UNIQUE (A Powers Novel)

Seven

When I arrive at Paragon, Forrest is waiting for me in the lobby of the building. It should come as a surprise Joyce chose Forrest to be my researcher. She probably knows all about my past, and who Forrest is to me. On the way to the dorms, he explains the different levels. Press rooms and entry-level offices on the first fifteen floors. A large hospital and medical department on the next fifteen. Ten levels of Pharmacology. More than double that for Research and Development.

But I already know all of this. Right down to Paragon's own publishing company above that, and legal. I also know the top floors are for the executives. It's everything between that I find a mystery. That's what I really want to explore. Obviously one of them is the dorms.

Forrest swipes his security badge and punches the number 101 on the keypad. In seconds the elevator is humming upward.

My eyes fall on his security badge as he sticks it back into his pocket.

"When do I get one of those?" I ask.

"You'll be photo'd after lunch and have it a few minutes later," he responds, glancing at the numbers on the panel.

My gaze follows his, watching the numbers tick upward. "Do I have a roomie?" What would it be like to have a roommate?

"No," says Forrest, straightening the cuffs of his lab coat. "Participants don't share rooms."

"Why not?"

Forrest chuckles, but it sounds forced. "You ask a lot of questions," he says sharply. "You always were a curious kid."

"You were kind of mean to me," I mutter.

Forrest used to harass me by chasing me away from his and Bianca's house with sticks or by saying cruel things about my parents. One time he even tricked me into picking up a handful of ash from a bonfire that went out the night before. I ended up with first-degree burns on my hands.

"I was protecting my sister." There's a sharpness to the way he says it.

I can't help but grin. "The irony. Protecting her from someone who would never have an ability to harm her."

The look Forrest gives me is unnerving. "You don't need abilities to hurt people."

The elevator door dings and slides open. Forrest steps out quicker than he has to. I look around the carriage before following him down a hall.

He says nothing and keeps a couple of carefully-paced steps ahead of me.

Did I do something to hurt Bianca? There was the time she and I went to the creek, and I pushed her in as a joke. She hit a rock on the way in and broke her arm. I felt awful about it, of course, but I thought I'd intended it just to be good-natured fun. I didn't see the rock. Or maybe when she told me we would get married some day and I told her girls were stupid, and I would never get married. She ran home crying and wouldn't talk to me for a week.

But it was all so long ago. We were just kids. Before her ability manifested early and mine never did. Before she became popular and I became nothing. Still, Forrest is so eager to stay ahead of me now that I'm certain there must be something more to it he's not saying.

Forrest stops outside door 1107, raps, and waits with his back to me. "Remember that everyone else here has abilities, Ugene. You can't trust any of them. Most of them probably resent you already. Try to remember that I'm your only real friend here."

Friend? Is that what he called this? And why in the world would they resent me?

The door to room 1107 opens, held by a guy about five or ten years older than me. Shaggy blond hair hangs around his face. His gray-blue eyes are worn out as he looks us both over—me more critically. When he notices Forrest his whole body tenses up, and he shuffled back half a step.