Final Truth

Chapter 61: I Always Win

Once they're on, I immediately recoil from Henley and allow Cade to pull me away from the ground, both of us nearly tripping over ourselves to get away from her.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jacqueline has regained enough air to crawl over to Genevieve, whom she gently nudges awake from where Henley threw her.

Cade and I watch Henley roll herself into a sitting position with her hands bound behind her back, powers useless to her now. And despite the fact that she faces us both, her gaze remains solely on me, a wicked smile of all things gracing her face at my presence.

"Well look at you, Adam. You've led your friends into a death trap; surely you have the knowledge to understand you won't be leaving here alive?" She mocks me.

Her words make me bristle in anger, and the want to take revenge on her when she can't fight back is so overwhelming that I have to remind myself of the task at hand in order to avoid doing so.

"What have you done to Julia? To Peter?" I demand, my voice rising to a shout and shaking with fury.

"I'm afraid poor Peter can't be helped much, but I'm sure Cassia and Susan can handle themselves to take care of him. I can, however, take you to Julia right now if you wish," she says, a false sense of pity accompanying her when she speaks of them.

I regard her warily as Cade turns to go assist Jacqueline with helping Genevieve stand, knowing somehow that Henley has just lied to me in some way, I'm sure of it; I served on a council long enough to figure out the kind of tales she could spin.

"I know that look on your face; you're overthinking things, Adam. I'm not lying this time," she says, seemingly reading my mind. "Julia's right through that door."

I look at the entrance to the lab, the door left slightly ajar, and for the first time in a year I can hear Julia, her soft cries of pain reaching my ears and causing my heart to lurch and tears to prick at my eyes.

After making sure Genevieve can lean on her sister properly, Cade leaves them and comes up behind Henley, hoisting her to her feet and rather authoritatively saying, "Then you can go in first and order whoever's in there with her to stand down."

"As you wish, traitor," Henley agrees, and I'm struck by the sheer wrongness of that statement, of this entire ordeal. She's given herself up too quickly, too easily, and I don't feel right.

Cade and I approach the door with Henley being pushed along in front of us, Genevieve and Jacqueline following closely behind.

I grasp the handle and slowly ease the door open all the way, my heartbeat in my throat with each passing nanosecond.

My friend is in there.

Then the door is open all the way and I can see everything, see the various guards draw their guns in surprise, see the nurses look up from their stations at all sorts of different control panels, see a giant tank with a violet colored liquid swirling along a back wall, see Julia inside a glass case at the back of the room squirming against the floor, mouth drawn open as if screaming without making a sound.

"Stand down," Henley says simply, and the guards lower their guns without question.

"All of you," she adds a bit more insistently, and this time the nurses follow suit, standing from their chairs and backing away from their control panels.