Lucy grabbed her gun and ran toward Luke's shelter.
He lay still on his makeshift bed, asleep.
Something stood over him. A figure.
Lightning flashed, and her eyes focused.
Beleth reached for her brother, and Lucy aimed her gun.
"Get away from my brother." Lucy's finger pressed
against the trigger, ready to pull it if Beleth so much as twitched wrong.
But he didn't move. He maintained that annoying stillness
and appeared to be thinking of something. "Don't do anything hasty, Lucy.
I have a proposition for you."
Right.
Like anything he could offer her would make a
difference. The Seeker had tried that approach once. It didn't work then and it
wouldn't work now.
She inched closer and shouted at Luke. "Wake up! Wake
up." When he didn't move, she kicked him in the leg. "Come on,
Luke."
Luke moaned but still didn't wake. The smell of alcohol
seeped out of his pores and gagged Lucy. Drool pooled by his chin.
If all the girls could see him now.
She was half
tempted to use her cell to capture this moment on camera. She would have too,
if for no other reason than to remind Luke what he looked like when he drank,
but she couldn't afford to take her eyes off of Beleth. The Show and Tell
lesson would have to wait.
"No need to wake him," Beleth said, "I just
wish to talk."
Uh-huh. Sure.
"Okay fine, I'll bite. What's your
offer?" She wasn't interested, but the more information she had on him,
the better.
Beleth walked around Luke to stand closer to Lucy.
Her finger twitched, but she didn't pull the trigger. Why
didn't she? She told herself it was because she needed the intel he could
provide, that it had nothing to do with fear of shooting another person.
"This isn't
my
offer," he said. "This
offer... comes from Mr. Steele." He looked at her as if this name should
have significance.
"Who's he?"
Beleth tilted his head. "Your sworn enemy and you don't
even know his name? He is your friend's father—the reason you never knew your
mother."
Lucy made the connection. The bastard in charge of
Rent-A-Kid, and father to both Sam and the Seeker. But Beleth was wrong on one
account, she had met her mother, briefly, through Sam and Drake, just before
her mother was killed by Rent-A-Kid. Now she
knew
she wasn't interested.
Words fired out of her mouth like acid. "And what could
he possibly offer me that I'd ever be interested in?"
"Control." Beleth whispered the word.
"Control over all the madness. You grew up in the organization. You've
carried out the assignments. No one knows what it's like better than you. Mr.
Steele wants what's best, but he's uncertain. He hasn't been through what you
have. You can give him that knowledge."
"So what, I go work for him? Not happening."
"You become my second in command," said Beleth.
"You decide how the children are raised."
"Bullshit."
Beleth didn't respond, didn't move at all, and Lucy wondered
if it could really be possible. If they really put her in charge, she could
make things so much better. And it
could
happen, couldn't it? The Seeker
had told her how he wanted things to be better, and he truly believed it. Maybe
Lucy could do what the Seeker couldn't. But....
"Why me? There has to be someone else."
Beleth seemed to think about it. "You're an asset Mr.
Steele can't afford to lose."
"Am I? I thought he lost me already."
Beleth cocked his head. "Has he? There are many things
Mr. Steele wants, Lucy, many things you are unaware of. We are puppets after
all, all pieces in the same game."
She didn't like feeling like a piece in someone's game, and
her instincts didn't trust this at all. Even the Seeker, who'd really believed
he was helping, had been misguided and had ruined so many lives. She didn't for
a second believe that Mr. Steele had pure motives, but she knew Beleth was
telling her the truth about everything. So far.
"Shut up. I refuse the offer."
"Of course. You play your own game. What will you do
instead? Spend more days on the beach drinking coconut milk? Your instincts are
right, Lucy. Mr. Steele does plan to use the children. You could buy them some
time, maybe save them, if you act."
Fury swelled up in her veins. She would save the children.
She could have saved them already if her stupid brother wasn't acting all
depressed. She focused her anger on Luke. It was his fault they still hadn't
done anything to save the kids.
Something Beleth had said stopped her. "What did you
mean... buy them some time?"
Beleth stared at her.
Lucy shook the gun and yelled. "Tell me!"
"The school, the assignments, were never the
organization's goal. Collecting powers was. In a month, most of the children
will be dead, and Mr. Steele will be the most powerful paranormal to ever walk
this Earth." Beleth turned around and began to walk away.
Lucy stood, shocked. Her mind tumbled over itself as it made
connections. The experiments. Adam. Creatures getting powers, changing. Where
were they getting these powers? Likely, from other paranormals. Paranormals
like the kids being raised at Rent-A-Kid.
So the breeding....
Oh my God.
"He's breeding paranormals to steal
their powers? That means...."
Sam. Her baby, Ana. He wanted the baby for the powers.
No!
Beleth couldn't leave. She could use him.
"Stop."
Beleth stopped walking, turned his head back to look at her,
then started walking again. "You have two days to accept this offer, or
you will die. Your choice."
Without thinking, Lucy rushed forward and attacked Beleth.
She holstered her gun; she needed him alive. As she approached him, he dodged
and grabbed her arm, then flipped her onto the ground.
Lucy fell into the mud, but quickly rolled backwards and up,
clumps of the sticky brown mess clinging to her like shit. She spun into a
roundhouse kick aimed at his face, but he blocked and lifted her leg, tipping
her to the ground. She pulled her leg in, went with the momentum and rolled
into a somersault, then jumped up and aimed lower. If she could kick his knee
in, she could break it, thus rendering him immobile.
Her leg swung out but once again he blocked.
Round and round, with each kick and punch she threw, he
blocked and knocked her off balance. She'd never fought anyone so strong, so
skilled and so fast.
She couldn't predict his moves by watching his torso, like
she could with other fighters. He was lightning fast and impossible to
anticipate.
Still, she refused to give up. He was good. Too good. But
she could beat him. She had to.
With another leap, she surprised herself by landing a side
kick into his chest and knocking him to the ground.
Using a kick-up, he pushed off his hands and jumped up
before she had time to register that she'd knocked him over. No time to think.
She had to keep fighting.
Another kick. Another punch. Lucy kept attacking, furious
that nothing she did impacted this guy at all. He was like a wall.
No matter what she did, it didn't seem to matter in the
bigger picture. In that moment, her whole life felt as futile as that fight.
They fought Rent-A-Kid, but now look where they were. They escaped, but they
still weren't free. There were more prisoners. More problems. It was never
going to be enough. Nothing they tried to do would ever end this.
Lucy lost focus as her hopelessness took over. She attacked
off-balance, and with a small flick of his wrist, Beleth sent her into the mud
again, this time pinning her with his foot on her chest.
This was it. The end. Lucy hoped she'd done enough to make
way for someone else to finish the battle against Rent-A-Kid.
"IPI will stop you." She surprised herself,
unafraid in the face of death. She felt calm.
Beleth dropped down, pinning Lucy with his knee instead of
his foot.
The air in her lungs dwindled. His bulk was too much for her
petite frame.
He didn't sound angry when he spoke, just certain. "IPI
is responsible for so much blood. Now they seek to erase their past. They will
fall, before the end."
She gasped through the pain. "What past?"
Beleth increased the pressure on Lucy's chest with each
sentence. "Who do you think first noticed the paranormals, first contained
them when their powers lost control? Who do you think first experimented on
them to better learn what they are?"
As Beleth finished, he lifted his knee, and Lucy inhaled
deeply, each breath sending spirals of pain through her bruised ribs. She
coughed as air flooded her lungs.
Could IPI really have done all of that? Could they have been
like Rent-A-Kid?
Beleth towered over her. "You have a strong spirit,
stronger than most I've known. I do not care for Mr. Steele's offer, but I do
agree with him that you are an asset not to be wasted, so I'll make you my own
offer. Agent Simmons has set up a base on the other side of the island. She
appears to be your reinforcements. Likely, you know her. She's been with IPI
since nearly the beginning."
Lucy knew her, of course. She'd been with Morrison when they
showed up to help the Rent-A-Kids after they broke out of the school, and
Beleth was right, she was her reinforcement.
Beleth looked straight into Lucy's eyes. "Kill her. And
I'll let all the children go and spare your life... and your brother's."
Toby's finger twitched. Could that happen after death? It
did in movies sometimes, but what if....
Drake hurried over to the small boy and checked for a pulse.
Nothing. Defeat settled into him, but just as he was about to pull his hand
away from the boy's neck, he felt it. Small, sporadic, but definitely a pulse
of life.
"Toby, wake up. Toby, can you hear me?"
The boy moaned and coughed weakly, but didn't open his eyes
or acknowledge Drake in any other way. He needed to find a phone, call for
help. He searched the beaten down house until he spotted an old rotary phone in
the kitchen.
Who uses these anymore?
He picked up the receiver,
but it was dead. Toby's mom probably hadn't paid the bill in a long time, by
the looks of things.
Outside!
He'd passed a pay phone down the street.
Drake hated to leave the kid in such a state, but he had to get medical help
immediately.
The run to the pay phone seemed to take hours, but in
reality only took about three minutes at most. The graffiti-decorated phone
booth looked as abandoned and out of service as everything else in this
neighborhood, but Drake couldn't allow himself to believe that the phone didn't
work. It
had
to. When the dial tone on the other end confirmed his hope,
he sighed and hit 9-1-1.
The nasally voice of a woman bored with her job greeted him.
"This is the 9-1-1 operator, what is the nature of your emergency?"
"I need an ambulance right away. A boy and his mother
OD'd on some drugs. I think she's dead, but he's still alive, though
barely."
Drake searched for street signs and relayed his location as
best he could. Then, despite the empty pleas of the emergency operator to
"stay on the line until help arrives," Drake hung up and ran back to
the house, praying to long dead gods that Toby was still alive.
The house smelled of desperation and hopelessness, but
hadn't begun to stink of death. That would happen soon enough. Still, a house
whose occupant lay dead inside had a certain feel to it, an emptiness and
sadness that a vacant house didn't have. Drake didn't want to walk back in, but
he had to. Toby needed him.
He argued with himself that this didn't concern him—wasn't
his business. But despite his fall into darkness, Drake couldn't turn his back
and walk away—no matter how strong the urge.
Toby reminded Drake of himself as a child—lost, alone,
abandoned by the world. If Drake hadn't found Father Patrick, who knows what he
would have become? He laughed sardonically at the thought when he realized the
truth.
This. I would have become what I am right now.
Thinking of the old priest pushed him into action. He shoved
open the door that no longer had a handle or latch, and entered the misery of
this family's life. When he went back into the bedroom, he half expected to see
Toby still and lifeless again. He didn't expect to find him gone.
The dead woman lay alone on the stained mattress, arm lying
limp to her side.
"Toby, are you here?" Drake searched the small
house quickly. No Toby.
What the hell? Where could he have gone?
Nothing looked disturbed. In fact, the bed still had an
impression where the boy had lain. He reached his hand out to touch the
mattress, but jerked back in surprise when his hand touched something that
wasn't there.
As if in reaction to being touched, the air shimmered and
Toby's body appeared where Drake's hand had been. The boy sighed and his
eyelids fluttered, trying to open.
Drake's jaw opened in shock. Toby had survived because he
did
have a para-power, and his mother clearly hadn't. This created a whole new
problem for them both. If the boy kept flickering in and out like that, there was
no way Drake could explain any of this. What would he tell the paramedics when
they arrived? Should he lie about his involvement? He certainly had no
intention of copping to illicit drug use—a one-way ticket to jail.
His choices didn't look promising, with no money, no
identification, no address. He was a nobody in the system, a lost soul too far
off the radar for anyone to care, but a prime suspect to pin a death and
almost-death on. If they tested his system, what would they find? Would he test
positive for drugs?