Judgement 8 (Subject Alpha #1) (4 page)

“That’s Reid’s story, not mine, but I can tell you it’s not pleasant. Lost a few folks of his own.”

I swallowed down the pain of guilt. I knew I shouldn’t feel responsible yet in a way, I was, very much so.

“My story is not up for discussion!”

I stiffened when his gruff voice barked across the room. I didn’t turn but Jonah rose from his chair and nodded firmly at Reid then smiled back at me. “See you later, sugar.”

I gave him a wide, genuine smile. “Thank you, Jonah.” He knew I was referring to his honesty and gave me a soft nod and a quick wink before leaving the room.

When I finally turned, Reid stared at me with a weird look on his face, almost as if he was studying me, his gaze trying to pierce through the density of my skull so he could study my mind. He didn’t release me from his gaze, his eyes finding mine and locking on for several moments. The light grey of his irises darkened until they resembled granite; flecks of silver shimmering with the light in the room.

“You have a pretty smile,” he stated brusquely.

Righty ho.

“Uhh, thank you?” I replied, sounding like I was asking him a question.

“Lights up your eyes, burns out the sorrow.”

I swallowed, trying to shift the lump of chicken that had lodged in my throat. I didn’t know what to say so I waited for him to decide where he was going with his strange conversation.

When he didn’t say any more and the atmosphere grew uncomfortable, I reached round behind my neck and indicated the small wound. “Thank you for removing my chip.”

He nodded. “Needed to come out. Sorry if it’s painful.”

“No. It’s fine.”

The air grew stagnant again before he walked towards me, stopping beside me and peering down into my bowl. “Finish up, we have to make a start.”

“A start?”

His eyes slowly lifted to mine. “You need to learn to control your
ability.
” He spat out the word ‘ability’ and I felt every bit of his hatred. I too saw it as a hindrance, an affliction none of us had wanted.

“Why?”

“Why? Because you’re shit hot at blowing things up.”

“No. Why are you helping me?”

He blinked then turned away from me. “It’s what I do.”

I didn’t understand and I had a feeling he wouldn’t explain. “But I’ve tried to control it. I’ve never . . .”

“Judgement are stupid fucks. No idea. They build robots, weapons, and they have no idea how to control them.”

I flinched at the word ‘control’ and ‘weapon,’ in fact his whole sentence made me tense. I was an object again. His referral to me as being nothing but a tool created for a specific purpose hurt. But then again, I should have been used to it. For twenty one years prior to the day my body and mind became Janice’s asset, I’d known my ‘construction’ had only been for that reason.

He recognised my need for information, for reasoning why he was doing this. “You can ask questions while we train.” He turned abruptly and walked towards one of the locked doors. I stared after him, trying to ignore the way his back muscles glided under his shirt when he moved. He turned back to me when he detected I hadn’t moved. “Now, little girl. We don’t have time for your dawdling.”

Well, excuse—fucking—me.

I sneered at him when he spun back round. Wiping my mouth on a napkin Jonah had set on the table, I secretly wished it was him who would walk me through this. I lifted my chin defiantly, braced myself and went after him when he disappeared through the door.

“OH, NO! NO FUCKING way!” Holding up my hands in defence and shaking my head, I glared and started to retreat, my back hitting one of the rubber padded walls that encased the room.

They both huffed, Reid staring at me with his habitual bored expression. Heather, the tattooed and heavily pierced bitch in leather who looked like she’d stepped off the set of Sons of Anarchy curled her lip and raked her eyes over me with disgust.

“Seriously! Reid, no way will this weak little bitch hack this shit.”

If I had been registering sound properly I would have launched her through the non-existent windows. Instead I stood, my legs wobbling and my heart banging furiously on my ribcage. My gaze refused to move from the hundreds of overhead electricity conductors that dropped from the centre of the domed ceiling and gathered into a nice shiny METAL helmet which apparently was supposed to slot over my head and give me an awesome smoking perm that would last for the rest of my life. Impressed? Me too. Oh, yeah! Fuck—that—shit!

“Let me out, Reid!”

“Elina . . .”

“Oh no, you can stop with the
Elina,”
I mimicked in his gruff tone,
pointing a finger at him,
“
shit right now and open this God damned door! Are you trying to kill me?”

“Hopefully!” Heather cut in. I shot her my finest glare and turned back to Reid.

“What the hell is this? I thought you said you were gonna help me. Sautéing someone is NOT helping them!”

My eyes widened when his lips twitched and he burst into laughter. As stunned as me, Heather turned to Reid, her own eyes wide as she watched the bulk of muscle double over in amusement.

“I’m so glad you find me funny! If you don’t hurry and let me out, we’re gonna have an even bigger problem. I need to pee and let me tell you, urine and electricity do NOT mix!”

He laughed harder, his hands holding his stomach as tears rolled down his red face.

My heart rate accelerated, my blood beginning the characteristic tickle as it thickened. My teeth vibrated as I watched him bark and guffaw.

“Uhh, Reid,” Heather whispered, her ever-widening eyes fixed on me.

My fingers snapped wide, tiny blue sparks discharging from my palms when the power inside me met the sweat adorning my flushed skin.

“Reid!”

My veins solidified, telling me my organs were preparing to shield themselves. My vision started to blur, the edges fogging with the white mist that seeped across my eyes.

The overhead wires jolted and jumped, the energy flowing through them hunting for its Master. Me.

“REID!” Heather screamed as she dived for him, pushing him back behind a small shielded wall when I let go and fractured the atmosphere in the room.

I blinked away the fog, my brain snapping back into place. My nostrils and throat filled with the heavy scent of smoke and burning plastic. My backside hurt and I shifted, aware I was now sat on the hard concrete floor with my back pressed to the wall.

My palms were sore, my skin blistered and red. I looked up at the blackened and still sparking wires swaying loosely in the still of the room.

Clambering up, I froze when I was met with stares from Reid and Heather. Reid no longer held that irritating bored expression, instead his eyes were narrow and his wide chest heaved violently beneath the black brushed cotton of his shirt.

“I think I broke it,” I whispered.

“Ya’ think?” Heather scoffed.

I backed up when Reid stormed across the room to me, his long legs providing large strides, closing the gap between us in seconds. The rubber at my back was soft when he slammed me against the wall, a huge contradiction to how his hand gripped my jaw, and he pulled my face close to his. “What the fuck was that?”

His hot, angry breath caused me to choke on a whimper. He pulled me even closer, the tip of his nose squashing mine as his fierce eyes turned to slits.

“Get out of my head, Reid.”

His jaw clenched when he came across the firewall I formed in my mind, blocking the connection of our corresponding CPU’s. That was at least something they had thought important enough to teach me.

“Fuck! Elina, what the hell are you?”

I reared back, hurt by his hostility. “You know what I am.” I hated the choked, wounded way it came out. “I’m one of you.”

He shook his head which hurt me more. I so desperately wanted to belong. And as much as Reid pissed me off, he was like me. He was one of the eight. My family.

I had finally found one of them, one to which I belonged. But his denial squeezed my chest and I gulped back the pain suffocating me.

“No.” His voice had quietened and I wondered if it was because he saw my ache. “We’re
not
like you, Elina. We can only control the electricity in the atmosphere, manipulate the atoms around us to feed our energy. You . . .” He shook his head again as if disbelieving his own words. “You not only take from the air, you take from
everything,
every resource available, including manmade power. You consumed every fucking energy source around, including the generated current through those cables. They were your puppets. They did your bidding. I’ve never . . .”

He blinked, his eyes tracking the tear that had freed itself and run quickly down my cheek. More followed, until I couldn’t hold them back. “I’m sorry,” I choked out, swiping at my face. “I don’t know. It’s just always been like that. I don’t know.” I turned and pulled at the door. “Let me go. Please.”

“Elina . . .”

“No!” I sobbed. “I want to go. I’m sorry.”

I pulled at the door, frantic to escape their hatred, their abhorrence of the monster in the room. I didn’t want to be different, I wanted to fit in, be with people who understood me. I had believed I’d found something to connect me to this earth, someone who could teach me, help me live normally. But I was wrong. I was on my own, abnormal, a deviant.

“Let her go, Reid,” Heather urged.

He exhaled at length and pursed his lips. “I won’t allow you to leave the building.” My heart sank. “But follow me.”

He passed me, retrieving a key from his pocket and unlocking the door, then stalked back up the stairs. I followed him, disappointed when he came back into his office. I just wanted to leave. I wasn’t sure I could take their repulsed expressions.

He didn’t stop. Punching a code into another keypad and then pressing his thumb to an electronic identity screen, one of the other locked doors opened. He turned to me. “Come.”

I didn’t have the energy to retort to the simple command, so I followed him up a set of stairs.

He opened another door and gestured for me to go through. My jaw snapped open as a huge room opened up. It was as cold as it was large. Long white walls extended so far that I knew this room was the entire area of the building. Shocks of black furniture broke the harshness; a long black leather sofa tucked to one side of the room, a giant TV, and numerous gaming consoles haphazardly tossed with various games onto a long black glass coffee table in front of it. A long black dining table sat to the other side, a mysterious white sculpture sat lonely in the centre. A large kitchen, with of course more black fixtures held one large corner and to the other side, a massive bed, with black scattered sheets.

Different to the office though, was that the walls held a vast amount of pictures, photographs of people I knew instantly were Reid’s family from their resemblance to him. Each seemed to be organised along the walls in chronological order, two people I presumed to be his parents holding a young boy, then holding two boys around ten years apart in age. A large one was of the two boys flying a kite on the beach, then what looked like a graduation. The farther along I looked, I noticed the older boy disappeared, leaving just Reid and his parents, then just Reid and his father.

And then I came to rest my eyes on one that had my feet moving slowly across the room towards it. It hung above a gigantic fireplace, fitted into a separating wall between two sections of the room.

“She’s so beautiful.” I hadn’t meant to say it, it just tumbled from me, my lack of discipline making me cringe. I spun round quickly, mortified by my loose mouth. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to infer . . .”

“Petra,” he stated quietly, his eyes leaving me slowly to gaze at the large photo. “My wife.”

I nibbled on the inside of my cheek, refusing to understand what his revelation did to my gut. His eyes held the picture for a moment longer, soft and full of pain, before they came back to me and he shook himself off.

“Make yourself at home. I’ll be back later.” And with that, he left me in the huge room, more alone than I had ever been.