Winter's Awakening: The Metahumans Emerge (Winter's Saga #1) (11 page)

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something shift low to the ground. It was Maze. He was crouched and ready to surprise attack; his yellow eyes like mirrors of light glowing in the dark room.

“What do you know fellas? They warned us these kids were gonna be tough, but look at ‘em! Damn, I’m disappointed! I was hoping for a good fight, but look what we got instead?” The snarling thug began laughing.

He pointed directly at me with his weapon and said, “Come here, baby. Daddy’s gonna take you for a ride.” I could almost hear him drooling with anticipation. There was more laughter, this time from the obvious leader’s minions.

“Who warned you?” I asked in a calm voice.

“What? I said, come here!” The thug stepped closer to me.

“Get away from her, dork-wad!” It was Cole’s voice. The anger and fear in it was very real and very touching. He had no idea, but he would see in a moment.

I’d had enough of these disgusting men. I could sense what the intruders were thinking and it was vile enough to make me blush with rage.

I gave a sharp, low whistle into the blackened room. That was one of the many signals mom trained us to use. It was all my brothers had been waiting for.

Alik sprang to his feet and hurled himself toward the biggest of the thugs, slapping the gun out of his hand and plowing him across the room. They crashed against the wall—the bad guy knocked out cold.

In the same instant, Evan took a three-step run and jumped feet first at the thug nearest him, grabbed him by the neck between his ankles, spun him down to the ground and pinned him in one fluid and well-calculated motion. A barrage of punches to strategic pressure points rendered his attacker helpless.

Maze, upon hearing my whistle, flew across the room to the thug farthest from us and propelled his sixty-pound body right into the man’s chest, teeth snapping and ripping at his neck. The terror behind the ski mask was real but his screams of panic came to an abrupt stop. A ceramic lamp lay in pieces around the thug’s head. Dr. Andrews had helped Maze finish the guy off. And since there was a pretty good amount of blood pooling through the ski mask, it was clear this guy wasn’t getting up anytime soon.

I only had eyes for the foul-minded creature who spoke to me. It was in that instant that I found myself smiling with anticipation. I felt a thrill ripple through my body as surprised registered in the man’s dull eyes. I leaped toward him in attack position. With my left hand I grabbed his weapon, and with my right, I delivered one quick strike to his nose with my palm that had him gushing blood and stumbling around.

Even though I was pumped and ready to finish him off, I thought better of it. I put him on the ground, face down and pulled his arm up and behind his back. He was in a lot of pain, but I had some questions and he better have some answers for me.

Chapter 31 The Messenger

“I’m freaking out, but okay,” Cole answered honestly. Maze was sitting on my right side, but he wanted to be sure I knew he was okay because he gave my hand a big slobbery lick.

Mom always said, “If you know you’re in for a battle, strike first and strike to win.” She would be proud of how we handled these goons.

“Come on in here guys. I’d appreciate your help asking this one some questions.”

Cole came flying from where he had ducked for cover. After quickly scanning the room and confirming that the bad guys were all subdued he blurted, “You guys are awesome! That was amazing! Oh, my gosh! I wish I had that on video! I would so put that on Yout—” he stopped mid-word and stared at the bad guy under me.

I was balanced on my guy’s back, my knee digging into his right shoulder blade, my arms wrapped around his right arm painfully pulling it back and up. The guy was trying valiantly not to scream like a little girl. (Well, a regular girl.) Cole looked back and forth from the guy’s cringing face, to me. I’m sure he was thinking, she only weighs 120 pounds, tops, and she brought that giant down?

“They had guns! They were coming to kill us?” Dr. Andrews was downright furious now.

“Well, I have my suspicions, but let’s just go ahead and ask this fella right here. So, were you sent here to kill us?” With the last word I yanked his arm a little further, and then eased off enough so he could talk through the pain.

“I ain’t telling you nothin’!” the thug spat through his bloody face.

“Ohhh, wrong answer.” I made a soft tisk-tisk noise with my tongue before I grabbed the hair on the back of his head, lifted and slammed his face into the crusty motel carpet.

I heard the doctor and his son gasp simultaneously. Good grief, they really didn’t have the stomach for this! Mom must have trained us really well. This was no big deal to us. I confirmed my thoughts by looking over at my brothers. Yep, they were both standing with arms crossed looking annoyed at the guy; no pity in their eyes at all. I guess growing up playing war games will desensitize a person.

The idiot under my knee was groaning. “Wanna try answering that question again?” I growled in his ear.

After several wet coughs and one uncontrolled sob from the pain, he answered, “We weren’t gonna kill you. Our orders were to bring you back to The Institute.” He was telling the truth, I could tell.

“Who gave you these orders?” I demanded to know. He hesitated one fraction of a second too long for my nonexistent patience, so he got another face full of carpet.

But it was too late, he had passed out. Darn it! Why didn’t I ask those questions first? Why did I have to be so rough on the three-hundred-pound thug? Why do I have to be so emotional all the time!

I felt myself start to cry, and then the doctor’s hand was on my elbow. Cole rushed to my other side and they walked me to the nearest bed.

“Are you hurt, Meg?” Cole asked gently.

I looked around the room through tear-filled eyes and saw Alik and Evan working on lining the four guys against the far wall. With quick movements, they were tying them up using the thugs’ own belts and shoelaces.

“My body feels fine. Never better. But my heart hurts, and I’m mad at myself for not handling that interrogation better. I really needed to hear that mom was alive.”

“Well, we can try to revive any of these other guys and get them to talk, if you want, Meg.” Alik said with a slight kick to one of the guy’s boots.

“As much as I want to know, we don’t have time. We’ve got to go. They weren’t planning to kill us, but they didn’t seem to care either way about Dr. Andrews and Cole. Besides, I’m sure the rooms around us heard the fight and someone has called the police. We need to get out of here. Fast.”

“I agree,” Evan said grabbing his bag. “But before we go, lemme check the SUV real quick for explosives, tracking devices, or anything else out of place.”

“Good call,” Alik smiled, appreciating his brother’s mechanical prowess and thinking. Dang, the three of us make a good team.

Chapter 32 Rage Begets Reason

Inside ten minutes we were back on the road. Everyone was beyond hungry again, so we went to a fast-food drive-thru and ordered lots of breakfast tacos. Have you ever had these things? Oh, my gosh, they are flour tortillas wrapped around juicy sausage bits and fluffy eggs with cheddar cheese and served with salsa packets. I’m drooling just thinking about them.

I started chuckling to myself. I never realized how much I’d been missing out in the food department because I lived in a bubble on the ranch all those years. I’m going to have to be careful not to pack on the pounds out here in the real world.

“What’s so funny?” Cole’s voice woke me from my food-filled daydream.

My sheepish grin and accompanying blush were completely genuine. I couldn’t tell him what I was really thinking. So instead I reversed the moment and asked, “So what happened last night? Were you that desperate to sleep in a chair?”

Now it was his turn to blush. “I just thought you needed some real rest,” he looked down at the edge of his shirt and shrugged casually.

“That was very sweet of you. I appreciated it, right up until the thug-fest.” We smiled at each other warmly.

“So…Evan, have I ever told you that you have beautiful eyes?” Alik was grinning at Evan.

“Why no, Alik. Thank you! You know, I noticed when you passed me the last packet of salsa for my breakfast taco this morning. That was very considerate of you!” Evan batted his eyes obnoxiously at Alik, and they exchanged goofy grins.

“Will you two shut up?” I barked. For the next ten minutes or so, I stared out the window and vowed to get my revenge. Stupid brothers.

In a decided effort to change the subject, I asked Dr. Andrews the question none of us had dared ask, but of which we were desperate to know the answer. “So what are we going to do when we get to The Institute? I mean, we know that’s where Dr. Williams is and that’s probably where he’s holding mom. But I can’t imagine they’re just going to open the doors wide and say, ‘Come on in, kids’.”

“Sure they are, Meg. They’ll be happy to have us walk in to the building; the problem will come when we want to walk out.” Evan specified.

“He’s right. We really need to come up with a plan. And we don’t have that much time to formulate it. We’ll be in California by nightfall. Are we going to try to break into the facility? Are we going to walk in there guns blazing? Is there a way to offer a deal? I mean, what do we know about this guy besides the fact that he’s a mad scientist bent on destroying children for his own sick gains?” Alik was thinking outloud.

“All I know about Dr. Williams is pretty much what I’ve already told you. He’s the guy in charge of The Institute.” Dr. Andrews stared at the road in front of him thinking.

“Well, wait a minute. How does he get his funding? Is there no board of directors he has to report to? Shareholders?” Evan’s voice trailed off as he was thinking.

“How about an ethics committee?” Cole added cynically.

“I think he does enough legitimate pharmaceutical business to afford his pet projects like Infinite. As far as I know, he reports to no one except the Food and Drug Administration, and they sure seem to have turned a blind eye to what’s really going on behind those walls,” said Dr. Andrews.

“Why can’t we go to the police or the feds?” Cole asked sensibly.

With a deep sigh, I started to explain, “Listen, until two days ago, I thought I was just a regular kid living with a quirky mom who wanted me and my brothers to live an ‘unpolluted lifestyle that focused on our intrinsic gifts and the development of our intellect’. Needless to say, everything has changed.”

I had been thinking of possible options from the moment I first knew mom was taken. “So, we go to the authorities and say what? A woman who claimed to be our mother for the last twelve years was really our rescuer from a neurobiological facility that was using us as human guinea pigs for their formulas? And, oh yeah, she stole us away from this facility in the dead of night, acquired an assumed name to help us hide and maternity tests would prove she is not our biological mother, nor are we siblings.

“She would claim that she rescued us. They would claim that they had no idea what she was talking about because The Institute does not now, nor ever has, used human beings as test subjects. How ridiculous!

“Dr. Williams would admit Margo worked for his company but, as evidence to her poor character, she didn’t show up for work one day and they never heard from her again. If Margo has these children, she must have acquired them through illicit means and the police need to charge her with kidnapping.

“It would be our mom’s word against this huge multimillion-dollar conglomerate. If you were the cops, who would you believe?” Though my logic was dead on, I felt sick saying it.

My brothers sat quietly on either side of me, both of them staring out of the window closest to them. I wondered if they wished none of this ever happened and that we were back on our ranch living in ignorant bliss again. I know that’s what I was wishing. My eyes drifted to the window, too. The scenery passed so quickly, it blurred into one stream of color.

And the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

The injustice of it all! They took me away from my biological parents, they tortured me for nearly four years while keeping me caged like an animal. They forced Margo into becoming a fugitive to save us. And when they kidnapped her, they took away the one person who ever loved me even though she knew that love would jeopardize her life!

I felt a rage build inside me so intense, heat poured from my skin. And from this fury, I drew strength. My mind was racing with possible solutions and probable outcomes: if this, then this. If this happened, then I would respond with this. When Dr. Williams said this, I would say that.

Then, my mind raced smack into a wall of clarity.

I was so enraged at the evil that hurt me and my family; I finally saw what I needed to do. Oh, yeah. Dr. Williams was not calling the shots anymore. From now on, he would have to react to my aggression. I’m going to take that evil monster down, and he won’t know what hit him. This is my game now. This is my world, and he’s about to feel my wrath.