The word is like a scream inside my head.
Max stiffens.
He looks up, staring at precisely nothing, the anger in his eyes barely held in check. I only realize then that he can hear her, too.
Of course he can.
Emmaline pounds against her tank, the sounds dull, the effort alone seeming to exhaust her. Still, she presses forward, her sunken cheek flattening against the glass.
Max hesitates, vacillating.
He’s no good at hiding his emotions—and his present uncertainty is easily discernible. It’s clear, even from my disoriented perspective, that he’s trying to decide which of us he needs to deal with first. Emmaline pounds her fist again, weaker this time.
NO
Another scream inside my head.
With a stifled sigh, Max decides on Emmaline.
I watch him pivot, stalk toward her tank. He presses his hand flat against the glass and it brightens to a neon blue. The blue light expands, then scatters around the chamber, slowly revealing an intricate series of electrical circuits. The neon veins are thicker in some places, occasionally braided, mostly fine. It resembles a cardiovascular system not unlike the one inside my own body.
My own body.
Something gasps to life inside of me. Reason. Rational thought. I’m trapped here, tricked by the pain into thinking I have no control over my powers, but that’s not true. When I force myself to remember, I can feel it. My energy still thrums through me. It’s a faint, desperate whisper—but it’s there.
Bit by agonizing bit, I gather my mind.
I grit my teeth, focusing my thoughts, clenching my body to its breaking point. Slowly, I braid together the disparate strands of my power, holding on to the threads for dear life.
And even more slowly, I claw my hand through the light.
The effort splits open my knuckles, the tips of my fingers. Fresh blood streaks across my hand and spills down my wrist as I lift my arm in a sluggish, excruciating arc above my head.
As if from light-years away, I hear beeping.
Max.
He’s inputting new codes into Emmaline’s tank. I have no idea what that means for her, but I can’t imagine it’s good.
Hurry.
Hurry, I tell myself.
Violently, I force my arm through the light, biting back a scream as I do. One by one, my fingers uncurl above my head, blood dripping from each digit down my bleeding wrist and into my eyes. My hand opens, palm up toward the ceiling. Fresh blood snakes down the planes of my face as I drive my energy into the light.
The ceiling shatters.
Aaron and I fall to the floor, hard, and I hear something snap in my leg, the pain screaming through me.
I fight it back.
The lights pop and shriek, the polished concrete ceiling beginning to crack. Max spins around, horror seizing his face as I throw my hand forward.
Close my fist.
Emmaline’s tank fissures with a sudden, violent crack.
“NO!” he cries. Feverishly, he pulls the remote free from his lab coat, hitting its now useless buttons. “No! No,no—”
