Nerve

by Kirsten Krueger

  “Ask you…for permission?”

  “No, ask me if I’ll do it with you,” she clarified, shifting with…awkwardness. Eliana hadn’t been aware Kiki Belven was capable of feeling self-conscious. “If you’re going to die, so am I.”

  “That’s…a little extreme.” Eliana cringed as she awaited an infuriated reply.

  Remarkably, Kiki remained calm and diplomatic. “I hope it’s a good enough reason for you not to commit suicide.”

  “I-I’m not suicidal—”

  “Your boyfriend died!”

  “He wasn’t the only person I live for.” Her heart pounded now with even more intensity than after Nixie’s attack. “I-I’m going to be okay. Thank you, though…for worrying about me.”

  “I didn’t say I was worried,” Kiki began, but then she saw the smirk budding on Eliana’s lips and groaned again. “Stop reading my mind.” She swatted Eliana’s forearm. Through the fabric of her sweatshirt, she barely felt it, but it was still nice to have some physical contact with another human again. “Ugh, you’re soggy…”

  “Because of you.”

  At the sassiness of Kiki’s eye roll, Eliana actually had to suppress her smile. “Wouldn’t you rather be soaked than toothless? I saved you, and since I saved you, can you please teach me how to stop you from invading my mind?”

  Though she nodded in agreement, and though she was capable, Eliana wasn’t quite ready to slice the tether that linked her mind to Kiki’s. So, as she’d done before, she spent the remainder of training purposely failing to teach Kiki to block her.

  “Water resistant: unsurprising, unimpressive. If it’s fire resistant, though…” Biting his lip, Tray adjusted his goggles and readied the blowtorch, which he’d “borrowed” from the science labs, along with the goggles. He was the only one in his dorm room wearing them, since the others observed from a distance; only Ackerly dared to stand near Tray’s desk as he worked on the Affinity-proof suit Lavisa had stolen from one of the town’s newly implanted guards.

  How Lavisa had managed to retrieve this suit was a mystery to Tray, but apparently Hartman had actually been helpful. Now the teleporter couldn’t stop giggling about how the naked guard would have to report to the Rosses that he’d lost his suit. Lucky for that man—and for the primaries—the Regg ambassadors were probably too busy seeking out Ruse to care about the missing suit.

  “Do you think the smoke detectors will go off?” Ackerly asked. No one else was in the Residence Tower now, but if they set off the alarms, it would throw the school into another frenzy.

  “If Adara was here, we wouldn’t have to worry about that,” Seth sighed, flipping absently through a dictionary he’d found in his brother’s endless pile of books. The only reason Tray paused to look at his twin was because he couldn’t get over the fact that Seth actually held a book in his hands.

  “If Adara were here, we would have to worry about that more. She would’ve burned this whole building down by now.”

  “No, Adara would be able to quench the fire with her Affinity.”

  “Quench,” Hartman repeated with an appreciative nod. “Your vocab is really expanding, dude.”

  “Maybe it’s my Affinity,” Seth grumbled.

  “Why don’t we test the suit with something that won’t get us caught if it goes terribly wrong?” Lavisa suggested before Tray could ignite the blowtorch. Leaning on the door to the bathroom, she scratched at a scab on her arm, barely prying her attention from it long enough to raise her eyebrows. “Try ripping it with your super strength.”

  His eyes narrowed behind his goggles. “Will you mock me if I can’t?”

  “No. But we’ll be able to conclude that it’s resistant to super strength if you can’t. This is an experiment, not a competition. Just because there’s a reason to mock you doesn’t mean I will. I’m not Adara.”

  Pursing his lips, Tray placed the blowtorch on the ground. He was about to tear at the fabric when a figure appeared in the open doorway, stunning him with her violet presence.

  “Holy hot,” Hartman blurted out upon seeing the former vice-presidential candidate, Olalla Cosmos, enter the room. Her hair cascaded on one side of her head like a cluster of orchids, and though her irises were as piercing and bright, dolefulness characterized those eyes, reflected in her black attire. When her focus fell on Hartman, his orange freckles disappeared in a surge of scarlet. “I mean—hi. We’re not—we’re just—”

  “Studying the Reggs’ new suits?” Her lips inched upward as she eyed the clothing on Tray’s desk. He hadn’t even tried to hide it; this woman was too intelligent to be fooled.

  “We’re trying to figure out what, exactly, they’re resistant to,” Tray explained, removing his goggles as he stood from his chair.

  “Are you planning a revolt?” she questioned with a hint of humorous castigation.

  Warily, Tray set his goggles on the suit. “No, just studying it for the love of knowledge.”

  Olalla smiled tightly as she folded her hands. “The Reggs have various types of technology to combat Affinities—science they’ve been working on for years. The government certainly could fight the Wackos—”

  “Then why don’t they?” Lavisa asked flatly. “Why force kids to fight their war?”

  “They wish to keep the war contained amongst the Affinities. Harold and I would have prevented that—and this, all of this…” She eyed the suit and then shook her head. “We had no hope, I will admit. I was foolish to think we could have won. Third-party candidates never win, even if they are the most rational option. We would not have had war, but now we will. The Wackos would have reasoned with me. They would have known that I understand their struggle and want to help all Affinities. But Ventura…he hates Affinities. The Wackos will rebel with greater violence than before—especially now that Daniel is in charge.”

  After readjusting his glasses twice, Ackerly asked, “Who’s…Daniel?”

  Olalla pressed her lips together and sighed through her nose. “Someone you should hope not to meet. I have not yet apologized to you all. I know you were Hastings’s friends. His death pains me, and I imagine it must pain you more. That Angor could do such a thing…it seems unlike him. But people will commit heinous acts for power. He always was mysterious about the nature of his Affinity…” Shaking her head again, she met each of their eyes, not with pity but with empathy. “I wish I could bring peace to you in your grief—I wish I could bring peace to this town, but…my mind feels weary. I can barely find serenity for myself.”

  Tray exchanged a brief look with Ackerly before asking, “Do you feel like someone is suppressing your Affinity?”

  “No, no,” she dismissed. “My emotions sometimes inhibit my Affinity…”

  Though she was convinced this was the truth, Tray was not. If Olalla’s peace Affinity was weakened, someone with a mind controlling Affinity had to be suppressing it. “Why are you still in Periculand?” he asked instead of delving further into the matter of her mind. “Are you working with the Regg ambassadors?”

  “Are you here to drag us back to training?” Lavisa added bluntly.

  “I’ve been at odds with the Rosses for years, you can imagine. We have our separate priorities. My opinions on the matters of Periculand are irrelevant to them now, and yet…they force me to stay. After Hastings’s death and my loss in the election, they claim I might be a target—a target for whom, they haven’t said. I’m under the impression they don’t want me to leave their dominion simply because they fear I will join the Wackos. A ridiculous concept, but…it’s for the best that I’m here now, regardless. Angor may have inadvertently led to Hastings’s death, but he is not wholly bad. He fought for years to keep the students of this school from war. Without him…well, someone needs to be here to oppose the Reggs, to strive for peace.”

  “So…you don’t want us to go to training?” Hartman clarified, still quivering with excitement in the woman’s presence.

  “I’d like to hear what you learn about those suits
,” she said, nodding toward Tray’s desk. “I’ve been studying Regg technology myself with the intent of, perhaps, creating fabric that can enhance an Affinity, rather than subdue it.”

  “Adara could use some fireproof clothes,” Seth said, slapping the dictionary shut. “Not that she cares if she burns her clothes off, but I think Tray was disturbed.”

  “Afraid of a girl’s body?” Lavisa challenged, jumping her eyebrows at Tray as he grumbled his dissent.

  “I—was—more annoyed that she didn’t care,” he stammered, crossing his arms defensively. “It’s unnatural. And crude. And contemptible.”

  “Ooh, contemptible—just read that in the dictionary,” Seth enthused. A moment of silence ensued in which they all stared at him, waiting for him to recite the definition. “Oh, I don’t remember what it means. I just remember reading the word. Spent most of the time trying to sound it out in my head.”

  “I’m impressed you did that much,” his twin mumbled, relieved that the subject had deterred from talk of Adara’s nudeness.

  “Speaking of Adara, we should go visit her.” Seth wiggled his eyebrows at his friends.

  “The Reggs outlawed it,” Tray reminded him, “and now they have guards everywhere. We’re not even supposed to be here. There’s no way we can get off campus without being spotted.”

  “It won’t matter if we’re spotted if we have the Affinity ambassador with us. She has to have the clearance to get past those guys.”

  “And if not,” Hartman chimed in before Olalla could object, “I can teleport us all one by one to the police station.”

  “Twenty feet at a time,” Tray snorted.

  “Twenty-five—”

  “I’ve been meaning to pay Angor a visit,” Olalla interjected, ignoring their banter. “I want to hear from his own mouth how he could have been so foolish as to try to murder Artemis. The guards won’t grant me special privileges, so teleportation might be the best—”

  “Yes!” Hartman exclaimed before extending his hand toward her. “May I have your hand, m’lady?”

  “I think we’re all capable of walking down the stairs before we start the teleportation,” Lavisa droned, pushing through Hartman’s outstretched arm and squeezing past Olalla in the doorway. “Are you gonna join us, Stark?”

  Seth discarded the dictionary by throwing it on his brother’s bed and then plowed through the room. “Of course! I could never pass up an opportunity to see Adara.”

  “I was talking to your twin, actually.” Lavisa, now in the corridor, peered around Olalla to meet Tray’s testy gaze.

  “I—no—fine.” Sighing, he cast a forlorn glance at the blowtorch he’d been unable to use. Instead, he was being forced to visit a thing far more dangerous and far less beneficial to his quest for knowledge. “Let’s go visit the demoness…”

  14

  Sympathy

  “No,” Mitt barked before the Starks and their three friends even finished passing through the police station’s doorway. He’d been at his desk again, playing handheld Yahtzee since Calder Mardurus’s departure a few hours ago, but now he sprung to his feet and planted himself before the back door as they approached. “You can’t visit her. Shouldn’t you all be in class?”

  “We should,” Tray affirmed grumpily. Behind him, the teleporter wobbled around dizzily, the intimidating yellow-eyed girl glared with crossed arms, and the plant-kid awkwardly readjusted his glasses. “The Rosses canceled classes indefinitely. Now it’s only training.”

  “Training to be in the government’s army against the Wackos,” Lavisa added. As an employee of the Rosses, Mitt thought he would have been made aware of this information, but he’d never heard anything of the sort.

  “Yeah, those Reggs are corrupt,” Seth said. Though the boy was only sixteen, he was as tall and muscular as a fully-grown man, making Mitt feel far less authoritative as they stood face to face. “They want to use children as weapons—which is why you should defy them and let us see Adara.”

  Mitt eyed the five teenagers ruefully. “If the Rosses are ruthless enough to train children for war, I’m not sure I want to defy them.”

  With a dramatic groan, Seth rolled his eyes back to his brother. “This guy is an asshole. I take back everything I ever said about cops being the good guys. They are out to get us.”

  Tray was the one to roll his eyes now. “He’s just doing his job. Obviously he’ll get in trouble with the Reggs if he lets us see her.”

  “You just don’t want to see Adara.”

  “True,” Tray said, but his focus had shifted to Mitt. “What if we told you we’re here on official government business?”

  Lavisa pursed her lips. “Are we?”

  The Stark twin’s nose twitched, but he remained silent as the officer considered his words. After a minute of scratching his chin, Mitt asked, “How official is this government business?”

  “Hartman,” Tray prompted, glancing back at the panting, swaying boy.

  “I can’t teleport anymore, man. My head—”

  “Am I allowed to come in now?” a voice sang as a purple head of hair slipped in through the front door. Mitt blanched at the sight of her.

  “Ms.—Cosmos,” he choked as the former vice-presidential candidate entered. “I-I voted for you.”

  “I think everyone in this town did,” Tray said flatly. “She wants to see the prisoners.”

  “Uh—of course.” Mitt fumbled for the door handle. “But”—he paused to glower at the primaries—“the rest of you can’t come.”

  Seth’s whines of “c’mon” and “please” were instantaneous, but Lavisa was far more collected as she strolled to Tray and said, “Can I execute plan B now?”

  “I thought you were morally against hurting innocent people?”

  “If he’s aligning himself with the Rosses, I think his morals are already—”

  “Fine, fine,” Mitt huffed, clenching his fist around the door handle. “You have fifteen minutes. If the Rosses find out about this, though, I wasn’t involved.”

  Stepping in line with the students, Olalla smiled. “I will gladly take the blame.”

  Mitt shook his head in awe. “Damn, you are perfect.”

  “I know,” Hartman enthused as he bumbled over to the rest of his friends, colliding shoulders with Lavisa.

  The teenager’s voice snapped Mitt out of his trance, and he embarrassedly opened the door. When he poked his face in, Adara stopped pacing her cell to assess his demeanor. Judging by the excitement that sparked in her eyes, she probably assumed he’d brought Mardurus in for another visit. He didn’t miss the dullness that consumed her face upon Lavisa’s entrance.

  “More visitors?” Adara droned as jittery Hartman staggered in next. “For a cop, Mitt, you really like to break the law.”

  Ackerly winced at her in greeting. “He wasn’t really happy to oblige.”

  “Greenie.” All disappointment abated at the sight of his grass-colored hair and matching glasses. “I thought you forgot about me.”

  “It’s hard to forget about you when you’re the constant talk of the town,” Tray sneered as he marched before her cell’s bars.

  Adara’s lips broadened at his grouchiness. “I’m glad to hear I haven’t become irrelevant. Have you missed me?”

  “Yes,” Seth answered before his brother could open his mouth. Though he wore dirty pajamas, he still had the audacity to sniff at her. “You look as gross as Fraco. Haven’t you showered?”

  “I’m not allowed to shower.” She gave a scathing glance in Mitt’s direction. “Apparently, I’m too dangerous for such luxury.”

  “The Reggs just don’t want you leaving your cell. The showers are down the hall.”

  “It’s not like I’ll try to break—” Adara cut herself short when Olalla entered the hallway, peering into the various cells with curiosity. “Damn, I’ve gone from no visitors to celebrity visitors. I must be the most sought-after prisoner in the history of the world.”

  Olalla’s
eyes trailed her voice to the only occupied cell, and when they landed on the former principal sleeping soundly on his metal slab, they protruded in alarm. “You’ve put her in the same cell as Angor? This is dangerous, Officer Telum. If Angor has a mind controlling Affinity, there’s no telling what he could do to this—”

  “If?” Tray repeated. “You don’t know for certain that Angor’s Affinity is mind control?”

  “Angor was always very secretive about his abilities,” Olalla said, eyeing the man as his chest rose and fell. “But the recent events have confirmed it, I suppose…”

  “Why don’t we all just admit that no one knows what the hell Angor’s Affinity is?” Adara crossed her arms over her chest, exposing the burnt sides of her shirt.

  “Did you burn yourself?” Ackerly blurted out, prompting her to lower her arms again.

  “We aren’t talking about that, Greenie. We’re talking about Angor’s Affinity.”

  Hartman steadied himself by holding onto Lavisa’s shoulder. “If it’s not mind control, it must be something pretty freakin’ bad. Nero’s scared of it, so it’s gotta be as deadly as Hastings’s Affinity was.”

  “Nero’s scared of it?” Tray asked, brow furrowing in Hartman’s direction. “How do you know?”

  The teleporter tried to shrug and nearly lost his balance. “The only way Fraco was ever able to subdue Nero was when he threatened him with Angor. He must have been punished with Angor’s Affinity before.”

  “He must know then,” Tray pondered, stroking his finger along his chin. “He won’t tell us now that he’s working with the Reggs, though. If he had evidence that supported Angor’s innocence, he wouldn’t want anyone to know, because then Angor would be freed and the Reggs wouldn’t be in charge anymore, thus ending his newfound authority.”

  “Big Boy would never divulge information to you anyway,” Adara said. “He hates you. But…if he’s prompted to think about it, we all know a certain mind reader who can pry the truth from him—unless my ex-roomie has joined the Reggs, as well? I’m surprised she’s not here to see me.”