Activate (5 page)

I
’m
in a metal cell in the middle of some kind of command center. No, that’s not right. My jail isn’t made of metal, because if it was, I could get out of my jail more easily. Of course, if I get out, I’ll still have to deal with
them
. The five guys people holding me here.

Five who are somehow stronger than me and know who I am. Can it be a coincidence that there are five of them like there are five of us? Possible, but highly unlikely. I don’t like this.

I pushed my emergency trigger, but Levi and his friends just started laughing, and told me no signal can get out from here unless they want it to. I am uber smart, and super-human, so I have to be able to come up with a way out of here. I
have
to.

“Have you thought of a way out yet, Abigail?” Levi asks me with a smirk.

“I’m going to kill you first when I get out of here.”

“If you’d just be willing to listen to what I have to tell you, you’d know there’s no reason to fight me. The ten of us should be working together.”

“I know nothing of you, so why would I want to join forces with you?”

“You knew nothing of you Creator until around two days ago, and yet you followed him blindly.”

“He
created
me.”

“With help, yes, but that shouldn’t be enough for you to trust him blindly, should it?”

No, it shouldn’t. Yes! It should. I shake my head. “You’re trying to confuse me.”

“No. I’m trying to get you to see the truth.”

“Your version of the truth.”

“It is not just mine, it’s ours.”

“Stop trying to attach me to you and your terrorist friends.”

“We are not terrorists, Abigail. We have attacked computer systems, and governments, yes, but no innocent person has been hurt by us.”

“Who are you to decide which people are innocent.”

“The ones who aren’t trying to kill me are innocent. Is that clear enough for you?”

Before I can answer him, one of the other boys rushes over. “They’re on the beach. All four of them.”

“We’ll finish this conversation later, Abigail. It’s time for me to go out and greet your friends.”

He nods to one of the other boys, and then leaves with the three girls. Once they’re gone, my babysitter flips a few switches on the consoles and walks over to my cell. While Levi merely angers me, this guy scares me a little.

“I’ve shut off the cameras and audio in here.”

“Okay.” Not okay. At all.

“I’m Clayton.”

“Hi.”

“We’re going to help each other.”

“Are we?” I ask, trying to make is sound flippant instead of frightened.

“Yes.”

“Why would I trust you?”

He smiles as he pushes a few buttons on his phone and then turns it to me. “Because he’s going to tell you to.”

My eyes widen as I see my Creator sitting in a room with another woman. They are both smiling at me. “Hello, Abigail. This is my friend, and fellow Creator. By now, you’ve met her creations. They’ve gone rogue, but I know you won’t join them, just like Clayton hasn’t really joined them, either. You’ll both help us destroy them—and you—once and for all.”

What? I don’t want to die. This was supposed to be about saving people, and not dying. I look around for a way to get out.

“Don’t be scared, Abigail. You’re about to fulfill your true destiny.” No. No! I don’t want this. He pauses, looks straight into the camera and says the word that changes everything for me. “Moriarty.”

Both my mind and my body shudder, and then it all becomes clear. We’re a threat to humans, and we need to be eradicated, along with the Muses.

We must hunt them down, and kill them. There is no other way. I’m going to be the one to do it.
Me.
There is no other choice.

“
T
here’s
no one on the beach.”

“Did you think there would be?” the man in my head asks.

“Yes. I did.”

“They will be coming, and while you’re not ready, there’s no turning back now.

“Who? Who’s coming.”

“The other creations.”

“Others? There are others like us?”

“Yes. There were five sets of five created.”

“20 are here?”

“No. Fifteen were already lost. Those from Moscow, Shanghai, and London are already gone. Only ten of you remain.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’? What happened to them?”

“He will tell you all. Listen to him. Listen to Levi.”

“You said you’re my Muse. What does that mean?”

“Again, Levi will explain it all. Trust him.”

“Are you leaving me?”

“No. As long as I am still living, I will also be with you. Sometimes you may not be able to hear me, but I am with all five of you. Always.”

I want to ask more, but all of a sudden I see three girls and a boy come out from the rocks. They seem to have appeared out of nowhere, but I know there must be a secret door.

“We’re not going to hurt you. Come down and talk to us,” the boy, who I think must be Levi, yells to us.

Coalton is the first to jump down, followed by Michaela. I land at the same time as Sabrina, and then the four of us gather into a line, facing off with the others. The voice—my Muse—told me I can find the answers to all my questions from the boy, so I’ll listen for now.

“Where is she?” Michaela asks.

“Abigail is inside,” he tells her.

“Bring us to her,” Coalton says.

“Of course. You must realize that we are like you, and we want to help.”

“You’ll have to prove that to us,” Sabrina tells him, and he locks eyes with her.

“I will.”

“We need to get inside, Levi,” one of the girls says.

“My sister is right. Let’s get inside.”

“I don’t think we really have a choice,” Michaela tells us.

“There’s always a choice,” Sabrina responds.

“Is there?” Coalton asks her.

“I’d like to think so. I say we go with them,” I respond.

I know I shouldn’t be listening to voices in my head, but right now, nothing else is making sense either. As we follow the four into the hidden doorway, I’m hoping we didn’t make the wrong choice. If we did, I don’t know that we’ll make it out alive. Actually, even if we chose right, there’s no guarantee of that, either.

T
his is right
. That’s the thought running through my mind as we follow these four people inside. That feeling alone is making me want to stop fighting this sense that there’s more to me than what I’ve been discovering these last two days.

Who am I really? I think this group may have the answers to that question, and even if they don’t, we need to get Abigail back. She’d do the same for us; at least I think she would.

Once we’re inside, we see her sitting inside a cell, glaring at the other person in the room with her. He’s introduced to us as Clayton, the three girls are Lauren, Jennifer, and Alejandra, and the ringleader is Levi. I look around at them, and I have to ask.

“Were all the sets made up of three girls and two boys?”

“No,” Levi tells me. “There were two sets with three boys.”

“Shanghai and Moscow?” Sabrina guesses.

He turns to smile at her. “Yes.”

The way they’re looking at each other makes me want to ask if they need to get a room. I’m not going to deny he’s hot, especially with that accent, and Sabrina has the most gorgeous green eyes I’ve ever seen. I know I’m pretty, but my almost black eyes aren’t as startling, and even Abigail’s raw sensuality can’t compare to Sabrina and her natural beauty.

Speaking of Abigail, she chooses this moment to finally speak up. “Are you going to let me out now?”

“No. I don’t think I’m ready to do that just yet.”

“How come they get to stay out there?”

“Because I say so.”

“You’ll pay for this.”

“And that’s why you’re in there.

I look a little more closely at Abigail, because I’m wondering why she’d provoke Levi. I can’t sense things like Sabrina, but I still notice the change. She’s somehow
colder
. She’s been mean and angry the last couple of days, but this, this seems different.

Cold-blooded killer is what comes to mind, and I know I’m right the moment I think it. I know she’d kill one of us and not bat an eye. If nothing scared me before, this realization chills me to the bones. She was a nice girl just a couple of days ago, and now she’s completely different. We’re all different, but not like this. This is hate, and I have to hold back a shudder as the word courses through me.

“My group won’t listen to you while I’m locked up!” she insists.

“You’re wrong.”

“Why would they choose you over me? I’m their sister.”

“Yes. We all saw that sisterly love while you made your boat captain ignore them while they were in distress.”

“You did that? You left us to fend for ourselves?” Sabrina asks, a look of horror on her face.

“You’re fine.”

“What if we weren’t?” I ask.

“Casualties are always a reality when you’re at war.”

“That wasn’t war,” Coalton reminds her.

“Whatever. Listen to Levi, and you’ll all suffer for it.”

“Right now, I’m thinking aligning with him is way better than sticking with you. Sister or not, you left two of us for dead,” Hinton tells her.

“Just remember; you were warned!”

“Noted,” I say. “Now tell us what you know, Levi.”

“With pleasure.”

T
he mood
in the room is tense, but also hopeful.
My
mood is one of wonder. I’m intrigued by Levi. Not because he’s dangerously good looking, but because there’s
something
about him. I can’t put my finger on it, but I trust him. I don’t know why, but I just do. I can tell Hinton does, too. Michaela wants to believe, and Coalton is waiting to see what happens, but he’s leaning that way.

Abigail, well, she’s a totally different story. I feel hate, genuine and pure, rolling off of her. Not just for Levi, but all of us as well. It’s like a switch has been flipped inside of her, and all of her humanity has been stripped away. It makes me glad she’s in her cage right now, and I won’t be advocating for her release anytime soon.

“Have a seat,” Levi tells us, sitting next to me as I take mine. I like that he did that—too much. “So, you all know we were created, but I’m going to explain to you the how and why of all of it.”

“It’s not important!” Abigail yells.

“It
is
, and she knows it. Ignore her. Twenty years ago, five ‘aliens’ landed in our world, looking for a new place to live because their planet was failing. They were all they had left of their people, and they didn’t want their species to die out. Since they could shape-shift, they made themselves look human, spread out to cities around the world, and tried to blend in. It worked for a little while, until the government in China found the first one, and tortured her until she admitted there were more. They forced her to contact the others through telepathy, and though they knew it was a trap, they came for their sister anyway.

“Once taken, they were brought into a room where the leaders of the covert services for their countries were waiting for them. These men told them they could live if they helped them create a new species. The five wanted to live, but they also knew not to trust these men. They agreed, while planning their escape. They became known as the Muses; blood and tissue from their bodies was taken from them.”

“We can shape-shift?” Coalton asks.

Levi shakes his head. “No. When our DNA was created, it was done with diluted matter from them. The governments wanted us to be
like
them in some ways, but they knew having twenty-five more who were just as powerful would be too dangerous. Also, they had other things they wanted to put in there. In addition to the alien part of our DNA, they were somehow able to give us the skills of famous detectives and spies from literature, movies, and television. I don’t know how they figured it out, and made it into something concrete that could be passed on, but we all have the skills.

“We think like Sherlock Holmes, fight like James Bond, charm people like Charlie’s Angels, and we can adapt like Jason Bourne and Sidney Bristow. There are others we have traits from, like Veronica Mars, Monk, Nancy Drew, and the detectives created by Agatha Christie, but I won’t name everyone—it would take far too long. Suffice to say, we can solve any crime, and fight any fight with no problem at all. We were born this way, and in the minds of the different government men, that would make us the perfect soldiers one day.”

“You don’t know how it was done?” Hinton asks.

“The DNA manipulation? No. Maybe if we’d been given the DNA of famous doctors or scientists, but I think they kept those skills from us for a reason. We aren’t meant to know, and really, we weren’t supposed to think for ourselves, even before ‘activation.’”

“We
did
have a different life, didn’t we?” Michaela inquires.

“Yes. You remember there was more, don’t you?”

“I do. I just feel like there is more than what I am now.”

“There is, and we’ll help all of you remember.”

“How? How can you do all this? Was your DNA manipulated differently than ours?” I ask, because I feel like I should’ve known.

How does Michaela know, and not me? Or the other three? Do they know, and I’m just the one who doesn’t? Levi’s hand lands on my knee, giving it a squeeze. I look up and he’s smiling at me.

“Our DNA was all done at once so there could be no variations, or advantages, to one country over another—remember some of our countries are not friends. But…the five men wanted to be able to have each of their five have a specific focus, so they manipulated the DNA even more, and came up with five versions. The leader, the fighter, the empath, the super-soldier, and the analyst.”

“I’m the empath,” I say.

“Fighter,” Michaela admits, holding up her hand.

“Analyst,” Hinton tells him.

“Super-soldier. I have the strength and the brains combined.”

“You do, Coalton,” Levi agrees.

“Obviously, I’m the leader. So let me lead,” Abigail yells out.

“Moving on. the Muses also knew how to manipulate their own DNA, so they collectively put something extra in there. Because the DNA was diluted, only two of every five of us got what they gave us. One remembers—a little at a time, but it will all come back eventually. The other has the gift of telepathy, and can communicate with their Muse. I am the telepath in my group, and Alejandra is the one who remembers. We’ve already established that Michaela is the one of you who remembers.”

“I’m our telepath,” Hinton admits.

“Yes, not the ‘analyst’ that your Creator wanted you to think you are, but a telepath like me.”

“Traitors,” Abigail yells. “Kill the traitors!”

I don’t know who she’s talking to until Clayton moves. He has some kind of knife, and he goes for Hinton. We all jump up, and inexplicably, Levi stands in front of me.

I don’t have time to think about that now, as I watch what’s playing out in front of me. Lauren tosses a similar knife to Hinton, and then it’s on.