Hidden (Book 3 of the Immune Series)

Weak and Powerless (Part 1)

Sakir

I beat against the glass with both hands, screaming at the top of my lungs as President Ashford fires a bullet through Dr. Julien. Mya thrashes around on the table, her mouth open in a scream, but I hear nothing.

Can she hear me?

"Mya, no!" I scream and look at Jay for help.

The girl has wrapped her arms around her head in defeat and is rocking back and forth in silence. Isaac looks at me with wide, fearful eyes. Athena smacks against the glass with her open palms, shouting towards the window. Tears streak her cheeks.

"Get up, Jaelyn!" I yell, glaring at the useless girl. "You're supposed to be the symbol of the resistance. Instead, you're cowering."

Jay looks up then, and her face turns bright red.

"What do you expect me to do?" she growls, but the glass muffles her voice. "I'm locked in a display case!" She pushes off the ground and clenches her fists at her side. "Hold on, let me just teleport out of here, Sakir."

"Oh, stop being sarcastic," I say, rolling my eyes.

"Well! How am I supposed to help?"

"I don't know. Do something." My voice wavers, and I fall against the glass. "Please, someone do something."

Mya's alone in that room, trapped and infected with the third strand. She'll be dead in a matter of hours, and she will still be alone.

Everyone she had in the world is dead.

My mind wanders back to how crippled and helpless I felt the day Mama died, how I couldn't breathe, eat, or sleep, how my mind ran circles around itself until I was too worn out to move, but I still couldn't sleep. The nightmares ate away at my waking and resting thoughts and drove me to the brink of insanity.

Athena drug me out, though.

I am supposed to be there for her. I was supposed to protect Mya, be the angelic hands that lifted her out of the trenches of lose. Instead, I'm trapped like an animal waiting to be euthanized.

No.

I refuse to give up.

Mya needs me.

I look back up towards the two-way mirror. Ashford walks away from Mya to another door to the left of the one he entered through. On this side, the knob turns, and the old man walks in.

"Mya! It's going to be fine! Mya, whatever you do, please, don't give up," I shout, praying she can hear me through the open door.

Ashford shuts the door behind him before crossing his hands over his chest.

"Well, hello, Sakir. It's been a while."

I glare at him through the distortion, swallow back the angry words I feel rising in my throat.

"Not long enough," I spit, taking a step back from the glass. "Why don't you let me out of this cage so we can talk like adults?"

Ashford laughs, but the sound resembles nails scraping against concrete. When he looks back at me, the grin on his face fills me with dread.

"I'm sorry to say that we cannot have an episode like the last time we met, Sakir. You'll have to excuse the glass. It's really for your own protection."

He pulls the black gun out of his jacket and inspects it for a moment.

Athena looks at me questioningly, and I realize I've never told her about the first time I met President Ashford.

I was eight. Papa was still working with Dr. Price to create the second strand at the time, and Ashford dropped by the house to check on how things were going. I wasn't supposed to know anything about Papa's work, but our family didn't keep secrets.

He walked into my house flanked with guards, and I stood square in the middle of the doorway with my hands on my hips.

"So, you're the man that's been bullying Papa?" I said in a high-pitched child's voice. Ashford had smiled at me then, too.

"Bullying? That seems like a harsh word to describe the relationship I have with your father," he said, striding across the room towards me. He towered over me, but I stood my ground.

"You boss him around and make him do things he doesn't want to," I said, "and I'm sick of it."

He placed his hands on his knees and crouched down until he was at face level with me.

"And what exactly are you going to do about it, Sakir?"

Even now, glaring at the president ten years later, a thrum of pride beats in my chest. Eight year-old Sakir Patel reared back and punched President Ashford in the most sensitive place he could reach, and when the suit-wearing adult fell to his knees, Sakir just finished him off by punching him in the stomach and wheeling out of the house.

I would do it again right now, if I wasn't locked up.

"I will say," President Ashford says, not looking up at me. He turns the gun over in his hand and checks the clip. "I'm a little more heavily armed than I was last time. It would be a fair fight if I let you out."

"A gun to my fists? That's your idea of fair? I'm flattered."

Ashford just smiles at me and shakes his head.

"You're too prideful for your own good, son. It's going to get you in trouble one day." He pauses and raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. "Oh, wait. It already has."

I hit the glass with a closed fist, and the glass shakes.

If I was a little stronger, maybe I could break it. I glance at Isaac who is watching me intently. He's the only person in the world I know stronger than me.

"What do you want with us?" Athena blurts out beside me. She has retreated to the far corner of her box and presses herself up against the back glass.

"I'm so glad you asked!" Ashford says excitedly and places his gun back in his jacket. "I'm here to kill you."

A/N: Oh, no.