I ran.
The explosion at the university, I thought, pounding down the stairs. I’d been standing so close to the speakers as they’d blown…My ears hadn’t been able to pick up much of anything after, and while my hearing had eventually returned, it was completely possible that I just couldn’t hear the mind-clawing frequency layered into the White Noise anymore.
Where is it coming from?
I forced myself to slow as I came down the last few steps. The hallway was a mess of paper and glass; the art that still clung to the walls was crooked or upside down.
Taking a deep breath, trying to envision how Vida would approach this, I raised my gun.
The floorboards near the door creaked. I spun toward the sound. A dark form dressed in head-to-toe black stood in the doorway, the barrel of his rifle aimed at my head.
Instead of raising my pistol, I threw up my left hand. His earpiece was enough. I seized control of that small bit of power and amplified it until it burst like a firecracker against the side of his face. The other electronics on him—the flashlight looped onto his belt, the scope on his rifle, the Taser—crackled, rippling as I drew a white-blue charge out of them. Their plastic casings made a horrible snap, like a bone breaking clean, just before they exploded.
“Fuck!”
The man screamed as he went down, trying to yank off his belt to pat down the fire. I started toward him, my mind darkening with the thought of finishing him, punishing him, for coming to this safe place. One step forward, one more. The gun was steady in my hands.
Two shadows moved along the exterior of the front windows, just beyond where he’d fallen to the floor, groaning. They streaked toward the porch; I wasted a second watching them through the patchwork of holes they’d made in the front door before turning and bolting.
I ran down the hall, passing through the living room and into the kitchen. The door that led outside from the laundry room was still locked, but I didn’t take any chances. I drew the short curtain draped over the door’s window to the side, keeping my back to the wall. A glint of silver caught my eye. I pulled the erasable chore chart off the wall beside me, angling its silver frame to reflect the space just outside the door.
No one was coming. I ducked out into the fog that had rolled up from the lake. The smell of damp earth was everywhere, mingled with gun smoke. The White Noise continued to blare; it was next to impossible to hear anything over it, including my own steps as I made my way deeper into the woods, trying to track the pulse of power the speakers emitted.
I glanced left, along the path. The same figures in black were pulling the limp bodies of kids down from the tree houses. I pivoted toward them, my finger so tight on the trigger of the gun I was surprised I didn’t fire by mistake.
One by one, in a horrible chain, they dragged the kids farther down the path, toward the lake. My mind was screaming at me to fire, but…
I can’t. I could maybe take down one of the men before alerting them to my location. I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood. No—I needed to stop the White Noise. I needed the others to be able to use their abilities to help me stop this.
“Come on…where are you?” I whispered. The White Noise filtered through the forest, blanketing every square inch of it until it seemed to be pouring out from everywhere and nowhere. It hadn’t knocked me out, but the intensity of its core sound meant I couldn’t focus on any one thought for long. I was navigating through the forest on sheer instinct, feeling out the charge.
I was so distracted that I tripped over the first speaker.
My knees absorbed the dull shock of my landing. I felt across the rocks and piles of mulch for the speaker’s case. I hadn’t uncovered any wires, which wasn’t good news—it meant it wasn’t connected to the other speakers, and I was likely going to have to find them one at a time.
I shook my head, letting that silver thread uncoil in my mind. My heart jarred as my power connected to the device. I coaxed the charge hotter, stronger, until the battery began to blister inside. The casing melted with a squeal, finally cutting off the sound.
Jumping to my feet, I braced a hand against the nearest tree and cast my gaze like a net, searching the trees.
Someone was screaming, begging, “Don’t, don’t!”
My jaw clenched. Move, I thought, move!
The tree to my right exploded, bullets turning its bark and leaves into splinters. A jagged shard caught me across the cheek, the shock and sting enough to make my eyes water and my vision swim. I dropped, falling beneath the line of fog, clutching at the place where warm blood was now dripping down over my chin.
None of it mattered. An electric circuit sang out from behind an overgrown fern, dousing everything in the audible fire that was White Noise.
Close—I was so close. The speaker’s power licked at the fine hairs of my ears, my face, my neck. Mud seeped through my jeans as I crouched, focusing my attention on connecting to the device’s power signature, even if I couldn’t see it. This one must have been larger than the first, because the charge pushed back twice as hard against my senses.
A sharp pain snapped against the base of my skull. Tingling warmth exploded there, the sensation crawling up and down the length of my spine as my hands flew back, searching for the wound, for the place the bullet had cut through bone and nerve and muscle.
But it wasn’t there. No blood, no gash—
As suddenly as the knifing pain had come on, it disappeared, throwing off my sense of balance. I barely caught myself on my hands as I tipped forward. Crawling, I tore at the mud and underbrush, calling to the silver thread in my mind, trying to spark it in the direction of the speaker.
Nothing.
A trill of panic, higher even than the White Noise, wormed its way into my chest.
There was no prickle of awareness of the speaker’s power. No pulse of its current. No static to curl against my mind as I entered its circuit.
Nothing.
I staggered forward through the foliage until I found the device. I slapped my hand against the speaker’s hard shell. I felt nothing. I was alone in my own body with only that emptiness in my head opening its jaws, devouring me whole.
There wasn’t a single spark left in me.
My power was gone.
“WHAT…THE HELL?”
I clenched my hair in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut, concentrating on the silver thread, imagining it there, coiled in my mind. The longer I crouched, my heart kicking at my ribs, the deeper I fell into that spiral of horror.
Someone screamed—they screamed my name.
I snapped back into myself, registering the weight of the gun in my hand and the reality of that moment. The White Noise was shredding the silence, and it seemed to only scream louder the longer I stood there, doing nothing, feeling nothing.
But in the dark chaos of the moment, a single, clarifying thought managed to get through.
“Like you need psionic powers to destroy a speaker, you idiot,” I breathed out.
Shutting out the sounds and movement on all sides, I took aim and fired directly into the face of the device. It leaped off the ground as the shot pierced it. A second bullet finally silenced it.
The other speaker was close enough to track by sound alone. I braced my feet against the ground, swiveling until my ears pricked with pain, pinpointing the direction of the sound. My gaze narrowed, searching through the fog, the darkness, the trees—everything that stood between it and me.
It was an impossible shot—impossible because I couldn’t see to aim, and I couldn’t get any closer, not with the men and kids on the trail. Instead, I pointed up, aiming at the thick arms of the oak that supported the unfinished frame of Tree House Ten.
It felt like the gun was trying to rocket out of my hand as I fired, unloading the clip on that branch. Bullets swarmed the trees like wasps, coming in from every direction, but I didn’t stop shooting, not until the massive branch cracked.
I threw myself down as it split off the trunk
. I heard, rather than saw, the branch crash to the ground, taking with it the beginnings of the tree house Liam had built. The wood pounded the ground, and, in the end, I hadn’t needed to find the exact location of the speaker. The limb and debris buried it, muffling the White Noise.
A branch snapped behind me. I spun, catching a glimpse of something moving in the corner of my vision. I trained my gun at it.
At a girl.
The teen was a shade of white too pale to be truly healthy—her skin had hollowed out beneath her wide eyes, and her cheekbones looked too thin, like you could strip away her clothes and see where all of her blue veins connected to her beating heart. Full, dark lashes framed her startlingly blue eyes.
I relaxed, just slightly. At least one kid had gotten away from the tree houses.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She reached up, touching the small gold flower charm on her necklace as she stared at me. Clearly overwhelmed by what was happening.
“You need to run,” I told her quickly. “Go in through the back of the house and take the hatch in the laundry room out—the others have already gone ahead.”
The girl smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Thanks for letting me know.”
I hadn’t heard the man come up behind me, but I sure as hell felt the butt of his rifle cracking against the back of my skull.
Lights burst in my vision, and I dissolved into agony, into darkness.
“—u! Owen—!”
That was…
My legs dragged against the damp ground, feeling like they were filled with sand.
“Zu!”
That was…The name…Owen was…The thought was there in my mind, just out of reach. It fluttered beneath the insistent tug of sleep, and each time the name was called out, only one color flashed in my mind.
Red.
My eyes snapped open, and the memory of the last few hours crashed into me, taking the air out of my lungs.
Haven. The girl. The man in the black. The rifle.
Captured.
My hands…I tried to lift them, to claw at the tight pressure I felt at the back of my neck. The man, his radio buzzing just above my head, hauled me over stone and root and thorny brush. Everything below my waist felt like it had been carved from stone, but my upper body was air, so insubstantial that I wasn’t sure I was even fully there.
The dirt suddenly softened beneath me, evening out. Blood rushed into my limbs along with that painful, hot sand sensation as feeling returned to them. The man had me by the scruff of my neck with one hand, twisting my shirt’s collar until it choked me.
“Owen! Owen, don’t!”
The fog wound up through the night, swirling the shades of midnight. I squeezed my eyes shut again, trying to clear the dizziness. When I forced them open once more, I couldn’t see the house.
But I could see a kid, no more than thirteen, as he stepped onto the trail, standing between us and the rest of Haven. With his skin and shirt, Owen was as white as a ghost. An easy target.
I kicked at the ground, trying to slow our progress. Ahead, a handful of other soldiers in black were struggling with their own bundles of squirming, writhing weight. The kids kicked and clawed, and the men laughed. They laughed at us.
Why is no one using their abilities?
I reached for that silver thread in my mind again, but there was nothing, nothing, nothing. I couldn’t feel my attacker’s electronics any more than I could his heartbeat.
They can’t, I realized. They must have all had that same block put on their minds as I did.
It could have been a sound that none of us could detect, or some unknown toxin mixed into the fog that closed off that part of our minds. It could have been a million things causing it, but the result was the same for all of us. For the first time in a decade, there was nothing inside me to call on. I had no power.
They’ve taken this from us, too, that rebellious voice whispered.
No. Even without our abilities, none of us were helpless. I shifted my weight sharply, hoping to startle the man into loosening his grip on me. Reaching back, I drew my broken nails against the hand gripping the back of my neck. But instead of finding skin, I scratched against thick, rough fabric.
He shifted his hand down, driving his fingers deeper into my neck. I twisted and strained, gasping to try to fill my lungs. Black exploded into my vision again. The pressure eased as my body went slack, but not enough to pull away.
“There’s another one.” The man’s voice was rough and deep with amusement, but I couldn’t tell who he was referencing, me or Owen.
Smoke curled in my nose, sharp and distinct. My gaze shot to the house, sure that the men had decided to torch it, to truly destroy every good thing.
Then fire raged at my back. Heat baked through my damp clothing in waves, stroking at my skin without burning it.
The man screamed, dropping me into the dark. As my vision cleared, I saw the flame at the center of his chest grow, then climb up over his head in a burning, golden wave.
The numbness hadn’t affected all of us. Owen—Owen still had his power.
It was all I needed to see. I rolled away, stomach heaving at the stench of roasting flesh. Soon, it wasn’t just one scream tearing through the air. I flipped over and pushed myself up onto my knees.
The men caught fire one by one, howling like the pack of wolves they were as it overcame them. I had the wild, fleeting thought that, from a distance, scattered in an arc on the trail, they looked like birthday candles.
The flames burned so bright, with such devastating intensity, the men only had mere seconds to scream before their lungs were singed.
As soon as the kids pulled themselves free, they ran for the house. It looked like all of them were unharmed beyond the roughing up the men had given them.
The kids gave a wide berth to the boy who still stood at the center of the trail, his gaze dispassionate as the figures that once had been men twisted into monstrous charred shapes on the ground. Wind carried the fire from their remains to the house, fanning them out over the siding and porch.
“Owen!” I called, jumping to my feet.
The boy turned his gaze on me.
This is why, that same dark voice whispered. Why it had been so easy to accept those controls Cruz and the others had put in place for us. Why that doubting part of me had been able to nod, to repeat their reasons for putting legal constraints on us. Why people would always be afraid, and why it had felt like we had to accept whatever small shred of freedom we’d been given.
No one should have power like this.
No one should be punished for using that power to protect themselves and others.
This was terrifying.
This was necessary.
My stomach rioted as I took another step closer to him. He’s a kid. He’s just a kid.
He had control. He didn’t need to be controlled.
“Owen,” I said, softer. “That’s enough….”
The rising flames from the house illuminated his face in a warm glow.
Then a flicker of awareness. Sudden fear, like that of a young child, pooled in his eyes.
“It’s okay,” I told him, holding out a hand. “You’re all right—”
Haven’s screen door slammed open and shut.
We both spun, but Owen was faster. Two men jumped down from the porch, guns drawn, and got no more than a step toward us before the first one went up in a horrifying whoosh of flame.
Blinded by fire and smoke, the first man ran, stumbling, back toward the house, collapsing onto one of the porch’s wooden posts.
I couldn’t move. My vision went dark at the edges, and I wasn’t seeing the soldier, I was seeing Mel. I was seeing the Defenders, the reporters, the bystanders torn apart by the explosion.
Stop it, stop it, stop it—I shook my head, feeling like I was about to vomit. Within seconds, the flames had snaked up in the dark wood and spilled across the porch. The second man shot Owen a terrified
look, freezing in place.
The boy only stared back. His forehead wrinkled, first in obvious confusion, then in outright alarm. He clutched at his head, letting out a soft moan of pain.
No. It had him, too.
The girl stepped out from behind the trees again as if materializing from the night sky. Her hands were in her oversize jacket’s pockets, her gaze focused on Owen’s hunched form. Her lips twisted in a cruel mockery of a smile.
Her?
As quickly as she’d appeared, she was gone again, fading back into the fog and darkness. It couldn’t be a coincidence—the band of pressure tightened on my mind. Somehow, she was…the girl was doing this to us. But if Owen hadn’t been immediately affected, it meant she had to target each Psi individually for her numbing grip to work.
Seeing an opportunity, the second soldier on the porch raised his gun.
“No!” I dove forward, throwing my arms around Owen to try to shield his small body.
A shot rang out.
A heavy body slumped to the ground, all clattering equipment and rustling fabric. When I didn’t feel the bite of a bullet, I pulled back, hands flying over Owen, inspecting him, feeling for the wound, for blood.
“Okay,” he mumbled, the words shaking with the rest of him. “I’m okay.”
A cry sounded. One of the soldiers, a woman, charged at us from where she’d been combing the woods, her equipment rattling. She got no more than a few steps before her body suddenly lurched up into the air with the impact of a bullet, slamming into a nearby tree.
Owen and I turned just as Roman burst through the swirl of smoke and ash, taking aim at one of the soldiers fleeing with a kid on his back. His eyes narrowed as he adjusted his arms, then fired—piercing the soldier in that slice of exposed skin on his neck, between the girl’s torso and the man’s bulletproof vest.
“See? It’s not always the worst thing to arrive late to a party,” Priyanka called over to him, covered by a different tree. There was a slight edge to the words as she added, “Never underestimate the power of a dramatic surprise entrance. You okay, Zu?”
They didn’t run.
Snapping out of my shock, I dragged Owen behind the nearest tree, trying to cover him as much as I could with my body.