Cassia's point of view:
A scream begins to form, the hollow of air beginning at my stomach and traveling up my esophagus to release its piercing noise.
However, I can't make a sound.
Everything happens in split-second intervals, the events merging until sounds mix together in nothing but a strange, unintelligible noise as terror takes over my body.
"Run," I manage to hear Cade say as Will starts shouting at his guards for something.
My hand still locked with Cade's, I jump from the ladder and take him with me, sending us both crashing to the floor and scrambling to our feet as we run inside the door.
I kick it shut and lock it just as the bullets start raining down behind us.
"They found us! Run!" I scream, my voice reaching an impossibly high pitch in fear.
Evelyn and her family are the first to react, racing out of the room and into the deeper tunnels that span outward. Kyle is the next, grabbing Susan's hand and pulling her after the family.
Adam bolts out of his chair so quickly that it falls behind him, frantically closing the box of powers and locking it. His fingers shake in the process.
The clatter of men coming down the ladder occurs only seconds after this, and the sound of them slamming the end of their guns against the other side of the door soon follows.
Adam quickly thrusts the box into my hands and ushers both Cade and I out where everyone else fled.
"They'll be expecting to find the box with me, so take it and run. Get as far away from the rest of us as you can. Use the box if it comes to it," Adam orders when we get out of the main room.
Two tunnels face all of us, one to our right and one to our left.
"The family, Susan, and Kyle took the one on the left. I'll catch up with them, I can figure this place out. You two, just keep safe," Adam insists before rushing into the left tunnel.
Cade pushes me forward into the right one, our heels digging into the ground in a sprint as the noise of the police breaking the door down unfolds in the room behind us.
We run forward as far as the tunnel goes before more begin to intersect it, taking random left turns and right turns until it's nearly impossible to trace where we just came from if we tried in this maze of a bunker system. Our only light is burning torches along the walls.
This goes on for what feels like an eternity until we reach a sudden dead end, nearly smacking into the wall in the dim light.
"Cade..." I trail off, feeling sick to my stomach as he starts panting from the running.
I know there's no way those men could possibly know where we are in this place, but every sound makes me feel like they're right behind me.
"Come on," I tell him, tightening my hand in his and taking this tunnel back until we come to a previous intersection and choose another way.
So many criss-crosses.
That strategy works for another minute or two before we come to another dead end, the air thick with heavy dust as we look around frantically for another way. We try backtracking once again and end up taking two, four, six different tunnels we hadn't gone down until trying to retrace our steps becomes impossible.
It doesn't matter though, for each one leads us to a dead end.
"Here," Cade whispers through heavy breathing, sinking to the ground to sit while pulling me into him. "I think we lost them. Just...stay here for a while," he gets out, and my own heaving chest seems to validate his reason to stop moving.
I don't think twice about leaning my head on his shoulder and scooting as close as I possibly can toward him, not remotely caring anymore. Cade is my friend and I should not have to feel weird about this anymore.
Our breathing matches as we try to calm down, one of my hands still curled tightly around the box of powers. I can practically feel the swell of infinite energy inside of it, tempting even me to open it and take a look.
Cade must've seen the way I was looking at the box, for he quickly puts his hand over it and lowers it from my eyes. "Don't," he says huskily, and I immediately comply by setting the box down beside me and turning my full attention to Cade.
Do not think about Will, do not think worry about your friends, do not be afraid. Breathe in, breathe out. Think about anything except this...concentrate on what's in front of you.
My inhales shaky with nerves, I try to start a conversation with Cade about anything but what's really happening.
Do not have a panic attack; you are fine.
"Say something. Talk...please. Tell me something about you that I don't know," I beg in a whisper, lifting my head away from his shoulder and staring at his eyes intently.
The dim torches reflect their soft orange glow in his pale orbs, making them seem almost like a sunset despite their true blue tint.
Sunsets...the sky. I miss the sky.
Cade looks at me questioningly at first, but his face softens as he understands why I am asking this. "Alright...let's see," he ponders for a moment, his heart racing from the stress just like mine.
"My favorite color is purple. Yours?" He asks with a light laugh, his nerves pulsating from our intwined fingers.
"Yellow," I say, not missing a beat and not feeling brave enough to look away from his face.
If I stop staring at him, I will stare at the walls, and the walls will remind me that someone could be on the other side of them, and that someone will kill us and not even lose sleep over it.
"I was born in July," I blurt out, probably sounding like a fool.
"February," he replies without questioning, looking at me with a scared yet sympathetic expression.
I drop his hand that one of mine still clings to and instead wrap both of my arms around his waist as chastely as possible, pulling myself so close that even my stupid pride can't separate us now. His heart thunders beneath his skin.
"I've been a master healer since I was seventeen," I say next, the subject of that being the next thing that crosses into my mind.
"I've been a master of controlling my anatomy since I was sixteen," he replies with a bit of pride buried under his anxiety.
I am about question how he's had his power longer than me before I remember he came from Will's society. Different people, different rules.
"Still can't remember to use it before you face-plant on concrete," I tease him lightly, letting out a shaky breath. He tries to feign hurt at my jabbing of his head-wound, but it ends up looking like real pain under the stress.
Don't stop talking.
"Adam had a girlfriend that died a few years ago," I blurt out, feeling a little guilty for stating something I had no business doing, but I'm not done. "Kyle was from the dark side like Peter but changed when he fell in love with Susan. It only took Julia a few days after she met Peter before she kissed him. Susan has a garden in her backyard because it makes her happy cultivating things she grew," I say in a rush, taking a deep breath afterwards and probably sounding psychotic.
"I lied about the P.S. part of my letter; everyone's been teasing me that there's something going on between us, and I was feeling brave, so I wrote that in the spur of the moment thinking we might actually talk about it," Cade replies instead, not missing a beat.
A nervous smile creeps onto my face, along with a sense of accomplishment. I had a feeling he lied.
"I know," I assure him, not wanting to make either one of us feel even more nervous than we do right now.
Cade jerks his head back in surprise, not expecting that from me. "You did? How?" He demands.
"I'm not Adam, but I'm not an idiot. You've wanted to be closer to me since the day we met, so what else could it have been?" I ask sarcastically, surprising both him and myself with my boldness.
"I...I don't know what to say now," Cade admits, his face turning scarlet. I would almost want to laugh if my pulse wasn't in my ears.
"Sweetie," I begin, although I use this as a form of sarcasm over an actual term of affection. "I'm in your arms trapped in a maze of tunnels being hunted along with my friends by the very man we hoped to avoid. That P.S. was bound to come up eventually."
Cade stares down at me in disbelief, and even I'm baffled. I sound more like Susan than myself.
"Anxiety does weird things to you. One minute, you're making sure we don't get too close, and now we're...well..." he trails off.
I want to laugh, but I know it will end up sounding like a cry of pain, so I resort to just assuring him that I am well aware of the situation.
He's looking at me intensely, something like passion smoldering underneath his pale eyes.
When he does this, a strange feeling slams into me out of nowhere, like I'm looking, really looking at him for the first time. I don't see a policemen with a life torn between protecting us and fooling Will. I don't see a suave young man trying to win me over with cleverness.
Instead I see a person, a boy trying to help those he loves live to see another day, for he knows we have the right tools to make the world a better place.
He's leaning in very slightly, the look on his face telling me I can stop him any time I want to. I can end this and we can go back to playing twenty questions like nothing happened.
But I'm not going to stop him, not with the way that look is setting my insides on fire. He can lean in as close as he wants, crush my lips against his, and I still am not going to move.
A small rebel in the back of my head is telling me to push away, reminding me that we're friends, but I push the voice to the most remote corners of my mind as feelings come rushing forward that I didn't know I had. He's getting closer, his eyes widening in a small amount of amusement as he realizes that I'm not going anywhere.
I'm about close the rest of the distance between us myself before the explosion of a gun going off sends me reeling back with a scream fighting its way up my throat.
Cade is quicker, however, and clamps one of his hands over my mouth before the scream ever reaches fruition.
The sound of the gun shot is close, and a cry of pain that I can only deduce to be from Susan follows the deafening sound.
I can feel my heart drop as newfound panic takes over, this one worse than when we were running mindlessly through the tunnels. My body reacts to the terror by shaking violently, tears springing out of my eyes.
I have to get to Susan.
Susan might be hurt.
I have to help.
I make a move to get off the ground, but Cade's grip around me tightens to prevent me from doing so. "He'll kill you before you could even try to help," he whispers frantically in my ear, scared out of his wits just as I am.
Defeated and afraid, I sink back down next to him and await the inevitable. If he found the rest of my friends, it's only a matter of time before we're next.
In fact, I can hear the sound of feet stomping and voices coming towards us.
Cade suddenly starts fumbling with one of my arms, hiking up the sleeve of my lab coat to reveal the exposed skin of my forearm.
"What are you doing?" I demand as he reaches over me for the box, prying it open and allowing the blinding light of it to shine through the darkness.
"A last ditch effort," he says mindlessly, pulling out a syringe of a power at random and quickly reading the label of it. Suddenly I realize what he's going to do, and Adam's pleas for us to use the box if we had to resurface from my memory.
Thinking quickly, he plunges the syringe in my arm and releases the foreign substance into my bloodstream.
A feeling akin to that of ice crystallizes through my veins, causing me to shiver against Cade as it spreads throughout my body. My mind races, trying to understand this new substance in me and adapt to it.
I have two powers now.
The sound of stomping feet gets closer as do the muffled cries of my friends, but I can't focus enough to tune in to them.
"It's only temporary; if he takes you hostage, you should be able to fight back with it," Cade whispers to me, trying to bring me back out of a haze.
This feels so weird.
My body has only just begun to stabilize again when I see Will and his men round the corner that reveals us, all of my friends along with Evelyn and her family trailing further behind them in handcuffs.
Susan's calf is bleeding.
Cade reacts quickly, plunging his hand inside the box of powers and yanking out a fistful of them, suddenly casting them at Will's feet where they explode from impact.
The sight sends Will into a panic as he lunges toward Cade, probably with every intent to rip his throat out.
But before he gets the chance, one of Will's men aims his gun at me and fires a shot into my shoulder, sending me reeling back toward the wall in pain.
"Next shot's going to be somewhere not quite as survivable if you pull that stunt again. Put the box down or she's dead, Cade," one of Will's guards orders him.
I look up at Cade through a cloudy vision, my body still messed up from the new unknown power in my system. I want to heal myself so badly, but concentration would be impossible in a situation like this.
I want to yell at Cade to take the box and run, to never let it get to Will, but all of that is pointless. We've lost.
Cade grudgingly complies, throwing the box at Will's feet and then coming to shield me from the guard's line of fire.
I take his hand to steady myself, my breath hitching in fear as Will stoops down to pick up the box. He reminds me of an addict finally getting access to the one substance they crave most, the one that will cause destruction to themselves and everyone around them.
"You're all prisoners now," Will says aloud proudly, another one of his men coming to handcuff Cade and I in power-proof shackles.
"I thought you wanted us dead," Cade grumbles to Will, eyeing him with pure hatred as the guard pushes the two of us to where the rest of our friends stand.
"In time, yes. You'll be executed for the public to see that not even people like the likes of you can stop me. Until then, you're all about to get very familiar with each other's screams. Guards, take them away," Will orders his men, and they begin to herd us away from this spot and through the tunnels.
We're prisoners now. No more hiding, no more hoping. Just torture.
I lean my head against Cade's shoulder as we wind our way through the underground, wishing I had kissed him when I had the chance.