Two

by LeighAnn Kopans

  “Have you considered that it might mean they’ve stabilized? That they’re hiding out? Or maybe that whatever they’re doing out there, it’s not bad enough to make a mark?”

  I frown. “Yeah, you’re right. It probably means that. I know.”

  Merrin smiles and tilts her head to the side. “Do me a favor? Just for tonight, will you take it as a good sign? We can keep looking in the morning, okay? It’s been a good day.”

  I know Merrin’s right. I don’t know anything, and worrying isn’t going to help me find them. I need to ignore the twisting in my gut. Just for tonight.

  And when she pulls me down on the bed beside her, rests her legs across mine, and slips her arm around my waist, there’s nothing wrong. Because this is the most perfect moment I could ever imagine.

  Merrin presses her lips against the underside of my jaw, and her breath wraps me in warmth. I let my eyes close and think of what a world would look like with just the two of us. With no worries about Supers or Hubs or blood work.

  Sounds like heaven to me, but it would be boring as hell for Merrin.

  But that thought doesn’t bum me out like usual. Instead, I’m grateful for right now, for the feel of her fingers digging into my side. I dip my head and press my lips to hers. I get lost there for a long while.

  When my lips buzz from the heady combination of kissing and warmth and exhaustion, I draw back and run my hand down the side of her face. She makes a pleased sound, like a cat basking in the sun.

  “You should get back to your room,” I say, “before they do the bioscan room checks.”

  She smiles up at me, her eyes drifting closed. “Did you miss that Daniel got here? Do you think I wasted any time having him hack both of our rooms so that I could stay here overnight?”

  A ridiculous smile spreads across my face, and I want to roll over, touch my lips to hers, thank her appropriately. But her body’s already gone heavy, telling me she’s on the edge of sleep. So instead I just reach up and turn out the light. In the darkness, I pepper her face with kisses, soft touches of my mouth to her gorgeous eyelashes and cheekbones that hopefully spell out to this sleepy girl how much I love her.

  She lets out a lazy, relaxed laugh. “He was already doing it to Leni’s room, too, of course. And the intake guys didn’t think to ask him about his non-Super skills in the testing arena today.”

  She murmurs something about remembering the first time we flew, and I tease her about calling me a hippie in the hallways of Nelson High, an eternity ago. Her voice floats through my head like it lives there, curling up in the corners where it can’t possibly leave.

  My eyes are so heavy and the room is so dark that soon her voice becomes a part of my dreams, weaving through scenes of Nebraska fields and music rooms and high school hallways. And then, slowly, other voices creep in. The deep velvet of Masters’ and the quiet musing of Vera’s. Daniel’s brooding baritone and Leni’s reedy laugh.

  The dream shifts, and I’m in a city alleyway. Horns honk in the distance, and the hum of traffic fills the air. I’ve never seen this place before, not in movies or real life.

  At the end of the alleyway, maybe even just around the corner, two girls’ voices clatter together in a quick, hushed argument. One is out of breath. I step closer, each step amplifying them, clarifying the nuances. So familiar but otherworldly.

  Just as I’m about to reach them, so close I can almost feel their vibrations in the air, one begins panting, and the other lets forth a curse. It hits me all at once, like a tidal wave — Nora. That was Nora, and the other girl is Lia. It’s been so long since I’ve heard them, but when she says curses like that, of course I know it’s her.

  I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than to take one more step, to see them and confirm what my ears are telling me is true. But the walls of the alleyway start to disintegrate, and the dust particles whip around me, just like the water droplets in the mini-hurricane Hayley created. I would scream if I could get any sound out. Instead, my face contorts, my stomach heaves, and my arms flail, trying to hold on to anything that’s real, even if it’s just the sound of my sisters’ voices.

  THIRTEEN

  I wake up to a cool hand on my face. Merrin’s stormy eyes stare down into mine. Her ribs move in and out in short bursts against my chest, and when my eyes fully open, she breathes out and the tension leaves her face. She sinks back down beside me, fitting her head into the crook of my neck like she always does. Her arm snakes back around my waist.

  “Are you okay? You were, like, shaking. And making weird noises.”

  I turn and kiss her forehead. My voice is stuck. I don’t know what I just saw or whether I should bother her with it. So I rub my hand up and down her arm, and she makes that noise of complete satisfaction that I love so much.

  And I fall back into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep.

  The alarm on my new cuff blares in my ear, and I wake with a start. Merrin mumbles something and flips over, burying her face in the pillow while I swing my legs out of bed.

  Kara’s voice comes out of the cuff this. “Good morning, Elias.”

  Merrin yawns and heaves herself out of bed. She wanders into the bathroom where she’s quiet for a moment until I hear her swishing and spitting water.

  “What time is it?” she asks, poking her damp face out of the bathroom.

  “It’s eight o’clock.” I must be barely out of sleep because I say the first thing on my mind, after last night. “Kara, do you think there’s any way I could get an appointment with President Masters? As soon as possible?”

  “Let me check his schedule with his assistants.”

  A few seconds later, she replies, “He’ll see you at nine o’clock. Would you like me to set an alarm for that appointment?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll remember.” I tug off my shirt from yesterday and drop it on the floor.

  The bathroom door swings open, and Merrin sidles up behind me, sliding her hand around and over my stomach.

  “You look good in the morning,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice.

  I spin her around, and she floats up to eye level, where she tries to kiss me. I bury my face in her neck instead, mumbling, “I’m not kissing you with morning breath.”

  “You have before. I still liked it.”

  “Yeah, but I was exhausted and not thinking.” I’m still feeling on edge after that dream. I know I promised Leni that I would chill out, and I know she’s right. But I just can’t shake the feeling that something’s terribly wrong.

  I slide my hands against the ridges at the back of her jeans and underneath her shirt as she sinks back down to the ground, hoping that holding her like everything is normal will make me feel like everything is normal. But it doesn’t.

  “Speaking of exhausted, what were you dreaming about last night? You were so freaked out. You seemed okay once you woke up, but…”

  I plunge my arm into the closet and come out with a clean shirt. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  Merrin laughs. “It’s automated. There’s a panel in the back that replaces them every day.”

  I pull it down over my head, my voice muffled in the fabric for a moment. “Nothing. It was nothing.”

  I’m glad my face is covered. I know it was something, but I have no idea what. And I’m not bugging Merrin with it until I know more. She’s so excited to be here, and Leni was right — I need to be supportive. I need to let her do what she wants to do. I have to.

  “I’m going to go,” she says, pulling on her shoes. “I want to sneak out and grab those vials from our hiding place while the Supers are coming in for the morning.”

  “Did you find a new place to hide them?”

  “The room’s only so big, but I figured under Hayley’s mattress, they’re safe for today. Vera said I could spend all day in the lab with her and her mom, who’s in charge of the whole lab. I told her about the formulas, and she promised to break them down with me. I might finally get somewhere.”r />
  My fingers dig into my palms as heat builds in my chest and climbs up my neck. I walk toward the desk, trying to shake it off. “But you’re not injecting anything, right?”

  “It’s hard to say. Here, at least, we have some more tools at our disposal, and with Vera’s Super, I feel pretty good.”

  All of a sudden, the tension of the dream and Merrin doing more things with those vials, things that could hurt her just like my sisters are hurting, is just too much. The words fly out before I can stop them, in a voice louder than I want them to.

  “What the hell, Merrin?!”

  Her eyes narrow, and her mouth drops open, a mixture of confused and pissed off that I’ve seen on her once before — when she found out I’d known she was a One before I even met her — and never wanted to see again.

  I swore I’d never cause that look on her again.

  “‘What the hell?’ is right. Those are my formulas, Elias. Mine. Based on my genes, my One. The research they did on me when I was a child. My future. My potential Super.”

  “A Super that wouldn’t even be a possibility without me!” The way my voice snarls out of my throat surprises me and twists my heart in two. I don’t want to scream at Merrin, and I don’t want to do this. But this fight has been a long time coming.

  “A Super that’s only possible because I never quit trying, no matter what. And I’m not willing to quit trying now. So why the hell are you?”

  I throw both hands up in the air and sit down on the bed hard, forcing myself not to cross the room to her. I may be angry, but I don’t want to be combative. “I don’t know, Merrin. Maybe because there’s a difference between jumping off an airplane with a parachute and jumping off an airplane, hoping there will be a trampoline wherever you happen to land!”

  “Oh my God, Elias. That is so freaking ridiculous. Everyone knows the impact of smashing into the trampoline would kill you even if there was one there.”

  She’s trying to be funny, I know, but I’m not ready to stop yet. “That’s exactly my point. That’s what I mean. I know there’s no way you just want to find out what the formulas are. I know you’re going to want to inject them and then…and then…” Suddenly I can’t speak at all. Horrible images of my sisters twist through my mind, real visual proof of what I’ve seen that stuff do to people.

  Merrin’s face has relaxed, from pissed off to worried. She take three tentative steps toward me. I look back up at her and say, as clearly as I can manage, “I can’t lose you, too.”

  “Shit, Elias,” she mumbles, settling next to me on the bed. “Your sisters aren’t lost. Not yet. I already told you — that’s part of what I’m trying to figure out. The common link between you and me and your sisters is this transferability thing. If I can use my formulas to figure out how their bodies went into hyperdrive, maybe we can slow it down.” She places her hand over mine, where it’s clenching the bedspread. “And if we can go supersonic on our own, it’ll give us a much better chance of helping them.”

  “You can’t do that! You’re not a test subject.” When I say it, it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself. We’re more than experiments. We’re people who deserve lives. I’m starting to wonder whether we’ll ever have that.

  She pulls her hand back and puts it in her own lap. “I can do whatever I want. It’s my body.”

  “I just don’t understand how you’re okay with the very real possibility that this stuff could kill you. I’ve never understood that. Even with Hoffman…”

  “Don’t you bring up Hoffman. I realize that was stupid, but I didn’t know.”

  “So how is this different?” I shout, staring her full in the face.

  “Because now, I do know the potential, and I’m making the choice. That’s the difference.”

  “You could die if you inject yourself with that shit. Are you okay with that?” I know, and she knows, that I’m also asking whether she’s okay with leaving me without my parents, without my sisters, and without her.

  “And your sisters could die and all the Supers could lose their powers if I don’t.”

  We stare at each other for a long time, not touching, just breathing, silently passing the argument between us. We both know that it could go back and forth for days, with no proof that either of us is right.

  Finally, Merrin speaks in a quiet, measured tone. “You’ve never understood how I was okay risking my life just because it might change things. I’ve never understood why you’re so happy with the way things are. Don’t you ever want to be more?”

  The answer is yes, of course, and no and maybe and I’ve-never-really-thought-about-it, all wrapped up in one. I can’t find the right words to push into the space between us, so I stupidly don’t say anything.

  She sighs and stands up. “I promise I’ve thought about this, Elias. I have to move forward.”

  When she’s halfway across the room, I sputter, “What if…what if I told you I had a plan? To go after Nora and Lia?”

  “I’d say I think it’s pointless to go after them without a way to neutralize and contain them but that, if you want to try, I’m not going to stop you. And that I’m going to try to help the way I know best.”

  I will never understand this stubborn streak of hers. I feel better when I’m with her, but for the first time since we met, I wonder if it would be better to let our differences push us apart, so it doesn’t keep tearing my insides to shreds.

  She turns away and grips the door handle. Her anger radiates through the room, but I walk toward her anyway.

  “I loved last night,” I say softly.

  She sighs and turns around, her hand still on the door. “Me too.”

  “I liked it being just you and me, safe, with nothing to worry about.”

  She arches an eyebrow. “Do you really think we’re safe here?”

  I sigh. “I think we’re safe, but we’re wasting time. And I think you’re right — my sisters need me.” My voice trails off at the end. I know it’s not what she wants to hear, but it’s the truth.

  “If I can figure out what these formulas are, then we’ll know our next steps.”

  She pulls down the door handle and tugs it open a little. I want to see her for just a few more seconds. Just one more answer, and I’ll be okay with letting her go.

  “Mer?” I ask.

  “Yeah?”

  “Weren’t you ever happy with just floating?”

  She drops her hand from the handle and walks back toward me. “It was good for a few things. Like this,” she says, floating up, grabbing my shoulder, pulling herself into me, and stealing another kiss. Her taste lingers on my lips, and I want to press them together to keep it with me.

  Then she lowers softly back to the ground, blinking her big, blue eyes up at me. “But I still want to fly. I’ll always want to fly on my own. You know that.”

  I wonder if hearing that from her will ever not be a punch in the gut. I try not to let too much sadness into my responding smile. “I know.”

  “I really think the girls are okay, Elias, at least for another day or two while I figure this out. I do. Nora said she can take care of herself. I believe that. And I want us to be together in this. I think we can do so much more together.”

  I know we can. So I close my eyes, let my forehead fall against hers.

  But she doesn’t really know my sisters. I do. A vision of the alleyway I stood in last night flashes through my mind. I know it was probably just a weird dream. I know it doesn’t tell me anything. And I know I can really only focus on one goal at a time.

  “Kara said Masters wants to meet with me before arena. You going to be okay to go there on your own?” I don’t know why I’m lying to her. But something about us feels out of sync and something about the dream feels too real, and I guess I want to figure stuff out for myself first.

  “Yeah, I told Vera I’d be there a little early anyway.”

  “Don’t forget to eat,” I say.

  “I might not if they remembered to stock
that cafeteria with any of the good stuff,” she says, planting a quick kiss on my lips and strolling back to the door.

  I laugh as she shuts the door behind her, but it’s not a real laugh. And that makes my stomach hurt.

  Forty-five minutes later, I’m standing in the waiting area to Masters’ office in a pair of khakis and a blue sweater I asked Kara for at the last minute. I figured a guy should clean up for someone with the title “president” before his name, but I still feel slightly awkward and uncomfortable. I shift on my heels as the assistant’s cuff gives off two quick beeps.

  She looks up. “Mr. VanDyne, President Masters will see you now.”

  My stomach flips. “Thanks.”

  President Masters sits behind his sleek, black desk, its spotless touchscreen top spanning at least five curved feet. He stands up the moment I walk in, coming out from around the desk to shake my hand and slap me on the back with the other.

  “Elias, I’m glad to see you. I hope everything’s working out for you at CSH?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re very comfortable. Uh, I’m very comfortable. Thank you.” I’m not scared of this guy, so why are my words tripping out of my mouth? I swallow and try something more confident-sounding. “Actually, sir, I wanted to ask you for a favor. Or maybe some information. I’m not sure.”

  He cocks his head, and the corners of his mouth pull up just a bit. “We’ve given you all the information we can about your situation. Unfortunately, there’s not much we know ourselves.”

  “Which is why I wanted to add something to my debrief, I guess. Something you might not know, but I’m really hoping you can figure out. Or at least help me figure out.”

  He looks at me, his eyebrows raised. Then he grips his chin with his hand, massaging it for a moment. “What do you have for me?”

  I take a deep breath in to try to stop the flutter of nervous indecision. I don’t know what they would want me to do in this situation, but I know I want them back, alive and well. I owe that much to them.

  “I have twin sisters. Nineteen years old, both Supers. I guess you could say they sort of started this whole thing. Their Supers got much stronger, enhanced, when they were together, when they touched. The Biotech Hub was really interested in that, so they…” I swallow because my throat has suddenly become thick, and I just want to get through this explanation and on to the help. “…they ran some tests on them, sir. A lot of tests. My sisters escaped Biotech when the rest of us did, but they were much stronger. Too strong, maybe.”