“The alarms will sound if you try to break through,” Meredith advised, halting the salt-encased fist in midair. “The code is 0121.”
“Well, aren’t you a helpful little thing?” the Wacko muttered as she jabbed her elbow into the numbers on the keypad.
When the door yawned open, Jamad drawled, “And you wanted to leave her behind.”
Naretha rolled her eyes but didn’t comment before prowling through the portal. Beyond, the metallic corridor was so dimly lit that Avner barely distinguished the doors lining either side.
“This door’s slightly ajar,” Zeela breathed to Avner, her lone eye unhindered by the lack of light. Avner stared at the door intently, waiting for someone to emerge, but then Zeela grabbed his forearm, halting him before he could conjure a spark. “There are two people inside—sitting.”
Though the two people had yet to detect their footsteps, Avner knew Naretha had no intentions of leaving this place without inflicting more damage. As she stalked across the hall and kicked open the door, he followed swiftly at her heels, hoping this time he could prevent needless death.
Unexpectedly, the room beyond the door was not a laboratory, and the two humans curled up within were not guards or experimenters but prisoners chained to separate beds and gagged with cloth. Even in the darkness, the man’s hazel eyes, the woman’s blue eyes, and their ordinary brown hair were visible.
“Reggs,” Naretha whispered in confusion, eyeing the two with unease. For a moment, Avner was equally as baffled, but then, through their bedraggled appearances and pleading expressions, he recognized them.
“S-Stark,” he stuttered, gawking. Linda Stark, Seth and Tray’s mother, tried to cry out his name through her gag, but Avner couldn’t manage a reply. They were in better conditions than the Affinities had been, but it made no sense that an Affinity research facility would harbor two Reggs.
“Ch-Charlie—Charlie,” Avner called, drawing the gray-haired man into the small room. “Can you free them—or get that lady, maybe—”
A deafening blast of gunfire reverberated through the underground complex. Shrieking ensued as the Affinities in the hall stampeded forward, surging the crowd to the opposite end of the corridor through which they’d come.
“Let’s go,” Naretha barked, hastily departing the room without dragging Avner along. He continued staring at the Starks in paralysis.
Jamad, with Meredith still on his arm, peeked in to usher Charlie out but then noticed Avner was there as well, gaping. “Av, let’s move.”
“We—can’t leave them—”
“They’re Reggs!”
“They’re people!” Avner shouted, but Jamad didn’t stick around to argue. With Meredith, he fled, leaving his friend alone with two helpless prisoners.
The sound of gunshots grew closer by the second, emanating from the stairwell. Cries ripped through the air and then evanesced when bullets ripped through flesh—not tranquilizer darts but real bullets. Avner knew he had no chance of freeing the Stark parents without Charlie or the key lady, and if Affinities were dying out there, his duty was to ensure Zeela’s safety above all else. Still, tearing out of that room and into the bedlam of the corridor also tore an irreparable gash through his conscience—through his heart.
At least ten Affinities lay dead on the unforgiving floor when Avner emerged. Was that his fault for stalling them earlier by questioning Jamad—for stalling them now by demanding help for the Starks? He didn’t want to think about it, and frankly, he didn’t have time. On the far end of the hall, the escaping Affinities ascended a second staircase. Now it was just him, ten dead people, and two guards with guns.
The man and woman wore suits like the other guards had; his electricity wouldn’t be able to penetrate them, and with the gunpowder in those metal rifles, any attempts to use his Affinity could explode the building.
He was ready to accept death—to surrender and beg them to kill him, rather than imprison him again—but then the guns suddenly flew from the guards’ hands, swooping to the ceiling and sticking there, as if by magnetic force.
Time stopped in the corridor, the living as petrified as the dead as all three stared up at those rifles. Avner understood why it was happening, and with a burst of newfound hope, he spun and darted toward the stairwell, zooming up the steps without glancing back at his pursuers.
When he reached the open doorway at the top, he found himself amidst endless mounds of hay encased within the worn wooden walls of a massive barn. Most escapees had darted for the exit, but Jamad, Meredith, and Naretha remained not far from the stairwell, the three huddled over Charlie and Zeela, who both crouched in the hay. As Avner had suspected, his girlfriend had witnessed the scene below and told the man to use his magnetic Affinity, which glued the guns to the ceiling, saving Avner’s life.
Upon his emergence from the stairwell, Naretha shouted, “Run!” but seemed unable to heed her own command; the sedatives hadn’t taken her consciousness, but they had slowed her muscles substantially. While Jamad, Meredith, and Charlie dashed toward the exit, she staggered in an awkward jog.
Zeela noticed her lagging and scooped her arm under the older girl’s armpits, hauling her along. Avner followed directly behind, shielding them from the oncoming guards. Though they no longer wielded guns, they certainly had speed. With Zeela’s lack of fighting experience and Naretha’s current state of lethargy, when the guards did catch up, Avner was forced to fend them off alone.
He would not let Zeela die—especially not after she’d wasted precious seconds saving him.
Whirling around, he projected two congruous bolts of lightning at the guards, desperately hoping the electricity would find some fissure in their armor. When they plowed on, he knew he would have to fight them fist to fist, a feat he’d never been particularly skilled at.
Aware that his hand would shatter in a collision with their helmets, Avner pretended to ready his fists for a punch, but when the male guard was upon him, he kicked him in the gut, sending the man stumbling backward. Within seconds, he regained composure and latched onto Avner’s leg, jerking it upward and flipping him onto his back.
The hay muted the impact of the landing, but his body still ached as he stared up at the two guards, the man restraining him while the woman prepared to pummel his face. In one last feeble attempt to save himself, Avner shot electricity toward the woman, but it missed the target—and hit a pile of hay instead.
Swearing frantically, both guards staggered way from the blazing mound. Avner didn’t waste the distraction; scrambling through the hay, he stumbled to his feet and broke into a sprint, distancing himself from the increasing inferno.
Heat permeated the barn, signaling him to flee as fast as possible, but once he reached the rest of the group, he realized they hadn’t yet escaped. The Affinities clogged the exit, their path thwarted by three figures in white.
“The experimenters,” Meredith whispered to Jamad as Avner joined them, panting. “And the manager, Fryda.”
Hearing this, Naretha groaned and mustered all of her strength to shrug off Zeela. When she reached the front of the crowd, where the three simpering Reggs stood, she spat on the hay at their feet. “This is becoming tedious.”
The eldest lady opened her mouth to speak, but Naretha didn’t let her utter a word; from her hand, a stream of sharp salt crystals effused and rushed up the woman’s nose, shredding through her brain. Before the two researchers could voice their outrage, they met the same fate. The prisoners didn’t wait for the corpses’ collapse to stampede out of the barn.
“Wish your parents could’ve seen that,” Naretha grunted to Jamad, grinning despite her depleted energy. “I told them I was deadly.”
“You’ve definitely proven yourself an experienced terrorist,” he muttered as they finally passed through the barn’s threshold. Though the wintery sun wasn’t strong, their eyes had become intolerable to the rays, forcing the Affinities to squint as they trudged through the grassy field. Zeela was the only one
unperturbed, her wide eye absorbing the scenery.
Through his eyelashes, Avner discerned that the brown barn was positioned at the center of a vast, seemingly deserted farmland, the structure sticking out like a lone ship in an open sea—only now that ship was ablaze, the fire licking out of every window and threatening to consume the wood completely.
“Well, Sparky, looks like you became a murderer today after all,” Naretha mused, lifting her hand for a high-five. “Welcome to the club.”
Ignoring her crudeness, Avner turned to the group of weary Affinities, many collapsing with exhaustion, immune to the blazing barn only a few paces away. “Does anyone have a fire Affinity?”
“Your sister does,” Naretha said when no one responded.
“Adara does not have a fire Affinity,” Avner snapped, his anxiety swelling as he watched the roof of the barn cave in. “She hates fire.”
“All the more reason for her to have a fire Affinity. I saw it in her eyes—they blazed as bright as this when she tried to attack me in Periculand.”
Again Avner disregarded her, his focus entwined with the lethal conflagration. “J, can you put this out? The Starks are still—”
“Ice isn’t gonna end this, Av. I feel like a melting cone of ice cream right now.”
“We can’t just let them die! They’re Tray and Seth’s parents—they’re innocent people!”
“Did you say Stark?” Naretha perked up from where she leaned on Zeela. “Those Reggs were the Starks?”
“Yes.” Avner watched her cautiously. “Do you…know them?”
“This complicates things,” she murmured, her nose twitching toward the barn. “I’m not sure if Danny will be thrilled by their deaths or enraged that he wasn’t the one to end them…”
“Your boyfriend knows the Starks—and he wants to kill them?”
The Wacko opened her mouth, but then Meredith yelped, rousing those who’d decided to rest. “They’re coming!”
“Who’s coming?” Avner demanded, his heart pounding with the possibility that the Starks had somehow found a way free. Meredith didn’t have to answer, however, for him to know how futilely optimistic that thought had been. The two figures materializing from the flames like charred demons were the answer.
“Run!” Jamad bellowed, setting the Affinities into a frenzy.
“How are they alive?” Naretha complained as she attempted to keep pace with the group. A few other dart-inflicted individuals straggled as well. It took all of Avner’s self-preserving will not to turn when the guards attacked one man at the rear of the pack, his screams echoing through the meadow with infinite anguish.
“They have Affinity-proof suits,” Zeela said, her voice strangely level given the circumstance. “Fire is an Affinity, therefore the suits are resistant.”
“Well, nothing’s resistant to this.” Throwing his hand back, Jamad cast a sheet of ice atop the grass. As expected, the two guards slipped on the suddenly slick surface, giving the Affinities enough time to gain more of a lead. Jamad’s triumphant laugh resounded through the meadow, as gleeful as Avner’s heart was mournful.
He wanted to mention the Starks again—wanted to sprint back there and fight his way through the flames to save them—but even though he’d caused that fire, it wasn’t his Affinity. He would have to sacrifice his own life if he tried to spare theirs. Perhaps a sacrifice was in order, though. The Starks shouldn’t have perished for his foolish mistake. But how could he abandon Zeela now, after all she’d suffered? How could he sacrifice himself for his own pride and self-righteousness before she found comfort and safety?
He couldn’t and he wouldn’t. Still, fleeing from that burning barn solidified the permanence of that gash in his conscience, altering the shape of his perfect morality. Zeela had said he looked different, and as his morals morphed, he wondered if she would ever look at him the same—or if he would ever want her to.
16
Prison-mates
Two grueling weeks of torpidity had passed for Adara Stromer. Other than Mitt, not one person had entered the police station, leaving her with little knowledge as to what was happening in Periculand. From what the officer had told her, none of the students had openly defied the Rosses yet, which was likely a result of their alliance with Nero—or the fact that eight hours of training was far less tedious than eight hours in a classroom. Adara definitely would have appreciated the Reggs’ takeover for that.
She knew Nerdworm would be restless without a constant inflow of knowledge, which was why she was surprised he hadn’t used his newly acquired free time to visit her and complain about his discontent. None of her friends had visited since the day they’d brought Olalla, and for that reason she’d been forced to seek a tentative companionship with Angor. Though she wasn’t sure she believed the King’s claims of innocence, she’d realized in her boredom that she didn’t care if he was lying. She would have befriended Nero or even Kiki just to feel less lonesome.
That was why, when Angor started an exercise regimen a few days after their incarceration, Adara had reluctantly agreed to join him. The routine consisted of movements like push-ups, sit-ups, squats—and then faithfully, at the end of each workout, Adara’s last exercise was her plea to Mitt for a box of donuts. One evening, the prisoners were finishing their push-ups when Weaponizer entered the corridor without a summons.
“You need to tighten your core, Stromer. You’re flopping around like a fish.”
Still in a droopy plank, she readied a sardonic retort, but when her head rose to confront him, she found him smirking along with the three teenage boys at his back.
“Oh, thank God,” she blurted out, jumping to her feet and leaving Angor to complete his push-ups alone. “I’ve been so freaking lonely here.”
“You don’t…look lonely.” Ackerly eyed Angor curiously as the man continued to exercise. As usual, Greenie looked like a humanoid plant, his white Periculand Training School sweatshirt stained with pollen and his green cargo pants coated with dirt.
“Of course she’s not lonely,” Tray scoffed, arms crossed, as he stomped into the hall. “Look at her—she’s thriving in prison. I’m not sure why I expected anything different.”
Adara met his antipathy with an air of frivolity. “I would probably thrive in a real prison. The problem with this prison is there aren’t any people in here for me to make fun of. I’ve already used all the insults I can come up with for the King—honestly, he’s too hip for me to come up with much. I need someone like you, Nerdworm, for whom there are endless mocking possibilities.”
Tray’s growl was interrupted by the arrival of his twin, who strolled in with a wooden basket in his hands and an exuberant smile on his face. “Happy Thanksgiving, Dar. We brought you a feast.”
“A feast?” Her chest swelled with glee as he set the basket full of food on the floor outside her cell. “It’s Thanksgiving?”
“It was on Thursday,” Seth said. “We haven’t been able to visit, though, because Hartman’s been holed up in the nurse’s office almost every day. Nero.”
Adara’s mood darkened at the mention of his name. “That dickwad. If only I could be freed from this prison…then I could beat up that bully and save his victims from peril.”
Mitt rolled his eyes when she looked to him dramatically. “I still haven’t gotten the okay from the Rosses. For my sake, though, I hope they release you soon.”
“You couldn’t beat up Nero even if you tried,” Tray said. “You’d probably incinerate him instead, and then burn down the whole—”
“I don’t have a fire Affinity!” she snarled, nearly grabbing the electric bars in rage. Composing herself, she added, “If I’m so evil and you’re so noble, Nerdworm, why haven’t you opposed Nero yet?”
“Because I don’t want to end up in a cell with you,” he snorted, but his eyes were on her prison-mate. Angor had finally stood, brow drenched in sweat. “What are you two training for, anyway—to break out?”
Massaging his biceps, the e
x-principal said, “I don’t wish to atrophy. I’m no longer as spry as I was in my youth, and given that I can’t remember my Affinity, this passes the time.”
“And you, Stromer?” Tray prompted with arched eyebrows. “Why aren’t you improving your Affinity?”
“Because I don’t know my Affinity. Besides, I need the physical conditioning; I am getting fat in here. Outside of prison, I burned so many calories—”
“Shut up. You never played any sports.”
“My sport was taunting people, and it required a lot of exert—”
“All right.” Seth waved his hands to interrupt their endless banter. “I think a little booze will lighten the mood.”
When he reached into the basket and pulled out a handful of beer bottles, Adara’s shock was enough to actually quench her argument with Tray. “Where the hell did you get that?”
“Convinced some guy in town to sell it to me. He was so pissed off about the Reggs’ takeover that he didn’t mind breaking the law.”
“Mm, and you’re divulging this information in front of a cop.” With her pointed look in Mitt’s direction, Seth’s cheeks paled.
“Uh…”
“Do you have more?” the officer asked as he peered into the basket.
“Yes…?”
After rummaging through the basket, Mitt pulled out a bottle, tipped it toward Seth in acknowledgement, and then retreated to his post by the door. “Thanks. I won’t say anything.”
“You’re allowing minors to drink alcohol, and you’re partaking in the event, but you won’t break me out of jail? Where are your priorities, Weaponizer?” Adara demanded, sarcastically aghast.
“How is it that you have more beer in here than food?” Tray questioned, digging through the basket with a frown.
“I’m not rich, bro,” Seth said before chugging a bit of his drink. “My boss barely pays me minimum wage.”
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