Page 103 of Resolve
“Sounds important. Fill me in tonight,” Dane reads aloud.
Reid doesn’t look surprised—not that I’ve ever seen him show that emotion before. “Dr. James is closest to Charles. He probably felt comfortable enough to skip the request if they already had plans.”
The door opens, and Jackson slips inside to the open back row. He probably read the message of the missing member.
“Now what?” Alice demands, crossing her arms.
“We continue with the plan,” Aiden responds evenly. “If the other six are there, there’s no time to waste before they become suspicious.” He turns to Reid and Tinsley. “Check the area. Make sure Portia and Noah are starting their rounds,” he reminds them.
Tinsley fixes her wig and reaches for the door. “It'll just take us a sec.” The door opens, and then she’s gone. Reid vanishes a second after her.
Aiden’s near-obsidian eyes land on mine. “Ready?”
“I think so,” Alice answers instead. “Are we sure her gift won’t do the same thing to me while I’m touching her?”
I reply first, “I’m sure. Just don’t let go.”
Tinsley returns within a minute. “There’s no one around. I’d hurry and do it now.”
“Good. It’s up to Portia and Noah to monitor the perimeter and keep anyone new back. You and Reid focus on lower debris falling further than twenty feet from the building,” Aiden directs. She gives him a two-finger salute and is gone again.
My turn.
We shuffle around to the door. Alice grabs my shoulder.
At first, I don’t think she’s done anything. The door looks the same, and I can see my hands. It’s when I look at the others that I almost feel as though I’m looking through a pane of glass. It’s transparent enough to see through, but something’s off... like light catching on a hidden veil between us and them.
“We’re good. You can open the door,” Alice tells me.
I make sure to keep my movements slow so we don’t lose contact. Jackson and Aiden leave, while Kell and Dane remain in the vehicle.
“We’re going to walk fast,” I warn Alice, then break out into an almost jog. The longer we take, the longer we risk the board members becoming suspicious and calling for backup.
We stop at the nearest side of the building.
“Stand behind me,” I whisper. Jackson’s going to control any debris from somewhere above, but we’re within that radius.
Reaching for my gift, I exhale deeply as it flows eagerly through my veins. Its warmth burns and sizzles beneath my skin, making my body thrum and pulse along with it. I make sure it stays contained and doesn’t spread to Alice or get too hot on my shoulder, and then I focus on the building.
On pushing my gift into the hard brick façade and spreading to the steel beam framework. The varying material slows me down as I have to adjust through each transition, pushing harder or slower depending on what’s there. It brings me back to my time destroying piles of concrete. Over and under, winding around and through it all until I’ve mapped out the area with my gift and in my mind.
I keep drawing out more and more, feeding my power into the building with hidden webs of disaster until I can feel it all in my grasp.
I’m gasping by the time it’s all there, my body trembling as I hold it all in place. Spreading my power isn’t the problem. Holding it back, keeping it from devouring everything it’s touching, is. As soon as I let it go, I can breathe again. It's like releasing a leash on a rabid dog. It immediately goes on the attack, consuming whatever it touches.
The building groans and snaps. Metal splits. Entire floors crack and disintegrate as the building caves at the center, its roof collapsing inward. I’d spread my gift in a particular pattern, focusing on the middle of the building and then the lower floors so they’d buckle first.
Wind picks up around us, whipping our hair up like a vacuum. Any debris or dust is swept into this mini tornado, pulled to its core before falling over the building.
I can’t hear anything over the destruction; the wind. It drownsout anything else around us as if we’re in our own world.
At last, the rest of the building crumbles into a heap, and the wind dies down.
Kellan pulls into an open space in a packed park-n-ride parking lot. Cars sandwich us from all sides, and a train horn bellows nearby.
“Which building is it?” I ask groggily, rising from Jackson’s chest once we’ve stopped.
After completely decimating the Gifted Enterprise headquarters, Reid took Portia, Noah, Alice, Sam, and the six rescued siblings back to Hype. Elias argued on the phone with Aiden that the rest of us should return as well, but we aren’t going back until the last one is dead.
