Nerve

by Kirsten Krueger

  She staggered back, and the flames extinguished with her anger, subsiding into nothing and leaving her hands soft but covered in a fresh layer of soot. The loss of warmth hollowed her soul, and that lingering panic numbed her senses—to the point that she didn’t even notice as the Reggs scurried from the room and prompted Mitt to close the door behind them.

  Alone with only Angor, who studied her with an experimenter’s eyes, Adara shook off her anxiety and padded back to her metal slab. The coolness lessened her fiery rage, but she still had enough left to glare at the principal. “Even though you tried to save my ass, I still don’t like you.”

  With an exhale born of numerous disappointments, Angor retreated to his own bed of metal and said, “I didn’t expect you would.”

  9

  Shifting Allegiances

  “What the hell happened there?” Calder asked as he peered up at the massive patch of spackled drywall on the ceiling.

  “Adara happened there,” Tray grumbled, shoving past him to enter Fraco Leve’s office. Upon arriving a few minutes ago, the door had been locked, prompting Calder to utilize his mysterious lock-picking skills. None of the primaries asked him where he’d learned the trick, and with the venom that flared in his eyes every time they fell on Eliana, she was too afraid to pry into his brain and figure it out.

  After discussing the plan for far too long, Lavisa had finally acquiesced to help by sitting with Hartman at one of the tables near the front door of the library, monitoring for any signs of Fraco. It hadn’t taken much to convince Eliana to join them—not with the threat of drowning, of which Calder had politely reminded her.

  “Fraco got a new desk,” Ackerly remarked as he and Eliana trickled into the office behind Tray. The Stark twin had already stalked to the right side of the room, where the wall was shielded by endless filing cabinets.

  Tray yanked open one of the black drawers and said, “Also because of Adara.” After ruffling through the files and then pulling open another drawer, he slammed them both shut. “Fraco didn’t label these or put them in alphabetical order. The lack of organization…”

  “Damaging Fraco’s property won’t keep us inconspicuous, Stark.” Calder raised his eyebrows at the dents Tray had put in both drawers.

  Alarmed, Ackerly’s eyes protruded behind his green glasses. “Oh, weeds! He’s gonna know we were here!”

  “He’s gonna know someone was here,” Calder corrected, “but if we’re lucky, he’ll be too frazzled by the Reggs’ hostile takeover to notice. Maybe you should take a seat, Stark, unless you think your super strength will break Fraco’s chair.”

  “Do you know where we can find Angor’s file?” Eliana asked Ackerly in an attempt to assuage the tension.

  “We’ll…probably have to check them all for P, unless teachers and administrators have an entirely different section…”

  Ackerly winced at the drawers, which Tray had resumed jerking open, purposely oblivious to Calder’s admonishing glares. His expression mollified when the Stark twin pulled out a green folder and waved it at him. “Found your file.”

  “Put it away,” was all Calder said before searching other drawers.

  “Adara almost destroyed your file last time we snuck in here,” Ackerly recalled with a nervous smile as he opened what appeared to be the A files.

  The secondary’s reaction was far more severe than Eliana had anticipated as his head whipped toward the green-haired boy with barely restrained ire. “You snuck in here before and didn’t find out what Periculy’s Affinity is?”

  Tray snorted. “Adara was in charge of that excursion. You can imagine there was no logic behind it.”

  “It was before…the incident,” Ackerly explained. “We were just trying to discover…Hastings’s Affinity.”

  He peeked fretfully in Eliana’s direction, expecting a negative reaction. The other boys waited for it, too—the moment Hastings’s name would provoke a violent outburst from her. Due to years of emotional suppression, she maintained neutrality and continued flipping through files. It wasn’t until she noticed something unusual that she turned to the boys with a frown.

  “I just looked through the S files… Adara’s isn’t here.”

  Instead of looking to Eliana, Calder and Tray both glanced at Ackerly in inquiry.

  He swallowed. “She…didn’t take it when we came. She didn’t even want to look at it.”

  Unconvinced, Tray mumbled, “Wouldn’t put it past her to return here and steal it on her own.”

  “The last time we were here, it looked like someone had tampered with some of the files,” Ackerly remembered with growing dread. “Do you think they stole hers?”

  “With what purpose? She didn’t know her Affinity at the time, so it wouldn’t have been in the—”

  “I found P,” Calder announced, jaw tight with displeasure. “Periculy’s isn’t here.”

  “Maybe someone stole both?” Ackerly offered weakly.

  After moving to the next drawer, Eliana tugged on it and found it wouldn’t budge. “This one’s locked.”

  “Let me open it,” Tray said, but Calder intercepted him.

  “Remember what I said about not leaving traces of damage, primie? I’ll do it.”

  Grumbling, Tray allowed the blue-haired boy to pick at the lock until the drawer swung open, revealing files of all three symbolizing colors, as well as names that began with all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Most of the teachers’ files lay within, but there were also a few student names scattered throughout, like Nero Corvis, Madella Martinez, and both Stromers.

  Without searching for Angor’s file, Calder extricated Adara’s. Though muffled by his mental block, there was a hint of excited interest in him as he sifted through the pages.

  “Wow, her birthday really is on August fifteenth,” Ackerly noted, standing on his toes to scan the first page over Calder’s shoulder. “You’d think that would be something she wouldn’t have remembered correctly, being so young when her parents left her…”

  “Adara Stromer is too much of a narcissist to forget her own birthday,” Tray said. “And Avner was old enough to have told her. Does it…say anything about her parents?”

  Calder flipped to the next page, which gave information on Adara and Avner’s father. “Casimir Stromer,” he read with a furrowed brow. “That’s an odd name.”

  “Says the guy named Calder.” Tray’s retort lost its edge when he spotted the page on the man. Most of it was blank, some spaces appearing to have been purposely whited out.

  “My parents were high when they named me,” Calder stated without emotion.

  Eliana tore her focus away from the file. “They were high when you were born?”

  “You can read minds; figure it out on your own,” he countered, blue eyes still roving the page before him. “Look—the section about an Affinity. It’s marked ‘Yes.’”

  With the questions tumbling through his mind, Tray’s voice came out absently. “Adara’s father has an Affinity—or had, if he’s dead—but it doesn’t say his ability.”

  “Check Avner’s,” Eliana suggested, prompting Ackerly to withdraw the other Stromer’s file. When he filtered through it, she saw the page on Casimir Stromer was exactly the same.

  Ackerly shuffled through a few pages that detailed his electricity Affinity. “Th-the information on his mother is missing.”

  “So is Adara’s,” Tray noted when Calder flipped through her file and found only a few blank pages that had yet to be filled with information on her fire Affinity.

  “In the other files, there are always pages about the mother, even if they’re blank,” Calder said. “Whoever tampered with the files must have taken the pages on the Stromers’ mother.”

  “Why?” Eliana asked quietly.

  After a moment of deep thought, Calder shook his head and returned Adara’s file to its drawer. “I don’t know. But we need to find Periculy’s—”

  “Whoa!” Eliana spun around to find Hartman standing on
Fraco’s new desk, feet slipping as he fought to steady himself. “This desk is slick with oil. But, hey—guess what? I think I got twenty-seven feet just then! It’s hard to tell—”

  “The Reggs are back,” Eliana said, reading Hartman’s frenzied thoughts before he could voice them. “They’re…dragging the librarian up the stairs—”

  “And Fraco’s with them,” the teleporter finished as he hopped down from the desk, wobbling.

  After grabbing Avner’s file from Ackerly’s hands, Calder hastily shoved it back into the drawer and then sifted through the remaining folders. “If Fraco comes in here, can you teleport us all out at once?”

  “Me?” Hartman spluttered, but he composed himself after the secondary aimed a vicious scowl over his shoulder. “Uh…no? I’ve only ever teleported one person at a time.”

  Calder jerked his head toward Ackerly. “Then get started.”

  Teleporting a few feet toward them, Hartman grasped Ackerly’s arm before the green-haired boy could protest, and the two of them disappeared, as if they’d never been there at all.

  “I see why Nero constantly has the urge to beat that kid senseless,” Calder commented, still focused on his task.

  “Not everyone’s attention span is as refined as yours.”

  Eliana muttered the words so softly she believed he hadn’t heard, until he said, “You’re riding a thin line, Mensen. Just because your boyfriend died doesn’t mean you can say whatever the hell you want and get away with it. Periculy’s file isn’t here.”

  Infuriated, her jaw had dropped, but then she caught his last sentence and stifled her irritation. “I just sensed the Reggs and Fraco—and the librarian. They’re on the floor above us, in Angor’s office.”

  Tray ran a hand through his hair. “Angor actually told them how to surpass the security system. Why would he hand Periculand over to them so easily? Especially if he has a mind controlling Affinity…”

  “Check if any of the other drawers are locked,” Calder ordered as he closed the one with Adara’s file and worked to relock it.

  “I think the librarian knew the code,” Eliana said in answer to Tray’s question, squeezing her eyes shut to focus on the minds above. “We’re too far for me to get anything clear, and—and they all just…disappeared.” Movement halted, and when Eliana pried her eyes open, both boys stared at her.

  Tray was the one to blurt a baffled, “What?”

  “All of their minds are gone. I—I can’t sense any of them.”

  “Maybe they’re coming back down.”

  “They’re not anywhere in this building.” Shaking her head, Eliana strained to search for the four minds. “It feels like…I’ve been blocked, somehow…”

  The boys shared a knowing look as their minds converged to the same assumption: If Artemis had a mind controlling Affinity—one that could even erase memories—then it was quite possible she could block mind readers.

  “I sense them again,” Eliana said, interrupting the boys’ ruminations. “The Reggs are still in the office with the librarian, but Fraco—he’s coming back down the stairs.”

  “Where the hell is Corvis?” Calder asked, just as the orange-haired boy materialized on Fraco’s desk again. Before he could brag about his teleportation or spew nonsense, the secondary snapped, “Take Stark. Now.”

  Tray backed away from Hartman when he teleported to him. “Me? Why?”

  “Because you’re nothing more than a sack of muscle. Mensen can alert us if Fraco’s coming back.”

  “He’s not.” After opening another drawer, Calder paused at Eliana’s statement. “He’s…looking for Nero. The Reggs…want him, for some reason.”

  “Corvis, take Stark.”

  “No—” But Hartman, perhaps in fear that Calder would provoke his stepbrother to pummel him later, hooked his arm through Tray’s and vanished from the room before the stubborn Stark twin could object.

  “When Little Corvis comes back, he’ll teleport me to intercept Fraco and Nero on their way back up to Angor’s office,” Calder explained, kicking one of the drawers closed and abandoning their fruitless mission. “You will trail us and listen in on whatever meeting happens up there. I want you to figure out what’s going through the Reggs’ minds while I focus on the verbal conversation. We’ll confer after.”

  “And I assume you’ll drown me if I refuse?” Eliana asked with all the boldness she could muster.

  Calder just rubbed his temples. “You spent too much time with your old roommate.”

  The primaries were harder to work with than Calder would have liked, but after hashing out his plan with both Eliana and Hartman, he convinced the teleporter to jump him down the hall. From there, he intentionally bumped into Fraco and Nero in the stairwell on their ascent to the fourth floor. Knowing the smaller Corvis had teleported back to the library and his involvement would remain unknown, Calder met his ally and the vice principal with calm indifference.

  “Mardurus,” Nero greeted when their paths intersected on the second-floor landing. “I’ve been looking for you all morning.”

  “Floretta summoned me to her office for a scolding,” he lied smoothly. “Apparently, I’m not allowed to drench primies that irk me.”

  Nero chuckled, but Fraco vibrated with annoyance.

  “Out of the way, Mr. Mardurus!” In attempted intimidation, the man swatted Calder with his greasy clipboard. “We have business with the principals!”

  “They’ve adopted that title, have they? How quick you are to change allegiance, Fraco. What will Master Angor say when he discovers you’ve abandoned him?”

  The conflict was clear on Fraco’s face, but he didn’t have the opportunity to defend himself before Nero said, “Mardurus comes with us. I want to have back-up, in case things go south.”

  The man huffed a sigh and plowed past Calder. “I have no idea what you assume is going to happen up here. The Rosses are respectable, professional—”

  “They’re the government.” Nero began climbing the stairs; he didn’t have to beckon for Calder to follow. “I’m not going back to prison.”

  “They have no intention of imprisoning you, Mr. Corvis,” Fraco assured him, likely to alleviate the hint of aggression.

  Though not the brightest, Nero had enough brains to be wary, and he nodded to Calder before they entered the office—a silent command to drown everyone in sight if these Reggs tried to restrain him.

  Calder had never stepped inside Angor Periculy’s quarters before, and the sheer size impressed him upon first glance. A wall of books comprised the right side, while framed degrees and awards littered the left. The posterior wall, like that of Fraco’s office and the library, was composed entirely of glass, encompassing a view of the barren forest at Periculand’s northern border.

  At the center of the office dwelled a lavish, wooden desk behind which the two Reggs stiffly stood. It wasn’t the sight of them that caught Calder’s attention, nor was it the librarian who stood by the wall of books, purposely removed; instead, it was the patch of wood before Angor’s desk that didn’t match the reddish hue of the rest.

  “Stromer really ruined this place, didn’t she?” he mused with a pointed glance. The Rosses did not look nearly as entertained, but neither voiced a word before Fraco scurried into the room.

  “I apologize. Mr. Corvis insisted on bringing Mr. Mardur—”

  “They both may stay,” William said, nodding to the two empty chairs on either side of Adara’s circle. Nero stomped to the vacant seats, threatening to crack the new wood with his heavy footsteps. His massive form barely fit between the arms of his chair, while Calder’s lithe body slipped into the other with ease.

  “Close the doors, Fraco,” Artemis commanded, and the vice principal—their vice principal—obeyed without question.

  Nero fidgeted in his tiny seat. “There’s a button for that, you know.” When the Reggs stared at him, bemused, he nodded to the computer monitor on Angor’s desk. “There’s a button on the computer that’l
l electronically close the doors.”

  Suspicion swam in William’s dark eyes. “How do you know?”

  “I served my share of punishments in this office,” the boy replied, flashing a brutish grin. Neither of the Reggs seemed to want to know more.

  “Upon entering this office a few moments ago, we were met with surveillance footage of an…event that occurred in the Physicals Building last night.” Artemis twisted the computer screen so both boys could witness the video of the brawl. Although the volume was muted, it was clear from the visible recording that Nero was in charge of the gathering—and that he commanded a horde of formidable teenagers. “What is the purpose of this?”

  “An underground fight club.” Nero shrugged one of his meaty shoulders. “We get more intense in there than we do in training, since Fraco won’t allow violence.”

  William looked to the oily man positioned behind the boys. “You won’t allow violence?”

  “I—well, Mr. Corvis has a tendency to severely injure other students!” Even Calder had to admit that this accusation, albeit true, was petty. “Training is a place for students to practice their Affinities in a safe—”

  “Not anymore,” Artemis cut in. “The conduct of this school will change come Monday. Angor has kept the purpose of Periculand a secret, but the government allowed him to build it on the premise that the young Affinities would be trained to combat the rising Wackos.” Nero’s eyebrows perked at this new knowledge, and Calder feigned surprise by parting his lips. “The current president is lenient, but the president-elect will not be. Upon Angor’s imprisonment, Emmett Ventura instructed my husband and I to seize power over this town and conform it to the standards on which it was built.”

  “You two work for Ventura?” Calder blurted out, unable to contain his revulsion.

  “Yes, they do,” confirmed a voice that boiled his blood. When the face of Emmett Ventura appeared on Angor’s computer monitor, canceling out the view of Nero’s Dominion, Calder didn’t even try to hide his antagonism.