The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(65)

My lips parted.

“It’s old,” Liam said, quickly, like that would make me feel any better.

Liam reached toward me, forcing a smile. I blew out the breath I had been holding and reached up to take his hand.

At almost the exact moment our hands touched, I saw it. The emergency light above that section of the back wall snapped back to full glare like a spotlight, illuminating the enormous black Ψ painted there, along with a very clear message: GET OUT NOW.

The thick, uneven letters looked like they were weeping. The light crackled and went back out with a loud pop, but I still threw myself forward, out of Liam’s grip, straight for the spray-painted message. Because that smell…the way the words drooped…I pressed my fingers against the Psi symbol and they came away sticky. Black.

Fresh paint.

Liam had only just reached me when I felt the strangest sensation of burning, right at my core. I looked down, expecting to see a spark igniting the front of Zu’s ridiculous dress, and then I was falling, and Liam was falling on top of me. Bulldozed right over, as if we had been nothing more than two daisies poking up through the cracks in the tile.

Liam’s shoulder rammed into my chest, knocking the air out of our lungs. I tried to lift my head to see exactly what had happened, but there was this weight—this solid, invisible slab of stone—keeping me on my back, and Liam flat against me.

The floor was freezing at my back, but my entire focus was on the solid press of his shoulder against my cheek. Our hands were caught between us, and for a moment I had the uneasy sensation of not knowing where one of us began and the other ended. He swallowed hard, the pulse in his throat close enough for me to hear it.

Liam moved to lift his head, straining the muscles that lined the strong column of his spine. “Hey!” he shouted. “Who’s there?”

The only response was another shove from the invisible hands Suddenly we were shooting across the ground, Liam’s leather jacket squealing against the dusty floor as we slid. I watched the emergency lights beyond Liam’s head pass with dizzying speed, tracking together like a single beam. Riotous laughter followed us down the aisles, seeming to come from below us, above us, on either side. I thought I saw a dark shape move out of the corner of my eye, but it looked more like a monster than a person. We tore through ribbons of ripped shower curtains, the body lotion, the bleach, to the line of cash registers at the front of the store.

“Cut it out!” Liam yelled. “We’re—”

There are some sounds you hear once and never forget. A bone breaking. An ice cream truck’s song. Velcro. A gun’s safety clicking off.

No, I thought, Not now—not here!

We slid to a painful stop at the checkout lanes, the impact with the metal jarring every sense out of my body. There was a single moment of agonizing silence before the once-dead store lights surged into brightness. And then, the cash register flashed on, conveyer belt sputtering to life—first one lane, then the next, and the next. Every single one, falling to order like soldiers. The numbered signs above blinked between yellow and blue, like a dozen warning signals, faster than my eyes could follow.

At first I thought it was White Noise; all at once, the building’s security alarms, intercom system, and televised displays went off, a hundred different voices screaming at us. Block after block of ceiling lights snapped on, electricity pouring through them after years of existing as nothing more than hollow, dusty veins.

Liam and I turned to see Zu, her bare right hand splayed out against a checkout lane. Chubs was next to her, his face ashen.

After only a few seconds of Zu’s power surge, the lights on the registers began to pop like firecrackers, dropping streams of blue-white sparks and glass to the ground.

She had only meant for it to be a distraction, I think; a flash and a bang to draw the attention of our attackers away from us long enough for an escape. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her waving us toward her, but the machine under Zu’s other hand had heated to a terrifying molten glow. I felt the invisible grip on me slacken suddenly, but fear kept me still as the dead. She wasn’t letting go. Liam and I must have had the same thought—the same scorching fear—because we pushed to our feet, shouting for her to stop.

“Turn her off!” someone managed to shout over the alarms.

“Zu, let go!” Liam stood and stumbled over cans of sunscreen and bug spray from a nearby display. I saw him lift his arms, ready to yank Zu away with his abilities, but Chubs was faster. He tugged the glove off Zu’s other hand and pulled it over his own, then all but ripped her arm away from the metal.

The lights went out. Just before the overhead bulbs exploded, I saw Zu’s face as she came out of whatever trance she had been locked in. Her big eyes were rimmed with red, her short black hair on end, freckles standing out against the full flush of her oval face. The sudden darkness gave Liam the opportunity to knock both her and Chubs to the ground.

And then, by some small miracle, the emergency lights flicked back on.

The first sign of movement didn’t come from us. I saw our attackers clearly now, climbing over the mangled heaps of white shelves. Four of them, each dressed in layers of black, each with a gun raised and ready. My first thought, as it almost always was when I saw anyone in a black uniform, was to run. To get the others and bolt.

But these weren’t PSFs. They weren’t even grown-ups.