by Jena Leigh
“Don’t drop your hand until I tell you, ’kay?” she said. “I’ve done all the swimming I care to do for one night.”
Alex nodded and Jezza began her efforts to repair the broken pipe.
“Is that actually going to work?” asked Nate. “The psi of the water in that pipe—”
“Is way more than these patches are rated for, I know,” finished Jezza. She smoothed one patch over the teardrop shaped hole, and then placed the second over top of it. “Which is why I intend to cover these patches with a crap-ton of fiberglass repair wrap and then tell the dumbass upstairs to call city maintenance so that they can get their asses down here and fix things properly before this jerry rigged stopgap gives way and floods his damn basement again.”
“How long do you think the patch will hold?” asked Alex.
Jezza shrugged. “Long enough that I’ll be back at my apartment and shaking hands with Morpheus before Lincoln needs to find himself a mop.” She eyed the pipe warily. “Or a boat.”
“Morpheus?” asked Aiden. “Who’s he?”
Nate suppressed an eye roll at the odd inflection of his cousin’s voice.
Prior to leaving for their tour on the Misty Rose, the couple had reached the point in their post-breakup journey that they officially couldn’t stand each other—but apparently Aiden was still capable of being jealous when the occasion called for it.
Or, as in this particular instance, when it didn’t.
As she wrapped the fiberglass tape around the patch, Jezza shook her head and smirked.
Alex, meanwhile, seemed to be trying very, very hard to suppress a grin.
“So tell me, New Girl,” said Jezza without looking up from her efforts. “What exactly were you doing at the boys’ apartment at half-past two in the morning? I’m assuming that at this ridiculous hour they didn’t just stumble across you while they were on their way here.” The grin she sent Alex’s way was nothing short of wicked. “So, which one’s more your flavor? Tall, dark, and brooding? Or tall, fair, and asinine? Or both, perhaps?”
“Uh…” Alex sent a slightly panicked look Nathaniel’s way. “I’m just sort of… in town visiting… for a while.”
Jezza snorted in amusement. “Riiiight.”
“It’s complicated, Jezz,” said Aiden. “A last minute thing. She’s staying with us right now because she has no place else to go.”
Jezza’s pale blue eyes raked over the trio one last time, her smirk still firmly in place. “Uh-huh.”
“It’s really not what you think,” said Nate.
“Whatever you say, boys.” She chuckled. “I’m happy to leave my mind playing in the gutter until you want to tell me the truth about your new friend. I’ll say one thing for her, though: she’s cute. I can see why you’re into her.”
Beside him, Alex’s cheeks once again blazed scarlet. “It’s not like that, really, I’m—”
From across the empty expanse of the basement came the sound of a door swinging open on rusted hinges.
Nate looked toward the creaking to find the aforementioned Lincoln descending the staircase with a dazed expression. He continued shuffling his way toward them like a man in a trance, barely registering the three additions to his impromptu plumbing party.
“Ah,” said Aiden. “At long last, the idiot graces us with his presence. Next time, dumbass, call a professional. If we hadn’t come to help, Jezza’d probably be unconscious and half-drowned by now.”
Lincoln blinked slowly, seeming to take in their presence for the first time. “Oh, you fixed the pipe. Thanks, man.”
His vacant gaze settled on Alex.
She held out a hand in introduction. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Alex.”
He took her hand mechanically and mumbled, “Lincoln. My name’s Lincoln.”
Alex inhaled sharply, dropping Lincoln’s hand as though in surprise. Her hand went to her right side and she rubbed it distractedly.
When Nate shot her a quizzical look, she smiled in reply, taking a deep breath as though testing her lungs.
Weird.
Jezza finished taping off the leak and huffed. “Yeah, you’re welcome, Lincoln. The next time your sorry butt calls me in the middle of the night, you’re going straight to voicemail.”
As Jezza continued to light into the newcomer, Alex leaned closer to Nate’s shoulder and whispered, “Is he always like this?”
She smelled like an unexpected mixture of his soap and Aiden’s shampoo and something he couldn’t quite name; something sweet and citrusy.
“Is who always like what?” he whispered back.
“Lincoln. Is he always this, I don’t know, out of it?”
Nate thought back to the last time he’d seen Lincoln, during a party at Jezza’s apartment a couple of months earlier. He’d seemed animated then, telling stories to an engaged audience for most of the night.
Although that might have just been the beer talking. In his experience, even the most introverted of characters would come out of their shell with enough alcohol prodding them along.
But Alex was right.
There was something odd about the way Lincoln had barely registered their presence, even with Jezza verbally tearing him a new one.
At that hour, it would have come as no surprise to anyone if Lincoln was just tired and in need of a good night’s sleep—but his wasn’t a look of exhaustion. It was closer to a look of shock.
Aiden had apparently registered the same odd vibes. “What’s going on, man? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Something about Aiden’s choice of words caused Lincoln to cringe. He looked up, meeting Aiden’s eye for the first time since joining them. “It’s Sara,” he said, finally. “She’s dead.”
In the ensuing silence, Nate could hear the muffled sound of a television coming from one of the upper floors.
“What?” Jezza had taken a step backward at Lincoln’s announcement.
Nate had no idea who Sara was, but it was clear from his cousin and Jezza’s devastated expressions that they had both known her well.
“How?” asked Aiden.
Lincoln didn’t answer, just shook his head slowly.
“How, Linc?” asked Jezza. “What happened to her? And when? I just spoke to her last night!”
Lincoln swallowed hard. “She—she was walking home from the parlor after work last night and she just…” He shook his head again. “I just got off the phone with her sister. Someone, um… They found her body in an alley a couple of hours ago. The news is already saying she’s the Seattle Scientist’s latest victim.”
“The Seattle what?” asked Aiden.
Jezza sank down on the pale concrete floor and yanked the pink gloves from her hands. With a small sigh, she said, “It’s the stupid name the newspapers gave to the guy responsible for a bunch of murders here in Seattle. It started just before you guys left town. And Sara…” She swallowed hard. “Sara makes five.”
“Five people?” muttered Aiden. “In two weeks?”
“If he really is the one responsible for Sara, then the killer is speeding up,” said Lincoln. He seemed to be coming more or less to his senses as the conversation progressed.
“How’s that?” asked Aiden.
“They just found the fourth victim the day before yesterday,” said Jezza. “Adding Sara, that’s two people in two days.”
“Geez,” said Aiden. “The guy’s on a killing spree.”
Beside him, Alex had gone oddly still and was chewing nervously on her lower lip.
She knows something, thought Nate. Alex knows something about these murders.
“How is he…” Aiden winced. “I probably don’t want to know the answer to this, but how is he killing people?”
Jezza and Lincoln both frowned and looked away.
Nate cleared his throat. “He uses some sort of chemical cocktail. Injects it into their neck. No one’s been able to identify what the stuff is, yet, but it…does things to the victims. Changes them
as it kills them.”
Aiden shot him a curious glance.
Nate shrugged. “There was an article about the murders in that paper I picked up from Trolley’s.”
“There’s something else,” said Jezza, quietly. “Something that they’re not talking about in the papers.”
“What’s that?” asked Nate.
“The victims,” she said. “So far, they’ve all been Variants.”
Silence reigned during the walk back to Aiden’s apartment.
Alex hardly noticed. She was too busy staring at her feet and cursing her lousy memory to register the lack of conversation.
At least her ribs no longer ached. Lincoln, she was amazed to discover, was a Variant with regenerative powers. One handshake, and Alex’s injured ribcage was good as new.
Her amazement had fallen quickly by the wayside, however, when Lincoln told them about Sara.
These murders, she thought, I remember when they happened. It was all over the news for weeks! But what ever came of them? Did they ever arrest the person responsible?
She couldn’t remember.
What she could remember, however, was that her Aunt Cil—a woman who despised bad news of any kind—had been glued to the cable news channels the entire time, seemingly fascinated by the case.
In light of this new information, Alex could finally see her aunt’s interest for what it was.
Cil hadn’t been fascinated. She’d been afraid.
A serial killer targeting Variants?
Alex’s aunt had gone out of her way for years to avoid contact with her own kind. But even in her self-imposed exile, she must have heard rumblings about the true nature of the murders.
She’d known, and so she’d watched with rapt attention as the case developed.
Alex, on the other hand, had been too busy with classes, swim meets, and her budding social life to pay it any attention. Just another depressing news story, lost amongst the rest.
If only she could remember more of the details.
“How did you do it?”
At the question, Alex tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. Nathaniel reached out to steady her, one hand grasping hers as his other took hold of her elbow.
The touch was fleeting, but it was enough to absorb his ability—if only a small amount.
“Thanks,” she said as she continued walking, choosing to ignore his question.
She’d been so distracted by the news of a serial killer roaming the streets of Seattle, that she’d forgotten about the other revelation that had yet to be explained.
“Well?” asked Nate, refusing to let the subject drop.
Aiden socked him on the shoulder and gestured toward the guy roughly ten feet ahead of them on the sidewalk. “Not the time, man.”
Alex returned to staring at her feet, grateful for the anonymous man walking ahead of them.
His being within earshot of their conversation gave Alex a few more minutes to formulate a reply. If she was right, and that building up ahead was the same one they’d passed earlier, then they were only a few minutes walk from Aiden’s apartment complex.
Once they made it into the apartment, Alex would have no choice but to give them the explanation they were looking for.
But what to tell them, exactly?
Even she was fuzzy on the details.
Both of her parents had been Variants. Her mother a jumper, her father, telekinetic. With those odds, she ought to have inherited at least one of her parents’ abilities.
Alex wondered which gift she might have developed, had Masterson not interfered.
But again, that part was fuzzy, too. How and when had Samuel Masterson actually interfered? From what she could glean from Grayson, Masterson had never been successful in his attempts to get his hands on her.
They’d taken the madman down and put him on ice before he could get close enough to inject her with anything.
Or so they’d all assumed.
So when had Alex been given the VX-2? And by whom?
She wondered if they would ever know for sure. The how and why didn’t particularly matter at this point—the fact remained, Alex had been injected.
They walked into the lobby of Aiden’s complex and made for the elevator at the end of the hall.
“Alright,” said Nate as the doors slid closed. “Now, spill.”
Alex sighed. “I’m not a… a normal Variant.”
“Well I’d say that much is pretty freaking obvious, darlin,” said Aiden.
The doors dinged open and they walked in silence down the carpeted hall toward Aiden’s door. He fished the keys from the pocket of his jeans.
A moment later, the apartment’s door fell closed behind them.
“What do you mean by that?” Nate pressed. “That you’re not ‘normal’?”
She grimaced. How to explain?
“You know those two serums that Samuel Masterson developed back before he went crazy?” she asked.
Nathaniel eyed her warily, choosing to remain standing as Alex sank heavily onto the couch. “The VX-1 and VX-2?”
“The what?” asked Aiden.
“Masterson created two gene therapies back when he was working for the Agency,” Nate explained. “The VX-1 stripped away Variant abilities and the VX-2 allowed one person to absorb the abilities of another.”
Aiden dropped his keys on the kitchen counter. “So the VX-2 was the stuff he used on himself? The stuff that changed him?”
Alex nodded. “No one can really explain how it happened, but at some point I was injected with the VX-2 serum.”
Aiden took a step back at the announcement, whether from surprise or fear, Alex couldn’t be certain. Nate, meanwhile, narrowed his eyes at her.
Again.
She was growing used to that look.
“The same serum that turned Masterson batshit crazy?” asked Aiden.
Alex pursed her lips.
The crazy part worried her, too. It was a side effect she’d yet to develop, but feared she wouldn’t be excluded from experiencing… eventually.
“I didn’t react to the serum in the same way Masterson did.”
Aiden’s expression now matched Nate’s.
She swallowed a sigh. “I’m not as powerful. I can’t keep the abilities I absorb, like he can. Mine fade within 48 hours unless I refresh them.”
“And how, exactly, do you absorb these abilities in the first place?” asked Nate. “The same way Masterson does?”
The question was laced with angry accusation—and it was Alex’s turn to furrow a brow.
What was with the hard edge to his voice?
Aiden snorted, whether in amusement or dismissal, she wasn’t sure which. At the moment, she was finding it almost impossible to read either of them.
“When, in the last 48 hours, could she possibly have done something like that?” asked Aiden. “She hasn’t been out of our sight.”
“The girl can travel through time, Aiden. Who’s to say she can’t freeze the world whenever she wants?” asked Nate. “She could have hit pause and slipped off to murder the first Variant she came across, and neither of us would have been the wiser.”
In that moment, Alex came to the startling realization that she’d never been privy to the details regarding how Masterson actually acquired his slew of abilities.
She knew that he usually killed anyone who got in the way of something he wanted, but she’d never realized it was also a part of his absorption process.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Alex held up her hands in a ‘time-out’ gesture. “Hold up. I absorb my ability through touch. That’s it. No murder necessary.” She scowled. “I would never take someone’s life just to borrow an ability!”
She bristled at the suggestion. Did they really think she was capable of committing such horrendous acts? Most of the time, she didn’t want the stupid powers anyway!
“Alright,” said Aiden. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Then how did you end up with that water-wielding ability
?”
“How do you think I borrowed your ability, Aiden?” she asked, defensive. “I absorbed it when you grabbed my wrist earlier.”
“You got it from me?” he asked.
“Where else?” she sighed. “Listen, I realize that you two have no reason to trust me, but I promise—I won’t lie to you. I might not tell you everything about the future I come from, but I swear I’ll never do anything to hurt either of you. You two mean more to me than you could ever know.”
Aiden and Nate exchanged yet another unreadable look.
“I’ll never lie to you,” she repeated. “There may be some questions I refuse to answer, but I promise that any information I’m holding back is only meant to protect you.”
And that did it.
Both of their expressions softened. Whatever doubts that were brewing between them had been eased. They were taking her at her word.
For now, anyway, it seemed they would trust her.
Aiden blew out a breath. “I’m going back to bed.” He started toward his room, then paused. “Alex?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” he said. When she furrowed a brow, he added. “For tonight. For jumping in and fixing the leak. Thanks.”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s nothing, really. Glad I could help.”
He disappeared into his room and the door closed behind him.
Alex untied her Chucks and removed her jacket, too tired to bother with changing into pajamas again. Sleep shouldn’t be an issue after all that had just happened. She was exhausted.
As she sat adjusting her pillow at one end of the couch and tugging the quilt over her legs, Alex caught sight of Nate.
He was sitting atop the pile of blankets that made up his makeshift pallet—and he was smiling at her.
She stopped fiddling with the blankets, her hands frozen in mid-air.
“What?” she asked.
His look of amusement was making her nervous.
“Nothing,” he said and shook his head. “It’s just that the more I think back, the more I’m able to remember about you, from when we were kids. You know you used to follow me around everywhere I went?”
She did? Well that was embarrassing.
She couldn’t remember him, at all.