Superior

Chapter 47

Chapter Forty-Seven

Caleb

"Are you going to help them?" Jeanette demanded, snapping me out of a trance. I shook my head, clearing it. The two people in the room were undoubtedly familiar, but I couldn't let that distract me.

"Yeah," I muttered, already forming a plan. "But stand back."

I was moving before she could respond. I skidded around a surgical table, then came to a stop in front of a large box, where I had a straight shot to the glass-enclosed room. Gritting my teeth, I began a mad dash forward, moving at top speed toward the transparent wall thirty feet away.

The boy and girl froze mid-yell.

Just before slamming into the glass before me, I turned, lifted one leg, and drove it forward with as much force as I could manage. The action sent a wave of pain flowing up from the bullet wound in my abdomen, but I ignored it.

The force of the impact sent me flying into the room with a spray of glass in my wake. My body acted for me, guiding my arms up to protect my face as I slid forward across the shining tile. Bits of glass rained down on me, scratching the bare skin of my arms and slicing through my shirt.

Eventually, I managed to catch myself, and, hands on my knees, watched as a dozen hairline cracks drew spiderwebs across the glass. Then, with quiet tinkling sound, the wall collapsed, dropping hundreds of shards into a glimmering pile on the ground. A few skittered my way. I caught an especially sharp one under my shoe and picked it up, examining it quickly before sliding it into my pocket.

From somewhere behind Leary's equipment, Jeanette shouted, "Is it clear?" I called out an affirmative response before turning to assess the situation.

The boy and girl, who I was almost certain were related, were banded securely to their seats. Apart from a few bloody scratches on their wrists and ankles, they didn't seem to be harmed; they were too far away for the shower of glass to have reached them.

A third chair sat empty beside the girl's, its cuffs retracted, but the blood on its seat suggested that someone had been sitting there. It only took a moment to locate the chair's former occupant. She was lying on her stomach the ground, propped on one elbow, her brown hair a frizzy, sweaty curtain around her face. There was something startlingly familiar about her, too—something in the way her eyes blinked at me from behind her rectangular black glasses that I was certain I knew.

All of a sudden, a flash pain flooded into my head, overriding the ache of the bullet wound and the sting of the glass in my flesh. This was something heavier, deeper; a fierce monster that shredded my mind, digging and prodding for...something. A memory, I realized with a start. A memory that was just out of reach.

And there it was: a flash of remembering, lasting for no more than a heartbeat. A fleeting image of the girl before me, sitting with the other two on wooden chairs in a small, cramped room. The three of them looked at me, their expressions guarded but undoubtedly scared, and beside them, smiling coyly, was—

The memory was gone before I could see the fourth person. There, then gone. Just like that.

The agony faded, and I took a shaky breath. The girl was still staring at me, but neither of us had spoken. When I caught her eye, her lips parted slightly, and she murmured, "I knew they'd save us."

I wasn't sure what she meant.

She stared at me unabashed, her eyes roving carefully over my face as I shifted beneath her gaze. Her expression was one of surprise, and, just barely, disgust. This girl, whoever she was, saw my face and was appalled.