Reckoning (The Variant Series, #4)

by Jena Leigh

  Again, Cassie tightened her grip around Alex’s arm. She’d be surprised if the other girl could even feel her right hand at this point.

  “That depends,” she said slowly, “on exactly how quickly you plan on sending us in that direction. Because if it’s at roughly the pace of a tranqed-up snail, I’ll be good. But if it involves any sort of swan dive, I’m just gonna have to go ahead and veto that motion. Loudly and violently, if necessary.”

  “Right. Got it. No swanning about.”

  “If that was your attempt at a joke, I’m embarrassed for the both of us. I really thought I trained you better.”

  They started their descent, slow and steady, until they breached the lowest bank of cool, wispy clouds and emerged high in the sky, adjacent to a still-illuminated swath of Bay View. Twenty seconds more and they were above the darkened canopy of a copse of pine trees.

  Alex stopped. “Okay,” she said finally. “Got what I needed. Brace yourself, and we’ll be back on terra firma and roughly eight states further north in no time at all. Ready?”

  “For the love of God, Lexie, just do it already and get us back on solid ground before I pass out.”

  The ensuing jump put the pressure she’d felt earlier utterly to shame. Thankfully, it was over almost as quickly as it began and Cassie opened her eyes to discover that Alex had kept her word.

  They’d reappeared out of doors next to a blazing campfire, far from the nearest city, judging from the clear array of stars shining overhead.

  The hard-packed dirt was cool and dry beneath her bare feet. It was, without a doubt, the most glorious sensation she’d felt in her entire life. She resisted the urge to drop to her knees and give it a kiss.

  Exhaling long and low, she clung to Alex’s arm for fear that her wobbly knees might give out at any moment.

  “Cassie!”

  In the next instant Cassie was, quite literally, swept off her feet and into Aiden’s strong arms. She held on tightly, relishing the warm embrace and the familiar scent of the beach that seemed to cling to him no matter how far he found himself from the ocean.

  Setting her down, he leaned forward and kissed her full on the lips—a greeting she happily returned.

  “Glad you’re okay, Cassie,” said Nate. His tone was relieved, but also unexpectedly gruff.

  Breaking off the kiss, she turned to find Declan standing beside his brother, staring at Alex with his arms crossed and an equally stern look on his face.

  “But next time, Lex, wait for backup,” said Nate. “Don’t just jump headlong into a situation you know nothing about.”

  Ah. Okay, well that explained the serious look on their faces.

  Alex tensed and opened her mouth to protest, but Cassie beat her to the punch.

  “Hey, now,” said Cassie, feeling a sudden need to defend her friend. “If Lexie hadn’t shown up exactly when she had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We only barely escaped in time as it was. I, for one, am kinda grateful she didn’t wait. Lexie totally saved my butt and I owe her. Big time.”

  Her testimony caused the others to relax slightly. Declan and Aiden even summoned a smile.

  Nate appeared to realize that his sour demeanor might not make for the best greeting. He allowed his scowl to dissolve into something resembling a smile.

  “It really is good to see you again, Cass,” he said.

  “You too,” she replied. “I kinda missed you dorks.”

  Aiden pulled her closer again.

  “Missed that smile of yours even more than you know, beautiful,” he said, grinning. Aiden picked her up a second time and spun her around before putting her back down again.

  She laughed, then added, “I’m glad to see you, too, but please… If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep my feet on the ground from now on. I’ve had my fill of weightlessness for one night—and I never, ever want to fly with you again, Lexie. Even if it is the only means of escape we have left.”

  The innocent statement hung heavy in the air and then, like a sudden downpour dissolving the muggy stillness of a summer afternoon, everyone around her immediately stopped smiling.

  Alex drew in a breath, her face pinched as though preparing for the argument she knew was about to break. Declan tilted his head back and stared at the sky, looking simultaneously aggravated and defeated. Aiden winced as though he knew something unpleasant was about to occur. And Nate…

  Well, Nate’s expression teetered between furious and dumbstruck before settling into a steady glower.

  “You did what?” Nate demanded. “There’s a reason that each time you asked me to teach you how to levitate I refused, Lex. Dammit, you could have crushed the life out of yourself and Cassie! Did you even think about that?”

  Wait, wait.

  Hold up.

  Alex could have accidentally crushed them when they attempted to fly earlier?

  Cassie thought back to the intense pressure she’d felt when they’d first taken to the air. At the time, she’d assumed it was just the natural resistance of gravity. Now she wondered if it might have been something else entirely.

  “Of course I thought about it, Nate!” she snapped. “And then I thought about the EMP they’d just set off, the sound of the footsteps in the hallway, and the image of Cassie being locked up for the rest of her life, just for being my best friend.”

  Alex began to pace, a roil of pent up anger and a surge of adrenaline suddenly—blatantly—begging for an exit. Cassie eyed her movements warily.

  “It was reckless, Lex.”

  “It was my only option, Nate,” Alex bit back. She stopped her pacing and spun to face him. “You know what else I thought about while I was risking my best friend’s life in my attempt to save it?”

  Nate stared stonily back at her, but said nothing. Behind Alex, Cassie could just make out Grayson, Cil, and Kenzie approaching from a cluster of buildings that stood in the distance.

  “I kept thinking, if only… If only Nate had trusted me enough to teach me this move sooner. If only he’d prepared me for this moment, instead of playing it safe and leaving me desperate and defenseless because he was too busy protecting me to teach me how to protect myself when it mattered the most.”

  Whatever was fueling her friend’s anger, this wasn’t something new. This was something that had been building.

  For a while, from the looks of it.

  Alex gave a humorless laugh. “All of you. You’re all so damn busy trying to protect me that you refuse to teach me the things I need to know in order to actually help you,” she said. “And you know what? Fine. The next time one of you is at risk of having their cover blown, or stuck hiding under a cubicle desk in an Agency building, or about to be arrested by federal agents for absolutely no crime at all… When the moment finally comes that I can’t help you, I want you to remember that I fucking tried. I tried to. And you were the ones that stopped me from being ready. You were the ones that kept holding me back.

  “When I finally fail to save someone, you’ll be the ones who are truly to blame. But I will be the one who’ll get to live the rest of my life saddled with the guilt.”

  Seemingly spent, Alex deflated, her shoulders drooping as she turned and stalked off toward the lights of the largest house in the grouping. Cil tried to slow her niece as she stormed past, but Alex easily shrugged off her aunt’s hand.

  Cassie stared at her retreating back, too stunned to react and too taken aback to even think about chasing after her.

  Never—not once in the ten years they’d been friends—had she ever seen Alex go off on someone like that. Before tonight, Cassie would have sworn her friend didn’t have it in her to go on such a tirade against people she cared about.

  Cassie turned an accusing glare toward Nate, Aiden, and Declan. “What. The. Hell. Was that about? What did you do to her? It had to have been something pretty unforgivable, because that?” She pointed a finger toward the direction Alex had vanished. “That is not my friend. That is not Lexie.”

&
nbsp; Cil, Grayson, and Kenzie finally reached them, observed the tense silence, and wisely said nothing.

  For a long, leaden moment, no one else spoke either.

  Finally, Declan started walking toward the building. Nate snagged him by the elbow before he could take more than a few steps.

  With a terse “I’ll talk to her,” Nate left the group behind and trudged toward what must have been the compound’s main building.

  That boy better have one hell of a speech in mind, she mused.

  Or one hell of an apology. She got the distinct feeling Alex was more deserving of the latter.

  Cassie turned her attention toward Grayson and narrowed her eyes. “Two things, Mr. Grayson. The first—I want you to do everything you can to make sure my family is okay after what went down tonight.”

  “Of course.” Grayson nodded. “You have my word.”

  “And second… I need to know exactly what Lexie’s been through since I last saw her. And I do mean everything. So one of you better start talking. Now.”

  Eight

  Falling face first onto her bed, Alex groaned into the cool fabric of a pillowcase. It muffled the sound, but only slightly.

  She waited for the impending knock—for Aunt Cil, or Grayson, or anyone else currently sporting a reason to be furious with her, to show up at her door—but none came.

  What had they expected her to do? Sit back and let Cassie be taken? Again?

  She flashed back to the moment their faces made headline news. Before Alex could even process the revelation that she was now one of America’s most wanted, Brian interrupted Nate’s creative litany of swear words by saying that he’d just had a vision of the police breaking down Cassie’s front door.

  At the announcement, Alex was ready to run off and rescue the entire Harper family. If Brian hadn’t quickly convinced her that it was only Cassie they were after, she probably would have. Then, before any more could be said—or decided—Alex was off, jumping solo to Bay View to help her friend.

  Alex shoved her face further into the pillow.

  She could feel Kenzie in the back of her thoughts, offering up the telepathic equivalent of a hug. The wordless message said little, yet spoke volumes, laced as it was with her friend’s nonjudgmental support and a hint of consolation.

  Out of everyone, Red seemed to best understand everything Alex struggled with—and it had very little to do with her being a telepath. Kenzie was just naturally observant… and endlessly empathetic.

  Alex rolled onto her back, her legs dangling off the bed at a crooked angle. The bright light of the ceiling fan above worsened her fast growing headache and she closed her eyes.

  Safe in the confines of her thoughts, Alex relived her tirade, word for word, as best she could remember. She couldn’t seem to settle on whether to adopt a resigned sense of embarrassment, or a renewed bout of righteous anger.

  Flashing back to the things she’d said—to the way she’d said them—it really could go either way.

  Because as much as she hated yelling at her friends, it felt good to get it all out.

  She was just so damn sick of having everyone doubt her capabilities all the time. She’d finally talked things out with Declan earlier, only to rehash the same freaking argument with Nate a few hours later.

  Only this time, it wasn’t a (mostly) civil conversation wherein she listed her complaints and Nate eventually saw the light.

  This was more like a purge. The expelling of every hateful thought and nerve-wracking fear she’d struggled with daily since the moment she first decided to fully embrace her gifts.

  Where her training was concerned, the others had done nothing but try to hold her back out of some misguided sense of chivalry—Nate more so than anyone.

  She’d begged him to teach her levitation. Begged!

  For weeks she’d pleaded with him to teach her how to master the art of levitating one’s own body, and for weeks he’d shut her down, claiming that the risk was too great, that she was too inexperienced, and that even he only used the skill when he’d exhausted all other options.

  So tonight, when she had exhausted all other options, Alex was stuck taking a very literal leap of faith. Faith in herself, faith in her measure of control over telekinesis, and faith in her ability not to crush her best friend in the world to death.

  And either someone upstairs was looking out for her, or she was the luckiest damn girl on the planet, because she’d managed to fly both of them out of the house, thousands of feet into the air, and up into the lowest strata of cloud cover, concealing them from the sight of anyone below—all without getting them both killed.

  Alex sighed.

  How many times was she going to have to prove herself before they trusted her?

  She certainly hadn’t missed that look of disappointment on Declan’s face when Cassie let slip about their little midnight flight. He might have caved earlier when she’d confronted him, but it was clear he still had his reservations about trusting her with her own abilities.

  She needed to learn everything she could as quickly as possible. She needed to be stronger. She needed to be more powerful.

  The thought tugged at something in the back of her thoughts. A memory from a few months ago, and an entire lifetime away.

  “It’s time for you to wake up, pet.”

  Alex opened her eyes, chilled by the realization that Samuel Masterson was finally getting what he wanted.

  His pet project was finally—fully—embracing the gift he’d given her. It only took a war to make it happen.

  She squinted at the light fixture.

  As a pre-cog, had he seen all this coming? Is that why he’d been pushing her to maintain and master as many abilities as possible? Did he plan for this?

  Was she playing into his hands without even realizing it?

  Masterson had proven himself more than capable of pulling just the right strings to spin a situation to his advantage. He’d already manipulated her into traveling back in time and saving his life in Seattle. He’d even poisoned Declan to ensure that she inject herself with the VX-2 that would make her like him.

  And where was he, anyway? According to Oz, no one had seen hide nor hair of Masterson since the day of her attempted rescue from the agency facility where he’d been posing as a man named Dr. Edward Li. The day Alex and Declan first traveled to the past.

  He’d chosen an odd time to lay low. He should be on the attack. He should be making the most of the chaos brought about in the wake of the uprising.

  What was he waiting for?

  She shifted her gaze to the bedroom door.

  Are you going to come in? Alex projected. Or do you plan on taking up shop in my hallway for the foreseeable future?

  Nathaniel had been standing outside the door for almost a solid minute, presumably working up his courage to knock. She’d sensed him arrive shortly after Kenzie’s projection and had been waiting for him to announce himself.

  The door opened and Alex pulled herself into a seated position, crossing her legs beneath her. She stared down at her hands in her lap, picked distractedly at her right thumbnail, and braced herself for the second round of the argument that she knew was coming.

  The edge of the mattress sank beneath Nate’s weight.

  “You, Alex Parker, are not okay.”

  “What?” Alex’s attention shifted from her thumbnail to Nate’s face, then quickly went back again.

  The expression he wore held none of the anger she’d been expecting to find. Instead, she discovered an honest, unmistakable concern staring back at her.

  “Alright,” he said. “Let’s recap, shall we?”

  Alex glanced up once more, but Nate had already turned his attention to the far wall. He paused, seeming to need a moment to organize his thoughts.

  “Less than six months ago, you were dragged into this life without any warning, preparation or… hell, even a hint that Variants actually existed,” he began. “But instead of being introduced to all this gr
adually, you received the most insane crash course possible. And then, like some freakishly surreal cherry on top, you pulled off the impossible and traveled through time.”

  The mention of her journey predictably caused Alex’s chest to constrict and her breath to hitch, as she was greeted with a visceral reminder of her time spent in limbo. She clenched her teeth and shut her eyes for a few moments until the feeling passed.

  “At which point you drowned, nearly died, became temporarily trapped in the past, lost Declan, found Declan”—Nate, who was ticking these events off on his fingers, eventually ran out of digits, switched hands, and continued—“became repeatedly stuck in limbo, took a cross-country road trip to save your past self and face down the psychopath that killed your family and upended your life, almost lost Declan again, then somehow came up with a plan that would not only save Declan’s life, but would also prevent our timeline from coming completely unraveled.”

  Nate’s recounting of recent events was entirely unnecessary. The memories were on a loop in Alex’s thoughts during the majority of her waking hours. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but Nate cut her off.

  “Only to finally make it back home and find yourself saddled with the dubious honor of being the most important chess piece in a war that, not even six months earlier, you hadn’t even known was brewing. And this whole damn time, everyone’s been too focused on the threat of the Agency and the whereabouts of Samuel Masterson to consider what all of this chaos might be putting you through.”

  Alex cleared her throat. “Well, when you say it like that… I guess I can understand why you’d think I wasn’t entirely… okay.”

  Nate shook his head. “You have every right not to be, Lex. That’s my point. Every day you’re up at the crack of dawn, you train harder than any of us, you do everything asked of you without a hint of resistance, and you’re doing it all with a smile that I know is fake.”

  She started to argue, but he held up a hand to silence her.

  “Trust me, Lex,” he said. “At this point, even Oz can tell the difference between your real smile and the one you plaster on for everyone else’s benefit.”