The Vanishing Girl

by Laura Thalassa

  “I hope so too,” I said, watching Caden as I spoke. His eyes thinned and his dimples appeared. I could read his expression. An enjoyable challenge. That’s what he thought I was.

  Coach Painter turned his focus away from us then and addressed the class. “Okay class, today we’re going to focus on guerilla warfare—specifically what you’ll have to do if you ever get cornered by the enemy. Pairs to the left, singles to the right.”

  Guerilla warfare? I was in way over my head. I told myself that I could do this. It was guerilla warfare every time I went to sleep.

  And why the heck were there any singles—shouldn’t we all be paired off?

  A beautiful girl with hair several shades darker than my own separated herself from the crowd and sauntered over to Caden. She ignored my presence as she hugged him for just a beat too long.

  “Hey gorgeous,” she said, letting go only to wrap an arm around his waist.

  “What up Desiree?” His eyes flicked to me briefly. “Have you met Ember?”

  Reluctantly Desiree pulled her eyes from Caden to size me up. Her mouth curved into a fake smile. “Not yet. Pleasure to meet you,” she said, not bothering to stick out her hand. A second later her gaze went back to Caden. “Looks like we won’t be having fun together in the singles group anymore.” She pouted. This show was all for me, though she never once acknowledged my presence.

  Caden looked down at her, and I saw genuine affection there. “No, we won’t, but that doesn’t change anything between us,” he said.

  “I guess you’re right. After all—” She leaned in and whispered something into his ear, smiling.

  He smiled in return.

  This girl was clearly marking her territory. Which was fine with me—she could have the blanket snatcher.

  Nonetheless, I memorized her face. Girls like her lived to make my life miserable, but now that she’d shown her cards, I knew a few of her weak points. She liked Caden, she felt I was a threat, and she primarily used her appearance to get what she wanted. I filed that information away. Who knew when I might need it.

  Guerrilla warfare turned out to be ten-minute modules where students teamed up with their pair—or another single—and used the nearby resources to attack and take out targets.

  Which was really spectacular for me, considering my vast array of knowledge on the art of guerilla warfare. Not.

  Caden had already seen me cuffed, wet, naked, and now he was going to see me get my butt kicked. I was noticing an unfortunate trend here.

  With a little creativity I might get through this without completely embarrassing myself. After all, I did know a bit about survival. Since puberty it had been that or die.

  I was seriously questioning my affinity for survival forty minutes later, after I ran my fifth lap around the main buildings that made up the facility, the fate of all students who were not busy with the module. Back home I’d run every day, not even they could prepare me for the hellish loops up and down the mountainside.

  While I ran, I studied my surroundings. The loop around the facility was large, yet I still hadn’t seen the chain-link fence that closed us in. That meant that this place must be huge. I’d have to do some exploring later.

  The students running next to me did so with ease, which made me think that most of them had been here for a while. Had the government found them the same way they’d found me? Were there more like us out there, or was I one of the last ones that had slipped through the cracks?

  When I and the other teleporters arrived back at the meeting point to check in, I leaned on my knees, focusing on not puking. I frowned when I noticed that Desiree still managed to look perky and cute, even after five excruciating laps.

  Coach called out, “Hawthorne! Bring your partner over here! The rest of you milling about—run another lap.”

  Caden nudged me. “That’s us.” He wrapped an arm around my waist.

  Just as I let him help me up, Desiree shot me a death look. I openly rolled my eyes at her—this was so not how I wanted to start off my stay here.

  “Okay guys,” our coach leaned in and placed a hand on each of our shoulders, “you’ve got ten minutes once you enter the warehouse to secure a red scarf and make it back out.” He was referring to the building in front of us. It was built into the hillside, so I had no idea how big or small it actually was.

  A ten-minute module. That was the same amount of time that we spent teleporting each evening. The project was training us to accomplish tasks in the same time it took us to disappear and reappear. Which reaffirmed my theory that they could control where we went once we fell asleep.

  “If you are targeted before the ten minutes are up,” Coach Painter continued, “the module will shut off and you’ll fail the training session.”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “You give out grades?”

  Coach looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Okay you two, get going!” He gave our shoulders one final shake and pushed us in the direction of the warehouse.

  Slowly we walked towards the building. “Is there anything I should know about this module before I go in?” I asked.

  Caden shook his head. “Nothing that I tell you will really help at the moment. Just be aware of your surroundings, listen to your instincts, and do not hesitate.”

  I stomped through the brush. This was going to be unpleasant. I could already tell.

  Caden eyed my not-so-subtle gait. “Also—and I know this might be difficult—but try to be quiet.”

  I picked up a nearby pinecone and threw it at him.

  “Ow!” He flinched. “Now that was just rude.”

  We slipped through the doors and entered a narrow hallway. Behind me the metal door banged shut, the sound echoing throughout the building.

  Caden gave me a look.

  I shrugged. “Sorry,” I said, my words reverberating throughout the building.

  Caden flinched. I think I may have heard him mutter, “Worst partner ever,” but, considering everything he’d put me through since the moment we met, I was pretty sure I had drawn the short stick.

  When nothing jumped out from behind the many closed doors that lined either side of the hallway, I began to get worried. Something was waiting for us. I knew how to survive for ten minutes out in the real world, but not one that involved combat.

  “I have a plan,” Caden whispered. “You guard the hallway while I check each room.”

  “Deal.” Guard duty seemed to be the lesser of two evils.

  He nodded and slowly opened the closest door. Nothing happened. Quietly he walked through the door. A minute later he came out.

  “Clear.”

  “Are we doing this for every door?” He flinched again at my voice. “Because I think we already wasted nearly a fourth of our time, and we have five more doors.”

  “You have any better ideas, princess?”

  “Um, yeah. It’s called smash and grab. We kick the doors open two at a time, jump out of the way—since by now someone is likely waiting for us—scan the room’s contents, and move on.”

  Caden looked half-convinced when he asked, “What happens if there’s too many people to take on?”

  I shrugged. “We fail.”

  Reluctantly Caden’s face broke into a grin. “Adventurous and daring.” He nodded. “I like it.”

  “Awesome. Then let’s do this.”

  We started with the back two doors, thinking it would be easier to work our way out of the building rather than into it.

  I began the count. “One.”

  “Two.”

  “Three.”

  We kicked the doors inward at the same time. Sitting in the middle of my room was the red scarf.

  “Shit!” I heard Caden curse behin
d me. I guess he was running into more trouble than I.

  I did a brief scan of the room and determined that it was not obviously rigged. Quickly I crossed the room and reached down to grab the scarf.

  “Freeze, or I’ll shoot.”

  My head snapped up at the voice. A man peeled away from the wall, aiming a very real looking gun at me.

  A grunt echoed from Caden’s room. Bummer.

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

  It was only a module. The lie should have been easy.

  I swallowed. “I can’t.”

  He lifted the gun and fired.

  Chapter 9

  “Great. Tardy exercises, and now I failed my first partner module.”

  “—Eff—off,” I wheezed between push-ups. I didn’t know a body could handle this much physical activity in a single day.

  “No talking!” Coach Painter yelled. I think he was taking our failure personally.

  At least the gun was unloaded. I still almost peed my pants when the guy aiming the gun at me had pulled the trigger and I heard the click of an empty chamber.

  After gym class, Caden and I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon attending Global Relations, followed by Language Acquisition. Apparently those weren’t the only classes I’d be attending; I also had weaponry, etiquette, and professional profiling classes later this week.

  The day should’ve been over after Global Relations, but thanks to our tardy attendance this morning we were now working out for the second time today.

  My puny arms could no longer push my body up and down. I collapsed onto the mat, my muscles spasming from the exertion.

  “Pierce!” Coach had quickly moved from not knowing my name to being on a last-name basis with me. “Why have you stopped?”

  “I can’t do any more push-ups.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” I could tell Coach was a wily one from the lilt of his voice. “Let’s switch to some stadiums.”

  I wanted to cry as I scraped my body off of the track and walked towards the cement stairs built into the stadium that surrounded the track. My tour had not included this football stadium, probably because it sat deep in the woods behind the facility.

  “Pierce!” he yelled behind me. I looked over my shoulder at him. “Do five sets of four, and then you’ll be done for the day.”

  “You want me to do twenty stadiums? All the way up?” There had to be at least forty stairs. Forty. Who even used this stupid stadium? All the forest creatures? There weren’t enough people in the surrounding fifty miles to fill these bleachers up.

  “No Pierce,” Coach Painter said, “I only want you to run the first two sets—and only halfway up.”

  “Really?” I asked, hopeful.

  “No. Now get moving! And Hawthorne, get up off the ground and join her. That’s five sets of eight for you.”

  “Coach—” Caden began.

  “Listen guys, this isn’t Rhetoric. I don’t care about your diction or your arguments. Now get moving, I want to go home before the sun rises.”

  Forget prison, I’d been recruited into hell.

  That evening, after I’d loaded my plate with food, I walked past the rows of occupied tables and made a beeline for an empty one towards the back of the room. My skin felt hot as several pairs of eyes tracked my progress. One pair in particular caught mine.

  I briefly met Caden’s gaze. He sat in the middle of a crowded table—next to Desiree—the center of attention. Despite my talent for understanding body language, his eyes were unreadable. I looked away, too tired to attempt to be social.

  I collapsed into an empty chair at the back of the room, my legs still weak from stadiums. I’d managed to do all twenty of them, but it took an hour and a whole lot of will power. I thought I was in shape. Trying to survive for ten minutes each night was incentive enough to work out. But this was different. I already knew I was going to be sore for days.

  I slid the food in front of me around, glum that my life had been taken from me and angry that I was powerless to stop it from happening. Only now did it hit me that I was stuck here for two years.

  Plastic clattered against the table. “Hey. Glad to see you snagged us an empty table.” I glanced up from my food to find Caden sitting across from me.

  “Do you ever go away?” I asked, annoyed. He was the last person I wanted to see.

  “Sorry princess,” he didn’t look sorry at all, “but we’re partners, which means we’re stuck together.”

  Fantastic.

  “Have you met some of the other teleporters here?” he asked, nodding his head to indicate the rest of the dining hall.

  “I’ve seen some of them in class.”

  “Seen and met are two very different things. Here, I’ll call my buddies over.”

  “Caden, no—”

  He turned to the table he was previously sitting at and whistled, waving his friends over and conveniently ignoring me. At least a half dozen students got up and began to move our way.

  My blood pounded and my muscles tensed. All I wanted was to eat alone. I grabbed my tray and stood up. Caden’s hand shot out and grabbed my arm, pulling me back into my seat.

  “What do you think you’re—?”

  He leaned in and whispered gruffly. “They’re watching us all the time, studying our behavior. If you want to go unnoticed, then you have to blend in. Being a loner will convince them you’re maladaptive. And you do not want that.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, taking in this tactical side of Caden. His friends, my classmates, were almost to the table.

  “If you’re so concerned about it, then why have you made yourself stand out?” I asked, thinking about the way he moved about the facility, acting like he owned the place.

  “You mistake acting the part for standing out.”

  The logic behind his words sounded eerily familiar. Hadn’t I done the same thing by covering up my markings with a tattoo? Plus, I had been hiding myself in plain sight for the last five years up until I’d arrived here.

  “We all have roles to play,” Caden continued. “Hadn’t I just about convinced you of who I was?”

  Yes. I’d assumed Caden was arrogant, egotistical, and charmed the staff and faculty into getting what he wanted. Now I wasn’t so sure that was all there was to him.

  His friends began to sit down around us. “Find your role and fit in,” Caden finished, smoothly transitioning from our conversation into fist-pounding one of his buddies and laughing at something he said.

  His words gave me the chills. We were being watched.

  A guy with skin the color of caramel was the first to introduce himself. “Jeff,” he said, reaching a hand out from across the table to shake mine.

  I’d done this often in my old life—made introductions. That was what came with moving around a lot. I’d also learned to keep my distance, to make only a few superficial friends—Ava excepted—because when you moved a lot, goodbyes inevitably followed a short while later.

  “Ember,” I said, taking his hand.

  His striking green eyes flashed with interest. “It’s nice to meet you, and a damn shame that you’re not single.”

  I pulled my hand from his. “I’m not in a relationship, if that’s what you’re talking about,” I said. My gaze flicked to Caden.

  Caden’s eyes glittered mischeviously, and again I saw a challenge in them.

  Jeff raised his eyebrows. “Oh really?” A smile played on his lips, but he didn’t say anything more.

  On Caden’s other side Desiree watched me. When I met her gaze, she held it long enough to let me know she didn’t care that I caught her staring, before turning and asking Caden a question.

  “Ignore her,” a blonde girl to my right
said.

  I glanced over at her. “Serena,” she said, introducing herself, “and that’s my pair, Eric.” She indicated the blonde guy on my other side, and he nodded to me.

  “Ember,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you both.” I plastered a pleasant expression on my face, even though making friends was the last thing I wanted to do.

  “Nice to meet you too,” Serena said. Her eyes flicked across the table and she lowered her voice. “I’m sorry about Desiree,” she said, leaning in. “She’s a great person, but she’s got issues, especially when it comes to Caden.”

  “I picked up on that.” I smiled. Not that I cared. I had no plans to get involved with the guy. No, I might be stuck here at the facility for the moment, but I didn’t plan on staying.

  I found myself in a hotel room, a queen bed sat to my right, the thin comforter a tacky maroon and green floral design. Thick drapes hid the window, and the only source of light came from the bathroom behind me and the large bedside lamps perched on either side of the bed.

  Wherever I was, it was outside the facility.

  In front of me a guy shoved clothing into a suitcase. I held my breath. He hadn’t seen me yet, but my odds of going undetected for ten minutes were slim.

  He turned to grab another clothing item when he saw me. Adrian.

  “Fuck!” He jumped at the sight of me. I tried to hide my own surprise.

  He clutched at his heart and swore. “Stop following me!”

  “I don’t exactly want to be here.” I subtly glanced down at my own clothing to see if I came here on my own or if I’d been directed here. I wore a plain T-shirt and jeans. I think I must’ve sought Adrian out on my own. That, or the government now knew my taste in clothing.

  He gave me a disbelieving look. “You know, I’m on the run because of you,” he said, throwing another clothing item in his bag.