Two

by LeighAnn Kopans

  She leans down and kisses my forehead. She’s never done that before, but God, I never want her to stop. The way her throat curves down over my lips…

  She pulls back, looking down at me again. “We’re going to be okay.”

  My eyebrows raise, involuntarily, at her use of the word “we.” Her eyes look steadily into mine. I don’t know if it’s the dark or my sleep-wrapped panic or being in bed together, but I suddenly feel so much hope and promise for the two of us that I close my eyes and make a silent wish. Despite our disagreements, despite what we said, please let Merrin keep being Merrin. Please let Merrin keep wanting to be with me, no matter how weird things are getting everywhere else.

  Please let us always be the same.

  “I’m sorry about before,” she says.

  “No. Seriously, Mer. I’m sorry. I’ve just — I didn’t get to tell you what happened today.”

  “I know.” She pulls her palm across her eyes and down her cheek, sighing. “I didn’t even ask you.”

  “They have a device here. They can find any Super, anywhere. But they couldn’t find my sisters, Mer, couldn’t see a single trace of them. And then something happened.”

  Her eyes go wide, and she sits up further. “What?” The rustle of the sheets as she shifts is strangely distracting.

  “I heard them. I saw them. And it wasn’t good. Lia…she’s not doing well. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know that it’s really bad.”

  ”Couldn’t anyone in mission control see it? Or Masters?”

  I shake my head. “The spike in activity only lasted a fraction of a second. They’re moving so fast they’re almost undetectable.”

  “Why did you see it?”

  “I don’t know. But the fact that I did is good enough for me.”

  In the darkness, Merrin’s voice is adorably annoyed. ’“I don’t get it, Elias. How is good enough even close to good enough in this situation? If I could just go back to Biotech, I could grab that equipment, get it back here, and we could run your genotype. Figure out why you can hear them. Figure out which of these formulas could make us both fly. That’s why I wanted to, Elias. I want Nora and Lia safe just as badly as you do.”

  “But I want you safe, too, Merrin. They’re gone. I don’t know what’s up with my parents. Right here, right now…you’re all I have.”

  “You know you can’t keep me safe forever.” Her voice is soft, and her eyes say something I don’t quite understand.

  Before I can respond, she leans down and kisses me. Her lips are warm and soft and reassuring on mine, and I could live in that kiss forever. But I want her to say something just as badly.

  After a couple seconds, she pulls back again, looking down at me and sighing. “What are we going to do?”

  There it is. “We” again. It’s the only assurance I need that we’re okay.

  “I’m waiting. Masters has the whole team on it now, trying to track them down. He said he’d let me know as soon as he had something, and I’m giving him till morning.”

  “Till morning. Okay.” She runs her fingers along the edge of my hair, wrinkling her nose. “I smelled lunch meat when I came in here. Did you get something to eat from that shithole of a cafeteria?”

  I hear her words, but all I can think is how perfect her lips are. And that they’re pouting. Oh, geez, the pouting. I never thought the word “shithole” could sound completely sexy, but she’s just done it.

  I roll onto my side and reach up to tuck one loose strand of hair behind her ear. “How come you never wear your hair up?”

  “I thought you liked my hair down. Longer. I let it grow out for you.” The pout stays. Good.

  “I know. And I like it. I love it.” I let my fingers trail down the length of one wavy tendril, which goes a couple inches past her collarbone now. My fingers brush against her upper arm. “But I love your face ten times more.”

  Finally, she smiles and presses her lips to mine. Then I kiss behind her ear, under her jaw, along her collarbone. I let my tongue flick out across the warm skin there, and she sighs. She tastes like she always has, like the air up high, but warmer. I let my teeth graze across her skin — I can’t help it — and she makes a satisfied noise from her throat, pressing herself further into me.

  She grabs my waist and closes the gap between us, fitting her body to mine in the most amazing way, hips against hips, her head at my chest.

  Everything in my body is on edge.

  I kiss her again and sigh into her mouth as her tongue plays against mine. Familiar, yeah, but somehow completely different. More urgent, maybe, than it’s ever been. A low moan escapes from deep inside me, and then I have to be even closer to her or I’ll die.

  My hands slide under her shirt, my fingers splaying out over her ribs, my thumbs brushing against her bra. The distinct boundary between the hard curve of bone and the soft curves of everything else sparks something in me, and I want her more than ever before, want to feel her skin against mine so desperately it hurts.

  I push her shirt over her head while she does the same with mine, and for a second, we’re separated. Gasping. I look down at her, and my God, she’s beautiful. Pale skin and lush dark lashes. Lips that turn red and swollen whenever she kisses me more than once. Eyes like storm clouds, that look into mine and see everything I’m thinking, everything I’m feeling, everything I am.

  I want her to be mine. Completely and totally mine. There’s nothing I want more in the whole world. And somehow, flying together won’t quite do it.

  She molds herself to me again, pushing her fingers through my hair, then pulls back again, staring into my eyes and catching her now-swollen bottom lip behind her teeth.

  “I feel stupid asking,” she says, “because I know I already know, and I…”

  “Anything.” I steal a hard, quick kiss while she catches a breath.

  “This is…your first? Right?”

  Is this…? Are we…? Oh God. It is. We are. This is it. I kiss her again, gentler, more lingering, and nod.

  She slides her hand into the back of my pants. For a second, I’m frozen, until I realize that means I can probably do the same with hers. I grab onto her belt loops, letting my thumbs play inside the waistband, and pull her into me as close as possible, tangling my legs with hers.

  “I love you. You know?” My lips are pressed up against her neck right beneath her ear.

  “Do you think I’d be doing this if I didn’t know that?” She kisses me hard, then breaks away to stare at me. “I love you too, idiot.”

  I grin and roll over her. She squeals and pulls my mouth to hers again. She mumbles something about how she’s been taking the pill, for months, against my lips. Somehow she has both her pants and mine off in just a few seconds.

  If there’s anything I’ve always known about Merrin, it’s that she can be crazy-strong when she’s going after something she wants.

  I fumble at the bra strap across her back, and in an instant, the warmth of all her skin against all of mine completely consumes me. I hold her tight against me, burying my face in her hair, breathing her in. When I come back to my senses, I kiss her everywhere — shoulders, ribs, neck, mouth again. Her legs wrap around the outside of mine, and for the first time in maybe forever, I feel like nothing exists besides me and Merrin, tangled up in the dark.

  EIGHTEEN

  When I wake up, the edges of the curtains are illuminated by a line of outside light. That’s what I recognize first — it’s morning. Past the time that I said I’d call Masters and demand answers.

  The second thing I notice is that the bed beside me is cold. Then I sit bolt upright, darting my eyes around the room. The air chills my skin, and I shiver. Something feels wrong, but there’s no sign of struggle, no indication of anything… A beep comes from somewhere in the bed, faint but clear.

  I fumble under the covers and find my cuff sitting in the impression Merrin’s right shoulder made in the sheets, screeching an alert. Across the slim screen runs a message.


  HAD SOME THINGS I HAD TO DO. I’LL SEE YOU SOON. LOVE YOU.

  I exhale. For a second, I’d thought… I don’t even want to think it again. She just had some stuff to do. No big deal. I fall back on my pillow, taking a moment to be grateful that she came in last night. After our fight, she still came back. Saying she loves me is one thing, but that proved it.

  I sweep my feet under the blanket, looking for my pants. My toe catches on the waistband, and I step into them as I leave bed. In the bathroom, I peer into the mirror. If I plan to go see Masters this morning, I’m going to need to wipe this damn smug look off my face.

  No matter how amazing it was to be with Merrin, I haven’t forgotten about what else is going on. I love Merrin, but I love my sisters, too. And I won’t be able to focus on anything until everyone I love is safe.

  I wash my face, tame my hair, and brush my teeth again. I throw on the only two things left in the closet — a white undershirt and a zip-up sweatshirt — and slap the cuff onto my wrist. Just then, it beeps again — a comm from Masters.

  WORKED THROUGH THE NIGHT. CLOSE TO A SOLID UPDATE. WILL MEET YOU IN THE ARENA.

  Fine. But if he’s not down there soon, he’s going to see my face in his office door again.

  At the entrance of the arena, I pause and take it all in. For the first time, I see a couple of flyers darting up and around the huge roof opening. I shudder, both at the memory of how Merrin and I escaped just a week ago through a similar opening Biotech and at the awesomeness of speeding through the air. I can tell Merrin all I want that our safety and us being together is my first priority, but I’d never deny that flying is awesome. Even if the whole supersonic thing is terrifying, experiencing that kind of power is incredible.

  “Hey! Elias. Glad you’re here.” Daniel’s voice is raised, his black eyes are wide, and he hurries toward me. As soon as I reach him, he turns back the way he came, and I follow.

  “What’s up?”

  “Vera’s running the vials of formula I brought with me – the ones Mer handed off to me before we left Superior. She found something…freaky.” Daniel can’t meet my eyes, and my stomach clenches.

  Inside the lab, Vera hunches over a microscope in a white lab coat, her sea-colored hair pulled back in five different braids from her face.

  “Nice coat. Should I call you Doctor McCoy now?” I let my giddy grin take over my face.

  Leni sits on a stool in the corner watching Vera. She meets my eyes and gives a quick shake of her head. Not now, she mouths.

  “It’s my mom’s coat,” McCoy mutters. “I threw it on so that anyone glancing in here would think I was her and not bother me.”

  “Does your mom have the blue hair, too?”

  McCoy’s cheeks flush when she looks up at me, eyes slightly narrowed. “Yeah, she does. It’s part of the mutation. I can’t get it to dye. I hate it.”

  Leni rolls her eyes at me.

  “Sorry,” I say, looking down at the annoying white sneakers I found in my closet this morning. The truth is, I think McCoy’s hair is cool, but I’ll just look like a douche if I say it now. “So what are you finding?”

  “This is the last vial I’m testing from the four Merrin brought with her. It was marked ‘degenerative,’ and we wanted to break it down into its basic components and test it on some samples.” She taps a fresh drop of the glowing green solution out of the vial. “This one, I tested on my cells. I’ve let it sit overnight, and the markers on the genes that enable my Super have completely gone.”

  “Completely?”

  She sighs. “Supers are, simply put, genetic mutations manifesting as larger chromosomal abnormalities. Usually a duplication. So, yes, we can live without those parts of our genetic code — it just means that the Super is gone. It seems that this terminative formula eliminates anything extra from the chromosomes. Anything unique.”

  “Completely?” I know I’m repeating what she’s clearly stated, and I know I sound stupid. But even with all this talk of a cure, I didn’t think that it was actually possible to erase part of someone’s genes.

  “Yes.”

  I find a stool and sit down, resting my heels on the first rung and my elbow on the tabletop. “Shit.” I run my hand back through my hair.

  “This is the Cure we read about in that transmission the first night we were here, isn’t it?” Leni asks, staring at nothing.

  ”That’s what they were doing with us,” I say, my lips suddenly feeling numb. I knew it since Merrin and I found that file back in Social Welfare, but saying it sounds different. “They didn’t just test the Cure on us – we’re the Ones that showed them that it actually worked.”

  A fresh new anger starts to take hold inside me. We really were entirely an experiment — worthless for anything but testing formulas. And I went along with it. I don’t know who I’m more pissed off at: my parents or myself.

  “That communication we read on our first night here,” Leni mutters. “It talked about degenerative capabilities in a blood-based formula, Daniel.”

  “Can you all back up for a moment?” McCoy asks. “What communication are you talking about? Where, from when, and between whom?”

  “It was here at CSH. I did a little hacking around on my first night here…”

  Vera’s eyebrow raises. “You hacked into CSH files your first night here? That’s impossible. No one hacks into CSH.”

  “We used my cousin’s ID to get into the mainframe,” Daniel says, hanging his head, looking apologetic. “Hacking’s kind of my thing. Anyway, there was a communication between an official here at CSH and what looked like a mole from Biotech, and it very clearly said, ‘Cure.’ As in, ‘a cure for people with special abilities.’”

  “We need to talk to Masters,” Vera says, disconnecting her tablet from the microscope and gathering it in her arms. “I have to show him these results.”

  “Does Merrin know about this?” Merrin was so hopeful about those formulas. If she knew that her genetics had been the base formula for the Cure, she’d be devastated.

  Vera shakes her head. “Merrin and I focused on the enhancing serums. We hadn’t gotten to the degenerative ones yet. And I haven’t see her yet today.”

  Something murmurs in the back of my head. I thought Merrin was going to keep working with Gallagher, or maybe see Vera. I shake my head at my own hyperactive worry. I’m sure she just got pulled away by Masters or another official for something.

  “Okay, so what do we do now?” Daniel asks, taking Leni’s hand.

  I clench my fists. “Well, I think at least now we know why Fisk biobombed the Social Welfare Hub. We have the only vials of this serum left. The rest were destroyed during the Biotech blast. Of course he didn’t want anyone else to get them.”

  “Fisk? You think this is Fisk?” Leni’s voice rises with every word, and her body goes rigid.

  “His name was all over those communications,” Daniel says. “I think we have to consider it a strong possibility.”

  “I thought he died. With all the fire… I thought he died. I thought we killed him.” Leni’s face twists in some unrecognizable mix of emotions.

  “I don’t know,” Daniel says, looking like he’s searching for the right thing to say. “I do know for sure that I saw a couple of his duplicates on our way out.”

  Fisk’s Super was — is — creating duplicates of himself through kinetic energy. If only one of them was left standing after the disaster at Biotech, then some part of him might still be alive. My stomach flips at the possibility, that whoever is hunting us at the Biotech Hub is an enemy we’ve already faced. But there’s also hope that maybe my parents aren’t trying to kill me after all.

  Leni slumps, and Daniel rubs her back. “But we’re safe here, right?” Her voice shakes. She takes a deep breath and blows it back out slowly, like she’s trying to convince herself of the fact. But she looks like she’s going to be sick.

  I don’t know how I’m really supposed to feel about this, but one thing’s cle
ar: it’s long past time for feeling. My sisters are in danger, and the Hub’s research on a cure for all Supers is far more advanced than we thought.

  “Okay, we definitely need to talk to Masters. I was in his office yesterday, and I’m supposed to meet him here soon. Maybe you should keep testing. You know – just to be sure.”

  Vera sits back down. “Probably right. I want to see what it does to Leni’s genome…”

  “We’ll stay here and keep working with different combinations of the formulas,” Daniel says, then looks quickly down at Leni, who’s staring at Vera blankly. I’m worried about her, but the fact that Daniel is here with her is a huge relief.

  As I’m almost out the door, Vera pipes up, “Hey, if you see Gallagher, would you tell him I’m looking for him? I want to get a sample from him so I can test this stuff on people with multiple abilities.”

  “Yeah, sure thing.”

  I take the long way around the arena, hoping to see Merrin in one of the compression chambers or maybe at one of the obstacle courses. But she’s not anywhere. I want to stop at the info desk to ask if she signed in at all yet today, but it’s still early and I really don’t think I could deal with standing still right now.

  Even though I’ve only been here a couple of days, navigating these hallways feels like second nature to me. In particular, the arena, my room, Masters’ office. There’s a certain comfort in the rhythm of it — the contained walls, the geometric structure. The safety.

  I run through the map of the facility in my head and realize I should be just passing over the room where the Funnel is located. Two steps later, black fills my vision. The arena disappears from around me, and I know what I saw last night was definitely not a dream.

  Just like on the touchscreen, the picture falls into place, like grains of dust collecting to make a single image.

  Somehow, the Funnel’s inside my brain.