The Darkest Legacy by Alexandra Bracken
“What do you mean?” When he didn’t respond, I pressed: “Who are you that you could even do that? You’re not just a student, are you? Why were you really at the speech?”
“It’s not like that,” he said quickly. “Suzume, listen—”
There was a labored groan of metal somewhere behind me. Daylight washed in, blanketing us in late-afternoon gold. My eyes watered the longer I stared at the opening, at the silhouetted figures there.
“I don’t know who the hell you are—” I called out to them.
I was cut off by the clang of metal striking metal, and a sinister hiss. Gas billowed around us, choking the small space. The door slammed shut again, a heavy lock rammed into place. The air turned sour, chemical.
“Shit,” the boy said, his words slurring. “Don’t breathe. Try not to—”
My thoughts slowed as the sensation of spinning returned. The darkness was a whirlpool that came on too quickly for me to feel afraid, or wonder if I’d ever wake up again.
“Your name,” I gasped out. “What’s your name?”
I fought against the pull of unconsciousness, bucking up against the restraints. It wasn’t right, none of this was right—I couldn’t go without knowing—
A single word reached me before the world dissolved into darkness: “Roman.”
THE NEXT TIME I SURFACED, it was to the sound of wheels against highway, muffled voices, and the loud, wet breathing of a man hovering above me.
I was flat on my back again, the thick heat baking me from all sides. The stench of hot rubber was everywhere. I was being steamed alive in my own sweat.
“Shit,” came a grumbling voice. “Fucking light…”
A joint cracked as the man rose, stepping on my shin as he moved away.
I fought to stay awake. To take in what was around me before unconsciousness crept up and pulled me back under.
The space was pitch-black, save for the narrow light attached to the top of the man’s helmet. He wore the same black uniform as the ones who had grabbed us, but his skin was as white as a ghost’s in the dark. His form took on an unnatural sheen—it was like searching the shadows of a lucid dream. The haziness of my vision made me uncertain if he was really hanging a bag of yellow liquid up beside me, or if it was a hallucination.
It wasn’t.
The light on his helmet sputtered. He knocked a fist hard against it, letting its full glow sweep down over Roman’s sleeping form. He used his boot to roll him off his back and onto his right side, facing away from me. Save for his shallow breathing, Roman didn’t move, not even as the man knelt behind him, fussing with the bag…the…
My mind struggled for the word.
Roman’s hands were bound together behind his back with a black zip tie. I couldn’t see them, but I assumed his feet were secured with a few more. My own ankles rubbed together uncomfortably, and there was a bite from something hard digging into my skin there.
As the man looked up and shone the light on it, I could see liquid drip down from the bag and glide through the thin tube that connected it to Roman. The needle in his forearm was secured with a heavy bandage of tape.
But…I squinted, waiting for the splotches of black to clear from my vision again. His and Priyanka’s IV bags were hung awkwardly from the straps on the ceiling, ones probably meant to secure shipments.
My own arm began to hurt in the same spot. There was a new, unrelenting pressure where a needle had been slipped beneath the thin layer of skin. A clear tube connected it to an IV bag on a metal stand. The first few drips of the same yellow liquid slid down the line toward my arm.
Spots of every color floated in front of my eyes, but the fresh surge of dread pushed back against the coaxing of whatever drug this was. My hands filled with hot sand as I tried to move them.
I couldn’t. My wrists were locked together. Not with zip ties, but actual handcuffs, lined with rubber. Sweat poured down over my forehead, my throat, my chest.
The drug left a rancid taste in my mouth as it seeped into my body. Within the space of two heartbeats, it became harder to focus on the sight of the man hovering over Roman. But when his back was finally to me, I turned my head toward the IV line, taking it between my teeth and yanking—hard.
The long needle pulled partway out of the vein. The tape hissed as the edge lifted off my skin.
I tensed, my hands curling into claws. Watching the man’s back. Waiting.
He didn’t turn around. He coughed without covering his mouth, smearing sweat and snot against the sleeve of his black shirt. My ears filled with static as I took the plastic tube between my teeth again. I didn’t look away from him, even as my heart began to bang in warning.
The tape gave way, lifting enough for the needle to slip out. The drug spilled over my wrist and the back of my hand, dripping onto the rubber mat beneath me.
The man rose again, pulling a cell phone from his pocket. He tapped out a message. Its screen cast a faint blue light on his face. That, combined with the glow from his helmet, was enough to confirm what I already suspected.
It was a semitruck of some kind. Every inch of it, from the inside of the door, to the ground, to the walls, was covered in old tires, cut open and melted together again in a tarry black quilt.
Thoughts were sharpening in my mind again, fragments piecing themselves together. I looked to the IV stand over me, then toward the haphazard way the others had been strung up.
Our suspicions had been right. They were only after me.
The boy was a Yellow, too, wasn’t he? I’d seen his button, and I assumed the kidnappers had as well. But I was the only one in proper handcuffs, lined with rubber. The girl was a Green, considered relatively harmless by most of the population, but her hands had been bound in front of her, and her ankles were locked together with zip ties of her own. If they were only ever after me, why hadn’t they just killed the others—witnesses—outright?
One possible answer was leverage. What was better than one hostage? Three of them. They could kill one or both of the others as a sign to show how serious they were about doing the same to me.
But there was this instinctive feeling I had about Roman and Priyanka that I just couldn’t shake. It had seared through me like an electric current from the second I saw Roman fire that first shot, and it hadn’t disappeared since.
I hated feeling suspicious of Psi who needed help; it made me more nauseous than the sedatives. If I questioned the motives of every stranger in a terrifying situation, I would never have opened the van door for Ruby all those years ago.
But the attackers, these two Psi, the men who had us now…Everyone in this situation was too well trained. No one shot like Roman did without hours of practice and instruction. No one fought with the confidence of Priyanka without having done it before.
Maybe they were part of this after all. I wanted to believe that all Psi were on each other’s sides, but I wasn’t stupid. There was the rumored nihilistic Psion Ring group, for one thing, constantly floating threats that undermined the work the Psi Council was doing. Or, the kidnappers could have hired these two to act as bait, knowing I’d be more likely to accept another kid’s help. If that was the case, they’d done their job well.
But…they were tied up and drugged, too.
As Vida always said, the best way through bullshit was to wade in, hold your nose with one hand and a grenade in the other, and cut straight through it. Right now, I needed to eliminate the immediate threat and then wake up the others for answers. As the only one of us currently conscious, it fell on me to figure out exactly how to do that.
“Changing the Op—” The man stuffed his phone back into a leather pouch on his belt and took two swaying steps toward the wall that aligned with the truck’s cab. He pounded on it. “You see that shit? Why the fuck should we take them there? The zone crossing is going to be a goddamn nightmare as it is.”
I couldn’t make out the muffled reply, only that there were two distinct male voices.
The truck vibrated beneath me. I closed my eyes as he passed by. Priyanka’s right leg shifted against my left as the man reached down and took her chin between his gloved hand, squeezing the soft skin of her cheeks. He stared into her face, bringing it close to his masked lips. He tsked at her, giving a mocking little coo.
Every inch of me went cold with fury. My fingers curled against the cuffs as I tried to slide my right hand free without making a big enough movement for him to notice. There was a gun at his hip and a knife in a holster at the other—but there was also the White Noise device on his utility belt and a smartphone in his pocket. And, if my senses were correct, a comm in his ear.
With a hiss, he shoved Priyanka’s face away, letting her head slam back against the rubber mat on the ground. My top lip pulled back in a sneer as his gaze lingered a second too long at the spot where her dress had ridden up to her thighs.
Oh, so it was like that, was it? He was that brand of bastard.
I felt wild with the thoughts careening through my head. They urged me forward, cutting through to a part of me I didn’t recognize. Here in the dark, I could be someone else. Someone who didn’t stand in front of audiences, perfectly coifed, smiling, smiling, smiling no matter what the world threw in her face. There were no cameras. There were no protocols.
There was only escape. Survival.
The man turned, kicking Priyanka’s leg aside to go for a small cooler near the door.
“You’re lucky he didn’t tell us to break your legs to keep you from running,” he told her casually, the way someone would report the weather. Cloudy, with a chance of agony. “I argued for it, of course.” He flipped the lid open, letting the flickering light on his helmet illuminate the bag of yellow liquid he pulled from the cooler. The light shifted, exposing her again to his gaze. “I would have taken special pleasure in smashing one bone at a time, starting with your hips.”
I knew the drug was fading from my system by how fast the words jumped to my tongue. How clear they were, despite the dry ache in my throat. “You like leering at unconscious girls, do you?”
The bag of fluid jumped from his hand, slapping against the rubber mat. The truck’s engine roared as it picked up speed. I felt the flare of its electric current as it flowed through the body of the truck, but I couldn’t tap into it. Not with the layers of rubber insulation between it and me.
The man’s light landed on the wet spot the drug had left on my side.
“You sneaky little bitch,” he said in disbelief.
“Call me a bitch again and I’ll show you how hard I bite,” I said.
“That’s some mouth you got on you,” he said. “I’ve a mind to put it to good use, freak or not. Maybe I’ll keep you awake, just to hear you scream.”
He laughed, and that shadow that lived in me, that small, dark corner of my heart that made me feel so ashamed when it demanded more, began to shift inside me. To rise.
How many people have to die because of you, before you’ll do something?
I stopped thinking. I shut down the carefully conditioned serenity. I let Mel and all of her lessons be carried out of my mind on a wave of anger.
Then I started to laugh, too.
The sound was haunted, ragged. The man sucked in a sharp breath as it reached him.
“Stop it,” he barked, lurching over to me. His light washed out my vision, but I refused to shut my eyes to escape it. He stepped onto my ankle, and I had to bite back a cry of pain as he leaned his full weight on it. A dare, a threat.
“I think it’s funny, too,” I told him. “Really, truly funny how much your friends up there must hate you.”
He was close enough for me to see his eyes shift, to confirm what I’d suspected: they thought the drugs would be enough. That the handcuffs would take care of the rest.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.
“They trapped you in here with me, didn’t they?” I said. The cut opened on my lip as I smiled.
“Shut the fuck up,” he growled, storming over to the back of the truck to retrieve the drugs. At the force of his words, Priyanka began to stir again, her bag still empty, waiting to be changed. “I can’t kill you, but I can use these last hours to create your perfect hell. So try me, you freak bitch.”
“What did I say about that word?” I asked.
I felt for the charge of his ear comm and seized it. Even with a throbbing head, it took only a second of focus to pulse it, to fry the small circuitry inside its plastic shell.
“Fuck!” he screamed, clawing at his ear. A thread of smoke wove between his fingers as he tried to yank it out.
“They lined everything with rubber to protect themselves and the truck. But they didn’t even tell you to leave your electronics with them.” I lifted my cuffed wrists. “They made you think I had to actually touch you in order to hurt you, didn’t they?”
His free hand went for his belt, to the White Noise device.
It was nearly impossible to explain what I could do to anyone who hadn’t experienced it themselves. Most of the time, it was important to pretend that I didn’t have the power at all; that I couldn’t hear the song of electronics buzzing and vibrating against my senses, or feel the buried electrical lines growling beneath my feet.
It was frightening—it had always been, from the time I was a child. The vastness of that power. The innate charge inside my mind only ever wanted to connect, to join and complete those nearby circuits.
I reached out for the batteries. They reached out to me.
The device exploded in his hand. A hot shard of plastic landed on my shin as he fell back, stunned by the sound, the pain. But I wasn’t finished, not until I had the battery of his phone in my mind’s grasp.
“Say you’re sorry,” I rasped out.
“You…bitch!”
The battery exploded inside his uniform pocket. The fire caught on his black pants, traveled up his side, to his neck, to his face, to his helmet. He screamed so violently, falling to the ground to try to roll the flames away, I was shocked the others didn’t stop the truck. The heat spread out through the rubber and melted it beneath him.
I sucked in a breath and sat up. The darkness pushed toward me from all sides, coated in smoke. I forced myself to stay upright, to watch.
The man writhed and groaned, trying to drag himself to the door. He was within arm’s reach of it when his body gave one final tremor and collapsed. The fire burned until it couldn’t, trailing out in thin, glowing veins across the rubber mat. As the last flame went out, the only thing left to me was darkness—darkness, and the sound of the wheels against the road, keeping time with my own driving heartbeat.
“HOLY…SHIT…”
I jumped at the sound of Priyanka’s voice.
The girl turned slightly to the side, jolting as the dry IV line tugged back at her. She jerked her bound hands forward, ripping the empty bag from its strap.
“Here, let me do it,” I said. Easier said than done. My ankles were locked together by loops of zip ties. I had just enough range of movement to get my knees under me and inch over to her.
The chain linking my handcuffs clicked and strained as I pulled off her tape in one go, ignoring her sharp “Shit, ow!”
“That’s what hurts?” I said in disbelief. The man’s helmet light was still glowing against the wall beside her. I’d made sure not to fry the device, thinking we might need to use it. Now it only illuminated her collection of cuts and bruises. Seeing them seemed to wake up my body to the reality of my own injuries. For a second, the pain took my breath away.
I shook my head, trying to clear the throbbing as I removed the IV line from Roman’s arm.
“I’m adding it to my list of complaints,” she muttered.
Roman let out a soft sigh as the needle
I tugged down the bag of yellow fluid, turning it toward the helmet’s light to try to find some kind of label. About a quarter of it was gone. It looked like he’d gotten a higher dose than both Priyanka and I had, and I didn’t know how long he’d be out, or if we’d have to try to break out of the truck without him.
It would be easier. I couldn’t stop the thought from welling up in my mind. One less person to potentially have to run from. One less reason to question my gut.
But also one less person to fight off the people who had taken us.
I released a hard breath. Who was I kidding—I was never going to leave either of them behind to the mercy of these people. For one thing, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the eye again. If there was even the slightest chance they were innocent bystanders, then I was going to give them the exact same chance I had to get out of here.
“Where the hell are we?” Priyanka asked, the words slightly slurred.
The thick curtain of her wavy black hair fell over her shoulder as she propped herself up on her elbow and, finally, pushed herself fully upright. The drug was clearly still working its way through her system; she had that slightly glassy look of someone whose brain was caught up in a fog. Which meant that I had an opportunity.
In another time, and in a very different world, I would have felt guilty for trying it, but this was life or death. And I was going to make it out of this truck alive no matter what.
“I’m a little more concerned about who took us,” I said evenly. “Did you recognize any of them?”
“Why are you asking me that?” she said, reaching her bound hands up to touch a spot on her cheek where a new bruise was forming. It was the size of a fingerprint. “Shouldn’t you have some sort of catalog of bad guys we can work through? Who are the idiots who are always out screaming on highways and at speeches with signs?”
“You mean Liberty Watch?” I said.
“If they’re the ones who think that you Psi should make up some sacrificial army, then yeah, Liberty Watch.”