Thanks to everyone who's been reviewing so far, I'd love to thank each and every one of you, but for some reason FFnet is refusing to allow me to do so. But, don't think that Madi and I don't appreciate it, because we really do. Support is everything to a starving author. :)
Sorry for the long wait, but I ended up getting more jet lagged than I had been expecting. Europe kicked my ass, by the way. 70 miles in 10 days, trekking across France and Spain on foot. Fun times.
Hope everyone enjoys the chapter, which has NOT been edited by Madi, seeing as she's still in Venice until mid August. Just little ol' Rory to fend for herself right now. When she gets back though, she'll be looking over any posted chapters and editing them for us.
Happy Readin'.
Rory.
Lighthouse
three
Marcus led the young girl forcefully by the arm down the long corridor, a cocky smirk planted on his young face. His pace was quick, and with her shorter legs Ella was skipping to keep up with him. He couldn't believe that she was back, or more the fact that she'd been able to escape in the first place. When they'd first captured her, he'd tried to tell everyone what a stupid idea it was, keeping her locked up no extra security. She was too powerful, too smart and resourceful, and too desperate to be kept within her small given boundaries. In honesty, Marcus was truly surprised that it had taken so long for Ella to gather up the courage to leave. It wasn't like she couldn't have simply walked out the front door whenever she chose to. There wasn't a whole lot anyone, Marcus himself included, would be able to do to stop her.
Only, Ella didn't know that.
When she had first been captured, Ellla had been a frightened young fifteen year old girl who barely knew the full potential of her own powers. She'd cried nearly every night for the first few weeks, having no one to turn to except for the older boy who'd been caught along with her, Ian. Together they seemed to slowly build a resistance against the happenings of the Hole, and the people who resided inside it. After a few months of brutal lessons concerning her powers, Ella made several plans for escape, but none of them she put into action herself. Instead, she 'accidentally' leaked her plans throughout the Hole and allowed others to fail one after another while she watched on.
Many would think at first glance that Ella O'Daniel was a quiet and sincere girl who was the picture perfect daughter than any family would be honored to have. But Marcus knew better. He knew that beneath the shy exterior stood a girl willing to risk everything for her own freedom, whether it be hers or anyone else's life on the line. The fact that she'd only moments before allowed Ian, her one and only true friend in the Hell they lived in, to lay down his life rather than give up her own. Oh no, Ella O'Daniel was no angel, but more of a wolf in sheep's clothing, waiting for the next unsuspecting fool to walk right into her latest plan.
But did anyone else in the Executive believe any of the things that Marcus told them about innocent little Ella? Did anyone ever take into account that they had caged an electrically powered teenaged girl in a metal cage? Of course not, because Marcus was the kook of the clan, and no one had ever managed to escape through the Executive's fingers. Ella O'Daniel, no matter what her powers were, would not possibly be able to escape the Hole. Until eight days ago, when the night guards were found unconscious and the little 'light-bulb' had escaped. It had taken every ounce of Marcus' self restraint not to walk up to the big guy and scream a very loud and obnoxious "I TOLD YOU SO!", but he, unlike others, valued his life.
He knew what potential Ella's powers held, how much pain and destruction they could bring to the world. The only part was making her realize it, before the big guys upstairs decided neither he nor Ella were worth any more time or effort. As much as Marcus hated to admit it, but the girl's fate and his were one in the same. If one went down, they both did. And Marcus had no intentions of going down without a fight.
Opening up the heavy steel plated door at the end of the hall, Marcus pulled Ella in behind him before slamming the door shut. He passed off the quiet girl to one of the many men in the room and briskly strode to the center. Ella watched as he clicked a few keys on a holographic keyboard and winced at the sight behind a pair of opening doors. Of all the torture devices used in the Hole, the Tank was by far the one she hated the most. She knew that while Marcus had threatened Ian with the very same tank, which could be filled with over a hundred gallons of freezing cold water, he would find some different way of punishing him. The Tank was almost always the one thing Marcus had set aside for her, his little way of showing her who was on top and who held all the cards. He knew how much she hated the Tank, what it did to her, and he loved to exploit the fact.
To put it simply, Ella was made almost entirely out of electricity. When mixed with water, you do the math.
"Just like old times, huh El?" Marcus didn't turn around as he continued pressing keys on the board. The Tank slowly moved forward with a hiss and stood still, mocking Ella with it's empty insides with the exception of two leather straps about three feet up on either side. "Just you and me, and our favorite little toy."
Ella wanted nothing more than to electrocute the smirking man's body until his heart ceased beating and Marcus would be nothing more than a horrible memory. But the cuffs on her wrists, with their blinking red lights, and the heavy hands on both her shoulders restrained her from doing said deed. She glared at his back, mentally burning a hole in the back of his abnormally large head. "Yeah, just like old times."
He couldn't see anything as a strong hand pushed him down what seemed to be a long hallway. The moment they'd drug him out of the room filled with cages, one of the guards had thrown a sack of some sort over Reid's head and proceeded to tow him along by the shoulder. The sack was scratchy and made him want to rip his face off, but he figured that any movement other than walking in the guided direction could possibly lose him his life. He didn't still didn't know who any of these people were, or what they wanted with him. As far as Reid could tell, doing what they wanted of him was the easiest way of keeping himself alive.
A door groaned in protest as he assumed one of the guards opened it, and he was led into a smaller room by the sounds of soft voices echoing around him. One of the men pushed him down to the ground and onto his knees, none to gently. He momentarily thought of simply Using, and fixing his small problem of lack of vision, but quickly thought of what the girl had warned. If not Using would keep his ass alive long enough to make a break away, he could go a few days without it. Wasn't like not Using was a bad thing for his health..
He blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights as the sack was roughly removed and thrown to the side by one of the men. Reid squinted as the light sent shocks of pain to his brain and he shook his head hoping to clear it with little success. A harsh laugh made him look up from his lower position on the ground and saw the man from earlier, Marcus, staring down at him with a grin. Taking a few steps towards Reid, he kneeled down before him and let out a small sigh.
"Reid Garwin, your reputation proceeds you," his pale eyes bore into Reid's half dazed blue ones as he spoke. "Though, you are a tad bit of a disappointment. The guys upstairs made you seem a little bit more.. dangerous."
Marcus smirked and punched him jokingly on the shoulder, a gesture that put Reid instantly at unease. He glanced down to where the older man had hit him back to said man and gave him a wary look. The man just grinned and stood up, reaching down to brush off his clothes with the back of his hand casually.
"Now it's time to find out what the hell it is you do, Mister Garwin."
With a nod of his head as a command, the man behind Reid hoisted up the teen and pushed him forward. Reid managed to catch himself and looked back to throw the huge man a glare before continuing forward. He took the few moments of silence to take in the room he was currently locked in with half curiosity, half desperation for an exit out. There didn't seem to be much in the room at all, a wall of electrical junk to the right with a dozen or so blinking lights, a map of the world on the left wall, and a steel plated wall to the front of him. There were eight or nine men filling the small room, not including Marcus and himself. And by the look of things, backwards was the only exit out.
The man behind him stopped Reid a few feet away from the front steel plated wall and he glanced at it in confusion. To his right, Marcus was typing away on a keyboard that seemed to materialize out of thin air and resembled that of a holographic Star Trek gizmo. A few seconds later, Reid found himself back on his knees, arms locked behind him. He didn't bother struggling, it was a waste of energy in a futile battle. He listened as Marcus tapped a few last keys and watched as his feet approached him.
"What can you do, Reid?" Marcus had stopped a foot or so in front of him and was staring down at the blond teen. His voice was indifferent, if not bored. "What makes you so special?"
Don't show them what you can do, ever.
The girl's words flooded his mind again, much like they had earlier in the morning. He still had no idea who she was, but her words had held such desperation that he couldn't help but believe in them. Whatever the hell was going on, that girl had tried to save him. The least he could do was honor her wish and hope it kept him alive.
Reid shook his head slowly, eyes to the ground. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Marcus let out a sigh and a small chuckle. "Don't lie to us Reid, it'll only make things ten times worse for you in the end. Tell me what is that you can do, and I'll let you go back to your comfy little cell all happy dandy. Sound like a plan?"
Once they know what you can do, they know how to kill you.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he repeated, voice void of any emotion.
"You're just making this harder on yourself Reid. The sooner you tell me what your powers are, the sooner you can go home, back to Spencer. All I need to know is what makes you tick, what makes you different from everyone else in the world."
He knew about Spencer. That meant he knew where Reid lived. That meant he might know about the others, about Caleb and Pogue, about Tyler. He felt slightly sick to his stomach at the thought of Tyler being in his current position. What would they do if they found the others? What if they already had, what if they were somewhere else in this godforsaken place, having horrible things done to them? What if they were already dead, and Reid was the only one left and this man, Marcus, was only stringing him along for the thrill of it?
Oh hell, he was going to puke.
"Tell me what you do."
Reid shook his head forcefully, trying to rid his head of death filled images. "I don't do anything."
"I refuse to believe that Reid," Marcus said in an almost sickly cheerful tone. "Because you wouldn't be here if you couldn't do something that made you special, unique, one of a kind. I know you do something that makes you, you. I just need to know what exactly it is that you can do."
"I don't do anything."
"Are you a Pyro? You could definitely fill that part with ease." Marcus tapped his chin and started pacing slowly across the floor, looking back to Reid every few seconds. "Rebellious, angered, full of teen angst. I could see you as a hot headed Pyro."
"I don't do anything."
He felt like a broken record. He couldn't tell them, couldn't reveal anything. He couldn't betray them, couldn't risk their lives by being reckless anymore. He would not be the reason why the three people he had left, died. He would not kill them.
"Or maybe you're a teleporter! Jumping from place to place, owning the world like it's your personal play ground."
"I don't do anything."
"You do look a bit like a shape shifter.."
A picture of a gray headstone slowly faded into Reid's mind. He tried to shake the image away as it slowly came into focus. He really almost did puke at the sight of Tyler John Simms, Loving Son and Friend, June 14th, 1989- January 9th, 2006. He looked to the right of Tyler's grave and instantly looked away from Caleb's matching headstone only to come face to face with Pogue's. He tore his eyes away from the graves and matching headstones, slowly backing away.
He would not kill them.
"I don't do anything!"
Reid's shout echoed through the room as the men around him stood in rigid silence. He brought his head up to glare heatedly at Marcus, who looked amused. He looked at the panting boy and shook his head, so like all the others.
"You do do something, Reid. It's my job to find out what, and if you don't start to cooperate, things are going to become.. complicated," his tone had gone from bored to serious, as he gave Reid a challenging look. "I'm done playing games now. I'm not going to ask again. What do you do?"
Tyler's laughing face entered Reid's mind for a split second. He shook his head and met Marcus' eyes fiercely. "I don't do anything."
Letting out a heavy sigh, Marcus shook his head and tsked. "I was really hoping it wouldn't come down to this, Reid. But you've left me no choice."
Two men came up behind Reid and pulled him to his feet as Marcus nodded to another man, who set to typing away on the Star Trek board. Marcus turned towards the steel wall, glancing back only once to Reid as the boy watched on in confusion. A loud hiss echoed through the room as the steel wall started to move and he realized it wasn't a wall, but a large door than spanned the entire width of the room. He frowned at the sight of Ella, who was standing a few feet in front of him behind a large plate of glass. The frowned deepened as he noticed her arms her bound to each side of the small tank like structure she was encased in.
Marcus smiled to Ella, who simply glared to him before turning back to Reid. He clapped his hands and pointed them towards him with a small grin. "This is your last chance to tell me your powers Reid."
Reid looked between the grinning man before him and the small girl locked in the tank a few feet away. He could see her shaking her head ever so slightly at him, as if she knew exactly what was going on outside her tank. He knew what she meant by the gesture, her words from earlier still fresh in his mind. He glanced at her a second time and looked back to Marcus, a hard look planted firmly on his face.
"I don't do anything."
"Bad answer," Marcus replied, letting out almost a sorrowful sigh as he nodded to the man in front of the keyboard. The man became to type furiously on the board while Marcus walked up beside Reid, throwing an arm over the boy's shoulder. He pointed to where Ella was tugging against the restraints on her wrists and was slowly climbing her away up the side of the tank. "That girl is named Ella O'Daniel. She's been here in the Hole for over a year, and it took me three hours to break her down enough to tell me her powers. She's sixteen, going on seventeen, and has the ability to control electricity."
Finally, Reid had at least some piece of information on the girl before him.
"Now, during her time here in the Hole, we were able to evolve her powers to a much stronger stage. During this.. procedure, her body slowly consumed enough electricity that her entire body is nearly 98 pure electrical static. In other words, she's a big ball of live electricity. She's like a live power station. You follow me so far?" He glanced down to see Reid watching as Ella continued to try and break away from the restraints. "Right now she's in what we residents of the Hole like to call, The Tank. It's a tank, obviously, that can be filled with over a hundred gallons of freezing cold water."
Reid didn't need to have an A in Physics to know where all this was leading.
Marcus let out a contented sigh just as an alarm went off and a small steady stream of water started flowing into the large tank that Ella was desperately trying to escape from. "What happens when you add electricity and water, Reid?"
Oh, fuck.
There was no way to escape the oncoming rain of ice cold water that was starting to fall from the ceiling. Every drop of water burned her skin, sending up a spark and sizzle as it landed on her exposed flesh. She didn't need to be able to hear what was going on outside The Tank to know Marcus was trying everything to get Reid to expose his powers. She was praying to God, through the pain of the water falling upon her, that the stupid idiot would listen to her earlier warnings and not risk showing Marcus his powers. The moment he did that, everything would be over.
She bit her lip from screaming as the water exposure was increased. Her hair was far passed drenched and the water was slowly making it way up to her knees. She was sure her wrists were bloody and raw from her failed attempts to escape the restraints encased around them. It wouldn't be the first time she'd managed to cause herself more pain trying to escape than the actual torture had. She closed her eyes to keep them from being blinded against the constant flashes that were shown whenever water touched her skin. The feeling in her feet was slowly leaving her, which was beginning to become a relief.
God, it hurt.
"You aren't a bad guy Reid," Marcus ensured, tightening his grip on his shoulder as Reid made an attempt to escape towards The Tank. "This isn't your fault. Ella's had this coming ever since she ran off to save your ass. It was only a matter of time, really. None of this is your fault."
Reid wanted to punch him in the face, make him bleed and feel pain like Ella was at the exact moment. He could only imagine the amount of pain she was going through, suffering through to ensure his safety for only God knew why. Why was she doing this for him, risking her life and everything else along with it, for a person she'd never met?
He winced away from the strobe like lights coming from within The Tank, results from Ella's pain. He was such as horrible person, standing there, watching as an innocent girl was put through hell by a maniacal man. What the hell was wrong with him?
"Tell me what you do Reid, and it'll all be over. You and Ella can go back to your comfy little cages and live happily ever after. Scout's honor."
Bullshit.
Looking at the lightning filled tank, Reid really didn't care anymore. He was done with slowly killing those around him, making them suffer for his stupid actions and having to sit through the consequences. He was done.
Once they know what you can do, they know how to kill you.
'Not like I wasn't going to die from Using anyway,' Reid thought to himself, eyes going black beneath his lids.
Within seconds, he'd flung an unsuspecting Marcus across the room, taking with him three other men. The landed heavily into the wall of blinking lights and remained motionless. Reid quickly threw the remaining men into the walls closet to them, having to throw a few more a couple times again when they refused to stay down.
Really, piece of cake.
Checking to ensure that none of the men were about to spring back into consciouness, and catch him off guard, Reid jogged up to The Tank's outer wall. He stared at it for a moment before shrugging and heaved a fist towards it. What would have normally broken a man's hand simply tingled Reid's as the glass shattered and water came spilling out of The Tank. He made it not even a full step before stopping cold and fell to the ground. His unconscious body jerked for a few seconds before lying still in the pool of water.
Unfortunately for Reid, he wasn't shock proof.
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