Echo Into Darkness: Book 2 in The Echo Saga (Teen Paranormal Romance) (26 page)

"The cuff overrides the chip," Keenan said.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you shouldn't have to dodge this."

Keenan snapped his fingers and a heavy crystal vase flew at my head. I ducked out of its path. It splintered against the wall.

My eyes bulged. He was telekinetic!

"Just so we're clear, you have full use of your paranormal talents as long as you're wearing that cuff," Keenan said.

"Where do you think she'll fit in? Coercion? Destruction?" Jaxon asked.

"We'll see how she does during the next round of testing," Keenan replied.

Coercion. Destruction. I remembered these types of agents from my research on the Internet.

Suddenly, I was sliding out of control across the marble floor. I smacked into a wall and began to spin in circles.

"Stop it," Keenan said.

"It's not me. I don't know what's happening." I skidded into another wall.

"I've got control over you. Override my telekinesis and regain control of yourself."

I got down on my knees, because dizziness was about to topple me. "I, I can't."

He sighed and released me. "Either we've met one of your limitations or you're holding back on us."

"She has a problem with fear," Jaxon said. "It makes her weak and scrambles her energy field or something."

"Is that true?" Keenan asked.

I gave him a tight nod. "What do you want from me? I showed you what I could do last night, now please let me and Connor go." I scoured his pale eyes for a hint of compassion. "
Please
. My family will be looking for me. They'll go to the police if I don't call." I forced certainty into these words that, in reality, gave me little faith. Kimber would have seen my note telling her I'd taken a bus to Seattle. She would be mad that I hadn't called, but she wouldn't be worried yet.

Keenan pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and I recognized the red and black swirly pattern on its case. It was mine. He tapped a couple of buttons. Kimber's voicemail message came through the speakerphone.

"Echo, I wish you would have talked to me before you left for Seattle," Kimber's voice scolded. "That boy you had trouble with didn't show up at school today. Call me when you get this message."

"We don't want your parents to worry about you," my tormentor said lightly. "It's not that you've gone missing, you're…emotionally taxed and need some space after my foster brother's rude behavior at his apartment."

Jaxon shot him a foul look. "She was supposed to be mine until I was done with her."

Keenan ignored his foster brother and dictated a text message into my phone. "Hi Kimber, don't be mad that I left town. I just need time to myself. Oh," he added as he looked straight at me, "I'll call you in a few days."

A few days?

He sent the text and pocketed my phone. His complete lack of expression summed up the extent of his control. His carefully crafted lies would keep my parents from searching for me.

Frustration heated my neck and spread across the room in waves. The lineup of celebrity photos jumped off the living room wall and flew at Keenan. He dodged them, and, quick as a flash, he unclipped the cuff from my wrist.

"See what I mean? She's got plenty of force when she's mad," Jaxon smirked.

Keenan was not amused. "Striking out against your superior is a mistake an agent makes only once."

He dismissed Jaxon with a nod and led me to the elevator. He called the car to our floor with a key. The elevator didn't have any buttons on the inside, either, just a series of codes etched into the panel and a keyhole next to each one. Keenan keyed one of the floors and from the way my stomach floated against my lungs, I knew the elevator was dropping.

"What was it like when you discovered you could move objects with your mind?"

I squeezed into a corner, as far away from him as possible. My head hung, and I let my hair veil my face.

"Horrible," I mumbled.

"Were you frightened?"

"A little," I lied. I'd been horrified.

"Fear is a form of weakness. My talent came on when I was three years old. I was terrified of it. My father forced me to develop it."

A ribbon of a conversation unfurled in my head. Jaxon's foster father, Keenan's father,
had
been a soldier. Those odd meetings Jaxon witnessed in the garage must have been some of the testing for paranormal ability. I shuddered to think what those children would have gone through.

"Sessions with my father were severe," he continued. "No matter how hard he pushed, I never gained talent beyond telekinesis. However, I learned to never let fear control me."

The expression on his face was chilling. His father had abused him and probably used him to get promoted in the Mutila. Now Keenan was building his own army of gifted kids. If he expected me to soften because he shared his sad story, then he wasn't the mastermind he thought himself to be.

"The testing labs will identify that single key inside you that will overcome fear under every circumstance. We will drill for it, go as deep into your psyche as needed. Anger, hate, revenge—these are the gems we will mine. They will allow your power to thrive beyond your emotional barriers."

Testing labs? I squirmed. "I know what you do," I said. "Your soldiers use their psychic ability to kill people or coerce them into working with you."

His eyebrows raised in appreciation. "Doing a little Internet research, were you? I'm flattered you cared enough to learn about us. Ivan loaded those Web pages. If I remember correctly, anything about the Mutila comes up under Conspiracy Theories. Nice touch, don't you think?"

You can't make me do any of those things,
I wanted to add. I kept my mouth shut.

Keenan continued. "Paranormal power is the new perfect weapon. The ungifted are frightened of phenomena they don't understand, which makes them exceptionally cooperative when I send in a gifted soldier to, say, influence them."

The elevator doors opened to a dark hallway. Our footsteps squeaked on the tile floor. Young voices came from somewhere nearby.

The madness in Keenan's eyes returned. "You are not like everyone else, Echo. You are the elite of society. The non-gifted are simple creatures. They hold more power than they fathom. Not paranormal ability, of course. Nonetheless, they could
change
the world, but what do they do? Nothing. They hide behind phones and computers and televisions and hand over the most important decisions of their little lives to those who will use it for their own gain. And you know what? Whether they're gifted or not, I will gladly make their decisions for them. This country will reach its peak when the Mutila and its sister factions are in control."

"No," I said quietly.

"Pardon me?"

"I'm not better than anyone else."

He shook his head, ever patient. "Come. It's time to see where your weaknesses lie."

Chapter 31

We entered a room divided into different sections. Racks of barbells sat along one wall. A glass case held swords, knives, and spiked mallets.

Dozens of kids my age worked in groups, practicing training exercises. The telekinetics juggled knives with their minds and flung them at dummies marked with red and white target symbols. The pyrokinetics launched arcs of fire and set their own bunch of dummies ablaze. They all must have been forced recruits like me because they each wore a metal cuff on their wrist.

Gianna was off to the side, out of range of the flying knives and fire. Her hand rested on a boy's shoulder, her eyes shut in concentration. He sat rigid with anticipation, the muscles in his arms taut as he braced himself for whatever misfortune Gianna was about to deliver. Gianna's body swayed. The boy quaked into a full-blown seizure. Spittle foamed at the corner of his mouth. She released him, and the boy crumpled to the floor.

"Gianna," Keenan called. She came out of her trance and marched over to us.

"Hi, Keenan," she said flatly.

"This is Echo. Take her through Stage One testing."

She gave me a cursory glance. "She doesn't look like much."

So that was how we were going to play this, pretend not to know each other.

Roth came out of the elevator. "Keenan, we know who's got the list of gifted kids."

"Good job, Roth." He turned to me. "Remember, there's no room for weakness here." He and Roth disappeared behind the elevator's doors.

In the testing room, the boy who had fallen under Gianna's spell rolled onto his hands and knees and tried to stand. His legs gave out and he sat down in a daze.

"What would have happened to that boy if you didn't let go?" I asked.

"He would have died."

I gulped air.

She ushered me into a room across the hall and closed the door behind us. A row of human dummies lined one wall. A fire extinguisher leaned against a row of cabinets. The walls were charred with long black streaks and the air smelled faintly of heat. We were alone.

I grabbed Gianna's arm. "You have to help me," I said. Then, remembering how she reacted the last time I touched her, I let go. "You have to get me out of here. Keenan kidnapped my friend, too."
My one true love
, I wanted to say,
the boy I'm meant to spend my life with
. "Do you know where he is?"

Her face was a blank slate. Her movements were robotic, a stark comparison to the distraught girl I'd encountered at school. She had become invisible again, moving in tiny, fluttery motions, a battered bird beneath Keenan's radar.

"Stage one testing," she recited in a monotone voice. "Minor explosive techniques."

She opened the cabinet and dragged out a large plastic crate filled with…piñatas? I did a double take, giving the colorful party decorations a second to register. The papier-mâché donkey, fish, and llama fixed their dead black eyes on us.

"Tell me," I insisted between clenched teeth. "Where are they keeping Connor?"

She shifted nervously, always, always keeping one ear aimed at the door. "I don't know anything about that." She reached for a hangman's cord dangling from the ceiling and looped it over the llama's neck.

"Can you at least tell my parents I'm here? They need to know what's happening," I begged.

"I definitely cannot do that."

"Then tell
your
parents! Tell somebody!" I worked hard to keep my voice low but hysteria was setting in. "
Dammit, Gianna. Help me.
"

"Pay attention," she hissed. "If you don't pass this test, you get marked down. You get enough marks and…" She yanked the cord tight around the llama's neck.

"And what?"

She spun on me, those wide owl eyes burning. "I warned you. I tried to protect you. You messed everything up. Why should I help you now?"

"I backed off like you told me to! Jaxon turned me in."

She shook her head and spoke below a whisper. "You were the one person on the outside who I thought could help us."

"Me? What was I supposed to do?"

"Like it matters now." She fixed her gaze on the llama. "All you have to do is pass a few tests, do a couple of missions, and you get to go home."

Hope flowered in my chest. "I do?"

"Don't get too excited." She handed me protective glasses, the kind we used in chemistry class. She put on a pair and settled into an open-eyed trance. She began to breath deeply, the way she had when she set the man on fire at the house. With the chip in my wrist, my aura could not pick up what she was doing. If it could, I believed I would have felt a surge of energy rising off her and into the piñata. The llama started to vibrate as though someone were shaking it to inspect its contents. Tentacles of electricity danced along its legs and head. The fine, bright paper smoldered and burned.

"You'll go to school as usual, and when Keenan wants you, he will send a soldier to get you," Gianna said. "You'll go with him, no questions asked, do the mission, and go back to your life. You don't talk to anyone about the Mutila, even when your parents yell at you and ground you for missing school. You give them whatever excuse you have to—too much pressure, or a bad breakup and so you left town for a few days. Got it?"

My heart sank again. "I'm not going to lie to my parents."

"You don't want Keenan going after them, do you?"

The piñata exploded in a ball of fire. Papier-mâché spattered the walls like buckshot. Burning tissue paper dotted the floor.

"Aw, that one was empty," she said and dropped the llama's remains into the trash bin.

"I can't do this," I said. "I can't live like that."

"You'll learn. We all do. The kids on the list that Keenan's tracking down, they'll learn to deal, too." She clipped a metal cuff around my wrist. "And don't mess with the chip in your arm. Ever. It's cause for immediate termination."

My mouth went dry.

"You don't have to get worked up about any of that as long as you do what he tells you to," she said.