Adam's point of view:
With the guards all rendered blind by Jacqueline and Cassia and Susan having made it past the commotion, I let loose a breath that's been trying to escape ever since we arrived.
"Good, keep them there," I tell Jacqueline, referencing the guards. "Now we just need to get past Henley..." I trail off, turning toward the door of the lab.
But the door opens as soon as I'm facing it, and out comes the wretched woman herself, the picture of abject fear more so now than ever before: the skin on the left side of her face is pink and stretched too tightly, suggesting a severe burn that hasn't healed quite properly, and her golden eyes radiate a wild kind of all-consuming rage.
"I'm going to enjoy this," she mutters darkly, reaching a skeletal hand out in the direction of myself and my friends.
Instantly, all four of our bodies are thrown against the wall so forcefully that it actually crumbles in some places, and the action causes my vision to momentarily dance with stars.
Genevieve is the first to bounce back, scrambling to her feet before launching herself at Henley, transforming herself into something that I can only describe as a beast with long claws and teeth through my blurry vision.
She lands one good scratch on Henley's arm before she's knocked back again into the wall, so brutal this time that it forces her back to her normal form as she lies utterly still on the floor now.
"Filthy mutt, you deserve worse than that," Henley spits, turning her attention to Jacqueline.
Before I can even blink, she's got her hovering off the ground in a chokehold so tight that Jacqueline's eyes look like they could burst from her skull.
"Release my guards," Henley commands her, but as my vision starts to gain clarity again, I can see the resolute hatred emanating from Jacqueline.
She wasn't kidding when she said she had been practicing with her power; even on the crux of asphyxiation, the guards are still blind and helpless to everything happening.
"I know you, foolish child. Your whole family, in fact. Disgusting people who betrayed my brother; you're all mutineers. You should've all died a long time ago," Henley seethes, increasing her suffocation with the power of control, and Jacqueline's head starts to loll from the lack of oxygen.
Henley's going to kill her, that much is certain. She means nothing to her.
Cade and I react simultaneously; he rushes in front of Jacqueline, effectively shielding her body from Henley's power and knowingly taking on the torture in her place. I rush for Henley myself as she turns her rage on Cade now, intending to crush his windpipe, and I seize her by the shoulders and tackle her to the floor.
Jacqueline collapses to the ground and gasps for air while Cade staggers to lean against the wall, both of them breathing heavily as they try to regain proper function of their lungs.
Henley is lying face down against the tile, writhing and pushing against me furiously as I try my hardest to keep her down by the shoulders, but soon her hand is reaching behind her back in my direction and I feel my organs constrict with her attempt to use her power again.
"Cade, I need those handcuffs!" I shout in fear, knowing that if we may not get another chance to subdue her.
Thankfully, he seems to have regained himself enough to frantically reach into his pockets and rush over with the power-proof handcuffs, sliding them over her wrists and locking them in place with such speed that I'm surprised for a brief moment.
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.
Julia reacts immediately to this, her face scrunching up into something of absolute horror as she begins to make a sort of choking sound, almost as if she were breathing in water.
"What...what did you do?!" I demand, rushing away from Henley to go to Julia.
"You told me to tell everyone in here to stand down; that includes the nurses that work to keep Julia's vitals going during these tests. I'm afraid she can't breathe," she says with a matter of indifference.
"Tell them to resume keeping her alive!" Cade practically shouts into her ear, and Henley goes to regard her people once more with an air of annoyance.
"You heard him," she says, and the nurses thankfully return to their jobs.
Julia seems to move as if she were drowning, lying on her back and making strange motions with her arms and legs as if she clawing through torrential currents before I hear her breathe in a gulp of air, so loud that I can almost physically feel the oxygen entering her lungs again.
I rush over to the one control panel that has a screen attached to it, and it's almost like watching a horror film: I see Julia treading water, her surroundings so dark that she looks around frantically for something, anything to let her know that she's not blind. Then I hear her cry out, both on the screen and in real life, and she's disappearing beneath the water again as something drags her down.
I look back at Julia in that little glass cage, face screwed up in pain as she grasps at her ankle, trying to pry whatever has her off.
"Take her out of the test!" I demand, turning my attention to Henley with absolute hatred while wondering when it will be enough, when will she have hurt enough people to be satisfied and finally stop.
"She'll die if I do that," she responds tersely. "Once you're in the test, you're stuck until it's finished. I'm afraid the only thing I can do is this..."
And as I whirl around to face Henley again, not missing the hints of violent implications at her words, everything seems to happen in slow motion.
A guard draws his gun and shoots Cade in the arm, but due to his power and reflexes, his skin hardens and the bullet bounces off of him, lodged in the ceiling now. However, it did distract Cade long enough for Henley to scramble away from him, and I watch as she draws a knife from her back pocket and slices the chain connecting the handcuffs together, severing their connection and allowing her power to become free again, for if you break handcuffs like those, their power becomes useless.
The ordeal must've taken less than three seconds before my friends and I are all forced to our knees and dragged together in a little huddle, groaning against her power and trying uselessly to break free.
The same guard who shot at Cade comes up to lock the door to the lab, and we're truly trapped now.
More than that, we played right into her hands. She expected us to come after Julia, she'd planned all of this. Allowing herself to be caught, telling her people how this was going to go, figuring this entire situation would follow exactly according to plan. And sure enough, it did.
I've never felt more foolish.
She looks down at us now with a mocking smile, her hold so tight on us that my knees begin to shake in pain from being forced to the ground.
"Oh don't look so disappointed; you had to see this coming, had to know that I always win in the end. Julia can attest to that when she gets out of the test, but for now, why don't you just watch her struggle? We'll wait for her to fail, and then I'll kill you all," Henley muses, eyes almost glazing over in relief before something else crosses her mind. "Oh! And don't expect Cassia or Susan to come to your aid; if I've played my cards right, they should be dead now as well."
"What?!" Cade shouts, a strangled sort of cry accompanying his fury.
Henley glares at him and physically forces his head down so that he may only look at the floor.
"You heard me; I had this planned, don't you see? I figured you all would come for a rescue mission, and I had Peter, wasting away and utterly useless. I figured he might be able to do me one last favor, so instead of continuing to starve him until he died, I saved his life at the last moment, started replenishing him with nutrients and getting him strong enough to where he could be reconditioned. Once he reached that point, I warped his mind again and made him a monster, made him my monster. I knew at least one of you would go after him, and for me, that was incentive enough. He'll try to kill anyone on sight, and you sent in the two of you least equipped to fight. It all worked out better than I could've hoped."
Cade is positively shaking beside me, but it's got nothing to do with Henley's power; it's rage, and I know so because I feel that some emotion leaking inside of me and pointed toward Henley, toward myself.
I brought them here. This is my fault.
And so, all I am left to do now is quietly mourn for my friends, a sinking feeling of grief settling permanently in my chest before I lift my eyes to look at Julia, watching her helplessly thrash around while crying out.
No, we won't be going home. This is it.