Toxic

by Jus Accardo

  I shoved Jade aside and stormed between them before it went any further. Kale shot forward to make another lunge for Alex, but I’d gotten in the way. He had just enough time to knock his bare-knuckled punch harmlessly to the side.

  They both looked at me like I was crazy.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Alex snapped, shoving my shoulder.

  He didn’t push hard, just kind of touched my shoulder and nudged, but it was enough. Kale elbowed me aside and flew at him again. Only this time, Jade actually did something. Grabbing a handful of Kale’s hoodie, she yanked back. But it didn’t stop him. In one fluid twist, he bent at the knees and shimmied, leaving the hoodie hanging in her hands—sans him.

  He was about to take another swing, but a scream sliced through the air, stopping everyone cold. It was laced with fear and sounded like it came from the lobby.

  Even worse, I knew that voice.

  “Mom!”

  9

  Kale screamed for me to wait, but I didn’t listen. How could I? Mom was in trouble. Back through the door and around the corner I ran. The hallway seemed longer than usual—each step moved me back instead of forward. I reached the lobby in record time and found Rosie standing in the middle of the room, a bewildered expression on her face.

  “What happened?” I snapped, scanning the room. It was just us.

  She shook her head and pointed toward the door. “I—I’m not sure what—”

  Time came to a screeching halt. Just beyond the glass doors, a dark blue van was squealing to a stop. The door slid open, and three men in Denazen’s patented blue monkey suits were wrestling Mom inside.

  I heard Kale yelling behind me again, but I didn’t stop. Through the doors, across the lot, and over the bushes that bordered the property. Nonono. “Mom!”

  My heart slammed into overdrive, brain demanding my legs pump faster. Cover more ground. A few feet ahead, the men finally managed to maneuver Mom into the vehicle as it jerked into motion. There was nothing really coherent going through my head in that moment. I acted on pure instinct. With a quick prayer, I dove for the still-open doors on the van. I dove for Mom.

  For once in the last few days, something went right—sort of. My speed was perfect and my aim exact. I sailed through the opening and straight into Mom. Actually, I sailed through Mom. Why? Because Mom wasn’t really there. I realized my mistake a second too late. A pair of strong arms circled my waist and yanked me further inside as I tried to squirm back through the opening.

  I resisted, clinging to the edge of the door as one of the men tried to pull it closed. Fighting harder, I managed to slip one leg over the edge and out of the vehicle, blocking the door track. Something in the back of my mind raged. If they closed that door, it was over. Good-bye, sunshine, good-bye, world. Good-bye, freedom.

  One hand still curled around the metal rim, I groped the floor for the blanket sitting inches away. The second my fingers gripped the itchy material, I closed my eyes and held my breath.

  A string of curses filled the air, accompanied by the increased cool September breeze and a flood of light. I opened my eyes in time to see the door-turned-blanket peel away and flutter from the side of the van. One of the men had been leaning against the door in an attempt to block my path. The door now gone, he lost his balance and toppled over the side and out into traffic. Good. One less to worry about.

  “Bind her hands! She can’t do her little switch-a-roo tricks if she can’t touch anything,” the one holding me yelled.

  I squirmed and shimmied, but his grip was too tight. “How would you like to spend—” I slammed my head back like I’d seen Kale do once. All I hit was air. “—the rest of your life as a seventeen-year-old girl?”

  That got him to let go. Only problem was, he shoved me toward the other side of the van and away from the door.

  A familiar chuckle drifted back from the driver’s seat. “Careful, Wayne. That little girly has some kick to her, yeah?”

  Able.

  I opened my mouth to comment that he knew all about my kick, but a deafening clatter sounded above our heads. The van swerved, and Able cursed. “What the hell—”

  His answer came in the form of Kale, who swung in through the doorless opening and landed between the two remaining suits. Lips twisted, a low growl rose from his throat. He lunged for the first man without a word, right hand locking around the man’s uncovered wrist. There was a moment of terror in his eyes and then nothing.

  The remaining suit stepped between Kale and me as Able jerked the wheel hard to the right. Squealing tires and blaring horns filled the air, and Kale lost his balance, sliding sideways—dangerously close to the edge. Aubrey was out of his seat and shouldering the suit aside before I could speak. He hauled me up as Kale righted himself.

  “Watch it, 98,” Aubrey growled. “It would suck if you lunged for me and she accidentally slipped out of a moving vehicle.”

  I could see the frustration in his eyes. Aubrey was right. We were all balanced too close to the edge now. If Kale came at us, Aubrey would try to avoid him, and things could get messy. At seventeen, I had no desire to become roadkill.

  From the driver’s seat, Able snickered. “I gotta admit, girly, I was wrong. I told them you’d never fall for it, and here you go proving me wrong, yeah? I just lost twenty bucks because of you.”

  “Carley,” Kale seethed. He was poised and ready to pounce, expression grim. “You used Carley to make us see Sue.”

  “Carley?” I asked, trying to twist free of Aubrey’s steel grasp.

  He smiled, tightening his grip on my arm. If he didn’t loosen up, the circulation was likely to stop. “One of the Residents. She can beam an illusion straight into your brain.” He stomped his foot. “Boom! Just like that. You’d swear on the air in your lungs it was real. She was in the lot around the side of the building.”

  Kale inched forward as the van’s speed decreased. We were coming to the intersection in the middle of town. The light was notorious for taking forever. Maybe if we timed it right, we could use it to our advantage.

  Of course just as we came to a stop, the light must have changed, because the van jerked forward, listing slightly to the left as we turned onto Daughten Avenue. The vehicle picked up speed fast—Able obviously wasn’t worried about traffic infractions. As Aubrey and the Denazen suit faced off against Kale, I watched as Parkview zoomed by in a blur.

  “Step away from Dez,” Kale snapped.

  “Why don’t you just come and get her?”

  We were fast approaching the town limits when a low curse came from the front seat, and the horrific sound of grinding gears and screaming metal filled the air. Everything shook, tilting sideways, and gravity disappeared. Something knocked me down and to the left, and sharp pain exploded at the base of my neck. For a moment, everything went watery. Hollow sounds—yelling and something else. Scraping. Like twisting metal—which, when everything cleared, I found was exactly what it was. The van had somehow ended up on its side, bodies strewn around the cabin like discarded trash.

  The first thing I became painfully aware of was the brain-numbing pain in my right knee. I’d dislocated it once after a particularly nasty round of bumper surfing, so any injury was always ten times worse. The next thing I was aware of was the smell.

  Smoke.

  I tried to sit up but couldn’t get more than halfway. “What the—” The duct tape the Denazen agent had wrapped around my wrists snagged on something that prevented me from getting up. I gave it a few good tugs, but it was no use. I was stuck.

  To my right, the agent hung from the opening where the door used to be. My guess was he’d toppled sideways on impact, then got caught in the door track when the van flipped onto its side. A thin trail of red dripped from the corner of his mouth, and I shuddered. If the van had flipped the other way, we’d probably all be dead.

  Kale lay beside me, and my pulse surged when I realized how close he was. Another few inches, and his hand would have hit my cheek. He
was still, eyes closed, but the subtle rise and fall of his chest told me he was in way better shape than the agent—for the moment. The smoke leaking in from the back of the van fanned into a small flame, and as I watched, crept closer.

  “Kale.” I coughed. The acrid smell was getting stronger, and my eyes and throat were beginning to sting. “Kale, you have to move!”

  From the front of the van, one of the twins moaned. I craned my neck to see Able, still in the driver’s seat, slumped against the window. He wasn’t moving. On the floor between us, Aubrey was getting to his feet.

  Back to Kale. The tiny flame was getting bigger—and closer—and Kale still wasn’t moving. Something sharp broke the skin on the back of my hand as I stretched to twist sideways. Taking a deep breath, I bit back a scream and thrust out my right leg out, bracing it against Kale’s shoulder. I was able to nudge him out of the path of the flame and closer to the door.

  “Able?” Aubrey mumbled from the front, trying to reach his brother. He lost his balance, tugging Able’s still form down with him.

  I yanked on the tape again with the same results. Kale was safe from the creeping flames, but that put me next in line. Panic coated the inside of my throat like syrup. Of all the ways to go down, burning to death was last on my list next to being crushed. “Kale!” No answer. I turned to the front. “Aubrey, get up! I’m stuck.”

  He ignored me, still trying to rouse Able with no luck.

  Kale stirred. “Dez…?”

  “Kale! I’m stuck. Hurry!”

  He struggled up and stumbled across the cab, going down on his knee twice as he tried to maintain balance. “Lean forward. I need to see.”

  I leaned as far as I could to give him room to work. After a moment, Kale cursed softly. He was trying to hurry and not touch me at the same time. It wasn’t working. A few feet away, Able stirred. Aubrey was desperately trying to wrestle the passenger-side door open and shove Able up and through, but without his brother’s aid, he wasn’t having much luck. “Hurry…” I prodded.

  I could feel Kale trying to pull the edge of the tape up. Each time his fingers came close to touching my skin, I couldn’t help flinching. Unfortunately, this only made things worse. Each time I tensed, Kale would freeze, terrified he’d come too close to making contact.

  He let out an anguished scream as the flames crept closer. “Your bindings are caught under a piece of bent metal. I can’t get it without touching you!”

  With Jade not here, we couldn’t take the chance. It had started as intense pain on the crane, but what if I was exactly like everyone else now? If he touched me, I’d be dead. Dissolved in a pile of dust. Though at this rate, if he didn’t touch me, I’d burn to a pile of dust. Talk about your double edged swords.

  I swallowed the lump crawling up my throat as a shadow fell across the cabin. When I looked up, for a moment all I saw was a male form outlined and illuminated by the sun. The way the light hit him, it almost looked like there was a halo around him. An angel, come to save the day.

  Alex said nothing as he pushed aside the dead agent’s body like it wasn’t even there and dropped into the van. Once out of the sun, I saw he looked horrible. There was a fresh gash across his right cheek, and above his forehead, a large chunk of blond hair was red and dripping, leaving a trail trickling down past the corner of his left eye, which was nearly swollen shut. I knew he’d taken some damage during his fight with Kale, but it wasn’t nearly this much.

  For a second, the sight of him was so startling that I forgot about the twins, the fire, and the fact that we were probably turned over in the middle of the road. “What the heck happened to you?”

  “Move!” he snapped at Kale. He had the tape free and off my wrists in seconds—just before the flames kissed the spot where I’d just been. “Are you okay?”

  I let him pull me up, cringing just a bit when I put weight on my left leg. A quick scan of the van, and I saw Aubrey and Able were gone. “I’ll live. What happened to you?”

  Alex nodded to the front of the van as he dragged me toward the door, lips hinting at a smile. “Dude doesn’t know how to drive.”

  10

  Ginger glared at us from the front of the room. Sliding a box of tissues across the table at Alex, she said, “Don’t drip blood on my damned floor.”

  The twins hadn’t followed us—they’d actually disappeared, which I thought was kind of odd. Between the three of us, we probably couldn’t have battled roadkill.

  The remnants of Alex’s fight with Kale—a bloody nose and split lip, along with the shadow of a bruise coming out across the entire right side of his chin—made him look like he’d gone ten rounds with a stampeding elephant. His T-shirt was torn at the collar, and his left eye was swollen almost shut. But it was the other things, the nasty-looking gash and still-bleeding head wound, that kept me from throttling him for the crap he’d started with Kale.

  When we climbed from the van, I’d nearly thrown up. Alex’s car was sideways in the road, the entire passenger side smashed in. The glass was shattered and the front tire flat. He’d driven past the van and cut in front to stop it from getting away. It was heroic—in an epically stupid way—and if I hadn’t run off like an idiot, he wouldn’t have done it.

  Compared to Alex, Kale looked like he’d barely broken a sweat. His bottom lip was swollen but not split, and a faint bruise had started to bloom across the bottom of his chin where he’d hit the van floor when we’d collided with Alex’s car. In the chair across from Ginger, Kale watched Alex with an even mix of satisfaction and annoyance.

  “Does anyone want to tell me what started that fiasco?” Ginger glared at me. “The one before you ran from the hotel like a brainless idiot?”

  “Idiot?” I snapped, even though I knew she was one hundred percent right. “I thought they were taking my mom! Ask Rosie. She was there. She saw the same thing I did.” I gestured to Kale, Alex, and Jade, all seated around the table. “And everyone heard her scream.”

  “Whoa,” Jade said, waving both hands in front of her face. “Don’t bring me into this. I didn’t see or hear anything.”

  “You really believe it would be that easy to get into the hotel? Don’t you think I have this place locked up tighter than a frog’s ass?” Ginger narrowed her eyes, shooting me another one of her famous glares—this one we’d named Ginger’s glare of duh. “Sue isn’t even at the hotel. She’s been gone since early this morning.”

  “Locked up how?” I pressed, stopping short of pointing out that when you cared about someone, you didn’t over think things. You just acted. But pointing out how she’d sacrificed her family for what she believed was common sense didn’t seem like the best bet right then. Plus she was right. I’d acted impulsively, and if I had it to do over again, well, I’d do the same thing.

  But I’d still be sorry about it.

  Ginger cackled and slammed her cane into the ground. “Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. This hotel is the safest place on earth for any Six. No one is getting in here without being let in on purpose.” She cleared her throat. “Now. One last time. What the hell caused all that chaos?”

  No one said a word.

  “Well?” Ginger pushed. “Don’t make me start swinging this damn cane!”

  Kale sighed. He wasn’t defensive or apologetic. Just matter-of-fact. “I don’t like him.”

  Looking from Kale to Alex, Ginger said, “I don’t like cabbage. Do you see me taking on the produce section of the food store?”

  I couldn’t help the giggle that slipped from my lips. A mental image of Ginger beating down a horde of cabbage as a swarm of carrots parachuted down from planes circling above popped into my head.

  Kale narrowed his eyes. “He’s irritating.” He stood and started to pull up the hem of his shirt. “And he stabbed me.”

  Alex rolled his eyes. Grabbing another tissue, he dabbed the corner of his forehead. “And you’re still alive. Time to get over it.”

  Kale held
his hand out to Ginger. “Fine. Give me something sharp. If I stab him, then we’ll be even.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m not dealing with this anymore. Detention. All four of you.”

  “Four?” Jade whined. “I didn’t do anything. I never even left the building!”

  “Detention? This isn’t even real school!” I cried.

  Ginger ignored Jade and glared at me. “Oh, it’s real,” she said. “And so is detention. As for you—” She turned on Alex. “I allowed you to be here as a favor. So far, you’ve made me regret it. I suggest that for the rest of the day, you remove yourself from my hotel so I don’t beat you bloodier with my cane.”

  Alex didn’t argue. He stood, flicked the bloody tissue into the trash next to Kale, and stormed out the door without a word to anyone.

  Jade snorted. “Nice going, Dez. Can’t you get through one day without causing trouble?”

  I stared. Was she kidding? “You’ve been here, what, like twenty-four hours? Already I wanna kill you.”

  “Disappointed to find the world doesn’t revolve around you? I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. Deal with it.”

  I took a step toward her. “Wanna bet?”

  “Enough!” Ginger boomed. “Do I have to chain you each to a different corner of the room?”

  After a few moments of silence, she asked, “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Sadly, no,” Kale mumbled. He folded his arms and looked toward the door with a sulky expression. “I’ll have to try harder next time.”

  …

  I was sitting in the dark when Mom came into the room.

  “Ginger told me what happened,” she said, settling on the edge of my bed. “What were you thinking?”

  “Please don’t lecture me. I—”

  “No lecture,” she said, voice low. The lights flickered on, and I cringed against the sudden brightness. “Just a set of simple instructions that you are to follow no matter what.”

  I blinked as my eyes adjusted. Her tone was a little scary, and the look on her face? If Dad had ever pinned me with an expression like that, I would have thought twice about stepping out of line.