"What are you solving by this?" I asked as she took a swing for my hair.
"I'm gonna murder you! I'm going to rip your hair out!" she shrieked in fantastical rage that would have amused me had it not been directed at me. "You're so special and spoiled aren't you?"
I held her arm above our heads as she went for another swipe at me. She twisted her body, to try to get another hold of me I assumed, but she turned too quickly and her trajectory pushed her right over the edge, breaking the rail on that side of the lift. I gripped the hand I was already holding as she pulled me down to the floor with a jerk as I held on.
"Don't let go!" she screamed. "Don't let go!"
"I'm not!" I yelled back. "Come on, let's pull you up."
"You'll just let me go," she said hysterically.
"Why would I catch you only to let you go?"
"Because you're evil!"
I could have laughed. "Come on and stop being a drama queen."
"No," she said, her voice serious. "No. You'll just let me go."
"I'm helping you, now come on."
I began to pull her arm up, but her glove was slipping. I pulled harder, but it slipped more. She started to freak out and I told her to calm down, but she refused.
"You're doing that on purpose!" she accused.
"Be still and stop thrashing!"
"That's it. If I'm going, you're coming down with me," she promised and threw all of her weight up to reach her other hand for my arm. With all her weight centered and heavy, I felt myself slip an inch from the platform. She was determined, but so was I. Once she started trying to take me down with her, it was game over. I opened my fingers and didn't grip her anymore and she began to slip. Her grip went higher and higher, eventually one of her gloves came off and I felt her offense mark burn into my wrist. She jerked and screamed and fought to hold on, but eventually…
…she fell.
I closed my eyes to the scene of her plunging to the ground below me. I rolled over to my back on the platform and couldn't help it as the tears clouded my vision. I was glad for them. It meant that some part of me was still human and I wasn't the trinket - the lifeless object brought here to bend at their will - that they made me out to be. I could still feel and make my own decisions and accept my own consequences.
I knew Marla would never stop and she'd tried to kill me more than once, but that didn't mean I was happy about seeing her die.
But then I remembered the battle raging above me. I jerked to stand and pulled at the rope over and over again until I finally reached the top and jumped out of the lift to the grass of the mountain edge.
Half of the greenhouse was a burning heap now. Kyle and Lynne were still tied to the side that was still standing, still unconscious. But I saw them standing off on the other side so I ran to Caleb's back who was holding them off by borrowing an ability that shook the ground under their feet. I touched his back and arms to let him know I was there, but he already knew.I'm so sorry, baby, but we're in it deep out here.
I'm ok, I told him. Let's just finish this.
Jen and Bish were near the wall. Bish was blocking Jen, but not touching her. I thought about what needed to be done. I knew what needed to be done, but didn't know how to go about it.
And they were coming again. The guy who had the fire hands was first. I immediately slammed him with a swoosh of my fingers into the nearest wall. I didn't feel like getting roasted while I was trying to think and I was so over it all.
They started to come at us again and Caleb could no longer hold them all off. One grabbed him around his neck even as he fought and swung to beat them off.
That was when the cavalry arrived. Caleb's beautiful, petite mother jerked the metal railing from the balcony edge and clotheslined the whole lot of them with it. I saw Peter duck and then punch a man's jaw, then he kneed that same man in the stomach. Bish punched a guy, then another guy, then another. Once he punched someone, they were down for the count. Uncle Ken was doing something to someone in the corner that I couldn't see and Caleb's other uncle who controlled the plants had a thorny rose bush swallowing a man. Caleb and Marcus went round and round. Caleb punched Marcus' gut, making him retreat backwards.
But it was when Marcus started to charge Caleb again with a broken piece of pipe in his hands, that I'd had enough.
That was it. I couldn't take another second of it. My body hummed with untapped energy and I felt it rise to the surface as if I called for it. My arms seemed to rise out in front of me by themselves before seeping to the side. The Watsons all fell back in a wave as if knocked down by some force. The energy ribbons were everywhere; in us and through us and all around us. The energy only seemed to affect the Watsons and they all rose to their knees in unwilling obedience to it and glowered at me with scared anticipation.
My family looked on as I became what I was destined to be.
"You all have ruined lives. Your family has taken everything you have for granted, and turned our kind into something it was never meant to be. We're different, it doesn't mean that we're better. We're powerful, it doesn't mean that we can hurt the powerless. If anything we're meant to help the humans and the ones of our kind that are struggling. Your family is the reason that the imprints were taken." They gasped at the implication and called me a liar and worse. I kept going. "And your family is going to be the reason they come back again."
They looked at me puzzled for a few seconds. I linked my fingers of one hand with Caleb's and begged for him to understand and trust me. He squeezed my fingers in agreement before connecting with me. The energy ribbons filled the air with green light and nowhere was safe from its glow. We began to draw the Watson's power away, their abilities, their very life force, their identity, their place in our kind, their history and their future. It came away from them in black ribbons of energy that mingled with the green and then dissolved. It hurt to watch the looks on their faces when they felt and realized what was happening, but it was my burden to bear as the Visionary.
They begged and screamed for me to give them another chance and tried to run, but my power refused to let go until it was finished. Marcus was the last to go down and I knew no lessons had been learned for him. His glare was one of revenge, not sorrow. They slumped and fell over in defeat and then it was all over, or at least I thought it was. Rodney came to stand next to me and I laced my arm with his.
"You're something, you know that?" he said in awe. I just smiled. "So when am I going to meet my dream girl? Is there a time frame on that vision of yours?"
I just shook my head at him. "I'm afraid not," I answered, but then I heard a roar behind me.
"No happy endings!"
Just as I turned, Rodney was right in front of me. I was confused as he looked down into my face at first. He wasn't the one who yelled was he? I heard the footsteps bang against the roof and looked to see Haddock charging us. He grabbed the fire hands guy and tossed him away from Rodney's back. He tripped and fell backward, hitting his head on the cast iron railing.
Rodney tried to smile a little at me, but his thoughts told me of the pain he was in. I grabbed him before he could fall and heard Caleb yell before helping me lower him to the ground.
Before I even really got a grasp on what had happened a tear slid down my nose and landed on Rodney's neck. "No," I said. "No."
Fire hands had woken up and charged us when our backs were turned. He'd picked up a long glass shard and had stabbed Rodney after hearing him talk about the vision I'd had for him. This wasn't supposed to happen. "But the vision…I had the vision for you to marry your significant. This wasn't supposed to happen."
Haddock bent down and looked at Rodney's eyes by prying them open wide with his fingers. Peter knelt and pushed Haddock's hands away and started his own inspection, but Haddock still spoke to me. "Something changed. Something changed to make the way the vision was supposed to happen be different." He looked at me. "It's not your fault."
Caleb's family looked on Rodney in horror as I turned to Haddock.
"Why are helping me?" I said, my throat and eyes clogged with tears. It got worse as Caleb grabbed Rodney's hand in a brotherly grasp and they looked at each other.
"I know what it's like to feel like you don't know what's going on around you. You feel so certain about one thing, but everything changes and makes it another." He looked back at Rodney. "I know all about the visions, I know how they work. My family did lots of research on these types of things from the histories." He looked back to me. "I don't know what happened to change it so that your vision didn't come true for Rodney, but that doesn't mean that you can't trust your visions."
I turned away from him, not even understanding why a Watson was helping me. It may not have been the smartest thing to do, turning my back to a Watson, but Caleb needed me. When I turned, it was too late. Rodney was already gone. I pulled Caleb to me and let him squeeze me to him. His skin was almost sizzling with anger and energy and it seemed to hiss as it met mine and he got a shot of calm.Kyle's parents had woken him and Lynne. They were all running our way and Kyle's face took on a look that said he understood what had happened. He knelt down with a hard thud to Rodney and ran his hands through his own hair before laying his head down to Rodney's hand. Lynne rubbed Kyle's back. Her cheek was red and there was still blood on her face from where Donald had cut her. I saw in her mind that Kyle had tried to heal her as best as he could, but they saw what was going on with us and ran toward us instead.