I'd never expected to play hero, and didn't really want the role. Several other paranormals would have been better at this than me. Not for the first time, I wished for another path, a normal life in New York. My wishes were made on dead stars, it appeared.
I stretched my body and raised my arms to the sun during my daily exercise routine. My reinvigorated appetite had made my body stronger. Still, my pasty skin and flaccid muscles did not approve of me. I did my best with the time and body I had.
Three days had passed since we'd made the switch. Drake still didn't have his powers back, and I couldn't fathom another possible way to escape. We would both need access to our full powers. Already it seemed an impossible feat.
I finished stretching and went into a push-up/sit-up/strength-training routine, pushing myself not to give up. Superhuman body parts might not have been part of my special powers, but I would use what I did have to maximum effect.
"Drake, how do you think they find us?" I sweated through my t-shirt in the hot sun.
'I don't know. I've been trying to figure that out myself. They didn't find me for a long time, which seems odd. Maybe because I moved so often.'
"You were a secret ninja!" I joked. Not very funny. "What if they have a seer, someone who finds us with a third eye kind of thing? How do we escape someone who can do that?"
'I don't know.'
"I've been thinking. We both use mental powers to manipulate the mind. What if we could figure out a way to join our powers, strengthen our ability to control those frequencies, and link with whoever tries to find us? Link with them and mislead them?"
The idea had been building in my mind for a while.
'That's a brilliant idea, Sam. And it just might work. We should try it here, see if we can link to people farther away. Maybe we can start with your friends. You couldn't link to them alone, but maybe together we could. That will give us a sense of our power and range.'
"I'm not going to start controlling my friends." I felt bad enough doing it to anyone. I was not about to start adding people I loved to this.
'Of course not. We'll only practice that skill if they let us, and only with things they approve. Agreed? Whichever twin we practice on, the other can tell us if it worked.'
Would this harm them? I didn't know. Let them make the choice on their own. We had to know what we could do.
"Okay, but if they're uncomfortable with it, that's it. No pressure!"
'Should we try now?'
My guard stood by the hospital door, not really watching me, but obviously there because of me. Impossibly high electric fences surrounded the area. What did he think I would do out here by myself? Sprout wings and fly away?
I sat on the bench by the empty basketball court... an ironic venue given they only allowed us out here alone.
I rested my elbows on my knees. To anyone observing, I would look as if I were cooling down from my work out.
"Ok, I'm ready."
It's not as though we had an instruction manual for this, so we both just linked and imagined our minds as one. The sensation frightened me. My mind and thoughts expanded to include his, and I felt his do the same. It wasn't like the one-way link I normally made, nor was it like the mind-talk link we had going.
We immersed ourselves in each other—mentally naked, vulnerable, scared. After a lifetime of hiding who I really was from almost everyone, to stand before anyone completely raw made me jittery. So be it. We had to save ourselves.
I waited for the judgment, the pulling away, the fear.
Instead, I found a kindred spirit. He too expected judgment and feared the loss of our intimacy when I saw his true self.
But I'd dreamed his memories for so long that the little boy he had been transposed over the man he had become—and I saw all of his true and complete self.
His anger and violence, the dark shadows that haunted his soul, made sense in the context of the life he'd been given. I embraced it all and offered him sanctuary inside my heart.
In return, I found my own solace in his.
How I wished we could stay in that moment, relishing the magic of each other, but we needed to see if we could connect to Luke and Lucy.
He followed my lead, since I knew what mental vibrations to look for. It wasn't so much like traveling over a geographic area as turning to the right channel on the television.
When the link switched on, it flared strong and sudden.
Lucy screamed in my head, and we almost dropped the link. Luke's thoughts drifted next to hers, which surprised me. I'd never linked with so many people at once—like a party in my head. I suddenly had an image of Being John Malkovich.
"Shhh, calm down. It's me, Sam. Drake is here too. We're testing our combined powers."
'Oh my God, Sam, I've been worried sick about you!' I could hear the tears in her voice.
"Are you okay?"
'We're fine,' Luke said. 'It's been hard without you here, and all the staff is getting weird. We haven't managed to send pictures to Drake's friend. They're cracking down on security since you left. Even assignments have been cut back.'
'I wonder what's going on,' Drake said.
"Oh my God, you guys, Rebeka is here. And very pregnant. She looked miserable." I'd tried to link with her several times, but couldn't find her. I worried something terrible had happened.
Lucy sounded sad. 'That's awful. She was sweet. Her para-power should have been kindness instead of seeing through walls.'
"Yeah, it broke my heart to see her. Oh... and it gets better. I'm starting to show. We're going to have to escape soon, before they realize I know everything."
My head pounded as if a team of construction workers had moved in. How long could I maintain this link? My muscles spasmed, and sweat flowed from my head in small rivers.
We explained quickly. Much to my friends' credit, or insanity, they readily agreed to be guinea pigs for us.
We experimented, making Lucy jump up and down, Luke sit in the corner, and Lucy stand and sit over and over. We had to sync our thoughts and focus really hard to make it happen. We had a lot of misses at first, but we figured it out through trial and error, and our successes became more consistent.
"Thank you for letting us do this," I said. "What does it feel like?"
'It's like your body and mind split,' Lucy said, 'and somewhere inside, you know you're not in control, but then it doesn't matter. Those times you told me to forget, I have no memory of anything.'
"You are the best friends. I miss you so much. We will escape, and we will find a way to get you guys out. I swear. I wish we were all together, in our apartment in New York, debating what to do on a Saturday afternoon. Not living this nightmare."
'Hang in there, Sam. We'll all make it through,' Luke said. 'And Drake, you'd better take care of her and that baby, or I will find you and make your life hell.'
I missed Luke. I missed both of them so much it nearly crushed me.
Much to Drake's credit, he accepted my friend's threat in good humor, promising to do anything it took to keep us safe.
I hung on to the link longer than I should have, not wanting to say goodbye to my friends. When my nose started bleeding and my head hurt so bad I nearly passed out, I forced myself to break the link. Tears rolled down my cheeks and onto the hot gravel at my feet.
At times, when I thought about what we were up against, I feared our task would be impossible. Then I felt my baby swimming in me, reminding me with a gentle mental tug that hopelessness was not an option.
Now we knew we could control willing subjects from a great distance. Our test had been successful, the knowledge gained useful. The headaches, not so much.
When my hour was up, I slogged back to my room, showered quickly, and slept for most of the afternoon.
***
I didn't make it two days before my only wardrobe choices came with elastic bands, as my belly swelled too much to suffer through buttons and zippers. Not as if I had to dress nice for anyone, stuck in a room alone all day. My "dates" with Drake didn't exactly require a dress code.
"What do we do when we get out of here?"
'What do you mean? Like how do we take down this whole organization?'
"That, yes. And us. I have no home, no life outside these walls. No one even knows I exist. I have no ID, no last name even. How will I survive out there?"
I didn't really expect an answer, but it helped to talk to about it all. The terror of failing burned like a wildfire in my chest. The fear of success sat like a brick in my stomach. I didn't want to become a ghost in the world. A nobody.
Who was I without proof of life? No birth records or identifications. No passports or parents. I didn't even exist outside of Rent-A-Kid, and neither would my baby. To get a job, make money, pay taxes—all these things required paperwork I didn't have. I'd seen enough of the world out on assignments to know there was only one place for people so far off the grid. They became the nameless, faceless masses on the streets.
'Sam, you won't be alone. I won't leave you on the streets to starve. You have me and I have friends. We'll find a way to survive.'
His comforting words played like a lullaby in my mind.
I tossed and turned with restless dreams that night. Nightmares, really—images blurred together, evoking a sense of fear and failure. I woke up in a sweat, tangled in my sheet, with my hair matted to my face and neck.
'Sam, can you hear me?'
"Yes. Is something wrong?" My clock said 2:30 AM. No wonder I felt like crap.
'I have my powers back. The drugs are out of my system!'
All sleepiness vanished. I sat up in bed, and we talked about our next step. We'd been planning and talking about this forever, it seemed. But still, this step was crucial. We had no idea of the repercussions if we failed.
We decided to get some rest and plan our escape for the next night. We needed all the advantages we could get. We'd have the night guard disable the cameras and open our doors. Then we'd meet up, "borrow" the guard's car, and escape.
Simple enough, right? Sure.
***
I woke up vomiting, with fire burning through my gut. My stomach had doubled in size, and the pain threatened to tear me apart.
Nurse Susie rushed me to another part of the hospital on a gurney. Dr. Pana met her halfway down the hall, as I moved in and out of consciousness. Drake worried somewhere deep in the back of my mind, but I couldn't respond.
Several scans later, and God knows what tests, they gave me something to ease the pain and relax the baby. She moved inside me, growing, trying to break free of the confines of my body. I tried to link to her, to tell her it wasn't time.
Maybe it was. How did I know? This was no normal pregnancy.
Oh, my God, what if they genetically altered her somehow? What have they done to us? These thoughts consumed me for the rest of the day, but I didn't have the strength to read minds, and Dr. Pana never left me alone long enough to try.
Still, I didn't need my powers to know that my baby was dying, and so was I.
