Page 66 of Light

The incredible creature who made it possible for me to be standing here, stunned beyond speech by the scene before me.

Because this experience is beyond what I ever thought to have. To accomplish. To finally realize. For so long, it’s been my fucking Purgatory, Pandæmonium, and Diyu. A hell I must have imagined, living on only in the reality of my darkest nightmares. A place supported on paper only, despite Tyce’s and Angie’s attestations to the opposite. In the back of my mind, I’ve written off both their accounts as matches to mine. Ramblings from minds that were stripped of the ability to reason or remember—though through every minute of every hour of every day I was in here, I vowed to never forget.

I swore I’d come back for them.

I dreamed of saving them all.

But began to think it was a doomed dream.

But now, I’m living that dream.

Surrounded by more and more of them by the minute, working my hardest to embrace each one as they stumble free from their newly opened cells, all of them dressed in what look like oversize white potato sacks, steel hoof-like hand covers, and nothing else. On the upper back of each “gown,” there’s a classification label in a garish military font.

Alpha 37

Omega 142

Omega 8

Alpha 210

Every time I see the red ink, my memories rupture open and my throat closes shut. Images, buried beneath the insanity of my first hours of freedom, assault me from all sides. Clear as if it’s happening again, I recall the first sight I ever had of my own designation: Alpha Two. I’d run far enough away to be certain I wouldn’t get caught and then had finally given in to the need to get the sack off my body as fast as I could. Then the harsher need to burn every thread of the fucking thing. I’d shot a furious lightning jolt into the thing, turning it into a massive ball of blue flames.

Hit with every instant of the moment now, I’m stunned I suppressed it. It had been the first moment I’d ever utilized my powers for me instead of the Consortium.

For me instead of her.

But the memory doesn’t stop there.

After frying my clothes, I’d been as naked as the day God made me. I hadn’t cared. I’d sprinted through the Barcelona suburbs until finding some clothes in an unlocked car and made a mental note to send the family a new car for their loss. Another first that night: consciously putting others before myself.

It was the beginning of a lot of changes for me.

But as the flashbacks of that night keep filling back into my mind, there’s also a glaring commonality to them. One detail I don’t try to deny.

I was in Barcelona that night. And I’m pretty damn sure I didn’t leave LA and then zip across the continental US and a major ocean to get there.

Recognitions that would have me shitting a pile of purple Ding Dongs right now if I didn’t already have a damn strong theory about how that happened.

But that’s bullshit for the back burner for the moment. Number-one priority: ensuring every single person here that they’ll never have to return to their cell again. I fight to vow it to them with the force of my embrace, the commiseration in my eyes, the confidence in my steps. But despite my efforts, they’re not biting on the cookie of hope yet. I don’t begrudge them. If I were in their skin, being dangled the big Chips Ahoy of freedom, I’d also be looking at the baker with a shitload of suspicion.

Everyone does perk up as Emma takes her second round through the complex, making sure the digital lock box on every cell is turned into a blob of melted wall art. But they’re all back to open cynicism the moment I dig into a supply closet, finding boxes of freshly laundered lab scrubs. I don’t push anyone to accept them. It’s all I can do not to behold the uniforms and liken them to Gestapo greens. Not a fair comparison by half, but as I start my mental action plan list for reacclimating everyone back to the world in which they’re now free, the first item is contracting a topnotch post-trauma recovery team. Every single soul in this room has survived a fucking war.

The trauma counselors are already on top of a rapidly growing list, including my commitment that they’ll all be housed at the Brocade until we help them find new homes of their own or paths back to the loved ones they knew. It’s an amazing feeling—no, a miraculous recognition—to realize I won’t be tackling the tasks alone. I grasp the recognition with all the certainty in my soul from the moment Emma reenters the main gathering area—an intake waiting room, from the looks of it—with stress stamped on her face but devotion shimmering in her eyes. Doesn’t take me more than two seconds to read what she’s telling me.

Team Richards, baby. All the way.

God in heaven, I love the fuck out of this woman.

I fight the craving to flash-pulse my way across the room and kiss her until her knees buckle. Damn, damn, damn, I don’t deserve her. Clearly this experience has extracted its pound of emotional flesh from her, and I ache deeply about that. Yeah, despite knowing she would’ve speared my balls and chomped them for breakfast had I ordered her back up the elevator shaft with the others. But at least she’d still be spared from this tableau of suffering—a shock she’s valiantly trying to play down but isn’t succeeding at very well. In many ways, it’s not fair. A huge part of me was ready for my hellhole homecoming from the second we started clearing the cave-in, but she’s only been prepared with the few details I’ve recounted about this place—and I held back a lot of them on purpose.

A confession that leads to deeper truths.

Not ones I’m proud of admitting.

I kept glossing over the grittier details for Emma because secretly, I never thought she’d have to go through this. Because very secretly, I was letting my own cookie of hope crumble between my fingers. As month after month dragged by without any new intel about the Source’s location, even with the Team Bolt command center churning nonstop, I’d started bracing my spirit for defeat. Telling my soul to accept that I got away and no one else did. Ordering my heart to honor the victims of the Consortium’s torture by making at least one city safer and happier to live in.

I’d been preparing to let Faline win this round.