Aleks watched as Tommy stabbed Pola as if in slow motion. She was so occupied with her own small victory that she failed to report the most important thing. Now, there was no doubt about it.
Tommy Palmer was a deviant and a traitor.
He was the one relying on all the information to the Rioters. That's why they knew everything about GSO's agents and their movements, while the agency missed many deviants. Tommy was always there monitoring the information going in and out of the agency. He was the mole all this time.
Many people reacted, but they've all been too slow. Regan raised a shield around Pola, but she had already fallen to the ground clutching her chest and coughing up blood. Toni threw a fireball, but Tommy disappeared, and the flames caught on the dark curtains.
Aleks was the first one who got to the stabbed gifted. She kneeled at her side and held her hand.
"Pola! Hang in there," she choked through the tears.
"I guess... I didn't see... that coming..." Pola rasped, blood painting her lips crimson.
"You'll be all right," Aleks cried, even though she knew it was a lie and the woman had moments left.
Pola tried to smile, but her mouth barely moved. "Get... them out... of here..." Her eyelids closed, and her hand went limp in Aleks' grip.
"No, no, no!"
Someone put a hand on her shoulder.
"She's gone," Stephen said, his eyes glassy too. "Come, we need to take the civils out of here before we have to say goodbye to more friends."
Aleks was numb as she watched Regan organising everyone to escort and protect the kidnapped gifted. She stared at her hand, now smeared with Pola's blood. How fitting. It was her fault. If she weren't so stupid and told everyone about her suspicions right away, Pola would live.
"Alright, everybody, we're moving out!" Regan ordered. "We don't know what lies ahead, so be on your guard and protect civilians!"
But as they started towards the exit, the archway disappeared, replaced by a solid stone wall. Aleks turned around, but the same thing happened to the other way out. They were trapped.
"Leaving so early?" asked a familiar voice from above. A balcony formed on the wall overlooking the whole chamber where Tommy and a woman unfamiliar to Aleks stood.
"If you have any ounce of decency left in you, Tommy, you will come down here and face me like a man!" Stephen roared, and his aura flared crimson. Aleks had never seen him so angry.
Tommy scoffed. "Please, I'm not a noble idiot like you lot. And Tommy Palmer is not even my real name. But you and your beloved GSO never bothered to check that because you were too excited to get a gifted with a useful talent."
"Who the hell are you then?"
"Does a name Griffiths ring a bell?"
Aleks' eyes widened. "As in Charles Griffiths?"
"Look at that. People still remember my father's name. Not thanks to the government, mind you. Let me tell you a story." He laced his hands behind his back and started pacing along the narrow balcony. "My father was a bioengineer. A pure genius, really. He worked on finding medicine for cancer, but by pure accident, he discovered something else. Something that could change humankind forever. He developed a substance that altered humans' DNA to enhance their natural abilities, making them stronger, faster, and more intelligent. Exciting, no?
"As a good citizen, he reported his finding to his boss, and they reported it to higher-ups, so very soon, the government showed interest in the project, providing funds for further research. My father was promoted to the head of the whole project and had several labs working under him. Things were going great until they weren't." He stopped at the balcony's edge with a faraway look at his face. "There was an explosion in his lab. Turned out, his drive to make discoveries and pressure from the government to get faster investment returns resulted in loosening safety protocols. BOOM!" his raised voice echoed through the walls making other people wince. "Many good people, including my father, lost their lives that day. All his life work ended up incinerated.
"Because the whole thing smelled of a sensation, the press was all over the place. They quickly discovered it was some super-secret project not registered in any official records. Environmental agencies raised an alarm that dangerous amounts of harmful pollutants entered the atmosphere after the explosion, and society was almost rioting. And what the government did? They blamed everything on my father, denying any connections with his research." His aura turned crimson. "They called him a lunatic and pariah. He was a genius who dedicated his life to improving humankind.
„The social backlash was horrendous. We had to change our names and deny any relation to him to avoid being burned at the stake by an angry mob. But that's not everything." Tommy shook his head and scoffed. "As soon as first people started showing symptoms of improved DNA, the government swiftly raised its head again and extended its greedy hands to get them all.
"They called us gifted," he scoffed. "As if those powers were some sort of gift from the heavens and not the life work of a scientist who they slandered and whose reputation they ruined. Why do you think they still try to keep us under wraps? Trying so hard for society to live in blessed ignorance? Because as soon as the word gets out, people will add up the facts. That maybe the government wasn't as ignorant of that mad scientist project as they claimed to be."
He paused for effect.
"The government is full of hypocrites," Regan said, spitting on the floor. "So what? It's nothing new. Being angry with them doesn't give you the right to run some crazy experiments on innocent people or kill those who thought you were their friend."
"I did not take any pleasure in killing Pola. But she was too dangerous for us." She shook his head. "A shame, she would make a wonderful addition to Rioters, but I knew her well enough to know she would never agree. You though... you still have a chance to join us."
"Join you to do what exactly?" Stephen asked, spreading his arms wide. "Kidnapping kids and drugging them? Throwing a tantrum because the government is full of scumbags?"
"You can mock all you want." Tommy shrugged. "But you can't seriously think you'll be the favourite government pet forever. When society catches up on this, and they will sooner rather than later, security questions will be raised. 'How can we control people with such powers? Can we trust them not to use poor, defenceless people?'" He shook his head. "Then the gifted will be either incarcerated or put under never-ending surveillance. And if someone slips and a bystander gets hurt? Well, that's just a perfect excuse to eliminate us all."
Aleks listened to Tommy's monologue, and with every sentence, she got angrier. His aura was primarily dark blue, signalling focus and lack of any stronger emotions. Only when talking about his father he showed splatters of angry red. But he was perfectly sane and seemed to believe his vision was righteous.
"You're preaching as if being a son of Charles Griffiths gave you the right to be our leader. But if you care for us all so much, then how could you experiment on those poor people?"
"Well, that's an unfortunate necessity. Sadly, I'm not my father and nowhere near his genius. Most of his research was lost in the explosion, and as you all learned recently, our upgraded DNA has certain... downsides. I believe the flaws in mutation can be fixed. It's only a matter of finding the right solution."
"You are torturing and killing innocent people!" Stephen growled.
"The progress of humankind was always paid with blood," Tommy said. His aura did not falter. No remorse, no second guessing. "And believe it or not, most Rioters agreed to test our power-enhancing drugs. Although letting our organisation lose all members is not sustainable, we had to look for other... subjects."
"If that speech was supposed to convince us to join your group of lunatics, you've done a poor job." Regan flicked a cigarette's bud to the ground and stomped on it. "You know what you are? Another hypocrite, just like those government folks you despise so much. You're just less subtle than them."
And then, finally, Tommy's aura flared with scarlet anger.
"How dare you compare me to those dogs! If you don't want to join us, so be it. But you won't leave this place alive."
The woman behind Tommy moved her hands as if she was drawing something in the air, and the walls in the chamber started moving again, creating more alcoves and balconies revealing numerous deviants.
"Keep your guard up!" Regan ordered and raised a blue dome over the huddled group of trembling civilians. "Do not let them hurt the prisoners."
Tommy sighed dramatically on his balcony overlooking the whole chamber that had become an arena. "I hoped you'd be rational and we could avoid the senseless bloodshed, but you've made your choice." He raised his hand. "Get rid of them."