Overtaken (25 page)

“Whatever you do, don't let go of my hand,” I ordered.

Chase tugged, and this time I followed. I was light on my feet, jogging alongside Chase through overly lit hallways and down metal staircases.

Security guards were combing the halls, checking doors, never realizing that they weren't alone. As Chase and I silently passed room after room of labs and computers and storage, something occurred to me. I knew right away it was exactly the kind of thought I should shy away from, but it refused to be denied. Why was I running away when every answer I'd ever wanted was in this very building?

My heels dug in once more, squeaking to a halt as my rubber soles gripped linoleum. I almost wrenched Chase's arm out of its socket.

“What is it?” Chase whispered, suddenly alarmed by my resistance.

I materialized and so did he. I pointed at the keycard he was holding in his left hand. “That's your dad's keycard?”

“Yes. Nica, come on. We've got to move.” Chase was losing patience with me. At least one of us still had their head on straight. We could hear footsteps and voices from somewhere down the hallway.

I continued on. “Which means it will open any door in this entire building.”

Chase didn't like where this was going. At all. “Yes . . .”

I had already made up my mind.

“I can't go yet. There are answers here, and I might never get an opportunity like this again.” I knew that I risked losing my chance to escape, but I'd already decided on this, and damn was I committed.

“You realize this is absolutely insane, right?” Chase proclaimed, nervously scanning up and down the corridor for signs of Bar Tech Security.

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “Completely and utterly.”

“But that's how you roll, right?” Chase sighed, shrugged. I nodded. He waved his arms like an overly enthusiastic college tour guide. “Where to?”

“Where would you get yelled at the most for sneaking into?”

Chase was sobering quickly. “The executive floor.”

Three minutes and a special elevator later, I was in the belly of the beast. The executive floor could be accessed by only a handful of Cochran's most-trusted employees. It also had the coolest collection of mint-condition arcade cabinets I had ever seen.

“Always keeping me on my toes, Bar Tech,” I muttered as I scurried past them with Chase.

“I'm not surprised. My dad has almost as many at home.”

“You mean . . . you've never been up here before?” I asked, incredulous. I was confused, as Chase seemed like he knew exactly where he was going.

“Nope.”

“Then how do you know . . . ?”

Chase pointed dead ahead to the double doors at the end of the hall. “Easy. That's the biggest office.” He moved for the doors.

“Wait,” I said, stopping in my tracks as I tried to assess the situation. “What if he's in there?”

Chase shrugged. Then he knocked. I winced, ready to run, but there was no response. We used the keycard and the doors swung open.

The office was spectacularly beautiful, impeccably decorated and designed. It was all browns, blacks, and creams. Spare Asian minimalism mixed with high-tech wizardry. Everything from the recessed lighting to the wall of concealed video monitors was controlled via a remote. It looked more like one of those insanely expensive luxury hotels than a business office.

Pushing all tangents aside, I headed straight for Cochran's computer. It was comprised of several slim monitors on his sleek, midcentury desk. With a secure office in an entirely secure floor providing more than ample security, Cochran's desktop was still password protected.

I realized that I had no chance in hell of hacking into Richard Cochran's personal computer. Still, I did have access to my own secret weapon. I turned to Chase, hoping that his status as the Cochran prodigal son had reaped some rewards along the way. “Any idea what your dad's password might be?”

I could see in his eyes that this was his do-or-die moment. Would he really betray his beloved father for some cause he wasn't even a part of? Or would he come to his senses and finally stop me and protect his family's empire?

“Takamori1877,” he announced. “His passion is Japanese history—specifically Samurai Japan. Saigo Takamori was one of the great samurai warriors from the nineteenth century. Some say he was the last true samurai.”

“Funny. That was my guess,” I quipped as I typed the password on the keyboard and then headed right to the drop-down search function.

My first search was for Blackthorne. There was a lot of what I already knew, but stark confirmation directly from the devil's playbook. Bar Tech had bought up almost all of the public land. The files also revealed that Cochran had made several recent trips to Virginia, meeting with local politicians, contractors, engineers, and researchers from the state's best tech school. The project was certainly gearing up, seemingly under most of the company's noses. Only one woman, whom Chase identified as Richard's loyal assistant of more than fifteen years, was cc'ed on any of the correspondence. The spending was coming out of a special fund Bar Tech had formed for corporate charitable donations. As no one seemed to care too much about Bar Tech's philanthropic efforts, it was the perfect place for Cochran to hide his secret spending.

Next I tried my own name and my father's. As I'd suspected, Cochran had been isolating my father for weeks before Dana brain-wiped him clean and he was sent out of town.

“Looks like your dad knows more about me than maybe I do,” I announced to Chase. Not only did he have details of my ability and its functions, likely thanks to Oliver and Jackson via Dana's superpowered wiles, but my habits, friends, absences from school, and medical records. The rabbit hole was tempting, but I knew I couldn't get stuck on the smaller details.

“What about Whiteface?” Chase asked, peering over my shoulder, eager to find out every secret his father kept.

“Jackpot,” I replied with a smile.

This time there was not just what I already knew—the secret facility, Dana's role, gene patents, Bluni as the program's lead researcher—but what I definitely did not. Details on Cochran's computer showed that the training facility was not the only atmospheric research lab that had been gutted and refurbished. While the main lab, Bluni's headquarters, was the crown jewel, the remaining five labs were among Cochran's collection of dirty little secrets. Each former lab had been outfitted with the most rigorous lock system and accompanying keypad, but the real kicker was in their new content. Cochran had outfitted each unit with a truckload of C-4 explosives. I didn't know much about explosives, but for some reason Richard Cochran had been squirreling away enough to blast Whiteface into two. Unfortunately, it didn't say why.

When I heard the door's lock click open, it was like I had summoned him to answer the question himself. With nowhere to go, I yanked Chase down directly under the desk. I tried to go stealth again so we could have a chance to sneak out or at least hide somewhere a little less obvious. My fingers shimmered but quickly returned to fully opaque. Chase shot me an urgent “hurry up” look. As hard as I tried to relax, focus my energy, and disappear, my body wasn't cooperating. Which made me only more desperate and panicky. But it wasn't happening.

Luckily, Cochran wasn't headed for his desk chair. He was too busy shouting back and forth with Bluni. “This Maya Bartoli shitstorm? This is all on you, Bluni. You were so caught up in your research lab you never realized how dangerous an enemy she could be to us.”

“This isn't my fault, Richard,” Bluni barked back. “This incident at the school has nothing to do with the science. It's an isolated aberration.”

“Isolated? She's rampaged half the town. She's the exact worse-case scenario that every researcher warned the board about before you told them every lie they wanted to hear and convinced them that these traits were safe to harvest and implant in others. I don't know if it's better or worse when your fearless leader drinks the Kool-Aid too.”

“Bartoli wasn't one of my kids,” he answered defiantly.

“You're right; she's not. But Nica Ashley is. And you let her run wild.” Cochran waved his hands around the room, presenting his office in its full glory. “The keys to the castle? My job? I know what the board promised you upon delivery of genetic patents. I might be getting pushed out, but I still have my people here.”

Holy shit. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Richard Cochran was no longer pulling the strings at Bar Tech?

“Fine. Great, in fact. The timing couldn't be better, because I am so tired of bailing out this ship you insist on sinking,” said Cochran. He picked his laptop up off the desk, along with the single framed photo on the desk: Cochran and an eighth-grade Chase. “Enjoy it while you can.” He departed with a smirk, leaving everything else behind him as he stormed out of the office.

Though Bluni didn't know he had company, Chase and I were reeling in Cochran's wake. My brain was scrambling to catch up: Cochran's reluctance to make the superpowered kids a real project at Bar Tech. Dana's recruitment tear through Ski Club and their training facility on Whiteface. Blackthorne, Virginia, Cochran's most top-secret projects. And his most recent acquisition: enough C-4 explosives to warm the heart of a Bond villain. I could feel that final piece clicking into place. It filled me with equal parts satisfaction and terror. It was time to get crazy.

Though Chase tried to stop me with every available limb, I climbed out from the under the desk. Bluni didn't even notice me until I spoke.

“I know what he's planning,” I said boldly.

Bluni dove for the desk's panic button. The alarm had barely sounded before two security guards barreled into the room.

“Leave her alone!” Chase shouted, rising to my defense, but it was chivalrous in gesture alone. He was quickly in the same zip-tie cuffs I'd been wrangled with.

He and I were being dragged away, so I shouted out as much as I could. “Cochran's not abandoning Bar Tech. He's going to rebuild it. He has another site in Virginia that he's hidden from the company. It's called Blackthorne.”

This seemed to at least get Bluni's attention. But why was I sharing? Why did I want to help Bluni, a man equally as vile as Cochran himself? Because I had figured out Cochran's endgame.

“He has all of Whiteface rigged to explode. He's going to bury Bar Tech, the town, and everyone with it.”

Bluni didn't flinch, but I could see his hand beginning to tremble. He looked away, instead turning to the guards. I could see his time as Bar Tech's grand master already ticking away. “You know where to put them. And get me a location on Cochran. ASAP.”

Chase's hand was warm, and I squeezed it like a charm, the only source of heat and light in the otherwise frigid cell. It was so cold and dark, that “cell,” wasn't even accurate. Compared with the rest of the building's architectural merit and postmodern grandeur, this felt like the dirty basement that Bar Tech had forgotten to finish. Its own Soviet gulag. The thought gave me chills. How many unfortunate people had been locked away in this place? While the realization that Chase and I weren't the first to rot in this hole was upsetting, even worse was the fact that we were on deck to be the last. I couldn't fix the past, but I was very focused on the future—the one that involved catastrophic destruction and the burial of Barrington. Every distant rumble and clank put me on edge, each one sounding for all the world like the beginning of the end. I sat silently, fists clenched, waiting for the reaper to arrive in the form of Cochran's avalanche, roaring down the mountainside to pulverize us. “Your dad's an asshole,” I blurted out. Not the nicest thing to say but a bit of an understatement in my opinion. Not uncalled for, but I knew it probably wasn't the right time to say so. When was, though? I didn't want to start a fight, but I had to let Chase know how I felt. He squeezed my hand back.

“It's just not like him. It's not the guy I know.”

“No one here is who you think they are,” I said sadly, thinking about Jackson and his abrupt transformation. “We've all kept secrets from each other. I'm not proud of it, but we did.”

“If I could just talk to him . . . ,” said Chase, trying to wrap his head around the recent avalanche of disturbing revelations about his father.

“It's too late for that, Chase. We have to get out of here and we have to try to stop him. Talking will just get us killed.”

Chase scooted across the floor to the slot in the thick door. “What are we gonna do?” he asked, as if I had some magic solution to our current predicament. “Can you shrink us and slip through here?”

I remembered that I hadn't actually discussed the specific details of what I was and wasn't capable of with Chase. In lighter circumstances, I probably would've laughed. But Chase was getting audibly frustrated—I hoped more at the situation than my attitude. A third voice interrupted.

“I have a better idea.”

The voice came from behind me. I turned around to see Topher standing behind us with Oliver at his side.

“About time,” I said matter-of-factly, and then ran toward them for a hug. In my excitement, I'd forgotten that they were simply projections, and my efforts sent me breezing right through their spirit forms and nearly crashing into the wall. “Right,” I said, noticing Chase's spooked look, triggered by our friends' sudden, ethereal appearance. “Uh, so, Topher can—well—long story, but it's him. Just separated from his body. Astrally projecting. This is what I was doing at the dance. I had to get to my mom.”

“But isn't she . . . ?” Chase shot me a bewildered look.

“Yeah, down in the South Pole. And Topher and Oliver are in town at Ebinger's.”

“Oh. Duh.” Chase looked more confused than ever.

I turned and looked at Oliver. “You saved me at the school.”

He blushed and looked at his feet, embarrassed by the attention.

“What happened with Dana?” I asked.

“There are places in my brain she didn't get to,” he replied. “It took seeing you in danger like that, but it was so clear. You were about to get hurt. I had to do something.”

His explanation sent one thought blazing across my brain: What about Jackson? If Oliver was moved to action, why wasn't he? Did he not care about me? Or not care enough?

“It took me a while to find him,” remarked Topher. “But I didn't give up. I kept thinking about what you said—that I was the only one who could open his eyes.”

“And he did,” Oliver chimed in with a warm smile. “I'm so sorry for the way this all happened. I can't believe what a dick I was.”

“You were, but it wasn't your fault,” I said, just relieved to hear Oliver sounding like himself again.

“I could've fought harder,” Oliver retorted guiltily. “I should've been stronger.”

“And I should've been a better friend,” I shot back, feeling my own pangs of guilt. “All Dana did was shove a wedge into a crack I created.”

Chase jumped from behind as his brain kicked back into gear after being blown wide open. “Hate to break up the good vibes,” he interrupted, “but you want to tell them what's going on?”

I started to pace as I relayed to my friends the information we'd discovered and the actions Bluni had taken; how we'd ended up in here, with no idea of where Cochran was or what he was up to.

Oliver was the first to jump in with a semblance of a plan. “Topher, how far away is the bakery from here?”

“Ten, maybe twelve miles,” answered Topher.

“That's where we went for . . . the projection,” Oliver explained to me. “Once I'm back in my body, I can cover that distance and be back here in like two minutes. It might be a fight to get in, but if Topher can find where the keys are, I might be able to break you out.”

“You aren't a fighter,” I reminded Oliver, stating the obvious.

“No, but I am angry,” he countered, holding out his hands and curling them into balls. “This is a fist, right?”

I grinned. “That'd be it.”

“Then I think I'm all set,” affirmed Oliver. “And I promise I'll only fight if I have to. If I'm quick enough, no one will even notice I'm here.”

I glanced over at Chase and Topher. “Work for you guys?” They both shrugged their approval. No objections.

“Okay then,” Oliver said, nodding at Topher. “See you all in a few.” Oliver and Topher blinked out of sight. And just like that they were gone.

“You really think this will work?” Chase pressed, doubt written all over his face.

“No idea,” I replied honestly.

“Has Oliver ever thrown a punch outside of a video game?” Chase asked, trying to muster up a bit of humor in an otherwise grim situation.

“It's the only option we have,” I reminded him. “If Oliver says he can handle it, my fingers are crossed and my hopes are high. Have a little faith.”

After a few quiet minutes with no sign of Oliver's arrival, I began to worry that my own faith was misplaced. Chase knew better than to point out that it had been much longer than my speed demon friend had predicted, but the silence just made me antsy. I looked through the small window in the door and noticed the hallway our cell was in had a wall of security monitors on the other side. No one was posted to watch them—was all of Bar Tech Security still downtown, cleaning up Maya's mess?—so I was free to observe the dozens of different angles feeding in from all around the facility. I scanned past labs and meeting rooms, bathrooms and hallways, but didn't see any indication that Oliver had arrived.

Come on, man. Where are you?

My eyes drifted to a segment of monitors focused on the perimeter of the building. Dozens of attentive guards were still on patrol. So much for my hope that Maya had been a large enough distraction to make this any easier on Oliver. One screen displayed a lonely back corner of the structure, a single guard leaning against the wall by a door. I looked past it—

—and right back as something blasted out of the nearby tree line and clocked the guard in the temple. The force nearly knocked him off his feet, and in an instant, Oliver appeared on-screen. He tried the door, but it was locked. He stooped and searched the guard for a keycard. Seconds later, he was in.

I nudged Chase. He looked at me questioningly.

“He's here!” He joined me at my side and peered through the slot. I pointed out a second monitor, where I'd picked up Oliver's journey into the facility, then a third, then a fourth. He was tough to follow, popping from hallway to hallway, but he was making his way to us when he stopped and whipped around, like something spooked him. There was nothing there, but he seemed to look relieved and started talking to someone. Topher! After a few seconds, Oliver grinned and sped off the way he'd come. I lost him, but Chase picked him up three screens over and four down. He peered through a thick window, checkered with reinforcement wire, that looked in on a large office. That must be where the keys are kept.

“No way he's getting in there,” mumbled Chase, coming to the same conclusion. Oliver looked around and blasted down the hallway, where he lifted a sizable trash can off the ground. A second later, the wastebasket burst through the glass like a rock through paper. An alarm began to sound as Oliver hopped in through the busted glass. Chase was shocked. “How'd he do that?”

“Speed,” I realized aloud. “Inertia. Once an object starts moving at a certain speed, it'll keep going that speed, even if he stops. Like in a car accident.” I shuddered at the memory of the wreck I'd experienced in Oliver's mother's backseat.

“So however fast he can run . . . ,” Chase added, mulling over the ramifications of inertia.

“. . . that's how fast he can throw anything he can hold,” I chimed back, completing the science lesson.

Bzzzzzt!
The door lock disengaged and Oliver popped it open. He ran in for a hug, which I returned at full strength. He turned to Chase, arms wide—

—and paused. Chase was not diving in to reciprocate the embrace. The brothers looked each other up and down, wary. There was no spite, but no warmth either. Chase extended a closed fist. Oliver gave him a pound. They both offered a small nod of understanding. This would do for now.

“Now can we get the hell outta here?” I asked as I eagerly strode out of the detention cell.

If we could've run as fast as Oliver, the escape would've been so much smoother. From caged to free in ten seconds flat. That wasn't happening. Our legs were still stuck in first, while Oliver zipped down each new hall like a race car with a brick on the gas pedal. After making sure each was clear, he'd gesture for us to follow and we'd catch up as fast as we could. This worked for the first few floors we ascended through the mazelike complex, but we were quickly met with resistance. The alarm triggered by Oliver's trashcan-through-the-window trick was still wailing, and the sound was drawing guards—not just from outside, but from within the recesses of Bar Tech as well. We could hear them pounding down the same stairs we were galloping up, and Oliver signaled for us to turn around. Speed wasn't necessarily in our favor anymore. Hiding would have to do.

We dove under the stairwell as gruff shouts and thick boots clattered by. I squeezed Chase's hand and wished I could vanish. More than anything, I wished that I could make Chase vanish with me, too. None of this was his doing, but here he was, being hunted just like one of us. When the last guard passed through the door, we hustled back up the stairs. We were going to have to rely on the world's fastest teenager to get us out in one piece.

“There they are!” The shout came from behind us, from a burly guy with a beard that wrapped his face like a werewolf's.

Oliver looked for something to throw. Nothing. The hall was white and bare. The security guard held up an automatic weapon—whether it was loaded with bullets or a beanbag, we had no way of knowing—and barked at us to freeze. Chase and I obeyed. We were caught, and our hands went up. Oliver made a familiar fist. He didn't think he could take this guy, did he?

Fwoom!
Oliver fired himself down the hall like a human rocket. My eyes couldn't even trace him until he was less than a foot from our captor, where he emerged from his speedy blur with his fist aimed for that bearded chin. Knuckles met jaw with a crack, and the guard dropped to the floor as Oliver rolled past him and sprang back to his feet. He brushed himself off and jogged back over to us.

Chase enveloped him in a massive bear hug. Oliver's voice was a muffled struggle as he gasped for air until his brother let him go. “We cool?”

“We're cool,” Chase announced with an approving nod.

It was only a short sprint to the exit, and we found ourselves outside, alone in the dark, with most of the Bar Tech Security force still confusedly scurrying through the building behind us. Oliver ground us to a halt.

“Wait here.”

“For what?” I shouted, ready to run until my body collapsed, just to be away from this place. Oliver pointed at a pair of headlights growing larger in the distance.

“Our chariot awaits.”

In a few seconds, a large white Ebinger's Bakery van with Topher behind the wheel screeched to a stop in front of us. Oliver rolled the sliding door back and ushered Chase and me inside. We froze at the sound of a dozen guns being cocked and aimed at our backs. A single pair of hands began to clap.

“And Cochran says you're all like Maya,” a familiar voice proclaimed. “You're much more in control and far less dangerous.”