Grounded

Chapter 17

"I need to speak with you privately," Jeremiah says. He hooks his index finger into my pinkie.

"Later." I yank my hand away. "Let's get this over with first." I've never talked to him like that before. How this world has changed me.

He scowls. "What's wrong with you?"

"You shouldn't have decided without checking with me first. You committed both of us."

Jeremiah looks totally confused. "What choice did I have?"

"We," I whisper. "What choice did we have? It was our decision, not yours."

He frowns at me like I'm not making any sense.

Maxwell leads us to the basement. I search the hall for Korwin but he's disappeared; I assume he's somewhere recuperating from the revelations of this morning. I don't blame him. I wish I could go to bed and sleep for a week.

"I want both of you to know, you're safe here. The mansion is a bunker," Maxwell says. "From the outside, the house looks like a typical Tudor, but inside, everything is reinforced. The glass is bulletproof. Steel shutters slide into place at the touch of a button. In the case of an emergency, the basement entryway to the compound can be sealed and appear as a solid wall. If we ever need to evacuate, there are multiple routes out of the mansion through the sewer."

"Why didn't Korwin bring me in that way when we escaped CGEF?" I ask.

"There is a Bio-Tech membrane that only goes one way. You can leave the mansion through the sewer but to get back in, you need a biological key. Even Korwin doesn't have it."

I don't understand what a biological key is, but it seems strange Maxwell wouldn't give it to his own son. "Why doesn't Korwin have a key to his own house?"

"He used to, but when he was captured by the Greens it was too dangerous. We had to change the locks. Protocol."

"Why is all this necessary, anyway?" Jeremiah asks.

Maxwell smiles. "Most directly because of the data. Stuart Manor is the intelligence hub of the Liberty Party. Not to mention Korwin. Seventeen years of unique research on the only electrokinetic human ever studied is here. It can't ever fall into enemy hands."

Maxwell's words nag at me like a splinter in my skin. "Until now. I will add to that data."

"Yes. We will find out how alike or different you are to Korwin. And your results will become part of history."

And just like that, I understand why the way Maxwell talks about Korwin affects me. He talks about both of us as if we are prized animals. Trick ponies. Maxwell talks about his own son like some kind of secret weapon. Not as a human being. Not as a child of God.

"We'll test you first, Lydia, and then I'll take Jeremiah's blood."

I nod. I will do what he wants, but I don't fully trust Maxwell. Who could trust someone who talks about their son in terms of years of data?

He ushers me into a large open room with padded gray walls labeled Test Room A. Maxwell and Jeremiah appear a moment later on the other side of a thick observation panel. I'm surprised when Korwin enters the room behind me.

Our eyes meet. "You're back."

"I need to show you what to do." He doesn't explain where he's been or why, but he gives me a reassuring smile that relieves some of my mounting anxiety.

Jeremiah's face twists into a grimace behind the window. I'm not sure why he's so upset. I think he's worried for me and probably still trying to digest the news that I'm a Spark and he could be too.