Fourteen

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The other Supers streamed out the front door. More SCI agents were likely on their way to the lobby, so they needed to get out as quickly as possible. Ivy took a step toward the doors, but someone grabbed her arm.

Ivy sighed. "What, Victoria?"

"Why did you go inside?" Victoria asked. "If you'd waited, you all wouldn't have gotten captured."

"It's my fault," Ivy confessed. "I got impatient." She folded her arms as guilt welled up inside her. "I guess... I guess I was thinking about what Summer would do. And she was a great leader, she was just a little headstrong. I mean, she took the idea of going to Cladis Point and ran with it, remember?"

"Yeah," Victoria said. "You got kidnapped by Scorpion."

"Right. Anyway, I guess I was just so determined to get the chemical." Ivy's hand slid into her jacket pocket. "But I'm sorry."

"I was worried sick about Claire."

"But not the rest of us?"

Victoria rolled her eyes. "Look, I obviously don't want you all getting hurt or whatever, but Claire's my sister."

Ivy opened her mouth to reply, but paused and frowned. The lobby was empty. "We should go," she said. "There are probably more SCI agents coming."

"Right," Victoria muttered.

They walked toward the front doors. Ivy reached out to grab the handle. Her hand was just inches away when a metal wall fell down from the ceiling, hitting the ground with a loud clang and blocking off the exit.

"What the—" Ivy spun around as more metal slid down to cover the lobby windows.

A voice came on over the speakers. "Lockdown initiated."

"You've got to be kidding me," Victoria growled.

Ivy? Victoria? Where are you guys?

Ivy jumped when she heard Claire's voice.

Victoria glanced at her. "You hear her too?" she asked.

Ivy nodded. We're trapped in the lobby. They put the building under lockdown or something.

We're getting in the jetchoppers out front, came Claire's response. There's more agents out here. How are you guys going to get out?

Ivy immediately thought of the chemical. But she wasn't sure how much Dr. Newman needed for the bomb, and they'd already used some to get of the cell.

We'll find a way out.

Ivy was surprised to hear Victoria in her head. She couldn't help but think that connecting all three of them must be giving Claire a headache.

Yeah, Ivy thought. I'm sure there's an exit somewhere. We'll meet you guys outside.

Claire's presence left, and Ivy sighed. "All right, let's go."

The only way out of the lobby was the hallway they came in through. Apparently only the exterior exits had been locked down. Ivy and Victoria were about halfway down the hallway when the sound of footsteps came from behind them.

Ivy turned around and tensed, ready to fight. At the end of the hallway, two SCI agents appeared. One held up a gun and fired a shocker. In the blink of an eye, Ivy flung her arm out in front of Victoria and grimaced as the shocker hit her wrist.

Energy flooded Ivy's body. She moved her arm out in front of her. The agents ran toward them, the one on the left ready to fire again. Electricity jumped from Ivy's fingers, striking the agents and sending them to the ground.

Victoria gasped. "How did you... Are they...?"

Ivy bit her lip. "They're fine." She looked down at her hands. "It's weird. I thought Summer knew with practice, but it's like... I instinctively know how much power I need to just hurt someone, versus..."

"Killing them?" Victoria asked.

"Yeah." The more Ivy thought about, the better electrokinesis was than pyrokinesis. She could barely do any harm, or knock someone unconscious without doing any permanent damage. Fire, on the other hand, was far more difficult to control.

Of course, the problem with electrokinesis was that it reminded Ivy of what happened to Summer.

"Lovely," Victoria said. She shook her head. "We should really be going."

She was right. There was the sound of voices and footsteps in the distance.

They hurried down the hall and came across an intersection. A sign told them there was an exit down the hallway to the right.

"Do you think it's blocked off, too?" Ivy asked.

"I don't know," Victoria snapped. "How—" she froze, and Ivy did the same. More voices, coming from the direction of the exit.

"Crap," Ivy muttered.

"In here," Victoria said.

Ivy glanced to the left, where Victoria was holding open a door. Black letters across it spelled out 'Laboratories.' The voices were getting closer. Ivy swallowed and followed Victoria in.

Victoria pulled the door shut as quietly as possible while Ivy looked around. They were in a small room. Another door a few feet away had a keypad by it, and labcoats and safety goggles hung on the wall.

Ivy frowned. "What—"

"Shh," Victoria hissed. Her ear was pressed up against the door. "They're out in the hallway," she whispered.

Ivy glanced at the door opposite them. "Maybe we should go through there."

Victoria chewed her bottom lip. "I guess. If someone's monitoring the security cameras out in the halls, they could send agents in here to follow us."

Ivy looked around. "There aren't any cameras in here, there might not be any in the labs either. There's probably another exit."

"All right, I guess it's worth a shot." Victoria straightened up, walked over to the door, and tried the handle. "Except it's locked."

Ivy examined the keypad. She tentatively set her hand on it. "Maybe I could do what Claire does when she unlocks stuff, but with electricity."

Victoria narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure that would work?"

"I don't know. But if I could trick the door into thinking it's getting the right signal from the keypad, maybe it will open."

"Sounds like you're just making stuff up."

Ignoring her, Ivy closed her eyes and concentrated on the keypad. It was humming with electricity, and she could sense where it connected to the door.

Would this even work? Summer had never done anything like this before. Well, except when she'd apparently overloaded Scorpion's generators during the mission to rescue Ivy. But that was sheer power, and they'd been lucky that the building required electricity to lock the doors, not unlock them.

Ivy and Victoria didn't have anywhere else to go, though. Apparently there were still agents hovering by the door outside, and they could come in at any second. Ivy drew in a deep breath and sent a very light burst of electricity into what she hoped was the right part of the system.

The door let out a painfully loud beep, and the lock clicked. Ivy grabbed the handle and pulled it open.

"Huh," Victoria said. "Not bad."

They slipped through the door and into the rest of the labs. Victoria knelt down by the door and listened for any sign of agents coming after them. Ivy clenched her fists, ready to run if they needed to.

"Are you going to take that thing off your wrist?" Victoria asked. "It's kind of freaking me out."

"What?" Ivy looked down. "Oh." She'd forgotten about the shocker. It was dead now. She'd sucked all of the electricity into her body. Ivy grabbed it and pried it off of her skin. There wasn't even a burn mark to show it had been there.

"I think we're good." Victoria stood up. "We should look for a way out."

"Yeah." Ivy hesitated. "Listen, about Claire..."

"Is now really the time?"

"We didn't exactly get to finish our conversation earlier."

"Yeah, because our lives were in danger. And they still are."

"Look, I just wanted to say that I still don't understand why you're worried. You've seen her in a fight. She's powerful."

"So?" Victoria said. "She has powers, but she's still... I mean, you could kill someone, but you wouldn't want to, right?"

Ivy clenched her fists. "Well, yeah."

"None of us do. And some of us don't even like fighting."

"Like you? I don't like fighting either, but I do it because I can help. You can, too."

"Can I though? Sure, I can beat up three people at once. I stand a chance against the Supers working for Scorpion—Altered, or whatever—but the soldiers? I can't punch armor, Ivy. It doesn't do a thing."

Ivy frowned. She'd never thought about that before. "I—"

"And I know, I don't have to fight. But Claire doesn't either, and she does, so I have to keep an eye on her."

"Why? You're the same age. I mean, if you think about it, it would make more sense for her to protect you."

"Yeah, I know, but my dad asked me to watch her for a reason."

Ivy folded her arms. "And that would be...?"

"Look, I don't like fighting, but I can do it. I did what I could in D.C. But Claire isn't a fighter. She tags along with you guys because she thinks she can handle it, but she can't. She's gonna crack one of these days."

"What makes you say that? She seems to be doing fine."

"Yeah, and you've known her what, a couple months? I've known her for sixteen years."

Ivy hesitated. "Listen, when I went to talk to Malcolm that day we locked him up, he told me something. About Claire."

"He did?" Victoria asked. "What could he possibly know about her?"

"Apparently SCI had some files they'd taken from Tyche Labs, which he took from them. The scientists at Tyche experimented on her."

"That's impossible—"

"I know. I told him that, but he claimed they did. I don't know. But he said that she was really powerful. They had to do something to suppress her power."

Victoria rolled her eyes. "And you believe him? He could have been lying. I'm sure he'd say anything to get out of his cell."

"Yeah, but if what he said was true..."

Victoria rolled her eyes. She opened her mouth to respond, but stopped and frowned when her gaze found something behind Ivy. "What the...?"

"What?" Ivy asked. She turned around and gasped.

Behind her was a tank, filled with a transparent liquid. Suspended inside was what seemed to be...

"Are those lungs?" Ivy asked.

Victoria frowned and walked up the tank, examining the lungs. "That's weird," she murmured.

"You think?"

Victoria shook her head. "No, I mean, I think these are too big to be human. And the wrong color..."

"What? How can you tell?" Ivy glanced at the tank again. She didn't understand how Victoria could stand to look at it for so long.

"I'm not positive. Maybe they are, I don't know." She looked up and her gaze trailed along the wall. "There's more."

"Seriously?" Ivy cautiously turned around, bracing herself for whatever was behind her. There were more tanks, but most of them were empty. But something at the end of the row caught her eye.

Victoria hurried over to it, and Ivy followed after a moment's hesitation.

"Supernatural Control Institution, Victoria said, reading some words printed along the bottom of the tank. She glanced up at what was inside. "This is getting really weird."

Ivy kept her gaze on Victoria, not daring to look at the tank. "Do I want to know what's inside?"

"Probably not."

Ivy looked up and took a step back. "Are they... stitched together?"

Floating in the tank were two hearts.

"Um, I don't think so?"

"Then how are they attached?" Ivy glanced behind her at the door to the lab. What was this place? What was SCI?

To Ivy's horror, Victoria reached up and lifted the lid to the tank. She reached inside and pulled out the—whatever it was. While she examined the spot where the two hearts were connected, Ivy looked up at the ceiling and tried not to throw up.

"Uh, yeah, these definitely weren't put together. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be like this."

"What do you mean 'supposed to be like that?'" Ivy tried to keep her voice from shaking. How was Victoria so calm?

"Like, whatever they pulled this out of..."

There was a chorus of voices from behind the lab door. Victoria's eyes widened in panic. She threw the organ back into the tank and closed the lid.

"Come on," Ivy hissed. She hurried over to the other side of the lab, where there was yet another door. This one, thankfully, was unlocked. They hurried through it and Ivy pulled the door shut. As the handle clicked into place, she heard people enter the room they'd just been in.

Another room, with another door at the end. She and Victoria silently hurried toward it. As they did, they passed more tanks, much bigger than the other ones. Fortunately, these ones were empty.

"Whoa," Victoria muttered as they passed the last tank. This one's door was open, and the whole area was sectioned off with yellow tape. A large puddle of water surrounded the open door.

Ivy glanced at the tables and equipment opposite the tanks. One of the desks was taped off, too, as well as a nearby door.

"We don't have time to investigate," Victoria said, nodding toward the exit. "Let's go."

They walked silently down a narrow hallway and went through another door back into the rest of the facility. An exit sign up ahead hung above a door. Ivy was relieved, until she realized this door was also blocked by a metal wall.

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