The sky is black by the time I reach my house. I hustle up the steps, and when I cross the threshold, Nathaniel is waiting for me. He’s sitting in the chair, the one Mercy picked out a garage sale. It’s purple and soft, made of velvet-like material. Nathaniel sits in a kingly manner, leaning back, his left ankle propped on his right knee.
“Where’s Mercy?” I ask him.
As if waking from deep thought, Nathaniel casts a brief glance in my direction, and then he looks away. “Lyla’s house.”
There’s something in his tone that makes me wonder what he’s not telling me.
“Did something happen?”
Nathaniel leans forward, resting his forearms against his thighs. “You could say that.”
Hurriedly, I walk around the couch and sit down. I know that whatever he’s about to say requires being seated. I wait for a few moments, but when Nathaniel remains silent, impatience wins out. “Are you going to tell me what happened, or are you going to make me guess?”
“I’m not quite sure what to tell you.” His expression hardens. “Actually, I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mercy wouldn’t want me to.”
What the hell does that mean? “If there’s something happening with Mercy, I should know. We’re on the same side, Nathaniel—hers. Don’t keep secrets from me.”
Nathaniel rolls his eyes. “Relax, drama queen. You don’t need to know the details, but we do need to discuss Mercy’s latest mutation.”
“Mutation? So, she’s an X-Man now?”
“Don’t be an ass, Gage. That’s my job.” Nathaniel stands, walks to the wet bar, and pours himself a drink. He offers me one, but I wave him off.
“Mercy’s powers are evolving,” he says. “She’s changing.”
“I know.”
“You do?” Nathaniel seems surprised I agree with him.
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about this. And I think we have to ask ourselves what we’re going to do if she can’t control it?”
“There is no, if, little brother. She can’t control this.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Nathaniel knocks back the rest of his drink. “Ever the Hunter. Always ready to swoop in and save the day.”
“Forget it.” This is pointless. Nathaniel and I are incapable of having a real conversation. “I’m going to bed.”
“Wait.” Nathaniel sets the now empty tumbler on the coffee table.
“What?”
“I don’t know how to help her.” He clears his throat. “And the truth is, I’m afraid we’re going to lose her to this thing, whatever she’s becoming.”
I have no answer for him. I don’t try to stop him when he leaves the room.
I go to bed, and I sleep in my clothes.
The next morning I wake when the sun pours through the window like a searchlight scorching my eyes. Rolling over, I throw the pillow over my head and try to go back to sleep.
“Gage?” I hear Mercy calling me from the other side of the door. “Are you awake?” Flashbacks of my encounter with Justice surge through my brain.
Not again. I slide to the edge of the bed, propel myself toward the door, and thrust it open. “You’ve got a lot of nerve trying this again.”
At first she looks confused, a tiny wrinkle creases her forehead. Then she smiles. “I’m not Justice, I swear.” She holds her hands up, surrendering.
“Prove it.”
“Seriously?”
I wait.
“Fine,” she relents. “We met in the library at school. You were stalking me, and then, when I nearly passed out, you helped me to the nurse’s office.”
I fold my arms and step back. “I wasn’t stalking you.”
“Yeah, you were,” she says as she shoves past me. Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “Okay, so I know you’re new to this whole human thing, but here’s a tip, crack a window every once in a while. It smells like funk in here.”
I pad over to the window and slide it open. “I’m going to assume you didn’t come by just to tell me my housekeeping skills suck, so what’s up?”
Mercy runs her fingers through her auburn hair. “You have to help me fix this.”
“Fix what?”
“This.” She holds out her trembling hands for me to see. “I feel jittery and exposed. My heart is beating a mile a minute. My skin is itchy. My hands won’t stop shaking. Something is wrong with me.”
“Come here.”
She walks toward me. I hold her hands in mine. But it’s only for a second, and then she pulls away. “Gage, I have to tell you something. Something important.”
“You can tell me anything.”
She takes a deep breath. “I didn’t tell you this before because I didn’t want to scare you, but now I feel like I have to.”
“Okay.” I sit on the mattress and wait for what’s coming.
She rakes her lips over her teeth before she begins. “When my mother and I were being held by Isadora something happened. And at first I didn’t think anyone besides us knew about it, but now I realize Isadora must know. She knows what I did, and that’s how she knows I can kill The Assembled.”
I can tell by the way her voice shakes that she’s scared to tell me the rest. “What happened?”
“I was in a cell with my mother, and she was dead. I couldn’t do CPR because I didn’t have a body.” She stands with her hands on her hips. “I don’t know what made me try what I did, but it worked.”
She’s being evasive on purpose. “What worked?”
Mercy is shaking. I want to pull her to me and comfort her, but I stay where I am.
She exhales sharply. “It was like breaching except I didn’t go all the way. I just reached in and held her heart and squeezed it with my hand until I brought her back to life.”
I try to process what she’s telling me.
Continuing, she says, “I didn’t think Isadora knew, but she must. She knows, and that’s why she wants me to kill The Assembled. And here I was being all smug, thinking I’m going to take down The Assembled because no one knows what I can do.” Her voice nears hysteria. “But she knows! She’s known this whole time.”
I think back to when Isadora released Mercy. Mercy came back to us determined to kill The Assembled. Nathaniel and I were convinced she wouldn’t actually be able to do it, but now I’m not so sure.
“We’ll think of something,” I say, trying to sound reassuring. “I swear. I won’t let Isadora use you.”
Mercy bites her lips. Her eyes are brimming with tears. She wipes them with the back of her hand. “I shouldn’t be this person. It’s not right.”
“Mercy.”
“Every time I breach a body, or Nathaniel breaches a body, there’s a reason. And I always let the reason outweigh the fact we’re killing innocent people. And now with this new power I realize I’m getting stronger. What if it gets to be too much? What if I end up no better than Isadora?”
“Mercy, that will never happen. You aren’t like Isadora. You’re good.”
“Yeah, now. But who knows what I’ll become.” She sits down next to me on the bed. “Gage, will you do something for me?”
“Of course, I’d do anything for you.”
She turns and looks at me, her beautiful eyes soften around the edges. “You and I both know this is wrong, and the only reason you’re not willing to admit it is because you lost your Hunter’s mark.” She takes my hand and entwines it with hers. “If you were still you, the old you, you’d know what the right thing is.”
I don’t like where this is going. “What are you saying?”
“There’s only one solution. I have to fight The Assembled. And I have to lose.”
No freaking way! “Mercy, I can’t—” I pull my hand from her grasp.
“Please. Hear me out. The Assembled takes care of me. Then you take care of Isadora. It solves all of our problems.”
I stand. “No.”
“Why not?” she asks, incr
edulously.
“Why not? You can’t honestly be asking me that.”
She buries her hands in her hair, her fingers knotting and twisting. “You said you would help me.”
“You trapped me! I had no idea what I was agreeing to. There’s no way I’m going to let you die. I know you’re having a hard time, but we’ll find a way out.”
“I can’t control it. This thing,” she picks at her shirt, like her powers are a skin she feels like shedding, “breaching people’s bodies, and now, people’s minds. This isn’t how I want to live my life. If I fight The Assembled and win, Isadora will never stop. She’ll never stop!”
I kneel before her and scoop her hands into mine. “I can’t do this for you. I’m sorry.”
“Because you love me.”
It isn’t what I expect her to say. I’m so thrown that my brain freezes.
She tosses my hands away and stands. I nearly topple over backward, but I’m able to catch myself at the last second.
“Sometimes,” she says, her voice quiet and sad, “I miss the Hunter.” Mercy crosses over to the door, opens it, and slams it behind her.
I start to chase, and then stop myself. “Dammit!” I kick the door, leaving a dusty boot print in the white paint.
What Mercy is asking me to do is absurd. It’s out of the question. She’s being irrational. She’s scared and talking crazy. That’s all there is to it. In time, with a little perspective, she’ll see things aren’t nearly as bleak as she imagines. She’ll see that we can fix this, that we can find a way to help her.
Frustrated and, according to Mercy, rank, I take a shower. The hot water pelts my tired body. I linger under the stream until the water runs cold. Afterward, I towel off and head back to my room to put on fresh clothes. I choose a pair of jeans and a thermal shirt. It isn’t cold outside—I’m dressed too warmly, but after the last twenty-four hours, I feel like I need insulation.
I hear the front door open and close. I stomp down the hall and find Nathaniel in the front room.
“Where have you been?” I ask, my tone biting.
Nathaniel smiles as if he’s up to something. “I was coming up with a plan.”
Why don’t I find this comforting? “You have a plan?”
“Yep.”
I gesture to the large envelope he’s gripping tightly. “And it’s in that?”
Nathaniel shakes the contents loose. Out slide two plastic cards. He hands me one.
“What the hell is this?”
“These are our high school ID cards.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“We need to keep an eye on Mercy. This is how we’re going to do it.”
I study my ID card. “You do realize that no one is going to believe we’re in high school.”
“They bought it before when you were there,” Nathaniel says.
“I never actually went to class. I just—”
“Stalked Mercy,” Nathaniel says, cutting me off. “I remember.”
“You’re crazy if you think this will work,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “I made us seniors.”
Still gawking at the card, I sink into the couch cushions, boggling at the thought of homework and tests. This is idiotic. We really do look too old, but I guess we give it a try. Of course we’ll have to explain why we live alone without any parents. Then again, I’m not planning on making friends, so maybe no one will even notice.
Nathaniel does have the right idea, however. This is what Mercy needs—to get back to her old routine. And if something does happen, like she’s forced out of her body, Nathaniel and I will be there.
Mercy made the deal with Isadora to keep us safe, and I’ll be dammed if I don’t do the same for her. True, I wish this task didn’t involve high school, but I’m willing to go through with it for her. Mercy wants me to live my human life; she wants me to have real experiences. High school will certainly be a human experience.
Being a Hunter is all that I’ve ever known. We lived among the humans, but we fought the urge of humanity every day. We forced ourselves not to feel, not to let our emotions control us. The Assembled taught us that we were above humans, that we were evolved beyond them. But we were also there to protect them, to secure the balance of things. Humans live. Humans die. And for the most part, they know very little of the world that lay beyond. They aren’t privy to that world until after death, until they shed their bodies and let go of their human needs.
Breachers are a black mark on humanity because they refuse to let go of the physical world. That’s why the Hunters were created, to bring them to justice, to make them face their fate. I was happy to do so because I believed in the cause. I believed in the order of things. I still do. When my time as a human is over, I will cross over. On that point, I will not negotiate.
Immediately my conversation with Mercy comes screaming back to me. She’s asking me for the exact same thing. She wants the chance to cross over. She doesn’t want to go on forever. And selfishly, I denied her that. “Son of a bitch,” I say softly.
Nathaniel narrows his eyes at me. “What?”
“I have to talk to Mercy.”
“Why?”
“Because she asked me to do something, and I realize now that I can do it. I have to.”
“Yeah, well, you can tell her tomorrow. Right now, we need to go shopping.”
Who is this guy? And what has he done with Nathaniel?
Shopping consists of a trip to the mall. Apparently, Nathaniel doesn’t hate this as much as I do. He drags me from store to store commenting that if he and I are going to “rule the school,” I need a better wardrobe. He even decides I need a signature look, and, as ridiculous as that sounds, what he picks out for me I kind of like, though I will never admit it to him.
Before, I dressed to assimilate. But there was also something very military about it: boots, jeans, black T-shirts. That was pretty much my standard Hunter uniform. Sure, I occasionally topped it off with a leather jacket, but that was a gift from Rae.
My human style is apparently nerd-chic. Nathaniel and I practically empty the jeans section of the first department store we hit. I remind him that Lyla already picked out plenty of jeans for me, and his only reaction is to roll his eyes. Along with the jeans, he outfits me with several button-down shirts. ‘Slim-fit’ the tags read. To complete the ensemble, Nathaniel picks out a few vests.
“No one wears vests.” I slide my arms through the openings and shrug the vest over my shoulders, examining myself in the dressing-room mirror.
“Be a trendsetter, little brother.”
“I think you might be losing sight of why we’re doing this.”
“No, you are.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Look, Gage, I know we’re in for the battle for our lives, and I know you don’t give a shit about high school or any of this. But you can’t let this opportunity pass you by. I know you. You won’t become a Breacher like me. You’ll live. You’ll die. That’s your plan.”
I try to pull away from him, but he holds me steady.
“Don’t even bother trying to convince me otherwise,” he continues. “Like I said, I know you. And I’ve made my peace with your choice, believe me—I have. That’s why I insist that you live every damn second to the fullest. Don’t hold back. No regrets.”
Nathaniel releases his grip and marches out of the room. His moment of clarity leaves me weak-kneed and bleary-eyed. The Nathaniel I know, the Breacher I chased for years on end—he isn’t capable of such declarations. It occurs to me now that I’m not the only one undergoing a transformation. I’ve been so concerned with myself, and with Mercy, that I didn’t notice the change in Nathaniel. And I should have.
That stunt Justice pulled—the swap when she pretended to be Mercy and came onto me in my bedroom—if that had happened a few months ago, Nathaniel would’ve gone for my throat. Yes, he threatened me afterward, but he kept his composure, and that alone should’ve tipped me off.
Of course, when Nat
haniel learns what Mercy asked me to do, all bets will be off. He’ll come after me with everything he has—of that I am certain. Preserving his own life may have been his top priority in the past, but that will take a backseat to preserving Mercy’s. Nathaniel is in love with Mercy. When the time comes, he won’t be able to let her go.
I decide to follow Nathaniel’s advice. I’m going to take advantage of every moment and live life to the fullest. This means loving Mercy in whatever way she’ll allow. If she doesn’t love me back the way I would like, I’ll have to live with that and accept her love in whatever form she’s willing to give.
Once again dressed in my regular clothes, I gather my haul and meet Nathaniel. We pay for the clothes, spending way too much money. As we leave the store, Nathaniel seems more confident than ever. He’s practically beaming. I’m not quite sure what he’s so happy about. It isn’t as if high school is an exciting prospect. And I don’t actually believe we’re going to be able to live normal lives. But I’m not about to spoil the mood. For now, we’re two brothers on the night before school. Who knows who we’ll be tomorrow.
Chapter Eleven
Nathaniel
The scream that escaped Nathaniel was guttural and deep. He broke free from the two men holding him and lunged for Isadora. Catching her around the neck, he squeezed and squeezed. She clawed at his hands. “You evil, vindictive bitch!”
Her eyes bulged from her head as Nathaniel tightened his grip. The two men who had been holding him restrained him once again. Isadora shook her hair back and straightened her shoulders. She rubbed her neck.
“You had no right to do this, Isadora. She shouldn’t have to pay for my choices.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you risked everything.” Isadora’s glare was fierce.
“This isn’t about my breaking the rules and you know it! This is vengeance.”
“It’s done.” To the guards she said, “Take him away.”
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