The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith Page 0,121

the shadows right in their path to the laboratory. She was slender, dressed all in black and had a high cylindrical collar that covered the lower half of her face. Her hair was pulled back, and her eyes were trained on him. “But I can’t let you get what you came for. You won’t be making it to the lab while I’m around.”

Landon was still crouched on the floor, seemingly unaware of the situation he had just dropped them into. Cortland kept his eyes on the girl as he straightened up and turned to face her. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest and feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins. They had run straight into the person they had been hunting for months.

“Artemis,” Cortland whispered to himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY

CONFLICT

IN THE

LABORATORY

With his hands and knees pressing into the cold tile, Landon was unaware of what was going on around him. Carrying him and Cortland up to the forty-seventh floor was surprisingly easy, but what was difficult was keeping his abilities in check. He couldn’t allow them to take control of him again as they had during his apocratusis. If it happened, he knew the consequences would be catastrophic, so once he had released them on to solid ground, he had to fight the blazing fire within and contain it. It felt like a lump in his throat—a burning, scorching lump—that he had to choke down, and he couldn’t do anything until it was gone.

Cortland’s body suddenly slammed into the glass railing with a loud boom just as Landon was getting back in control of himself. The sound of guns firing in rapid succession was muted from where they stood but could still be heard echoing up the inner shaft of the tower. He looked quizzically at Cortland, who in a forced voice said, “Artemis,” and then made a directional motion with his head before falling unconscious.

Landon’s eyes bulged in surprise, and he hurried to his feet.

She stood powerfully in the middle of the hallway. Her high collar concealed her face, and her eyes glared at him with determination. There was no denying that Landon recognized her as the same girl he had encountered at the Gymnasium all those months ago.

His mind raced. He couldn’t believe she was standing right in front of him. In the back of his mind he wondered if in different circumstances, they could have just sat down and talked like civilized people with her answering the many questions he still had. What would she say if he could tell her that Dr. Pullman had told him to find her?

But these weren’t different circumstances and it wasn’t a different time. There was no changing his and Cortland’s situation. Anxious chills ran through his body; he knew he’d have to fight Artemis in order to fulfill their orders. She was the one thing standing between them and the laboratory, and they needed to get to the laboratory.

Landon clenched his jaw and focused. Time seemed to slow down around him as he awaited Artemis to make the first move. As he concentrated, the world shrank until nothing existed but the two of them. Apart from the steady sound of his own breathing, he could hear nothing, not Cortland stirring behind him or even the clatters from the battle raging below. Following his training, Landon widened his stance and rooted his legs. Tiny flecks of dirt and dust spurted into the air as he ground the balls of his feet into the tile.

Artemis reacted accordingly, crouching down into a low fighting stance, and then with a seamless thrusting motion of her arms, she projected her telekinetic force forward in hopes of pushing Landon aside as she had done Cortland.

“Not this time,” Landon muttered to himself as he pressed his hands forward and directed a similar telekinetic force toward Artemis. He knew what he was facing. He’d experienced the strength of her abilities before when she pinned him to the golden doors of the Gymnasium. But this time was different; this time she was not the only one with control of their abilities.

His quick reaction took Artemis by surprise; his reflexes were much faster than she had anticipated, and she had to reinforce her posture to brace herself for the impact of Landon’s oncoming wave of power.

The moment their fields collided, Landon’s feet slid a few inches back on the tile as his body absorbed the initial pressure. Like trying to walk against gale-force winds, he could feel his body