Someone catches me again, this time new arms, and the man who calls me his daughter holds me like I’m his child and he says, “Honey, you don’t have to think about them anymore. You’re safe now.”
“Safe?” I rear back, eyes wild. “Whoareyou—?”
The woman takes my hand. Squeezes my fingers even as I wrench free from her grip. “I’m your mother,” she says. “And I’ve decided it’s time for you to come home.”
“What”—I grab two fistfuls of her shirt—“have you donewith myfriends?” I scream. And then I shake her, shake her so hard she actually looks scared for a second, and then I try to pick her up and throw her into the wall but remember, with a start, that my powers have been cut off, that I have to rely on mere anger and adrenaline and I turn around, suddenly furious, feeling more certain by the second that I’ve begun to hallucinate, hallucinate, when
unexpectedly
she slaps me in the face.
Hard.
I blink, stunned, but manage to stay upright.
“Ella Sommers,” she says sharply, “you will pull yourself together.” Her eyes flash as she appraises me. “What is this ridiculous, dramatic behavior? Worried about yourfriends? Those people are not your friends.”
My cheek burns and half my mouth feels numb but I say, “Yes, yes they’re my fr—”
She slaps me again.
My eyes close. Reopen. I feel suddenly dizzy.
“We are your parents,” she says in a harsh whisper. “Your father and I have brought you home. You should be grateful.”
I taste blood. I reach up, touch my lip. My fingers come away red. “Where’s Emmaline?” Blood is pooling in my mouth and I spit it out, onto the floor. “Have you kidnapped her, too? Does she know what you’ve done? That you donated us to The Reestablishment? Sold our bodies to the world?”
A third, swift slap.
I feel it ring in my skull.
“How dare you.” My mother’s face flushes crimson. “Howdareyou— You have no idea what we’ve built, all these years— The sacrifices we made for ourfuture—”
“Now, Evie,” my dad says, and places a calming hand on her shoulder. “Everything is going to be okay. Ella just needs a little time to settle in, that’s all.” He glances at me. “Isn’t that right, Ella?”
It hits me then, in that moment. Everything. It hits me, all at once, with a frightening, destabilizing force—
I’ve been kidnapped by a pair of crazy people and I might never see my friends again. In fact, my friends might be dead. Myparentsmight’ve killed them. All of them.
The realization is like suffocation.
Tears fill my throat, my mouth, my eyes—
“Where,” I say, my chest heaving, “is Warner? What did you do to him?”
Evie’s expression goes suddenly murderous. “You andthat damn boy. If I have to hear his name one more time—”
“Where’s Warner?” I’m screaming again. “Where is he? Where’s Kenji? What did you do with them?”
Evie looks suddenly exhausted. She pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger.
“Darling,” she says, but she isn’t looking at me, she’s looking at my father. “Will you handle this, please? I have a terrible headache and several urgent phone calls to return.”
“Of course, my love.” And he pulls a syringe from his pocket and stabs it, swiftly, into my neck.
Kenji
The common room is really growing on me.
