Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy (39 page)

“Do
you remember when I asked you about the reason you became my friend,” I ask
him.

Suspicious,
Milo says, “Yes.”

“Do
you remember what you told me?”

He
nods, but doesn’t repeat what he said so long ago. My Naturalism courses
through my body, gathering up the drug and memorizing its makeup. I need a
little more time.

“I
asked you if you sought me out because you honestly liked me, or because you
saw me as a way to get back at the Guardians.” I pause, lending my
concentration to my talent for just a second. I’m almost there. “You told me
you were with me only because you wanted to be with me.”

“Yeah,”
Milo says slowly. “What’s your question?”

“My
question is …” I say, wrapping up my work and storing the information. My
Naturalism hovers nearby waiting for when I will need it next. “… did you mean it?
Was that really the only reason you were with me back then, because you loved
me?”

His
answer hurts more than I expect.

“No,”
he says. “I did love you, but I also needed you. I would have made you believe
I loved if I’d had to in order to get what I wanted from you. I needed a way to
hit the Guardians, and you were it.”

He
brings the glass back to my lips and spills the water into my mouth. Before my
eyes close again, I say, “I only loved you for one reason, Milo. Because you
were the first person in my life who made me feel like it was okay to be who I
really was. You made me believe in myself for the first time. Thank you for
that.”

Chapter
30

Gateway

My eyes stay closed as I
listen to Milo lock the door behind him when he leaves. I still don’t open my
eyes. The soft echo of Milo’s voice whispering, “I’m sorry,” drifts through the
bars. The desire to cry for him builds in my chest until it feels ready to
burst. I hold on until the sound of footsteps disappears entirely. Only then,
do tears slip down my face and soak into the pillow. It takes me another few
minutes to open my eyes. Even longer to lift my head. Rolling far enough to the
side for my head to hang over the edge of the bed makes me nauseous. I spit out
a clump of white powder. It splatters on the floor unceremoniously.

I
know I’ll have to find a way to hide that before Milo comes back, but I’ll
worry about that later. The quarter-sized blob of toxin is probably only half
of what was inside the glass. I’ll do better next time. For a first attempt,
and having no clue what I was doing, using my Naturalism to isolate the
chemical structure of the poison and trap even half of it was better than I was
expecting. I can hardly move right now, but getting half the dose out of my
system means the drugs will wear off twice as fast as usual. Given that Milo
visits me once a day, I’ll still be barely mobile for about twelve hours. That
gives me close to twelve hours to get in contact with Celia.

Having
only an hour a day to think about her last words to me, it took a lot longer to
figure it out than it should have. Well, I still didn’t figure it out
completely. I get that she wants me to meet her in the spirit world, but I
still don’t understand what she meant by being wrong about that place. The day
she asked me to try and perform an Inquest on her, she left saying that the
spirit world was just an empty place now that the Ciphers weren’t trapped there
anymore. She said she was wrong, but what does that mean? If it’s not an empty
place, what is it filled with?

There’s
only one way to find out.

Every
hour or so, I test my Spiritualism. Whatever this crap is Milo keeps making me
drink dulls my mental capacity. It takes just as much mental power as it does
spiritual power to use my Spiritualism. And since this has always been the
talent I’ve struggled to master despite my added power, I need to be at the top
of my game. The minutes tick by painfully slow. At first, all I can manage is
to get into a trance. Eventually, I’m able to contact my spirit and send out a
few feelers. It’s hard to tell time alone in my cell, but I think it’s been
about ten hours when I am able to push my spirit away from my body and into the
subconscious waiting area that leads to the spirit world.

It’s
only my spirit body. Even still, the ability to move around freely feels so
good. No chains around my ankle, no tiny little room to suffocate me. For a
moment, I simply move each muscle in my body, walk, run, spread my arms and
breathe. Then I take off at a sprint toward the barrier. Time is a tricky thing
in the spirit world. You never really know how long you’ve been here in
physical-world time. The ratio is fluid and unstable. I don’t know how long
I’ll be able to stay. I have to be back in my body, faking being drugged,
before Milo comes back to see me. I crash through the barrier and skid to a
stop on the other side.

The
young Asian man sitting in full lotus position blinks and stares at me like I’m
a ghost. “You’re here!” he exclaims.

“Who
are you?” I ask.

“Alex
Takima. Celia recruited me. I go to school with her.”

“What
are you doing here? It’s got to be about four in the morning.”

“I’m
watching for you. We take shifts. Someone is always here waiting just in case
you ever showed up,” he says. Then a light seems to come on in his brain. “I’m
supposed to get Celia as soon as you show up. She’s been waiting for you for
weeks!”

“Can
you get her now?”

He
jumps up excitedly. “Yeah, I’ll be right back. I’m going to jump back and call
her. Don’t go anywhere.”

Not
a problem. He disappears, leaving a puff of ethereal mist in his wake. I count
the seconds. Not that it matters, given the time anomaly, but it helps keep me
from getting too impatient. I reach just over three minutes before Celia bursts
through the boundary behind me. I spin around and catch her in a hug. When she
finally pulls back, tears are pouring down her elated face.

“Libby!
I can’t believe it’s you. Thank goodness I wasn’t in school or my ballet
teacher would probably be wondering what on earth I was doing lying in the
middle of the dance floor, but I wouldn’t have cared. I couldn’t believe it
when Alex called. I jumped as soon as he gave me the message.” Her hands cover
her mouth as she giggles. “Lance kept telling us you were still alive, but
after all the pain he felt from you we started getting scared that they were
doing something really bad to you. We couldn’t figure out why you hadn’t met me
here yet.”

“Milo’s
been drugging me,” I explain. “How long has it been since he took me?”

“Six
weeks.”

I
shake my head in frustration. We sit down in the mists across from each other. “I
was hoping he was lying about how long it’s been. I only remember about three
weeks of being held. They must have kept me drugged nonstop for the first
couple weeks.”

“Have
they really been hurting you? Braden is a mess. All he can think about is
whether or not they’re torturing you,” Celia says.

Like
they did him. The scars across his chest have to be a constant reminder to him
of how sick the Guardians are.

“When
they first let me wake up, they kicked me around a little, but it wasn’t a big
deal. I hope Lance didn’t suffer too much. Nobody has hurt me in a while. I’m
okay. Tell Braden I’m fine, now, and tell Lance I’m sorry.”

“Lance
wasn’t hurt that bad. It was knowing that you were in pain and not being able
to help you that was the worst part. For him and Braden. Every time Lance
started feeling the pain, Braden was right there. He wouldn’t leave him alone
for a second. It’s been so hard for him not to come find you,” Celia says.

Thinking
of him melts my bravado. My mouth starts twitching and pulling into frowns I
can’t control. Before I can stop myself, I’m crying like a baby. “I miss him so
much. Is he okay? I know he must hate himself for not trying to stop me from
going. Is he alright?”

Celia
wraps me up in hug and shushes me like I’m a small child who has just skinned
her knee. It’s what I need, though. She holds onto me and says, “He’s okay,
Libby. It was really hard for him at first, but me and Lance have been keeping
him really busy training the new recruits and checking on the Ciphers all over
the world. We run him so ragged, he barely even has time to breathe, but that’s
the way he wants it right now. He just breaks down if he thinks about where you
are for too long.”

“I
hate not being able to feel him around me. Not having him near me is worse than
being beaten by that thug, Thomas. I can’t even dream about him because the drugs
put me under too deeply.” That has been agony for me. I have so many good
memories of Braden sitting around my mind just waiting to be accessed.

“How
are you here now? Did Milo stop drugging you?” Celia asks.

“No,
I figured out how to keep the drugs from getting into my bloodstream using my
Naturalism. It worked well enough.”

Celia
just stares at me. “You what?”

“I
gathered the drug back up and spit it out,” I say, unsure of myself now. “I
only got about half of it, though, or I would have been here sooner.”

“I
… I can’t believe you were able to do that, Libby. There are people who train
for years, decades, to work as Cures. They’re called in when people are
poisoned or bitten by something. They try to heal the person by removing the
venom or toxin,” Celia says. “Cures are the absolute best at what they do, but
they’re success rate is only about ten percent. You did it with no training at
all, and got half the drug back out. That’s incredible!”

“Uh,
great, Celia, but I don’t know how long I can stay here. I have to get back
before Milo brings me my next meal. Can we discuss the weirdness of what I can
do some other time?” I ask.

“Sure,
as long as you show me how to do it later.”

I
nod and she grins. “So, what has been going on at the training house? You said
something about new recruits?”

“Yeah,
your friend Jen, she posted the video of Milo storming in and taking you,”
Celia says, the corner of her mouth pulling down into a frown at the mention of
what her brother did. She struggles to get it under control. “Anyway, it went
viral within an hour. After what happened … after Milo …” She has to stop
again. Images of Milo slitting that man’s throat color my vision and I cringe.
“After seeing what the Guardians were willing to do to innocent people, a lot
more recruits have come to us wanting to help. It’s mostly been teens, and
people around Braden’s age who get worked up easier than older people, but even
the parents and grandparents are getting on board by supporting their family
members who want to help. It’s been amazing to see.”

“What
else?” I ask. “Have you gotten any closer to coming up with a plan for my
birthday?”

“I’m
working hard on figuring out the Cipher zombie thing. They had to have combined
their power somehow. Me and a few others have been experimenting on how to
replicate it. I think we’re getting close.”

“Anything
about giving talents back?”

She
shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Libby, but that one’s going to have to be all you.
You’re the only one capable of taking talents. I’ve had some Perceptives try
looking at Braden, and they can’t even sense the emptiness you can.”

“Now
that I know how to counter the drugs, I’ll be able to at least have time to try
and figure it out. I won’t have anything else to do,” I say.

“We
know where you are,” Celia says. “Lance tracked you down the day after you were
taken. They’re holding you in Denver. It’s not a regular Guardian compound so
we can’t use the schematics from Braden to get you out.”

“You’re
not trying to get me out anyway. Lance promised. You guys have to wait until my
birthday.”

“Why?”

“Because
that’s when Howe is going to release me.”

“He’s
only going to let you out so he can kill you,” Celia reminds me.

I
smirk only a tiny portion of my anger, directing it at the mists surrounding me.
“Yeah, we’ll see how that works out for him, won’t we.”

The
truth of that statement weighs down on me. I don’t have a choice, actually. All
I can do is sit in my cell and wait. Howe will send Milo to drag me out in
public where he will dramatically insist I give up my destiny and swear some
kind of medieval fealty to him even though he knows I’d rather eat live
scorpions than ever give in to him. He’ll wait for the moment my diktats flare,
the signal that my talents have been fully unlocked, and I’ve truly become the
Destroyer. That is the moment he will kill me, if his information about me is
good enough. He might be in for a surprise if it isn’t.

Pulling
my thoughts away from Howe and his righteous sword of murderous dreams, I
remember the reason I came here in the first place. Celia’s last words to me
before I was taken. “Celia, what did you mean when you said you were wrong
about the spirit world?”

Her
whole face blossoms into pure excitement. Celia jumps up and motions for me to
do the same. “You’re not going to believe this,” she gushes. “You have to come
with me!”