BURIED ALIVE
ISABELLA HART - POV
I can't get air.
Something heavy pins my chest. Could be concrete. Could be steel. Doesn't matter. What matters is my ribs won't expand and my lungs are screaming and there's dust everywhere, coating my tongue, my throat, filling the spaces where oxygen should be.
I try to move my legs. Nothing happens. No pain. No sensation. Just absence, like those parts of me stopped existing below my waist.
But I feel everything else. God, I feel it all.
Through the blood bond, Marco's broken ribs send sharp bursts every time he tries to breathe. Three cracked. Maybe four. He's pinned under something and his brilliant tactical mind is spinning through scenarios, calculating survival percentages, coming up with numbers that keep dropping.
Dante's thoughts are scattered. Wrong. His skull got fractured somewhere on the left side and the psychological fortress he maintains so carefully is crumbling. I sense his panic underneath the confusion. He hates not being in control of his own head.
Luca's bleeding. Shrapnel in his gut, multiple pieces, and I feel them like they're inside my own body. Foreign. Violating. His hands press against the wounds but blood keeps coming and his protective instincts are howling to get to me except his body won't obey.
And Nico.
Nico's right here. Inches away in this concrete tomb we're sharing. His left arm is destroyed, bone punched through skin, but he's conscious and breathing and trying so damn hard to be strong.
"Isabella." His voice scrapes out. Dry. Pained. "You okay?"
The question almost makes me laugh. Instead I cough and taste copper. "Not really. You?"
"Been better."
We lie there. Breathing when we can. The silence presses down harder than the rubble.
Then I sense something else through the bond. Someone else. Weaker than the brothers. Flickering out like a candle drowning in wax.
Marcus.
My father is dying somewhere to my right. I feel his life force guttering, each heartbeat fainter than the last, and part of me wants to reach for him while another part wants to let him fade.
"Isabella." His voice bubbles wet. Liquid in his lungs. "Need to tell you something."
I turn my head. Pain shoots down my neck but I don't stop. I need to see him.
There's light. Not much. Just thin threads filtering through gaps in the rubble, showing me dust and shadows and Marcus's crumpled form. He's face down. Something massive crushing his lower body. Blood spreading dark beneath him.
"The diagnosis." He coughs. Red mist in the dusty air. "It was a lie. You're not dying. Never were."
Everything stops.
My heart. My breath. The world.
"What?"
"Vincent made me say it. Wanted you desperate. Compliant." Another cough, rougher. More blood. "I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry."
Heat floods through me. Not the bond. Not power. Just pure rage, molten and vicious. "You made me think I had months left."
"I know." His hand drags across concrete toward me. Fingers leaving smears. "But you have years. Decades. Your powers won't kill you. That was Vincent manipulating everything."
I should feel relieved. I should feel grateful. Instead I just feel betrayed down to my bones. Every choice I made, every desperate decision, built on his lies.
"Where are the boosters?" The words come out sharp. "Tell me where they are."
"There are no boosters. You never needed them." His breathing rattles. Failing lungs. "The injection I told you about, it's not a cure. It's an amplifier. Makes you stronger but unstable. Dangerous. Vincent wants you enhanced and out of control."
My searching fingers brush something smooth and cold near Marcus's body. I grab it. Pull it free from the debris.
A syringe. Filled with liquid that glows silver even in this dim light.
"Is this it?"
"Don't use it." Panic strengthens his fading voice. "Isabella, please. It'll make you too powerful. You won't be able to control what happens and Vincent planned for this. He knew you'd be desperate enough to take it."
The building groans. Metal grinding against concrete. Something heavy shifts above us and through the bond I feel Marco's pain spike. Whatever was pinning him just got heavier. His heart rhythm goes erratic. Shock setting in.
Dante's consciousness dims. The head injury winning.
Luca's bleeding faster. His life force draining with every pulse. Minutes left. Maybe less.
Nico beside me, broken and trapped, pretending he's not terrified.
They're dying. All four of them. And I'm stuck here with a syringe full of Vincent's manipulation and a father who destroyed my life trying to save it.
"I need power." My voice sounds distant. Calm. Wrong. "Enough to reach them. Heal them."
"No." Marcus tries to shake his head. Can't. "He planned this. Knew you'd choose them over safety. Don't give him what he wants."
"I'm not giving him anything." My fingers tighten on the syringe. "I'm saving my family."
But there's a problem. Even amplified, I can't reach the brothers from here. Too much distance. Too much rubble blocking the bond's pathways.
I need a massive amount of energy. Enough to blast through concrete and metal and space. Enough to heal catastrophic damage from dozens of yards away.
I need a power source.
Marcus's life force flickers in my awareness. Fading but still there. Still usable. Still fuel.
"No." He's reading my face. Seeing my intention. "Isabella. I'm your father. Don't do this."
"You stopped being my father when you made me a lab rat." My voice doesn't shake. Should shake. Doesn't. "When you strapped me to a table and shot me full of serums while I screamed for Mom."
"I was trying to protect you."
"By torturing me?" I start dragging myself toward him. Inch by agonizing inch, concrete scraping my skin raw. My legs still won't respond but my arms work and I need to get close enough to touch him. "By turning me into a weapon?"
"I thought I could fix it later. Give you a normal life after."
"There's no normal." I'm close now. Close enough to smell the blood and piss and fear coming off him. "You made sure of that when I was five years old."
His fingers find mine. Cold. Clammy. Shaking. "I love you. Always loved you. You have to know that."
Something in my chest cracks. Because I do know. That's the worst part. He probably did love me in his broken, ruined way. He just loved his research more. Loved Vincent's approval more. Loved the idea of scientific breakthrough more than his daughter's childhood.
"I know," I whisper. And that's the tragedy. "But it doesn't change anything."
I pull.
His life force comes reluctantly at first. Then all at once, like a dam breaking. I don't take it gently. Can't afford gentle. I rip it out of him, every drop of energy his dying body still holds.
Marcus screams. High and horrible. The sound bounces off concrete and fills our tomb.
Then stops.
His energy crashes through me and it's not clean power. It's memories and emotions and knowledge all tangled together, forcing themselves into my head whether I want them or not.
I see myself strapped down. Four years old maybe. Crying while Marcus injects glowing liquid into my spine. Vincent watching from the corner with those cold calculating eyes. More tests. More injections. More pain. Breaking down my body and rebuilding it into something other than human.
I see Marcus's regret. It's real. Deep. Choking him. He did love me. But he loved the work more.
I see his fear. Of Vincent. Of me. Of what I'd become when I learned the truth.
And I see Vincent's plan. Not all of it. Marcus didn't know everything. But enough.
The amplifier opens locks in my DNA. Locks Vincent installed years ago. It transforms me from weapon into something worse.
But Vincent made a mistake. He assumed I'd use the amplifier blind. Didn't account for me stealing Marcus's knowledge with his life.
Now I understand what I'm doing. The risks. The cost. The change.
And I'm doing it anyway because my brothers are dying and I won't let them.
I uncap the syringe with my teeth. Find a vein in my forearm by touch alone. Slide the needle in.
Press the plunger.
Silver ice shoots through my veins. Cold enough to burn. Then hotter. Then beyond temperature entirely, beyond any sensation I have words for. My DNA unravels and rewrites itself. I feel every cellular change, every enhanced sequence activating, power multiplying exponentially.
I scream. Can't help it. The sound tears out of me.
The concrete around me fractures. My body convulses. The blood bonds ignite, burning brighter than they've ever burned.
Through them I reach for the brothers. Distance collapses. I sense their exact locations, their specific injuries, everything that's wrong.
Golden light erupts from my skin. Spreading outward. Searching. Finding.
Marco's ribs knit together in seconds. The metal pinning him warps away.
Dante's fractured skull seals. His scattered thoughts sharpen and reform.
Luca's shrapnel wounds close. The foreign metal pushed out by regenerating flesh.
Nico's shattered arm straightens. Bone aligning and healing impossibly fast.
It's working. I'm saving them.
But the amplifier doesn't stop. The power keeps building. I'm not just healing anymore. I'm broadcasting. Every enhanced individual for miles can probably feel this, my power signature blazing like a star going supernova.
More rubble collapses but my power shoves it away from me and Nico. Creating space. Safety.
Except I can't stop glowing. Can't dim the light. It's too much.
"Isabella." Nico's staring at me. His voice shakes. "Your eyes."
I can't see them but I feel it. My irises burning silver. Wrong.
Marcus's body lies next to me. Empty. Drained. Gone.
I killed him. My father. Murdered him to save the men I love.
The reality of that settles over me and it's heavier than any concrete. I'm a killer now. Crossed a line I can't uncross.
My hand finds something in Marcus's jacket. Paper. I pull it out. Unfold it.
A note. His handwriting, shaky and rushed.
Isabella, if you're reading this I'm dead. I'm sorry for everything. Vincent is alive. He faked his death. His plan for you goes beyond the amplifier. He wanted me to inject you with a secondary serum. I refused. Hid it. He'll come for you now. For what you're becoming. Trust your brothers. Trust your
It ends there. Unfinished. Like he ran out of time or courage or both.
My hands won't stop shaking. Vincent survived. He's out there somewhere. Planning. Waiting.
And there's a secondary serum Marcus hid from him. Something Vincent wants inside me.
I search Marcus's jacket with frantic fingers. Find another syringe in an inner pocket. This one's filled with black liquid. Oily. Wrong in a way the silver wasn't.
Before I can look closer Nico grabs my wrist. "We have to move. Now."
He's right. The building is actively collapsing. My power broadcast just told every hostile force within fifty miles exactly where we are.
But I can't stop staring at that black syringe. At Marcus's empty corpse. At the silver light still pouring from my skin like I'm something other than human now.
What did I just become?
What did Vincent make me?
And what's in the secondary serum Marcus died trying to keep from me?