Nerve

by Kirsten Krueger

  Considering all the terrible turns this town could take, Tray soon became restless. That was why, when Eliana bumbled down the stairs and crashed into him, a piece of paper in her hands and a grave expression on her face, his lips broke into a genuine grin.

  “Eliana, hey,” he greeted, straightening to his feet as she fought to right herself. With her blue hair in a messy ponytail and the whites of her eyes tinted pink, Tray discerned that she’d either just awoken from sleep or was in a severely distressed mental state. Given his inexperience with emotional consolation, he convinced himself she was sleepy, even though the hollow grief was prominent in her glossy gaze.

  “We have a problem,” she said, her voice firm despite its brokenness. “I just drew this.”

  With the depiction thrust suddenly into his view, Tray had to blink a few times to fully focus. When he did, his brow crinkled at the bedlam and violence: Drawn with bright pencils, Eliana had crafted a scene of fire and destruction, and Periculand was its setting.

  The front gate was wide open, permitting a horde of Affinities clad in black to attack the young students of Periculand, many falling or fallen under the assault. The Physicals Building was half-collapsed, the Naturals Building burned, and he saw himself among the fray, a head of brown hair fighting off a much larger opponent.

  “Well,” Tray said through a gruff cough, “I’m not really an artist, so if you’re looking for a critic—”

  “This isn’t art.” The tight clutch of her fingers formed indents on the paper as she waved it in his face. “This is the future. Tray…” She trailed off, her normal reticence resuming. “The Wackos are coming for us. They’re going to destroy us.”

  “Are you sure?” Lavisa asked as she approached the bottom of the stairs, scowling up at the drawing. “How did you know to draw this?”

  Lowering the paper, Eliana swallowed. “Kiki and I have…a connection. Somehow I read her predictions—er, steal them…”

  “Well, where is Kiki?” Tray demanded, scanning the lounge for any sign of her pinkish hair. “If she knows what’s going to happen, we need to talk to—”

  “It doesn’t matter where she is,” Lavisa said, tightening her hand wraps, “but we do need to figure out when the Wackos will arrive and what their goal is so we can organize a proper defense strategy. I would say we could interrogate Ashna and her friends…” She peered over her shoulder at Ashna lifting a bright green table. Cath wasn’t far from her, hefting a red couch, but Naira had disappeared, probably to puke outside with Seth. “But with her infinite Affinities, I think Than is a safer bet. Unless he’s been lying, his Affinity is just living a long time. He won’t be a physical threat against me or Tray.”

  “Wait…” Eliana’s features warped with confusion. “Infinite Affinities? What do you—”

  Before her question could fully develop, Hartman appeared on the step beside her, orange hair in disarray and chocolate nestled in the corners of his smirk. Knowing no one other than the teleporter would have an opportunity to say much now that he was here, Tray sent a mental image to Eliana of what Ashna had done to Nero, and her eyes protruded.

  “Hey, guys,” Hartman huffed, swaying into Eliana, who was too baffled to react. “Is Nero gone?”

  Lavisa’s lips curled wryly. “He’s been gone for at least twenty minutes.”

  “Oh, sweet.” He nodded around to the group. Recovered from the shock of Ashna’s secret, Eliana awkwardly touched the corners of her own lips to alert him of his messiness, but he didn’t notice. “I was distracting him for you,” he added to Tray, “but then I ended up all the way across town inside someone’s freezer. Longest distance I’ve ever teleported, I think. It had to have been a few hundred feet, if not a few thousand—or a few hundred thousand—”

  “Sounds like a fluke,” Lavisa commented as she finished securing her hand wraps.

  “Even if it was, I didn’t hesitate to reward myself by eating all of the ice cream in that freezer.”

  Eliana exchanged a mildly amused look with Lavisa. “We can tell.”

  “If you’re so proficient now, why don’t you teleport us over to the Mentals Building?” Tray suggested. “We have an emergency.”

  “Don’t say emergency. I can’t work under pressure, man. If you tell me there’ll be more ice cream, though—”

  “I’ll buy you ice cream later,” Eliana assured him as she looped her arm through his. She didn’t add the silent “if we survive” that Tray saw written in her eyes.

  Enthused by her promise, Hartman hastily waved at Tray and Lavisa before vanishing from the room. That he’d teleported out of the lounge in one go shouldn’t have been impressive, but for Hartman it was.

  “You know where Kiki is, don’t you?” was the first thing Tray asked once the other two had disappeared.

  Lavisa glanced forlornly up the stairwell. “I saw her go…upstairs with the acid-spitter.”

  “Up…oh—oh. I see.” Tray stared at the ground, as if he might witness the two of them by merely looking toward the upper floors. He knew Kiki was…experienced, mostly because Seth had always tried to discuss it with him—even though Tray had explicitly expressed his disinterest—but to consider she currently engaged in such activities, with Wacko invasion impending, outraged him.

  “Don’t tell Eliana,” Lavisa added, her yellow eyes harboring a threat.

  “Is—that who they both have a crush on? The acid-spitter? Does he even have a name?”

  Rolling her eyes, Lavisa leaned against the railing. “Yes, he has a name. But no, they don’t like him, you blind idiot. They’re into each other, but they’re clearly in a fight. I told you, girl drama. Stay out of it.”

  “Kiki and Eliana are into each other…” Tray whispered to himself. For some reason, he couldn’t wrap his mind around quiet, innocent Eliana being infatuated with obnoxious, heartless Kiki—nor could he imagine Kiki settling for anyone who wasn’t the pinnacle of popularity. The entire concept was as insane as Ackerly liking Ashna. With all of these ridiculous romances budding, Tray was sure this town would implode on itself before the Wackos even arrived.

  The subject was dropped when his entire surroundings unexpectedly changed. In a matter of seconds, Hartman had teleported back into the lounge, grasped Tray’s arm, and then teleported them both into the library. In the middle of the night—or morning, technically—the ground floor of the Mentals Building was absent of life and light; only the glow of the half moon shimmering in from the wall of glass illuminated the tables, chairs, and rows of books.

  “That had to have been a hundred feet!” Hartman exclaimed, his enthusiasm reverberating through the empty room. “You can’t tell me that wasn’t a hundred feet!”

  “I’m almost inclined to believe in a god,” Tray stated dryly. “Where’d Eliana go?”

  “Upstairs!” he shouted, his voice carrying through the air even after he departed.

  Grumbling to himself, Tray stalked toward the stairwell embedded in the left wall. As soon as he passed through the door, he sealed his lips, because hushed voices emanated from above. Fearing it might be the Rosses, his eyes darted frantically for a place to hide, but then Eliana’s voice hissed, “Tray, get up here.”

  Jogging up the stairs, he halted on the landing to the third floor when he found Ackerly standing next to Eliana, cheeks red and face contorted with…annoyance. Tray had never seen Ackerly annoyed. This was the kid who would gladly spend any length of time with Adara Stromer; Tray had thought his patience unlimited.

  “Have you seen Fraco?” Ackerly asked, his tone indicating he’d already asked Eliana and received a negative response.

  Since Tray couldn’t give him a positive one, he countered with, “What happened with the Rosses? They let you off the hook?”

  “Oh, um, yeah,” he affirmed, glancing up toward the fourth floor, “but the Wackos are on their way to raid the town. I’m supposed to tell Fraco.”

  Eliana grimaced in concentration. “I don’t sense him in this buil
ding… Do you know when the Wackos will get here?”

  “Probably an hour.” Ackerly’s lips scrunched as he glared between them. “Ashna’s…a Wacko. She’s been plotting against us this whole time. You were right.”

  The confession startled Tray, and he felt much less satisfied than he thought he would. “Who…finally convinced you?”

  “Bleeding Brains,” Ackerly sighed as his shoulders slumped. Tray shot Eliana a quizzical look, but even she seemed puzzled by his statement. “The Wackos called, and the leader accidentally started playing some music, Calder told me it was Bleeding Brains—he and Nero got thrown in jail, by the way.”

  “What?” Tray’s body tensed as if he could physically attack this news. “They can’t be in jail! The Wackos are about to demolish us! Nero and Calder are the strongest defense we—”

  “I’m sure the two of them will piss off Adara and they’ll all bust out after she burns the place down.” Lavisa’s voice echoed through the stairwell as she and Hartman ascended from below. “Don’t be so worried, Stark.”

  “Adara breaking out of prison only heightens my worry,” he griped, running a hand carelessly through his hair. “The last thing we need is her adding to the Wackos’ demolition with her irrational, impulsive, irrepressible—”

  “All right”—Lavisa nudged past him toward the door—“we could stand here all day and come up with I words that describe Adara, or we could go interrogate Than and figure out why the hell the Wackos are coming here.”

  “I already know why they’re coming.” Ackerly’s expression darkened back into that unfamiliar irritation. “They’re coming for Ashna. They’re coming because she led them here. They’re coming because…she’s Danny’s sister.”

  Everyone stilled. Even Hartman, who almost always vibrated, had petrified with this revelation. Tray had been certain Ashna was a Wacko, but he’d never considered the possibility that she was the leader’s sister. This made her more than a replaceable soldier of theirs; this made her untouchable. If they hurt the insane terrorist’s sister, the consequences would be cataclysmic.

  “We should capture her as leverage against Danny,” Ackerly continued. “We should…threaten her safety until he calls off the attack. I want to go find her.”

  Pushing open the door to the third floor open, Lavisa gave him an unconvinced look. “I don’t think you going to obtain Ashna is the best plan, given your history of being in love with her and all.”

  “I-I wasn’t in love with her!”

  “Either way, Lavisa’s right,” Tray said, earning a bemused eyebrow raise from her. “Ashna’s hostile, and she has too many abilities for any one of us to fight her alone. We should apprehend her as a group—but first, we need to know what Than knows. He could have secrets about the Wackos’ fighting tactics that can help us.”

  “I sense him in his office,” Eliana said as they slipped into the corridor. Tray led the group—until Hartman teleported in front of him.

  “I’ll jump in there and sneak attack him,” Hartman whispered, flashing an impish grin before he evaporated from sight. A moment later, a few yelps emanated from the door labeled “T. Floros,” and Tray quickened his pace to reach it. Before he grabbed the handle, though, Hartman reappeared beside him, eyes as round as clementines. “You do not wanna go in there.”

  “Yes, we do.” Shoving Hartman aside, Tray thrust the door open. He’d expected Than to have abandoned his character of innocence—to be a nasty, snarling Wacko, wielding some deadly weapon. He hadn’t expected Than to have Floretta pinned to a wall, the woman’s lilac eyes wide with alarm.

  Tray’s instinct was to react in a defensive form of rage. Gathering the strength of his Affinity, he pointed his finger toward Than and exclaimed, “Get your villainous hands off her, Floros!”

  Instead of responding with a wicked smirk, Than’s jaw dropped in bafflement. “V-villainous?”

  Hartman intercepted Tray’s threatening approach by teleporting in front of the Wacko. “No, no, he’s not hurting her. They were…making out.”

  Tray paused, quickly reassessing the situation. Now that he took a moment to truly study them, Than’s arms were clearly wrapped around Floretta’s waist in a romantic embrace, her face flushed not with fear but with embarrassment.

  From the doorway, Lavisa chuckled. “For once, I really wish Adara were here to make fun of you, Stark.”

  “You two are—” Ackerly began, unable to finish his sentence as he stared at the teachers. Discovering Ashna was a Wacko had certainly infuriated the boy, but to find out his teacher-crush, Floretta, was romantically involved with someone who was literally centuries beyond him appeared to have broken him. “No…no…”

  “Hey,” Hartman said, spinning toward the intertwined adults, “if you two get married, you’ll be Floretta Floros. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

  “Her real name isn’t Floretta, and that’s irrelevant right now,” Tray snapped, taking a step closer to the teachers as they scrambled to disentangle themselves. “We know your secret, Floros.”

  Than’s tan face paled considerably as his brown eyes scanned the group of primaries. “How did you find out?”

  Tray kept his posture stiff and his chest puffed, mostly to remind himself that, though this man was physically bigger than him, Tray could easily defeat him in a fight. “Our spies found a note in here.”

  “Ah.” Than glanced reminiscently toward his bookcase. “The note from Axelia. You didn’t take it, did you? It is quite old and fragile, you can imagine… You were able to translate the ancient Greek, then?”

  Slowly rotating his head, Tray found Eliana standing in the doorway, looking as confounded as he felt. “No…” she said warily, “we found a note that you wrote…to someone… You mentioned Danny—how you were keeping Ashna’s presence here a secret from him for now—until she could complete her mission. We…know you’re a Wacko.”

  Than’s eyebrows crinkled in deep rumination, but then realization flickered across his features, as if he’d just remembered his own affiliation. “Oh…that note…yes…”

  “So, what is Ashna’s mission?” Tray prompted impatiently. “She must have done more than tell Danny about Periculand’s secrets, considering that’s been your job.”

  “Erm, yes, my job…” Than agreed with an awkward glance down at his hands. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know exactly what Ashna’s purpose here has been. All I know is that her whereabouts were to be protected from Daniel’s knowledge. If he were to discover her location, he would most certainly come here and execute her, as well as trounce the town—”

  “Execute her?” Ackerly repeated. “But…she’s his sister!”

  “God, I told her not to tell anyone,” Floretta sighed, massaging her forehead in exasperation. It wasn’t her physical movements that caught Tray’s attention, though; it was her unintended confession.

  “Than didn’t write the letter that Eliana found,” he said. “You did—and you gave it to him. You’re the Wacko! You’re the one who’s been feeding them information—who gave them Hastings’s room number and the town’s location and—and the one who’s helping Ashna with her—”

  “Yes, yes.” By pulling up the sleeves of her pale purple dress, Floretta displayed the flower tattoos wending up her arms, the ones Tray had seen so many times and had thought nothing of. “These are my Wacko tattoos. I was a Wacko. I fed Ephraim information about Periculand for years. I gave the Wackos Hastings’s room number—but that was before I realized Danny had taken charge, before I even knew Ephraim had died. I’ve defected since then. I don’t want any part of them. They’re just as much my enemy as they are yours.”

  “Eliana?” Tray beckoned without glancing back at her.

  Floretta’s expression mollified, and then Eliana’s soft voice said, “She’s telling the truth. I can’t find any deception, but…you knew she was a Wacko and you were okay with it?”

  This question was directed at Than, who exhaled a breath and shook his head. �
��The Wackos…were not always truly evil. I never joined, and I always sided with Angor against them, but they have saved many Affinities, like they saved Julie.” He gestured toward Floretta, who squirmed either at his use of her real name or his mention of her past. “I understand why she chose to join them.”

  “I was kidnapped at my high school graduation,” she explained reluctantly. Tray was tempted not to believe her, but a ghostly quality entered her eyes, unlike he’d ever seen on her typically cheery face. “I was…experimented on for years until the Wackos broke me out. Their morals might be skewed, but I will always be indebted to them. I will always choose them over the Reggs, even with Danny as their leader.”

  Tray and his friends all exchanged awkward glances—except for Hartman, who had raised his hand as if they were in the middle of class.

  “Hold up…” he said, eyes narrowed. “Not to interrupt this depressing backstory, but if Floretta’s the Wacko…then what’s your secret, Than?”

  “Oh.” The history teacher cleared his throat and straightened his tie. “Well, I’ve lied to this entire school…about most of my history, in fact. I won’t be turning three hundred on my next birthday, as I’ve led you all to believe. The date might be inaccurate, but if my knowledge is correct, I’ll be turning two thousand five hundred and twelve. Roughly.”

  Tray choked at the unfathomable number. “That means you were born in BC times—that’s impossible!”

  “Not any more impossible than living to be three hundred. I age one year every one hundred years, rather than one year every ten, as I previously told you. Oh, I have lied to you students about so many things, but no one would believe the things I have seen, the things I have done! For one, I lied about my religion. I’ve always believed in the Greek gods, because I’ve witnessed them with my own eyes.”

  “Okay, so Than might not be a Wacko but he’s definitely wack,” Hartman said, and Tray couldn’t say he disagreed.