Intrepid

by J. D. Brewer

  But before our faces got close enough, reason found its way back to me. I put my hands up so they gripped the back of his, and I pulled the sturdy fingers from my hair. “We need to talk,” I whispered, and my voice shook him from whatever trance he was in.

  I dropped his hands, stood up, and backed away, but I couldn’t catch my breath. I wanted to go back to the moment before I changed my mind. I wanted to feel the Multiverse collide into a kiss like it did in the dream I’d had just a few hours before. I wanted to lose myself to the warmth blooming around his body and the surge of Energy that felt so unnaturally natural. Without another word, he pulled himself up, grabbed a dishtowel, and filled up a bowl with water. His body was shaking, whether from pain or desire, I couldn’t tell.

  “Liam,” I said. “I have to talk to you.”

  “Oh, we’re gonna talk alright. But right now? Right now… Santiago’s hurt.”

  “What? Where?” I’d only been gone less than an hour. How on earth could both of them get hurt in such a short amount of time?

  Liam nodded towards the deck and I followed him out. Iago was passed out on a lounge chair, and blood was drying around several wounds.

  I gulped back some air and asked, “What happened?”

  All of the sudden Liam’s unreadable expression became very readable. His eyes narrowed into the anger I was expecting from the start. “You happened.”

  “Me?”

  “Don’t act indignant. Where the hell did you go? Better yet, why? Why did you go to the 620s of all places? Did you know about mammoth-bears before you hit that button? No. Of course not. You know absolutely nothing, but you act on every damn impulse as if you did.”

  I kneeled down next to Santiago. “Whose fault is it that I don’t know anything? I’m sure as hell not cool with y’all’s brilliant plan to keep me in the dark with everything. Who the hell are you to keep what you are a secret from me… or do you not even know what you are?” I grabbed the bowl from his hands, set it on the ground next to me, and swished the towel through the water. As I squeezed the excess water out of it, I wanted the towel to be Liam’s neck. How dare he talk to me like that?

  “What exactly do you think I am?” His voice nearly growled out the question, and I shivered.

  “Don’t play stupid, Liam. It doesn’t look good on that pretty, little face of yours.”

  “I don’t understand? What am I?” he asked in a way that was more resigned than inquisitive. Liam was such a know-it-all, and he kept talking like he knew better than me just because he was raised on this stupid boat. His reclusive lifestyle left him inadequate in the how-to-be-a-human-being department. I wondered how he could even care so much about Humanity when he didn’t even know how to interact with it. But maybe he didn’t know what he was. It was just as possible as him knowing. After all, they kept me in the dark my entire life.

  I put the towel around Iago’s neck and moved it over the wounds, but the blood did not want to come off.

  Liam took a deep breath. “What am I?”

  I didn’t want to grace him with the answer. To admit exactly what I knew would be to admit exactly what I didn’t. If he was playing stupid, it’d be better if I played it safe. He assumed I knew something, that meant he might give up more information by accident that would help me piece it all together. Instead of answering him, I asked, “Why isn’t he healing?”

  Liam’s face soured even more than before. “In trying to get away from the mammoth-bears, I think I nearly drained him of his Energy.”

  I tried not to let the information surprise me. Since talking to Lindsay, I’d already figured out that it wasn’t me on my own who killed all those animals this morning. I thought Liam activated something within me, but the fact that he could drain Energy from his surroundings without me around could mean something else entirely.

  As I scrubbed at the dried blood, I noticed what hadn’t yet dried was oozing backwards into the slice on his head, and the same thing was happening to the gash that traveled from his neck to his collarbone. I kept cleaning despite this, until the water in the bowl darkened and grew murky. I sent Liam for some more water, and I held Iago’s hand in mine while I placed my forehead on the part of his chest that didn’t hold a gash. The movement of his torso showed that his breath was growing stronger inside his ribs. “Come on, Iago,” I whispered. “This is nothing. Remember that time you lost control of that dirt bike and crashed into the fence? The way the barbed-wire tangled around your neck should have killed you, but you walked away with just a few scratches. And that was nothing compared to what your mom had in store for you as punishment. This? This is nothing.”

  Nothing. It was a funny word to fling around at a time like this. I remembered the way his mouth wrapped around a similar sentence. “You. Are. Nothing.” I wished it were true, because had I not gone to the 620s, Iago would not be in this situation, and if he died, it was on me. I tried not to cry, but something had to be wrong if his body was refusing to patch up. I didn’t know much, but I knew that if Liam’s scars were already disappearing, then Iago’s shouldn’t have been this far behind. I thought about Papa and how Ringo Jumping him back to Geronimo messed with his brain. All these years I thought it was Alzheimer’s, and it may as well have been. Papa wasn’t Papa after it happened. What if the same thing happened to the boy I grew up with?

  “Iago,” I whispered. “I can’t wait long for you to get better. Please, don’t do this.” It didn’t feel right to go with Iago in this condition. Even if he carried a death-syringe in his pocket, I cared about him. I knew it wasn’t personal, and I knew he wouldn’t do it unless deep in his heart he truly believed I was a danger to the Multiverse. Even then, I couldn’t see him doing it. He was my brother. I couldn’t bear the idea that if we left, we might be leaving Iago to insanity or a horribly slow death.

  I couldn’t leave him like this. He was the last piece of home I had left.

  But I had to let go of a lot of things… including home.

  “Come on, Iago. Heal already.” I put my head back on his chest and let the sobs come out. I hadn’t given myself the room to feel this pain since Sully wrapped his fingers around my throat that night, but I felt it all right then and there. Every ounce of hurt and anger and loss pulled me into its own cutting pain and bled out of me in the form of snotty, hiccup-y tears.

  As much as I wanted to be sure Iago was healed before we left, we couldn’t wait. For too long, I’d been living under the shackles of other people’s fear, and I had the Knowing on my side. I knew that I could do so much more if I started trusting in myself over the others.

  I trusted that Papa had answers, but how did I get them? He was delusional most of the time. “Sometimes he’s not,” Lindsay had said. Suddenly, I understood what she meant. If I could just get to Papa during one of his lucid spells, he could tell me what I needed to know.

  Iago’s breath was growing strong under my ear. He’d be okay. If we got him to a room before we left, he’d probably wake up healed but a little confused. Confused was better than addled. Maybe we could come back and check on him in a couple days, but getting to Papa couldn’t wait.

  I sat there, with my head rising and falling with the ever-steadying breaths my friend was taking. This would be our goodbye, and a new resolve settled into my heart. Even if Iago was afraid of what I could do, I would leave him with a silent promise. I would love before I hated, understand before I believed, breathe before I spoke, and think before I acted. But most of all, I would be Intrepid, for him and for everyone else counting on me.

  I didn’t hear Liam return until I saw the bowl he settled down next to where I knelt. Except the hand that set it there wasn’t Liam’s. It had a silver ring wrapped around a calloused thumb and a silver bracelet wrapped around the black hair on his wrists. I pulled my head up and saw a face that made me understand the real definition of missing. “Ringo?”

  “Chin up. He’ll be fine.” He lifted me up by the elbows and smiled. “Just think how warm yo
u’ll make Mrs. Ortiz feel when I tell her how much you decided to care about the boy.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Ringo showed me how to use the Planck Activation Bracelet to access Iago’s med-scan. A floating hologram rose above him, laying out his bones, then layering images of the rest of his inside with each scan it took.

  “No internal bleeding, and his brain scans are functioning normally. He got lucky, kiddo,” Ringo said, before he and Liam carried Iago to his room.

  I went into the galley and sat at the table to let the silence steady me. I needed a moment to breathe. Too much had happened in such a short time. Iago almost experienced death by mammoth-bear, Lindsay was a Saltador involved in some secret faction, Liam was another hybrid, and Ringo decided to drop in for a visit.

  All in one day…

  It was possible that all of it was a coincidence, right?

  I could process everything if I really gave it a shot.

  I could…

  I couldn’t…

  I slid into the cushioned bench that lined one side of a cafeteria table and put my head into my hands. The bite of wood on my elbows grounded me to where I sat, and I was thankful for the support to my heavy, heavy head. Ringo being back could mean anything, but something told me it wasn’t part of the plan. The hug he’d wrapped me in felt like a flannel shirt that had been washed too many times so that the fabric had become scratchy and uncomfortable rather than worn and safe. He’d told me in his stupid letter that I had to go through all of this without him. What had changed to make him suddenly appear? Did he have a failsafe-syringe too? Could I trust this man who pretended to be my father all of these years?

  My skin felt warm to my hands. I turned some of my senses down so I could concentrate on how the boat rocked under my feet and how the sound of the wind rippled across smooth water. I didn’t necessarily mean to tune up my hearing and eavesdrop, but the moment I accidentally did it was the moment I kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner.

  Ringo’s voice was familiar, connecting me to so many memories. I ached to hear his laugh, and I had a sick hope Liam would say something. But their conversation was all business, and Ringo said, “Iago sent me a message to say she’d left. Do we know where she went?”

  “The 620s,” Liam answered.

  There was a rustle of a blanket being drawn over Iago in his bed, and I could hear the way it wrapped around every curve of his body. Iago was going to be okay, and it made me focus on what needed to happen next. I couldn’t stay, but how could I leave now that Ringo was here?

  “Did you figure out if she met anyone?” Ringo tried again.

  “Our hands were a little full.” There were cracks in Liam’s words, like every one of them would crumble under the right amount of pressure.

  I rubbed my fingers along my face so my skin stretched in and out. “What do I do?” I whispered. Should I leave right then? Should I go without Liam? I groaned and whispered, “Similar. Not the same.” All the rubbing I was doing to my cheeks was not rubbing in the answer. “He’s a hybrid, but what kind? He’s mutated, but how?”

  I thought on how his fingertips raced lightning across my skin when he touched me. It wasn’t the kind of lightning that happened from the anticipation of a someone holding your hand for the first time or the bubble-bursting stomach hiccups at the beginning of Sully’s kiss. It was more chaotic than that. What would have happened if I let Liam kiss me? Why did he even want to in the first place? That was the question that made my stomach twitter. It melted me into the possibility of what if, and my heart raced as if he were in the room with me, trying to pull my lips onto his again.

  There was no logical reason for wanting him, and I wondered if I craved him because I craved what his presence did with my Energy. It was almost as if he could control and redirect it, but to what purpose?

  I ground my teeth together in frustration over how answers could rest at the tip of everything: tongues, thoughts, fingertips. They wait for a scale to shift this way or that so they can tumble down and into your brain, and finding this answer was like finding the hidden toy in the cereal box before everyone else did. There was no light bulb going off over my head. I just suddenly knew what he was—what he could do.

  If I could activate a Splice, then Liam could Move it into existence using any type of Energy that existed—even if it wasn’t the Collective Energy of humanity. Back in Spain, I had access to millions of Movers, so when I Spliced, the others pushed the four universes into existence. But when I tried to do it on the boat, there was only a Primitive Energy. It was too sporadic and spread out because it had been converted back to sedimentary objects and instinct-driven animals. Here, on this planet, there were no connecting fibers to propel Collective Energy.

  But Liam?

  He could gather Energy even from the crevices of death, and he could un-Stagnant a universe by giving it his form of electric-shock treatment. While I could Splice, Liam could Move.

  This answer only made me realize another.

  I couldn’t leave without him.

  I thrummed my fingers on the table and tried to dissipate the nervous warble that wiggled through me. Impatience found me because, despite the fact that I didn’t know what to do next, I wanted to do more than sit on my toosh and wait. I wanted to act on what I’d learned.

  When Ringo joined me in the kitchen, he slid next to me on the bench and put his arm around me. We sat in silence for a while, unsure of how to untangle everything. How was anyone supposed to begin a conversation like the one that needed to happen? It didn’t take long for my mouth to remember it had a mind of its own so that I started it incorrectly. “I hate you,” I whispered.

  “No. You don’t.”

  “I want to.”

  “I want you to, too. It might make you feel better to put your Energy into a little bit of hate.”

  I leaned into the crook between his arm and chest, and I nuzzled my head into the patch of body just above his armpit. He smelled the same, like pinecones drizzled in thunderstorms. It was the smell of home and normalcy, even if those things didn’t exist for me anymore.

  “Where’d you go today?”

  “I just wanted to try a Jump on my own. I’d read about the 620s on one of the forums, and I wanted to see if I could numb how I felt to the point of not feeling cold.” The lie came out and sounded so close to the truth that even I almost believed it. I’d never been good at lying before, but the surprise of it was welcome. Like Lindsay said, I needed to start holding onto a few secrets of my own.

  It’d been so good to see her—to know that I would never meet a Lindsay on another world who didn’t know me. Despite all the secrecy she’d lived with, trusting her was as simple as blinking. Perhaps the blow of her particular betrayal was softened by the fact I’d already had to forgive so many others for it lately. With everything else, it made sense that Lindsay was in on it too, and it made sense that she meant well.

  I had to start looking at people for their intentions rather than their actions, because I was learning that intent was anchored to belief, belief was anchored to faith, and faith was anchored to love. At the core, I had to start experiencing everyone within the gradations of love they existed in because it was the only way to forgive them for the rest of it. And I needed this act of forgiveness in the same way the moon needed the sun for illumination because in letting go of blame, there was a different kind of freedom—the freedom of acceptance.

  Ringo reached down and held up my wrist. “How’d it come off?”

  “How did what come off?”

  “The tracker… how’d it come off?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I lied. I shrugged and pulled my hand away.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I’ll get you a new one tomorrow.”

  I removed my head from his shoulder and sat up. Lindsay was right about this too—they had no right to track me like an animal. “No, you won’t. I’m not a heifer at the ranch that needs to be tagged. I�
��m a human being, and it’s time y’all started treating me like one.”

  “It’s for your protection, Tex. What happens if you accidentally Jump and we can’t find you?”

  “Then you teach me a protocol for how to rendezvous. Tell me coordinates that are safe to go to or a forum I can reach that is only connected to you, and if I make a mistake, I’ll know how to come back—”

  “Texi—” he warned. It was the same warning he always used, but I felt the pangs of it in a different way. For the first time, he was wrong to use that tone with me.

  “How can you expect me to trust you if you can’t even trust me? I’m tired of the lies.”

  “There are things you don’t get yet.”

  “Then help me get them! Stop telling me I won’t understand. I’ve done nothing but try since you left that stupid letter, and I think I’m handling things well, considering.”

  Ringo scoffed. “You call today well?”

  I felt trapped from where I sat, and I pulled one leg up so that I straddled the bench on my way out of the seat. But Ringo grabbed my hand to still me.

  I glared at him and said, “I will make mistakes. I will not be perfect. But I will not be tracked.”

  “Your mistakes will cost lives, like it almost cost Iago’s today. Trust me. Ever since you were a baby, I’ve done everything in my power to protect you, and I need you to trust in that.”

  “But you set out to kill me before you tried to save me.” The truth of that statement flattened on my ears. It went so deep into hurting that it no longer felt painful.

  Tears pooled in Ringo’s eyes, and I didn’t know how to take it. I’d never seen him cry before, not even that time I mistook his big-toe for a nail when we were building that tool shed behind our house. He took a deep breath and said, “I couldn’t do it and still call myself a human being after doing so. Instead, I transported you to Geronimo. Papa. He raised me, you know? He was the only one I could trust. The night I took you, before I moved into the correct Vein, I realized I’d been followed. Then I discovered the tracker on you. It was in the little medical bracelet wrapped around your tiny ankle. I cut it off, left it where we were, and transported you to Geronimo. I stole a truck and crashed it into a tree near you, because I knew the Sheriff’s department, and therefore Papa, would find you easier if there was something to draw their attention to you. Then I returned to find the medical bracelet with your tracker and Jumped over and over again to lose their trail. I Jumped into so many different universes before they finally caught up. They almost killed me trying to find out where I’d taken you, but luckily, I’d already Jumped through so many Veins that they couldn’t figure it out.”