Final Truth

Chapter 66: Distraction

Adam's point of view:

Even with my knees on the verge of giving out from being forced to the ground for so long, even with Cade uttering swear words next to me, even with guards watching my every move and Henley leering over me...

All I can do is look at Julia.

I've watched her gasp and claw at the air, almost as if she were drowning, heard her scream out every sound imaginable until she had nothing left, seen her weep for an endless amount of time only to wake up and scream some more, listened to her whimper as if she were pleading with someone, and my heart lurches for my dear friend in a kind of pain that I could scarcely imagine.

Even after having a building fall on top of me, I somehow think I might've been the luckier one between the two of us.

She seems to have calmed somewhat, allowing me to see just how dreadfully she's changed over the past year: her cheeks are hollowed out and her entire demeanor looks frail, almost like she would crumble should anybody touch her. Once tanned skin has now become alarmingly pale, and her black hair hangs dead and lifeless, no different than a limp rag on her head. The clothes she wears are much too big for her, so baggy in all the wrong places that it's unnerving to see.

Were they starving her just like Peter?

She looks helpless and small, powerless and afraid, and I can't bear to watch it anymore, can't stand to see her reduced to adjectives I would never describe her with. Something, I must think of something.  A distraction, perhaps. Anything.

"What have you done to Cassia?! To Susan?" Cade shouts, shaking with fury and pent up anger after attempting to keep himself quiet for so long.

Henley is quick to react, using her control over him to slam his body face first into the ground, but Cade's power prevents the pain well enough to make the gesture nothing more than a battle of wills.

"How dare you speak to me," Henley seethes, such fury emanating from her bare hands that it seems as though she's trying to meld Cade to the floor, albeit unsuccessfully. Her venomous hatred seems to bleed over into the guards surrounding us, all of them pointing their guns solely at Cade now.

"I remember you precisely," she continues. "You were my brother's top police officer, the one man he was foolish enough to trust, and now he's dead because of it. How can you live with yourself, you filthy traitor? How do you live with what you've done?"

"How do you?" Cade fires back, and Henley yells in frustration before grabbing a guard's gun and shooting him point blank, but once again, the bullet bounces off his skin to lodge in the floor, now a smoking black hole.

"You can't kill me," he sneers, and then Cade and Henley proceed into a screaming match of insults, trading verbal blows with phrases like "filthy snake" and "murderous witch" reaching a concussive volume along with other words I dare not repeat.

Perfect.

I catch Genevieve and Jacqueline's eyes across from Cade and make a point of slightly moving my shoulder, hoping to convey that in Henley's distraction, her power over the three of us has lessened. Jacqueline nods slightly, something defiant rising up in her eyes, her willingness to fight back again becoming clear.

I look back to the guards, and their eyes begin to slowly glaze over as Jacqueline makes them see what she wants. However, they don't begin to cry out and paw at the surrounding air like they did when they lost their sight, so this must be different.

"They see us on the ground like we are now," she whispers so that Henley won't hear. "However, we could get up, and they'd still see us like that. They're stuck with the image of us on our knees and Henley shouting at Cade."

I gaze back at Henley, who now looks an inch away from dismembering Cade out of sheer will as a result of the rather creative string of dirty insults he's thrown at her over the last few seconds.

"Any chance you could do something to her too?" I ask Jacqueline.

And within a second, her golden eyes have glazed over to match those of her guards, and I quickly nudge Cade to make him shut his mouth.

But Henley continues to shout at him, now trading insults with the image of Cade that Jacqueline is projecting into her mind.

I rise to my feet to test if her power holds up, and sure enough, nobody tries to stop me. As far as they're concerned, I'm still on the floor.

The others follow suit in distancing themselves from the guards and Henley, and soon enough, the guards are glaring down an empty spot on the floor while Henley continues to shout at nothing, oblivious to what's really happening.

The small group of nurses that monitor Julia, however, do notice us now, but they don't raise any sort of alarm or fight back. No, they only look afraid.

"I can't trick their eyes, too," Jacqueline whispers before I could even form the thought. "If they're keeping Julia alive, then they need to see what they're doing."

I nod while making eye contact with one nurse in particular, one who still holds that bit of fear in her eyes while simultaneously seeming approachable enough.

"Is there nothing you can do to get my friend out of there?" I ask her.

"It would be unwise, but you needn't worry for her. She won't die in a test," the nurse responds with conviction. "Besides, she's nearly finished. Just one section to go and it's over. It's funny, she hasn't almost passed a test like this since-"

Julia screams.

Louder and more terrified than any she's released so far, so powerful that her glass enclosure shatters and sends shards flying everywhere. No one is spared from them, bits of glass now stuck in myself, my friends, and the nurses, oozing blood and prompting sharp cries of fear and pain.

It's a split second-occurrence, over as quickly as it began, but it's enough.

Enough for Jacqueline's focus to break.

Enough for Henley and the guards to regain clarity.

I watch in horror as guns are raised and fired, the screams and sounds of things breaking blurring together like bad audio, watch as Genevieve shifts into some sort of animal to attack the guards, watch as Jacqueline quickly to tries replicate what she did beforehand with little success in her panic, watch Cade try to shield her body as absolute chaos ensues.

Things are exploding in gunfire, some of the nurses are trying to run from their stations, my friends are rushing into harm, and all the while, Julia lies whimpering at the back of the room vulnerable to everything in her oblivion.

I throw something. I'm not even sure what, perhaps a chair, in Henley's direction before sprinting back to cover Julia's body with mine, praying that this nightmare will end soon.