* * *
I walked the beach for an hour or so after Connor left me. I’d worn the jacket I’d found in my closet, but the cold air still cut through the thick fabric, and by the time I came back inside my skin was wind whipped and beating red.
Later, I checked out the gym, which was a giant room full of all of the necessary equipment. I didn’t know what any of the machines did other than the treadmills. I’d never been big on exercise.
The pool was long and narrow and was a nice eighty degrees. I sat with my feet dangling in the water for a bit and watched Lake Michigan churn through the glass wall of the poolroom.
When I’d explored all I could explore, I returned to the second floor and rifled through my closet again. Most of what was inside was basic wear: Gray sweatpants. Black sports bras. Black tank tops. Plain T-shirts. Thin, form-fitting sports jackets. The only color in the closet was on the identical pairs of running shoes—black Nikes with pink soles.
At exactly six o’clock, I went to the lounge, pausing when I passed Sam’s door. I couldn’t hear anything on the other side and wondered if he was already eating his dinner.
I wanted to meet him. Mostly I wanted to pump him for information and find out what his training was and how mine might be similar. But when I got to the lounge, I saw only a single tray of food on the table and no Sam in sight.
Was the food his or mine? And if it was mine, where was his? Where was he?
I found a steaming bowl of potato soup on the tray, several packets of crackers, a bowl of grapes, and a biscuit with a cold bottle of water.
The food was delicious. The last few years, my mother’s home cooking had started to taste bland, like she’d left out all of the spices she used to use. Now, it felt like my taste buds were coming alive again.
Afterward, I cleaned up and put my dishes in the dishwasher and left it to do its thing.
On my way back to my room, I stopped at Sam’s door, put my ear to the wood. Still silent. I knocked, waited. Knocked again. Nothing.
Maybe I’d see him at breakfast.
I went back to my room to lie down and fell asleep quickly.
* * *
Dad picks Anna up and sets her on his hip. He’s different today. There are no bottles of cheap whiskey within reach. He’s not checking the clock to see if it’s time for his next dose of pain pills, with a few extra tossed in.
He’s closer to the Dad I remember, who used to take me on nature walks and name the trees like they were giants in a fairy tale.
“Dani?” the Fox says. “Can I talk to you alone?”
I look between him and Dad and Anna. Mom sits in the background knitting, ignoring us. Sometimes I want to rip those damn needles out of her hands and throw them in the garbage.
“Sure.”
I follow him to the sunroom at the back of the house. The sun has set, sucking the color from the sky. The white bark of the birch trees in the backyard stands out in the closing darkness. I sit on the edge of one of the wicker chairs and fold my hands in my lap.
I strain to hear Anna down the hallway.
“I wondered if you might be interested in working for me,” the Fox asks.
I look up. My first thought is, Is this supposed to be my present? Anna got a Barbie and I got this?
“Where?” I ask.
“In Cam Marie. In my lab.”
“What would I be doing?”
“We’re doing research. Advance science. Genetic alteration. It’s for a program. We need subjects. People to train and later to send on assignments.”
I don’t know much about science. I failed eighth grade biology, but I do know what test subjects are. “You mean I’d be a guinea pig?”
“That’s a harsh way of putting it.”
But he doesn’t say no.
“When would you need me?”
“You’d have to leave within the week. What do you say?” he coaxes. He leans back and crosses one leg over the other, like he doesn’t care at all what my answer is. But I think he does. I think he wants me to say yes more than he’s ever wanted anything.
“No.” The word comes easily. I can’t leave Anna alone with my parents, and I don’t believe anything he says anyway. “Thanks, though.”
I start to rise, when he adds, “Your dad agreed to stop drinking if you went.”
I freeze. “What?”
“He’ll quit. And I’ll hire someone for therapy and pain management.”
A lump forms in my throat and I swallow it back. “He won’t stick to it. He never does.”
“He will.” His foot, the one that hangs over the other knee, jiggles.
“What about Anna?”
“She’ll be fine. Things will be different.” He tilts his head to the side, and the new angle sharpens all his features, bringing out the Fox.
I sit back down. “How long would I be gone?”
“Six months. If it works out, maybe longer, but only if you want.”
“Will it hurt? Any of these genetic alterations?”
“No. I have the best medical team.”
“Will I be different when I leave?”
“Possibly.”
“Better or worse?”
He smiles. “Better. Much, much better.” He sits forward, rests his elbows on his knees. There’s steel in his eyes, but his answers come too quickly. Like he’s mapped out all the ways this conversation could go and he knows just what to say.
“Come work for me,” he goes on, “and I will fix everything that is broken about your family. I’m promising you and Anna a better life.” The words come out carefully and quietly, and I realize all his answers were leading to this. An offer I would have a hard time refusing.
Not only do we not have the money to properly take care of Dad’s problems, but he would never agree even if we did. The Fox has something we don’t. He’s always had Dad’s respect and admiration. He also has money.
“What do you say?”
As I sit there, watching him watch me, my head fills with the slow whisper of words. Words I have memorized.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee
It’s from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. And I know it’s not a poem meant for sisters, but when I read that stanza in English lit last year, I couldn’t help but think of Anna. My little innocent eleven-year-old Anna. I would do anything for her.
I have nothing to lose, really, and everything to gain. So long as Dad does what he’s supposed to do, and the Fox keeps his promises.
Maybe this is a present after all.
* * *
I woke with a start in semidarkness, the sheets tangled around my legs, the memory of my last meeting with OB, only a week ago now, still running down the back of my throat like blood from a cracked nose. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t get rid of his voice in my head.
“Come work for me and I will fix everything that is broken about your family. I’m promising you and Anna a better life.”
Sweat had dampened the hair at the back of my neck and plastered it to my forehead. To calm myself, I went to the large window that looked out over the beach. The moon was nearly full tonight, and glittered on the water in slashes of silver. Crusted snow still clung to the sand and dune grass. It was a harsh landscape this time of year, but still beautiful. Like an ice queen. I could hear the faint noise of the waves crashing into the shoreline, the beat of the wind against the glass. I pressed my fingers to the window and closed my eyes.
If my super power was fearlessness, OB’s was persuasion. Saying all the right things at exactly the right time. He had known what I needed to hear to convince me to come to this place.
And here I was.
My stomach gro
wled, bringing me back to the present. The clock on my nightstand said it was four in the morning. I decided to see if I could find some fruit in the lounge.
The hallway outside my room was lit only with rope lighting embedded in the edge of the floor, so it was like walking down an airplane runway. When I rounded into the lounge, I froze.
There was a boy at the dining table. He was hunched over a thick textbook, reading, and an untouched apple sat on the table next to the book.
“Hey,” I called out. He looked up. There were bruises all over his face. A black eye. A dark black bruise on his lower jaw. A healing, yellowed bruise on his left cheek.
“What happened to you?” I found myself asking, before even introducing myself. I stepped closer, into the space lit by the one light that was on.
“What happened to me?” A ghost of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Haven’t they told you anything about this place?”
“No.” I swallowed the lump of unease growing in my throat. “Actually, I looked for you earlier. You’re Sam, right?”
He hesitated, flicked his eyes downward, then back up again. “Who’s asking?”
“I’m Dani.”
He grabbed the apple, and polished it with the underside of his black T-shirt and stared at me.
“So…” I started, “I wanted to find you, to ask you about the training. Connor didn’t tell me anything.”
“They never do. Nobody tells me shit around here. Everything I know, I’ve experienced firsthand.”
I sat in the chair across from him. His dark hair was cut on the short side and neatly combed back. His greenish eyes were piercing, analyzing, but amused.
“Have you been through training then?” I asked, and he nodded. “Tell me about it.”
He took a bite of the apple, chewed, and swallowed before answering. “It’s a lot of hand-to-hand combat at first.”
Must be where he got the bruises.
“Endurance training, too,” he continued. “A lot of memory challenges, you know, so you can memorize assignment facts without writing them down.”
“Have you been on an assignment yet?”
He shook his head.
“How long have you been here?”
He chewed slowly on another bite of the fruit and waited to answer. “A few months.”
For someone who’d been training that long, he didn’t look like he was in that great shape. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t muscular either. His arms were scrawny. His cheeks, hollow. Maybe the training was more like torture than anything else.
Sam looked up, past my shoulders, and his eyes widened briefly, his mouth clamping shut with a click of teeth.
I turned around. Connor stood in the doorway. What was he doing here at such an ungodly hour? Did he live here, too?
“Dani,” he said calmly.
“Yeah?”
“Can I see you for a moment?”
“Good luck,” Sam whispered as I shoved my chair back.
His well-wish felt more like a warning.
At the doorway, Connor stepped back and motioned me to take the lead. “Where am I going?” I asked.
“To your room is fine.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
The whole way, Connor stayed two steps behind me. My stomach fluttered, as if he were a spider making its way up my spine.
At my room, he followed me inside and closed the door behind us. I hadn’t turned on the light when I left, so the room was still mostly dark, save for a pool of moonlight stretching from the floor to my bed.
I made my way to the window, feeling somehow safer there. “So, what’s up?” My heart thrummed in my neck and in my chest and in every other pulse point. My tongue felt heavy as a sandbag.
Connor came across the room and stepped into the light with me. It only hit half his face, leaving the other half in shadow. He looked down at me, and all the blood in my veins drained to my toes. My knees grew weak.
He looked absurdly handsome right now, even though it was the middle of the night. Where my hair was disheveled, matted in the back, flat on one side, his was messy in a way that seemed deliberate, as if he’d just gotten out of the shower, run his fingers through it, and called it good. Several locks fell in front of his eyes, but he still managed to keep his gaze settled on me.
“What did he say to you?” Connor asked, his voice quiet, but heavy on the inflection.
“Nothing.”
The corner of his mouth quirked. “You can trust me, Dani. I’m not going to reprimand you. I just want to know.”
“Usually if someone needs to tell you they can be trusted, it means they can’t.”
He smiled but didn’t say anything more.
I thought about the bruises painted across Sam’s face. “Maybe it’s not me I’m worried about getting reprimanded.”
Connor narrowed his eyes inquisitively. “You barely know that guy.”
“So?” I furrowed my brow. “He looks like he spent the day getting the shit kicked out of him.”
Connor tilted his head, as if he were listening for the things left unsaid. “Spoken as if you know something about the subject.”
My throat tightened and tears burned immediately in my eyes. I did know. I knew too damn well. And I wondered if Connor knew, too. How much had OB told him?
“He only said there was a lot of training,” I answered. “Endurance. Memory. Hand-to-hand combat. That’s it. He didn’t say anything else.”
Connor watched me too closely. I didn’t blink. The less I gave away the better.
“Good,” he finally said, and turned to the door. “Try to get some more sleep. Six AM will come quicker than you think.”
And then he was gone, but his presence had left an impression on me, and I knew sleep was going to be impossible.
Was he trying to rattle me?
Because if he was, he’d succeeded.
* * *
I ate breakfast alone and waited in the lounge area for someone to come get me, to tell me what it was I was going to be doing today. Or what I was going to be doing at all.
After Connor left me earlier in the morning, I’d taken a shower and dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a black tank top with the black Nikes. It was a comfortable outfit, but not what I was used to wearing. At least I had my makeup, so I could still feel slightly like myself.
When I heard footsteps nearing the lounge, I perked up and expected it to be Connor coming to retrieve me.
It wasn’t.
My immediate disappointment caught me off guard.
It was a woman who stood in the doorway, staring at me. She didn’t seem much older, or taller, or stronger than I was. Twenty-two, maybe. She didn’t seem much of anything, actually. She was unremarkable. Unadorned. Unattractive, but not ugly.
“Are you just going to sit there?” she said with the quirk of an eyebrow.
I stuttered for a second and silently chastised myself. I must have sounded like an idiot.
“No,” I finally got out. “I’m coming.” I scooted the chair back and in my rush nearly knocked it over. She raised her eyebrow higher.
When I came up in front of her, she offered me her hand. “I’m Natalia. I’ve been assigned as your instructor.”
We shook hands, and I was surprised to find a lot more strength in the shake than I had anticipated. A lot more strength and a lot more confidence.
Maybe there was more to Natalia than her modest appearance.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
She smirked. “Wait until tonight,” she said as she walked away. “You’ll be taking that back.”
* * *
I was slammed on the blue mat for what felt like the millionth time, and the pain didn’t register quite as much as it had the time before. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.
As I lay on my back, trying to call the air into my lungs, I stared at the round overhead lights hanging from steel rods and enclosed in steel cages, a
nd I wondered if that was me in some symbolic way. Hanging by a thread but trapped in a cage at the same time.
Maybe I was delirious.
“Get up,” Natalia said.
I could hardly feel my legs, but I managed to roll over onto all fours and suck in a gulp of air. I was used to being kicked around, after all. I could do this. If it meant saving Anna, I could suffer through anything.
“Hurry. No assailant will wait for you,” she reminded me, and I lumbered to my feet.
“Who would be assailing me?” I asked as her fisted hand landed a punch to my lower jaw, sending a shock wave of dull pain through every tooth root.
I was on the mat. Again.
“It’s not your job to identify your attacker.” Natalia appeared overhead, blocking out the lights. For a second, I thought I’d gone blind and dumb. “It’s your job to identify danger first, risk second. You should be able to predict where they’ll move and how they will attack by their body language alone. Everything else is a distraction.”
“Okay,” was all I said, and we started again.
She went easy on me after that. Her movements were slower. She gave me instruction as we grappled: “Put your hand here,” “Swing from here,” and, “If you twist this way, you’ll get more leverage.”
We did that forever. I had no idea how long exactly. We were in a gym below ground, so there were no windows to mark the daylight. There were no clocks, either. Natalia had strapped on a watch when we first came down here, but I was too proud to ask her what time it was.
I worried I’d run out of energy before we were even halfway through the session, but I somehow managed to keep going. And just when I thought I might die before Natalia called an end to the training, Connor showed up.
Sweat had soaked through every dry patch of my clothing by that point, so I’d stripped off my shirt and now wore only the sweatpants and a black sports bra. My mascara had all but melted off and smudged beneath my eyes. Several hunks of hair had come loose from my ponytail and were now glued to my forehead and the back of my neck.
Still, I felt Connor’s eyes trailing the curves of my body. “Is she done?” he asked Natalia.
“I guess.”
He slid his hands into his pants pockets. “She either is or she isn’t.”
Natalia crossed her arms over her chest and let her high ponytail swing to the side as she cocked her head and narrowed her eyes at Connor. I could feel the ice crystals forming between the two of them.
Forged: An Altered Series Prequel Page 2