.

Ruby drops her hand immediately.

Pixie lets go of Arella’s hand and pants. “Jesus fucking Christ! Couldn’t you have gone easy on me?”

Ruby grits her teeth together apologetically. “Sorry, Pix. That was on my lowest power.”

Victor points at Ruby. “Go hold the Ordinary’s hand.”

With a few clicks of her heels, Ruby does what she’s told. Once her hand is joined with Arella’s, Pixie is ordered to blow at her. Ruby shrieks toward the ceiling, clutching one of her ears, until the pain stops.

“Sorry, Roobs,” Pixie mimics. “That was on my lowest power.”

Victor crosses his arms over his chest. “Ordinary, do whatever you did on Trey on the girls.”

Arella shakes her head. “I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“Go hold Trey’s hand again.”

Arella doesn’t waste any time obeying that request. She stands at my side and grips my arm like it’s a lifeline. I think about running and dragging her with me, but I doubt I can make it out of here without one of us getting hurt. For once, I’m glad I can’t sense her emotions. The expression on her face is enough for me to know that she’s scared to death. I’m scared too, baby.

“Both of you,” Victor says. “Hit him with all you’ve got.”

A piercing sound stabs my ears as my body burns like it’s on fire. Arella squeezes my hand harder, closing her eyes. I fall to my knees, counting at least ten seconds of pure agony before it finally stops. Arella kneels at my side, gripping onto my hand so tight, it hurts. I plant my other hand against the floor to keep myself from collapsing over. My breaths come out in heavy pants.

“Let go of him,” Victor says.

“No!” Arella squeezes my hand harder.

Victor wrenches her up by her hair. Hearing her scream hurts me more than what those women have been doing to me. I don’t think about it as I shoot up onto my feet, grip Arella by her waist, and yank her behind me. Flames appear in my palm, and I chuck them at the back of my uncle’s head. My fireball misses and falls to the floor before disappearing into a cloud of smoke. Stupid, because I rarely miss. My trembling fingers are throwing me off.

Victor twists on his heel and shoots me a death glare. “Did you just throw a fireball at me?”

“I told you to quit manhandling her!”

The auditorium goes silent. The look in Victor’s eyes screams murder. The anger radiating off him says he’ll do it. I wouldn’t put it past him.

Surprisingly, Victor relaxes his shoulders and turns to the women. “Thanks for your time, ladies. You’re dismissed.”

Without a word, Pixie and Ruby exit through the double doors. The second they’re gone, Victor comes at me with a fist up. I push Arella out of the way and duck. She stumbles to the side as I back the other way. As I hoped, Victor follows me, hurling another fist at my face. This time, it lands. My head snaps to the side as pain explodes up my jaw.

“How dare you attack me!” He aims a kick at my chest. I manage to get out of the way, only to get sucked into a tornado. Spinning, it carries me toward the ceiling. Victor circles his wrist in the air as his tornado whips me from side to side, round and round. “I should have gotten rid of you after the police dropped you off on my goddamn doorstep! If I wasn’t the only living relative you had left, I would have unloaded your dumb ass with someone else. You’ve been nothing but a fucking nuisance, you worthless piece of shit!”

I kick, and swim, and jump. I even try using my telekinesis. Nothing works to get me out of his spiraling tornado. I’m trapped, and I’m dizzy.

“I should kill you right now for throwing that fireball at me. Teach you a fucking lesson!”

The air is sucked from my lungs as the tornado disappears. From the ceiling, I fall straight back into the battle box and land on my front. My head bounces back from the impact as agony flares up my cheek. Wheezing, I force myself onto my knees only to find Victor pointing a finger at Arella.

“Quit that shit!” he says.

My girl shoots a dirty look at him. “You’ve spent all day trying to get me to do this, and now you want me to stop?”

The auditorium goes silent again.

From the stands, a deep voice says, “She’s got a point, boss.”

Victor directs a glare at Craig. “Nobody asked you.”

I get to my feet and march across the battle box to stand in front of Arella protectively. “This is over. You have no right to treat her like this. No right to be yelling out orders to her or manhandling her like she’s a fucking ragdoll. She’s an Ordinary. A person that we, as ZIRDA agents, have sworn to protect.”

“Well, aren’t you Mr. Righteous tonight?” Victor scoffs and even has the nerve to chuckle. “You don’t get it, kid. Within the last day, this Ordinary has gone from being unable to tap into her immunity to activating it while making skin-to-skin contact with you. Then, just now, she projected it onto you while you were near the ceiling. That’s way more progress than the last Immune.

“Don’t you see? She’s it! She’s the key we’ve been looking for. The ultimate win against the Royals. Once we can get her to fully control and project her immunity, she can help us wipe them out of existence. And once we can replicate her immunity to make the rest of us immune too, this could be the end for the Royals. It all begins here—with her.”

Having the right intention doesn’t justify purposely hurting innocent people. Clearly, Victor has no boundaries when it comes to completing his life’s mission of eliminating all the Royals. I’m certain that he’ll kill off as many Immunes as it takes to finish the job. Yes, the Royals tried to kill him and they succeeded in killing his younger brother—my father. We both lost people we loved at the hands of the Royals, but at some point, we need to say enough is enough.

When Victor first assigned me to Arella, he said the goal was simply to find out the source of her immunity. No one was supposed to get hurt or kidnapped. Somewhere between here and there, he has justified doing whatever it takes to get what he wants. We can find another way to bring down the Royals. A way that aligns with ZIRDA’s values of protecting Ordinaries.

I wish I could say all that to Victor, but it won’t change his mind. He’s so blinded by his need for vengeance that he’s drifted too far off the path of what’s right. He thinks it’s okay to kill one to save a thousand, but if that one is Arella, he’ll have to get through me first.

“Craig, get your ass up here and make yourself useful,” Victor says.

In an instant, Craig is in the battle box with us. I keep Arella close behind me.

“Craig has the ability to shrink anything down to the size of a grain of rice,” Victor says to Arella. “Unless you want Trey to be squashed under my shoe, you’ll project your immunity onto him.”

Without a single warning, Craig points at me, and I’m falling. Except, I’m not. The room has gotten bigger. Every passing second makes everything sound louder and echoey.

My already aching body doubles over as I clutch my stomach. Vomit sprays out of my mouth onto the floor, and then I cough as another wave of vomit rises inside me. Arella’s shriek vibrates through the air as a giant shoe appears above me.

* * *

Someone shakes my arm. My eyes pop open.

Katie leans back into a chair and stares at me with a honeyed smile. How is this girl always so happy? If I wasn’t an Empath, I’d think it’s fake, but the energy I sense from her is light and content.

“Good morning,” she says and holds out a bottle of Healing Water to me. She glances at the iPad in her lap. “Actually, no. Good afternoon! How ya feelin’?”

I sit up and glance around. Sterile white cabinets. A sink in the corner. A beeping sound coming from a machine. An IV is taped to my arm, connected to a bag of fluids. I’m on a hospital bed with crisp white sheets. I’ve been here before. Many times. This is the infirmary on the third floor of Shadow Ridge.

I accept the Healing Water and unscrew the cap. It’s hard to move. My arms are sore, and my fingers have lost some dexterity. Still, I put my lips against the opening of the bottle and chug. It’s the berry-flavored kind—my least favorite. I didn’t even check the label before consuming it. Still, I drink it all in one breath.

“Wow,” Katie says. “That’s one hell of a party trick.”

I press a button on the side of the bed. The top half of the mattress folds upward until it’s in a comfortable position for me to lean against. My hazy head has a pounding migraine, and I swear I can still hear Pixie’s ringing in my ears.

“Where is she?” My voice comes out scratchy.

“In her room.”

The fuck she is. If Arella was in “her room,” she’d be in her apartment. “Why aren’t you there with her?”

“Victor told me to check on you. He wanted me to make sure you were okay.”

I scoff, and it hurts my throat to do so. “He hasn’t cared about my well-being since I was a kid. Why start now?”

Last night, Victor almost killed me. I’ll bet if no one was around, he would have. When I was trapped in his tornado, I sensed his rage and need to bang me against the ceiling until every bone in my body was in pieces.

“Victor has to care about you somewhat,” Katie says. “He’s asked me to check on you at least five times a day since that night in the battle box.”

That night in the battle box? Instantly, the haze clears from my head. “Say again?”

“I said that Victor’s gotta care about?—”

“No, no. Not that. What was the last part?”

“Um, that he’s asked me to check on you multiple times since that night in the battle box?”

My body stills. “And how many nights ago was that?”

“Three.”

“Three?” She’s gotta be kidding me.

“Being shrunk does a lot of trauma to a person’s body. Not to mention you were shrunk and reshrunk almost ten times in a matter of five minutes.”

I don’t remember that. I must have passed out by that point. I point to the IV sticking out of my arm. “What the hell is this for?”

“Fluids and pain medication, according to the nurse. She said you’d need at least another two days to fully heal, but Victor insisted on getting you back into the battle box today.”

I let out a fuck that chuckle. “What makes him think I’m gonna willingly allow people to torment me like that?”

“I don’t think you have a choice. Victor won’t stop this research just because it causes you a little pain.”

“A little? I was knocked out cold for three days! I’d rather be a lion’s chew toy than ever get volun-told to participate in that bullshit again.”

“While you’ve been out, other people have been volunteering. Victor’s tried countless methods to get the Immune to project onto someone other than you. So far, every test has been unsuccessful.” Katie straightens her back and smiles. “Now do you think you can get up? We don’t want to keep Victor waiting.”