Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy (6 page)

I
roll my eyes. “Sure, but you wouldn’t let me come alone, would you?”

“I
said I didn’t doubt, not that I was stupid,” he says with a fierce smile. “Come
on, let’s get this done.”

Blackwood
starts yelling threats and profanities at me, but I ignore him pretty easily.
Daniel is assigned to stay and keep an eye on them while the rest of us head
for the holding cells below. After checking the building scanners to make sure
there aren’t any other Guardians waiting to pounce on us, we turn to the
elevator. The rest of the building appears to be empty, although sublevel four
only gave a sketchy reading. Must have something to do with the talent
interference down there. We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose.

All
five of us pile into the elevator. Milo’s hand reaches over to me, and it takes
me a moment to realize he’s not trying to hold my hand. He’s giving me a gun.
The cold metal of the Glock startles me as he presses it into my hand. I glance
around and realize I’m the only one who doesn’t already have one. Maybe it
should stay that way. I look back at Milo pleadingly.

“You
won’t have your talents down there, Libby. I told you we’d figure something
else out,” Milo says.

“I’ve
never shot a gun before,” I say quietly. Somebody snickers behind me. I don’t
know whether it was Dean, the Texan, or one of the mountain-bred Canadians, but
I ignore all three of them. “Milo, I don’t want it. Take it back.”

He
shakes his head, but he does reach for the gun. I try to shove it back in his
hands, but he only turns it over to show me something. “This is your safety,”
he says, pointing at a small switch. “Keep it on unless you really think you
need to shoot. Then just point and squeeze the trigger. You’ll be fine.”

When
he pushes it back into my hands, I hold it away from my body like it might bite
me. I’m not against guns, necessarily, I just know myself. I didn’t end up with
thirteen broken bones because things always work out well for me. Accidents and
outright terrible choices follow me around constantly. I’m more likely to shoot
myself than any Seeker trying to kill me.

The
elevator chimes and stops. My hands tighten around the gun’s grip reflexively
as the door slides open. The Guardians are egotistical enough to pull every
member of the compound up to greet me, but Blackwood isn’t that stupid. At
least, I don’t think so. There has to be somebody down here keeping an eye on
the Ciphers.

Milo
takes the lead looking oddly comfortable with a pistol in hand. I’ve never seen
him hold, let alone shoot a gun before. Apparently this isn’t the first time.
He holds it in front of him and steps forward with heavy movements that tell me
he is already being affected by the interference. On him, it isn’t an
unfamiliar look. I knew Milo before I unlocked his talents, and remember very
well how he used to move. Plus, even with Speed and Strength, Milo is not the
most graceful person in the world. He’s nothing like Braden when it comes to
that.

Dean
urges me forward, bringing my thoughts back to what we’re doing, and I step out
of the elevator cautiously. The subtle lessening of all my talents scares me. I
can feel my mind and body dulling with each step. My identity, my purpose, is
stripped away from me the deeper I go into the prison. Milo keeps moving
steadily, but I’m having a hard time keeping up. Hope that I’m not the only one
struggling makes me glance back at Dean and the others. Dean has had his
talents the longest of the three. The scowl on his face shows how hard he has
to concentrate. Kayla and Hammond actually look more chipper than they did
before coming down here. But this is normal for them. They both look to be
somewhere in their mid-thirties. They’ve lived without talents all their lives
up until yesterday. They look almost relieved to be rid of the onslaught of new
sensations and information.

I’m
so absorbed in the strangeness of this place that I almost don’t see Milo hold
up his fist. I skid to a stop before running into the back of him. We’re at the
end of the hallway. The talent-stealing affects are even worse here. I can feel
them pulling at me from around the corners.

“Dean,
you take Hammond and Kayla left. Libby and I will go right. Stay together.
Shoot anything that resists,” Milo says.

He’s
taking over again, but I really don’t care at the moment. Heck, he’s good at
it. And I’m too busy trying to shake off the feeling of my life force being
sucked out of me to argue with him. I’m not even sure I can pull the trigger of
the gun in my hand like this. I feel so incredibly weak, and it’s only going to
get worse the farther in we go. When Milo steps forward, I try not to be a baby
and shield myself with his bulk.

We
make it to the end of the next hallway, passing several innocuous holding
cells, without incident. I feel horrible, but my body doesn’t actually seem to
be having any noticeable trouble. That gives me hope. I grip the Glock more
steadily and step to the other side of the hallway when we come to another
fork. We step out at the same time, backs to one another, and I find nothing.
My heart rate slows back down, and I turn back to ask Milo which way he wants
to go. The man standing in front of him with a gun pointed at his head makes me
gasp.                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                         

My
first reaction is to tap my talents. The sputtering grumble of nothing snaps me
back to reality.

“Drop
your weapon,” the Seeker demands.

“Don’t
do it,” Milo says.

“I’ll
shoot him if you don’t.” The hard set of his body makes it clear just how
serious he is. I’ve been trying to learn more about healing with Naturalism
from Milo’s dad. It’s one of the hardest things to do with that talent. I’ve
gotten fairly good at the basics of first aid, but getting shot at point blank
range, not even me at my full power and all the knowledge in the world could do
anything about that.

My
fingers uncurl from the grip and fan out in a peaceful gesture. The Seeker’s
eyes narrow. He suspects some kind of trick, but what am I going to do down
here that he won’t be able to dodge or stop? Throw it at him? That’ll go over
well. He’s not exempt from the interference, but he looks very well trained. I
start bending down, lowering my gun to the floor carefully. My eyes never leave
his, but my thoughts are frantically searching for something to do. He doesn’t
have any talents, either. That’s the purpose of this place. But like Milo said,
if that was all they were focusing on when they designed it, chances are they
overlooked something a person could exploit when they’re without talents. What,
though?

I
almost jump in surprise when my knee touches the floor. My slight pause causes
the Seeker to inch forward, closer to Milo. Even Milo tenses, then. The
Seeker’s left foot twitches, a balance check he wouldn’t have needed to make
with his talents in place. It’s a tiny movement, but it reminds me of
something, two somethings, actually.

“I’m
putting the gun down,” I say calmly. “Don’t do anything rash, okay?”

He
watches me. He doesn’t trust me even a little bit. That’s fine. He shouldn’t.
Steel clicks against the tiled floor as the tip of my gun makes contact. I
slide the body of it onto the floor as well. The gun is down, but I don’t move
to stand back up yet. He doesn’t trust me. Well, the feeling is mutual. For a
moment, we stare at each other, judging the other one’s honesty. That’s what
he’s doing, anyway. I already know he’ll shoot Milo if I give him the chance.
I’m simply keeping his eyes off what my left hand is doing. I just pray Milo
isn’t ticklish on his ankles.

My
hand is in place when the Seeker finally breaks eye contact with me. “Stand
up!” he demands. “Back away from the weapon.”

Just
like endurance, reflexes aren’t completely linked to Speed and Strength.

My
hand rips the knife off Milo’s ankle and flings it straight into the Seeker’s
thigh. His right leg crumples immediately, throwing him to the ground. The pain
makes him drop his gun. It clatters to the floor and I kick it away from him a
second later. Milo has him pinned to the ground before I get my foot back on
the floor. The small knife wasn’t big enough to do any real damage, but the
shock and sting of its bite is enough. A small trickle of blood dribbles onto
the floor as the Seeker glares at me. He’s not the only one who was surprised.
Milo looks back at me with a disbelieving grin.

 “They
may be strong, but they aren’t invincible,” I say.

“Apparently
not,” Milo says as he flips the Seeker onto his stomach. The zip ties he pulls
out of his back pocket secure his prisoner with his hands and feet behind his
back, then bound to each other in a reverse fetal position. Breathing isn’t
going to be easy, and escaping will be difficult even for someone with dulled Strength.
Milo yanks his knife out of the guy’s leg and snaps it toward his throat. Caught
off guard, I barely grab his hand in time to stop him from drawing the blade
back.

“Milo,
what are you doing?”

He
stares at me like I have just asked him the stupidest question he’s ever heard.
“We can’t leave him alive. He might come after us.”

I
gestured at the contorted figure on the ground. “He’s not going anywhere any
time soon. Just leave him.”

“But,
Libby …”

“Come
on, we don’t have that much time, just leave him.”

Milo’s
expression darkens as he sheaths his knife. “At least let me gag him so he
doesn’t yell for help.”

I
gesture for him to go ahead. I step around the Guardian and the puddle of blood
forming around his thigh where I hit him. I look away from him, glad the other
something I remembered right after reminding myself of the knife Milo keeps in
his ankle sheath was that Guardians think they’re above wearing body armor. That
knowledge would have been even better with a gun, but Milo’s knife worked, too.
He keeps several knives on his person, actually. I’m just glad I was on the
right side of him to grab it.

As
soon as Milo finishes gagging our captive, he stands up and says, “You know you
could have just shot him. It would have been easier and faster than going for
the knife.”

“He
wasn’t expecting the knife. He would have shot you if he thought I was going to
shoot,” I say. “I didn’t trust myself enough to try shooting him, anyway. I’ve
trained with knives at school, not guns. I probably would have missed, and then
he would have shot both of us.” It all sounds perfectly logical, but I drop my
eyes and admit the biggest reason I didn’t try the gun. “Plus, I realized my
safety was still on. Taking it off would have told him what I was about to do.”

Milo
just shakes his head and hands me back my gun. I flick the safety off this
time, just in case. We decide to go right, the direction the Seeker came from.
Either he was the only poor sap left out of the fun upstairs, or Dean and his
team already got to any others. The rest of our hunt is uneventful. We reach
the ridiculously thick doors of the final cell block—the ones pulsing out the
talent-stealing interference—to find it already ajar. No sound immerges from
the poorly lit room. Milo slips inside the narrow opening, takes three steps,
and drops to his knees.

Chapter
6

Time to Choose

I rush in behind him and
stare at the empty cell to my right. “They aren’t here?”

My
hand sweeps across my forehead in frustration. Everything we did today, it was
all pointless. They must have moved them right after Blackwood gave his
ultimatum. “I can’t believe this,” I say, turning back to Milo. He’s not
looking at me. His head is cradled in his hands, the Glock pressing into his
temple painfully. Profound grief seeps through the interference. Only when I
feel the subtle touch of his emotions do I realize his aren’t the only ones. My
initial shock and dulled talents kept everyone else’s feelings from reaching my
mind.

Chills
run up my spine as I let myself feel the terrible pain and anger of the others
in the room with me. It’s then that I realize Milo isn’t staring at the first
cell like I was. He’s looking straight ahead. My mind refuses to let me process
the clues. All I can do is slowly force my body to turn. At first, I can’t see
anything in the dim room. The cell looks empty, until I look down.

Every
part of me goes completely numb as I stare at the blackness of dozens of body
bags lying on the floor. Every surface is covered with them, the floor, the
beds, the benches. I don’t have to count them to know there are eighty-one.
Casey’s lifelong friend Caroline is in one of those bags. Cole’s brother, Sam
Vera, as well. My miniature renegade, he has been desperate to see his brother
again, and now he never will. So many others I had gotten to know and consider
friends over the summer have been wrapped up and stacked like forgotten Legos.
They’re gone. They’re all gone.

I
don’t cry.

I
get very, very angry.

Nobody
stops me when I bolt from the room. The multi-colored walls flash by me in a
red-tinged blur. Blood pounding through my veins colors everything I see with
vengeance. I don’t bother with the elevator. My returning Speed carries me up
the stairs faster than a machine ever could. The sound of the last door
slamming open when I reach the lobby full of trapped Guardians echoes through
the silent room. They don’t make a sound, but they all turn to stare at me. Daniel
blinks in surprise at my sudden appearance. Red-faced, furious, hair blown
loose by the speed of my running, and a look that I’m sure promises death,
shocks every one of them into wide-eyed fear. The only one brave enough to
speak is Blackwood.