Free Rebels Rising (Dark Rebels, #1) by Caitlin Falls Page A

was this a test?”
    “No, the test is whether or not you can get us out of here without the Remnants killing us.”
    “Okay, tell me right now, what is this Remnant you speak of?” She had meant it to be funny, but what Connor said was far from humorous. “It’s the leftovers from the time when this place was awake.
    “Power never really disappears, even when the people who possess it die. If the people are bad, and the Power is bad, then it does bad things. This place is filled with that kind of Power. We call that the Remnants, and they can kill you.”
    “Oh gee, thanks for telling me that before we walked into this place! No wonder I’ve been so nervous!”
    Tawny asked, “What do you mean, you’ve been so nervous?”
    “I don’t know. I just...on the train I had a weird dream, and then I had this odd, bad feeling all night. If I had known that there was bad stuff here I could have relaxed. Well, maybe not, but at least I would not have been so freaked out, wondering...”
    “You never said you had a premonition!” Blake shouted.
    “What’s a premonition?”
    “Think! What were you afraid of?”
    “I saw...I didn’t know exactly. I mean, it was nothing specific.” She was stuttering, but there was nothing she could do about it.
    “We have to get out of here.” Tawny spun in a circle, her hair flying out around her small and pale face. “Guys, we need to get the hell out of here right now.”
    Krista’s voice quivered, “Is it a Remnant?”
    “It’s a lot of Remnants,” Connor said.
    Tawny shifted, her skin turned to golden fur, and she ran, her body morphing as she went. A bright light struck her, her green-hazel eyes glinted, and her hands hit the floor as great paws. Connor’s wings shot out from his back, and Blake spun around, his hands hooking into talons.
    They were all ready for battle, but Krista was not. There was something coming—something that was worse than anything any of them could imagine, and she had known it and said nothing. They were all going to die, and it was her fault.
    The Remnants looked like ghosts, at first. They were insubstantial and wraith-like; they hung on the air, and they seemed to be too fragile to cause any real harm. Then they solidified and hardened.
    The banks of empty machinery flew at Krista’s head. She ducked low just in time to keep her head on her shoulders. Her mouth was dry, and fear made her heartbeat accelerate until she could see the skin on her chest fluttering and expanding with each tick tock of her heart.
    The Creators had made these Remnants. Some of them had belonged to bad people to start with, others had come from people gone mad with pain and terror, and others had simply grown wild after their bodies were taken away.
    Pity lanced through Krista. Some of the Remnants dripped with pain, others with rage or grief, and the emotions were overwhelming her. She wanted to simply fall to her knees and weep for what had been done in that room.
    She could see it all: the experiments, the torture, the people herded in and tested until they were broken and bloody and begging for a merciful death. No wonder their Power stayed there, trapped in that space.
    Her mind locked down, and she stared at one Remnant, a hollow-eyed man with the grin of a barracuda. He had been a bad man, she knew it, she felt it. His Power had been stripped from him by men worse than he was, but they had not known how to cage that Power, not then, and so it was free within these walls.
    Blake was fighting a screaming wind. It caught him up and tossed him from wall to wall like a rag doll. Connor was trying to free Tawny from the grip of what looked like a woman with three breasts.
    Revulsion and horror replaced pity. No matter what had been done to these people when they were alive, they were no longer alive now, and only their twisted and crazed Powers remained behind.
    She pictured a jar, wide-mouthed and with a clamping lid, like the ones her mother used to can the