by Tracey Ward
“Yeah, I don’t doubt it.”
Alex crouches down slowly beside Naomi. The girl watches her, her eyes huge, and I wonder how long it’s been since someone was that close to her. Alex’s hand trembles when she reaches for the girl. I pull the hammer back on my gun when the girl reaches back.
Naomi’s fingers flinch. They flex slightly, jerkily, and Alex jumps at the sudden movement, but then she falls perfectly still.
“It’s all right, Naomi,” Liam says softly, his voice nearly singing. “Alex is here to help you. Remember what we talked about.”
The girl’s eyes swing between Liam and Alex. “She’s… kind.”
Her voice is surprisingly raspy, almost deep. I expected her to sound like a child, but I realize that’s stupid: she’s a grown woman.
“Yes,” Liam confirms. “She’s very kind. She can do what I do only a little better. She can get you out of that room. Take her hand, please, and don’t be afraid.”
Naomi closes the distance between them. Alex’s hand takes hers firmly, her fingers wrapping around the porcelain skin of the other girl.
Alex smiles weakly. “I’m going to Slip us now. Are you ready?”
Naomi nods, her eyes trained on Alex’s face.
Alex doesn’t ask me for help and I don’t give it. She goes very still, the hum begins, and they’re gone. Easy. Effortless. Like she’s been doing it her whole life—because, honestly, she has.
Something inside of me sighs when she leaves.
“All right, man,” I tell Liam, turning to face him. “Our turn.”
“You’ll have to stow your pistol first.”
I nod, disengaging the hammer and applying the safety. “I forgot it makes you nervous.”
I didn’t forget.
“Are you going to put it away?”
“No. It’s not pointed at you. That should be enough.”
“I’ll need your hand.”
I give it to him reluctantly. The connection with Alex I don’t mind. I like it. But holding hands with Liam—that I can’t stand.
“Are you ready?” he asks me.
“Just do it already.”
∞
“That girl freaks me out,” Campbell tells me.
I look up from my spot at the kitchen table, across the room to where Naomi sits, in front of a TV with Beck. They’re not talking, not looking at each other, but they seem oddly comfortable with each other. It’s impressive, considering everyone else keeps saying how much she ‘freaks’ them out.
After we met up at the Mall of America, we agreed it was time to make camp and plan our next move. Considering he refused to give me a name yet, Liam and Naomi came with us. We threw out a lot of ideas of where to go, but finally agreed on a cabin in the woods that Beck’s coach owns. He told the guy he had a final paper he needed to write that had a huge impact on his grade—and his ability to stay on the team—and he was having trouble focusing in the busy dorms. He was immediately handed the keys to the cabin so here we are, entrenched in wall-to-wall wood paneling and an odd obsession with garden gnomes. They are everywhere. Literally everywhere. I went to the bathroom only to find one sitting on the back of the toilet smiling up at me as he watched me pee. Second weirdest observed urination moment in my life—first being, hands-down, a random drug test in the PJs, where the person watching commented on the superior strength of my stream.
“Yeah, well,” I tell Campbell, tossing him Naomi’s file, “she emits fear, so it’s not a surprise.”
He flips it open. “This is her?”
“Yeah, it’s one of the ones Beck lifted before he left. According to this she emits her fears, just like Liam said. That creepy feeling you have, that’s just her hanging out.”
“Are you guys talking about Naomi?” Alex asks, taking a seat beside me.
“Yeah.”
“She freaks me out,” she whispers to me.
I smirk. “Lot of that going around.”
“How’d they do this to her, anyway?”
“Pheromones and all kinds of crossed wires,” Campbell answers, thinking aloud as he reads. “They cut a lot of them, it looks like.”
“They practically lobotomized her when she was just a kid,” I explain. “It’s a messed up story.”
Alex’s face pinches in disgust. “He did that to his own daughter?”
“He did it to his son, too. Liam was just lucky to be older when Evans started cutting into people. He proved he wasn’t a good test subject. She’s younger. She was perfect.”
“Not anymore,” Campbell says under his breath.
Alex slaps his arm hard.
“Ow!” he cries. “What’s your deal?”
“Oh yeah, act like the victim,” she tells him. “So she’s the opposite of you, Nick. You can’t feel fear, she can’t stop.”
“Liam said he’s been working with her, training her to control it—at least the broadcasting of it. He didn’t document any of it though.”
“She’s your polar opposite,” Campbell says in hushed tone, watching her. “She’s your nemesis.”
I sigh heavily, snatching the file back from him. “Seriously, man, don’t start with the Marvel bit.”
“It’s more of a DC theme.”
“She’s not my nemesis.”
“Not yet. You have to give it time.”
“The same way Nick said that you growing on me would take time?” Alex asks. “’Cause I’m still waiting for that ship to come in.”
“We’re not meant to be friends, you and I. We’re uneasy allies at best.”
“You’ll betray me someday, won’t you?”
“More than likely. Hey,” Campbell says, slapping his hand down on the table in front of me, “did he give you a name yet? What are our orders here?”
“No, not yet,” I reply grudgingly. “He wants to go with me.”
“Are you serious? I figured Prince Harry would take his sister and run.”
“So did I, but whoever these people are, he’s not messing with them. He says now that his dad is dead they’ll come after him.”
“What? Like mob-style? They’re going to kill him for killin’ his old man?”
“They’ll enslave me,” Liam corrects, appearing in the hallway beside us.
He’s fresh from a shower he desperately needed. New clothes too. I’ve only ever seen him in dress slacks and a button-down, so this image of him in distressed jeans and a T-shirt is strange—like seeing Elton John in a football uniform.
“My father was a brilliant scientist, despite being a phenomenal twat,” he continues bitterly. “The only person on the planet equipped to carry on his work is me. They’ll take Naomi, imprison her yet again, and use her to encourage me to carry on where my father left off.”
“Or you could go to them first. Offer to work for them willingly if they leave her alone,” Campbell suggests.
Liam eyes him carefully. “I understand you think little of me as a man, but I’m sure you can understand my need to at least feel like one. I will not belong to anyone. Neither will Naomi. Her freedom and mine will be on our terms, not at the mercy of another.”
“When do I get a name?” I ask him. “Or better yet, an address. You give me that and I’ll be out the door making all your problems go away.”
“You can’t do it alone.”
I sit back in my seat, crossing my arms over my chest. “See, everyone keeps saying that but it’s just not true.”
“How do you intend to lay siege to an entire army? Because that’s what you’ll be facing.”
I pull the white stone from my pocket and slam it down on the table. It sits gleaming and perfect against the rough wood of the dark table. The room feels different with it out in the open. It feels lighter somehow. I don’t know if it’s that feeling or the loud snap of it hitting the table that got everyone’s attention, but suddenly the entire room is fixated on it.
“What is that?” Beck asks curiously.
I keep my eyes hard on Liam. �
�It’s how I’ll end this.”
“Is it a Monopoly piece?” Brody asks. “Why is it shaped like a boat?”
“It’s a stone he created in a dream we shared,” Alex explains softly. “He gave it to me along with two others. I accidentally brought them out of the dream, and when I gave them back to him in the waking world he was able to mold them. He can make anything he wants out of them. He has no limits.”
“I’d like to see that,” Beck whispers reverently, stepping in to get a closer look at the stone.
“Don’t hold your breath,” Campbell warns. “He’s stingy with them.”
“That’s the only one left,” Alex reminds him.
“Who shaped it into a boat?”
“I did.”
“He let you play with it and not me?” Campbell asks indignantly.
Liam shifts on his feet, his face carefully calm. “We assumed the bird was Alex’s doing. That and the dragon. We were wrong, weren’t we?”
“Your dad was wrong about me a lot,” I tell him.
“So it seems. I’ll try not to make the same mistake.”
“What you can do is tell me where I’m going.”
“French Polynesia,” he answers immediately. “I have coordinates.”
“We’ll have to sail there.”
“We certainly can’t fly.”
I turn to Alex. “Another island.”
“Yay,” she cheers sarcastically. “Is it another private one?”
“Yes,” Liam confirms. “It’s small. There’s only one house—though it looks more like a hotel.”
I whistle appreciatively. “Deep pockets.”
“Deeper than some governments.”
“You’ve been there? You’ve seen the layout?”
“Of course.”
“And who lives there?”
“Sandrine Ardant.”
Finally. The name means nothing to me but that’s not a surprise. I wasn’t expecting him to tell me it belonged to George Clooney or Tony Blair. Whoever is ordering these experiments, whoever bought up the program from the United States Government, is someone wealthy enough to afford it but anonymous enough to fly under the radar with it. There are a lot of people out there with a hell of a lot of money, most of whom your average person has never heard of. You amass that kind of money and you don’t want to be public knowledge. It makes you a target for either thieves or investigation, neither of which you want.
I’m not half the conspiracy theorist that Campbell is, but even I don’t believe the Forbes Top 100 Wealthiest People on the Planet list is at all accurate.
“It’s a woman?” Alex asks.
Liam raises his eyebrows. “You seem surprised.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just am.”
“Harley Quinn, Mystique, Circe, Doctor Girlfriend,” Campbell rattles off. “All female villains. All completely hot, crazy, and badass.”
“Doctor Girlfriend?”
“Venture Brothers. Get into it.”
I stand abruptly, unable to handle a Campbell rant right now. “Everyone get some rest. Eat, sleep, prepare yourselves. We’re leaving first thing in the morning.”
“All of us?” Alex asks, surprised.
“Anyone foolish enough to come along.”
“So all of us,” Campbell confirms.
I don’t answer. Instead I head for the door.
“Where are you going?” Alex calls after me.
“I need some air.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alex
I find him on a bench at the edge of the property. He’s sitting with his back to the house, his front to the forest, and a river rushing by his feet.
“You just cannot stay away from water, can you?” I ask him lightly.
He doesn’t turn around. “It’s an old foe. It nearly bested me once.”
“That sounds like an exciting story. I’d love to hear it.”
“There’s a girl in it.”
“Ooh. Is she pretty?”
“Beautiful.”
“Did you tap that?”
“In the most respectful and mutually enjoyable way. Twice.”
I sit down next to him on the bench, grinning. “You dog.”
“It’s the charm. The ladies, they love it. What can I say?”
“You could tell me what you’re doing out here.”
He falls silent, his focus on the moonlit water of the river running by.
“I don’t really know,” he finally says, his voice low.
That’s a big admission for him. Nick knows everything about everything. He knows exactly what he’s going to do and when. It’s just who he is. I’m pretty sure Dr. Evans removed his blood and replaced it with liquid confidence, because the guy straight pisses assurance. So to admit he’s unsure what he’s doing or thinking or plotting—that’s huge.
“Do you not know,” I ask skeptically, “or do you not want to talk about it?”
I see a ghost of a grin on his lips. “Can’t it be both?”
“You don’t want to talk about the fact that you don’t know?”
“It’s happening tomorrow,” he says seriously. “This whole thing comes to a head tomorrow, and I don’t have a plan in place. I don’t know what I’m up against or where I’m going exactly or who this person is I’m going to find, and that’s okay. I feel like I can handle that.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I feel like I can handle that.” He turns to face me. “You and Campbell, you’ve made it clear I’ve got some god complex issues. I think I can handle and do anything, so how do I know I really can handle this? How do I know I’m not going full Lex Luthor like on the dock with you?”
“So we’ve stolen your confidence?”
“More like you’ve made me wonder if I’m living in the same reality as everyone else.”
“Wow, okay,” I breathe. “We’ve made you think you’re crazy.”
“I know I’m not crazy, but I wonder if I’m entirely human,” he says, the words falling out in a weird rush.
“What? Like you think you might be a god?”
“No, nothing like that.” He puts his face in his hands, rubbing it vigorously. He’s agitated—annoyed, I think, at himself. It’s all very unlike him. I wait patiently until he lowers his hands, mumbling, “I worry I’m a husk.”
“Why? Because you can’t feel fear?”
“Because I don’t feel a lot of things. Not the right way, anyway. What I did to you in the dream didn’t even register as wrong to me until you and Campbell pointed it out. I thought I was doing something good that would help you! That’s messed up.”
“Okay, calm down.” I turn in my seat to face him, putting my hand on his arm. “You feel things. I’ve seen you laugh. I’ve seen you cr—No, I haven’t.”
“I don’t cry,” he tells me firmly.
“Okay, okay. Hold on. I’ve seen you be compassionate. I’ve seen you angry. Or annoyed, at least. I’ve seen you love.” I hold up two fingers, smiling. “Twice.”
I’m so relieved when he laughs. I was running out of emotions. I want to tell him I’ve seen him hate, but I’ve only seen him direct it at himself. It doesn’t feel like a good example right now.
He turns his eyes to mine, holding me steadily there with him for a long time. I expect him to tell me all the things he does that are wrong because Nick is like that. He expects perfection from himself. He wants to be flawless, and it’s impossible to explain to him that being flawed is exactly what makes him human. That’s he’s perfectly imperfect exactly the way he is. That I wouldn’t change a single thing about him.
“I plan for everything. Absolutely everything,” he whispers unexpectedly, his words coming out so incredibly soft I have to lean in closer to hear them. “I’ve known exactly what my life was going to look like since I was ten years old, but nothing… nothing on this earth could have prepared me for you. For what it fee
ls like to love you.”
There are moments in life that you want to bottle—a peace and glory inside an instant that you can never reproduce or manufacture. It’s a singularity. An aligning of the stars that sets the heavens ablaze and leaves you hushed in pure, humbled awe. Cameras can’t catch it. Words will inevitably fail it. Your memory will dilute it. You can’t hold onto it any more than you can capture sunshine. The best you can hope for, the only way to truly enjoy it, is to be in that moment and nowhere else. Not the hurt of yesterday or the promise or terror of tomorrow. Wholly inside that moment, that sunlight, is the only way to make it last.
I would linger in that moment beside the river with Nick, his beautiful, heartfelt words singing in my ears, for the rest of my natural life and beyond if I could.
“That was really good,” I whimper.
He grins crookedly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I wipe a stray tear out from under my eye. “That was… thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I may not feel a lot of things very strongly, but loving you—I do feel that. All the time.”
“All right, stop,” I laugh through a rush of tears spilling down my cheeks. “You’re killing me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do you see, though? You’re not a husk.”
He picks up a stray pine needle off the seat and begins tearing it into tiny pieces. “Maybe not entirely.”
“Not at all.”
“But I still have doubts. I know how much strength I have but I don’t know if I should use it all. And if I do, does that mean I’m going too far? I don’t know where the line is.”
I sigh, wiping my face and rubbing my hands together briskly. “Okay, I’m going to say this and you have to take it for what it is and not a permission to do anything remotely like the dock to me again. All right?”
“Okay.”
“The thing is… I think you really can do just about anything. It’s scary—at least for me it is. Once you have the stones in your hand, I don’t think anyone can stop you. I truly believe you can take that little white boat, sail it right up to the island, and overthrow the entire thing. All before lunchtime.”
“But should I do that? That’s the question: at what point is using my power going too far? This is what I was talking about right after the dream happened. I need your help figuring that out, because I obviously don’t know. As far as I’m concerned I should go in there guns blazing, pulling no punches.”