I swing my leg around and kick a tall teenager in the stomach. I move to punch the other teenager, but I forget that my arm is in a sling and end up only swinging my shoulder in a whirl of pain.
“Whoa!” the dark-skinned teenager says.
I gasp. Teenagers? And they’re not even trying to fight. They are not who I expected… My head feels heavy, and black dots close in my vision. I feel myself falling backward, but either Marissa or Zoë catch me.
“What the hell?!” Zoë says. Her voice is close to my ear, so I know it was her who caught me.
“Abe? Eli?” Marissa says.
“Oh! My stomach!” The tall, light-skinned teenager says.
“What are you two doing?”
“They’ve been following us since we left the bedroom floors,” I say.
When my vision comes back, Zoë helps me regain my balance then quickly steps away from me. The tall teenager still holds his stomach and grumbles.
“Ohww… that was a really good hit,” he says.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Eli?” Zoë says. “What were you thinking? Why would you sneak up on us?”
“You two really shouldn’t be here,” Marissa says.
“Yeah, well neither should you, Princess,” the tall teenager says.
“What? We wanted to say hi and see what you guys were up to,” the dark-skinned boy says.
He winks at Zoë and smiles. She tries to act angry, but a smile eventually cracks her scowl. A real smile—not like the ones they’ve been forcing with me.
“Annika, these are two of our good friends and member of the Metanites,” Marissa says. “This is Elijah, and the dramatic one is Abraham.”
“Dramatic?” the tall teenager, Abraham, says. He stands upright and rubs his stomach. “You go five hours without food then take a direct hit to your stomach!”
“Guys, this is Annika. She just woke up this afternoon,” Marissa says.
“Nice to meet you, officially,” Elijah, the dark-skinned boy, says.
He’s so familiar… oh—the bridge. He’s the teenager who lit his entire body on fire and carried an unconscious Zoë back to the escape van. I don’t recognize Abraham as any of the silver-suited teenagers from the bridge, but he has the same build as the driver of the van.
“Hi, I’m Abraham,” he says. “It’s so good to see you alive!”
He steps toward me and spreads his arms. I take a step back too late and find myself wrapped in a tight hug. I wince—his arm squeezes my arm sling, causing the edge to pinch my shoulder.
“Oh! Crap—I’m so sorry! I forgot about your arm,” he says, unwrapping me and looking at my left arm.
“You guys need to quiet down before—” Zoë says.
“Miss O’Brien! Miss Mencken!” an older voice croaks from further down the hall.
“Oh shit,” Elijah says.
I turn and look down the hall to see a woman marching toward us. The woman is petite and as tall as Dr. Reins. Her skin is dark and stretched but doesn’t take away from her fit frame. Her face is frightening with dark circles carving under her brown eyes, and her hair is dark, short, and frizzed. Her sophisticated dress is dark green and one size too big for her.
“Classes are still in session, so none of you should be in this part of the building,” the woman says. “And ladies, I trust there was a reason you left in the middle of—”
She makes eye contact with me, and for the first time since my return to Cleveland, I feel afraid.
“Out. Now!” she hisses.
“Wait, Ms. Grenavich—” Elijah says.
“I don’t want to hear it, Mr. Henderson. Take yourself and your friends out of this room immediately before someone gets hurt.”
“Hurt?” Marissa says. “No one’s going to get hurt.”
“This is not something you can argue. All of you out, now!” Ms. Grenavich says.
“Why?”
“Because she’s dangerous!” Ms. Grenavich says.
Yeah… she definitely knows who I am.
“No, she’s not.”
Yes, I am.
“Don’t fool yourself, O’Brien. She is more dangerous than you think. And you,” Ms. Grenavich says. She turns back to me. “Get out of my school or you’ll be behind bars before you know it!”
Behind bars? So they are going to turn me in? Anger at the woman builds inside of me, and now I almost want to stay as long as I can just to spite her.
“Ms. Grenavich, we were just—” Elijah says.
“I’ve agreed to let her stay here under the condition that she not be allowed anywhere near the children, so Out!”
“On our way!” Marissa says.
She grabs my right hand, and we jog down the hall and away from the woman. The boys run past us giggling, and we don’t stop running until we make it back to the elevators.
“So she’s…?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about her,” Marissa says.
The five of us file into an elevator, and Marissa presses the “11” on the Bleu screen.
“Wow… I thought she was going to bite our heads off!” Abraham says, laughing.
“Yeah, but seriously, we should probably stay away from her while we have… you know,” Elijah says.
“Eli—” Marissa snaps.
“But actually…” Zoë says.
The elevator doors open, and I’m first to step out. I look around, and the room looks strangely familiar. I think we’re back in the hospital.
“So Annika,” Abraham says, “what do you think of our home?”
“Big,” I say. “Is this the hospital portion?”
“Science lab and hospital. It’s only open to the students here at Kenyon, since most people need some form of special treatment or another,” Marissa says.
We follow Marissa down a hall that’s different from the one that lead to my hospital room. Instead of individualized or surgical rooms, this hall leads to a series of lab rooms only visible through the glass window of closed doors. I try to focus on where I am, but the sight is all too familiar…
Crowds of scientists in dark blue lab coats crowd the room. The machine fires up, sparks fly from the generator, and the wall of square batteries glow green. The scientists cheer. The machine is alive—and hungry. The doctor steps up, smiling, and his teeth are eager to sink down into the first subject to the machine: me.
I stand against the wall, my heart punching my rib cage, begging to be set free. But it’s trapped, as I am, and the machine will take us both soon. The machine’s first meal.
Screams echo from another lab room where a red and orange lava-lamp-like wall bubbles faster and faster. More screams. A young boy, stark naked and red-eyed, runs toward us. He sprints past us, down the hall, then disappears around the corner.
“Annika—you okay?” a voice says.
I turn around and see the four teenagers staring at me from further down the hall. They look worried, but they’re not looking down the hall where I saw the boy disappear; they’re staring at me.
“Yeah—I’m fine,” I say.
I catch up, and we walk further down the hall. The echoes follow me, and I wonder if the others can hear them. Zoë and Marissa keep talking; Elijah and Abraham keep laughing; but the echoes overshadow them. Zoë opens a closed door to a lab room, and we all enter. She closes the door behind us, and the echoes vanish.
I sigh and rub my eyes. Hopefully this trip across the lab is shorter than all the other stops.
“Wow, he must have cleaned this place recently,” Zoë says.
I look around the lab room. There’s two rows of lab tables to the left and two rows of tall shelves on the right filled with an assortment of books, test tubes, labeled bottles of all sizes, and binders. Where there isn’t a storage compartment on the walls, there’s a poster—mostly science related, but one is an old poster of Moton in his original super-suit.
“There you guys are,” a voice says—a real voice.
I turn toward the voice and
see a teenager with white spikey hair sitting on a black lab table. His shirt sleeve is rolled up, revealing a stitched-up laceration on his right arm.
“What’s up, man?” Elijah says.
He walks toward the white-haired teenager, and the two slide the back side of their left hands against each other then fist-bump with the same hand. Abraham and the white-haired teenager repeat the motion.
“Lazzer, this is Annika. She just woke up this afternoon,” Marissa says.
He tries to force a smile toward me, but he’s even less successful than Zoë who has been staring—glaring—at me for the whole tour. Can’t blame them, though. I was the reason they were in danger, and I’m sure that cut on Lazzer’s arm came from the evening under the bridge.
“So how’s the arm, Lazz?” Elijah asks.
“Eh, infection went down a bit, but Nate wants to inject some super-antibiotics to make the rest go away by St. Patrick’s Day. He should be coming back soon.”
“Wouldn’t want to miss the basketball tourney, hey? Because if you and Nate wanted to drop out now, because ah—you know Elijah and I have it in the bag…” Abraham says.
“Yeah, between his ankle and your arm, you might as well throw in the towel now,” Elijah says.
“Alright, I found just enough of the antibiotics for one dose,” another familiar voice says.
I turn my attention toward a teenager emerging from the storage closet in the back of the lab room. I immediately recognize him as the flyer from under the bridge. He makes his way toward us on crutches, and a cast over his right foot peeks out from underneath his long, light blue lab coat. My fingers start to tremble, and my breath quickens. Then I see the syringe in his hand.
I gasp, and photon of nuclear energy shoots from my hand and shatters the syringe. The flyer jumps, everyone else jumps, and I stumble backward into Zoë. She catches me and doesn’t let go. My body shivers, and my breathe shakes with it.
“Whoa!” Abraham says.
“Nate are you—?” Marissa asks.
The flyer shakes the glass off his lab coat and approaches me.
“Nobody step there—I’ll clean it up later. Lazz, toss me my stress ball,” the flyer says. He pulls out a small, slim flashlight and shines it in my eyes.
“Is it still in the basket? Oh, found it,” Lazzer says.
“How long have you been walking her around Kenyon?” the flyer says.
He holds two fingers against the side of my neck and places his other hand on my forehead. My eyes are glued to his lab coat, a sure sign of whose side he’s on. I want to push him away, but I might fall over. I shut my eyes and move my face away from his.
“About an hour, maybe?” Marissa says.
“Did you give her anything to eat?”
“Ah… no.”
The flyer removes his lab coat and lets it fall to the floor. Lazzer tosses the flyer a green ball the size of my fist, and the flyer catches it with one hand. He places it in my right hand, and my hand instinctively squeezes it.
“There, that should help,” the flyer says. “Sorry for startle. Some food and some rest should make you feel better, too. Zoë, could you take her back to her room for the night?”
“Sure,” Zoë says.
“I’ll order pizza,” Elijah says.
“Oh! Can you get pepperoni and sausage,” Abraham says.
“Seriously, Abe, bad timing,” Marissa says.
“Pizza sounds great,” the flyer says. “And if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me— I’m the first number programmed into the phone in your room. My name’s Nate Reilly.”
V: Eavesdropping
Sunday, March 16, 3:02 a.m.
First person
I’m lying in bed when I hear a cough. Frail and sore, like the vibrations of the noise are ripping the flash within the neck. Her neck. I sit up and rub my eyes.
“You?” I say to her.
I was expecting the other. There—standing next to the gray couch in my temporary bedroom—just a breath more than a ghost. I was expecting the ghostly figure with long dark hair, but I awoke to a young girl with curly blonde hair that grazes her shoulders. Her blue eyes—neither gray nor green—stare at me.
“Is it you?” I ask her. I almost smile, but I’m too scared. But why should I be? She is not the enemy.
“Say something,” I beg, but she remains silent.
The longer she stares at me, the sicker I feel. Her eyes glance away from my eyes and to the sling on my arm, and then she looks back up at me.
“It’s okay—these people fixed it. I wasn’t trying to start a fight, but I…” I say.
Her eyes still linger on mine, and the longer they linger the deeper the guilt sinks into my stomach.
“I know it’s my fault. I’m making it right—for you. For all of us! I’m not going to hurt anyone else; I promise,” I say.
She steps toward me until she reaches the edge of the bed. My heart races, and sweat drips down my back. She lifts her hand to my left, bandaged shoulder but doesn’t touch it yet. Her fingers inch closer, and closer, and closer. The instant the tip of her finger touches my shoulder, a blinding white light flashes from the spot.
My eyes open to starlight. I’m laying back in bed—the girl!
I sit up, and blood rushes to my head and to my left shoulder. My shoulder goes from numb to searing and back to numb in just three seconds. I look around my bedroom for my ghostly visitor, but I see no one.
“No,” I whisper.
I climb out of bed and spin around the room. I look out the starlit window only to remember it’s not a real window. I run to the bathroom—empty. She’s gone. I almost call out her name, but voices echo from the hall outside my bedroom door.
“I don’t care if it’s one in the morning! Wake her up and kick her out, or I’ll do it myself!” a bitter, female voice says.
“Quiet down, Kono! This is neither the time nor the place,” a soft, female voice says. “You’re jetlagged and need sleep.”
“I am fine!” the bitter voice—Kono, I assume—says.
“You’re going to wake everyone on the floor!”
“Let them wake up! How could anyone rest with a deadly criminal sleeping among them?” Kono says.
Ohh, she’s talking about me.
“Moton and the others will explain everything to you in the morning,” a male voice says. The voice comes from the ground directly behind my bedroom door. He must be sitting on the ground and leaning his back against the door. I know I have heard his voice before.
“I don’t need an explanation, like how I know she’s the reason you’re on crutches and why Izzi didn’t contact me for the past five days. And how could you explain housing her here without telling anyone?! Do you think the government is blind to her here?”
So they didn’t tell the government that I’m here. Maybe Kenyon is as safe as they claim it to be.
“They won’t find her here,” the male voice says.
“And your foot?”
Silence.
“So I was right—she is responsible for putting you on crutches,” Kono says.
“Yeah, she is, because without her I’d be in the ground. She saved Zoe’s life, too, which is another reason why she’s staying.”
“Saving two lives is not enough reason to keep an international murderer under your roof rent-free. Now step aside, Nate.”
Nate, as in Nathan Reilly? The teenaged doctor?
“I won’t,” Nate says.
“What’s going on out here?” another voice says. This time I recognize it right away.
“Abraham,” the soft, female voice says.
“Good morning Kiaria, Kono, Nate,” Abraham says, coming closer.
I lean my back against the door and slide down. I close my eyes and can almost feel Nate push the weight of his back against mine. I am careful not to move too much that they sense me here, but feeling his weight pressing my back assure me that this is no dream.
“What seems to be
the problem?” Abraham says. A satirical tone replaces the teasing nature of his voice—or perhaps he’s just exhausted and frustrated for being woken-up.
“You’re kidding, right?” Kono says.
“No, because from where I’m standing, you’re the problem of the hour, Kono,” Abraham says.
“You would be okay with this! I can’t be the only one who thinks that keeping her here is a bad idea,” Kono says.
“You’re not, but the only opinion that matters right now is Moton’s, and he says that she stays,” Nate says.
“How is she?” the soft, female voice says—Kiaria, I think.
“She’s doing much better. We almost lost her in the operating room when we first got her here, but she made it through. She’s scared, though,” Nate says.
Scared? Me? I’m not afraid of anyone here… only afraid of their judgment level for bringing me here and whether or not they are trying to contain me here only to turn me in later.
“Oh not you too,” Kono says.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Kiaria says.
“Have you tried reading hers? She’s probably plotting how to kill us in her sleep.”
No, but you’re getting close, bitch.
“Come-on Kono. Just meet her and take a look at all that she’s gone through in the past week,” Abraham says.
“She’s just a teenager—just like us. Maybe she came from a troubled past, but so have a lot of students here. Given the opportunity, I think she’d choose to do the right thing and use her powers to help people. She already proved that she could when she saved Zoë and me,” Nate says.
“Sound familiar, Kono?” Abraham says.
There’s silence.
“I won’t support this,” Kono says.
“Of course not.”
“You don’t have to, but you do have to live with it until Moton says otherwise,” Nate says.
“She is dangerous!” Kono says. “She’s putting all of us in danger just by being here.”
“Well, we are the Metanites,” Kiaria says. “Let’s show her that we’re dangerous, too.”
The three retire to bed, but Nate remains. He probably can’t move since I think Kono did something to his crutches before leaving. My mind races with thoughts on what the Metanites could possible do to threaten me with their power.
The Nancy Experiment Page 5