by Ruby Knight
Russ looked close to passing out.
Hank looked like a kid that got an extra slice of chocolate cake. “Right, then. This Saturday, the heads of Letum are set to meet in Prague at a gala. It is a black tie event, a masquerade. So as you may have guessed, each of you will have a part to play. They will have the access codes on their persons. Certain members hold the cards. We need all five codes to access the facility in Africa.”
There was a pop behind Hank, and I could swear the Secretary of Defense jumped a good two feet out of his chair. Harrison leaned in and said something to Hank and he nodded. Harrison laid out eight envelopes on the utilitarian table, each with a name.
“Russ, Trent, José, Paul. If you will follow Harrison, we can get going on your ability boost and training. The rest of you are dismissed. The president will be here tomorrow at fourteen hundred. We will meet here then.”
Each person stood and saluted toward the screen positioned at the front. The president responded in kind. The four people who didn’t know about abilities looked spaced out, and they filed out of the room in a daze. The line to the president went dead.
I sat and waited, shuffling around all of the information that had been thrown my way, but I couldn’t do it. I needed sleep. I placed my cheek against the cool concrete surface and closed my eyes.
“Come on, Julia. Let’s get you to bed. We can talk with my dad tomorrow,” Cole whispered close to my ear, which stirred my body, but not enough for me to avoid dreamland. He tugged me up and tucked me into his side.
He was warm and firm and sheltered me in a security I didn’t know I wanted. I yawned and closed my eyes while letting him guide me to my room. Our room. His room. I had so many questions that needed answering. Tomorrow. I would definitely get the answers tomorrow.
Chapter Twelve
A siren was blaring. I bolted out of bed and scanned the room to find the source of the awful noise, looked up, and turned around quickly. Cole was holding his phone with the alarm ringing on it, one hand covering his mouth and trying to conceal his laughter. I dove onto the bed for the screeching device. He held it above his head.
“Turn it off! Seriously, who wakes someone up like that? Aren’t you supposed to want to kiss me awake? What the hell?”
He calmly unlocked the phone and ended the blaring of sirens.
“I thought we were being raided or the world was ending,” I said while rolling onto my back and pulling the covers back over myself.
“You’ve been asleep for twelve hours, grumpy girl.”
He placed a gentle kiss on my shoulder. I really needed to stop having sleepovers with Cole— way too comfortable being in this bed with him in it shirtless.
“Come on, sleepy head. We’ve got to get to training.”
I pulled the covers up over my head. “When are they going to have my room ready? I don’t like having morning breath around you.”
“You want your own room?” he asked quietly.
I peeked out from under the blanket. “I thought I was required to have my own quarters. Boys and girls are separated, right?”
Cole had his head against his arm. “Yeah, we usually are. But after your surgery, I didn’t want you to be alone and I may have threatened various people. They gave me my way.”
He looked vulnerable, like he was waiting to be let down. Did I want to go? I mean, this has all been so crazy. I’d never had a boyfriend in the past, but I was pretty sure moving in together came pretty far down the road. At the same time, this situation, the world we were living in, didn’t give me the time to act at a reasonable pace. I was comfortable with Cole; I liked him. I liked being in a room with him. Not sure if it was because I had been alone for so long or because I wanted him close.
“Hey, pretty girl. What’s going on in that brain of yours?”
I rolled over and shrugged the covers completely off my face.
“Just thinking through my emotions. It’s new for me. All of this, it overwhelms me sometimes. You overwhelm me sometimes, but in the best way possible. I don’t know what that means. If they let me keep staying in here, I’ll stay.”
That was the right decision, right? It’s okay. It’s okay to fall sometimes, if you have a safe place to land, right?
Cole smiled with pure elation. Did he not realize that I was the one getting the prize? He was patient and protective and did I mention his abs, because Holy hell, his abs should be sculpted. I pursed my lips and quirked them to the side. He tackled me and pulled my head against his chest, his breath hot on my ear.
“I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I am just going to roll with it. I have you. I’m not letting you go. You’re with me. It’s me and you,” he said.
“Has it really only been a week?”
I heard footsteps approaching from the hall, jumped out of bed, and hit the button so the door would slide into the wall. Being caught in bed was just weird to me; no one knew. Okay, maybe they had an idea that Cole and I maybe had a thing. But how obvious would it be if Hank walked in on us in bed? Hello, Mr. Thomas, I was just, yeah, waking up with your son. No, that wouldn’t be awkward. Yawn … yeah, hard pass.
“’Morning, James,” I said to my gawking little brother.
“Um. Hi. What are you doing?” James paused. “Never mind. I wanted to talk to Cole, about, um, guy stuff.”
His cheeks showed the slightest trace of pink. I smiled.
“Sorry. It will have to wait. We have a meeting with the president in an hour,” I said.
James’ jaw popped open. Amusement coursed through me as shock spread across his face.
“Like, the president, as in, leader of the free world?” he stuttered out.
I heard Cole rise off the bed and cross the room to come lazily hang his arm around my shoulders.
“The very one,” he said.
“Can I come?”
My little brother was having a fan boy moment. Cute.
“Sorry, Jam. We don’t really even know why we are in the room. When we find out more, I will find you first, okay?”
He sulked a little and nodded.
“Now, go. The big kids have got to work.” I smirked at him and he rolled his eyes.
The conference room was packed full yet meticulously organized. People stood shoulder-to-shoulder, wearing varying degrees of military uniforms. I scanned the ones lining the walls for familiar faces. Hank, flanked by Harrison. The secretary of defense stood taller today and looked less like a deer caught in headlights. The director of the CIA stood next to Hank on his left side. Other than that, I hadn’t come into contact with any of the rest during my time at Eisenhower.
Cole and I squeezed in next to Harrison. Cole slipped his fingers through mine, effectively calming me. The calm wasn’t because he pushed me, though, but because being with him did that for me.
A few people were shifting from foot to foot; others were twisting their hands together. The room collectively held its breath as the door to the conference room slid quickly into the wall and the president stood in its opening. Military members held their hands up in salute, which was immediately returned by the president. Others nodded.
Hank broke from the group lining the wall and stepped forward to shake the president’s hand, and then they did a bro hug. I had to swallow a giggle trying to bubble up my throat.
The president walked to the head of the table and sat in a black leather chair. Hank settled down directly to his right and the head of the CIA on his left.
“Please feel free to sit,” the president said.
Cole gripped my hand a little bit, in an effort to keep me in place. People filled in the seats around the table. A few of us were left standing. We were all in the black uniforms issued to us by The Sway.
“The next forty-eight hours will have a heavy impact on our current world.”
Someone was translating in an Asiatic dialect to a petite woman near the end of the table. Initially, the additional language caught my attention, but as I studied her, I notic
ed the edges of her body were pulsing. Almost like a light shining too bright. She had to be Transcendent.
The president continued. “The Sway has done a rushed training for those of you who weren’t aware of this specific facility. I apologize that you were kept in the dark, but as most of you know, the clearance involved with this program was non-existent. If you weren’t of it, you didn’t know it.”
He sighed, rubbing his hands over his eyes. “The twenty-two people in this room have been hand-selected by Hank and myself for this. Although humanity doesn’t know who you are, you carry their entire weight with you. If we fail, the nuclear fallout of this will devastate the planet. The world will forever be changed. The Letum not only want to wipe out the world’s major cities, they want to take us back in time. No technology, no ways of communication. They think that reverting to this state will reset the clock our world has to work with.
“They are wrong. They don’t know about us.” A crackle of light snapped between the president’s index finger and thumb. “This mission will define our history.”
People sat a little straighter and the president took a deep breath. “We will leave tonight. We are separating our itineraries to manage each specific group’s task. Military personnel are with me. Sway members, you are with Hank. Our allies are with Director Marshall of the CIA. We need you all to meet with your specific leaders, and they will outline the plan. We take off tonight at nineteen hundred.”
The president pushed back from the desk to stand. Every member around the table followed suit.
“Hank’s team will meet in the training room. My team will stay here. Director Marshall’s team will meet in the silver conference room. You should know that when we land, there will be chaos. The people of the world are scared, and in their panic, their irrationality is at an all-time high. I know this is beyond what we thought could happen, but Hank and I have had an idea it was coming. We know the teams we have assembled can do this. Dismissed.” The president saluted.
Director Marshall was the first to stand. He was nearly a foot away from me and I stepped forward.
“My parents?” I asked.
His eyes softened for a moment before turning hard. “They are fine. They are being held at a safe house in Las Vegas.”
He motioned for his team to follow him with two fingers. A weight lifted off of my heart, and I found myself breathing easier.
“Agent Michael Rowland. Can you find him and get him to The Sway? Please?” I asked.
“I’ll try. He was in Mexico, last I heard.”
I nodded and left his side.
Cole leaned toward me. “What did he say to you?”
“What do you mean, what did he say? He said it out loud.”
“Director Marshall can soundproof what he says. He also can speak and understand every language on the planet.”
“Whoa! That’s pretty awesome.” It really was. I glanced back up at Cole and he was smirking at me. “Right, he said my parents are fine, safe.”
Not sure why I left out Mikey.
Hank stepped and leaned toward the president. I couldn’t hear what he said, but the president nodded in return to whatever he had said.
“Sway, follow me, please.”
Quade, Harrison, and a few others I didn’t recognize moved toward the door. The oldest person on the Sway’s team, other than Hank, was Quade. If I had to guess, he was just past the legal drinking age.
Maybe.
What were a bunch of kids going to be able to do?
We took a different route to the training room than I had when I went with Cole. The compound was huge, and I had barely scratched the surface on all of the rooms it housed. We walked down the cement hallways, not speaking. I took a moment to pause when we passed a glass room with a kid glowing electric green, running on a treadmill with electrodes pasted on his body. I tilted my head at the window and pointed inside.
“Testing facility. And yeah, he turns into a Christmas tree when he gets excited. Then, for bonus points, he becomes radioactive,” Cole said.
I opened my mouth to comment. Closed it again. Opened it.
“But he—” I stopped talking, baffled, and started nodding. “Yeah, okay.”
Words obviously weren’t going to work. Cole laughed, causing people turn and stare. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in the direction of our little group of six. Hank opened the door to the training room and held it back for our group. Hank, Quade, Harrison, Cole, me, and a girl I didn’t know with her hair in pigtails chewing pink bubble gum.
Hank sat down on the floor and stretched his legs out in front of him. Quade paced back and forth, rubbing his thumb and pointer finger together. Cole sat down, effectively pulling me down with him. I tucked my legs in and sat crisscrossed. Harrison was popping in and out of various points in the room. Bubble Gum Girl was twisting a pigtail around her finger, blowing the single biggest gum bubble I had ever seen. Nobody said anything for a good two minutes. Various emotions crossed our group’s faces. They were reflecting on the information we had just been given.
“So, what are we going to do?” I asked, not able to stand the silence any longer.
Hank looked up at me and quirked his lips into a puckered grin. “We are going to do this our way.”
Quade walked over and squatted down. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “There isn’t a lot of chatter on the frequencies here about actual Letum members. I can’t jump to overseas frequencies. I will know more once we are in Prague.”
I held up my hand, thinking it was only polite to ask a question that way. Hank chuckled and Quade pointed to me. “Yes, Miss Caldwell.”
I brought my hand back down. “What can you do? What is your ability?”
Harrison popped up right next to Quade, making him fall back onto his butt. I laughed a deep gut laugh. Cole covered his mouth, laughing, too. Soon, the six of us had defused the tension and had tears streaming down our faces.
“I can tune into frequencies. I can see or hear, I guess, any radio or digital signal,” Quade said.
“Oohhh. That’s a cool one.” My tone spelled my approval. Hank shook his head. “So, what’s the plan?”
Hank’s eyes lit up and he smiled like a movie star.
“Have you ever been to a ball?”
Chapter Thirteen
After lunch, Cole and I made our way back to his room.
“Let’s have naptime.”
He squeezed my hand three times and pulled me into a cement doorway, pressed me back until my body came in contact with the cool wall. He then placed his hands on the sides of my head and leaned his body against mine, nipped at my ear, and trailed kisses along my neck.
“I have a surprise,” he said before pressing his lips against my mouth softly.
I parted his lips and let my hands wander up his muscular back. He kissed me harder, possessing me completely. He backed away an inch and leaned his forehead against mine.
“Come on. Before I decide to skip your surprise.”
I pouted out my lips and then smiled. “You are turning me into a pouting girl. I am not a pouting girl. On to the surprise. Lead the way.”
Cole pushed off of the wall and tucked me into his side. Instead of breaking off to head toward the living quarters, we went toward the back of the house. We stepped out onto an expansive patio that overlooked the valley sitting in the base of the Catskills. It was snowing, leaving the area looking fresh and clean. He pulled me in the direction of a detached garage, where he scanned his card at the door.
Inside sat an array of luxury cars. He grabbed a set of keys hanging from the wall and an SUV’s led headlights lit up.
“Where are we going?” We had to pack and leave for Prague in the next four hours. “We can’t just go play hooky right now. I mean, I would love to pretend like the world isn’t on the brink of world war three, but Cole…” I sighed as he opened up the passenger door. “We have responsibilities to our country, to all of humanity. We can’t
go for a joyride.”
He leaned in and kissed my lips softly. “We won’t be gone long.” He winked at me and closed the passenger door.
He walked around the front of the car, smiling to himself. I wanted to be spontaneous. Live in the moment, for this moment. I’d always had such a strong grip on my responsibility and control. The next few days would be challenging emotionally, physically, and mentally. Could I be this girl? The girl who was spontaneous? I was allowed to act my age every once in a while. Right?
The car door slammed shut. “You ready?”
I took his hand. “Yeah, let’s go.”
As the garage door opened, the blaring sun against the crisp white snow proved about as much fun to look at as stabbing a pencil in your eye. I squinted in response. Cole smirked at me and leaned into the back to hand me a sunglasses' box with a bow on it.
“How did you—”
A kiss from him cut me off.
“I had Harrison pick them up after we left the Bahamas. I just haven’t had the right time to give them to you.”
I popped open the case and a pair of black sunglasses looked back at me. I slid them on my face and pursed my lips. “How do I look?”
Cole smiled at me and shook his head. “You’re always gorgeous,” he replied softly.
I blushed and then stuck out my tongue. “All those slick words, when you already have me.”
I slid the glasses down the bridge of my nose and looked him in the eyes. Cole was still new for me; a boy responding and caring for me was like breathing on Mars. I mean, hell, I was still a virgin. Not like I wanted my first time to be at school, and since then, it just hadn’t been important. I chewed on my bottom lip.
“You have got to stop looking at me like that or we won’t make it out of the garage.”
His eyes heated when I released my lip from my teeth and as he hissed a breath in through tight lips.