The Returning Read online

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  12

  Elise followed the boy down the long hallways that led from the room where she had been held. The guards stationed outside the door had been knocked unconscious and were slumped against the walls, their heads cocked to the side, their eyes closed. She glanced up at the boy again and paused for a second, but it was barely a heartbeat before she remembered what going back meant.

  She would die if she stayed here, locked away in this prison until the Scientist got what he wanted from her. Though if they were caught trying to escape, they might both be killed. Then this boy’s blood would be on her hands. She suddenly realized she didn’t even know his name. He might be killed because he was foolishly trying to save her, and she didn’t even know his name.

  Elise didn’t actually know anything about him at all. Why did her heart trust him when she did not even know his name? How had he found her? Where had he come from? Why did he even care? The questions hit her brain like small pebbles flung with annoyingly accurate aim.

  They reached the end of the hall, and the young man held up his hand for Elise to stop. She did, and he reached into the inside pocket of the jacket he was wearing and pulled out a handheld device she didn’t recognize. It flashed to life when he tapped the screen. She tried to peer closely enough to see what the images on the screen were, but the boy read the display too quickly and then tucked it away.

  “We have a couple of minutes before the patrolling unit makes their way back toward this section. So we have to move quickly, but quietly,” the boy said.

  “What’s your name?” Elise blurted out. She hadn’t meant for it to slip past her teeth, but sometimes her words had a mind of their own.

  The boy smiled, the one that made Elise’s heart quicken, and shook his head. “I guess I should have told you that already. My name is Willis.”

  “I’m Elise.”

  Again he flashed her that brilliant smile. “I know. You ready?”

  She had more questions, but clearly this wasn’t the right time. She didn’t know him, but he was rescuing her, so she would hold to that and ignore the rest. She nodded and Willis’s smile turned to a determined grin. He then returned his focus to the mission at hand and slipped around the corner, Elise on his heels. They stayed pressed against the wall, crouching low as they quickly moved toward their destination.

  The hallway they passed through was thin and dark. It ended in stairs that they climbed quickly. Every inch of her body ached, but she ignored the pain and tried to keep up with Willis. The top of the stairs landed them in another hallway, much larger and more familiar to Elise. She had probably walked this one before. It had marble floors and decorated ceilings.

  They moved down the side of this hallway smoothly, encountering nothing but air. Willis slowed suddenly and placed a finger to his lips as Elise nearly slammed into him. Worry streaked across his face and he began searching the area around them. Elise heard it then—the echoing of boots, headed right toward them. She thought he’d said they had several minutes. Who was coming?

  She also searched the hallway, but all she saw was the wall, floor, and ceiling. Suddenly Willis was pulling her back the way they’d come and across the wide hallway. Elise glanced over his shoulder to see a door a couple of feet away. They reached it and the boy twisted the knob. It didn’t budge. The footsteps got louder, and Elise’s heart rammed into her throat. They were going to get caught.

  Willis yanked Elise along as they continued to move back in the direction they had come from, trying each door they came to. All were locked. They could hear voices now as the patrol of guards got closer.

  Finally a knob twisted free, and Willis pushed open the door, stepped through, and pulled Elise inside. He closed the door softly as she turned to survey the room. She hadn’t been inside this room before. It looked like an office of some kind but appeared never to have been touched. It was set up perfectly, all necessary office supplies in their proper place, but it had no life of any kind. It was a placeholder, as so many of the rooms in the Capitol Building seemed to be.

  Willis touched Elise’s arm to grab her attention and opened his mouth to instruct her, but before he could, another door that led into the room on the far left wall began to open. Elise froze, and Willis couldn’t move fast enough before a guard stepped around the opening door and into the unused office. His eyes met the two standing in the room, and a moment of confusion passed over his face before recognition set in. He knew Elise; all the guards knew her.

  He started toward them, his mouth flying open to speak, but Elise only heard his command over her shoulder as Willis pushed her back out through the door and into the grand hall.

  “Stop!” the guard yelled.

  Elise slid out across the marble floor, and Willis kept his hand clenched tightly around her arm to steady her. Now more echoing footsteps bounced through the large hall. Elise suspected the patrolling unit had heard the shout and was headed toward them. As soon as the thought entered her mind, two more guards appeared in front of them, the third one exiting the unused office behind them.

  Willis pulled Elise down the hall in the opposite direction of the imminent threat. They ran, their feet pounding against the floor, as they tried to put distance between them and the guards. All three were rushing after them. Elise could hear their shouts and the crackle of a radio as one called for backup. Dread filled her heels and made it hard to push through. There was no way they were going to get out of this.

  “Here,” Willis said, and she followed him as he made a quick turn down a smaller side hallway. It was much darker than the grand hallway and only held a couple of doors on either side before ending in yet another staircase. Willis jiggled every handle as he sailed by each door. He moved like a machine, Elise noticed, her lungs straining for relief. Keeping up with him felt impossible. All the doors were locked, so Willis headed for the stairs. The guards had rounded the corner into the small hallway now, only a handful of seconds behind them.

  “Stop, in the name of the Authority,” one of them called.

  “Willis,” Elise said, her mind filling with terror. Maybe they should just stop? They were going to be caught anyway; maybe if they surrendered, the Authority wouldn’t kill him. Her fate was already sealed; she’d been a fool to think she could change it.

  “Come on,” he said, reaching for her hand without pausing.

  The moment their hands met, she was filled with an unusual sense of peace. He had come for her. She held his hand tightly and pushed past the throbbing ache in her thighs and the blinding worry trying to overtake her mind. Just keep moving.

  The stairs twisted up onto a landing, and another long hallway stretched before them. This hallway was carpeted, with two doors framed against the wall to their left. Willis pushed on the first door and it opened, leading into a small sitting room. Elise rushed in and slammed the door behind her. Her eyes scanned the room and found that the far wall held two windows. Beyond them lay the gardens that stretched over a dozen yards toward the stone wall at the perimeter of the Capitol’s property. They must be on the east side of the building, Elise thought. If they could get out onto the lawn, then she knew the gardens better than anyone, and she might be able to shake these guards.

  The idea filled her with a new measure of hope, and she moved toward the windows. They were only two stories up, but she knew this side of the building had balconies. If they could drop to one . . .

  Quickly she moved from one window to the next. Both were shut tight.

  “Elise,” Willis said.

  “If I can just get one of these open . . . ,” Elise said.

  She yanked again on the window’s hardware, trying to shake it loose. She knew these opened. They had to. Something screeched against the floor behind her and she glanced back to see Willis pushing a chest in front of the door. She turned back to the window and continued to pull, splinters from the wood digging into her fingers.

  Willis stepped up n
ext to her and squatted, placing his shoulder under the window’s middle ledge. He pressed up through his legs as Elise pushed with her palms, both of their faces red with effort, and the window squeaked open just a hair.

  They looked at one another and she saw excitement flash behind his eyes.

  The closed door behind them began to shake with force, and the chest blocking it shuddered. It wouldn’t hold for long.

  “Again,” Willis said.

  Elise nodded, and again they focused all their combined energy on the window. It slid up a couple more inches as something heavy began to pound against the center of the blocked door. The sound of wood cracking echoed through the sitting room, and fear buzzed through Elise’s mind.

  “Again,” Willis said.

  They pushed once more, Elise digging for strength she wasn’t sure she had, and the window finally slid open. The bottom half slammed against the top, and Willis and Elise peered down. Just as she’d remembered, there was a small balcony just below. She exhaled a heavy sigh of relief.

  “I’ll lower you down first and then come after you,” Willis said.

  Another crack of wood bounced around the room and Elise nodded.

  She turned and climbed out the window backward, as if she were headed down a ladder, bracing herself with Willis’s arms. He began lowering her, moving so that his torso was lying across the window’s ledge. A loud snap came through the window, and Willis turned his head over his shoulder. Shouts followed the snap, and Elise knew the guards had broken through the barricade.

  Everything happened quickly after that. Willis was yanked away from the window, and he released his hold, dropping Elise several feet to the stone balcony’s floor. She hit hard, the vibration spreading up through her feet. Her knees buckled and she fell onto her hands, the blow piercing through her already-bruised shoulders.

  She could hear the struggle that was taking place above her—a loud crash and an angry wail—as she struggled to push herself up against the spinning pain in her head. Through the haze, she heard the noise upstairs stop. Elise stood shakily and looked up, hoping to see Willis’s head poke through the window. But nothing came.

  Willis!

  Panic took her then. What was she supposed to do? She looked through the glass doors that led from the balcony back into the Capitol Building. Something moved inside, and before she could react, a guard opened the door with his weapon raised and his face stern. Elise kept still as he moved out onto the ledge. Another guard appeared behind him and marched toward her. It was over. She had been foolish to believe it was ever anything other than over.

  13

  Willis’s eyes fluttered open as images blurred in and out of focus. He felt like he had cotton in his brain; everything was foggy and stuffy. Something overhead was turning, blades cutting through the air, which he thought was odd. The ceiling was white, and as he looked slowly around the room, he saw four beige walls that stretched down to hardwood floors. His eyes moved back skyward and he realized that the spinning object was a ceiling fan, turning slowly, circulating the smell of chemicals.

  The back of his head pulsed with pain, and when he tried to move his hands toward the ache, they didn’t budge. He glanced down and saw that his arms were strapped at his sides. He felt the cold of steel as he registered that his entire body was being restricted against something solid. A chair, he thought. Two wide white belts were across his chest, two more across his legs.

  The cotton in his head was clearing now, and voices drifted through the air to his right. He turned his head to see two men dressed all in black, one talking with an old man in a white lab coat, the other holding back a beautiful girl. Elise.

  All the memories of the past several hours crashed against his mind at once. He’d been told to save her, and the light had led him. To the Capitol Building, down into underground tunnels, up to a lower level where she was being held. Each step was foreign, but he trusted the whisper, the light, the instinct that was more than he understood. They’d almost made it out.

  His body reacted before his mind had finished digesting the situation, and it yanked violently at the straps around him. He had one pulsing thought that cut through the jumble in his brain: Save the girl.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake,” the old man with the two guards said. “And faster than I would have thought. You must be well trained.”

  “Let her go,” Willis said.

  “You’re going to lead with that? How disappointingly predictable, and really rather a waste, since you were trying to steal her from me.”

  “Where am I?”

  “That seems irrelevant.”

  “Who are you?”

  Darkness flashed across the old man’s face. “The fact that you don’t know confirms my suspicions about you,” he said, “which means the time is indeed upon us.”

  As the old man talked, Willis slowly began working at one of the straps. By bending his wrist as far as he could, he could just reach the lower buckle on his right, away from the prying eyes of the guards. The strap was tight and thick, but with enough time, he thought it might not be impossible to get free from.

  “What suspicions? What ‘time’?” Willis asked, the fog in his head now completely clear and his mind working properly. Just keep him talking.

  “Don’t play the fool now, boy; you’ve already proven you’re smarter than that. How many are there of you? Is he with you?”

  “Is who with me? I don’t know what you’re—”

  The man chuckled hatefully. “Very well, then. So the Seers have managed to infiltrate the city? There can’t be that many of you, so what’s your purpose?”

  “Let him go, Dr. Reynard,” Elise said.

  The old man snapped his head back to glare over his shoulder at Elise, and Willis caught her eye. She looked desperate, defeated. She was swaying a bit too, as if she weren’t completely in control of her body.

  “What did you do to her?” Willis asked.

  “Gave her something to settle her nerves,” the man said.

  “You have me back; please don’t kill him,” Elise said, her words slower than they had been a moment ago.

  “Oh, I don’t intend to kill him. No, death is a waste when one can instead transform,” Dr. Reynard said. He walked back across the room to a long, thin table against the wall. On it was a silver tray holding a large syringe filled with yellow liquid. He lifted it up and surveyed it with pride.

  Dread inched its way into Willis’s mind.

  “I don’t plan to kill any of you. I’m just trying to save you from yourselves,” the doctor said, turning back toward Willis. “You’re young and were probably taught by that mad leader that choice is necessary for happiness. The truth is he may be right, but evolution isn’t much concerned with happiness. Humanity’s primary goal is longevity. To survive as long as possible. We have found that choice has a rather negative effect on survival.”

  “So that’s how things are done around here?” Willis said, still working on his restraints. “You just take away every person’s choice until they are numb robots that merely survive?”

  “I don’t expect a mind as flooded with nonsense as yours to grasp the big picture; besides, it doesn’t matter. In a couple of minutes, you’ll be in transition, and all your worries will be gone.”

  The doctor took several steps toward Willis, the liquid in his syringe sliding about. “After I take care of you, I will finish what I started with Elise, hunt down the others you came with, and extinguish the false power you believe choice gives you.”

  “I won’t let you,” Willis said.

  “Why do people always say that? As if you are in any position to be making such a claim. You can’t stop evolution. Regardless of the trash Aaron has filled your head with, this has always been the path of humanity. It’s time that you all joined us in the future.”

  Dr. Reynard looked to one of the guards over his shoulder. “Prepare him,” he said, and the guard nodded and moved to the front left side of the chair.
He did something that Willis couldn’t see, and the metal chair began to lower backward until he was stretched out as if lying down to sleep. The movement forced Willis to stop messing with the strap at his side for fear of getting caught, and as the doctor approached, it was impossible to ignore the panic racing in his heart. He needed more time.

  The chair came to a stop and jolted Willis’s bruised head against the hard steel, sending a ripple of pain down his back. The old man grabbed Willis’s forehead and turned it toward the right so that his neck was elongated and vulnerable. The doctor’s touch was like ice, his hold firmer than Willis would have guessed. Doubt and fear dropped into his body like stones. This couldn’t be happening. He’d followed the call.

  “Your pulse is racing,” Dr. Reynard said. “Don’t be afraid; it will all be over soon.” He moved the syringe’s needle toward Willis’s neck, and Willis tried to pull against the old man’s hold. His desperation for survival intensified.

  “Don’t fight what’s good for you, boy,” the doctor said. “You should feel lucky. You’re the first of many Seers that I plan to bring into the new era. You’ll be an example of the power of science and forward thinking. Once the tiny hope of the Seers is destroyed, all that will remain is the future—my future.” A small chuckle fell from the old man’s mouth, and Willis nearly erupted with fear. He could feel the presence of the needle even before it touched his skin.

  “Welcome to the new world, boy.”

  Elise’s mind swirled with agony and fog. She tensed as Dr. Reynard lifted the syringe from the long table beside her. She knew what it was, but her body was heavy with drugs, so she could do nothing but watch as the Scientist headed for Willis.

  After being detained on the balcony, Elise had heard a voice on the guards’ radios ordering them to bring her back to the basement. Elise had thought about throwing herself off the balcony; she knew all too well what waited for her in the basement. But they had Willis, so she hadn’t.