by Tracey Ward
“Hey,” I call softly. I clear my throat, try again. “Hey!”
Nick turns to me immediately, his face on alert. “You’re awake. I was starting to worry.”
“Why?” I groan, standing up slowly. “I was only out for like an hour.”
“Try two days,” Campbell corrects.
“What?!”
Nick nods, stepping toward me. I can see him checking me over. He looks at my eyes, my throat, my skin. He’s checking for fever, heart rate, clarity.
“You were out for two solid days. More like two and a half.”
“How is that possible?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Campbell tells me brusquely. “What matters now is we have company.”
I hear the helicopter. The heavy thump of the rotors are getting closer and closer, bearing down on us quickly.
There’s no time to run. There never was.
“Alex,” Nick begins calmly.
I nod. “I’ll try. I swear I’ll try.”
“Where?”
“Outside.”
“Campbell, we’re in motion! Outside! Now!”
We all run into the open green field. The sky is overcast, gray, and oppressive. I wish I could see the sun. I wish I could feel it on my skin and imagine myself on the beach in Florida with Cara again. It’s a memory I don’t touch because it hurts too much, but it’s one so strong and clear I feel like it’s my best shot at getting us out of here.
“Hold onto me!” I shout. “Both of you!”
They do it immediately, Campbell without a single joke, and that’s how I know we’re in real trouble. That and the chopper. Not only can I hear it, I can see it in the distance. It’s black and looming, its size growing as it moves closer and closer.
It reminds me of our bird.
“Maybe you should use the white stone,” I tell Nick, feeling reluctant. Inadequate.
His eyes hold mine steadily, his face only inches away. “Don’t lose your nerve now. You’ve got this.”
I shake my head weakly. “It’s always had me. I’ve never had it.”
“You’ve done it a million times in your sleep. You did it wide awake with the injections. Some part of your brain knows how to do it. All you have to do is lose the fear to find it.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“I’m right here with you. I know you don’t trust yourself, but you trust me, right?”
I swallow hard, nodding nervously. “Yes.”
“Good. Then do it.”
I take a few deep breaths, just the way Liam taught me. I try to remember his lessons without remembering too much about the clinic. I don’t want to go there. Not now, not ever again. Instead I think of the woods—the ones in Washington where Nick did his survival training and I was stuck for days on end. It’s not a good memory, but it’s strong. It left a mark, that’s for sure, and this gray sky reminds me of the day it rained while I was there. I was drenched to the bone.
“Now would be a great time, SB,” Campbell whispers, his breath hot and impatient on the back of my neck, making me shiver.
I was hiding in the trees, trembling from cold and fear.
“Don’t pressure her,” Nick warns. “She needs to be calm.”
My teeth chattering, my muscles clenching and shaking.
“I’m not pressuring her, the chopper is pressuring her. The cop cars coming down the road are pressuring her.”
“Shut up.”
“Tell her to hurry up.”
Vibrating down to my marrow.
Nick presses his cheek to mine, his mouth to my ear. He speaks rapidly, calmly. “You have the power to do it, Alex. I’ve seen it. It’s incredible. The kind of strength that can make grown men shake in fear at the sight of you. You were born to be this. To do this. Don’t be afraid of it.”
“We’re out of time,” Campbell reminds us.
The chopper is getting louder. So is the hum in the air.
But it’s not coming from the sky. It’s coming from my face. From the warmth seeping into my cheek. From Nick.
“I know,” Nick answers him.
I press my hand firmly to the back of his neck, pressing his face harder against mine.
“What do we do?” Campbell asks tightly.
I focus on the texture of his skin. The thrum of his heartbeat. The rumble of his voice.
“We ru—”
Nick’s voice falters. Sounds are blaring in from every side but I swear I can hear his heartbeat in my ears. His and mine and Campbell’s. I zone in on them. I pull them together. Push them into sync.
My skin begins to tingle. To tickle.
“Alex?” Nick asks carefully.
It’s strange. It’s familiar but so foreign. I would swear in every court in the country that I’ve never felt this feeling before and I’d be telling the truth, but I think I’d also be lying. I think I have felt it before, I must have, but I wasn’t conscious enough to realize it.
It feels like humming. Not nearly as jarring as the vibrating Jazz Hands does, but it’s close. It feels similar. More subtle, like a feather-light rumble in the air around me that sets the hair on my arms on end. It feels like electricity. Like a lightning storm rolling in. I breathe into it and it expands, surrounding me on all sides until I can feel it in my feet and my hair.
“Alex,” Nick says softly, his voice taut. “Please tell me that’s you.”
“I think it is,” I breathe.
“Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
“What is she doing?” Campbell asks.
“I’m Slipping,” I whisper.
“What does that mean?”
Nick tightens his hold on me, making Campbell do the same. “It means hold onto your lunch.”
Chapter Nine
Nick
Every time. I vomit every single time.
I hate it like you would not believe. It’s a pride thing. It’s emasculating. Alex comes out of it clean as a whistle, smiling ear to ear and looking like a kid coming off a carnival ride she can’t wait to get on again. She’s already back in line for Splash Mountain, bouncing on her toes with joy while I’m hanging my head behind a trash can, raising my churros off the ocean floor. I’m glad she’s not suffering, I’d never want this for her, but I don’t want it for me either.
My only consolation, and it’s a cruel one, is that Campbell is doubled over as well.
“What the hell?” he cries miserably between heaves. “What’s happening?”
“It’ll pass,” Alex promises him.
“I hate you!”
“I hate you too,” she answers affectionately. I feel her hand on my back, soothing and warm. “You okay?”
I nod stiffly. “It doesn’t get easier.”
“I’m sorry.”
Campbell stands up, lifting the hem of his shirt to wipe his mouth. It’s already in charred tatters from his run-in with the fireballs back in Japan, and when he moves it out of the way I can see the burned skin underneath. He wouldn’t let me look at it back in the shack we called home, and now I see why. It’s nothing too bad—more like a bad sunburn than anything, but it still looks painful.
“Where are we?” I ask Alex. I stand up straight, groaning as the world sloshes side to side for a second, threatening to keel me over again.
She purses her lips doubtfully as she surveys the area. “Not where we’re supposed to be,” she mutters.
Far as I can tell we’re in a back alley in a city somewhere. The building is one story with red brick walls. Pretty standard.
“Where were we supposed to be?’
“I was shooting for the forest in Washington.”
“The training forest?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. Well,” I gesture to a tattoo parlor across the street, “that sign says Kinky Kat Tattoo. It’s in English. Odds are we’re in the U.S., and judging by the foliage and mountains, I’d say we’re in the Northwest. Not quite the forest, but we’re probably close.” I smile at her
proudly. “You did it, though. You Slipped on purpose.”
She bounces on her toes a little bit, springing up and down. When she smiles back, it’s glowing. “I know! I can’t believe it. It felt so… I don’t know. Good. Great. I feel great. Even better than I did after the serum Slips.”
It shows on her face down into the pigment of her skin just how good she feels. She’s flushed pink, not red the way she was when her heart was in overdrive. Now she looks alive. Happy.
Beautiful.
“How did you do it?”
“I’m not really sure,” she says, her brightness dimming a little. Then she smiles at me and it’s a different kind of light. More subdued. Affectionate. “Part of it was you.”
I raise a quizzical eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. I could feel it, but not really. It was too far off. Like music I could hear but I couldn’t make out the words.” She pokes me playfully in the chest. “When I touched you, you amplified it until I could.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I protest.
“I guess you don’t have to. Your power was just… there. Like a fully charged battery that gave me the boost I needed to make it happen.” Her eyes scour my face suddenly, her brow pinching in worry. “I didn’t drain you, did I? Are you tired?”
I consider her question but I don’t feel especially tired. Aside from the vomiting, I’m not worse off than I was before the Slip. “Nah, I’m good. What did it feel like? How did you find it?”
“I think I hummed.”
“You hummed?”
“Yeah. It was weird. It reminded me of Jazz Hands. I think meeting him helped. He gave me a hint to what Slipping feels like. Did you feel the air around him when he was gearing up?”
“Yeah. It made me sick in my gut.”
She winces slightly. “Makes sense, since you throw up every time you Slip with me when you’re awake. We must do something similar. Once I latched onto that vibration, finding the Slip was… I don’t know, it was almost easy.”
I glance at Campbell, who nods immediately. He knows what I’m thinking. It’s what we were talking about in the barn while Alex was out cold.
We read the stocky guy’s file front to back. Turns out his name is James Richards, he’s twenty-three, and his muscular system has been strengthened. He was supposed to be faster than me, one of the original trials just before mine came along creating super soldiers. He never made it, though. His reflexes are good but everything else fell short or went so far off the charts they didn’t matter anymore. His failures are what led to breakthroughs in my trial. His runtime is slower than mine, his vertical jump shorter, his hearing and eyesight are totally normal.
What he can do, though, is have the mother of all seizures.
They don’t call them that because it sounds awful, but it’s what it sounds like to me. Every muscle in his body seizes, twitches, vibrates, and nearly paralyzes him. He can do it on command, and the part that amazes me is that he does. He chooses to seize. That’s when the magic in his hands happens, his extremities taking most of the vibrations when he focuses there, creating the most heat.
Why exactly his body can move at such an incredible speed—one that can break the sound barrier and generate enough heat to throw fireballs at Campbell’s face—is still a mystery. Even the illustrious Dr. Evans doesn’t know where they went wrong or right.
Based on everything I’ve learned about the guy so far, I’m beginning to think Dr. Evans doesn’t know jack.
“Well,” Alex says awkwardly, glancing between me and Campbell, “we’re here. We’re back in America. Where should we hide?”
“We shouldn’t,” Campbell answers immediately. “They don’t know where we are. They couldn’t. Besides, we’re exactly where we need to be.”
“What do you mean? Where are we?”
“Salem, Oregon.”
“And you know that how?” she asks dubiously.
He points to the building behind me and Alex. We turn together, both of us moving slowly as though expecting a trick.
There, printed in fading white paint against the rough brick, is a circular logo.
McGilligan’s Bar
Salem, OR
Est. 1942
“Oh,” Alex says with surprise.
“How is Salem, Oregon exactly where we need to be?” I ask.
Campbell grabs the bag out of Alex’s hand, flips through it briefly, then pulls out a file. He’s smiling wickedly as he holds it in the air. “Because of this guy.”
“One of us,” Alex whispers softly. She’s staring at the file, her eyes absolutely brimming with hope.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I caution, holding up my hands to reign them in. “We know someone they experimented on is here. We can’t assume they’re friendly.”
“Why would you immediately assume they’re not?”
“Because I wouldn’t have been. I told you, if you hadn’t eased me into this thing for a year I’d never have believed you. I would have called the cops on you.”
“Or shot me,” she reminds me blandly. “You said you would shoot me.”
“Anything is possible. Depends how crazy you sounded—and I guarantee if you show up on someone’s door with him,” I point accusingly to Campbell, “you’re going to sound crazy.”
“Are you really implying that I’m the crazy one here?” he demands.
“I’m saying you’re a fanboy and you know it. You know what you sound like so drop it.” I gesture unwillingly to the file in his hand. “What can this person do? What’s their specialty?”
“Wolverine.”
Alex scrunches up her nose in confusion. “Wolverine? Like super strong bones? Healing ability?”
“No, like super sense of sight and hearing.”
“So not like Wolverine at all?”
“Are you questioning me on comic lore?” he asks indignantly. “I will mop the floor with you, newb.”
“Fanboy!” I snap. “What’s the guy’s name? Who are we working with?”
“Brody Daniels.”
I close my eyes for half a second but inside I’m tensing. Tightening. That’s why we’re here. Liam told Alex to go see Brody Daniels first, she’s read the files, she knew where he lived. She brought us here for him.
But when I meet her eyes, she looks horrified.
“I only recognize the name because Liam mentioned it. I had no idea where he lived. I didn’t even read his whole file.” Her eyes tense almost painfully. “How did I do this?”
“Your subconscious,” I tell her. “You read where he lived, and even if you don’t remember it offhand, some part of your brain knew. Same way if I asked you what year McGilligan’s was established you wouldn’t know. Not off the top of your head.”
“1942,” Campbell spits out.
“But your brain knows,” I continue, ignoring him. “Somewhere in your mind you have that information stored. And it’s good. It got us stateside. You almost hit the mark of where you wanted to be. You did great.”
Alex smiles with relief. “I can only get better, right?”
“Try smoothing out the ride first,” Campbell requests.
“I’ll work on it.”
“Campbell, what’s this guy’s address?” I ask him. “How do we get there?”
Alex shoots me a surprised look. “You’re willing to go? I thought you were dead set against finding more of us.”
“I’m dead set against going in blind and hoping for the best. We’ll scout it out. If we see anything suspicious or catch a single whiff of Evans, we’re out. You’re Slipping us far away from here. Deal?”
“Deal,” she readily agrees.
Luckily Alex landed us downtown, and we make it to the bus station no problem. With everything written in English, Alex’s body on the mend, and a vaguely familiar terrain to work with, it’s smooth sailing. It’s easy to stay off the grid using Alex’s cash to buy lunch and bus tickets, but I’ve seen her wad of bills. With three of us pulling on it, i
t won’t last long. We need more. We need my checking account and what’s hiding in her savings and maybe even whatever Campbell has in his bank. Once Alex can prove she has this Slip On Demand thing down, I think it’s worth the risk to run debit cards at ATMs. Slip in, get money, Slip right out. We never have to be where they’re looking for us for more than five minutes.
“Try and Slip to the next seat,” Campbell pushes Alex.
He’s relentless. He’s been bombarding her with questions about her past Slips and growing up with it and how she found me. She doesn’t have answers to all of that, but I’m surprised by how much she shares with him. I learn things I didn’t know about her and her condition. Campbell gets a breakdown of just about everywhere she’s been, but when he pushes her on Russia she shuts him down. Hard.
Now he’s taken to begging her to show him a Slip. One he can see from the outside that doesn’t make his insides want to see daylight.
“Don’t,” I warn before she can answer him about the seat Slip. “The bus is in motion. How do we know she won’t try to Slip to the next seat, miss the mark, and end up meshed in with the road below us? Or half in and half out of a seat in the back? You could end up with your fist in someone’s brain—which if it was Campbell’s, I don’t know if I’d mind.”
“Dude,” he says low, nudging me with his foot.
“What? Did I hurt your feelings?”
In response he juts his chin toward Alex.
I turn to look at her face where she sits silently beside me and I want to kick myself. I wish Campbell had done it harder, saved me the trouble.
Her face is taught with worry, her eyes shimmering with tears she’s holding inside.
I know what I’ve done: I’ve piled fear on top of the fears she already had, almost immediately after I told her to overcome those fears. It’s as though I can’t help her without hurting her, and it tears me up inside—a feeling I am massively unfamiliar with. I’m not built for this. For being close with people. For being good for her.