“H-Her name is Annabella. She staged this to get her brother out of prison!”
“Deus, we need to get out of here so I can find someplace dry to read,” Landon shouts as he wades toward the doorway right before the water swells with a vengeance, engulfing all of us.
Landon blows a hole in the wall and the water pours out, sweeping us out with it. I hang on to my hostage while he splutters and cries and flails.
There’s absolutely no way he’s the man who attacked Ellison. His abilities are abysmal at best.
“It’s okay, guys, we can still do this,” August says before he picks Landon’s waterlogged body off the ground. It’s a bit limp as he pouts.
“August… I didn’t want to get wet.”
“Those fuckers got my rifle wet,” I grumble. “I will?—”
I cock my head when I see something the others don’t quite notice yet. We’ve found ourselves near the food court and I can see the hostages crowded on the ground, hands over their heads.
I throw the crying man to the ground, already bored of him, and dash forward on silent feet. But with the least silent crew ever created behind me, the man I’m heading toward quicklyturns from where he’s standing over a villain who is quite dead, judging from the amount of blood outside their body.
He’s all in black with a hood that hides his face. He cocks his head when he sees me, and I immediately know that this is the man who cut Ellison open.
I lift my gun and pull the trigger, but the water must have damaged it because the weapon doesn’t fire properly. I shove my rifle at Ellison and turn invisible as I rush the man. He seems to know that I’m coming and hurriedly slips down an employee hallway.
I race after him, confident this man isn’t going to get away from me. But as I turn the corner, I slam right into one of Ellison’s illusions so hard that I’m flung backward and only manage to keep myself from hitting the ground by grabbing onto the wall. I understand that Ellison can’t see me when I’m invisible, but did his illusion have to be so damnsolid?
“Shit, sorry,” Ellison says.
“It’s fine.” I rush past the illusion and reach the end of the hallway, where I realize that I don’t know where he went. There are three paths and I know the longer I take to assess each one, the farther away he’ll get. I drop my invisibility as Landon and Ellison catch up to me.
“August and Lex stayed behind to take care of the remaining villains. Why don’t I go straight, Ellison, you go right, and Deus, you take left?” Landon suggests.
I hate not being able to go in all three directions, which will leave them vulnerable, but I have to trust that they’ll be able to handle themselves.
“Okay,” I say, wondering if I can place trust in them to not fuck up. They hurry off and I head left, throwing my invisibility on again. But as I make my way down the hallway, I get a bad feeling and look behind me. I’m nervous the others are going to get hurt or even killed without me there.
“Let’s go,” Ellison’s illusion says as he reappears next to me. “Stay focused.”
Right. I’m not focused.
“Look at them. Look at them, both dead because she cared too much. If she hadn’t gone back to help her, they would have both lived. You cannot let feelings into your life, do you understand?”
“Where do you go when you get that far-off look in your eyes?” Ellison asks through his illusion.
“Just thinking too much.”
“Does thinking cause so much work that your whole body shuts down?”
“The second you go to sleep tonight, I’m going to eat Doritos on your white couch.”
“Who said you were invited back into the house? I think I’m healed just fine and no longer need your assistance.”
“I think you need to loosen up a bit. Even your illusions look stuffy,” I say as I reach over to grab his tie.
He smacks my hand away and I realize that I’m not focused…again.
When we reach the end of the hallway, I see multiple doors, all closed. I head to the right because the left would take me deeper into the building, and I have to assume the person in question is wanting to get closer to the exit.
Ellison swiftly checks the rooms I don’t go to before returning. “Do we know what this man’s power is?”
“Being a pain in my ass,” I quip before I slow and hold an arm out. “I hear someone.”
