Ordinary Read online

  “Is he safe?” The sudden appearance of another guy—maybe in his early 20’s—in the room with me makes my heart jump into my throat.

  He stands at the window, staring out at nothing. Or something. It’s hard to say. There’s nothing but wasteland beyond the windows. All I can see of the guy is messy red hair, slumped shoulders, his arms hugging his chest.

  “Who?” I ask, approaching slowly.

  This guy isn’t part of our group. I have no idea where he came from. Another floor, maybe, like Bianca said? That means there are others in here, which doesn’t bode well for us.

  “Promise me,” he says, oblivious to my question. “I need to know he’s safe before I agree.”

  Agrees to what? Somehow, I’m only hearing part of the conversation. Did this happen? Was this conversation real?

  The door rattles behind me, then the muffled thump of fists against the soundproof glass. I glance over my shoulder. Miller pounds against the door, throwing his weight and his Powers against it, desperation creasing his face. He’s shouting, but I can’t hear anything he’s saying. Everyone else has pressed away from him, against the far wall. I’m locked in here alone.

  The guy turns from the window, squaring off against me so suddenly I stumble backward. “Do it. I dare you. Do it, and I’ll bring this whole place down on your head.” Pure hate burns in his sunken green eyes and sallow face. “I’ll kill you all!” His scream is so wild, so purely feral. Spittle flies from his mouth. Tears roll down his cheeks. Despite his weak form, his clenched fists and animalistic hate fill me with absolute dread.

  “I… I don’t…” I back up as he lurches toward me until my back presses against the wall.

  Miller continues his attack on the door across the room.

  The guy stops inches from me, sneering, snarling like a predator ready to rip apart its prey. Something unseen twists his arms back, pulling him away. He resists, fights, kicks, and tugs desperately to break free from the invisible grasp, all the while screaming the same words over and over.

  “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

  Then just as suddenly as he appeared, he’s gone. He wasn’t real, wasn’t really here. I’m on the floor, back pressed to the wall, hands over my ears, shaking. Real or not, he meant it. Death lived in his eyes.

  The door clicks, and I lower my hands. Celeste casually holds the door open, watching Miller curiously. Everyone else in the hallway stands with their backs to the far wall, faces pale.

  Miller kneels in front of the open door, sobbing like something inside him shattered. I watch for a moment, then look at the vacant spot where the guy disappeared.

  Not just any guy. Murphy. Nothing else could explain Miller’s reaction. The absolute devastation.

  Still shaking, I push off the floor and walk over. All my hate for Miller melts away, replaced by pity. I don’t forgive him for what he did. I can’t. But there’s no doubt why he did it. I kneel beside him, wrap my arms around him. Miller leans against me, sagging, all his energy and motivation extinguished like a dead flame.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to offer some sort of reassurance. “It wasn’t him. You know that, right? It wasn’t really him there. Paragon is playing with your head, trying to break you.”

  But to what end? What do they have to gain by showing us that? Did that really happen at some point in time or was it just another hologram, a simulation created by Paragon to mess with our heads?

  No one dares to move or speak, offering Miller a chance to grieve. Miller, who is always so tough, who stands up to everyone and everything. Miller, who never seems to care about anything or anyone else. I think seeing him in such a state reminds all of us that this testing needs to stop, that we all need out. The others in our group inch toward the open elevator doors.

  Decisively, Miller pulls away, gripping my head between his trembling hands tighter than I would like, our faces inches apart. “Get me out of here,” he growls. “I’ll kill them all.” He grits his teeth, then yells the words again, so much like Murphy had.

  “Okay.” I nod, leaning my forehead against his. For the first time since discovering what Miller did, I believe he wants the same thing as me. To escape this place. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Despite the abrupt resolve to destroy Paragon, Miller still needs help standing, shaking as we make our way back to the elevator. It’s only eleven floors down, but in this state, I don’t think Miller will want to take the stairs.

  43

  The elevator ride is silent. Miller uses his manipulation Power to select floor 189 and hold on to it to prevent us from being taken somewhere else. Everyone else gives him and Celeste space, staring at their feet, pressing against the back walls of the elevator—not that there’s a lot of space to spare. At one point, the carriage lurches, stops, and starts taking us back up. Miller tries his Power on the panel, but it does no good. His hands ball into fists, and he lets out a roar as he throws his fist into it again and again until the panel loosens. Quite a terrifying sight.

  Everyone presses even further away from him as he rips the panel out of the wall and grabs the wires inside directly. Something sparks, smoke billows out of the access space. I wave it away, coughing. For a moment, I fear he may start a fire, but the elevator stops its ascent and resumes the journey to floor 189.

  “That’s one way to do it,” I say, hoping to lighten the mood. No one laughs.

  The stink of body odor is quite foul in this confined space. I hold my breath to try and avoid breathing the air, counting down the floors.

  The exit’s a trap! Madison’s message screams in my head, and I reflexively reach up to cover my ears, as does everyone except Celeste.

  But it’s too late. The elevator dings and the doors slide open on floor 189 before we can react.

  “Shut it,” a guy against the back wall calls out. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “No!” I dart through the open door before anyone else can stop me. I won’t leave the others in trouble.

  “Let him stay,” another guy says in the elevator. “We can still go.”

  “The doors won’t close,” Miller says, though part of me wonders if he’s lying to them.

  The thought disappears the moment I see the hallway ahead, and I freeze in place, waving Miller and the others back into the elevator before they step out.

  All three of the other groups line the walls on their knees, eyes downcast. Each group has half a dozen security guards standing over them, holding guns to their heads. Some of the subjects are prone on the floor, either convulsing or completely still. A quick count of eight in total. Likely the first to put up a fight. Judging by the blood or angry welts on some of the guards, the match wasn’t completely one-sided. One guard’s body is dragged through an open door down the hall, broken glass and concrete shards crunch under the guards’ boots as they pull their comrade along.

  Twenty feet down the hall, Bianca tilts her head slightly in my direction and meets my gaze. Blood trickles from her temple and the corner of her mouth as she kneels beside Rosie. The blood is a clear indication that Bianca put up a fight, along with the cracks and dents into the concrete walls around her.

  Joyce steps out of a doorway at the far end of the hall, and the space between us seems to stretch. “Ugene. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Let them go,” I say, doing my best to sound braver than I feel.

  “If you cooperate, no one else has to get hurt,” Dr. Cass says. “Though your friends in the elevator need to join the group.”

  I ball my hands into fists, the image of Murphy’s pure hate filling me. For a moment, I understand that feeling.

  “I’m afraid I must insist,” Dr. Cass says.

  Commotion arises behind me. I spin around, watching as additional security guards yank subjects out of the elevator. Miller sends a bolt of electricity straight through one guard, punching another in the face and taking his gun. He charges at another guard and bounces backward as he hits an invisible
barrier. A Telekinetic bubble. Everything seems to slow as I watch a third guard throw one of the girls in our group to the ground by her hair and raise his gun at Miller’s back.

  “Miller stop!” I scream, rushing over and putting myself between them before the guard can fire.

  Miller’s chest heaves with mad breaths as he slowly turns in a circle, holding the gun out at each of the guards—whose full attention is on him. His grip on the firearm tightens, finger wrapped around the trigger.

  “Drop it,” I hiss. “We’re outpowered. You’ll get everyone in trouble.”

  “I don’t care,” he growls.

  “I do,” I say, raising a hand and carefully placing it over the gun’s barrel, lowering it. “Please. Not like this.”

  The muscles in his jaw twitch with rage, but he drops the gun on the ground and raises his hands. In seconds, three guards are on him, binding his wrists behind his back.

  “He’s dead,” one of the guards said, toeing the guard Miller shocked. The emptiness in the dead guard’s eyes is enough to tell us all that. Miller killed him. Without hesitation.

  “Line them up,” Dr. Cass says impatiently from down the hall, waving along the wall with the other subjects. “Ugene, this way please.”

  The walk along the hallway feels long. Longer than the journey through the valley or across the arid plains. The world seems to stretch as I make my way toward the room into which Dr. Cass disappeared.

  Chunks of concrete—remnants of the fight between the subjects and the guards—press into the sole of my worn loafers. Cracked tiles create strange patterns on the floor, reminding me of the cracks in the ground outside. Bullet holes puncture the walls in places, but not a lot. The fight clearly ended quickly.

  Most of the subjects don’t move or make a sound. A few struggle to keep control of their crying. Both the silence and the tears rip at my heart. I knew this was a trap, and still I walked every last one of them right into it. Right into Paragon’s open arms. My steps fall heavy as I pass one of the prone subjects in a small pool of blood. Not just a subject. Mo.

  Tears blur my vision, and I blink them back furiously, meeting Sho’s eyes near the end of the hall. His meaningful gaze turns from me to the wall opposite him. I don’t quite understand until I turn to enter the room where Dr. Cass awaits. The plaque on the wall beside the door reads 6B.

  The exit.

  Taking a deep breath, I square my shoulders and step through, uncertain of what to expect on the other side.

  44

  Dr. Cass sits in a swiveling high-back desk chair, the black leather a stark contrast to her pale blue pencil skirt and matching suit jacket, and the white walls of the room. Her manicured hands are folded in her lap.

  Hilde stands at one side, sweat on her brow, face paler than I remember. At the other side, Forrest examines his tablet, oblivious to anything else going on in the room. Behind them, a window looks out at the ruined world beyond—a clear indication we are still in the simulation.

  “This experiment has been something else, Ugene,” Dr. Cass announces as if we are just having a casual conversation in her office and my friends aren’t waiting at gunpoint. “Your abilities have really taken me by surprise.”

  Abilities… “But I… I thought…”

  “Leadership abilities, intelligence,” she clarifies. “Sorry if that was misleading. I’m afraid we have not found even the slightest trace of any sort of Power in you.”

  The words are a blow to the gut. I gasp, wince, look to Forrest for something, anything, that says she’s wrong. He just frowns and shakes his head. It’s a perfect mirror of the disappointment I’ve seen in my dad so many times.

  “But your skills haven’t been without reward,” Dr. Cass continues as if I care. “You’ve brought out readings from our other test subjects like we’ve never seen before—natural boosts to Powers and chemical reactions in their brains and bodies that people with their rank shouldn’t be capable of. If we can find a way to reproduce the results in a more controlled and peaceful way, it could help society flourish; it could stop regression. And, I suppose, some thanks are owed to Forrest and his brilliant idea to initiate Protocol 10-98.”

  Brilliant. Right. Torture us. Starve us. Fight us. Shoot us. Best idea I’ve ever heard.

  “But now that we have the data we needed, I’m afraid I’ll have to insist that this charade end,” Dr. Cass says.

  “What charade?” I ask, noticing Hilde’s sweat isn’t beading anymore, but dripping down her temples. What is she doing?

  “The pitiful attempt at escape, of course.” Dr. Cass leans forward, resting her forearms on her knees. “You can’t escape, Ugene. This is a simulation. It isn’t real.”

  “Tell that to Mo or any of the other subjects you shot in that hallway.” My words have far more venom than I intend. My gaze flicks around the room, and I can’t help but wonder if this ever really was an exit. Maybe the whole point was to make us think we could escape.

  On the far side of the room, just out of my initial line of vision, my dad stands between several guards. “Dad!”

  I rush toward him, but bright, explosive pain blindsides me, turning my vision to floating specs of darkness momentarily. I crumble to my hands and knees.

  “Ugene,” Dad calls to me, stepping forward. Several guards restrain him. His frame is smaller than I remember, frail. It doesn’t appear as if the treatments have worked. He’s degenerating anyway.

  Derrek yanks me to my feet, shoving me away from Dad. Where did he come from? Derrek reeks of sweat but otherwise appears to have fared better in this simulation than the rest of us. His gaze on me is vigilant, but something about him is off.

  Making a feeble attempt at maintaining my dignity, I stand upright, taking a couple steps back, and brush my hands over my clothes in mock indignation. Pretending to ignore Derrek and the throbbing pain in my skull from his blindside punch, I turn my attention to Dr. Cass.

  “If anyone learns the truth about what you are doing here, you’re finished,” I say, doing my best to sound as threatening as possible.

  “Sweet, innocent boy.” Dr. Cass clicks her tongue, then stands and closes the gap between us, like a lioness stalking her prey. “So sheltered by your world, insulated from the truth. What makes you think anyone will care once they know what we have to offer them? An end to the inequality. An opportunity for anyone to enhance their station in life. The end of regression! You’ve heard of the Purge, when Powerless humans tried to make our advanced species extinct. They killed us, tortured us, experimented on us.”

  “You aren’t any better!”

  “Hold your tongue.” Dr. Cass’s expression darkens momentarily before adopting its usual calm composure, still stalking toward me, picking her way carefully. “That devastation out there.” She waves toward the window behind us. “That’s their fault. They drove Atmos to the edge. And now, the only reason we are able to survive is because of our Powers. If we lose them, that’s it. The bubble protecting our way of life will break. Crops will fail to thrive in the ruined ground. People will starve. Wells will run dry. The world is not ready for Powerless humans to survive! But imagine if we had the Power to expand, to grow and flourish and fix this broken world. And Paragon will offer that to everyone. Who cares how we came about it?”

  Everything she says is so matter-of-fact and authoritative that anyone who didn’t know better might actually believe her, that we can actually fix what is broken. That any sacrifice is worth the price to offer salvation. But Paragon can’t pull blinders over my eyes anymore.

  “Leave him alone, Joyce,” Dad says with that tone of dangerous authority that always made my skin crawl and made me jump to action. And he sounds so familiar with her.

  Dr. Cass, however, is unfazed by his outburst. “Our Powers are weakening,” Dr. Cass says, stopping in front of me and placing her hands on my shoulders. “And you are living proof that we face complete regression. I can’t allow that to happen.”

  My shoulders
tense at her touch. Trina. Dave. Michael. Jade. Vicki. Mo. The seven other subjects lying in the hallway. The forty-six lost in the fight against the guards on the plains or in the sandstorm. Enough is enough.

  “Being Powerless is not a weakness,” I say, not flinching under her gaze. “Being afraid of losing your Power is.”

  Dr. Cass recoils like touching me will give her a disease. “I leave this up to you, Ugene. Let go of this ridiculous fantasy of escape and save your friends, your father, your city, or continue this pointless fight and General Powers will never receive his treatments. He will die.”

  General Powers?

  “I’m already dying,” Dad says, sagging ever so slightly. “Don’t do it.”

  But looking at him, at the frail state he’s in and the once powerful muscles sagging or gone, it’s hard to agree.

  General Powers. I knew he was part of the military, but I had no idea his rank. I guess I never cared. In his condition, that rank wouldn’t last long.

  “You haven’t been treating him,” I breathe the words out.

  Dr. Cass clicks her tongue again.

  “After everything I did for you.” My spine stiffens with indignation. “All the torture and near death I’ve endured, all the excruciating tests and samples and all the friends I’ve watched your goons cart away, you didn’t keep your one promise.” Anger boils in my gut and spreads through my body like wildfire. I want to fight, but they all have Powers, and I have none. It would be a quick end. “And now you dare to dangle him over my head like this is a whole new incentive to be an obedient dog? Why would I ever trust that you would keep your word? I don’t. I won’t!”

  “Don’t be childish,” Dr. Cass says. “If we have no Powers, we can’t grow what we need to survive or clean the water. But we need you. We’ve always needed you, but your father has foolishly sheltered you on some preposterous notion of protection.”

  I don’t know what she means about my dad, but I do know that she’s wrong about one thing. “We don’t need Powers to survive. We need cooperation. Intelligence. What I’ve managed here should be proof enough of that!”