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the bindings that were holding him in place.
    Ethan sagged, limp, sighing with relief. As the agony subsided on the outside of his body and his nerve endings no longer vibrated with pain, a new pain hit him from deep inside. It shook his core and made him feel absolutely helpless. He had called Anna. He had lured her to this. He was going to get her hurt or killed and he cared about her. Yes, he barely knew her but he cared about this Anna woman greatly.
    The man laughed, delighted over what Ethan had done. A smile crossed his face and he smirked smugly, saying “Good boy. I’ll see you shortly.” At that moment, he left, walking to the door that he’d been leaning on and opening it. He soon disappeared into the abyss, leaving Ethan alone. That was when Ethan recognized again that he was alone, but he wasn’t. There were two other people in the room with him.
    The two restrained people were silent, at first. One of them was a young woman with braided hair. She had brown skin and big eyes. She was short, and athletic, and her body looked strong. She was bound as tightly as he was and continued to look from one side to the other. The man next to her also had dark skin and was staring at him. His face was strong.  The girl spoke up first. “He killed them,” she said, looking to the hastily covered bodies on the floor. “It looked like he was doing some kind of ritual and then they died…”
    “I called another person here,” Ethan said, swallowing down guilt with his whispered words. “I didn’t mean to, but when he hurt me...it came out. I can call people with my mind and I called this girl, Anna. I can’t seem to call again to tell her to stop.”
    “There’s something keeping us from using our powers,” the man said, looking over at Ethan then back to James. “We’ve been trying our best to use them.”
    “I broke through when she did that thing to me. The pain. I couldn’t stop.”
    The girl nodded. “There has to be a ward against us using our powers or whatever,” she said, “but at the same time maybe you broke through.”
    “Maybe.”
    There was silence for a moment. The girl, however, broke through.
                  “I’m Alicia,” the woman said, introducing herself somberly. “This is James. Our powers involve fire. I assume this chick does stuff with her head, yeah?” When he nodded, she went on. “It seems that the bastard paired us off when we were children.”
    “Oh,” Ethan murmured. That made sense. It also opened up his eyes to why he was so drawn to Anna. Maybe he was supposed to be drawn to her. Maybe they had been engineered to be connected to each other by whatever experiment that this was. Maybe that was why he felt things for her that he’d never felt for anyone before, especially not for a total stranger. His relationship with this girl was a weird one.
                  “Racist, huh?” the man whispered. “The dead couple in the corner is Asian.” His face was firm and utterly unmoving. Everyone dealt with fear differently, and that was obviously his way of dealing.
    Ethan didn’t know what to think about that. He could not think about anything except for how fearful he was. He was so scared. He had led Anna right into this. He had led her to the slaughter. He didn’t know if the man’s stupid powers were why he was so drawn to her, but he didn’t care. He cared about her. She was important to him and he wanted to keep her from walking right into the slaughter that was intended..
    “Please don’t,” he cried but like they’d slowly figured out, his abilities were muted, blocked. There was no way out.

Chapter Seven
     
                  Anna could not find him at first. The instinctive knowledge of where Ethan was existed as fuzziness at best. When she opened her mind, however, she just knew. It filled up her mind. She knew exactly where Ethan was. She drove. She pushed the gas and sped as fast as she could. She just drove