Seer

by Ashley Maker

  “What did he tell you?”

  I push in harder. “Look, my dad’s crazy. All I remember him saying about the expert thing was that it was the government’s fault. That they were trying to create super humans and it killed a bunch of people. Is that what you want to know?”

  “Your father is not crazy.” Mathias’ voice takes on an edge. “Everything he told you is true. In late 1941, hidden deep in the desert around Los Alamos, New Mexico, the government started what was called the Abeo Program as a companion—or you could say a backup—to the Manhattan Project. Our nation had just been thrust into the Second World War, demanding the accelerated research and development of new weapons, the likes of which had never been seen before. The Abeo Program itself was a highly experimental, classified project that tested a new gene-enhancing serum on select members of the military. It was meant to produce hardier soldiers who could more easily withstand the rigorous challenges of war. But something went wrong.”

  Oh, here we go. Sounds almost identical to the things Chris likes to say.

  “Two strains were given, but within thirty days almost half of the test subjects died. The survivors seemed perfectly fine, exhibiting zero side effects, but the high fatality rate encouraged the permanent closure of the program. On the other hand, the Manhattan Project was considered a success, prompting the rerouting of all research to further bomb development. As far as the government is concerned, the Abeo Program never existed. They washed their hands of it. Any inquiries were silenced, and the remaining survivors learned to keep their mouths shut. Most of them went back to their normal lives, having regular, civilian jobs, getting married, having families. But unbeknownst to the government, the Abeo Program was most certainly a success. If they had studied even the first generation, they would have realized three things.” He holds up a finger and begins ticking the numbers off. “First, the serum is ineffective on adults. Second, the two strains injected produced two very different results. And then there’s the third, an anomaly within the anomaly. The Seer.”

  Mathias stops talking and his hand returns to the top of the desk.

  I clear my throat. “As nice as your little speech was, what does any of that have to do with me?”

  He leans forward. “An anomaly was found in the offspring of those given Strain A of the Experior serum. The anomaly is recessive, which means only one in four could have the gene, and only under certain conditions. Our studies showed that all of the children with the recessive gene are carriers, but not all experienced the expertus change. Not all became Seers. After discovering this, our leaders decided to pair actual Seers together to see what would happen. We’re only now beginning to see the results of that pairing. Your parents were one such pair, which means you, at the very least, are a carrier of the Seer gene. You may very well be a Seer. The expertus takes time and is a gradual change. If you reach adulthood without experiencing the first phasing signs, we’ll know for sure.”

  He’s looking at me expectantly, like I’m supposed to say something. Oh, I have things to say. There are so many questions I can’t quite grasp any of them. Serum. Government. Pairings. Seer. The words bounce around, reminding me of Chris. My heart beats strong and heavy as a sledgehammer in my chest. “So, what, you’re going to study me for two more years and see if I become a Seer?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  I suck in a breath, but it’s like there’s no air. “I’m not some guinea pig for you to experiment on! And pairings? Are you trying to tell me my parents were paired together like some kind of sick, scientific arranged marriage? And, hypothetically, because there’s no way I believe you, what happens if I am a Seer? Does that mean you’re going to pair me up with some other Seer dude and make us have little Seer babies? If I’m not one, what then? Do I get to leave?”

  By the time I’m done talking, I’m breathing hard, my throat dry and raspy. I ball my hands into fists until my fingernails dig into skin. How dare he act like I’m a part of this! This isn’t my problem. I don’t want to be involved in whatever is going on.

  Mathias tilts his head to one side. “There are some questions I can’t answer until you do or do not begin the expertus change.”

  My hands shake. “So you’re going to make me go back to that cell, and then, I don’t know, poke me with sticks every now and then to see if I magically become a Seer?”

  “Of course not. You’ll be placed in a training regimen like the rest of the students here. If you start exhibiting Seer characteristics, I will test you. Like it or not, you’re one of us. Your life is here now.”

  My mouth opens, closes, and opens again, but I can’t say a word.

  “Welcome to the compound, Miss Palmer. I look forward to hearing of your progress, and you’d better believe I’ll be paying attention.”

  Just like that, I feel like I’ve been sentenced.

  7

  Through the pane of glass, shades of red-gold fire arch across the sky, the sun’s fading rays caught by what’s left of the low-hanging storm clouds. Combined with a backdrop of mountains and snow-dusted pine trees as far as the eye can see, the sunset view is spectacular, but it’s as useless as it is pretty. Tells me absolutely nothing. Not where I am, or how to get out of this place. There aren’t even any visible roads.

  Behind me, the office door reopens, but I don’t turn around. My fist tightens around the coarse fabric of the drape. I scan the darkening horizon one last time for a hint of something—anything—but there’s just mountain and trees and snow. Wherever I am is secluded as all get out.

  “You’re supposed to come with me,” Kade says, the low timbre of his voice prickling the hair at the nape of my neck.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I find him standing by the door, holding it open with one arm. The last of the sunlight highlights the contours of his face and catches a spark in his eye the artificial lights don’t. My stomach flutters in response, and I drop the drape like it’s burned me, plunging his face into shadow. “Where are we going?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t want to talk to me anymore?”

  Ugh. His words are a cold, dousing reminder I’ve messed up again. I shouldn’t have said a word, shouldn’t have even looked at him. With a sharp intake of breath, I spin on my heel and stalk across the office, keeping my gaze firmly fixed on anything other than him as I pass into the hallway.

  I can literally hear his smirk when he lets out the smallest of laughs. That does it. I whirl back around and glare at him. “You think this is funny?”

  He closes the door and crosses his arms. “The tantrum you’re throwing? Yeah, a little bit.”

  Facing each other, I realize how tall he is, almost a foot over my average height. And even though he’s wearing loose-fitted jeans and a long-sleeved gray shirt, I can still tell he’s muscular in a lean and athletic sort of way. He could probably take me down in a second if I tried to make a break for it. My hands clench into fists. “And here I thought you understood. My mistake.”

  The look in his eyes changes, becomes so intense it sends goosebumps tingling down my arms. But he doesn’t say anything. Not a word is spoken as he takes the lead, navigating the hallway at a pace I can easily keep up with. When we reach the bottom of the staircase, I expect him to turn right toward the lobby, but he goes left into another short hallway with an exit at the end.

  A rush of frigid air lashes against my skin when Kade opens the door. I suck in a breath and fold in on myself, tucking both hands into the fabric of my sweater. Another blast of freezing wind tries to steal the door from Kade’s grasp. He cuts a glance at me, eyebrows furrowing deep, before ducking his head and plowing forward. The door closes behind us as I take off after him, teeth already chattering.

  My shoes swish forward and back on the path, scraping against coarse salt and a thin layer of snow. Shades of cobblestone peek through the white every few steps, a mottled collection of dark brown and tan. A growing splash of yellow light attracts my gaze
, which flickers up only long enough to recognize the old-fashioned black lampposts lining the walkway at regular intervals.

  The sudden stillness of the wind makes me look up again. A gigantic log and stone mansion looms over me, warm light spilling out. I catch glimpses of furniture, chandeliers, and the occasional moving figure through the many windows. Kade’s holding the front door open, and the numbing pinpricks of cold turn to blossoming warmth as I cross the threshold.

  Everything is quiet. Too quiet. I know I saw people from the windows and—oh.

  At least ten teenage girls are standing or sitting around a large U-shaped couch across the room. They are all—every single one of them—staring at me. Hardcore staring, like they know what went down in the office and they think I’m still dead. Even though I never was, and the hypothetical death itself is questionable. I want to scream at Mathias for messing with my head like this. Instead, I swallow at the sudden knot in my throat and force myself to stand still, because the way the girls are looking at me has me this close to turning around and bolting. Even if that means I have to stay outside in the snow until I become an ice sculpture.

  Kade clears his throat behind me. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”

  My room? He grabs my wrist and leads me to a spiral staircase tucked into the nearest corner. Humming whispers follow. We’re at the first turn of the wooden steps before I fully realize what happened. His skin is both cold and warm against mine. And it’s the heat seeping between us that finally snaps me back.

  I yank out of his grasp and grab the black iron railing to keep from tumbling down the stairs. He closes his hand and keeps spiraling up, as if he expected me to do that. For the shortest moment, I can’t move. My skin is tingling, and I don’t know if it’s from the change of outdoor to indoor temperature or—

  No. I’m not going to go there.

  With the rail as support, I hurry to catch up.

  We pass a landing with hallways stretching out on either side of it before starting another flight of stairs. Rafters and support beams promise the climb is almost over, and then my feet scuff against the gleaming wooden floors of another hallway. Kade stops in front of the first door to the right. There’s a fancy electronic keypad he punches a few numbers into. A green light flashes, just like at hotels. He swings the door open and flicks on the light switch.

  I’m not entirely sure what I expected when he said he was taking me to my room, but this definitely wasn’t it.

  This is somebody else’s room.

  There are books everywhere: strewn across the turquoise duvet of the bed pushed against one wall, cluttered on the desk in the corner, crammed into every available slot on a tall bookshelf by the curtained window. And where the books stop, weapons begin.

  Sharp weapons. Blunt weapons. Weapons I’ve never seen before in my life.

  I can’t believe Mathias thinks I’m the dangerous one. Who lives in this room—a serial killer?

  The weapons are all over the place. I recognize a set of wicked, sharp-looking knives in a display case on top of the bookshelf, and the long staff leaning against the wall, but the rest are unfamiliar. Out of all the weapons, the ones that catch my eye the most are the set of double blades hanging directly over the bed, mounted securely to the wall with metal brackets.

  I’m still staring at them when a female voice says, “Who is this and why is she in my room?”

  I whip around and see a girl standing in the doorway. Her features are tiny and pixyish—breakable looking. She has perfectly smooth skin surrounded by long, shining white-blond hair pinned back from her face with clips. Her bright green eyes are narrowed when she snarls, “I said, who is she?”

  I glance at Kade and find he is also staring at her. Except he’s grimacing, eyebrows drawn together and teeth gritted. His voice sounds the way his face looks when he asks, “You haven’t talked to your dad yet?”

  “Talked to my dad about what?”

  He gestures at me. “About Clare.”

  “Clare?” Her death stare transfers to me. She gives me a once over and her perfectly sculpted eyebrows scrunch. “What’s really going on? Are you trying to make me jealous or something?”

  Kade lets out a half-snort, half-laugh. “You need to get over yourself and call your dad.”

  Her eyes flash. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “If you’d stop being ridiculous, I wouldn’t have to.” His gaze flickers to mine and back to hers. “We really shouldn’t do this in front of her.”

  “I’m sure she’ll live.” She gives me a withering look. “You’ll live, won’t you—what was your name? Blaire?”

  Oh great. She’s talking to me. “It’s Clare.” I shrug and try to sound casual. “After what I’ve been through today, this is pretty small in comparison.”

  The corner of her mouth turns up. “Thatta girl, Blaire. At least I’m not the only one in this room who knows how to man up.” Her voice turns back to ice. “You gonna let the little girl show you up, big boy?”

  Kade rolls his eyes but otherwise doesn’t react. “Way to be an adult, Laila.”

  “Oh, ‘cause you’re such an adult,” she says sarcastically. “Newsflash. You’re nineteen! Stop acting like such an old man. All you care about is your stupid job. One call to my father, that’s all it would take.”

  I watch as he finally snaps. The glint in his eye becomes nothing short of murderous. “How exactly would that work, Laila? ‘Hi, Dad. Kade won’t go out with me. Fire him?’”

  She scoffs. “You think you’re so untouchable around here. Well, guess what? You’re not. In fact, you got lucky. You’d be nowhere, doing absolutely nothing if you hadn’t—”

  “Get out,” Kade says between clenched teeth.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said get out.” He jerks a hand toward the door. “Now.”

  Laila laughs, as if he’s told a hilarious joke. “This is my room. I think you’re the one who should get out.”

  They stare each other down, daggers practically flying from their eyes. Considering all the actual weapons in the room, I’m a little scared to move, or even breathe. It’s like I’m standing in the middle of a future murder scene. I cringe when Kade points to me and says, “I’m not leaving her here with you until you’ve talked to your dad.”

  She rolls her eyes so far back the whites show and huffs out a breath before pulling a phone out of her back pocket. “Fine. Whatever will make you get out of my face.” After smashing at the screen, she holds the phone to her ear. “Dad? Kade’s making me call you. He’s brought some girl to my room who is not supposed to be here. I’ve never seen her before so she must be an outsider. Should I escort the two of them to you?” She smirks at Kade.

  Pause.

  She starts pacing, then stops abruptly. “What? Okay. Yeah, hold on.” She flings another door open. I catch sight of what looks like a bathroom before she slams the door shut.

  Kade takes a deep breath. And then another. “Sorry you had to see that.”

  My head is spinning with questions. I point at the bathroom door. “And what exactly was that?” Forget about not talking to him. Some things are clearly more important.

  He exhales forcefully and says, “That is Mathias’ daughter.” Pity laces his voice when he adds, “And you get to be her roommate.”

  My stomach sinks at the words, an anchor heavy enough to root me to the floor. Laila’s angry voice carries through the bathroom door. I glance around her room again—light from the fixture overhead glints off all the sharp metal—and try to swallow, but can’t.

  Please no, please no, please no.

  Laila storms out of the bathroom and looks directly at me. Her green eyes are a surging storm of anger, but she pastes on a smile and says, “Well, I guess I overreacted. Welcome to the compound, roomie.”

  8

  The scent of lilacs smacks my nostrils with every step down the hallway, wafting off the heavy winter coat Laila let me borrow, as if she drenched the brown
tweed in perfume. Starting down the stairs after Kade, I wrinkle my nose and stuff my hands deeper into the silk lining of the coat’s pockets. If Mom were here, she’d be sneezing like crazy and complaining nonstop about her eyes; anything that messed with them drove her batty, so our house was always a no-perfume zone. I wasn’t even allowed to use scented lotion or body sprays, and now I’m practically wearing a purple-scented candle.

  And I hate it. I hate perfume. I hate this coat.

  I hate this place.

  Because I never—not even once—doubted my memories of her. They were pure and happy and normal, and I clung to them after she disappeared. And then Mathias had to go and tell me she was a part of this. I don’t want to believe it, but something as simple as Laila’s perfume rips a fissure through what I thought was true, reminding me how sensitive her eyes always were. How she shielded them. How she practically lived with sunglasses perched on her nose.

  I don’t want to believe she was a Seer. I don’t even know what being a Seer means. But now every memory of her is magnified, questioned…doubted. I thought Chris was the paranoid one, and she was normal. So why did she homeschool me? Why did she insist on moving to a new neighborhood every two or three years? Then there’s the fact she never took me to a hospital, not even the time I fell off the park’s jungle gym when I was eight and she thought I broke my ankle. It was just a bad sprain, and maybe she figured that out, but don’t most mothers take their children to the hospital over things like that? And why—why—did she give us a new last name and never, ever talk about her past in detail?

  Now that I really think about it, none of those things are normal.

  I thought she was hiding me from my father, for some reason she didn’t want me to know. I thought maybe he was abusive. When I went to live with Chris and came face to face with all of his drinking and craziness, I quit asking myself why, because I thought I finally knew. I would have never in a million years thought she faked my death.