“Rock hit your forehead,” Lavisa informed him. “You blacked out.”
Tray’s hand flew to his forehead, and he yelped when he felt the aching bump that had formed there. “What happened to my cheeks?” he questioned as his fingers grazed the pink and slightly raw skin.
“Oh, I’ve been slapping you to try to wake you up,” Seth replied casually, rubbing his hands on his pants as he hopped to his feet. “While I was doing that, everyone else was fighting a bunch of Wackos.”
“What—” Tray began, but the word barely left his mouth before a person appeared behind Seth, her back still hunched and her voice wheezy as she panted.
“Where is Hastings?” the Wacko teleporter asked, looking frantically around the room with pale green eyes.
Eliana could sense Nixie was about to tell her when Tray sprung up and ferociously attacked the woman with his fist. Her glasses broke beneath the force of his hand, and she cried out in pain before wilting to the floor and then hastily disappearing from sight.
Tray muttered to himself bitterly as he caressed his knuckles. When he turned back to the student spectators, his expression hardened. “What?”
“You just punched an old woman,” Seth said, appalled.
The other twin rotated his shoulders, unconcerned. “She was a Wacko.”
“But she was an old woman—”
“It was a good punch,” Lavisa stated. Though her tone was neutral, she studied Tray with a mildly-impressed smirk. “And she was a Wacko, old or not. We can’t sympathize with terrorists.”
Tray nodded stiffly, but he refused to look her directly in the eye. Instead, he glanced between the burn on his chest and the burn on Eliana’s shoulder and asked, “Acid?” She nodded, just now reminded of the pain. “We should go to the nurse, then. I’ll carry you.”
Her eyebrows spiked up, and though she opened her mouth to protest, Tray ignored her as he swept her off the ground with ease. He wasn’t as muscular as his twin, but his super strength compensated, and he carried Eliana out of the basement like she was a thin blanket.
As they marched toward the exit, she heard Seth say, through Lavisa’s auditory system, “He learned his girl-getting skills from me.”
Eliana peeked over Tray’s shoulder to see Lavisa examining the sea of bodies. In particular, she was looking at one girl: Seth’s ex-girlfriend, who lay unconscious, surrounded by others but still inherently alone. A pang of guilt flitted through Eliana’s chest as she realized she’d totally forgotten about Kiki in the chaos. Part of her wanted to break away from Tray and hurry back to help the blonde, but they were already ascending the stairs, leaving her behind.
23
Captives
Darkness clouded Adara’s vision, even when her eyelids began to flutter open. Pain radiated from the back of her skull, inducing a groan as she groggily regained consciousness. Softness was beneath her aching body, and black fabric covered her face, making her breathing shallow and strained.
It was probably her sweatshirt, she realized, but instead of smelling like candy and donuts, it smelled of salt, like the ocean. Her back felt itchy and hot, as did her arms, but she didn’t get the chance to remove the fabric from her face to inspect her injuries before the sound of voices penetrated her ears.
“You mean to tell me you just…found these two in the Residence Tower, as if they knocked each other out in some duel?”
“You’re making it sound like Little Stromer actually accomplished something.”
“It’s more likely the Wacko knocked herself out. All we need to assume is that, somehow, this whole thing is Stromer’s fault. Nero and I had nothing to do with it. Frankly, we should be praised for being kind enough to bring them here.”
“Did Miss Stromer fall on the asphalt? She has a significant amount of road rash…” the first voice, a male’s, said with deep concern. Adara recognized it as the nurse, Jason Pane.
“No, she didn’t fall; I just had to drag her here from the Residence Tower, since she’s too freaking heavy to carry.” That voice was rather distinctly Calder’s. She should have recognized it the moment he began spewing about how this whole thing was her fault.
The accumulation of lies and insults forced Adara to spring up from where she lay, generating a debilitating headache. Her sweatshirt fell into her lap, allowing the white light of the nurse’s office to bombard her eyes. Three figures stood at the foot of her bed, and as her vision focused, she registered them as Dr. Pain, Big Boy, and the Pixie Prince.
“Or,” Adara began, her voice hoarse but determined, “maybe you’re just too freaking weak, Pixie Prince.”
Arms folded, Calder met her gaze and tried very hard to look disinterested. His dark hair was half in a bun, half falling out in stray pieces, and a thin layer of perspiration coated his skin. Since he’d shed her sweatshirt, his arms were bare and visibly bruised with deep purple spots. A few bloody cuts marred his face, almost like claw marks.
“Why does my sweatshirt smell as bad as you do—like a polluted ocean?” Adara questioned, displaying it between pinched fingers, as though he’d soiled it. The motion stretched the skin of her elbows and stung her with a sharp pain, and when she glanced down at her arms, she noticed her forearms were coated with scrapes of blood, as if the top layer of skin had been scrubbed off. Holding up her wounds for him to see, she added, “Did you do this?”
“I thought it’d be easier to drag you by your feet once we got outside,” Calder informed her as a crooked smirk inched onto his lips. “It was, actually, but your head kept banging on the sidewalk, and your shirt kept getting pulled up—nice bra, by the way.”
She shot him a scathing glare. “It’s not a nice bra—I bought it used from a thrift shop—so don’t lie, Pixie Prince.”
Twisting her arm behind her back, she felt the throbbing rash that ran up her spine and silently cursed herself for having passed out. It hadn’t been her fault, of course—that Wacko had knocked her out using his mind—but she still felt utterly pathetic. As she began to rub her sore shoulders, she glanced at the bed beside hers and noticed a person lying in it.
“Who carried her? She doesn’t have any road rash.”
“I did,” Nero said. His usually buoyant gray hair was a matted mess and his t-shirt was dirty and tattered. With steely eyes, he glared at the girl in the bed—the female Wacko they’d encountered in the Residence Tower. Her eyes were closed now, but her ski mask was off, revealing her pale skin, sharp features, and pinkish-white hair, currently styled in a scruffy pixie cut.
“Huh,” Adara marveled sarcastically. “I think you could have easily carried both of us here, Big Boy.”
“Oh, I definitely could have,” Nero confirmed, shifting his attention to her with equal enmity, “but it was too comical watching Mardurus struggle to drag you across campus. I couldn’t intervene.”
“Just be thankful you’re here at all,” Calder put in before Adara could make a sassy comment. “I could have easily left you in the tower.”
“You care more about a Wacko than me?” she challenged, motioning toward the unconscious female to her left. “How chivalrous.”
“We captured a Wacko,” Nero said with excited pride. “We’re heroes.”
“And you did nothing to help, so that’s typical,” Calder added to Adara.
For once, she didn’t succumb to the banter. “I’m assuming you have no intention of bringing her to the authorities?”
“Is that what you want to do with her? I do recall someone mentioning that police officer is your boyfriend—”
“I think we should wake her up and question her,” Adara spoke over Calder. “Let’s find out why she was here.”
“Or we could just parade her around the cafeteria in the morning like a trophy. It would piss your brother off,” Nero added as an afterthought.
Adara cocked her head to the side pensively. “That’s not a bad idea, either. Anything that pisses Avner off—”
A moan cut through her sentence, a
nd she swiveled to see the female Wacko stirring. Calder and Nero inched closer to her bed, but the nurse rushed past them to reach her first.
“I should heal her concussion before she awakens.” Leaning over the Wacko’s bed, the nurse gingerly placed his aged fingers on her forehead, reducing the thrashing and moaning to stillness and a faint hum. A moment later, her pinkish eyes flew open, and upon seeing the nurse hovering over her, she threw up her hands, spraying him with a current of thick salt crystals. The jagged edges whipped Dr. Pain’s face, staining his cheeks with blood, as he staggered back.
Adara was wide-eyed and speechless, but Nero and Calder were both swift to aid the nurse, the blue-haired boy stepping behind the old man to steady him while Nero stalked to the other side of the Wacko’s bed and drew back his fist.
“No one hurts Dr. Pain. Give me one reason I shouldn’t smash your face into your brain,” he growled, his muscles quivering as he fought to restrain himself.
“He’s fine,” the Wacko snapped, glowering at Pane, whose face had healed, leaving no trace of any injury. Glancing over and seeing the nurse was no longer injured, Nero relaxed, gradually allowing his fist to fall to his side.
“Wow. I never would have thought you’d defend an old man who heals people,” Adara taunted. “Who would have thought big, bad Nero Corvis had a soft heart?”
“Shut up,” he barked, tensing again. “I’m not a fan of Dr. Pain healing the kids I hurt, but he helps my allies, as well, and I respect that.”
“Allies. Still too tough to call them ‘friends,’ huh?”
“I gather you all hate each other,” the female Wacko said, shifting where she lay in the hospital bed.
“Basically,” Adara confirmed as she fiddled with the fabric of her sweatshirt. When she reached the two holes in either armpit, her slivered eyes rose to Calder. “I still have to kill you for ruining this sweatshirt.”
“I imagine there are a lot of things you have to kill me for,” he droned before refocusing on the Wacko. “What’s your name?”
“Ooh, the Pixie Prince has a romantic interest in you, Nacil,” Adara said, wiggling her eyebrows between the pair.
“Nacil?” Nero repeated, bemused.
“You know, what they call salt in science class.”
“You mean NaCl?” he clarified flatly. “Sodium Chloride, the ionic compound that is salt?”
“Don’t get all technical with me, Big Boy. You’re starting to sound like Tray.” This comment clearly miffed Nero, and a triumphant smirk slid onto Adara’s lips. “Whatever it’s officially called, it doesn’t change the fact that Pixie Prince is into her.”
“I am clearly not into her,” Calder said. “Salt and water just don’t mix, Stromer.”
“Hm. Ever heard of the ocean?” she countered slyly. “You know, the biggest body of water on Earth—made of salt water?”
“I have no interest in the boy with the water power,” the Wacko said as she examined her black painted nails. “I’m already romantically involved with someone else—someone who will gladly kill to rescue me from this place.”
“I hope that’s unnecessary,” the nurse piped up, now standing farther from the bed to avoid another wave of her salt crystals. “Periculand does not take hostages—or even prisoners, for that matter—”
“Because we’re all prisoners,” Calder and Adara interjected in unison. With narrowed eyes, they both scrutinized each other as the nurse continued to talk.
“Wackos are not welcome in Periculand. Mr. Periculy will have you sent to the United States government, my dear—I am sure of it.”
“Real prisons are worse than the little cells they’ve got here,” Nero said darkly. “I know, since I’ve been in both.”
“You were in juvie,” Adara reminded him. “This Wacko looks old enough to go to an actual real prison.”
“If we hope to gain any information from her,” the nurse chimed in before they could continue to argue, “I should fetch Aethelred. He’ll be able to see every part of her past—”
“I’m twenty-five,” the female Wacko said, staring up at the ceiling, “so I would go to a real prison. And, if you all must know, my name is Naretha.”
Calder blinked in disbelief. “That’s your name? I thought that monster was talking in some weird alien language when it said that.”
“That monster is not an it; she’s a she, and she’s not a monster,” the Wacko snarled defensively. Nero’s cheek grew faintly red, as though he were embarrassed—or perhaps enraged—that he’d nearly been beaten by a monstrous female.
“Well, is she the one you’re ‘romantically involved’ with?” Calder questioned, causing Adara to laugh.
“Told you the Pixie Prince is into her. He just won’t give up. Why don’t we ask her some more important questions, hm?” Adara swung her legs over the side of her bed to face the Wacko properly. “Like…why did you come here? Were you trying to kidnap Seth Stark or Hastings Lanio? And how did you know their room number?”
Naretha looked to the three males in the room, who all stared at Adara with slightly impressed bafflement. Adara could have boasted about her interrogation skills, but she was too busy having a stare-down with the Wacko.
“I don’t know who Seth Stark is,” the Wacko replied rather vaguely.
“So you came here for Hastings, then?”
“That’s a bad idea,” Nero said. “Not sure if you’re aware of what Lanio does, Wacko, but it’s not pleasant.”
“I’m aware of how powerful he is,” Naretha answered levelly. “Why else do you think we wanted him as our own?”
“Hastings would not use his power to help Wackos,” Adara insisted. “He won’t even tell me what his Affinity is, and we’re pretty much best friends.”
Calder let out a hearty chuckle. “I think you have a very unrealistic image of yourself, Stromer.”
“There are plenty of other Affinities here with useful powers,” Nero said, eyeing the Wacko seriously. “Why him? Why Hastings and no one else?”
Naretha returned his gaze with just as much severity, though her tone was blithe. “You seem to know a lot about him. I would think you’d know who he is.”
Nero’s thick eyebrows bunched into a unibrow, but he didn’t get the chance to question her further before the door to the nurse’s office swung open and a horde of primaries barged in.
“Mr. Pane—” Tray began to call, but upon seeing the nurse was awake and surrounded by familiar faces, he halted his speech abruptly. His normally neat brown hair stuck out in odd directions as sweat clung to his face. A large red bump throbbed on his forehead, and his cheeks were full of color. In his thin arms he carried Eliana, whose blue hair was a wild mess and whose equally blue eyes were wide as she stared between Adara, Calder, Nero, and the Wacko. She tried to squirm out of Tray’s grasp, but despite his seemingly weak appearance, he held firm to her as his eyes landed on Adara.
“Remove yourself from that bed, Stromer,” Tray ordered. “Eliana’s actually injured, not just taking a nap.”
“Who naps at one in the morning, Nerdworm?” Adara questioned as she hopped off the white bed. Her back ached and her wrist was still throbbing from when Nero had slapped her, but she subdued her expression of agony and instead held up her forearms for Tray to see. “And I am injured, for your information.”
“Ooh, that looks worse than the time you and Tray got into that spontaneous wrestling match on the carpet,” Seth observed as he stepped into the room behind his brother. He looked far less disheveled than the other two with his hair still styled and none of his clothes ripped or damaged. “Except that time it was Tray with the rug-burn.”
“Did you get into a fight with this Wacko?” Lavisa asked as she positioned herself beside Seth. Her arms were crossed, her hands were wrapped in dirty cloth, and her dull yellow hair was pulled up in a braided bun with only a few wispy strands loose. “Two of them came down to JAMZ—”
Adara’s eyes flew to Eliana. “Did they capture Hast
ings?”
“No, he’s with Hartman…somewhere,” she replied uneasily. There was still clear discomfort on her face from being held so tightly by Tray.
Adara clucked her tongue. “Well, that’s reassuring. What happened to you? Why’s Nerdworm carrying you like you’re his damaged damsel?”
“She was burned with acid—”
“By Acid Attack,” Adara finished for Tray, who was as highly irritated as usual.
Nero began to snicker. “You fought Dave?” he asked Eliana with mild intrigue. “I’m surprised you’re not dead—”
“We did teams, not one-on-one fights,” Seth explained enthusiastically. “My idea, obviously.”
“My sister will be disappointed she didn’t get to battle your ex-girlfriend,” Calder said. He was studying a large bluish bruise on his upper left arm now, and he winced when applying pressure to it. “She wasn’t hurt by the Wackos, was she?”
“No, she wanted to help them,” Lavisa said, her tone edged with resentment. “She almost handed Hastings over. She was ready to join them—”
“If she’s anything like him,” Naretha interjected, nodding toward Calder, “we wouldn’t want her.”
“She is everything like me,” Calder barked, his nostrils flaring with genuine anger, an expression Adara had rarely seen him indulge in. Hastily, he recomposed himself, clenching his jaw as he continued to poke at his bruises. “I say we kill the Wacko and parade her dead body around in the cafeteria.”
Nero’s dark eyes simmered with bloodlust. “I’m not opposed.”
“You can’t just murder her!” Tray exclaimed. “She has rights—like the right to a fair trial. You have no authority to take her life, no matter who she is.”
“You wanna tell me what I have the right to do, Stark?” Nero demanded, broadening his shoulders and puffing out his chest while taking a few intimidating steps toward Tray. Nerdworm swallowed, stumbling back and nearly dropping Eliana.
The nurse stepped between them before Nero could issue a punch and held up his hands. “There will be no fights in this room, Nero,” he said sternly. “Everyone here has come to be healed, not hurt. I have no idea what this JAMZ they’re speaking of is, but I can see they’ve been in a fight with Wackos, just as you have, and I wish to mend them. If you have no further injuries, you may leave.”
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