Faded Flare

by L. B. Carter

  Sirena’s brow went the other direction, showing concern. Either she was caring by nature or had some subconscious level of recollected tenderness for her forgotten friend.

  And Buster? He was staring at Henley, an abnormal expression on his face. Henley was so used to his dead-pan aloofness it took her a moment to place the feeling he was conveying: respect… and an iota of pride.

  Henley looked away with a blush. Her mentor had rarely praised her work, fixating on improvements and oversights to modify. Henley preferred that.

  Aiming ahead was much wiser than checking over her shoulder to the past—intention toward something better, imbued with positive feelings of hope, motivation, intention, rather than harping on inalterable actions that associated with negative emotions, like remorse and disappointment. Praise was often an insincere manipulation to reward and encourage wanted behavior—a training device used on the weak. In retrospect, if her mentor had employed such a tactic, Henley might have been more vigilant to BTI’s utilitarian apathy.

  Coming from Buster, it felt entirely authoritarian. Her blush morphed into an agitated flush. For what purpose was he attempting to manipulate her?

  Henley helped Jen sit in the open trunk on the bumper, retrieved the water that had seeped a damp spot on her borrowed shirt, and opened the bottle, offering it to Jen.

  Jen accepted and took a few small sips, then downed half the rest in a hearty chug, and upended the last of it over her head. She spat the rivulets out of her mouth, watching as the others joined to form a leery but protective semicircle around the trunk. Her appearance suggested she had been mauled by a wild animal. Henley didn’t believe Reed was that wild—at least, not after Jen’s ferocious swat to his weakest point.

  “All right. You.” Jen pointed at Sirena, back in control. “Start explaining who the frick these two are.” Her finger flicked back and forth from Nor to Reed.

  “You.” She pointed at Buster. “Stop staring at my wet t-shirt and find me a towel.”

  Henley smirked. There was no way the Bus had even noticed Jen had breasts until she brought attention to them.

  His eyes widened, dropped, and he turned around. It was wise to have one person watching their backs anyway.

  “You.” The soggy blonde adjusted her index finger to indicate Henley, whose smile fell. “Thank you.”

  Henley’s grin renewed tenderly.

  “And you.” The finger extended toward Reed, her eyes narrowing, lashes meeting in the middle. “I’m sorry about the damage to your future offspring.”

  “Sorry enough to keep the wet shirt on?” Reed grinned lasciviously and winked. “You can check everything is still working properly if you’re feeling guilty.”

  “Not guilty enough to resist simultaneously checking if my bite force is stronger than my gag reflex.” She smiled sweetly.

  “I’ll grab the shirt and towel,” Reed proffered with a little genuine fear. The hit had to have been painful enough to forestall his enthusiasm to do anything that had even a chance of earning a repeat. The hit had also demonstrated that she had unsuppressed fighting nature; the threat was not a bluff. He ducked to the side, digging through the duffel he’d salvaged before Buster could.

  “You. Talk,” Jen commanded Sirena, toying with the empty water bottle. She was nervous, her bravado a subverting technique.

  “As I said, this is Nor and that—” She gestured to the behind bent over the bag. “—is Reed Stanley. They’re brothers working for an organization you hired to protect me after I got out of BTI—the first time.”

  “Green Solutions,” Nor supplied.

  Jen snorted. “Sounds like a lawn-care company.” Nor opened his mouth to object, and Jen waved him off. “I remember, I remember. I didn’t hire you per se. My mom’s boyfriend did—Mark.”

  “Semantics,” Buster had the audacity to accuse. Henley shot him a silencing glare. He complied for once. Letting go of control, even momentarily, was probably giving him an ulcer, let alone the detour from …wherever he was taking them. Her family at the end of it all, she prayed. Would he lie to manipulate her into cooperating?

  “So,” Jen said conversationally. “How did you know where Sirena was?” Jen bore her eyes into Sirena as if they contained laser beams.

  “We’ve already established that the phone was a mistake. Can we not keep bringing it up?” Sirena pleaded, eyes to the sky.

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” Buster said. “It was intentional.” There was a menacing growl in his baritone.

  “In my defense, it wasn’t the phone. It was the necklace.” Sirena’s eyes fell to Jen’s neck.

  Nor’s followed briefly before glancing quickly away from the bright blue showing through her wet shirt.

  “The necklace?” Jen’s free hand wound around it and she stared down at her cleavage. “From Mark?”

  “It wasn’t his. It belonged to our colleague Lynn. Even the nicest gestures can have repercussions,” Nor said kindly.

  “But you got it before he hired Lynn.” Henley was confused.

  Jen’s face closed in. “He was one of you?”

  “Not that we know of,” Nor shrugged. His arms crossed, interrogation mode settling over his empathy. “Had he met up with Lynn before she helped him extract Rena?”

  Jen shrugged, a lip curling. “How should I know? He wasn’t my actual dad. I only really got to know him when I got to BTI.”

  “Well, however it got to you, you activated the tracker just a few hours ago.” Reed stood back up, waving a shirt between the two to diffuse the battle. “Let’s not sling blame on each other when we’re on the same side… in a twisted, fucked-up way. We wouldn’t have accosted you kids so dramatically if whatever you hit Nor with hadn’t been as potent as it was,” Reed protested. “That was unnecessary.”

  Jen’s eyebrow crease was back, alertness lightening her eyes. “Hit you with?”

  “When you took Sirena. I was out for a good while before Reed came to see what had stopped me from getting her home from the hospital.” Nor ran a hand through his hair in remembered frustration.

  Jen slid off the bumper, gaze bouncing between the Stanleys. “You’re telling me that you didn’t bring Sirena to BTI?”

  Henley’s stomach was starting to cramp, curdling in a way not dissimilar to its earlier reaction to the fast food they ate.

  Nor’s brows couldn’t have been lower. “Why would we do that? Our contract was to get her away from whatever institution Mark snuck her from. Lynn—our colleague—was bringing the specimen and Mark to our headquarters when…”

  “Stew,” Sirena and Reed spat at the same time, anger firming their features, hers pinching and his sharpening to hard angles.

  He thrust the black thermal at Jen, who whipped it from his hand and wrenched her wet shirt over her head.

  Buster immediately busied himself with his watch. Henley hid a smirk in her shoulder. “We need to get on the road or we won’t make the meet-up.”

  “We need to get on the road so we can get Sirena to safety, and then I can go kick that punk’s ass,” Jen asserted. “He’s so getting his acceptance offer rescinded.”

  “Actually, I think what he did is a jailable offense. And that’s only if there’s even going to be anyone at your rendez-vous,” Reed reminded Buster, brutally. The inference to Val’s demise lost any of its previous sorrow since he was not even pretending to avoid ogling Jen’s neon blue zebra-striped bra. At the inspired look in his eye, Henley mentally increased her assessment of his ‘wildness’ level.

  It was a cool early-autumn day.

  “Well,” Sirena piped up. “Even if there isn’t, I’d bet Stew is on our tail now. Even without a tracker, he can get Jen’s mom’s help.”

  Jen shook her head, pulling the thermal over her head. Reed blinked, freed from Jen’s hypnosis, disappointed. “More like Professor Hutchins, but I agree. Looks like we’re heading west with these fine and upstanding gentlemen,” she said from inside the material. “I guess you’re not fire
d. Yet.”

  Secretly, Henley gave a relieved sigh. She wasn’t sure she trusted the Bus yet, especially with the likelihood his contact was defunct. However, her family was at the end of all this chaos. She’d joined this endeavor to leave BTI behind. She wasn’t turning around no matter how winding or blocked the metaphorical road was.

  Jen’s head popped free and she lifted her hair free from the shirt neck. “Well, gang, let’s hit the road. But I am not driving this time.” Using the removed shirt to mop the blood from her face, she sat back in the trunk, scuttling back and crossing her legs, wrists on knees.

  “You can have shotgun and thank me for letting you wear my shirt with some—” A bloody shirt smacked Reed in the face, halting his improper suggestion.

  ∆∆∆

  Without Jen’s prone body, they had more space to spread out in the car, Jen and Henley taking the back seats that popped out of the trunk floor, Sirena and Buster in the middle, and Reed and Nor once again in the front. It was their vehicle.

  “You gonna tell us where we’re heading now, bud?” Reed asked, as if Buster had been the one forestalling their course. “Or should I go straight forever?”

  Henley watched Buster’s teeth grind. “We need to get back on the highway.”

  “No way. That was a perfect way for us to make easy time overtaking your trail. We don’t want our followers to do that too.”

  Followers. It was such an ambiguous word for an entire institution with extensions into public forces, like wires snaking out into the walls, with more specific feeders of Jen’s mom and— “Who’s Stew?”

  “Kid from my school,” Sirena answered. Well, that didn’t sound so bad.

  “A high school student?”

  “Yes and no,” Jen hedged. “Yes, he was a high school student—”

  “But the smartest one there. Valedictorian,” Sirena said. Another Buster?

  “—but he was also doing some work for one of my mom’s colleagues, Professor Hutchins—and that’s the guy who made Sirena the marvel she is.”

  Sirena was unimpressed. “I thought you said I was your mom’s baby.”

  “Yeah, but he was surrogate—only because she can’t do the genomes or the lab work. The idea was hers—your conception. Hence her terrible attachment to you.”

  “So Stew is also a B-TItan?” Henley referred to BTI students by the name they’d given themselves.

  “Yes and no,” Jen’s head tipped back and forth on her neck. If she had whiplash, the stiffness hadn’t developed yet. She sounded like Buster with her indecisiveness. “He’s an accepted student, being an overachiever with his so-called research beforehand as a sort-of bartering tool.”

  “What research?” Henley was intrigued, despite Jen’s disgust of the kid.

  “Stalking me.” Sirena punched the back of Reed’s seat.

  “Hey! What did I do? I’m no Stew.”

  “No,” she granted, “but you stalked me, too.”

  Reed nodded emphatically. “You are very welcome. We accept all kinds of payment—”

  Sirena spoke over him with an eye roll. “Anyway, he’s definitely not going to give up on me. If what Jen says is true, he just brought me back to BTI. He’s going to be infuriated with himself—and you guys—that I escaped. According to Nor, he thinks I’m his ticket to fame and fortune, insofar as being a minion to a prestigious professor goes.” She glanced at her three original companions. “No offense.”

  “None taken, I’m getting out of that world,” Jen denounced.

  “Likewise, obviously,” Henley seconded. “So you’re saying we have three different tails though all connected?”

  “Three?”

  “Stew, the people Buster and I ditched, and Jen’s mom.” Henley tilted her head at her seatmate.

  “Won’t she just rely on Stew?” Nor asked. “Since he’s working with her colleague.”

  “You clearly haven’t worked with academics,” Jen dismissed with hearty disdain—about the subject, not to whom she was speaking. It was hard to keep up with who she liked and disliked. “They are spiteful, competitive, back-stabbing a-hats.”

  “Our mother was an academic. I helped her in her lab. She was always very generous and supportive of the other scientists.” Nor’s voice was quiet but somehow that made it all the sharper.

  “Oh. Well, you must have gotten the golden anomaly.” Jen had little sympathy.

  Nor nodded. “She was.”

  Jen winced. “Was?” She seemed reluctant to ask.

  “Same explosion that took Val.” Reed’s comment had no inflection though Henley had borne witness to his earlier strife. It made all the more sense now. The resurrection, so to speak, of Val’s death also roused grief for his mother.

  “What? Val is dead?” Jen’s shock overrode any modicum of sympathy she might have used to not delve further on her train of thought.

  “We discussed this while you were unconscious.” Buster took over. “I have other contacts.”

  “What?” The shout erupted from Henley this time. “You certainly did not say that before when we were deliberating directions. Why must you insist on secrets?” She glared at the back of his head. His black hair was greasy on the crown and irregular lengths, dipping as low as the collar of his shirt. Did he ever get it cut?

  “You two are like yin and yang. I swear. We’re never going to make it with you two ragging on each other, let alone my mom and Stew.” Jen’s eyes volleyed between Henley and Buster.

  “Sometimes opposites attract,” Nor volunteered.

  “Like Mother and Father,” Reed agreed.

  “Magnetically, atomically, and molecularly, that is factually true,” Buster stated, blandly. “It is incorrect for humans who seek out similarity for reassurance in conformity.”

  While Henley agreed with his physics, she did avow, “In our case, it seems to be. Can’t get rid of you.” Her head tilted as she thought. “That makes sense, everything seems contrary to common normalcy with you.”

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

  “I’m hungry,” Jen announced.

  “Again?” Buster was exasperated.

  “Breaking out of a high-security institution, stealing cars, driving on a high-speed chase, sleeping for only a few hours, running from intruders, and getting into a car accident only to wake up in said intruder’s car and try to run… it’s all exhausting. Cumulatively, it’s a wonder I’m not dead. I don’t recommend that kind of daily schedule.”

  “I stole the cars,” Henley pointed out.

  “I bought you food in the middle of that,” Buster added.

  Jen flapped her wrist. “Like one sandwich. And bought? You used my money.”

  “Stolen money.”

  “Family money. Families share. That was not enough fuel to support all that excitement.”

  “We can’t stop,” Buster insisted.

  “Regretfully, I agree with the robot.”

  Henley started until she realized Reed was talking about Buster.

  “However, we happened to have loaded up our car before Sirena was taken from us, so we have some supplies.” Reed sat up taller to flash a grin in the rear-view mirror.

  “Oh, tell me it’s Goldfish! Or Cheez-its. Cheetos? Really anything cheesy and carb-loaded.” Jen suddenly turned into a toddler, bouncing in her seat.

  “I’d rather no fish,” Sirena said, nose scrunching.

  “No fish or cheese, but fear not. We’ve got something much more helpful for someone who’s had such a rough day as yours,” Reed pampered. “Nor, please display our offerings with a flourish.”

  Nor didn’t quite comply—he simply hefted a giant tub that was between their seats into the air. He was less thrilled than his brother.

  “Meal-replacement protein powder?” Henley read.

  “Damn straight. Highest protein content to lowest calorie pack. And all the vitamins and minerals you need. And the chocolate flavor,” Reed exalted.

  “Hurray,” Jen dron
ed. “And what, are we supposed to just take turns dumping a scoop of powder in our mouths and hope the saliva breaks it down? Sounds like eating chalk.”

  Reed shook his head, pulling onto the entry ramp of the freeway. He had decided to follow Buster’s instructions even though he thought they would be followed faster? Buster was back in control. He must be positively gushing with joy. “You may have noticed in your fit earlier that we were considerate enough to also pack water bottles.”

  Jen didn’t even blush. “Perfect, then I can build up my muscle before I smack you with it again.”

  The engine volume rose as their speed escalated.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t drown out Jen’s next words, delivered nonchalantly into the conversation like a bulldozer down a country lane as Nor began passing around water bottles that were rolling around the floor.

  “But actually, we need to be sparing with that water. We’re heading into the drought-stricken part of the country.”

  ∆∆∆

  Henley’s nose was pressed to the window. She was transfixed by the golden color of their surroundings saturating her vision: golden sun as it started to set over the flat horizon; crispy golden stalks of grains waving in a hazy breeze that were so densely packed they looked like wires wrapped around a coil; golden gravel on the roadsides beyond the highway barrier; golden wood desperately supporting leaning barns and little farmhouses; golden faces of dust-coated people walking down dirt tracks between the fields or poking out of rolled-down windows of only slightly darker-shaded pick-up trucks. The monochrome was somewhat peaceful, beautiful even, with that luster of the precious metal she used so often in her work. Wiring itself was very zen. “It looks so—”

  “Lifeless,” Jen supplied.

  At the macabre description, Henley’s vision darkened as though the sun had set in that instant, filtering out the brightness: the empty, cadaverous husks of dried plants leaned tiredly back and forth, helplessly, wearily, crisped by sunlight; the dust sifted through the air aimlessly, no soil or vegetation to hold it to a home; the droop on the people’s faces matched the tilt of the sagging roofs and walls of their houses.