“You don’t look fine,” the lion-masked woman says. “Let the doctor look at you.”
“He isn’t a doctor!” I repeat. “Did you not hear him? I don’t want him anywhere near me.”
“Why are you freaking out?” the boy asks. He has one of those silly masks on, too. His is a hyena.
My heart thumps. “I’m not, I just don’t like doctors.”
“He’s not a doctor,” the woman says curiously. “You know that. Which means you don’t like lab technicians. Why is that?”
She approaches the edge of my bed.
“Fine,” I say through clenched teeth. “Check my head. Make sure it’s working right.”
“Had a bad experience with one?” she continues.
I refuse to respond. Her eyes are locked on me, and I suck in a sharp breath when she looks at the lab technician with a calculating look.
“Test her.”
“What?” I snap. “Are you insane? My brain is leaking matter into my skull. I’m going to die in five minutes max, and you want to test me?”
“You just said you were fine,” she says. “Test her.Now.”
The lab technician sighs and reaches for his kit, and my heart races. Even if my mother worked with the Resistance, I don’t trust them. Not with my biggest secret, at least.
“It’s a waste of time,” I say. “I was tested as a child, and I have a fear of needles. You don’t need to do this.”
“Your father is a powerful Kinetic,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense that both his children possess no powers.”
“But we don’t,” I say. “Haven and I are Commons.”
The lab technician is preparing his syringe. I blink, and time freezes. It’s probably not smart to use my powers now, but I need a second to collect myself. I need to get a hold of those keys. The woman stands nearest to me, and I stretch my torso to riflethrough her jacket. A frustrated sound escapes me when I realize she doesn’t have it. Instead, it dangles from the boy’s waist.
“Think, Haven,” I whisper. “Think.”
I look around for something to hook into the circle that holds a bunch of keys, but there is nothing even remotely useful near me. I have to get that boy to come closer.
I blink, and time resumes.
“Can you hold my hand?” I ask the boy.
My lip trembles, and I stare at him with wide eyes.
He glances at the woman for permission.
“Don’t go near her,” she warns. “She was looking at your keys just now.”
Damn it. She is smarter than she looks.
My sleeve is rolled up by the technician, and the same dread that hit me all those years ago returns. Tears prickle my eyes because I don’t have my mother to protect me. I have to figure it out all on my own.
The needle slides into my skin, and my blood begins to fill the tube.
Slowly, he places it in the synthesizer. The device that will determine if I possess the gene that only the Gifted carry.
A thin line of light shifts across the device from green to red.
“A Gifted,” he says, surprised.
