Trance (39 page)

Specter’s yellow-orange aura glowed from Gage’s eyes. A wicked smile twisted his mouth. “What’s the matter, Trance?” The voice no longer belonged to Gage, but to someone—something—else. “Don’t you want to be alone with me for a while?”

W
e stared at each other for what felt like hours. It was likely just seconds. I saw no familiarity in the face that I knew so well and cared for so much. Just the icy glare of someone foreign and evil. A murderer controlling Gage’s body. It was my fault, and I found no comfort in the fact that he had no weapons, or that Gage’s powers couldn’t hurt me.

“Speechless?” he asked.

I swallowed. “Who are you?”

“Who I’ve always been.”

“You’re not Specter.”

“In a way, I am. Specter was the name given to a man who once wielded the powers I possess.”

“Why?”

He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Why don’t we take a walk? I will better explain things to you.”

“No.”

His eyes narrowed. He pointed at Marco. “Shall I kill your friend there to prove my point? Or shall we just take a walk?”

“Where?”

He reached for Marco.

“Okay,” I said quickly.

He stopped, stood, and then offered me a hand. I ignored him and stood on my own. Dizziness nearly toppled me. I sucked in a deep breath, trying hard to focus.

“Watch your step, Trance. Don’t think I can’t hurt this boy. I can manipulate his senses until the stress puts him into a coma. Or perhaps open up his sight and look into the sun and blind him.”

My insides liquefied. My worst nightmare was standing in front of me. The only no-win situation I feared encountering. Our only proven methods of forcing Specter out of a body were unconsciousness or death. I couldn’t entertain those thoughts yet. Killing wasn’t an option. Knocking him out might be possible, but I needed to stay with him. At least until I figured out where his corporeal body was and how to trap him.

“I won’t fight you,” I said.

“Good girl. Now walk toward the Base.”

I did as he asked, not looking at the van as we passed side by side. If Ethan was listening, I prayed he kept silent and out of sight. The only way to end this was to play it out. Something about this wolf-in-Specter-clothing seemed familiar … the way he talked, the words he chose.

“I knew you’d be the most difficult,” he said casually. He could have been discussing a recipe. “I knew the first night, in the motel. Your powers are incredible, Trance, and quite fascinating. I had to know why you, too, had been gifted powers not your own.”

I almost stopped walking, but didn’t want to give him another excuse to threaten someone. He didn’t know why he had his powers, either. Or she? I had to get more information before he just hauled off and killed me.

“You think my powers were a deliberate gift?” I said, refusing to look at him.

“In a way, yes. Your powers were likely, as hypothesized, the last attempt of a dying woman to manipulate powers she’d been hoarding for fifteen years. Similar energy powers run in families, so the match to your grandmother’s power made sense. She tried to even the odds by giving you something she thought you could handle.”

A tremor ripped down my spine. Only eight people knew about Agent McNally’s theory on my powers. Oh God, who was he? Was it McNally herself? The notion he actually was Gage was there and gone instantly. Impossible.

Wasn’t it? McNally had warned me that the only person I could truly trust was myself.

No, I knew Gage, dammit. It wasn’t him. And it didn’t explain how this doppelganger came into possession of the Specter powers. Unless—hell. Unless Marcus Spence had family we didn’t know about.

We entered the Base. He pointed toward the elevator. It opened when I pressed the call button, and inside we went. This was too planned, too perfect. My brain roared on information overload. This couldn’t be happening.

We rode up silently and stopped on the third floor. He nudged me out and to the left. The gymnasium was this way and, sure enough, he pointed me toward those double doors.
I inhaled sharply and pushed. Stale air greeted me, as did the sharp odor of blood. Three steps in, I stopped, unable to see in the dim light. Gage moved behind me and flipped a switch. Fluorescent light flooded the room.

I backed up, right into his chest, my lips parting.

The room was the size of half a basketball court, with high ceilings and mats rolled across half the hardwood floor. The wall opposite the door was a bank of windows, the wall to our left all mirrors and dance barres. Unused equipment—a trampoline, uneven bars, a vault—were still shoved in the left corner. My attention was drawn to the objects directly ahead and slightly to the right.

No, not objects. People.

In the near-center of the room was a balance beam. Renee was tied to it with colorful jump ropes, her arms and legs stretched and twisted into pretzel-like shapes, knotted around each other in ways even her flexible body was not meant to turn. Her eyes were open and fixed on the ceiling. Sweat dripped down her face and had pooled on the floor beneath the beam. She seemed past pain, past agony, square in the center of shock.

Dahlia lay on the floor below the beam, bound in a practice mat like a jelly roll, with only her head sticking out. Unconscious? Dead? She was too far away for me to tell. Dr. Seward and Agent McNally were likewise tied up with jump ropes—and drugged or concussed—on the floor near a second balance beam. Psystorm was swathed in karate uniforms, the colorful belts cinched around his legs, arms and torso creating a motley straitjacket. He was blindfolded by
a black belt, his body carelessly dumped in the far right corner of the room. Only Caleb and the rest of the medical staff were missing from the waking nightmare. No, someone else was missing.

Fuck. Me.

Anger replaced horror, and the anger quickly melted into rage. These were my friends, tied up and tormented by a deranged federal agent who was blackmailing me with Gage’s body. As absurd as it sounded, I’d walked willingly into a no-win situation and needed a miracle to get back out again.

It took every ounce of self-control to not charge across the room and release my friends, consequences be damned. Instead, I pivoted and faced the doppelganger.

“So what are you going to tie me up with, Alex?” I asked. “Fuzzy handcuffs?”

Not-Gage blinked. His slow grin gave me the chills. “You think I’m Agent Grayson?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Telling you would ruin the surprise. How do you know I haven’t been Cipher this whole time?”

“Because I know him.”

“Yes, you do, and quite intimately.”

I glared, but kept my mouth shut.

“Cipher’s trying very hard to wake up, Trance. He’s fighting for you. He may even be in love with you.”

“Fuck off.”

He quirked an eyebrow and crinkled his nose. It created an absurd expression on Gage’s face. “I haven’t seen this vulgar side of you before. I am certain, however, if I’d gone into
anyone else’s body, you’d have blasted me by now without regard for that person’s life.”

Seen that side of you before. He was playing now. I couldn’t let him bait me and reel in the line. I would have killed anyone else if I had to in order to save more lives, only I would have cared. I would have cared a lot. Not Gage, though, not when we’d come so far. I couldn’t lose him by my own hands. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?”

Instead of giving him the satisfaction, I changed the subject. “What the hell are we doing here?”

“Finishing this, Trance. We’ve been dancing around each other for the better part of a week, and I’m exhausted. You’ve worn me out.”

“So end it already and stop fucking around.” My left hand burned, itching to create and unleash an orb. To release the pent-up fury flickering just beneath the surface. I swept my hand out, indicating the room’s five prisoners. “You could have killed them all before I got back, and then pounced. Why the show?”

“I need an alibi.”

My lips parted. He watched me, curious, studying my reaction. I couldn’t seem to move, think. Utter a sound. He had the upper hand completely, and all I had was the very real urge to curl into a ball and scream.

“You’re thinking now,” doppelganger-Gage said. “Wondering. Who do you think I am, Trance? Still think I’m Agent Grayson? Or is he stuffed in the trunk of the car you crashed into, slowly suffocating to death?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“Funny you should say that. But I’m also damned. I have been since the moment I was cursed with these powers, “he said with a weary sigh. “I’ve been in all of their heads, you know. Your friends. A little gas in the vents to loosen them up and make them sleepy. Then a walk down here to tie themselves up. I know what they think of you. Want to know?”

“Have I said ‘fuck off’ yet?”

He strolled past me, my hostility rolling off him like water off a duck, gazed at his prisoners, hands folded behind his back, pleased with himself. I kept even with him, allowing only a few feet of distance between us, and froze when he stopped halfway to the balance beam.

“Did you know Flex still blames you for Caliber’s death?” he said. “She hates that Gage is alive and William is dead. Deep down she thinks you let him die. That you left him behind. Of course, you and I both know the truth—”

I hit him hard with a closed fist, awkward with my left hand. The blow glanced off his chin and did little more than piss him off. He threw a jab I couldn’t avoid. It smashed into the blood knot on my chin and splattered crimson all over his shirt. I fell to my knees, blinded by the fiery agony in my face. Blood drizzled down my neck. The world tilted.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t want to kill you yet, but I will keep you docile.”

Docile? I struggled to breathe, to maintain some sense of composure, when all I wanted to do was collapse. Giving up would hurt less. Forcing him to kill me would end this sick game. Tears dribbled down my cheeks, and through them,
I saw clearly—my friends tied up like animals, used as bait, and my lover lording over it all, controlled by a madman. If I gave up, I doomed them all to death, and if hell existed, I would burn for it.

If I gave up, the future of the Rangers died with me.

“Why?” I said, practically spitting the word.

“Why what?”

“Why are you really doing this?” I lifted my head. Another tear squeezed from the corner of my eye and joined the river of liquid already staining my chin and throat. “Why are you killing us off? Why did you kill those Metas and destroy the Warden?”

He sucked in his lower lip, a very Gage-like gesture. He seemed to war between his own desire to gloat and some need to keep it secret. Knowledge made him feel superior, gave him an edge. I needed to turn that edge against his throat and press.

“You weren’t a Bane before,” I said, pushing a little harder. “You probably aren’t a Meta at all, just some nobody who thinks mass murder makes them somebody.”

He scowled. “You know less than you think.”

I hauled my weary body up, ignoring the throbbing in my face. Intent on him. “Once we’re all dead, then what? The Banes get turned loose to wreak havoc on the world? Is that what you want?”

His scowl softened into surprise. “You didn’t know about the MHC’s fail-safe protocol, did you?”

I shook my head, wary of his tricks.

“Of course you wouldn’t. It’s something they designed
thirty years ago, Trance. I’m surprised no one ever mentioned it. Especially McNally, since you two seem very chummy. Of course, this isn’t the first time she’s withheld information under the guise of your best interests. I suppose she didn’t want some sort of Ranger riot on her hands when you actively hated the idea.”

“What idea?” I snapped, tired of his pontificating.

“Mass murder. Did you know they have been systematically piping a depressant into the island’s water supply for the last ten years? And they’ve recently increased the dosage, making it so strong some people are getting sick. I suspected as much for years, but Psystorm verified it when he spoke to you about Caleb’s mother.”

Gage hadn’t been in the room during the conversation about the prison’s water supply. Neither had Grayson, for that matter. I looked at the bodies tied up on the floor. What was out of place?

He continued: “The MHC had something else prepared, Trance, completely unknown to their superiors at the ATF. A fail-safe protocol to eradicate the Banes, to be used only in the event that your powers returned, and all active and capable Rangers were killed in action. It was meant to protect regular human beings from the Bane threat. To destroy the most dangerous weapons in the world in one fell swoop.”

Psystorm. The little black box.

“The collars,” I said.

He nodded.

Bile surged into my mouth. I swallowed hard. That’s what this was about: genocide. Destroying everyone with powers.
“It won’t work,” I said, unable to keep my voice steady. “You know it won’t, don’t you? I mean, you could have killed all twelve of us right away, and then what? Look at Ember. The Banes have children on the island who are uncollared and powered.”

“I admit, Caleb and Ember were unexpected, but I had to see this through.” He looked at me with weary eyes. “Perhaps this time it will be better.”

This time. My guts twisted. “So all the old Rangers and Banes die. Rangers at Specter’s hand, the Banes at the push of the government’s button, and then all is well? What gives you the right?”

“Have you ever been away from home for so long you’ve lost yourself and everything you know? Of course you have. You lost your powers for fifteen years, and you spent the time wallowing in a life not yours. Trying to fit into a world that didn’t want you. So did Cipher. I can feel his disgust with the way things were. Being normal and how it nearly destroyed him. They stole your identity and your life. If given the chance, wouldn’t you have done anything to be here today? To be what you were always meant to be?”

“Yes.” I said it before I thought better. It was the truth. I despised those feelings of alienation, of knowing I wasn’t meant to be a regular girl. I went to extremes in my personal life to find something to fill the aching void in my heart. And now someone decided my life and my pain was on the sacrificial altar? Hell, no. I’d fought too long and hard to carve out the life I had. It was not his to take away. We’d all worked too damned hard.