“Fire Demoness.”
Composing herself into a state of antagonism, Adara swung her legs over the side of the slab and padded on bare feet toward the bars, halting a safe distance from the electrically-charged metal. She surveyed his white sweatshirt, green cargo pants, and plain black shoes with displeasure. “Where are your duck slippers?”
“I was in too much of a rush to retrieve them. Shapeshifter Dispus disguised himself as you, leading the entire school to chase ‘you’ around town. I’m intelligent enough to know the difference, so when they told me to check the jail for you, I figured I’d stop by to inform you of the chaos unfolding in your name.”
“I’m gonna get so much shit for this…” the cop muttered, rubbing his forehead.
Adara’s lips flared into a grin. “Did you get it on video?” she asked Calder. “Are the Reggs pissing themselves? I bet Tray is fuming…”
“Stark knew it wasn’t you.” He sniffed, inhaling the prisoners’ grungy odor. “Nero’s gone on a rampage, though, ransacking the town to find you. Even when he knows it wasn’t you, he’ll probably still come in here and try to destroy you.”
“I hope he does,” she said with an appreciative glance at the electric bars. “Well, Pixie Prince, aren’t you gonna go make it happen? Aren’t you gonna go report to your master and tell him I’m here? You are Nero’s Minion, aren’t you?”
Calder’s lips curled downward with that. His vision flickered in Angor’s direction, where the ex-principal relaxed on his slab, listening with intrigue. “Nero’s the Reggs’ minion now. He’s agreed to be the commander in their army—Emmett Ventura’s army—against the Wackos. Once this issue of finding you is resolved, Nero’ll be in charge of training the other students for the remainder of today…and every day.”
Angor sat upright, running a hand through his dirty pink hair in dismay. “This is precisely what I aimed to avoid… Do they not see the students are children—that they are sending untrained children to war with psychotic terrorists?”
Calder shrugged. “I don’t think they give a shit about who dies, as long as none of them are Reggs. They don’t see us as people; they see us as a means to their desired end. And Nero sees allying with them as power.”
“What do you see it as?” When he refused to meet her eyes or answer her question, Adara added, “Sounds to me like you and Big Boy are on the verge of a break-up. How heartbreaking.”
“I don’t have to blindly agree with him to be on his side.” The defensive response was instinctive, but after a pause, he rethought his predicament. “The Reggs aren’t the issue, it’s Ventura. I can’t stomach working for that guy. I told him next time he comes back here, I’d have a host of enemies awaiting him, and now they’re all his freaking allies.”
Adara snorted. “You’ve screwed yourself, Pixie Prince. Now you won’t look nearly as tough as you think you are. Although…if you want to defy Nero and the Reggs, I think I would make a wonderful ally. All you have to do is subdue Mitt with your water magic and press some of those buttons on the wall over there, and then we take this town as our own.”
He masked his intrigue with skepticism. “Take it how? By burning it to the ground?”
“I don’t have a fire Affinity,” she snarled as her hands curled into fists. The movement drew attention to her flimsy prison garb, the sides of which were singed.
“You might hate fire, Stromer, but feelings aren’t facts. Your proposition is tempting, by the way, but I don’t think I’m ready for this town to be utterly incinerated quite yet. I’ll come back when things get dire.” He turned to leave but then saw Angor massaging his temples. “I tried to figure out what your Affinity is by sneaking into Fraco’s office to retrieve your file. The Reggs got to it first; they have it now.”
The ex-principal looked up, weary and distraught. “They are the only ones who know the truth then, and still they have no intention of freeing me. I will order my own death sentence if it is discovered that I do have a mind controlling Affinity—that I did kill Hastings—but as far as my brain can remember, neither is the truth. If it’s possible to expose the truth to everyone—to declare me as innocent and the Reggs as liars—will you do it?”
Calder’s lips twisted in contemplation. The answer was clear to him, but publicly announcing his allegiance didn’t seem like the wisest move, even in front of a crowd with as little influence as this one. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Your power is extraordinary,” Angor insisted, rising from his perch. “Surely you can use force to bring justice to this—”
“God, Angor. Just when I want believe you, you start saying shit that makes you sound like a murderer,” Adara groaned as she paced away from the bars. “The Pixie Prince only resorts to violence for the sake of his precious master.” Spinning back toward him, she tilted her head and asked, “Isn’t that right?”
“I’m not incriminating myself on the chance that he could be innocent.” Calder’s harsh gaze cut from Adara to her cellmate. “I’ll see what evidence I can gather inconspicuously.”
“Thank you,” Angor said, nodding. “I always did admire your ability. The sheer control you have over water, even from the very beginning—magnificent. If I had been trying to murder the Reggs, I would have used you instead of Hastings.”
Upon sprawling on her bed, Adara hit her head against the metal and grunted, “Ow—please don’t admit you’ve considered how you would murder the Reggs if you’re ever granted the chance to defend yourself.”
“Why?” Calder asked Angor, ignoring her comment.
“Well, Hastings’s death by severed blood vessels was nearly instantaneous. He could have drawn it out for torture purposes, of course, but he wasn’t yet that skilled. You…you could drown someone to death over a matter of hours if you wished, inflicting greater suffering and making a grander statement.”
After considering his words for a moment, Calder shook his head. “It never would have worked if you’d tried to use me. No one can control my mind.”
Adara rolled her eyes. “Nero does a fine job of it, and it’s not even his Affinity.”
“Nero does not control my mind.”
“Then what’s stopping you from breaking me out of this prison, hm?”
Calder opened his mouth, but it was another voice that spoke.
“I’d say his penis, mostly. He knows he won’t be able to control his attraction to you if you’re free, and considering the obvious, none of us really want that,” his sister crooned as she appeared in the doorway. Calder had a difficult time suppressing surprise and maintaining nonchalance, especially when Nixie shot him a grin that said Nero wouldn’t be happy about this.
Nonplussed by her presence and the words she’d uttered, it took Adara a moment to sit up and meet Nixie’s eyes through the bars. “The obvious?”
“You’re a lame little primie Nero wants to murder, and if my brother follows through with his attractions, he’ll be murdered as well,” Nixie droned, as if it really were obvious. “Thanks for telling us about Dispus, by the way.” This snide remark was aimed at Calder. “You’d better convince Nero you had no idea—and that you didn’t use this opportunity just to flirt with Stromer.”
He refrained from scowling at his sister by directing his animosity toward Adara. “Don’t tell Dispus to run around in your body again, got it?”
Adara, luckily, had enough brains not to claim she had nothing to do with Ruse’s charade, which would have exposed Calder’s bluff. Instead, lips curling as her red eyes studied him through her lashes, she mused, “Maybe next time it’ll be you inside my body, Pixie Prince.”
Cackling at the lewd joke, Nixie retreated from the room, beckoning her brother to follow. Calder lingered for a moment, giving Adara a look that was meant to quell what his twin had insinuated. But with the way she appraised him, those eyes sparkling like rubies amid a pit of ash, he almost wished the Fire Demoness’s words would come true.
As he departed with a wink, he sincer
ely hoped Stromer was left with as much confusion about his sentiments as he felt.
12
Another Imprisoned Stromer
Jamad’s head ached, but it was nothing compared to the pain festering in his gut, the rage of betrayal ripping through him.
What bothered him most was that he should have seen it coming. Colette had acted strange during their entire visit. Even though Jamad had shown no interest in interacting with Jade, Colette likely wouldn’t have warranted it anyway; she was protective of the child, like most mothers were, but that fear had driven her to betray him and his friends.
There would be no forgiveness for this—that decision became finite when he finally opened his bleary eyes and beheld their new location.
Moisture dripped from the stone ceiling, dampening his pale blue hair with water that would have been cold to anyone else. His wrists hung level with his head, manacled to the stone wall behind him by impenetrable chains, and his fingers tingled from the poor blood circulation. Strong rope bound his ankles, restraining him in the same fashion as the other forty people in the room.
It didn’t surprise him that the limp hair and droopy eyes of each of them were oddly-colored. It did make him swear, though.
“Glad to hear the drugs didn’t kill your pleasant attitude, Snowman,” Naretha’s ragged voice droned from farther down the wall. Avner sat directly beside Jamad, his yellow head tilted forward in unconsciousness; Zeela was positioned on her boyfriend’s other side, blinking; and Naretha lounged beyond her, glaring up at the ceiling as it deposited drops of water onto the bridge of her nose.
Jamad yanked at the chains and shifted on the dirty straw beneath him. “Where are we?”
This had to have been an underground chamber; there were no windows, and the only door was wooden and moldy with decay. Even if the room hadn’t been small, the rancid stench of feces would have been enough to induce a sense of claustrophobia. Rat droppings littered the ground, but the people scattered around the walls were arguably more disgusting, each coated in grime with withered scraps of clothes hanging from their thin bodies. None of them were dead, but…a few were certainly close.
“Hell,” one man grunted from the other side of the dungeon, his gray eyes more lucid than those of most of his prison-mates. The t-shirt he wore was torn and crusted with blood. Scars lined his square face and once-athletic arms, and his hair, too gray for his wrinkle-free complexion, was a few months overgrown. “We’re in hell, depending on your definition of the word.”
Jamad should have asked more about their location, but his focus was now aimed at this man’s familiar features. “Are you…related to Nero?”
Groaning, as if in response to the sound of his enemy’s name, Avner shook his head and squinted. “Nero?”
“You know Nero?” the man questioned with a spiteful snort. When Jamad just glared at him, he sighed. “No, I’m not related to Nero Corvis. I worked at the juvie he was sent to, though—almost lost my job when he showed up because they thought we were related. I feel pity for whoever shares blood with a menace like him.”
Naretha studied the matching shade of his hair and eyes. “You have an Affinity?”
Nodding, the man said, “I…used to be able to attract metal, like a magnet. This place has weakened my Affinity, though. I can barely even sense the metal around my wrists anymore.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Who knows?” He leaned his head back against the stones. “Is it still 2016?”
“Yes—November, unless we’ve been here for more than a few weeks,” Naretha said.
“If my perception of time is right, it’s only been a day since they threw you four in here. I’ve been here since August. There was a…fight in the juvie. It was my fault—I let some Affinities in to retrieve this kid, Hastings, and there was a brawl between the Affinities and Regg prisoners. My superiors didn’t care much about my Affinity before the incident, but after… Well, I don’t have proof they turned me over to experimenters, but I was kidnapped a day later and woke up here.”
A grimace had progressed on Avner’s face throughout the tale. “Was one of the Affinities you let in a girl with reddish hair and endless sarcasm?”
After a moment of recollection, the man sat straighter. “Yes, actually.”
“My sister,” Avner sighed. “I apologize.”
Naretha spat and, for a moment, Jamad thought it was because of Avner’s politeness, but then he realized water had dripped into her mouth. After spitting twice more, she asked, “Have you just been sitting here for months, or do they experiment on you?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the man said with an exhale of defeat. “They’ll likely take you today. They enjoy new subjects.”
Jamad shuddered for the first time since acquiring his Affinity. “This is messed up. We need to get out of here.”
“There’s no way—”
“We’ll fight our way out,” Naretha growled, cutting off the man. “We aren’t just gonna give up.”
“They pump gas into the air to suppress our Affinities,” he explained, unwavering in his dejection. “You might be the strongest of us now, but not for long.”
“He’s right,” Zeela admitted, still blinking. “I can see everything in here—vaguely—but my X-ray vision won’t penetrate the walls.”
Jamad leaned forward as far as he could to shoot her a questioning look. “I thought your Affinity wasn’t working anyway?”
“Naretha cured me in the van.”
“I don’t remember a van. Damn, that tranq really got me.” Jamad rubbed the sore spot beneath his clavicle with his chin. “Anything else I missed?”
“Your mom’s a bitch, if you weren’t aware,” Naretha replied, earning a scowl from Zeela.
“I am aware.” The thought made him want to release his icy anger, but like Zeela, his Affinity was dwindling. “I’m…sorry I brought us there. It was a stupid move.”
“Mm.”
“My parents wouldn’t have been any better,” Zeela said, clearly resisting the urge to kick the Wacko beside her. “They would have called the cops the moment they spotted us.”
“In the end, it made no difference,” Jamad said, his scathing tone directed at his mother—and his father, for that matter. “Reggs will be Reggs.”
“J—”
“It’s true, Av. I never wanted the Reggs to be our enemies, but…they are. They hate us, all of them—even the ones who used to love us.”
Avner pressed his lips together, silencing his tongue. In his eyes, Jamad was probably some criminal now for thinking lowly of Reggs, but amidst this dire situation, there was no use in arguing about their differing ethics.
“I always thought that, out of us Stromer kids, Adara would be the one to end up in confinement,” Avner mused, shaking his head. “If we ever make it out of here, she’ll never stop mocking me for it… How many researchers are there in this building?”
The man closed his eyes at the memories. “Whenever they bring me to the lab, I’m too drugged up to count.”
“There are two,” a weak, hoarse voice piped up. Upon pivoting to the right, Jamad found a girl about his age with pale skin and striking magenta eyes that matched her dirty hair. All she wore were bedraggled undergarments, the bra and panties both too small for her form. Judging by the way her skin clung to her jutting bones, she had lost weight but had grown in stature, as if she’d been captured before puberty truly hit.
“Only two?” Jamad repeated, unsure if he was more bewildered by the state of her appearance or the words she’d uttered.
“Two who conduct the research,” she repeated, clearing her throat. “Four guards. One overseer.”
Naretha sprung forward until the chains prohibited further movement. “That’s it? That’s pathetic. Even if we don’t have our Affinities, we can easily take them. You two have gotten into fist fights before, haven’t you?”
“If fist versus ice counts,” Jamad answered with a wince. �
�And the fist was Nero. He destroyed me, for the record.”
“Nero’s the buffoon who looks like him?” Naretha asked, jerking her chin toward the man across the room. “I wasn’t even impressed when we fought him, and if you can’t beat him… God, you are screwed. I’m gonna bust out of here, though, with or without the rest of you.”
The girl beside Jamad shook her head incessantly, pink eyes bulging in terror. “You can’t defeat them. They are indestructible.”
The Wacko rolled her eyes. “They’re Reggs. I’ll demolish them.”
“You’ll be optimistic today, but tomorrow…” The man stared at the wall, ghosts swimming in his eyes. “The hope doesn’t last long.”
“How long have you been here?” Jamad asked the girl. Her body was so marred with bruises and scars that it was difficult to determine how pale she really was. Currently, there was a vicious gash in her abdomen still oozing blood, even though most of it had clogged. “Shit, what happened?”
“Don’t get near it,” she warned when he shuffled closer. “They will know.” Brow furrowed, Jamad scooted away again, eyeing her warily. “I have been here as long as I can remember. There is no way to escape.”
“I’ll make sure you escape,” he insisted, glowering at her wound. That this deep slice was so common to this girl… He would slaughter these researchers for the way they’d tortured all of these Affinities. “I’ll make sure we all escape. Z, you have no idea what’s on the other side of these walls?”
“Dirt, mostly—but there’s a hall beyond the door and some other rooms, I think. I can’t get a clear image of anything.”
“Do either of you have an idea of the layout?” Jamad asked, glancing between the man and the girl.
“Meredith does.” The man nodded toward her. “She’s been here the longest—or has survived the longest…”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Meredith confirmed, meeting Jamad’s eyes earnestly. “But they can’t know.”
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