Page 113 of Sin

“Don’t worry,” I told him, knowing he and the others could hear me. “I’m going to figure this out. Just… Hold on.”

You can help me, Luca’s voice said, brushing over my walls. I saw your scars. You’ve seen mine. You’re like me.

With clumsy hands, I searched London’s damp pockets. Finding his phone, I pressed his thumb against the scanner to unlock it. It took several attempts to get it to recognize because his hands were wet with blood and rain. His hands shook.

Glass crunched outside, and I tried to force my stubborn fingers to move faster. I opened London’s recent calls and found the one I needed.

Just as I pressed call, the passenger side door was ripped open, revealing Lucas. Tremors wracked his body, and he peered at me through the car.

Vaguely, I heard President Osborne’s voice answer the call, but all my attention went to the man staring in at me. He looked different than the last time I’d seen him.

In broad daylight, despite the gloom, Lucas’s scars were even more pronounced. Several thick, red lines curved down his neck and along his hairline before hiding beneath his long, matted hair. His shaking hands had matching burn bracelets, like from the cuffs he’d worn in his confinement. A wide, raised mark circled his neck. The skin was puckered and discolored.

They’d instructed us to put a shock collar on him and made us shock him every time his control lapsed.

His body appeared thinner, like he wasn’t eating well, and his skin was ashen. The dark bruises and red rimming his eyes hinted at his exhaustion, and he barely seemed able to stand straight.

Still, despite his fatigue, Lucas grabbed me with strong hands, wrenching me out of the van and into the downpour outside. I was barely able to struggle, in too much pain to put up much of a fight. I had no cuffs to put on him, no back up, and I was injured. I was outmatched, and he knew it.

“Tell me where Keith is,” he said, his grip bruising. “That’s all I want to know and I’ll let you go.”

I spit at him. “Vete al infierno.”

He cocked his head, not seeming too bothered that my saliva now slid down his cheek, considering the rain simply washed it away. No, only when his gaze slid in and out of focus did he flinch. “We can either do this the easy way or the hard way. Easy way, you tell me where Keith’s been hiding. Hard way, I tire all of you out until one of you cracks and lets me see.”

“I’m going to go with option number three.” Lucas might have been stronger, but I wasn’t going to just sit there and do what he wanted. I was still a weapon in my own way.

I searched within myself, knowing I needed to keep my words simple and precise to pack a punch. “Let me go,” I said, infusing the command with my power. Lucas let out a pained noise, and he dropped me as he stumbled several steps.

Without his hold, I fell hard to my knees. I grunted at the impact. Glass cracked beneath my suit, and shakily I scrambled to make it back to the van. Lewis had the cuffs in his bag. If I could just reach the bag…

I just needed to make it back to the van.

As I approached, I spotted the bag next to Lewis’s head. I reached around him, my fingers snagging the strap in triumph.

My victory was short lived when all of a sudden, Lewis’s head turned toward me, his gaze unseeing yet clearly focused on me. A cold chill, not from the weather, settled in my bones as he grabbed me before I could get away. My suit reacted to his touch, shifting, constricting, and making it almost impossible to catch my breath.

When Lucas took control of their minds, he was able to control their powers? Why the hell had I not thought that was a possibility?

“S-stop!” I choked out, but I didn’t have enough concentration or breath to make the order stick.

Lewis undid his seatbelt, never making any sound as he fell, nor did he release his hold on me. While my nanosuit restrained me, he climbed out of the window. He started to drag me toward Lucas then, who was frantically rummaging in a backpack on the wet ground.

Lucas growled in frustration before dumping the entire contents of the bag on the street. Wrappers and empty water bottles scattered across the asphalt, and Lucas cursed before chucking the backpack in anger. There was a pop, pop, pop as several car windows shattered nearby.

“No! No, no, no, no. There has to be more. Just a little more. Where is it?” Lucas muttered, his head ticking to the side. His pained, irritated gaze landed on me, then Lewis. He squinted at him in concentration, causing his brows to wrinkle and teeth to clack together in a grimace. “Why can’t I see? I just need to focus. Then maybe the thoughts… Why are they jumbled? Why can’t I find them? I can’t…” He pitched to the side, his eyes glazing over as Lewis beside me stilled. “I can’t see… I just want to see. I just want to know where he’s hiding.”

But Lewis’s mouth wobbled slightly, and the suit relaxed for a brief moment, allowing me to draw in a quick breath and think as I looked at Lucas.

Really looked at him.

His hands shook, and a pained crease filled the space between his brows. His skin was paler than normal with an almost greenish hue. Each of his breaths came out shallow and weak.

This instability reminded me of the carnival.

The C9. That must have been what he was looking for in the bag. But he didn’t have any more. My guess was that Lucas had slowly been running out of the drug, which in turn, made it harder to use his powers the way he wanted to.

It made sense, considering the effects of the drug. The C9 might have been the only way for him to fully control his powers with how intense they’d become. Without the drug, his power was volatile and he couldn’t fully leash it. It must have been why Lucas was only in control of the other’s bodies and not their minds. Maybe back at the carnival he might have been able to do it, but not now. Not without the help of the drug.

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