1 | Gods & Monsters ✓

Chapter 21

Breathe... Breathe...

It was getting harder to breathe. Just keep taking air in through the nose and slowly out the mouth, exactly like Leo taught her. Ava wrapped her arms around herself, trying to keep the heat in. She couldn't let this happen. Not here.

"Ava, are you okay?" Sam asked.

Everything blurred together.

"She's obviously not okay," Mika snapped. "Her energy level is spiking through the roof. We need to get her some help. Or help her somehow."

"Are you suggesting we use koto on her? Do you know how dangerous that is? She's a human, Mika. We don't know how she'll react to our spells in that state."

"We have to do something." Mika pulled out his phone. If Ava wasn't so sure she'd fall over by moving, she'd crush that phone under her heel. "I'm calling Darious."

At least he wasn't calling Marc. If Marc found out what she'd been doing... Who was she kidding? He already knew. Everyone at the Capitol knew by now about the laboratory. What kind of punishment would the Council give her this time? They tracked everyone's activity around the planet. They obviously tracked Ava with her ID.

She gasped. ID. There might still be hope after all.

Turning on her heel, she walked back toward Harry, her legs unsteady the whole way. When she tripped on the carpet, she caught the chair and used Gio's shoulder to hold herself upright. "Look up the ID number I gave you."

It took Harry a moment to understand what Ava said, but once he did, his fingers had never typed so fast before. Still, nothing came up on the two tablets they salvaged. When he clicked on the last tablet—the one Ava found in the wall—the logo of a cross wrapped around the world appeared on the screen. It was a new logo, one that looked vaguely familiar. Possibly seen in History 101.

A single file popped up, listed under a folder called Staff. Harry double tapped the file to open, and Ava lost her breath all over again. There was a picture of a woman.

Long locks of chestnut hair cascaded over her white lab coat to one side, sporting a blue buttoned-up collar beneath. What stood out was not her perfect smile or the bark coloring of her eyes, but the deep shade of red lipstick, like crimson—of blood.

"She looks like you," Harry said, glancing back and forth between the picture and Ava.

What he really meant was: Ava looked like her. "What else is on that file?"

Harry stuck the vapor device into his mouth and scrolled through, reading quicker with his ability. "Says here, she was a Bioengineer. 25 at the time. 193 centimeters tall. No health irregularities. Only relatives: her mother and one younger sister. Father unknown. But get this," Harry wiggled his eyebrows, "she was a mixed breed. Puerto Rican, Italian, and... German."

Gio smirked. "I knew that bump on your nose wasn't just for show."

Like Ava cared about any of that. This told her nothing about her abilities or what was wrong with her. "When was she born? Is she still alive?"

Harry kept searching through the files, then came to a stop. "She's MIA Code PO. So she was alive before they wiped out the Pacific Ocean."

And likely dead like the billions of others who went missing during the attack.

Since the next human evolution didn't occur until eighty years ago, this also meant she had no abilities. Still, Ava felt a connection when looking at her picture. They didn't look exactly alike, yet there were clear details, in their eyes and hair, that proved they were related by blood. And that part scared Ava. She'd rather be adopted and unknown.