Crystals clicked against each other in endless waves, likely Naretha’s salt and Jamad’s ice. The mumbled curses that flowed from the Wacko’s mouth indicated the two Affinities were unintentionally counteracting each other, the salt melting the ice and resulting in useless pools of sludge. Their lack of success clearly delighted the intruders, because three ominous cackles wove through the air, along with the crackling of electricity.
“Blast ’em, Av!” Jamad yelled, followed by an increase in the sparking noises. When he and Naretha both cried out in pain a moment later, though, Zeela knew Avner had been unsuccessful in his attempt to attack the intruders.
“J! Dammit! Z, they’re immune to my Affinity! Jamad and Naretha are down!”
“I…am not…down,” Jamad grunted, his words strained from the effects of the stun-gun. He was accustomed to Avner’s Affinity but not enough to be completely resistant.
“No, get back in your room!” Avner demanded, probably to the Solbergs. Colette’s muffled sobs were still audible, but Zeela assumed Elias would at least attempt to help—not that he could if even Avner’s powers were ineffective. “J, can you st—”
A new weapon fired, one that Zeela guessed was some type of dart-gun. As soon as she heard the dart penetrate flesh, she scrambled along the ice wall to find the end, desperately trying to view what was happening on the other side. When Jamad shouted Avner’s name, she stilled, paralyzed by the insinuation. Had Avner been shot? Was he…dead?
“Please!” Colette wailed as a body wilted to the floor with a thud—Avner. “Please, do not take him! Only them!”
There was a pregnant pause in which Zeela couldn’t even breathe. Jamad’s disbelief mirrored hers. “Take us?”
“We received a call earlier, notifying us that three fugitive Wackos were here,” a masculine voice droned, likely originating from the intruder who had demolished the door.
“I’m not—we’re not—none of us are Wackos!” Jamad stammered. His incredulity lingered, but Zeela had pieced together the harrowing truth: Colette had called the government to apprehend her, Avner, and Naretha. Colette, who had been like a second mother when her own had been so unloving, had turned them in to become prisoners.
“They must go, Jamad!” she cried, remorse and fear evident through the thickness of her accent. “They have ruined you. You are not the same boy!”
“No, I’m not the same boy!” he barked, the room chilling a few degrees with the coldness of his words. “Did you expect me to come back here after three years as the same kid I was before? I definitely didn’t expect to return to find I have a sister!”
“Jamad,” Elias pleaded. “I did not want this, but…let them take the three Wackos. Stay here, with us.”
“No, no—”
“Glad to hear you don’t want to stay,” the female intruder interrupted. “We wouldn’t have let you, anyway.”
Zeela squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of the dart whizzing through the air. Jamad grunted as it perforated his skin, but she knew he must have passed out, because after his body thumped to the floor, he was silent.
“Please, please!” Colette begged, her words nearly inaudible between her sobs and her accent.
The intruders ignored her, and Zeela had to swallow her hopelessness as she heard them dragging the three immobilized bodies out the front door. Were the intruders even aware that she was curled up here, behind this wall of ice? Was it opaque enough to hide her? All she knew for certain was that they planned to kidnap Avner and Jamad, and based on the fact that she still sat here, unharmed, they had no intention of hauling her along with them.
If they took her two best friends—after the Wackos had already taken Maddy—and Zeela was stuck here, completely blind…the guilt and helplessness would consume her.
So, when the female intruder commented on how the boy with the blue hair wasn’t the third Wacko Colette had called about, meaning there must be another, Zeela crawled over soggy splinters toward that voice. When they spotted and electrocuted her, she didn’t fight back.
The whispered words hit Zeela’s ears when her senses finally rejuvenated. The world was hazy for a few moments, but then shapes and colors began to materialize before her—not in the same fashion that normal eyes perceived but in her normal vision of heat and X-rays and auras. Naretha lounged on the floor beside her, oddly calm considering their predicament.
“Yes,” Zeela confirmed quietly, absorbing the details of the van they sat in. Unlike the ones Periculand used to transport students, there were no seats for them, no view of their captors, and no windows. With her reacquired vision, she saw three bodies seated in the front, all swaying, as if… “Are they dancing up there?”
“And singing.” A second later, Zeela indeed heard some cacophonous vocals. “They’re so obnoxious. At least they couldn’t hear me rummaging around back here.”
Following Naretha’s nod, Zeela twisted to find cabinets bolted into the walls behind them. She couldn’t open any, however, because her hands were tied with rope behind her back.
“Took me forever to even open one.” The Wacko wiggled her bound arms, proving she was just as incapacitated. “Once I did, though, I found a bunch of medicine—weird shit I’ve never come across. I injected you with the one labeled ‘Concussion Cure,’ and—”
“You injected me with a foreign drug?” Zeela repeated, eyebrows arched.
“It worked,” Naretha mumbled as her gaze drifted to the unconscious boys slumped on the opposite side of the van. “I don’t want to try anything on those two. They were tranquilized, judging by the darts hanging from their chests. Normal tranqs don’t work that fast, though.”
“If they have drugs that can cure a concussion, I’m not surprised they have rapid-acting sedatives. Do you think the boys will be all right?”
Naretha shrugged. “They’re both breathing. The real issue now is how we’re gonna get the hell out of here. I don’t know what this rope is made of, but I found a knife in one of the cabinets and it won’t cut through.”
Zeela peered behind her back, where she fruitlessly rubbed a knife against the bindings. In her vision, there was something unnatural about it—something she couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“I can’t focus on anything outside the van long enough to figure out where we are,” Zeela said, “but I know we’re going fast. If we tried to jump out now, we’d die.”
“God, I hope we haven’t left the state,” Naretha groaned, banging her head back against one of the cabinet’s metal doors. “We shouldn’t have bothered leaving Periculand. Danny would have razed that place to save me, and we wouldn’t be stuck in this van, headed to some research facility.”
“Is that where we’re going?” Terror gripped Zeela at the thought of scientists prodding at her eyes. She didn’t want to think of what they might do to Avner and Jamad.
“Most likely. Why imprison us when they can experiment on us? It’s sick, but…I see why they do it. They need to learn as much about us as they can in order to build weapons to use against us. I’ve heard horror stories about these places from Affinities who escaped and came to the Wackos for refuge. None of them are right in the head.”
“Are any Wackos right in the head?”
“Remind me not to save your ass ever again—and remind me never to listen to Snowman ever again,” Naretha added, jabbing her chin toward sleeping Jamad. “His parents shouldn’t have been trusted; we should have left that night. It was one of them that sold us out, wasn’t it?”
“His mom.” Zeela let out a weary sigh. “She was always so kind. I…can’t believe she betrayed us like that. Don’t be a bitch to J about it, though. He’s gonna be…unwell for a while.”
The Wacko snorted, shaking her head. “I don’t care how unwell he is. All I care about is escaping before they cut me open to find out where my salt crystals come from.”
“Is there a specific place they form?”
“No, but that’s the point. The Reggs think they can do some exp
eriments and then know all there is to know about Affinities, but our powers are complex—they defy the rules of science…or rewrite the rules, at least. Every human has sodium chloride in them, and somehow I can make it grow and flow out of me. If they can figure out how to hinder my ability or replicate it… They’re gonna love you, if you hold the cure to blindness.”
Zeela’s jaw clenched at the prospect. “When I was young, doctors did love me. They didn’t suspect I had an Affinity; they just thought my blindness had worn off, somehow. They always did tests on me—nothing intrusive, but…I always knew they wished they weren’t confined by ethics. When my sister started hearing voices, we hid it from my parents as long as possible.”
“Just as a reminder, the Wackos don’t experiment on people.”
She rolled her eyes. “They do kill people, though.”
“Semantics.”
Although Zeela knew she was kidding, Naretha really did believe the Wackos were justified in their terrorism. She opened her mouth to question it, but then a hole slid open at the anterior of the van.
“They’re awake,” the woman said, peering through. She wore a helmet, but beyond it Zeela detected an unflatteringly flattened nose to compliment her sneer.
“Gas them,” one man said while the other continued to sing.
“Like hell!” Naretha staggered to her feet and lunged toward the opening. The woman slammed it shut, and before the Wacko could move her bound hands into a position to reopen it, clear gas seeped from the vents. “Chloroform,” she choked, eyes fluttering closed as she dropped to her knees.
A moment later, the sweet-smelling chemical hit Zeela’s nostrils, slowly lulling her senses. As she collapsed onto her side, she could only allow the cool metal of the floor and the discordant warbling of their captors to soothe her into the realm of unawareness.
11
The Enslaved and The Escaped
Calder avoided the primaries for the rest of the weekend, despite their efforts to communicate with him. Apparently he’d gathered enough information from his meeting with Nero and the Reggs that he didn’t need Eliana’s input on the situation.
In truth, she hadn’t grazed even one thought during that meeting. As soon as the doors to Angor’s office had shut, her powers had been rendered useless, as if a shield blocked her Affinity—or, perhaps, all Mental Affinities. Tray agreed that, if Affinities existed, scientific ways to combat them must have also existed.
“That’s probably why you suddenly couldn’t sense any brain activity when we were in Fraco’s office,” he contemplated at breakfast on Monday morning. “They must have closed the doors to Angor’s office.”
“Do you think they know the office can do that?” Eliana asked, peering around Lavisa to look at Tray. His cereal was soggy and untouched before him, his brain too involved in rumination to crave sustenance.
When he considered her question, the answer ran through his mind with as much logic and rationality as all his thoughts. If Artemis has a Mental Affinity, she knows what the room can do; if she’s truly a Regg, then she doesn’t.
The confirmation of either of those facts grew increasingly vital, yet Tray didn’t mention it to the others. Eliana had gleaned a general sense of his suspicions, since he wasn’t skilled enough to form a complete mental block on his mind, but he avoided thinking about it around her in the hopes that she would remain oblivious, which she was also aware of. Instilling panic in their friends wouldn’t help this already-negative situation, so Eliana maintained the façade of naivety.
“Let’s hope not,” was Tray’s vague response as he leaned back in his seat and avoided the others’ gazes.
The six primaries sat at their usual blue table in the cafeteria, a somber ambience hanging around them. Everyone anxiously awaited the Regg ambassadors’ arrival and the announcement of how Periculand would change under their rule. Even Kiki was unsettled enough to have claimed the seat on Eliana’s right rather than sit alone. Seth, however, was nowhere to be seen.
After the events of Nero’s Dominion, the dejected Stark twin had holed himself up in his lonely dormitory, ignoring his brother’s periodic knocks. Lavisa had suggested Hartman teleport in there to ensure he was alive, but the orange-eyed boy was convinced Seth’s grudge against him for teleporting them off the mats would prompt a physical fight. Eliana, who could read every thought that went through Seth’s unguarded brain, didn’t disagree. That was why, when the glass doors of the cafeteria burst open, the six of them were almost disappointed it wasn’t the Reggs.
“Seth!” Kiki called as he stalked toward the buffet. Unkempt hair hung in his eyes, stains riddled his white t-shirt, and he still wore orange pajamas rather than cargo pants. When his blue eyes locked onto his friends, void of his usual enthusiasm, Hartman began to tremble.
“Don’t call him over here,” the teleporter hissed at her from the opposite side of the table, but it was too late; Seth had altered his trajectory and approached his ex-girlfriend, who plastered a sweet smile on her glossy lips.
“Seth.” She gestured to the empty chair beside hers. “Why don’t you sit? I got you some bacon.”
Blinking, Seth glanced down at the plate full of bacon before her, none of which she’d eaten. When Eliana read the thoughts flowing freely from her mind, she shot Tray a look that nonverbally confirmed the truth: Kiki had, somehow, bribed Seth into coming to breakfast this morning, his first meal in days. The glare Eliana threw at Hartman quelled his quivering, and he tried to act as normal as he possibly could.
“Thanks,” Seth said absently as he plopped down in the vacant seat. His eyes evaded all others as he munched on the bacon strips.
“Seth,” Kiki prompted again, folding her hands on the table, “why don’t you tell the orange-haired loser what I told you this morning?”
His gaze darted briefly up at Hartman, now wide-eyed in his seat beside Ackerly. “Kiki saw a vision of the future…where I apologized to you for being an asshole.”
“‘Stupid asshole,’ were the exact words,” Kiki corrected.
Sighing, Seth bit into another piece of bacon. “I’m sorry for being a stupid asshole.”
“And?”
“And thank you for saving someone as pathetic as me.”
Kiki beamed smugly as she patted Seth on the back. “Exactly how I saw it. I’m a genius.”
When her eyes locked onto the other Stark twin across the table, Tray, for the first time, actually believed she was. He knew as well as Eliana, who simultaneously read both of their minds, that Kiki hadn’t seen a vision of this precise moment. That she’d convinced Seth of it so easily and contrived the plan so flawlessly defied all of Tray’s knowledge of her character. A satisfying flutter of emotion built in Eliana’s gut at the prospect that Kiki had finally embraced the deeper, brighter side of her personality.
“I, um—yeah,” was all Hartman could say, his freckles stagnant for once. “I’m…glad you’re alive.”
“I’m not.” Seth slumped back, nibbling his bacon with less fervor. “Adara’s still in jail. I failed her. I’m the worst best friend in the world.”
Lavisa raised her eyebrows knowingly. “She would’ve been more pissed to hear you’d let Nero murder you. At least you still have the opportunity to break her out.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Tray snapped, receiving an eye roll in response. “Adara’s imprisonment is the least of our worries right now. We need to figure out what went down in that meeting between Nero and the Reggs.”
“I think we’ll find out soon,” Ackerly mumbled as the glass doors opened once more, this time admitting Artemis and William Ross—with Nero and the Pixie Twins at their backs.
Nero’s expression was far more smug than Kiki’s had been moments earlier, and with every student who withered under his gaze, the arrogance magnified. Nixie reveled in the apprehension as well, tauntingly erupting cups of water at every table they passed.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been afraid of a girl in pigtails be
fore,” Hartman whispered as the five intimidating figures neared the center of the cafeteria. Unlike his sister, Calder’s method of instilling fear was in the form of apathetically surveying the crowd, so contrary to the inspired, almost righteous way he’d looked at the primaries in Fraco’s office.
“Nixie’s not what scares me about this,” Tray muttered, watching closely as Nero took a spot beside the Reggs, as if he were their equal. The Pixie Twins stood at a distance, like bodyguards, scanning the quickly quieting scene.
“Attention!” Artemis droned, although they clearly already had it. “We have a few announcements to make.”
At the answering silence, students glanced around in concern. Typically, Nero would defy the authority in some crude fashion, but now he was with the authority. And without the Stromers to oppose him…
“As you all know,” William began, rotating as he spoke in order to view the entire cafeteria, “my wife and I have generously agreed to run Periculand with the unexpected villainy of its former leader. After reviewing Mr. Periculy’s files and performing a thorough evaluation, we have come to the conclusion that the conduct of this town has not been to the government’s standards.”
“The United States government sanctioned the development of this town under the condition that its students be trained as weapons to combat the terrorist Wackos.” Artemis’s addition provoked whispers of alarm.
Tray clenched his jaw and muttered, “At least they’re finally being honest about it.”
William called for order and waited until the chatter subsided. “Mr. Periculy obviously did not follow this guideline. None of you are even close to ready for confrontation with the Wackos, which was demonstrated when they invaded this town last month. The only ones capable of capturing a Wacko were the few who stand around us—Nero and his friends.”
Nero held up his hands, as if to settle a crowd, even though acid-spitter Dave was the only one to applaud.
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