Super Secret | Half Hero Book 2 [ON HOLD]

Chapter 25: Bag of Cats

For I don't know how long, I jus stared at Mac, unable to sort through the blind anger, the searing regret, and the crippling confusion I was constantly being bombarded with.

"You realize this is crazy-pants, right?" I squawked. "The best hope we have is to grab my mom and brother when the heat dies down. You can heal Aaron, and we'll show my mom that Varun is working with the government that's trying to kill me."

"That doesn't fix the problem, Ella," Mac argued, fitting his considerable heft on a fullsize leather couch to stare at the stove. "C.E. is just the first in a long line of bad guys looking to get their hands on a game-changing chemical element to weaponize."

I couldn't understand why this was our problem to solve. Wasn't Mac the guy that told me he didn't want to have anything to do with this mess ever again?

What had happened in the past few months to change his beliefs so profoundly? Didn't we have enough crap to deal with already? Adding ruthless soldiers of fortune and the entire US government to our insurmountable to-do list seemed like overkill.

"Spend some time with these kids," Mac pleaded, rubbing his eyes as if he was tired of the argument. "Listen to their stories. You might find you have more in common than you think."

I scrunched my face up in thought. Mac wanted me to hang out, winning friends and influencing subspecies, while my family was trapped in the lion's den.

He clapped his massive palms on his knees to push upward off the couch like the old man he was, turning to give me a final look. "And keep it in your pants, little Half Hero."

"What?" I hissed, covering the blush that flooded my cheeks with my tear-soaked blanket.

"You heard me! Stay away from Cyrus. His mind is a bag of cats you want nothing to do with," Mac called, trundling toward the sleeping quarters. "I'm going to bed. You should too."

After a few fitful hours of tossing, I fell into a deep sleep on my stomach while the deafening peace of the glacial forest drowned out my thoughts.

My dreams never materialized into actual narratives but played horrendous memories like a mixed tape of my worst moments.

There was Aaron, sitting in a pool of his own blood, begging me to help him but my feet were nailed to the floor. When I bent down to free myself, a pair of hands grasped my face, yanking me into a fight with a dark specter in a bulging black mask. In the struggle, the apparition's amorphous hand clamped down on my mouth, suffocating the air from my lungs while I thrashed.

Next came the plan crash that started this whole ordeal. I was trapped in a metal tube in free fall while helpless passengers were tossed like salad. A doll-like stewardess flew at my face, her expression warped in accusatory fear. She reached for my hand, but our fingers merely brushed as the plane pitched to the side. Blue sparks burst from my hands, spewing over the horrified faces of my innocent victims. The cobalt hue grew so intense I had to close my eyes as my body seized with the power flowing through my veins.

Then, the force released my eyes and I found myself in a room with blank walls. I recognized the woolly blanket covering my tiny knees and the shelves of cards from my classmates, all of them wishing for a miracle. I turned my head to see my dad doubled over and crying in the boxy pink chair beneath the only window in my juvenile hospice room. I couldn't quite make out my own father's face, but I knew his voice.

In his hands dangled a long syringe, exactly like the ones in the Scion lab.

***

I woke to see a thick blanket of snow outside the windows of the cabin, like a picturesque wooded winter wonderland (in the middle nowhere.)