There was no time to waste. Elena knelt down beside Sam. "Hey, buddy. You've got to wake up."

He groaned and rolled over. "It hurts."

"It's not that bad anymore, Sam. We weakened your powers. But I need you to use them one more time."

"No. I don't want to hurt anyone."

"You won't be using them to hurt anyone." Well, it would hurt. But that wasn't part of the point. The room was still red—that was a good sign. If it started to shift to blue, the plan would fail. "How far are your powers pushed out?"

"Kind of far," he said. "I've been trying to push them out as far as I can."

"Can you pull them in?"

He sat straight up. "No, Miss Elena!"

"No, no. Not suddenly. Just . . . really slowly. Can you do that?"

He shrugged. "I could. But the closer they are, the more it hurts."

"It's okay. We won't be pulling them in for long. Go ahead and start pulling them in. Just a little at a time, slow as you can."

He wrinkled his nose.

"Hey." She put a hand on his shoulder—it shocked her, but not nearly as badly as the last couple of times. "Do you trust me, Sam?"

A slight little smile played with the corners of his lips, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

The pounding in Elena's head returned, then the spikes in her nerves, then the fire in her skin. The walls grew a deeper, darker red, then faded to black. She looked over at Sam—he had faded as well.

It was working. They weren't emitting or reflecting any visible light. They weren't absorbing it, either. He looked like the shadow of a skeleton, a faint silhouette.

"Can I stop?" His voice cracked.

"Sam, open your eyes."

A slight pause. "Miss Elena? Where are you?"

"I'm right here." She reached out to touch his silhouette with hers, but immediately thought better of it. "Hey, this is pretty cool, right?"

"What's happening?"

She couldn't explain the science to him, but for once she knew exactly what to say. "You're using your powers for good."

She wished she could see the look on his face.

She turned on all three LED flashlights, and they slipped out the door.

The scientists in the hallway were caught up enough in their data analysis that they didn't notice the door slip open, didn't see the faint shadows pass through right behind them. They shouted into the microphones, berating her for taking the probes off of Sam, then for not responding to their calls, but none of them dared come near the isolation chamber.

Elena gritted her teeth through the pain as they neared the exit of the facility. Sam whimpered beside her—she could only hope no one heard.

Patrick stood at the other end of the parking lot. "Let's run," Elena whispered to Sam, and they did. Their footsteps were as loud as they had ever been, but it didn't matter. No one knew yet that they had left. No one was searching for them. Elena had a hard time even seeing Sam—she wouldn't have been able to see him at all, if she hadn't known exactly what to look for.

Shouts and footsteps emerged from the buildings, and security guards flooded from the building. The cameras must have turned back on. They'd been missed. Elena pushed herself harder, and braced herself before touching Patrick's hand as she passed.

"Ow!" he cried, pulling his hand back from the shock. Then he squinted. "Who's there?"

"It's Elena. Sam's anomalies are making us invisible. We have to run."

"You're starting to come back."

Elena glanced over at Sam, panting beside her, and gasped. His anomalies were shifting to the other side of the spectrum—if he didn't push out, they were going to become a glowing blue beacon in no time. But if he did push out, they would be perfectly visible.

"Hide!" The three of them darted behind a parked car. "Sam, push out your powers!"

He did, and the headache subsided suddenly. There was no time to be thankful for that.

"We've got to get out of here," Patrick said.

"What are we supposed to do?" Elena bit her lip. They didn't have a camper, or a van, even a car. She slipped her phone out of her pocket and fumbled with the screen, her fingers shaking too hard to type in Michelle's number.

A car screeched up beside them. Elena flinched—they'd been caught. There was no hope now.

"Need a ride, strangers?"

Michelle.

Elena jumped to her feet. "You're okay!"

"And you've got a lot of explaining to do."

"Not right now, we're being chased!"

"Hop in."

They piled into the back, and Michelle pulled away before Elena had had a chance to grab for her seat belt, let alone Sam's.

Despite the quick start, Michelle didn't speed away much faster than the speed limit "Faster!" Elena said. "They're going to catch up to us!"

"They're not chasing us," Michelle said. "They don't know this is the car they want."

Elena swallowed hard and forced herself to stop looking over her shoulder. She kept her head down and her face covered. Sam was doing the same, as if by instinct.

"How did you find us?" Elena asked.

Michelle shrugged. "I woke up in the hospital. Didn't need to be there, of course—"

"We saw you get hit in the head and pass out!" Patrick said.

"Yeah, didn't you have a concussion or something?"

"No, I wasn't unconscious. I pretended to pass out so they wouldn't target me. I thought you'd take my hint."

Elena groaned. "How were we supposed to catch that?"

Michelle shook her head. "It was a long shot. Anyway, I think the anomalies did some damage to me—"

"I pulled in my powers to defeat the bad guys!" Sam piped up.

Michelle smiled a little. "That explains that. Anyway, they took me to the hospital, but you weren't with me. It didn't take a genius to figure out where you'd gone, so I came after you."

"Your timing was amazing," Elena said.

"I've been waiting here for a bit, actually. Guards wouldn't let me into the building. What happened to you all in there?"

Elena and Patrick exchanged a glance. "It's a long story," Patrick finally said.

"You can explain on the way. It'll be good practice for where we're going."

"Where are we going?" Patrick asked.

"To the nearest police station."

"What?" all three of them cried.

Michelle's eyes met all three of theirs one by one through her rear view mirror. "We're all legally kidnappers. But now that you've been forcibly held by Tech United—"

"—we kind of went of our own accord—"

"Under duress. It's time to tell the whole story." Michelle looked back at Sam. "And it sounds like you've got a better handle on things when it comes to your powers."

He nodded and gave Elena a slight smile.

Elena's stomach turned a somersault, but she knew Michelle was right. She almost always was.

The spikes in her nerves were gone, and the fire in her skin had long since cooled. Even the headache had faded to nothing but a dull soreness. They'd solved the mystery and calmed the anomalies, but Tech United didn't know that. However worthy the task of saving Sam had been, there had been a lot of mess left behind in the process.

"Okay," Patrick said finally. "I'm going to need to call my parents."

Elena smiled to herself just slightly. "I'm going to call my mom, too."

She had a lot of mess to clean up. And this would be a good place to start.