Maddie slumped in the wooden chair at the far end of the room, wearing baggy clothes and work boots, the bruise on her face a dingy mauve beneath her crimson-tipped bangs.

Nylon rope bound her wrists and ankles to the chair. Her exhausted eyes watched as the mercenaries dragged me to a column ten feet in front of her. They lashed my hands together and attached the rope to an eyehook overhead. They adjusted me until I slumped facing Maddie, my weight on my wrists, my hands turning purple.

A ventilation system thundered to life and filled the room with noise. Standing near the door, the lady doctor glanced at her cell. Then she crossed the room and jabbed me in the leg with a syringe and depressed the plunger. She stepped behind the column and--

----------------------------------------

I woke to throbbing agony in my shoulders and wrists. And to the sight of Maddie, her hands tied, her face bruised, her eyes livid. With a cinderblock wall behind her, she filled my field of vision. Somewhere nearby, a machine thrummed.

I felt for the orbs and she said, "No! Lark! I’m boobytrapped."

"I’ll get free and--"

"Listen to me." She exhaled in ragged relief when I withdrew my attention from the orbs. "PJ lost control of me, he’s working on something that needs all his attention. I’m myself again, Lark. We can talk now, I don’t know for how long."

"Do you--"

"Boone’s power is, he knows things. But he needs help. We need help. We need the government behind us. After he got shot and all his secrets came to light, Boone lost his access."

"Rachel says--"

"Shut up and listen! Rachel’s fighting daddy issues, but Boone’s fighting doomsday. The end of everything. So yeah, Boone arranged this, he set PJ loose in New Park to show what kind of enemy we’re facing, to wake everyone up."

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Not everyone. Just the ones he doesn’t kill."

"We’re all dead if Boone fails." She shook her head, and her crimson bangs swept her forehead. "We planned to let PJ recruit two bombers, detonate two explosions. Then we'd stop him before things snowballed. That was the plan."

I clenched my fists against the spreading numbness. "Stop him? You work for him."

"For Boone." Her voice turned shaky. "Always for Boone, only for Boone. He asked me to let PJ take me …"

The machine behind me thundered a gritty note that vibrated along my spine. For a moment I imagined I heard voices, and I touched the orbs with my mind, feeling half-blind without them. But Maddie’s urgency--and the pain in her eyes--kept me from freeing them.

She lifted her head. "That was my choice. I chose that. We needed someone on the inside and I … I betrayed my brother, my family--you. Because doomsday is coming."

"Yeah, you know it's true because the fucking Mayan calendar says so."

"There’s no time to explain. " She took a short sharp breath. "Every time PJ kills an active, he gets twice as strong and twice as psychotic. He’s not just starting a panic, he’s starting a bloodbath."

"So what do we do?"

"Make your choice, Lark, right here, right now." She pinned me with her gaze. "It can be you and me, fighting together, working together. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything. Oh, God, my poor parents …"

I swallowed, and didn't say anything.

"But there was no other way to save them, to save everyone." She blew her hair from her face. "First we need to save ourselves. There's a bomb."

I followed her sidelong gaze to a brushed steel box, with lights flashing inside a tangle of wire and circuit boards. Two red lights, blinking in unison.

"What do I do?"

"I don’t know," she said, "send the orbs inside, I guess and--"

The lights changed to numbers: a digital readout, counting down in a blur of red.

00:06

00:05

00:04

00:03

Three seconds to detonation. A bomb. Ten feet away from me--and Maddie. No time to think. The orbs burst from my chest, shredding my shirt, and flashed into the box.

They tripped a wire and the door slammed shut, locking the orbs inside.

That wasn’t a box, that was a safe. It was a trap. The orbs were stuck behind reinforced steel plates.

I felt my lip curl and I focused on the orbs, preparing to tear through the safe.

Then the red-tinted darkness exploded around the orbs. A flash-bang grenade inside the safe sent shockwaves slamming through my mind.