Judgement 8 (Subject Alpha #1) (11 page)

I flung myself around, vomiting, my heaves loud and my stomach cramping in pain as tears ran from my eyes with the onslaught.

There were dreams and nightmares. That was neither. That was a memory, a replay of things that had passed . . . had broken.

Every single electricity point in the house blew when my rage found its outlet, leaving my body in a violent scream; a scream that shattered every piece of glass in the house, scorched every piece of furniture in the derelict building, melted cables within the walls and finally took out the electricity supply to houses within a three mile radius.

They were going to die. All three of them. Painfully and as gruesomely as possible. I wanted the blood they had stained her with to fucking choke them. And it would; that was the only thing I was certain of in this crazy fucked-up life.

MY EYES SNAPPED WIDE as the door burst open, the wood splintering as a gasp left me, both in simultaneous harmony. A faint smell of burning hit my nostrils as shouting and darkness enveloped me.

“What the fuck, Reid? I told you! I fucking told you she was trouble!” a female voice shouted.

Oh great, not her again. The bitch hated me.

I pushed up into sitting position and tried to see something through the smoke and blackness but all I could make out were silhouettes.

“What’s going on?” I asked to whoever was there.

“We need to get out of here.”

“Jonah?” It was a relief to hear his voice. I’d passed out after the shit at the house and I presumed we were in a different one. But as long as Jonah was with us, my plan had worked.

“Come on, sugar.” I was scooped up into strong arms, my body curling into Jonah instinctively. “We have to go.”

“What happened?”

He raced through the house, his heavy pants becoming wheezes the thicker into the smoke we got. I started to panic, my heart beat pounding in my ears as my mouth dried. It was so dark. The scent and sound of a blaze somewhere made my heart beat way too fast. “Jonah, what the hell is going on?”

“Shush, it’s okay,” he whispered as he pushed a piece of cloth over my face. “Hold this against your nose and mouth. Don’t inhale the smoke, Elina.”

I didn’t like the way he kept turning to look behind him, his brow furrowing more each time, his features tightening with worry.

Suddenly he spun us around, his arms hugging me even tighter to his body as he rammed the door with his shoulder. When it didn’t budge, he took a couple of steps back and charged at it. We crashed out onto a lawn, Jonah spinning so he took the brunt of the fall and I landed on top of him.

Rolling off him, I spluttered into the grass, gasping for clear air as my chest screamed at the pain. I couldn’t get enough as both Jonah and I gulped, forcing the oxygen to dilute the smoke in our lungs.

Jonah was on all fours, drinking air as hard as I was but barking a cough at the same time. He held up a hand to me when I scurried over to him. “I’m okay,” he wheezed. “I’m okay.”

He flopped to the floor and rolled onto his back, his chest heaving as he fought to breathe. “Fuck!”

“What happened?”

“You . . .”

“You fucking crazy bitch!” Heather screamed as she launched herself at me, her body pinning me down as she wrapped her fingers around my throat and her legs around my thighs. “You are a fucking ticking bomb!”

“What?” The bitch was stoned or fucking fruit looped. “What the fuck, Heather?” I screamed louder when she pinned my face with her other hand and dragged my head up then forced it back so hard my skull vibrated painfully.

Each star in the sky swirled and blurred into one when her hold on my throat tightened. “I am gonna kill you! You fucking freak!”

I shook my head as much as I could.

“Heather!” Jonah shouted. “Get the hell off her!”

“Move, Jonah! Reid’s still in there. She’s fucking killed him!”

I was sure hands clawed up from the earth below me and tried to take me back down with them. My heart stopped. My lungs clamped down. No. No! I didn’t have time for that shit. I needed the other part of me, the part that enjoyed pain, not feared it.

I zeroed my gaze on Heather, on her rage and her hatred and allowed it to consume me, taking in each of her vicious words and making myself believe them. It wasn’t too hard. She was right. I was a monster, a freak against Mother Nature who didn’t deserve to breathe if Reid died because of me and my inability to control the disease that lived inside me.

She flew backwards into a tree trunk when my skin erupted with energy, every single pore on my body fighting with me, the enemy inside me for once my ally. It was only then I realised there were no lights on in the street. Only my body illuminated the area around us. I didn’t have time to wonder what the hell was happening to me as I tore across the garden and back into the house.

Jonah’s screams and shouts of my name mingled into the loud crackle of the intense fire, the now angry flames whipping for me as soon as I entered. I stumbled back, the heat and intensity of it was ferocious. Fuck. I looked around, trying to figure out which way to go. Where the hell was he?

“REID!”

All I could hear was wood splintering, fire hissing and things crashing. Sirens filled the air. Shit! Something else we didn’t need.

“REID!” It came out a spluttered cough, my lungs hacking up some sludge at the same time. I pulled my shirt over my face and moved farther in. A door to my left felt hot, the tell-tale bright orange glow sneaking out from under it warning me that way wasn’t an option. “Shit! Reid,” I choked out, tears filling my eyes. “Don’t do this. Don’t make me your murderer as well.”

I managed to reach the bottom of the stairs, the sound of them creaking above me not really encouraging. Blowing out a breath, I forced myself to calm down. “Okay, arsehole, my turn.”

I closed my eyes, shutting off my surroundings, ignoring the intense heat, the sweat frying my skin when it evaporated leaving behind a salty residue.

“Where are you?” I followed the radio waves, the faint lines of my own unique green signal leading the way in my head. I allowed them to flow, to conjure and twist and form a path in my internal vision. I had always been crap at this stuff, Janice shouting at me every time I lost the trace but my brain was doing it, it was hunting for him, seeking out and burrowing through the dark for the unique blue pulse in the atmosphere.

I almost choked on my own nerves when I found his faint throb of blue. It was easy to climb inside him, sliding into his tired mind as my body moved fast up the stairs towards the indicator, my feet breaking through the warped wood as I went. I gave him everything I could, feeding him what little energy I had, surging heat through his mind, stimulating and encouraging him. “Come on, don’t be a stubborn bastard, Reid. Let me help you!”

I slammed to a halt at the top of the stairs. “No. NO!” Fire licked every wall and crept along the floor, its flames curling towards me, the heat melting everything in its reach.

And Reid was on the other side.

As soon as I saw the blazing wall I knew we would either both die tonight, or just one of us. And I chose one of us.

Sliding the phone from my pocket, I fired it up and hit the icon. She answered on the second ring.

“Elina? Elina? Oh my God, where are you?”

“Listen to me, I don’t have much time. I need you to do something for me.”

She knew by the sound of my voice what it was; her choked gasp confirmed it. “No, Elina, I won’t. I won’t do it!”

“You have to,” I whispered. “You owe me. You owe me, Mother. And you made a promise. Now it’s time to keep your only promise to me.”

A sob echoed in my ear and a smile touched my lips. “It appears you have empathy, Mother. I need you to do it, now.”

“No . . . Elina . . . I . . .”

“You promised! You have fed from my hell for twenty-three years. Please. Please, if I hold any part of your heart, you will do this.”

“I can’t . . . you’re my baby.”

“No. No, I’m not,” I said quietly. “I’m subject Alpha, the prototype for project Judgement. And for the first time in my life I need to do the right thing. Let me go. I gave you every single beat of my heart to do with as you pleased. Well now . . . now I want you to be the one that gives it the final beat.”

“El . . . you’ll . . . you’ll die. I . . .”

“Set me free!” I begged. “I am so tired. I am a charged corpse, Mum, nothing more than a puppet on so many people’s strings. A force that has been manipulated so many times my head is fried and my soul is dying embers.” I swiped at a tear. “It’s time to let me go. Flood my chip. Please.”

“El . . .” Her cries broke my heart. “Baby, I . . .” She snivelled and blew out a breath.

“You promised,” I whispered, my heart sinking as the flames grew taller. “Don’t destroy what little we ever had together.”

She paused and took a few gulps of air. I closed my eyes and prayed. “Please . . .”

“Initiate code 44,” she choked out to someone. A stifled cry of relief tore up my throat. “Initiate—code—44!” she repeated slowly and firmly to someone. Someone spluttered something in the background. “DO IT!” she screamed.

“Thank you,” I sobbed. “Thank you.”

“You really love him, huh?”

I stilled, my tears flowing more freely when my eyes widened. “What?”

“Reid McCallum. Subject Delta.”

“I . . .”

“Shush. I lost you a long time ago Elina, but now, now I know you leave this life with a full heart, something Rowan and I could never give you.”

“Mum . . .”

“I love you, El. And I’m so very sorry. Goodnight, baby.”

I blew out a breath and closed my eyes.

“Subject Alpha,” she said completely toneless but assertively to someone. “Access code 0–1-0–0. Authorisation code . . . 1–4-5–1.” She hesitated then a choked sob left her and she forced out the final words. “Termination . . . code, 1–9-9–1. Sleep well, Elina, sleep well, my baby.”

Agony tore through my brain, a lightning bolt of fire coursing through every single nerve ending in my body as energy flooded my mind. A scream tore from me as my body felt like it ripped in two with the amount of electricity that engulfed me.

My heart struggled to regulate as my veins fortified, my blood slowly grounding to a halt inside them as it turned to cement. My bones tempered to accommodate the fury, attempting to protect me against the battle my body was under. My organs galvanised inside me, building shields against the sheer force that rode me.

I didn’t have much time. Taking a deep breath, I walked through the fire, its intensity unable to touch me with the computer-generated vigour locking down my body; even the pores in my skin had closed as the fake armour assembled around and inside me.

Breaking through a door I found Reid on his stomach, his face buried into the shirt he’d peeled off his back in an attempt to cover his mouth.

“I’m here, Reid. I’m here.”

I cried out at the pain tearing through me, my body shutting down as my brain pulsated with the electrical torment.

I laughed when I picked him up, the tears devastating me at the same time. His body jolted in my hold, my own death kick starting his heart as I dragged him over to the window, smashing it with my elbow.

“Breathe!” I grunted as I hauled his huge body up to the window, “Breathe, damn it!”

He groaned and mumbled something that sounded like a threat to my arse, and it had never sounded so damn fucking perfect. My eyes were closing, my heart slowing as it gave up the struggle.

“Not yet,” I breathed out. “Not yet. Let me do this!”

I pushed his body out of the window onto a porch roof, lugging my failing body out behind him and landing with a thud as I tried to fill my shrinking lungs.

“Reid!” I coughed, my mouth filling with mucus as I pushed at him. “Time to live. I . . .” I struggled to speak as my tongue swelled inside my mouth. “I—will—not be the . . . one who . . . killed . . . you.” His body rolled off the porch as I fell onto my back and smiled as the stars faded.