She lets out a sigh, and I finally look up at her. Her lips twist into a frown. “Am I happy being a human blowtorch only when I’m connected to Daniel? Not really. I’d love to be able to do it myself, but if I can’t, I’ll live. But it’s different for Daniel. He gets this crazy rush when it happens, like it’s what he was always meant to do. That’s what he says anyway.”
“I get it. I love flying. It makes me feel powerful and everything, but I don’t think I’d actually care about it that much if it wasn’t for Merrin and her obsession.”
Leni nods. “So you have to just accept that she does care. And I know you’re stressed and I know you’re really worried about your sisters, but we’ll never be safer than we are now. Take advantage of it. No matter how much Merrin sneaks around, she’s within the four most secure walls for Supers in the country, okay? It’s going to be fine.” She grins at me. “Breathe, Elias.”
I want to believe her. I really do. But everything just feels so…dangerous. I fling my hands out hopelessly and fall back on the bed. “But you can’t know that for sure, Len. If something happened to her…”
“You can’t know anything for sure. Ever. You could be in a countryside hole in the ground somewhere and be in danger, even if you might not know it.”
“Leni, we’re on the run from an evil genius who tried to kill my sisters. And me. And probably you and Mer and Daniel, too. We don’t know what kind of intel he has, we don’t know if someone here is a mole, we don’t know — ”
“Stop. You’re right — we don’t know everything we could possibly know. But what I’m saying is that if she’s going to snoop around without you, this moment is probably the safest time ever for her to be doing that.”
I sit up and have a staring contest with Leni for a good two to three seconds. Then she starts laughing, and I run my hand through my hair again. “This is how you rationalize all the shit Daniel does so that you don’t freak out, isn’t it?”
“Have you known me since I was six?”
I laugh and sigh again. “Obviously
She smiles. “You forget, E, I’ve known you since you were six, too. And you always make it worse in your head than it really is.”
“Shut up,” I grumble, resuming my elbows-on-knees stance and staring at the carpet. It’s dark green flecked with pink and white. Such weird colors for carpet.
“You know this is who Merrin is. She can’t chill out when it comes to genetics. She’s obsessed. That’s part of the reason you like her.”
“I know,” I say, dropping my volume. It’s really not fair of me to grumble at Leni when it seems like, somehow, she has it all figured out.
“You can’t hold her so tightly she suffocates, E. Right or wrong, someday she’s going to need to run away from you so she can figure out who she is. And you’re going to be devastated. But you’ll get through it. ”
“Are you kidding me with this philosophical shit?”
Leni laughs. “Seriously. She loves you, but she knows she’ll be miserable and make you miserable if she doesn’t do everything she can to figure that power thing out.”
“Do you think she’ll ever quit poking around in labs and trying to inject herself with chemicals while I’m not paying attention?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I think she’ll chase every lead she can.”
“And if I don’t want her to? Because I’m terrified I’m going to lose her?”
“If you fight her on it, you’ll lose her for sure.”
The silence after that is comfortable and lingering. Leni is absolutely the best person to talk to because she never makes me feel like a freak for sitting and thinking. It only takes me a handful of seconds to realize how completely right she is. I would rather have a happy Merrin who scares the shit out of me every once in a while than a miserable Merrin who resents me for not letting her. I think.
That doesn’t mean I want to pace and fidget and worry until she gets back. I’m going to have to find some way to deal. But I don’t want to hash it all out with Leni right now, so instead I just groan and fall back on the bed again.
Leni laughs, gets up out of the chair, and flops down on the other bed. We both stare at the ceiling. It’s a drop-style job with tiles laid in a metal framework, and each of them is pocked with hundreds of holes.
“I’ll bet by the time we count a thousand holes, they’ll be back.” She raises her finger at the ceiling. “One…two…”
“Okay, that is a weird coping mechanism.”
“Shut up,” she laughs, reaching behind her and lobbing one of the pillows at me. “Like your stupid guy griping was that much better.”
It’s the first time I’ve really laughed in days, and it feels good. I take advantage of the deep breaths to drag the air into my lungs, and that makes me wonder when the next time Merrin and I fly will be. Whether we’ll go supersonic. Whether I’ll see that smile of ridiculous, unimaginable, awed happiness on her face again.
“Don’t even think about starting to worry again right now. Let’s just talk like normal people until they get back. You and me, talking about normal stuff.”
But I don’t even know what’s normal anymore. I’m lying in my bedroom laughing with my best friend, but instead of Mom being down the hall and Rosie cooking us dinner, we’re in a dorm room in Virginia, under lockdown. And my girlfriend and Leni’s boyfriend are trying to sneak into a high-tech lab to scan genetic manipulators based on our blood.
And my sisters are somewhere out in the world, completely out of control of their powers.
Yeah. Not normal.
Nothing might ever be the way it used to be ever again, but at least I can prepare for it. “So tell me about breaking into Biotech? Obviously, I couldn’t hear you during debrief.” I know what Merrin told me, but I want Leni’s take.
“Oh my God. Yeah. That was crazy. Merrin called us at like four-thirty in the morning, dragged us out of bed.”
“Us? As in you and Daniel? Out of bed? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Oh, please, Elias. First of all, I’m not talking about that with you. You’re like my brother. Gross. And also, this is not girl talk hour.”
Heat flushes my cheeks. She’s right — she is like my sister — but hell if I’ve ever thought of Leni or either of my sisters that way. I shake my head, forcing the image of her and Daniel doing that stuff out of my mind. “Okay, okay. And then?”
“She made Daniel hack her cuff. We all broke in, we torched the security system, she broke into the labs. She had a screaming match with Fisk…”
“Okay, that’s about the point I remember from,” I say, fighting a grin. Merrin risked a whole hell of a lot for me, and even though I hated that she had to do that, it was confirmation that she at least felt the same way about me that I did about her.
Just then, a sharp rapid knock rattles the door, and Leni dashes to it before I’m even upright.
“Yeah, you’re the picture of chill,” I mutter.
“I heard that,” she throws back over her shoulder. Her hair swings across her back like it’s got a life of its own.
She throws her arms around Daniel’s neck and drags him to sit on the bed next to her. Merrin’s right after them and plants a kiss on my lips, softer and more lingering than she’s ever done in front of anyone else before.
Merrin hates PDA. Something is up.
Then she collapses, face-first, on the bed beside me, letting herself bounce. For effect, I assume.
I pass my hand over her head, letting my fingers run through her hair. It’s all I can do to stop it from moving down her back, playing at her waist, squeezing her hip. But her weird kiss and the messenger bag at her side rein me back in. I swallow, hard, and command myself to calm the hell down. This is not the time, even if it could be the place. Instead, I ask, “What’d you find?”
Daniel answers, not Merrin. “The lab has a mass spectrometer, even if it is a really old one. The facilities here are nothing like at Biotech.”
<
br /> “So…what does that mean?”
“I’m guessing they could see the type of formula it was but not which components were derived from which points on the DNA,” Leni says.
Merrin nods. “Exactly.”
I’m disappointed for her but strangely relieved. “So their equipment is useless? Are you sure you saw their most advanced lab?”
“According to the map, there’s no place else it could be,” Daniel says, scuffing the carpet with his shoe. “And I figure they really have no reason to keep something that high-tech secret to their insiders.”
He has a point. Biotech had secret labs-within-labs so that they could conduct their less ethical experiments on kids without the whole town knowing. But CS isn’t Biotech.
“Okay, so their equipment actually sucks. They don’t have even close to the caliber of spectrometer they need as a Hub. Sounds like President Masters talks a good game, but if Biotech has gone rogue, the Super community is completely screwed,” Merrin says with a sigh.
She props her chin up on her hands, casting the most mournful gaze I’ve ever seen around the room. Is she actually pouting? God, she’s really disappointed. And really, really, really cute.
“I just can’t believe we got this far only to be stuck at a Hub with a substandard bioresearch center. I mean, there’s focusing on advancement, and then there is focusing on performance.” Her voice is almost whiney, and I bite back a smile.
“They already told us they were focused on performance, though, Mer. We knew that.”
She blows out a long breath, and looking at her face, I see a glimpse of what Merrin’s freaking out about. It’s true that I’ve never been nearly as focused on flying as she has. For me, it was a daydream. For her, it was a life’s ambition. But the fact that our abilities could be in such flux, that they could change so much in such a short time to allow us to go supersonic… That could be dangerous, or it could be awesome. I’m more concerned about the dangerous, and I know Merrin is more concerned about the awesome.
“We figured out the very basic type of the core formula in each vial. I wrote it down…” She pulls a white, wadded-up something out of her pocket.
Leni rolls her eyes. “You wrote it on a napkin, Mer?”
“We don’t have cuffs yet or tablets. It’s not like there’s any paper around. And even if I did have a tablet, I assume they’ve got some kind of way to see what’s on it…”
“If you get a tablet and you want to put your personal stuff on there, you know Daniel could hack it.”
He throws up his hands. “Hey, remember what happened the last time you guys made me hack something?”
“Yeah. We blew up Biotec,” Leni says softly.
We all look at each other for a couple solid seconds, and then the barest hint of a smile cracks across Daniel’s face. “Yeah, okay. That was pretty awesome.”
A little laugh escapes Merrin, and then Leni is giggling. I smile, too.
“So lesson learned,” Merrin says. “We have each other’s backs. No matter what.”
“No matter what,” the three of us echo.
I move a hand to Merrin’s knee, and she scoots even closer to me, letting her body mold against mine.
Leni’s eyes flick down to my hand and back up to Merrin’s head resting on my shoulder. “We’re going to go. We have to get some rest before boot camp or whatever tomorrow.”
Daniel stands up and reaches a hand down to her, and she takes it lazily, comfortably, wrapping her fingers around his and smiling.
Merrin’s voice drifts dreamily from my shoulder. “Don’t wander the halls too long, you two.”
When the door clicks shut, Merrin turns into me, and, like our body parts are magnets, my fingers push through the hair at the back of her neck. Her lips press into my neck, and a small hum escapes her.
Her very being is driving me absolutely crazy. She’s got to know that.
My hand drifts down her neck, and she looks up at me. I bend down and press my lips to hers, and it’s soft and warm and exactly where I want to be. Too soon, she smiles against my lips and pulls back.
“I’m leaving before I’m tempted to ditch Hayley and stay here.” Her voice is low, and soft.
“Why don’t you?” I close my eyes and press my nose to her hair.
She laughs and kisses me again.
God, I could live inside this moment.
“They check. It’s an all-persons-accounted-for kind of thing. You know, the security you love so much?
“Mmm.” I clear my throat. “Right. Security.” I stand up and tug my shirt down over that area that’s standing out more than I like on my jeans.
Merrin walks lazily to the door. “I’m not done, you know, Elias. I’m not giving up. I’m just gonna ask about their biotech stuff at our orientation or whatever tomorrow. There must be something else. Someone else. But I promise you, no matter what happens here, I will always be careful.”
A lump rises in my throat, and I pull her tight to me. If I didn’t know better, I would think the utter smallness of her, the way my arms overlap when they encircle her, means she’s fragile. But I know she’s not.
“I will,” she repeats, pressing a kiss to my chest.
She pulls away, turns, and walks out the door, throwing a smile over her shoulder. “See you in the morning.”
And before I can get a word in, she’s already gone.
I fall into bed still wearing all my clothes and remember nothing about my dreams except the skittering voices that run through a dark landscape. They chatter syllables that sometimes make me feel like they’ve moved into my brain and are there to stay.
Eleven
Kara wakes me up with an alarm that gets progressively louder until the annoying beeps vibrate through my skull.
Then her voice fills the room. “Good morning, Elias. Your Hub orientation will begin in one-and-a-half hours, and breakfast has already begun.”
I roll over and groan. The curtains in this room have made it perfectly pitch black, but I finally lift my head, open my eyes, and squint at the glowing border around the window. “What time is it?”
“Eight-thirty. You were sleeping very soundly.”
Creepy. I stretch out of bed and stagger into the bathroom, squinting when the bright, blue-tinged lights glow to life.
“Geez. Lights low.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that it’s a habit from being at Biotech, but this Hub seems to have some of the same technology because the lights dim exactly as they would have at home.
Once I splash some water on my face and scrub at my teeth with the sonic handheld cleaner, I feel okay, and my mind returns to one thing: find Merrin and figure out what we’re doing next.
Because with us, there’s always a next thing. If I’m going to be with her, I have to learn to accept that.
Another clean set of Hub-standard clothes appeared in my closet while I was at debriefing yesterday, along with the street clothes I asked for. I pitch the ones I wore yesterday into Pat’s small square door on the wall. Forceful suction yanks them out of my hands, and they whoosh down through the tube. That’s way more impressive than what Rosie used to do, which was clunkily lower the pile of clothes down the chute and start the laundry on a timer. Mom was always going down there to make sure Rosie didn’t mess up the sorting. Since it’s Hub orientation, I pick the Hub uniform and check it in the mirror, smoothing it down over my stomach. It feels kind of silly to be wearing a glorified jogging suit, but it doesn’t look half bad on me.
I hook my glasses behind my ears, and as I move toward the door, Kara says, “Elias, your new cuff has arrived.”
On the wall just inside the door, there’s a black box with a handle and a latch. I snap it open, and cushioned in gray, high-density foam is the highest-tech cuff I’ve ever seen. The ones back home were three-inch tablets strapped to our arms with fabric, but this is sleeker, closer-fitting. When I strap it on, the material stretches. It feels like a thicker, more
breathable version of the Hub clothing.
“What’s this made out of, Kara?”
“It’s a highly flexible, high-density polymer. It can handle great extremities of heat, trauma, and high speeds.”
“So it’s basically indestructible.”
“That’s correct. Would you like help programming it? It’s already adjusted to your name, birthdate, and basic biostats, but it will collect more data as you go about your day and spend more time at Clandestine Services.”
“Of course,” I murmur, tapping at the slim screen as it asks me yes/no questions about my preferences for time display (regular, not military); phone calls (I decide to allow incoming, on the off-chance that Nora or Lia get to a phone); and my favorite music (I put in some slower acoustic tracks, leaving room for the hard rock I know Merrin will put in there when I’m not watching.)
A few other guys about my age are leaving their rooms, too, but they’re mostly already talking to each other and no one really looks at me. Still, I subconsciously follow the crowd, assuming everyone’s going to exactly the same place I am. I guess high school will do that to you.
As soon as I get into the vicinity of the dining commons, the smells go straight to my stomach. God, I’m starving. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night — whether it was good and whether I felt full afterward. Right. I fell asleep before I could make my way down to the dining area. My stomach growls at the realization, and I’m even hungrier.
I grab a glass of orange juice, looking for Merrin, Daniel, Leni, or even Hayley, but no one else is here. I’m starting to feel fidgety all by myself, so I find a table and scarf down a huge pile of sausage, potatoes, and eggs in about ten minutes flat.
I try to check out every person in the room while I’m stuffing my face. It looks like everyone at CSH is an adult — within ten years on either side of my parents’ age or college-aged kids not much older than me. I’m the youngest one here.
Food gone, there’s no reason for me to sit here alone, so I dump my tray and walk out, once again acutely aware of how tall I am without the others around me. I don’t like the feeling of being all alone, especially here. The only one in an entire room who’s an outsider, a freak. I don’t like it at all. My skin prickles, and I pick up my pace. I need to find Merrin. The others.
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