“Miss Grey and Mr. VanDyne, I trust that you had a chance to rest, refresh, and eat? Are you ready for your debriefing now?”
We nod.
Daniel looks around at the hundreds of people gathered in here for the meal. “How did you find us in here?”
She smiles and taps her ear. “…I can hear you. Great Super to have at CSH.”
“Whoa,” Merrin whispers.
“Indeed,” she says, letting her smile grow wider. She motions for us to stand. “Please, follow me.”
TEN
The five of us do as she asks. I’m careful to keep my face expressionless, and I know Merrin is trying, too. But more than a few people in the bustling lunch room stare at us as we weave between the tables to the exit.
I tell myself it’s Leni’s hair they’re looking at or how freakishly tall I am — both things have always stood out in a crowd — but a sinking feeling in my stomach tells me it’s not. Emily leads us down another nondescript hallway with hardwood floors and white walls. Merrin’s head moves slightly as she inspects our surroundings. Here the paintings are replaced with official-looking nameplates beside every door.
I lean down and speak in her ear, continuing the conversation we were having before Emily came to get us. “I want us to be safe, Merrin, so what? I don’t see what the big deal is.”
The words rush out, low and angry, and though I didn’t really think I was that upset, it feels good to say them. Feels good to finally admit that I’m freaking pissed off about the fact that my best friends, my girlfriend, and myself are in mortal danger.
“You think I don’t want us to be safe?” Her voice is pitched so only I can hear it, but I can’t miss the frustration there.
“I don’t know. I think you really want to figure out what’s up with those vials.” Even if it puts us all in danger. How can she be so oblivious? So damn stubborn?
“Of course I do. Don’t you? Didn’t you love flying alone, Elias? I mean, wasn’t it amazing?”
I shrug. “It was fine. But you know what really makes me happy? You. Alive. Breathing. And standing next to me. Conscious.”
“Well, yeah. Of course. I mean, you, too.”
I shake my head but look forward. I don’t want to see her eye roll, and I’m determined to focus on the task at hand. Follow Emily. Debrief. Talk to Merrin about all this vials-of-formula and emotional stuff later. I clench my fists. I love Merrin so much, but sometimes I just don’t understand her. And this is important. It’s something I need to understand.
She grabs my hand, her delicate fingers wrapping around my long ones, gently tugging me to a stop. “Elias. Listen to me.” Her eyes flick over to Leni and Daniel. “I love you. I would not have broken into the Biotech Hub to save your ass if I didn’t, okay? Let’s talk about this later.”
I know she loved that place. Being part of that Hub and the work they did there was her dream, and she’s right. She did break in there for me, ruining any chance of that future.
She looks into my eyes and tugs at my hand. “Come on. Let’s catch up.”
I let myself follow, but I can’t help the frustrated twinge in my gut.
Emily gestures to a set of interrogation rooms. I’ve seen enough TV to know that’s what they are. She smiles reassuringly. “This is where all new arrivals at CSH report within twenty-four hours of their arrival. We will be splitting you up during the debriefs, which I’m sure you’ll understand.”
“What if we don’t all say the same thing?” Merrin asks, looking at me from the corner of her eye.
“The interviewers enjoy telepathic communication with one another.”
“You have mind readers?” I ask. Something about that pushes a ball of tension up in my throat. The idea of telepathy has always scared the crap out of me.
Emily smiles like a proud parent. “Our telepathic staff have worked on honing their skills for years, but be assured they can only communicate telepathically with one another. No one will be reading your minds if that’s what you were concerned about.” She paused. “Though there will be other associates sitting in each of your sessions who are Gifted in sensing the veracity of words and reactions.”
“Lie detectors,” says Daniel. “You have human lie detector Supers. That’s amazing.”
“Mr. VanDyne, you’ll be in the first room. I’ll be right back after I get him situated.”
Merrin squeezes my hand, and I nod at her before I step into the room. It’s very small, maybe a quarter of the size of my room back in the dormitory wing. It’s not the typical card-table-and-uncomfortable-chair setup you’d expect to see though. Instead, there’s a comfortable couch, a shorter and more compact version of the ones in the lounge area, and two armchairs opposite. There’s a second door on the opposite wall.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Emily says.
There’s no way I’m going to be comfortable in here. The couch’s stiff material is sterile and uninviting, and I squint against the cool glare of the fluorescent lights above. I lower myself on the couch and try to figure out a way to arrange my legs so I don’t look like a discombobulated insect out of its normal habitat. I’m not sure I’m succeeding.
The door on the other side of the room clicks open, and two people, a man and a woman not much older than Nora and Lia, enter the room.
The guy is shorter than me, solidly built with broad shoulders, hair cropped very close to his head and glasses. The girl has long, blonde hair that bounces around her shoulders in waves and a confident posture. They each take a chair opposite the couch.
“I’m Amy.” The girl extends her hand with a warm smile.
“And I’m Nate,” the guy says. “I’ll be the one asking questions today, and Amy will be recording your responses.”
Amy must be the lie detector. Amy is also gorgeous. I can see how she would be very useful to the Clandestine Services Hub, both as a Super and as a spy. Most guys probably take just one look at her and forget all the complicated lies they were planning to feed her.
For the next hour, they ask me every question they possibly can about how I got to there. The only difference between this and an interrogation on a cop show is that, in-between my answers, Nate sits up stock-straight and silent and makes his own notes. I assume he’s listening to what the other telepaths are telling him Merrin, Hayley, Leni, and Daniel say and then asking me the next question accordingly.
If I wasn’t so worried about making a mistake, all of this would be incredibly cool.
At the end of the session, Nate smiles and says, “Thanks for the honesty, man. Makes my job easier. Welcome to CSH.”
When Amy shakes my hand, she flicks her eyebrows up and smiles, and I could swear she winks. A flood of relief surges through me, not because a hot chick is flirting with me, but because if she is, at least it means that she doesn’t suspect me of being a national security threat.
Amy gestures to the door. “Okay. You’re all set here. Next up, you’re meeting with President Masters.”
“My friends, too?”
Nate freezes again — asking the others, I assume. “Yep,” he says. “Follow me.”
Nate leads the five of us through the complex and stops in front of Masters’ office. I give them all a quick smile and nod, letting my eyes linger on Merrin. She’s shifting her weight back and forth from leg to leg. Her movements are so slight I don’t think anyone but me would notice — the kind of movement she does to keep control over her lightness when she’s distracted by something else.
Nate smiles. “Go on in. The president is expecting you. It was great to meet you all, and again, welcome to CSH.”
President Masters sits in a large, black office chair wearing a crisp white button-down shirt and black pants. He manages to look casual and slightly intimidating all at the same time, a talent I wish I had. His smile is genuine as he gestures to the chairs in front of his desk.
“Thank you for cooperating with the debrief,” he says as we sit. “The information you carry can hel
p the entire nation of Supers. Especially with the changes that are currently raging through our society. And I hope those of you who are interested in joining our effort will consider staying with us here permanently.”
Both Merrin and Daniel begin to respond, but Masters holds up his hand to stop them.
“Our intelligence has confirmed that the Biotech Hub is working on something that will, in their terms, cure the mutations that make Supers…well…Supers. Obviously, here at CS, we’re pretty happy with our powers. Is it safe to assume you four are as well?”
Merrin opens her mouth to speak, but again, President Masters interrupts. “Or at least with the uses for your Ones you’ve discovered?”
Merrin reaches for her shoulder, and her fist clenches there, around the phantom strap of her messenger bag. Her face relaxes, and she drops her hand. For once, I’m glad she stashed that thing. I realize that I completely forgot to bring up those damn vials in the debrief, and I’m assuming the other three kept quiet about them as well, for one reason or another. Otherwise, Nate would have slipped in a question about that.
Masters pins us all with that unreadable gaze. “At CSH, we welcome anyone with any powers, as long as they’re willing to help our cause. We offer an intake training program. It’s a bit like military boot camp, but with clandestine-focused skills instead of military ones. And it seems from your debrief, you’ve already had experience using your powers against an enemy combatant.”
His tone is scolding, but his eyebrows raise and slight smile tugs at his lips. He’s just as amused by us blowing up the Biotech Hub as Michael and Max would be by messing up Merrin’s room.
“I see the potential in all of you, and I’d like to help you develop that potential to aid society and all Supers.” He brings his hands together. “Sound good?”
We all nod. I don’t think we really know what else to do. And it’s not like he’s giving us another choice.
“Great. We’re going to get you all set up with new cuffs that’ll make it easier to govern your access around the building. However, these cuffs will not allow you to receive or send communications outside this building — is that clear? It’s for your own safety.”
“What if something’s wrong? What if we need to call out for…I don’t know…” Leni says. Her eyes dart around the room.
“You won’t. We’re a very self-contained community here, Miss Summers. And I guarantee you are perfectly safe and will be well cared for here.”
“But our parents…” Leni’s voice trails off as President Masters presses his lips into a thick line.
He looks apologetic, but I hear the steel behind his words. Whatever he thinks of us, he has bigger things to worry about. “Frankly, between the biobomb and the unusual circumstances of your arrival, we’re just not comfortable with you communicating with anyone connected with or in close proximity to any of the Hubs. I’m sorry.”
Leni swallows hard. I want to reach out and put my arm around her, but in front of President Masters, showing any kind of affection just doesn’t feel right.
He clears his throat. “All right. That’s all for now. Emily will take you back to your rooms. Dinner is in just a couple hours, and your orientation and training will begin tomorrow morning.”
Emily leads us back to the dorm wing, and the path is becoming familiar. A map of the building starts to form in my mind. It’s is one huge, solid rectangle, divided by the hallways into nesting rectangles, one inside the other. I assume the space in the center of the compound is maximum security, and I realize as we move further outward from President Masters’ office that I’m right. Thankfully, the dormitory wing is in the next layer. We’re more vulnerable when we’re sleeping, and I feel more relaxed knowing that security is tighter there.
Once Emily is out of sight, Merrin turns to Daniel. “You said you still have your cousin’s scan card?” she asks breathlessly.
Daniel glances around the hall. “No, but I can get it again. I had to give it back to him last night, or he would have known something was up. Actually, I can try to get his wife Sarah’s. She’s here, too, and I think she has higher level clearance..”
“What kind of clearance?” Merrin asks.
A look of excitement sweeps over Daniel’s face. “Med clearance. She’s a doctor. Yes. You’re a genius.”
Leni throws up a hand. “Whoa, wait a minute. You already did your ridiculous spy stuff last night. We said that was it. That was the last time you were going to do something crazy. We found Elias and Merrin, and now we’re going to figure out our next steps. Legally.”
“I’m going to bed,” Hayley says. “No offense, but I just got here. I don’t want to get kicked back out on my first night.” She doesn’t wait for any of our approval before she walks back down the hall, throwing a “see you tomorrow” over her shoulder.
Daniel frowns at her. “But Merrin wasn’t here before, and now she has those formulas with her. If they have the equipment here to help us analyze them, that would be awesome.”
Leni’s angry glance flicks between Daniel and Merrin. “Why didn’t either of you bring this up during debrief?”
“We don’t know very much about the formulas,” Merrin says. “We can’t just give this stuff to them without knowing its value. I don’t think President Masters would do anything differently if it were him.”
I raise my eyebrows at her.
Merrin shakes her head, gets that look I can never resist. “I just want a peek, okay? I really can’t hand them over without knowing what they are. It’s harmless, Elias, I swear.”
“Do you want me to come with you? To get the bag?”
“No,” Merrin says quickly, but when she sees my face fall, she jumps to continue. “I mean, you’ll only be worried the whole time, it’ll stress you out, and it’ll take Daniel and me no time at all. Go chill out. We’ll slip in and slip out while everyone’s going home for the night. Run some slide samples, check out some data — it’ll be fine.”
“They haven’t registered our cuffs yet, and our biodata probably won’t upload to security until tomorrow. I got that much out of Naveen,” Daniel says. “So if we’re going to sneak into a lab, we really have to do it now,” Daniel says. “I’ll talk Sarah into letting us into the lab. I’ll have her show me around, and Merrin can say she’s going to the bathroom and go run some slides back at one of the stations.”
“That? Is an awesome plan.” Merrin’s eyes spark like they do when she’s about to do something she’s really excited about, something she absolutely loves. I know her mind has been on that messenger bag since the moment Nora handed her that vial, standing in the middle of the destroyed Biotech Hub, at the same moment my whole life was imploding around me.
My mind, on the other hand, has been getting as far away from Biotech as possible. Not to mention that there are about a hundred things that could go wrong with Daniel’s plan.
“It is not an awesome plan,” I say. “If you two get caught, who the hell knows what could happen? They could torture us, they could kick us out, they could send us back to Biotech — ”
“And if we don’t do this, we could be completely clueless about those formulas forever,” Merrin counters.
I throw my hands up in the air. “So? We’re fine right now. Why can’t we just be here? Be safe? Live our lives?”
“Because this is about more than just flying, Elias. If Biotech is still hell-bent on making a Cure and one of those vials is the key to it, we won’t be safe here much longer anyway.”
I look at Leni, hoping for support. She breathes in and out steadily with a pained look on her face. She feels sorry for me, but she’s not going to do anything.
Daniel reaches for her hand, and she gives it to him, clasping his forearm with her other one. She stretches up on her toes and rests her forehead against his, then kisses him quickly. Then she says something in his ear, and he smiles, kisses her on the cheek, and drops her hand.
How is she possibly okay with just letting him go
off and risk all our futures like this?
Merrin squeezes my hand before joining Daniel. “I’ll take care of him, okay, Len?”
She winks. “I know you will.”
Daniel nods to me as if to say the same thing about Mer, and I shake my head, letting a deep sigh out through my nose. My heart’s sinking more and more by the second. I hate that not only Merrin, but also my sisters, feel like they’re slipping further and further from my grasp every second, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
“Seriously, we’ll be back before you know it. I swear,” Daniel says.
Leni starts to walk down the hall, touching my arm so that I’ll follow. “We’ll wait for you in Elias’ room, okay?”
“See you back here in a few. Maybe we’ll bring some ice cream.” Merrin smiles at me before she turns and walks at a fast clip to keep up with Daniel’s strides toward the residential wing. Just going to scam Naveen’s wife. No big deal. Daniel might be a better fit for the Clandestine Services Hub than I thought.
I scan my handprint into the panel beside my door and let the retina scanner sweep over my eyeball before pushing open the door. Leni follows me inside where Kara greets us both.
“Does she do that every time you go into a room?” I ask.
“Nah,” Leni says, twisting my desk chair around and straddling it so that her chin rests on the back of it. “Just the dormitories. Which, of course, is where it’s annoying as hell. Nice that you got a single room.”
“Yeah, I guess there’s an odd number of guys.”
“Wow. Did you tell Merrin that yet?” Leni wiggles her eyebrows at me.
“Shut up.” I sit down on the bed and hunch over, elbows on knees, and rake my fingers through my hair. A deep sigh rushes out of me.
Leni’s voice goes serious, and she asks, “She’s stressing you out, isn’t she?”
I stare at the floor. I love Merrin, but lately, it’s been harder than I’d ever imagined. “Isn’t Daniel stressing you out? Don’t you just want him to be happy being safe in a Hub where no one’s going to put us in sensory deprivation? Don’t you just want to forget about this Ones’-genetic bullshit?”
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