Absolute Zero (Touch of Frost)

by Rush, Lynn

  I shook my head. “They showed up at my graduation and took me. Had me for about seven days.”

  Nate’s eyes widened. “When was that? You just graduated right?” He glanced around, eyes narrowing as they scanned our surroundings.

  “What?” I sat straight, looking around. “You see something?”

  “No. How’d you escape?”

  “I froze the hell out of everything. Jumped from the building. Then me, Jasmine, and Georgia went back and blew the place up.”

  “Georgia?”

  “She’s my twin sister. She’s fire. I’m ice.”

  “A twin?” He hopped to his feet, hands instantly went to his head, and his fingers filtered through his dark mane.

  I stood. “What is it? You’re freaking me out.”

  “They know about your twin? Is she as powerful as you?”

  “She only has fire. No strength and no healing.”

  “Oh, yes. You heal. I saw that. And you have strength as well?”

  I nodded.

  “No wonder you held me so long on the balcony. And in the woods, your ice came so naturally and intensely. I remember your mother healing herself. They brought her in seriously injured on one occasion. I saw a video of it.” He paced and he looked around again.

  “Georgia just came into her powers a few months ago. She may still get strength and healing but doesn’t have them yet.”

  “Tell me.” He stopped and faced me. “Did Jasmine scan you for implanted tracking devices when you broke out from The Center?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re not safe here. None of you are.”

  Chapter 31

  “Implanted tracker?” Jasmine said, as she plopped into a leather chair. “No! I just got this place decorated, too. And now they’re going to storm in and trash it, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know if she has one, Jasmine, but she may. I found some in me and the two who left with me,” Nate said, as he paced in front of the fireplace in one of the sitting rooms.

  I sat on the coffee table facing Georgia who sat on the couch next to Scott. Zach paced near the bay window overlooking the front yard.

  “Do you have equipment to scan her?” Nate asked Jasmine.

  “No.”

  “Amanda, after you returned from when you captive, did you have any strange marks on you? Weird, itchy spots that weren’t there before?”

  “Not that I can tell, but I was unconscious most of the time because I wouldn’t cooperate.” I looked at Scott. “Maybe that’s why they kept finding us. Maybe I’ve had one from when they grabbed me a couple years ago.”

  “No Agents had found us for two towns before Trifle, though,” Scott said.

  “They could have just been observing.” Nate shook his head.

  “I watched them their entire stay in Minnesota. I never saw a Coat there, observing. I would have picked up on that.”

  Nate arched an eyebrow at her. “Really? Would you have? So far I’m unimpressed with your security and negligence about the imbedded tracking devices.”

  “Hey!” Jasmine bolted to her feet. “I left when I was sixteen. I guess I didn’t get to that chapter, huh, teacher?”

  “True. You didn’t have clearance for that level of training at the age of sixteen. I’m sorry, Jasmine. I’m just worried for everyone’s safety.”

  “Jasmine’s done fine. Survived on her own since she was sixteen, and has taken great care of us since we met her.” Scott stood and walked to Jasmine. “So, Nate, what do we do to see if Mandy’s tagged?”

  “I have the equipment at my apartment.”

  “Oh, no. She’s not going anywhere with you.” Zach strode across the room toward Nate.

  Nate looked at me. So did everyone else in the room. Nothing like the pressure of five pairs of eyes staring at you, waiting for you to decide. Since when did all the decisions get dumped on a mutant nineteen-year-old college girl?

  So not fair.

  I stood, my gaze flitting from each and every face, well, except Zach’s. He didn’t know crap about anything, but I zeroed in on Jasmine’s, then Georgia’s. She gave a nod. I looked at Scott. He had an arm draped around Jasmine and stared at Nate then back to me.

  I nodded and he did, too.

  “Okay. Georgia, you and I are going with Nate.”

  “No. Mandy, don’t do it,” Zach said. He moved toward Nate, fists clenched. “He works for The Center. He’ll drug you and take you back there.”

  Nate didn’t even flinch. He merely looked at Zach, then to me. The confidence oozing off Nate’s shoulders empowered me even more than the supportive looks I’d gotten from Jasmine, Scott, and Georgia. They trusted me, I needed to trust myself, too.

  Even more encouraging, they trusted Nate. Of course, I hadn’t told Georgia and Scott he had a hand in hurting and killing Mom. That might change their outlook of him, but what mattered most was that I trusted Nate.

  But at the moment, Zach was pissing me off beyond belief.

  I formed a big snowball and tossed it at his chest. He stumbled to the side and looked at me. He’d stopped two feet from Nate.

  I stormed around the coffee table and toward him. He stepped back, eyes wide. “Excuse us, please.”

  I grabbed his wrist and yanked him down the hallway toward his and Scott’s rooms.

  “Okay, buddy. You just need to sit back and listen.”

  “Mandy, wait—”

  “No. You wait. I just spent the last two hours out there talking to Nate about everything. You don’t have the whole story. Right now, we need to go find out if I’m the reason those stupid Coats keep finding me. Or how Andrey is.”

  “I want to go, too. I want to be there, just in case.”

  “In case what, Zach?” I released my death grip around his wrist and stepped back. “You can’t do anything. You have no powers.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I know. I’m the weak human boyfriend.”

  “Ex-boyfriend, remember?”

  He flinched. “Oh what, Nate’s back in the picture now?”

  “None of your business. Maybe I’m just not going to have a boyfriend for a while. Ever think of that? I don’t need a guy to exist.”

  He turned his gaze downward.

  “Look. Zach. I know you mean well. And what you did with Samantha—well—I understand why you did it. You were trying to protect me and Georgia and Scott.”

  “I did it because I love you, Mandy.” He reached out to my face, his wide, gray eyes pleading.

  Man he was cute. The memory of the kiss he planted on me earlier tickled my brain, and my stomach. I ducked and stepped to the side. “You think of me while you were kissing Sam these last few weeks? Holding her hand? Going on dates during your protecting-thing?”

  Zach opened his mouth, but then snapped it shut again. His cheeks turned crimson, and he shifted his weight.

  “That’s what I thought. Look, if you really want to help me, then just shut up and do what I tell you, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m taking Georgia with me because she’s strong. If Nate tries anything, she’ll fry him. She won’t let anything happen to me.”

  “Why can’t he just go get his little electronic toys and come back here?”

  “Because I need to grab some stuff from my apartment, and I have a few more things to find out as well.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Too bad. It’s what we’re doing. You’ll stay here with Scott and Jasmine and work on fixing that Samantha problem. Jess will help, too.”

  Zach nodded, obviously hearing the finality in my voice. I turned to walk away, but his warm hand grabbed mine, and I faced him.

  “Please. Just be careful, Mandy.”

  “You, too.” I pulled away from him and moved toward the main room.

  Despite how annoyed I was with both Nate and Zach, I cared for them both. Zach and I had history. Nate and I now had history. Mostly because he worked on my parents, and even knew about me through the
ir file. Hell, technically—oh great I sounded like Nate—he’d known me longer than Zach.

  So he should care more about me, right?

  If he was capable of caring. Born from a mixture in a Petri dish…I shivered. No, don’t go there, Mandy.

  I turned the corner into the main room and found Nate and Jasmine talking off to the side while Scott and Georgia sat on the couch. When I rounded the corner, Georgia shot up. Her face aglow, not literally, but just aglow.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  Nate turned from facing Jasmine and looked at me. Yes, his eyes melted my heart. Man, I was hopeless.

  “Come help me, G.” I waved her to me. She hopped up and scurried over. I grabbed her hand and pulled her to our room.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m looking for a change of clothes for us to bring along, just in case. And I need to tell you what’s going on with Nate.”

  I rifled through the drawers, found a change of clothes for us, threw my hair in a ponytail and grabbed a backpack from the closet all while I told her nearly everything Nate shared with me outside.

  Georgia sat on the bed, her mouth open, and eyes wide the majority of the story. I wished I could have just zapped her the information from my brain, because it sliced through my heart a little as I told her everything. Especially the part with Mom and Dad.

  “I want to go with him back to the apartments so he can check me over, then we can grab stuff from our place and come back here. You stay alert, okay? Just in case Zach’s right and Nate is a load of lying crap.”

  “He’s not,” Georgia said with a whisper.

  “How can you say that?” I froze in the doorway of the closet, holding the backpack to my chest. “How can you be so sure?”

  “You know how you and I latched on to one another right away when you first moved to Trifle? You know, the first time I ran up to you in the lunchroom to say hi?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got a sense about you. You know, that you were a great person. I didn’t believe the rumors that you’d killed a teacher at your last school or that you were a lost cause just trying to graduate. I followed that gut feeling, and look, we’re sisters. Twins!”

  “Oh, God, does that mean that Nate might be our brother? And I totally made out with my brother?”

  Georgia laughed. “No. I’m just saying it’s a feeling I get. You know? I can tell he’s legit.”

  “I think I’ll add psychic or ESP to your list of powers. What feeling do you get about Zach?”

  “Oh, yeah, he loves you all right.”

  “Nate?”

  “I see love there, too.” She winked.

  “What’s that look like, exactly?”

  “Rephrase. I feel love there.”

  “Tim?”

  She nodded with a smile, and her cheeks reddened.

  “This totally sucks. How can I even be thinking of love and guys when I might have some freaking techy thing wedged beneath a layer of my skin that’s giving off a signal for everyone in the whole freaking world to see?”

  “Let’s get out of here so he can see if you have one and get it out if you do.”

  I threaded my hand through the backpack. “This sucks.”

  “Hey, so, Nate said Tim was involved. Did he say how?”

  “I never got the details of that yet. We’ll ask him on the drive.”

  Georgia stood up and walked over to me. She gripped my shoulders and stared me straight in the eye. “Don’t worry, sis. I got your back.”

  “Thanks.”

  We strolled out of our room and within a few minutes we were back in my car driving toward our apartment with an ex-Agent from The Center who had a hand in Mom and Dad’s murders.

  But yet, I liked the guy.

  I was mentally bruised from all that had happened to me over the years. I just knew it.

  “So, Nate. How’s Tim involved in all this?” Georgia asked from the back seat.

  Nate looked at me as he drove my car. “When will I be allowed some questions?”

  “You asked a few when I told you I was grabbed in June.”

  He laughed, then glanced in the rear view mirror. “He’s one of us. So is Martin.”

  “No way!” Georgia shot forward. Her hand rested on the back of my seat, and her head popped into view between me and Nate. “How?”

  “He and Martin are like you two. Children of parents involved in the experiments The Center did years and years ago.”

  “How many of us are out there?” I asked.

  “Not sure. We all hide well if we escaped, and not everyone inherited abilities from their parents.” He glanced at me then the road.

  “Why’d they do it?” Georgia asked.

  “Ultimately, they wanted to create more adaptable humans. For instance, the DNA injected into your mother’s lot of experiments were extremophile organisms. Their hopes were to develop humans who could survive in extreme situations.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “It’s multifaceted. Exploration of other planets, extreme work environments to search for more fossil fuels, and…” He glanced at me. “Because they wanted to see if they could.”

  “Assholes.” I pounded my fist against my thigh.

  “Like me, it didn’t work for everyone. Many survived the injections without any alterations. Some didn’t survive and some—”

  “Turned out like mom and produced freaks like me and Georgia.”

  “I wouldn’t say freaks, but yes.” Nate nodded slightly. “I think you turned out to be a beautiful work of art, Mandy. Someone to be treasured.”

  The tenderness and awe lacing Nate’s voice when he’d said that took me by surprise. Where I’d always thought myself a freak, he didn’t. He saw me as a thing of beauty? I wanted to be angry with him, The Center, hell, the world, for what I was, but I’d never once considered myself a work of art. Hell, I was just starting to grasp the idea of having these super powers for a reason to help others, like superheroes or something.

  “You, Martin, and Tim…what’s your story?” Georgia asked.

  “Boy, you two are sisters, aren’t you? I can’t wait until it’s my turn to ask questions.” Nate smiled. “Tim has enhanced vision and Martin has strength.”

  “Why didn’t he just hoist us up quick when the balcony fell away?” I asked.

  “Same reason you didn’t. Brings attention.”

  “And we just happened to move into the same apartment complex as you guys. Three mutant boys.”

  “I hate it when you call us mutants,” Georgia said, as she plopped back against the seat. “Makes me sound like an animal or something.”

  “Sorry. So, us moving in to this place, was that a coincidence?”

  “Martin had a place there, and it’s great because it backs up to a nature reserve. Lots of escape routes. Lets us come and go pretty easily. Probably the same reason Jasmine picked it for you guys.”

  “Come and go for what?”

  “Remember when I had to leave for those few days after we first got together?”

  My body instantly remembered our first ‘getting together’ moment in his room at the party. “Um. Yeah.” I shifted in my seat, hoping he didn’t see my hot face in the darkness. Then I remembered he had night vision, so he probably did.

  Man my body was one big betrayal. Were all nineteen-year-old chicks like this? I thought it was guys who were supposed to be dictated by their body’s desires.

  So not fair.

  Nate smiled, then went on. “I told you about our ‘coming to Jesus moment’, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Tim, the level-headed one he is, thought we should use our powers for something good. Not to make money and sell to the highest bidder like The Center wanted to use them. Or does use them.”

  “Meaning?” Georgia asked from the darkness behind.

  “We help people. People who are in trouble.”

  Georgia gripped the back of my seat again. “Like superher
oes?”

  Nate laughed. “I guess. Look, it’s a long, long story, but in a nutshell, Martin, despite not looking the part, is very agile, quick, and really, really strong. Maybe even stronger than you, Amanda, but Tim, he’s got the scanners and connections to police monitors, fire departments, everything. When he hears of stuff, he lets us know and we go help. If we can, that is. So, I disappeared a couple days with Tim to help out in a town nearby. There was a search party for a missing kid.”

  I remembered the time I pulled that chick out from the burning car. It felt amazing to help, to use my powers for a good reason.

  “I knew it! See, Mandy, like I said. We can be superheroes.”

  “You said that?” Nate flinched. “Oh, sorry, no questions.”

  My turn to laugh. “And yes. She said that maybe we were created and given these powers for a reason. You know, to help people.”

  Georgia slapped the back of my seat. “Ha!” She wove her arms around Nate’s neck from behind and squeezed. “You suck for lying, but we totally understand why. Can we join your team?”

  “Georgia.” I was mortified. “We totally still have Andrey to deal with, and the two Agents who stormed the smoothie shop the other day.”

  “What? Recently?”

  Georgia released her grip around Nate’s neck.

  “When I locked you in the supply cabinet.” I shrunk against my seat. “I totally iced you in on purpose. Thankfully I’m a klutz and tripped on the doorframe as a dart splintered the door above my head.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “We got them, Jasmine did her thing, and we learned about some stuff. But mostly, we learned that no one seems to know anything about Andrey, but they do know Mom kept a book of The Center and they were there trying to find the book I guess.”

  “You’re right. Don’t know Andrey. And what’s this about a book?”

  “How can you not know Andrey? He’s an agent. He was at The Center in California that I escaped from in June. He has this wicked steel weapon made out of the metal that kept me hostage. He’s super-fast and super-strong. He said I was too dangerous to live. He got away just after we trashed The Center in California.”

  “You two did that?”

  “Blaze and Kelvin,” Georgia said. “We burnt it to the ground.”