I rushed through the doors to the convention center, and I dumbfounded. There were so many people in that convention center that if I breathed in too much air my sides pressed into the people standing around me. It was a mob! I’m telling you! It was so crowded that even though I had come through the doors right after Ivy’s kidnappers, I had absolutely no idea where they could have went. Unfortunately, Quincy didn’t either.
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“And while he was searching, Mia. They had already set me up in a conference room.”
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I thought I had never and would never be more terrified in my life when they strapped me down to that cold, hard, unforgiving metal table in the center of a circle of desks where beautiful, spiritual rocks should have been. Big men in forboading dark-grey suits flooded in, filling and overflowing in the seats. A chill ran down my spine. Even though I thought I had reached the most scaring moment of my life, I wasn’t even close.
The meeting started, and Hag introduced me to a room of impersonal eyes. Greedy eyes, when she told them my purpose. Hag then instructed Damian to “Hook her up!” Suction cups were stamped onto my chest, my head, my soles, my back, my palms, my nose, my mouth, and right in between my eyes. These disks connected me to an enormous, dark, bussiness-man grey machine.
They were waiting for me to do magic. Hag told me, “Do your magic, Deary, and we’ll let you go. That’s not so hard. Is it deary.”
“You’re going to have to wait a long time, Hag.”
“As long as it takes, right boys?” “Yesss…” The were robotic.
They had been waiting for what felt like hours. There was no way that I was going to give them magic. Magic is not to be harness for evil or by evil people. The last time that happened, when American scientist were messing with alchemy in the 1940s, we ended up with two entire cities in Japan completely obliterated. Suddenly, something happened to break my resolve. My phone buzzed. Loudly. Because it was touching the metal table in my sagging pocket. Hag took my phone out of my pocket and answered it. It was my mother. With the phone on speaker, I could hear my mother’s panicked voice, a hoarse whisper that cut through the distance so that it felt like she was speaking into my ear.
“Ivy… Come home now! Your father doesn’t have much time left. He wants to see you. Please… come home!”
I couldn’t wait anymore for Jem to find me. I didn’t have time to be brave for my world. I could only think of my self, my family, my dad.
Despite my restraints, I rose into the air, like always, but something was wrong. I didn’t lose myself. All I could think of was my fear, my anger, my self, my self, my dad, my pain. MY PAIN! The sucction cups burned. The smell of burning flesh filled the air. Instead of gold, I was engulfed in a planet of red. That was all I could see. All I felt was liquid fire in my veins, crawling up my forearms from my wrists, and into my elboes.
I floated back down to Earth with an pain even more excrusiating than the pain in my arms. I had the weight of betrayal of the entire world like elephants on my chest. I looked over at the machine and saw red smoke curling out of the cracks. It was an overfilled metal balloon. It was my fault, but I had to deal with it later. I ripped the suction cups off and made a mad dash to the exit. I had to see my dad. I had to. I could save him.
But then, a bussiness robot stepped in front of the door. They were not finished with me yet.