The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,74
and make sure they don’t have the whole house surrounded,” he said. “Jen, you’re with me. Zu and Ana, I need you to stay here and cover us.”
His voice disappeared beneath the battering hail of gunshots. They pierced the side of the house, spraying through the wood siding. Shards of glass and plaster whipped into a hurricane of sound and violence.
“Did they make it out?” I asked, smoke and debris filling my mouth. “The house kids?”
I didn’t hear any noise downstairs. They must have made it to the hatch. They had to have escaped.
But the kids outside…
The gunfire had stopped, but their screams hadn’t.
“Help! Help me!”
“Get out! Run!”
My next thought sent a chill deep into my core. If the intruders wanted the kids dead, they already would be.
“They aren’t going to kill them,” I told the others. “They’re going to take them!”
Jacob crawled through the broken furniture, dragging a rifle after him. He braced it against the blown-out window’s frame, looking through the gun’s sight. A gash on the bridge of his nose sent blood streaming down over his face.
I followed, bumping up against the other side of the window, the pistol gripped tight in my hand.
“Can you get a shot off?” I whispered, craning my neck to see out of the corner of the window.
He couldn’t. Not without hitting the kids being dragged out of the trees, kicking, scratching, hollering.
“Why aren’t they using their powers?” I whispered.
The other kids had to know these people weren’t friendly, and we could hear them trying to get away, even in the face of the intruders’ guns. Something else had to be preventing them from using their abilities. Something we couldn’t see from up here.
The men in all black—they looked like monsters. They’d painted their faces to blend in with the green of the forest, and their body armor was as heavy as any soldier’s going into war.
Just like the men who had kidnapped us in Pennsylvania.
Horror gripped me. This place…it had been Liam and Ruby’s dream, and I’d turned it into a nightmare. The evil had chased me here, and now it was going to infect the lives of these innocent kids.
I switched off the safety and checked the cartridge, then slammed it back into place. I hadn’t felt the heavy, bitter kiss of a gun in my hand since I was a child myself, when Vida had given me the training no one else was willing to. After, I’d sworn I’d never hurt anyone, let alone kill them. There wouldn’t be any need. Not with the world we were creating.
We wouldn’t need to fear every stranger and their intentions.
We wouldn’t have to protect ourselves, or claim self-defense.
We wouldn’t feel the cold brush of death on the backs of our necks every time we stepped outside.
My hand tightened on the gun. You are not going to take these kids.
“Where are you going?” Jen whispered as I approached the doorway. “Zu! You can’t be serious!”
I shouldered past her, ignoring the protests of the others.
It was almost like the soldiers had sensed it, like they somehow knew the exact moment to truly crush me.
I only made it one step before the White Noise switched on.
The same second I realized I was still on my feet, I saw that no one else was.
The sound blared from speakers outside, enveloping the house like hurricane winds. It hummed and intermittently squealed. But it was just…there. Too loud, too aggressive in the way it invaded my skull, but there was nothing blistering about it.
Not for me.
Jen moaned, her legs curling toward her core, her hands jammed against her ears. Across the room, Ana was struggling to push herself up off the ground, swaying like she’d been drugged. A few feet away from her, Jacob craned his neck around, his face red and sweat-slick from the effort it took to push back against the White Noise.
“G-go!” he managed to get out.
I ran.
The explosion at the university, I thought, pounding down the stairs. I’d been standing so close to the speakers as they’d blown…My ears hadn’t been able to pick up much of anything after, and while my hearing had eventually returned, it was completely possible that I just couldn’t hear the mind-clawing frequency layered into the White Noise anymore.
Where is it coming from?
I forced myself to slow as I came down the last few steps. The hallway was a mess of paper and glass; the art that still clung to the walls was crooked or upside down.