Forever and a day – I'm never going to leave this life
I've never claimed to be a hero—not after so many missions, not after ruining so many lives. So it's only fitting that this villain doesn't get a happy ending, isn't it?
Chapter Fifty-One
Escape Route
Glass shattered all around them. As Max coughed, he sent wave after wave of psychic energy, bending metal, cracking counters, boiling liquids. Someone shouted, maybe screamed, but the more he tried to contain it, the worse it got with his powers.
He had a reasonable idea that he was down in a lab, and a lab meant someone was working on getting him help. Or he wanted to believe that, anyway. The problem was that if he kept thrashing the world around him, there was not going to be a lab to work in. He was certain he'd already physically pushed Parker away—that or she'd been smart enough to move away from him.
For the first time in his life, he wanted someone to sedate him.
His throat was in flames, and he couldn't stop coughing. He needed water, he needed cold. He needed air. The world spun when he opened his eyes, searching for the water Parker had been talking about a few minutes ago. He tried to walk and found himself on the floor instead. Chaos extended around him, and he saw Parker arguing with an older woman, as they both pointed out at him. He was destroying this room and they were still there, trying to help him.
I have to stop this, he desperately thought, convulsively swallowing in a vain attempt to get a respite from his body. In a moment of absurd clarity, he realized that if he couldn't walk out of there, his mind certainly could. And without his mind, his body had to stop wreaking havoc.
He searched for John's mind and fled into his clone's reality, hoping he wasn't leaving a sinkhole behind him.
John didn't fight him, but Max had the feeling he wasn't welcomed—
not exactly.
"Max, this is serious," Frank said, looking ten years older. "Samuel took down the cameras, so we have no way to prove this wasn't a violent and deadly outburst on your part. Or that it won't repeat itself."
"Maggs saw me. She told me to go."
She did? Max had absolutely no recollection about it, but now that John had brought her into the conversation, where was she?
"That's the other thing. How did you manage to run all the way to Oregon?"
John didn't answer as Frank opened the door to Summers' office. The furniture was disarrayed, sure, but not much seemed to have happened here. No grand fight. No destroyed debris that told of a dramatic encounter and unleashed energy. The truth was Summers would have never been a match for Max's powers. No one really was.
Frank closed the door behind them and they both looked down at the floor, where papers and office supplies laid undisturbed. On the other side of the spacious office, the chair were Max had sat was upturned.
Frank sighed. "I found the syringe he used on you. A large dose of sodium pentothal. He was counting on your metabolism to burn through it fast, so he was rather liberal with the dose."
"All I wanted was my fix," John whispered, touching the chair as if he were having a flash, but John already knew all of this, didn't he? He'd touched Max in that motel, eager to get the truth of what had happened. "Summers must have withheld it from me."
"He should have known better than to stand between a man and his addiction." Frank turned to look at the door, "We can spin it that way," he said, more to himself than for Max.
Frank looked at the cameras, and Max noticed that the red light was off. Nothing was recording this room. "I had my suspicions, but Samuel must have taken it to the next level. Truth serum… did he really think he could get your secrets that way?"
"What are you talking about?" John asked, narrowing his eyes. Of all the people to fool into believing he was Max, Frank had always been the hardest.
"I know Max. I know that you're not happy here. Hell, I know you're miserable. But I told myself, 'there's nothing better for him than staying here with us.' And as twisted as that sounds, you have no idea how much worse this can get."
"Am I being selfish for wanting more?" John asked, with a dark kind of chuckle that sounded so much like Max that at that moment, they were absolutely the same.
"I thought you'll try a few things and then realize how—how inescapable this life is. But then… then things started changing. First Starbucks, then your late arrivals at the base. Then you were unfocused on your missions, and last but not least, you hid the fact you were developing flashes. I'm not blind Max. By this point, I'm certain you'll either escape or die trying."
"With that sort of choice, I'll rather not die," John said, with his characteristic charm, one that decidedly was not Max's. Frank didn't miss it.
He looked at John, serious as ever. "What happened to Summers is not going to go away any time soon. They want to have you under observation at all times. Run extensive tests. Review the drug composition once more. In less than six hours, you're going to be a prisoner here, do you understand?"
Something in the way Frank said it implied he was not talking about the burdens of bureaucracy and paranoia.
"You don't want me around for when that happens," John said, his mind deciphering Frank's words faster than Max could.
"Max—John? Whoever you are, you're running out of time."
John nodded once, and swiftly got out of the room. But instead of running to the closest exit as Max would've done, he turned around and walked on the opposite direction.
What are you doing? Max asked, bewildered.
Ever wondered what our true purpose here was? John answered, as he overrode security locks to go deeper into the base. Doors would never stop neither of them.
What?
Guards looked at him suspiciously, but John materialized a clearance pass, and with a smile and a nod, he went into an elevator. This was a part of the base Max had never been to—but John had. He'd been here plenty of times when he'd been a teenager.
I know why we were sent here. And I'm not going to allow some misguided plan to retrieve their royalty to end my life here on Earth.
What are you talking about? What royalty?
The elevator doors opened to a sublevel full of equipment and computers, and a dozen people in white hazmat suits. In the middle of it all, a black, round spaceship was the center of all the attention.
Well, Max. You know how they told you we were special? They had no idea how.
