by C. J. Felver
Pulling away, she puts her hands on my shoulders and locks me in her gaze. “Cleo, girl, I was so worried about you. All I could think about was the worst possible outcome.” Her gaze shifts toward Wren and turns deadly. He’s standing beside me, his hands shoved into his pockets as he rocks back on his heels, eyes darting all over.
Oh my gosh. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Wren is nervous. Interesting.
Without saying a word, Lyza marches over to him and punches him square in the face. Wren curses, hunching over, grabbing at his nose. When he stands back up, his eyes are watering, and a trickle of blood runs down his chin, dripping onto the steps. Lyza’s clenched fist comes back up, but I grab her elbow, spinning her around to face me.
“That’s enough, Lyza. I’ll admit that he deserved that,” I say, giving him a pointed look, “but I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for him.” Lyza’s brows scrunch together and her head tilts to the side as she points her thumb over her shoulder toward him, silently asking me if I really mean Wren. I nod slowly.
Wren shakes his head. “What is it with you and punching me like that?”
Before she can reply, my dad bursts through the doorway, throwing himself at me. I catch him easily, wrapping my arms around his frail body. His feebleness is so much more pronounced after hugging Lyza.
“Cleo,” he cries, “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’m here, Dad,” I say, holding him tightly, resting my cheek against his shoulder. “I’m here. You didn’t lose me.”
He pulls away with damp cheeks. His face is drawn and distraught, showing how he’s suffered with my capture.
“Can we head inside?” Wren asks. “We have to talk.” Zander is still standing by the door. One side of his mouth quirks into a grin, but he nods.
Once all of us, my dad included, are sitting around the couch, Wren fills them in on what he told me earlier.
“Lemme get this straight,” Lyza says. “That crap they gave your dad … AGAS is planning to administer it to elementals all around the world? And by doing this, they’ll rid the world of our abilities … without killing us?”
“Yeah, that’s basically it. I don’t know about the world, but they plan on starting with Lawrence,” Wren says.
Lyza leans back into the couch with a huff. My dad is sitting between us on the edge of the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. Zander is leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. He seems to have a permanent scowl on his face and his eyes shoot daggers around the room. I can almost see steam rolling out of his ears.
“We can’t let this happen,” Wren says. “I know we can stop them somehow, but there’s no way I can do it alone. Especially now that they’ve pulled my security clearance. And with everything that happened earlier, I’m sure they’ll shoot me on the spot.”
Which makes sense, considering Aulder said he knew too much to be allowed to live.
“Don’t worry about security clearance,” Zander says. “I can get us in. All I gotta do is hack into their mainframe and unlock the doors you need. It should be pretty simple.”
I scoff internally. He says that as if hacking HSI’s mainframe is as easy as popping toast into the toaster.
“That could actually work,” Wren trails off, looking deep in thought.
It could actually work, that’s the crazy part. If we play our cards right, this could go really well. On the other hand, if we screw this up, the future for my kind is at stake.
Wren stands. “I’m going to head out. There are some things I want to look into. Is it alright if I come back tomorrow so we can discuss strategy?” he asks Zander.
“Yeah, man. No problem.” Wren thanks him and they shake hands. He turns to leave, but gives me a concerned look as he walks past. My only response is a raised brow. What is this guy’s deal?
After a quick rinse in the shower and some food, I wander back out to Zander’s sitting room, joining everyone else.
“Were you able to remove the tracker?” I ask Zander, gesturing to my dad. I’ve been wondering about that.
“Absolutely. It was in the back of his neck. I disabled it in the car and removed it as soon as we got back here.”
“Thank you,” I tell him. By him removing the tracker, he’s saved us a lot of potential trouble. The fact that he had the foresight to disable it before heading back to his house speaks volumes.
I give my dad a quick once over. Sure enough, there’s a bandage on the back of his neck, just below his hairline. “How are you feeling, Dad?”
“My neck is fine,” he says, an evasive answer if I’ve ever heard one. He looks ready to fall over in his seat. “I’m going to try to get some rest. I couldn’t sleep while you were in that awful place. Now that I know you’re safe, I should be able to manage that.” He pats my knee before walking away.
“Cleo, I set up a spare room for you. You’re more than welcome to stay here until you can get back on your feet—or until this mess is dealt with. We set Frank up in the room next to yours.”
I don’t know what to say. Offering this kind of hospitality after we’ve dragged him into this crapshoot with AGAS and Aulder Harlow doesn’t seem fair. But our options are limited right now. So, I graciously accept, offering again to pay him rent. Zander laughs and leaves the room.
I let out a huge puff of air, letting my lips buzz together. “This is such a mess. How is this our lives now?”
Lyza lets out a strained chuckle. “No kidding. But at least we’re all together now. And we found your dad. That’s a huge plus.”
A huge, relieving plus. If anything good has come of this, I couldn’t think of anything better. We need a vacation on a beach somewhere. Or in the mountains. Over the course of a few days, Lyza’s been abducted, then I found her and my dad, only for my dad to be captured again, then I was captured myself …
“What if they find us again?” I say, panic setting in. “What if they figure out where Zander lives? What if—?”
“Woah, girl. Calm down,” Lyza says, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me in to her side. “I already asked Zander those exact questions. He said he knows how to block them from finding you here. He used some technical terms, and I have no clue what they meant, but he was very convincing.”
“You’re sure?” She nods and I believe her. She wouldn’t lie to me, it’s not her style. “Okay.” I yawn, stretching my arms over my head, flinching when it pulls the muscles of my stomach where the guy punched me.
“You must be exhausted. Why don’t you get some rest?” Lyza says, standing.
“Definitely tired. It’s kinda hard to sleep when you’re strapped to a chair.”
“Girl, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. Except for the being strapped to the chair thing. Sleep first, then you can give me details later,” she says, standing and leading me to the room Zander set her up in. I cringe at the thought of retelling my experience and crawl into the bed.
Lyza slips out of the room and I drift off. It isn’t a restful sleep. My dreams are plagued with visions of tubes and wires, and menacing faces wielding syringes.
Notions
I wake up the next day feeling like shit warmed over. Clearly, I slept—if that’s what you call tossing and turning after repeated nightmares—the day away, because it’s already three o’clock in the afternoon. In the bathroom, I turn the faucet on, mentally reaching out to pull water to my face—but I can’t. Still nothing, no connection. The serum must still be in my system. Hopefully, it won’t be too much longer, because this is the worst.
Shuffling down the hall toward the kitchen, I rummage through the fridge, grabbing some things to make myself a sandwich. Briefly, my mind goes to Zander, but he told me to make myself at home, so I’m assuming that includes the kitchen. I’ll definitely have to pitch in with groceries.
Soft footsteps alert me to someone else entering the kitchen. It’s Wren, walking in and sitting at the table. I stifle a groan. What is this guy doing he
re? Why can’t he just go away?
Ignoring him, I go back to the pantry for bread and get started on my sandwich.
“Tell me something about yourself, Cleo,” Wren says, shifting his chair to face me.
Tell you something about me? What does he think we are, friends? We are definitely not friends. We are people who don’t like each other but have to coexist for … what? A common goal? I don’t even know.
My silence must drag on too long, because he keeps going as I spread Miracle Whip across my slices of bread. “I know you may not have the best feelings for me, but we’ll be working together despite that. I don’t know about you, but I like to know about the people I surround myself with.”
I whirl on him, pointing my spreading knife in his direction, only to find that he must have gotten up during his little speech because he’s right behind me. My knife is almost touching his chest.
“Think what you want, but I don’t want to get to know you. I don’t want to be your friend.” I lower the knife. “I appreciate what you did for me yesterday, but that’s as far as it goes. I don’t trust you. So just fuck off and leave me alone.”
For a moment, Wren’s face doesn’t display any emotion. Then his face transforms into hard lines, his jaw feathering. He takes a step forward, placing his hands on the counter, caging me in. “You can’t ice me out forever, Cleo,” he says, making my heart pound against my ribcage. He removes his hands, stepping away. I swear I see a hint of his dimple before he leaves the room.
My hands tremble as I finish making my sandwich. I can’t say why, exactly. Maybe it’s nerves. Maybe it’s the serum. Maybe it’s the lie said to Wren’s face. Because, as much as I hate to admit it, I do trust him. It’s difficult and I don’t want to allow myself to, but how can I not after what he did yesterday? Then coming back here to help us take down his former employer? If that doesn’t say trustworthy, I don’t know what does. Maybe I’m just stubborn.
The trembling finally stops as I put everything back in the fridge. I swipe my plate from the counter, heading for the living room, where I wait for everyone else.
Lyza and Zander walk in as I take my first bite. Her lips have that thoroughly-kissed look to them, giggling as Zander playfully slaps her ass.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, girl. You and Frank slept like the dead for the past thirty hours,” Lyza says. “He’s still sleeping, actually.”
What? Thirty hours! How is my dad still sleeping? He went to sleep before I did. With everything I went through, I can see why I slept so long—and I still feel like shit, but there’s no reason my dad should still be sleeping.
Wren walks in, speaking up before I can voice my questions out loud.
“You look …” he says, pausing to grimace. “Well, you still look like you took a beating.” A hint of a dimple is visible. Is this dude messing with me?
I give him my best eat shit glare. And of course, he sits next to me on the couch, returning my glare with one of his own. Seriously? I’d like to get off this bad luck streak right about now. Ugh, whatever.
This day is turning out to be great so far. At least it’s already almost over.
“Let’s get this plan out of the way,” Zander says, eying me and Wren.
“Right,” I say, swallowing another bite of my sandwich and clearing my throat. “So it sounds like there are two serums: one short term blocker and one permanent. We need to get our hands on both of them before Aulder has a chance to use them on any other elementals. We need to go back to—”
“It’s not that simple,” Wren interrupts. “The blocker is the only serum he’ll have at HSI Labs. The other serum will be at one of his warehouses, stored and ready to go for whatever he has planned.”
“Okay, so that serum needs to be our priority, then,” Lyza says. “We can figure out the other one later.”
“Where’s the warehouse?” Zander asks.
“In the abandoned suburbs of Lawrence.”
“What kind of security are we talking about?” Lyza asks.
“Not much,” Wren says, scratching his jaw. “There’s a camera system set up, and a couple guys monitoring them. It’s basically a storage facility, so Harlow doesn’t keep many guys there.”
“Getting in and out should be pretty easy if we can get those cameras taken care of.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Wren says. “If something goes wrong with those cameras, they’ll be calling in backup. And it’s not like you can just walk in through the front door,” he drawls, giving me a look.
“Listen, I was on my own, trying to figure out how to get my best friend back. It was all I could come up with.”
Zander waves his hand as if he could clear our disagreement from the air. “Cameras aren’t a problem. I have that under control.”
“We could try the windows? Go in through the side, close to where the serum is being stored,” Lyza suggests.
“Good plan, except you can’t get in through the first, second and third story windows. There’s latticework on each window, you wouldn’t be able to get through.”
“So you’re telling me, to get into this building, someone will have to climb to the fourth story and break through a window?” I ask.
“Yes, but it will only work if someone distracts the guards watching the monitors,” Wren clarifies. “And the serum is most likely being stored in the fourth story, anyway. So whoever climbs could get in and out without alerting anyone else.”
“I’ll go see if I can find some sort of building schematic,” Zander says, standing from his spot next to Lyza and leaving the room.
“I can distract the guys keeping track of those camera monitors. I’ll just need a way to stop them from potentially calling for backup on their radios,” Wren says.
I look to Lyza since there’s no way I can do that without my connection to water right now. “Sure,” she says. “I’ll help with that.”
Wren looks at me. “That leaves you to climb the wall, Cleo.”
Shit. I hate climbing.
After quite a lengthy conversation, I sit outside in Zander’s backyard. We’ve managed to come up with a pretty elaborate plan to deal with this serum issue. I’ll be busting into room 414, looking for serum EC-274. I’d be lying if I said there aren’t butterflies in my stomach over it. This will probably be the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever done before. And that’s saying something considering what I’ve gone through the past week.
There’s only one problem: if I don’t get my powers back by tomorrow, this plan isn’t going to work very well.
Earlier, Wren mentioned it’s probably been long enough for the serum to run its course through my system. Except, nothing seems to be working.
I’ve been out here for about an hour with a glass of water and so far I haven’t managed to make not even a small splash. I won’t be giving up. Wren wasn’t exactly sure about the timing.
One thing is for sure: this is the most miserable feeling. Ever.
Well, almost. Being strapped to that chair was by far worse.
The scraping of metal alerts me to the sliding door being pulled open. I look up to see my bestie coming down the porch steps. Lyza sits on the grass beside me. “How’s it going?”
I dip my fingers into the cup and flick water toward her, deadpanning a glare at her. She swats at me, snorting out a small laugh. Her humor doesn’t last long; her expression becomes more serious.
“That’s it?” She looks at me wistfully.
I nod, letting out a sigh. “Yep,” my lips pop on the “p.”
“Do you think a little sparring session would help you out?”
We’ve had plenty of sparring sessions in the past. Between the two of us and Reese and Joe. When we were younger, it was a fun way to explore our elements, see which one of us had the upper hand. Then it became more about honing our skills and having fun. Sparring was something Joe always loved to do together.
I shrug. “It couldn’t hurt.”
She stands and pu
lls me to my feet. I put the glass of water safely on the porch and we move to stand at opposite sides of the yard, putting about ten feet between us.
Lyza makes the first move, tossing out a small ball of electricity at me. It crackles as it flies through the air. Just before it lands, I slide out of the way.
Turning back to face Lyza, another ball of static hits my arm. Tingles spread through my bicep, up to my shoulder and down to my wrist.
Another one is speeding toward me. Acting on instinct, I pull for the water around me, but I feel only emptiness. At the last moment, I shift to my left, dodging the next onslaught of electrical currents coming my way. One catches my thigh, spreading throughout my leg. I’m so used to the feeling that it’s nothing more than a numb, tingling sensation.
Though she hasn’t been using her full power on me. I get nowhere near the voltage she would use to protect herself. In our years of friendship, she has only used it on me once. Let me just say, I hope I never end up on her bad side.
Trying my powers again, I expand my senses, hoping to dredge something up. But again I get no response. With a huff, I draw my fingers across my neck, signaling for her to stop. She crosses over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Still nothing? I thought that would’ve worked.”
“Yeah, me too. If nothing else, I was hoping a shock to my system would’ve reset me or something.”
She cracks a smile at my lame joke, even though it wasn’t just a joke. It seemed to help when I was hit with the electric stun sticks at HSI.
“Actually,” Lyza says, “maybe a shock to your system is exactly what you need. Where did they inject you?”
“In my left arm, why?” I ask, absolutely baffled as to what she’s talking about.
“Hold out your arm, girl. Maybe something will happen if I send a low pulse directly where they injected you.”
I hold out my arm for her and point to the exact spot.