I glance up from my notepad.
Seventeen names are scrawled on it in my poor handwriting, little more than a frantic attempt to organize my thoughts in writing. Next to the names are their appropriate abilities and where I last saw them. It doesn't do much good, considering I didn't know if they escaped or how far ahead of me they were. I didn't see any traces of them in the forest, but I can only go in one direction; for all I know, they could've traveled miles in the other direction and I'd be none the wiser.
A noise dragged me out of my thoughts and now I'm sitting stock still on the floor, pencil gripped in my shaking hand. It sounds almost familiar, and that's terrifying.
Murmurs arise downstairs from the rest of the family, laced with concern. I tilt my head to hear them better from the open door. I can't make out any words, but then the house shakes. I slowly clamber to my feet, nervousness already making the moment tense.
There's the pounding of frantic footsteps as someone races up the stairs, and a brief sweep of nearly bioelectrical signals tells me it's Brandon. He bursts into the room moments later, sliding over to the closet on the other end and yanking a red bag off the hangar.
"What's going on?" I ask, setting the pencil and notepad down on his bed.
He doesn't look at me when he answers, instead tearing random items of clothing out of his dresser and shoving them in the bag. "Dynagenesis people."
I curse. "They're here for me."
"They probably don't know you're actually here. They've done random security checks of nearby houses before."
"Why?"
He finally turns to face me, bag swinging in his hand. "I don't know, but you need to hide or leave. They're gonna tear this building apart."
I shut my eyes and reach out as far as I can. There's frantic energy in the main room from 3 other sources, but there are eighteen other humans surrounding the house.
I open my eyes and look at Brandon. "They're everywhere. They're going to find me."
He grabs a huge stick of wood from the corner of his room. "Not if I can help it." He sees my look of confusion at the object, and gestures non-threateningly. "Baseball bat."
I nod. "Follow me."
I race down the stairs, leaping down the last few and rolling into a swift sprint. Brandon runs down clumsily after me. I skid into the room where the rest of his family are talking in hushed tones, Jason peeking out the window through the curtains to the agents surrounding the house. I tear him away and he yelps.
"Listen to me. Do not, under any circumstances, tell them I was ever here. If they show you evidence, deny it. Do not slip, you hear me?"
The family stares at me in bewildered silence. After a few moments, Janice gives a small nod, and I decide that will have to be enough.
I sprint from room to room, grabbing the weapons I had stolen from the facility earlier. The guns are a familiar weight in my hand, and I let a small smirk slip. Brandon follows behind me, slamming into the doorway ungracefully, and I roll my eyes when he can't see. "What are you doing?" He whispers, and I shove the pistols in my loose waistband.
"Stocking up. You only have two entrance doors, but there's a window just above one of your block machines in the basement that I think I can crawl through. After that, I'll either hide, run, or fight, depending on who finds me, the safety of the situation, and how many rounds I have left."
He looks stunned for a moment. "You went in our basement?"
"The only time I've slept was about thirty-one hours ago and it was because I went unconscious. I had plenty of free time." I glance past him when I hear yelling outside. "However, that is not our main priority right now. You know the plan. Make sure your family follows it exactly."
He stutters for a moment, the baseball bat slack in his hand. "Okay. Okay, yeah, okay, I can do that."
"Good." I slide past him and turn the corner towards the stairs leading to the basement.
"Paige?"
I spin to face him. "Yeah?"
He gives me a tense nod. "Be safe."
"Don't worry about me. They're about to kick in your front door if your mom doesn't answer it."
He blinks with a small smirk. "Alright."
And with that, I sprint down the last few stairs and towards the dusty room off to the side where I had seen those big square machines, but more importantly, the window. I clamber awkwardly onto one of the cubes and test the glass. It has a small latch that I flip open easily. I hold my breath, reaching outside with my ability, feeling for bioelectrical signals. I've learned to sort through the small ones and look just for humans, and there's two right outside, likely guarding the window two stories above me in case anyone jumped out. That would be ridiculous. I'm not an amateur.
I place my hands on the cool brick wall and squint as I slip into their heads one at a time. There's a little bit of resistance, but that's normal. They didn't send their bigshot guards; they sent all the weak ones that I didn't kill. Yet.
I open their eyes and silence their thoughts, forcing complete surrender. Using their vision, I survey the scene. There's another pair of guards pressed against either side of the back doors, rifles drawn. They shouldn't be ready to use lethal force if they didn't know I was here, but it also makes hand-to-hand combat more difficult. I bite my own lip, thinking. I can't kill these guards, not with the others right there. I also can't shoot, because that will draw everyone to the back, and I can't take control of that many people at once.
Somebody screams from inside the building, and I realize they're inside. I have to act fast.
I hold tight to the minds of the guards and open my own eyes wider, trying to see through the triple vision. Slowly, cautiously, I crawl out, twisting my hair into my shirt so as not to catch it on the bush just outside. I bite my tongue to avoid hissing as I roll over one of the more painful wounds on my side. The bush rustles, and I freeze, but I'm out.
I have one of the guards casually glance over to the pair by the door. They haven't moved, but also aren't looking in my direction. Good. I clench my fists, feeling the bandages stretched across my skin, feeling my ability sitting somewhere deep within me, waiting to be unleashed like hellfire. I take a breath and swear that Brandon's family is not going to die tonight.
I choose a guard from my pair to be my victim. I shut my own eyes and watch his as he pats his partner on the shoulder and strolls over to the other two by the door, gun in holster and hands swinging casually at his sides.
The pair of guards look up at the intrusion, looking slightly annoyed, or slightly suspicious, or somewhere in between. My guard cocks his head with as much of a charming smile as I can muster. "The irony of ghosts is that at one point, they might have never been alive at all."
It's completely unhinged, and I take their moment of confusion as an opportunity to strike. A few quick knife strokes and they're collapsing back against the house without so much as a sound. I cut the delicate cords of the killer guard's mind and he too falls to the ground, leaving only the one man behind the house. My face cracks into a feral, bloodthirsty grin.
I launch out of the bushes, rolling to standing next to the frozen guard. With fire burning behind my eyes, I pluck his rifle from his gloved fingers. He draws another pistol as I settle the stock against my shoulder, testing its weight and the alignment of the sights. The other guard turns in the opposite direction, leveling his own gun stiffly in case anyone rounded the corner. I sigh and roll my neck. "This is gonna be fun," I murmur quietly to myself. "Don't let an innocent family die, try not to put too many bullet holes in their house, and engage in a gunfight alone against a dozen other highly trained guards. What could possibly go wrong?"
I have the one remaining guard pace to the side of the house, peeking around the corner. The majority of the guards have their guns trained near the front. None of them notice a stray guard near the back. I breathe a sigh of relief. That'll make this job easier.
I have the guard fire a single shot into the fray as I sprint in the opposite direction. There's yelling from the front of the building as they realize what happened but I'm already rounding the corner where they can't see me. I grind my teeth and focus harder on the guard under my control. Digging my feet hard into the dirt, I launch toward the front doors, cocking the gun as I run. I'm risking more than I can afford to lose.
I hiss as my mind is overwhelmed with pain, but it's not my own. It's easier to think of it as an illusion. I drop my hold on the guard's mind because I know what the pain means; they're shooting him, and he's dying. Murdering their own brethren. My mind is relieved, my vision clearing of red until I'm only seeing what's right in front of me. The rifle feels lighter than ever as I skid to the front of the building.
Nobody is looking at me and I drop to a knee, leveling the gun against my shoulder. I target a younger looking man who looks like he'd rather be elsewhere. I take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger.
He falls to the ground as the sound echoes, and every eye falls to me. I grin and shoot again, not even giving most guards time to lift their guns. Many dive out of the way of my bullets, behind the house or into the bushes out front. One guard stumbles awkwardly, clutching his opposite shoulder with one hand, blood leaking from between his fingers. I take a moment to watch before putting him out of his misery with a few well-aimed shots. It's a fraction of a moment but then I'm up and running, giving chase to the guards who escaped around the side of the building.
I pause near the porch, plastering my body against the wall and glancing in through one of the windows. There's four, no, five guards inside, guns drawn. A few of them are retreating deeper into the house, while two have their weapons trained at the ground while talking to Brandon's family. I can only get a quick peek, but I furrow my eyebrows when I look away. A guard steps around the corner and I dispatch him with one efficient thought, but I must have miscounted. I bite my lip and look inside again.
Brandon isn't there. Jason, David and Janice are huddled on the couch, but Brandon is nowhere to be found.
I growl in frustration. I explicitly gave him orders, and he deliberately went against them. It makes me want to tear my hair out. A kid with no combat experience and a wooden stick, ignoring directions from a superhuman. "Dumbass!" I yell, spinning around the corner and emptying the last few bullets into a guard pressed against the wall.
I don't have time to think about his stupidity. I spin on one knee, digging the toe of my boot into the dirt and pitching the rifle as hard as I can into the small remaining group. I reach out for Brandon's bioelectrical signal, simultaneously pulling out the dual pistols from my waistband and cocking them forward. I can hardly focus when I fire. The recoil feels worse than normal, despite the fact that these are standard issue guns. I'm doing too much at once and I know it. A pressure starts to build behind my eyes, a steady headache that pounds with the rhythmic gunshots.
My pistols empty at the same time, and I toss them to the ground next to me, shoving off the ground and all but tackling the last agent that stand in front of me. He's already bleeding from multiple wounds, all non lethal due to my sloppy aim, but painful nonetheless. We slam to the ground together and he cries out as two of my fingers stab him in the throat. He rolls over, coughing, and I hesitate a moment too long to go in for the kill.
A cold metal I recognize to be the barrel of a gun is shoved against the back of my head. "Don't try anything!" Someone yells behind me. I bite my lip and raise my shaking hands in surrender. I reach out with the last few fragments of my ability and although I can feel the presence of the guard's bioelectricity, I can't get a solid enough grasp. I try to shove down the hammering sensation in my skull but it doesn't make a difference. I grind my teeth hard. I'm not going back to the facility. At the same time, I know I'm not faster than a bullet. I don't want to accept my fate, but I have seconds to contemplate death.
There's a sickening crack that resonates behind me.
I keep my hands in the air and my knees on the ground in case this is a trick. Please don't let me die here.
"Paige?" A meek voice says in between heavy breaths. I set my hands in the flattened grass, closing my eyes.
I want to cuss him out, to berate him for not following directions, for jeopardizing his entire family, but the baseball bat drops to the ground next to me, and I realize I'm not dead after all. There's no gun to my head. I glance behind me and sure enough, there's the heaped body of a guard, limp on the ground.
"Did I kill him?" Brandon whispers.
I rock back and stand unsteadily, eyes locked on the body. The other guard is still clutching his throat, and I give him a swift, decisive kick to the skull. "You probably did."
"Oh my God."
"I know." I reach down to grab the baseball bat, letting my fingers slip into the notches near the bottom. I suck in a breath through my teeth and debate mentally about which lie to tell the stunned Brandon. "Never gets easier." It does. "Don't forget these are the same people that tortured me and nineteen others for sixteen years. They almost killed me more than once. As far as I'm concerned, this is just another tally." And with that, I saunter back toward the house.
"They've got my family trapped inside."
I freeze, the bat swinging casually at my side. "What?"
"They're gonna kill them." He's still staring at the dead guard when I turn around. "They're gonna kill my parents. Breach of peace, trespassing, and harboring a criminal. I don't even know if those are real charges."
I'm still hung up on they're gonna kill my parents. "Public executions aren't so public," I murmur, pacing back and grabbing a gun off the limp guard. Brandon still looks like he's staring into an alternate dimension, eyes blank and unfocused. He doesn't even realize what's happening.
I race the few yards back to the porch, my heart beating hard in my head. A single stride propels me up the shallow steps and then I'm skidding in front of the door, the frame in splinters and the doorknob hanging askew. There are three guards inside, staring at me, guns pressed against the heads of Brandon's family.
"Bring us the kid," one of them says. My eyes flick over to him. In the same motion, he pushes the barrel harder into Jason's temple and draws out another pistol, pointing it directly to me.
I don't know what to do. For the first time, I don't know what to do.