Isabelle drops the bar and darts away. I press my face against the glass, desperately trying to see where she disappeared to, but I can't see. There's cursing, and the grinding noise gets louder. "Isabelle!" I yell, slamming my hand against the glass as my heart beats in my head. Let me out, let me out, come back, help me...
"We're fucking screwed," Clarissa says, sinking back against the wall. I ignore her. I don't know what's going on, but her pessimism isn't going to help here. I pound on the glass, screaming Isabelle's name. I punch the glass in anger, and my knuckles sting from the hit. I have to get out of here.
"Is that gasoline?" Someone asks, fear laced in their voice. There's muffled talking. The other mutants are yelling, same as me, and I can't hear what's going on. The situation only gets more chaotic.
Maya steps back into view, shuddering. She doesn't look at me. "I can't do it," she whispers. "I can't. The gasoline, the water..."
"You have to!" Isabelle yells. I aim another punch at the glass, even though at this point, I know it's useless. I can't do anything. Blood from my knuckles smudges on the wall, and they sting, but I don't stop. If I'm going to be captured anyway, I'm not going to take it peacefully. There's going to be a fight.
"Maya, look at me," Clarissa says calmly. Maya's eyes are unfocused, staring straight ahead. Her fingers twitch at her sides. My blood feels thick when she does it — she's using her abilities without even realizing it. I'm stock still as Clarissa tries to calm her. It's precarious and we all know it. Amber liquid trickles down the floor, over the flickering lights, and I recognize it to be gasoline. This is bad.
"Maya, you've gotta to focus," Clarissa says, and I know she's feeling Maya's abilities too. She pressed a hand over her bullet wound, which is starting to look suspiciously supernatural. She hisses through her teeth. "Maya, please. Focus on me." I'm reminded of how I treated Brandon right before I killed his family; it wasn't unlike this, but harsher. Clarissa is one of the best of us. If there's ever a time to surrender and have someone else help, that time is now. I sit tight, shut up, and try to ignore how blurry my vision is getting.
Clarissa pleads quietly, and Maya's fingers fall limp. "There you go. Listen to me. It's gonna be okay."
"I wasn't supposed to do this," Maya whispers.
"None of us were. I just need one thing, Maya, and I know you can do it because you're so young and powerful. The gas, Maya, you need to get it out. I don't know where it's leaking from, but it could cause a really bad fire."
Maya shakes her head. "Gasoline and water separate. They don't mix for very long."
"You've gotta try. Please."
Maya blinks, and I know she's back in the game. Slowly, her fingers contort, bending awkwardly as she raises her hands carefully. I watch with both interest and urgency as the gas on the floor writhes unnaturally, spreading and thinning as though ignoring the physics of liquids altogether. It pools away from the lights, piling up unnaturally. Maya grits her teeth. This can't be easy. "That's it," Clarissa hums. Maya raises it into the air and the glittering sphere raises off the floor, sucking the rest of the liquid with it.
It's fascinating, but after a few seconds of watching, the gasoline starts to separate and sink to the bottom. Maya flicks an index finger and the water swirls underneath, catching it, but it's clearly a struggle. She flings the sphere out the back of the truck, where I assume they entered from, but there's still a glistening film on the floor. Maya doesn't miss it. She tries to seep it up but can't seem to manage, quickly letting her hands fall to her sided in defeat. "It's separating too quickly," she says. "I can't... I can't..."
"It's okay," Clarissa reassures, though she's getting anxious too. Our hopes are dropping.
I change my tactic of approach. "Maya, you need to disable the collars."
She turns to me, tears shimmering in her eyes. "What?"
I point to the thick metal ring hanging heavily around my neck. "The collars. We need our abilities. Please, water works fine, you just need to fuck up some of the electronics and then we can use our abilities again to get out of here."
"It'll fry you," she says. "I don't know why it didn't the first time."
I grind my teeth. "Maya, listen to me. I'm dangerous. If we lose this, Dynagenesis could easily wipe my mind of everything and everyone and keep just the fighting part of me. I won't have a choice anymore. You don't want me on the other team. Even..." I take a shaky breath. "Even if it kills me, it would be better than the alternative."
She thinks about that for a moment. Gasoline leaks around her sneakers. Finally, she shakes her head.
"I'm sorry, Paige. I can't do that."
No, no, no, no. I throw myself against the glass. "No, please, Maya, you have to! You don't get it, if I don't escape, they're going to have me kill you against my will. I can't do that, but they're going to make me. I'm not going to sacrifice your life for mine." Her eyes say she's already made up her mind, and I resort to useless pleading. "Maya, please, please, no, you have to... please..."
"Paige, I'm not trading lives. You'll be okay."
In any other situation, I'd be proud of her. She finally made her own decision, and chose to do what seems like the right thing, but now, it's going to cost them their lives at my hand. I can't do that, but I know I don't have a choice. The guilt is going to kill me, if one of them doesn't.
I take a breath to quell my frustration. "Can you... Isabelle..."
She understands my meaning and steps forward, out of sight. I sink to my knees and bury my face in my hands, finally letting out all the sobs I've been holding back all these years. My body is emptying all the grief out, and it makes me angry, it makes me sick, it makes me feel so terribly weak and futile and useless in the face of danger. I'm supposed to be the strong one of the group and I'm tearing at the seams, collapsing from the inside out. I press my shaking palms against the floor as my fate hits me like a knife to the stomach.
"Paige?" Someone murmurs. I look up tearfully and see Isabelle crouched in front of my cage, looking like she's on the edge of crying herself. Her hands are bloody. I can't believe I didn't notice that before.
"Isabelle, what's going on?" I'm so feeble. Jax darts behind Isabelle, shaking his head. It's not at me. Whatever they were doing up front, it didn't work. "Isabelle?"
"They... sent out a distress signal. Back to Dynagenesis. Somebody's coming." She presses a hand over her nose, and her voice breaks when she speaks, barely above a whisper. "We didn't have enough time."
I gasp for air as her words set in. Isabelle nods. We're just staring at each other wordlessly, dying on opposite sides of this glass.
"You've got to go," I whisper. She shakes her head.
"I can't leave you here."
"She's right," Jax says about me, arms crossed but tears glimmering in his eyes. It's his last attempt to be suave. "I hate to say it, and I know I'm going to regret it, but if we can't get you all out of here, we have to go." He sniffs. "I guess I owe you my thanks, Paige, even if it's not worth much now. You risked your life to free us. I'd be dead without you. I'm sorry it had to end this way, but I hope you meet your end with peace — or, knowing your style, a lot of broken bones and that stupid smile of yours." The humor fades quickly, but I give him a real, genuine smile for the first time in forever. He returns it, but he's not fast enough for me to miss how he wipes away the tears that slip down his cheeks.
Maya steps into view, resting her hand on Isabelle's back. She sends me a tight-lipped smile. "I couldn't have said it better. Just... thank you for everything. We're going to rescue you. Just hold on a little longer."
"Armored truck, up ahead," Fiona yells. "Wrap up your eulogies; we've gotta run."
Jax wraps a hand around Maya's waist and offers his other to Isabelle. She doesn't look at him. "You did everything you could. We've gotta go," he murmurs. His eyes speak to how much he regrets this, but I know they don't have a choice.
"No, I..." Isabelle sucks in a shaky breath through her teeth, wiping tears off her face with her palm. "I can't just... give up like that. Come on. We gotta try something." She looks around at the group, more out of desperation than anything.
Jax shakes his head sadly. "We talked about this... you knew this might not succeed, and you were willing to accept the consequences. We've got to go, Isabelle. I'm really sorry." He glances up at the front of the vehicle. "Fiona, let's go."
Fiona carefully avoids Isabelle and allows Jax to wrap a hand around the back of her neck. Isabelle breathes heavily in between sobs, staring me in the eyes with such anguish in her gorgeous eyes. She wets her lips, not breaking eyes contact. "I can't," she says shakily. "I'm not leaving."
I ignore Jax and press my hand against the glass, leaving tiny smears of blood. Isabelle shakes her head. "You have to, Iz," I plead. "Save yourself. They're already coming, and I can't let you get captured. I can't let that happen. Please. I'm going to find you again, I swear it." We both know it's a comforting lie. We might never meet again. Isabelle's head dips with the weight of her choices.
"I need you more than you think. At least we'd be together." She presses her hand on the glass over mine, tears running down her cheeks. In the corner of my eye, Fiona scrunches her face in concentration and the air around us contorts in a rippling wave. She's fending someone off, but it won't last for long.
I move closer to the glass, feeling sick with guilt. "Why are you so goddamn stubborn, Isabelle? You have to go! Forget my face, leave, just distance yourself so when the time comes and I'm the one on the other side of the gun, you don't feel bad about doing what's right." My words collapse into incoherent sobs.
Fiona throws an arm in front of Jax and the air ripples away from her fingertips. "Jax, Just leave her here."
He looks so torn, but finally, he closes his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispers. The air crackles around him as he darts away at a supersonic rate, Maya and Fiona disappearing with him.
Then it's just me and Isabelle, separated by a piece of fucking glass. She's not going to make it out of here. The reality sets in and I press my forehead against the wall, the gravity of the grief weighing me down. I failed her. I failed all of them.
"Damnit, Isabelle," I whimper. "You know this is goodbye, just... just leave."
"We're more than human, Paige, we'll make it out — "
"Or what if that's exactly what we are? The guards here are just human, and they do the most horrific things I've ever seen. It wasn't supposed to end like this. I risked my life, over and over and over again so that you could be safe, but it turns out we're just going to die here together!"
I try to wrangle the heaving sobs that come after that declaration. My chest feels tight and I swear I can't breathe, not with Isabelle kneeling right in front of me, mere seconds from being locked up and dragged away.
"I just wanted to be with you one last time," she murmurs back. "We got so close to getting you back, and I can't just leave you here. If we're going to die, I'm glad we're together."
She presses two of her fingers through the circle in the glass, the only way she can get on my side. I take a trembling breath and touch them gingerly, wrapping my own index fingers around hers. It's as close as we'll get to each other in our final moments, a measly substitute for the crushing hug I want to give her, but it's raw and it's pure and it's a small bit of comfort as hope fades.
"I'd rather be here with you than anywhere else," she whispers.
I squeeze her fingers a little tighter. "I don't want to become a monster, Iz. I can't kill you or the other mutants, but they're going to make me. And then when they're done with me, they're going to kill me."
She shushes me carefully, glittering green eyes heavy with a kind of torment I've never seen in her. I shake my head, pleading with her. "As much as I care about you, Isabelle, you can't stay here. That would be my biggest regret, second only to abandoning you at the facility. You have to leave."
She trails a finger along my knuckle. "Don't make this harder than it has to be, please." We lock eyes and I send her a tight-lipped smile through the tears, a smile that I hope speaks volumes as to how much I believe in her.
"I'm sorry, Isabelle." With a deep breath, I reach out for any bioelectrical signals in the area and snag a single one as fast as I can. Electricity races through my veins and I start to convulse uncontrollably, but I do my best to bite back a scream. I have to let go of the bioelectrical signal quickly, but I barely had a hold of it in the first place. My limbs twitch as the shocks stop. I don't know if my plan worked or not.
My vision is blurry, but I realize I'm slumped on the floor, taking shallow breaths. Isabelle has her hands against the glass, pounding from the other side, and as the ringing in my ears subsides, I hear her yelling my name. I give her a gentle grin. She smudges the tears away from her cheeks with the back of her hand. "What did you do?" She cries. "Paige, what did you do?"
"Don't forget me, okay?" I whisper. My throat feels raw and my voice breaks on the last word, but Isabelle knows what I asked. She nods, and even though her eyes are bloodshot and the shirt she's wearing hangs off her thin frame, I decide she's still the most beautiful person I've ever laid eyes on.
I flinch in surprise as Jax appears in a blur behind Isabelle. He stares at me before nodding in a mutual understanding. I captured his bioelectricity signal just long enough to send him a simple message, and fortunately, he interpreted my meaning enough to come back. He pulls Isabelle back gently. Thank you, I tell him with my eyes, and he smiles back. You're welcome.
"No, no, no!" Isabelle exclaims, but she's so exhausted, she barely fights it. Jax tenses up, ready to run, and I lift two fingers in farewell.
"I'm gonna miss you," I murmur.
Isabelle breathes heavily for a moment before mirroring the motion. "I won't forget you," she whispers.
And then she's gone.