I smiled at him and then the executives who came in. “My name is Sienna, and you have been fucking with my life. I’ve had enough of it.”
One of them stumbled up from the wall he’d hit when I zapped him. They stared at each other. “Do you know anything about messing with a Sienna?”
The other one stayed so quiet that I knew that he did. His heart rate kicked up. I walked toward him. “You do, don’t you?” I zapped him, just a smidge, and he yelped before his eyes widened. “You know how you made me sick and then tried to have me kidnapped again and again?” I threw my arms in the air. “Hurt countless numbers of people. Scared me. Threatened those I loved? Well, here I am, but guess what, I’m not sick, and I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.” Rage surged through me. It was an unusual feeling from me. But maybe I’d just had enough. The thing about rage, I quickly realized, was that it didn’t respond to logic. Yes, I knew this was a bad idea. I had no one to help me if this went wrong.
But I wanted to hurt them. I spent so much time not doing that, on making sure everyone else was fine. On trying not to be such a burden to everyone around me, to make sure I left no negative footprints anywhere I went, that I was simply done from the effort. At least one of these fuckers had known what was happening to me. Maybe he had ordered it.
“We needed to understand how you do what you do. We can’t have others with that power. It would change the corporate balance of power. It would lower our stock prices.”
I pretended to wipe away a tear. “You’re about to have a bad day. Your stock prices will be the last thing you have to worry about, ever. In fact, you may never feel anything again.”
I opened up my abilities. I was going to suck this asshole dry. There was a change in me. It used to be sort of out of control for me to do this, but now it was easy. I could take everything out of him, and he’d be dead. I was clear about that.
The door flung open. I hardly noticed. If they wanted to hurt me, I’d deal with them, too. Someone picked up the man I was about to emotionally lobotomize, and he snapped his neck before he dropped him to the floor.
“I thought we told you that we’d do the killing.”
I sucked back my power. “Corbin?” My voice shook. “How are you here?”
He put his arms around me. “Kellan isn’t the only one who will always find you.” He shot daggers to the others in the room. “Anyone else need to die?”
I let him hold me, my body vibrating slightly. I couldn’t say why. “No. I mean, a lot of people probably do, but that one was responsible.”
He nodded once. “Fine.”
“We’ll take care of them. And here.” The man I’d just made very wealthy handed me the paper I’d made them fill out. “We won’t ever come to your side of the galaxy. I can say that for sure, but I’ve also put it in writing. This is my company. I’m Max Faustas. We’re not interested in doing anything but getting out from under Evander’s thumb here.”
The door flung open again. This time it was Devil. How had they all gotten here? A second later, Wade appeared. They were both panting.
“There is a huge crew of Soldiers heading in. Are you listening to this?”
I hadn’t been. But I opened my ears. Yes, there was a lot of chatter, a lot of yelling. We were in a lot of trouble.
“What do we do?”
Devil stared at the executives across the desk. “Despite what they said, I’m going to suggest they run. They’re good at getting people killed. Do it. Now. While we’re still here to distract them. And whatever she gave you that is going to let you win? Do it fast. Or else we’ll come back, and you won’t like what happens when we do.”
Did he really intend to come back to this side of the galaxy, or were we stuck here? Corbin tugged my hand. “As for us, we’re going to run.”
Wade groaned. “There are a ton of them between us and where we need to go.”
“Right,” Devil said. “So you keep Sienna alive and leave what is between us and transportation out of here to Corbin and me?”
Wade nodded once. “I promise.”
I almost argued. At this point I didn’t need anyone to keep me alive. I was pretty darn capable of handling it. But I wasn’t going to argue. They were right. I’d never killed anyone. I was about to, but Corbin had stopped that.
If I tried to interfere, I might make this worse.
Corbin and Devil fought through lines of men as though they’d been doing it together for years. That wasn’t true. In fact, they’d only been on a permanent same team for a brief period of time with me. For a number of years, they’d been enemies. But they were almost beautiful. Wade grabbed my arm, yanking me backward. I was going to have to speak to him about what had happened to me with my rage, but I wasn’t going to do that right now.
We might need that rage. Seeing Corbin had deflated it, but it was still there, in the back of my head. A thought dawned on me. What if it wasn’t my own that I was feeling?
What was amazing about the constant killing I saw in front of me was that they were fighting men who were as trained as they were. I’d no sooner thought that than a whole additional crowd showed up. My guys were surrounded.
I rushed forward, and Wade yanked me back, surprisingly strongly. I could have gotten away, but his tug reminded me that I didn’t want to make this worse.
“Wade, we have to do something.”
He smiled. “No, we don’t.”
How could he think that? Why was he smiling? That was when I saw them. Blaze. Kellan. Anders. Trenton. How and when had they gotten here? The lights flashed dark. Most of us could still see, but I was sure Trenton had just suddenly done that because it was, at least for the half a second it mattered, totally distracting.
My guys pounced. And then they pounded.
“Sienna,” Trenton called. “Wade. This way.”
I ran toward him. What did he want us to do? He didn’t tell me, but it wasn’t the time. I ran after him, and it was soon obvious to me that we were heading back to the machine. But we couldn’t go without the others.
“Trenton?”
He shook his head. “We can only send two through at a time anyway. You and Wade. Then me. The others will make it. I trust them. That’s all this takes. We have to trust each other. They’ll get through. They’re not leaving you. I promise you that. Neither am I.”
On the ground, Not-Johnny groaned. Why was he doing that? I didn’t have time to ask. I stepped in the device.
There was darkness. And then light.
Wade
“You okay?” I pulled Sienna out of the machine. She put her hands on her knees like she had to catch her breath, and I wished I had anything to scan her with. When I’d darted after Devil and Corbin, I hadn’t been exactly prepared to battle.
I kissed her cheek. “Sienna?”
“What if I did everything wrong? What if the guys aren’t coming back? What if everyone gets killed?”
I squatted down in front of her. There were just some things I had to say, that I had to make her hear. “Sienna, maybe whatever you did will turn out to be a mistake. Maybe it won’t. We can’t predict the future. I don’t care what our time travelers say. They don’t really know. They do some kind of thing to get us to behave in ways we hope are the right ways, but really, screw it. No one really knows, Sienna. We’re all doing the best we can.”