I close my eyes and listen.

The steel of the safe is cool against my cheek as the tumblers slowly turn with soft clicks. The white silk of my long dress brushes against my skin as faint laughter and the hum of conversation drift into the dark room. I pause as the distant sound of sirens echo outside, glancing uneasily at the large bay window as the red and blue lights approach, then fade.

The thin line of light from the bottom of the door illuminates the shadow from my kicked-off heels, eclipsed for a moment by someone passing with heavy steps. I hold my breath and mentally review the security rotation schedule again, (I should have eight more minutes, not that it would matter to the guard if I was found coaxing the valuables out of Mr. Latimer’s vault) only relaxing once the door was silent again.

Reminded that time is fast running out, I refocus on the dial, frowning at the false contact point that nearly did its job. But with a final breath, the welcome sound of the bolt sliding home reaches my ears.

Twisting the handle, I swing the safe open on quiet, well-oiled hinges.

Hello lovelies, I greet the treasures inside with a wide smile before rifling through them.

Money, drugs, guns, more money, more drugs—papers! Finally!

I shuffle through the folder, then the first notebook, baring my teeth in frustration as each one proves fruitless. Ripping out the page I was requested to find, I continue my hunt for any part of the information I need.

Give me a name! I demand in silent anger, edges crumpling under my grip as a high-pitched whine fills my ears. GIVE ME A NAME!

The window cracks.

Freezing in place, my eyes dart to the line of light under the door, where a shadowy shape has just paused.

Shit shit shit shit, I chant internally, trying to calm my heart before the crack spreads.

The silence stretches on interminably, both the shadow and I motionless as the party continues on. I almost convince myself that the dark outline is just a coat rack I hadn’t noticed, or a bottle of champagne someone had set down, when the shade shifts and grows closer with the unmistakable beep of a keycard reader.

And shitballs.

The guard enters, turns, and despite my ingenious strategy of not moving, still frowns in my direction.

“Hey!” He brings up a flashlight to shine in my face. “You’re not allowed in here!”

Three minutes. I want to ask him as I grab the flute of champagne sitting on top of the safe. You couldn’t give me three minutes?

“What are you⁠—hands up!” The man shouts, reaching back for the weapon on his hip.

Yeah, right, I roll my eyes and flick the thin glass rim with my fingernail.

A sharp, piercing sound rolls forth, causing the guard to drop his flashlight, his earpiece to squeal with feedback, and the already cracked window to shatter completely as the lights go out.

Once I hear the thump of his unconscious body hitting the floor, I stuff the notebooks back inside the vault and slam it closed with a hurried spin of the dial. Grabbing my heels off the floor, I rush out to blend with the partygoers, half of them demanding to know what was going on while the other half shout in fear.

Universal relief spreads through the crowd as the lights come back on with a flickering hum as I slip on my blood-red shoes. Most of the well-dressed guests head immediately toward the exit, the more litigious ones calling out threats and promises against the supposed security of the place.

I hide a smile as frantic voices echo over the earpieces.

“…breathing, but he’s out cold. Probably a trained…”

“…district attorney is saying we can’t keep them here. Should we let the guests…”

“…out the window! Start searching the grounds immediately…”

Clearly aware something was wrong, but equally unsure what, guards uncertainly decide to search the guests’ tiny clutches and designer tuxedos before allowing us to leave.

Surrounded by the perfume and complaints of wealth, I keep my head down and stay to the back of the group with the folded paper resting snugly between the arch of my foot and the patent leather of my shoe. As soon as they begin to harangue the valets to bring around their cars, I slip around and head down the sidewalk, finally able to relax for the first time that evening.

“Excuse me, ma’am? Stop there, please!”

Or not.

Wrinkling my nose in a silent curse toward whichever deity had it out for me tonight, I do my best to keep my stride even and unhurried despite the voice behind me.

“Ma’am! I said stop! Now!”

A tall, blonde guard slides in front of me, eyes narrowed in suspicion with his hand up. “I said stop right there!”

I halt and frown in apparent confusion, my hand curling into a fist before rubbing a small circle in the center of my chest. “Sorry.” I sign with a careful tilt of my head. “Who are you?”

The man blinks. “Oh. Uh… I need to know if…” Floundering for a moment, he settles on the predictable, irritating tactic of pitching his voice to a near yell. “Were! You! At! The! Party?!”

Stifling a wince at the volume, I manage a tight smile and make another small circle. “Sorry, I have to go. I can’t help you.” My gestures are large and over-exaggerated, poking fun at his assumption that ‘slower’ would mean ‘instantly understandable’.

After pursing his lips in indecision, he shouts, “Did! You! See! Anything!?”

I lift my brows as I sign back, “I see you?”

The guard sighs, then slouches in defeat. “Fine. I guess you can go.”

My hand touches my chin before tipping forward as I give a wide smile. “Thank you!”

Muttering to himself, the guard walks back to the building as the smile slips from my face.

That was far too close.

~*~

 

The echoes of my boots and the buzz of a flickering streetlamp are the only sounds as I approach the dark entryway. Two hulking men with guns on their hips cross their arms on either side of the entrance. One raises his hand with a scowl.

“Hold it. Who are you?”

Rolling my eyes, I reach into my jacket pocket, nails scraping against the red leather as I pull out the folded bit of paper between my index and middle finger

The man frowns. “What the hell is that supposed to⁠—”

“Wait.” His companion squints at me in the low light. “You’re the thief girl, ain’tcha? The one who can’t talk?”

I twitch a little at the description, but give a single nod.

He swings the door open into the darkness. “Mr. Cato is expecting you.”

Walking through the empty warehouse, silently judging the melodrama of it all, I push into the poorly lit office where Cato sits behind a mahogany desk, flanked by two more muscle men.

Cato is a mid-level criminal with top-level aspirations who takes ‘dress for the job you want’ a little too seriously. I swear he must have screencaps of Scarface taped around his mirror, because every time I see him, he has a different terrible wide-lapel jacket and colored shirt unbuttoned to reveal far too much chest hair. His clearly dyed black hair is slicked black, accentuating his receding hairline.

His pinkie ring, which I can tell from here is turning his finger green, glints as he tosses his phone onto the table. Pouring himself a glass from the ever-present bottle of whiskey, he leans back in his chair with a long sip.

“Ah, Echo. So nice to see you, as always. Do you have what I asked for?”

Dear God. If any cat could stand him, I’m sure he’d be petting one just for the aesthetic.

I hold up the paper from the safe in response, and his oily smile grows.

“I knew I could count on you!” He sets the glass down and reaches forward, grin fading when I don’t hand it over.

Tucking the paper back in my pocket, I make sure he’s paying attention as I sign, “You said the safe would give me a name.”

Cato waves his hand in the air carelessly. “I don’t do… whatever that it is. If you have something to say, just spit it out.”

Forcing back a growl, I grab the small notebook from my back pocket and scribble out my thinly veiled accusation, underlining ‘name’ before shoving it at him. I sign it as well, my right top two fingers tapping across my left pointer and middle fingers in emphasis.

The crime lord glances down at the message, pauses for the briefest of moments, then motions one of his bodyguards to step forward threateningly with his hand outstretched. After narrowing my eyes at Cato, I pull out the latest page of Latimer’s black market accounting book and slowly give it to the man looming over me.

You and your friend are literally wearing sunglasses inside. Could you be more cliché? I snark silently. Do you need protection from the shine of the grease in Cato’s hair?

“Look, sweetie,” Cato tells me as he snatches the page from his security guard a little too eagerly. “I really thought if anyone had the info you wanted, it’d be Latimer. Turns out my intel was bad. What you gonna do?” He nods at the other guard, who offers me a silver briefcase.

Wow. Was someone playing ‘bad movie villain trope’ bingo or what?

Focused on his stolen prize, Cato has clearly dismissed me in his mind. “You can leave now.”

I don’t move.

His blue eyes finally shift up to my green ones with a sneer. “I know you can’t talk. You deaf too?”

I extend the top two fingers of each hand, then tap them together twice in slow deliberation, as if he was a toddler.

“Name.”

Cato’s face darkens and the man holding the briefcase sets it on the floor. “I told you—tough luck. Now you can either leave with your money, or with some bruises. But you’re leaving either way.”

Taking a moment to assess the stance and position of both bodyguards, I put up my hands in the universal signal for surrender, then reach across to retrieve my notebook. Almost by accident as I pull the pad back, I knock the bottle of whiskey off the desk.

The glass rotates once, twice in the air before smashing to the concrete with a high-pitched ring.

The second the shattering sound pierces the air, magnified tenfold, all three men cover their ears in pain as the single dim light bulb explodes, allowing me to rush the guard on the right. Snatching the sturdy metal briefcase off the ground, I slam it into his stomach, causing him to double over and gasp for breath, then drive it down on the back of his skull, knocking him to the floor.

In an admirable attempt to do his job, the second man fumbles blindly for his gun, shooting vaguely in my direction. I duck behind the desk and concentrate, the supersonic crack of each bullet growing exponentially louder until he drops to the ground, clutching his head.

Glancing around, confirming that the main threats were dealt with, I stalk around the desk⁠—pausing to pick up the fragment of the bottle’s long glass neck from the floor⁠—and stare down at the cowering Cato, hair dye and fake tanner running down his face in rivulets.

Dragging him out by his collar like an errant puppy, I toss him into his faux leather chair, ignoring his panicked gibbering in the faint light filtering through the cracked window.

“Please, don’t…. You can keep the money, you can take everything, just please don’t hurt me. Do you want my watch? It’s a Rolex! Okay, it’s not a real Rolex, but it’s the best knockoff money can buy. I swear, I don’t know anything! Just please don’t do—”

Holding the glass shard in my left hand, I press the jagged tip pointedly under his chin until he finally falls silent.

Certain that I now have his undivided attention, I once again take the top two fingers of my right hand and bounce them gently but firmly against the left hand holding the bottle neck, leaving small marks on his skin with each tap.

“Name,” I mouth with feral precision.

“Kid, I get you want answers,” Cato raises his hands placatingly, the severe tremble of his wrists betraying his fear, “but these people do not mess around. You do not want to get caught up with whatever they’re into, and if they heard I snitched on them, I’d be as good as dead!”

Lifting a single eyebrow, I press the makeshift knife a little more decisively into his throat.

“Alright! Alright! Oberon! That’s all I know!”

I blink and frown at him, but let up the pressure a bit.

“All I know is rumors. They’re some giant shadowy organization that has people who can do stuff that shouldn’t be possible. Unnatural stuff.” His eyes suddenly widen. “Not that your thing is unnatural or anything! It’s very impressive⁠—” I glare at him a little and his voice shrinks to a frightened whisper. “Very impressive.”

Rumors or not, it’s more than I had before.

Dropping the bottle to the concrete, I grab the silver briefcase before walking out, leaving Cato to heave frightened breaths as the men groan in anguish, the crunch of broken glass echoing loudly in the dark.

~*~

 

The waitress brings my espresso and chocolate croissant to my corner table with a customer service smile I briefly return. After a blissful sip, I reach for my pastry just as it’s lifted in the air.

“Ooh, chocolate! My favorite!” Kat coos delightedly, sliding into the seat across from me with her laptop bag, ignoring my dark look.

“Would you like something to eat?” I sign sarcastically, timing my gesture for ‘eat’ to coincide with her large bite of my croissant.

“Nah, I’m good,” she grins unrepentantly as I roll my eyes with poorly concealed amusement.

Her black hair, several shades darker than my own and as curly as mine is straight, slips out of her messy bun as she pulls out her computer, clearing a spot on the table. As the waitress returns, she motions to the empty plate. “That was delicious. Two more please? And a chocolate mocha.”

Once her order was in, Kat’s brown, usually laughing eyes grow grave as she spins the laptop toward me.

“Far be it from me to assume a minor crime lord might have lied to you, but dear God, I hope he lied to you,” she tells me before pulling up several files on the screen. “There are barely whispers of whispers of these people. From the very little I could find, I put together that they’re some giant R&D corporation that works with everyone from DARPA to black market billionaires. It’s hard⁠—”

Our waitress returns with Kat’s food and drink, pausing our conversation. Kat sets one of the croissants onto my empty plate, accepting my acerbic “thank you” sign with a wink.

“It’s hard to tell fact from fiction because so much of it sounds exactly like fiction. They either collect people with abilities, like you, or they create them.” Leaning back in her seat, Kat shakes her head and crosses her arms. “Anyone who digs too deep or comes into contact with them disappears. And I mean, poof. Gone. No social security, no internet presence, no sign that they ever existed. All traces of them vanish⁠—unless you’re me.”

I finish my espresso as I browse the thin files full of redacted information and obvious conspiracies, then grab Kat’s mocha and take a sip as I review them again.

After the third time, I take my chin off my hand and wag a single finger in my friend’s direction.

“Where?” She repeats, reclaiming her drink. “Nowhere! These people are professional ghosts with help from governments and criminals alike. There’s no physical trace of them in any public record.”

Waves of anger and helplessness threaten to overwhelm me.

The first lead, the first hint of anything in years, and it comes to nothing!

I fight to steady my breathing as the hiss of the espresso machine, the buzz of conversations, the clatter of silverware on plates all grow to a roaring din, the empty cup and saucer in front of me being to rattle on their own.

“But…”

The ringing in my ears stops suddenly as my mug stills.

“A few different conspiracies from different sources do mention the same place,” Kat offers slowly.

I shake my pointer finger at her urgently, nearly knocking her mocha over.

With deliberate care, Kat moves the mocha out of harm’s way and sets it down on the far side of the table. “Before I tell you, you have to promise me something first.”

Narrowing my eyes suspiciously, I ask, “What?”

“You have to let me come with you.”

My answer is immediate.

“No.”

“These are dangerous people! You can’t just wander in with no back-up!”

I level a foreboding stare and lean back defensively. “I can take care of myself.”

“But you shouldn’t have to!” Kat bursts out, then fiddles with her necklace for a long moment. “Look,” she adds quietly, “you don’t have to tell me about your past if you don’t want to, but even I can tell something bad happened to you. And I know you’ve been alone for a long time because you had to be.”

Lifting her head, Kat gazes at me with uncharacteristic seriousness. “But you’re my best friend. And you’re not alone anymore. I know you can do it on your own, but just… let me help.” She returns to fiddling with her arrow necklace. “I want to help.”

Silence punctuated by the sounds of the café fills the air again, but instead of rage and despair, it’s made up of vulnerability and embarrassment and a fair amount of chagrin on my part.

My hand touches my chin and drops forward in a wordlessly sincere gesture, which Kat takes with a small grin.

“You’re welcome,” she returns quietly. Pulling her laptop closer, a familiar spark returns to her eyes. “So. Where do we start?”

 

~*~

 

Kat glances through the chain link fence at the heavily secured building, then remarks, “This is a terrible idea.”

The power of my glare is somewhat lost in the darkness.

“You said you knew a way in!” I reply irritably, my fingers already cramping from the cold.

“I do, it’s just… this is a lot more than I anticipated.” Glancing at the thin line of my lips and the crease between my brows, Kat hastens to add, “But don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

I force myself to breathe.

“Okay, if you take out those three big lights and the two cameras over by the main entrance, that should draw the guards away from the maintenance door and clear our path in. You ready?”

Cracking my neck, I try to stuff the fear creeping up my neck into a far corner of my mind. I can do big, unbridled waves in high-stress situations, but specific targets have never been my strong suit.

Kat pulls out a tuning fork and hands it to me expectantly. I wrinkle my nose⁠—it still feels like cheating, no matter how scientific and efficient Kat tells me it is⁠—and strike it against my hand. The prongs vibrate quietly, growing louder as I place it next to my ear and focus on the pitch.

The waves feel slippery and elusive as I try to bend them to my will, like silk sliding through my hands as it resists my control. Sweat beads my forehead while I coax and stretch them as much as I dare before releasing my hold and flinging them at the north side of the building.

I fall sharply on my butt from the effort, but still manage to see the huge floodlights sputter and die one after the other as the military force surrounding the facility immediately calls for reinforcements.

“Well done!” Kat applauds as men race around to the front, leaving the small maintenance door untended. For now.

We push through the break in the chain link we had cut earlier and race as fast as we can while still crouching low to the ground. I keep an uneasy guard as Kat pulls out her picks from the wristband underneath her sleeve and goes to work on the lock, whispering soft encouragements that quickly turn to hissed curses.

A nerve-racking minute passes, the distant shouts and orders punctuated by flashlights and footfalls, and then another as a clear voice barks directions and a chorus answers “Yes, sir!”, which does not bode well for our timeline.

I tap Kat’s shoulder and sign her name, a ‘K’ hand shape that I pinch near my cheek like whiskers, with clear urgency.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m rusty, just gimme a⁠—ha! Finally!”

The small hatch gives way at last and we both dive in, closing the door as quickly and quietly as I can manage, just before a pair of dark shadows march across our vented line of sight. Looking to Kat with a sigh, she responds with a shrug and switches to signing in an overly confident tone.

“What? I got us in, didn’t I?”

Shaking my head, I try to calm my adrenaline and ask, “What now?”

“From what I’ve read, their truly sensitive stuff requires a dedicated airline, which should be…” Leaning forward, Kat peers through the mass of tubes and wires in the vent until she points to one victoriously. “Here! We just follow this line down and see where it takes us.”

A part of me balks at how little information we have and how imprecise her strategy is, but knowing how hard Kat worked to even get us this far, I force it back with a deep breath.  We crawl through, freezing any time footsteps pass by on the other side of the wall. Underneath the heightened anxiety, I can feel the small fizzle of exhilaration growing in the back of my mind. This is the closest I’ve gotten to any kind of truth in… well, ever.

Years of survival and disappointment choke back most of the new sense of hope, but the buzz continues through my veins as we grow closer. A few dead ends and backtracking add an uncomfortable amount of time to our venture, but eventually Kat sits back and checks the rough blueprint of the building on her phone before tracing the black tube that curved out of the vent and through the wall.

“This is it!” She signs to me with emphatic points.

I glance back to the small grate we had just passed, harsh light pouring through the grid.

“You’re sure?”

She nods excitedly. “As sure as I can be!”

We both squeeze together to peer out the slits, Kat waving at me to ask, “Anyone out there?”

I close my eyes and listen.

Air hisses through the tubes. Electricity buzzes through the wires. Fluorescent lights hum in the ceiling. Mechanical whirring comes from the far end, oddly echoed, but no footsteps, no heartbeats. Just sterile silence.

Shaking my head, I point to the left. “Two cameras near the door, but no people.”

A wide grin stretches across Kat’s face as her fingers dance excitedly. “Alright, let’s go!”

After rummaging in her bag, she pulls out a dental mirror, a short odd-looking hose, and a small cordless drill. Ignoring my confused head tilt, Kat pokes the dental mirror through the vent and angles it toward the corner. Muttering to herself, she pulls out a drill bit, fits it on one end of the plastic hose, places the other end on the drill and snakes it out and around to connect to the screw.

The drill whizzes to life with a whine that sounds far too loud to my ears but doesn’t seem to draw any attention from the still-quiet room. Once all four screws are off, I cautiously emerge, wincing at the bright illumination made all the brighter by the rows and rows of glass cabinets.

I help Kat stand as she gapes at the reflective surfaces around us, each full of vibrant, off-putting collections of colors.

“What the hell is this place?” She breathes in awe.

I can only shake my head mutely, a knot growing in between my shoulder blades.

Whatever this place is, it feels… wrong.

Kat motions me over to one of the cases full of oddly colored test tubes. “Here, look at this.”

Treading warily across the spotless white floor, I squint at the samples of light blue that are strangely difficult to look at, then peer down to see a keypad next to a screen with a single word in bold green font against a black background.

Oberon.

A crown hovers above the ‘e’ while a flower’s outline floats inside the first letter.

My heart drops to my stomach.

Kat taps the screen to reveal columns of numbers. “Okay, these are labeled… Subject 698 ⁠— Extraction 214, Subject 698 ⁠— Extraction 215, so on. Not that that tells me whatever this means.”

Hand shaking, I touch Kat’s shoulder. She glances at me, then does a double take in visible concern.

“E, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

Instead of answering, I turn and lift my hair from the nape of my neck, revealing numbers I’ve only seen backwards, in mirrors and blurred cell phone photos.

“One, zero, eight⁠—” She reads aloud, then stops. “Is that… Were you…”

A thousand questions clearly swirling in her mind, Kat swallows, then straightens her shoulders. “You probably want to find the vials that match your… that match that number, right?”

Grateful beyond words, I nod.

“Okay, okay, I can do that,” she says, to herself as much as to me. “I can do that.”

Pulling up a search function, she flicks through the results with quiet mumbles, abruptly walking away from this case to awaken one a few rows down, then continuing on. I trail uncertainly behind her, so lost in memories long locked away I nearly jump out of my skin when Kat grabs my hand.

“Sorry! I think I found it!” She whispers to me, tugging me to a hallway of glass near the east wall.

The closer we get, the more that feeling of wrongness creeps up my spine.

“Here. Subject 108.”

Even without her worried gesture, my gaze is fixed on the rows of dark green liquid that almost seem to be vibrating in their cases, singing a note that sounds as familiar as my heartbeat, like an oasis in an eerie desert.

“Can you open it?” I ask at last, trying to force my trembling fingers to obey me.

“I think so. One sec.”

The screen flashes with different colors as lines of indecipherable code replace the list of numbers. Frowning, Kat types several different commands, her scowl deepening as nothing changes.

“Come on,” she growls, fingers hitting the screen harder, as if to lend the demand more authority. “Come on, you little piece of⁠—” A series of words lined in green pop up and startle her halfway through her curse.

“Is it open?”

“Maybe? Give me just a⁠—”

Unable to wait, unable to resist that siren song, I twist the silver handle and yank the door open impatiently.

“Wait! There might be⁠—”

An ear-piercing alarm cuts her off, and we both turn to see the door at the far end burst open to reveal a heavily armed security team. I make a last-ditch desperate grab at the green vials, pulling three out before a sharp pain hits the back of my head.

The tubes shatter to the floor as Kat’s hand grabs my wrist before my world goes dark.

~*~

 

I can’t hear anything.

My eyes snap open in growing panic, only to see Kat handcuffed in a metal chair next to me behind a matching steel table, staring at me with an anxious gaze, reflected a hundred times in the glass cube around us.

I glance down to see my own hands similarly bound, connected to the chair by a short, strong chain, and then realize⁠—it’s not that the room is quiet, muffling the noise from outside, or that Kat sits in wordless fear.

I can’t hear at all.

There’s a weight in my ears that wasn’t there before, blocking every sound around me, leaving me in complete and utter silence, sending my heart racing in remembered terror.

Kat’s head swivels to the door, and I follow suit only for my vision to go gray in pure unadulterated rage at the all-too familiar face walking in.

“Good evening ladies,” he smiles widely, my anger making lip-reading difficult. “What a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t planning on seeing 108 here ever again, although I did hope. And you brought a friend! How lovely.”

The chain my cuffs are attached to spring taut as I try to unsuccessfully lunge at him, painfully discovering that the chair itself was anchored to the floor.

He throws his head back, the shake of his chest telling me he was laughing. “Oh, 108, I have missed our chats,” he tells me, leaning forward so I can see his mouth clearly.

“Do you like your gifts? Remind you of anything?” He gestures to the side of his head, and I jerk once again in a vain attempt to dislodge whatever was sitting in my ears. Amused, he turns to Kat, who was watching this entire exchange with an expression of horrified understanding.

“We’ve miniaturized the tech of 108’s previous residence, an anechoic chamber. While these ear plugs aren’t near as powerful, the room itself is over twenty decibels below the threshold of human hearing. It means there’s no echoes, because the walls absorb them. Clapping does nothing. There’s less air pressure because there’s no ambient noise. Stay in there long enough and you’ll eventually fall over, because our bodies rely on reverberation to know if we’re standing upright.”

His bragging is briefly disrupted by the door opening again as a younger man in a lab coat pokes his head in. I can’t see either of their faces to figure out what they’re saying, but a brief touch of cold on my hand refocuses my attention to Kat, whose eyes flick pointedly downward before staring straight ahead.

I see the briefest shine of silver of Kat’s lockpicks as she leans cautiously closer, then force my gaze back up to our captor as well, who has now turned his back to us completely. The glimpses I have of the assistant’s lips only afford me snatches of the one-sided conversation.

“…only our most recent batch of… unfortunately, they were also the strongest… looks like all four of the missing ones are accounted…”

A smooth surface slides into my palm, and I glance down with the barest of disbelieving hopes to see a hint of emerald green encased in glass as Kat returns to her seat.

After a moment, he waves in dismissal, sending the man in the white coat scurrying out of the transparent interrogation room. Turning back to us, he clasps his hands in an insincere apology.

“Forgive the interruption, ladies. We simply had to make sure none of your explorations caused the company any real harm.” He snaps his fingers and a full security team enters the clear chamber, the heavily armed men all dressed in black eyeing us with ill-intent.

“Now that that’s cleared up, Mr. Goodfellow here will take 108 back to her home in our research facility, and you, Miss Akina, can join our growing community of test subjects. And who knows? Maybe at some point you too can experience 108’s unique…”

His smile falters in a rare and delighting moment as he sees my uncuffed hand reach up from under the table. In the most satisfying gesture of my entire life, I flick the tips of my fingers at him from under my chin with a feral, full-toothed grin.

I turn my palm toward the floor and allow the empty glass vial to fall from my thumb’s grasp, watching the blood drain from his face.

“Run,” he attempts to say, his Adam’s apple bobbing in fear. “Run!”

He tries to push past the line of confused men as Kat claps her hands over her ears.

I close my eyes and scream.