Avner bit his tongue, knowing the proposal he wanted to voice but unsure of how to word it. Instead of speaking, he listened as Angor continued, his tone eerily sly.
“I called you here for information on the event you were holding yesterday evening—the little club you’ve been conducting, which you dubbed JAMZ.” Swallowing, Avner opened his mouth to explain, but the principal spoke first. “I’ve known about JAMZ for quite some time, before you begin claiming it was a one-time event.” His smirk was almost cat-like as he crossed his legs and leaned farther into his chair. “I have cameras everywhere, if you were not aware. It’s a well-organized group you run—a great extension of training. I imagine, though, that if I declared it a school function, that would ruin the fun.”
Avner laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. “Everyone does love the idea of breaking school rules…”
“As did I,” he acknowledged with the dip of his chin, “which is why I will go on pretending I have no knowledge of it. So long as no one dies, I have no issue with it.”
“Last night was the most dangerous it’s ever been,” Avner assured him, “but if you always watch, you probably know that…”
“Yes, last night was more eventful than usual. The idea of teams was interesting, might I add.”
“Seth Stark’s idea.”
“Hm. The friend of your sister,” Angor noted, mostly to himself. “But, I digress. It was fortunate that last night was the night the Wackos chose to infiltrate our town. If it had been a normal night—if all the students hadn’t been concentrated in the basement—the Wackos might have succeeded in their plan to capture Hastings.”
“They, um, they did capture someone—Maddy—Madella Martinez,” Avner stammered, feeling an ache in his chest even as he spewed the words.
“I’m aware,” Angor said, his expression pensive. “I will admit I am not too pleased with that. It was a tragic mistake.”
“It was my fault,” Avner said, glaring at the forest beyond the glass. “I should have been able to save her.”
“It’s noble of you to feel such.”
“I don’t feel noble.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. I’ve felt the same as you before—the regret of being unable to save the ones you love… It will happen again and again—especially in this world, where our kind is so despised.”
Avner glanced up at Angor tentatively, feeling hesitant but somehow strangely comfortable with this unfamiliar man. “I was… I’ve been thinking…that maybe, since we have a Wacko in our captivity…we could…exchange her for Maddy. Mr. Pane said the Wacko claimed to be valuable—claimed the other Wackos would want her back—”
A chime sounded throughout the room, and Angor sat up straight to address his computer. After clicking a button, the metal doors behind Avner swung wide, revealing a pair of emotionless individuals.
“Apologies for the interruption, Avner,” the principal said, barely looking at him. His eyes were trained on the two adults strolling stiffly into the room. “These are the Regular ambassadors, William and Artemis Ross. I’ve been working closely with them for years to maintain peaceful relations between this town and the United States government. Ah…Jeannette, would you fetch us another chair?” he called toward the bookshelf side of the room.
Avner hadn’t noticed before, but the school’s librarian had been there the entire time, reorganizing the books. With a simple nod in Angor’s direction, she refocused her attention on a chair stationed in the far corner of the room, and without touching it, she mentally repositioned it so that it sat before Angor’s desk, right beside Avner. The two ambassadors were stunned as the chair flew across the room, seemingly by magic, but Avner was not too shocked—he’d watched the librarian move books with her Mental Affinity so often that it seemed normal.
Gingerly, the two Reggs sat in the empty chairs, crossing their legs guardedly and placing their matching black briefcases on their laps. The woman was probably shorter than Adara and certainly stouter, with a round face aged with faint wrinkles. Roving the room, her eyes, as dark as her hair, held an aura of sophistication that was amplified by her expensive suit. Her skin was deep olive, like Avner’s, while the Regg man’s was pale, like Angor’s.
The man, William, had the tall build of Avner, athletic but now fuller with age. Thinning and graying hair rested atop his shiny head, and seriousness was etched into the lines on his forehead. Although Avner was convinced he had never seen them before, something about these Regg Ambassadors was…familiar.
“I was under the impression we would be having this meeting in private, Angor,” William stated, sparing a suspicious glance in Avner’s direction.
“I can go,” he suggested, but he’d barely begun to stand before Angor shook his head.
“No, stay. Avner is a respectable young man—he might be able to give you further insight as far as last night’s attack. He was an eye witness and a leader in the student defense against the Wackos.”
Neither of the Reggs appeared to be exceptionally impressed; their impassive expressions remained.
“We want all the information you can give us on last night’s attack,” William said plainly. “All videos of your interrogation with the captured Wacko and any video you have of the actual break in or the fights they provoked with your students. We wish to interview your security, as well.”
“My security guard did the best she could to defend this town,” Angor informed them. “The Wackos had a mind controller, and you can imagine those are especially difficult Affinities to deal with. Once inside, the Wackos were able to send photographs of our town to their teleporter, who could then enter freely. You are aware, I presume, that most teleporters need to have seen a place before they can teleport to it.” Both Reggs stared at him blankly, so he pressed on. “Now that the teleporter can come and go with ease, Periculand will need more advanced technology to keep the Wackos out.”
“Do you think the government has not been desiring the same technology?” the woman, Artemis, questioned.
“I was under the impression you were already in possession of such technology,” Angor replied almost sassily as he raised his pale red eyebrows.
“We won’t know how we can assist Periculand until we have been given every detail of the attack,” William explained, his demeanor calm. “We’re aware they came to kidnap a boy named Hastings Lanio. If this is true, we have interest in using the boy as bait to coax the Wackos out of hiding—”
“I will send you all videos and documents recording last night’s events,” Angor said sharply. “I assume you will also desire the quarterly report at the end of the month.”
“We always do,” Artemis answered, her dark eyes slivered probingly at Angor.
“You’re aware that requirements will be changing with the new president,” William said. “We’re assuming Emmett Ventura will win with his rising popularity, and he has a precise vision for this town.”
Angor’s lips twisted. “The Regg government always does have their own precise vision for this town, don’t they?”
“A vision you don’t often like to conform to,” Artemis added with the mildest jump of her eyebrows.
“We’ll return for the quarterly reports, as well as some surveying of our own,” William said. “Send all evidence of the attack before midnight tonight or, I can assure you, we’ll return in the morning.”
In unison, the Regg ambassadors stood from their chairs and swept out of the room like an Arctic wind. Avner was left feeling not only cold but also confused.
“I didn’t know the Regg government was so involved here,” he said, shifting where he sat. “I didn’t know they held you to a certain standard.”
Angor exhaled a sigh, relaxing as he slumped back into his seat. “I cannot do what you ask of me, Avner. The Regg government will rebuke me at a legal level if I negotiate with terrorists and exchange the Wacko for Madella, as much as I personally would like to. Perhaps, when they are not so heavily involved in th
e matter, I might be able to do something. For now, unfortunately, Madella will be at the hands of the Wackos, and we can only hope that, out of fear for their own compatriot’s safety, they do not harm her…”
25
Collapse of Composure
“Do you remember when you first moved in with us and Tray was convinced he was in a nightmare?” Seth asked Adara, kicking pebbles as they walked along the sidewalk. He had a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other, but Adara doubted he’d used either throughout their entire day of classes.
Algebra, a class required by the Reggs, had just ended, and the primaries poured out of the Naturals Building to trek to the Physicals Building for training. Adara strode beside Seth with a potted fern in her arms, since Ackerly was too overwhelmed by his textbooks and notebooks to carry it himself. The plant was just beginning to sprout in the soil, and Adara examined it as though it were some sort of alien vegetation.
“When he was in embarrassing denial?” Adara peered over at Tray with wicked eyes. He wielded a towering stack of books, most of which had nothing to do with any of their classes and were just, as he put it, for the love of knowledge. “Of course.”
“Well,” Seth said, “this is exactly like that time. Everyone knows the Wackos broke in, but the teachers are all acting like it was just a scary dream.”
“It’s Monday,” Adara reminded him as they passed the Residence Tower. The twenty-story white cylinder was blinding in the afternoon sun. “We’ve had the entire weekend to get over the trauma.”
Bitterly, she looked down at the dark red marks on her arms—the scabs that had hardened and left a sleeve of rigid itchiness on her forearms. The back of her head stung, as well, but her dark hair was thick enough to conceal any physical damage Calder’s dragging experiment had inflicted. “Not all of us are mentally weak pansies like Nerdworm.”
“I like pansies,” Ackerly chimed in with as much defensiveness as his feeble voice could muster. After a dreadful day of wearing Calder’s contact lenses, Ackerly and Adara had gone to Louie’s Lenses and bought him a new pair of green-framed glasses, which allowed him to glance at Adara over his pile of books with clarity. “Pansies are great—especially the purple ones—”
“Because they remind you of Floretta’s hair,” Adara finished for him, wiggling her eyebrows provocatively. Ackerly’s cheeks flushed now from more than just the sunlight.
“I don’t blame you,” Seth said. “Floretta is the only bangable teacher here. At our old school, we had several.”
Adara’s eyebrows shot up, and Seth exploded into a fit of laughter that, as it prolonged, became wildly contagious. She was soon genuinely giggling while Ackerly chuckled with uncommon ease. Tray, however, was inflexible, and propping all of his books on one arm, he swung open the glass door to the Physicals Building with nearly enough force to yank it off its hinges.
“I don’t understand how you can all be laughing at a time like this,” he spat at the three as they coughed out the last of their laughs and then proceeded into the building. “We were just infiltrated by Wackos the other night—the same people who blow up bridges and kill people. On top of that, it doesn’t look like they’ve increased security at all, and no one’s necessarily watching us to make sure no one’s kidnapped.”
“You want adults to escort us around like children?” Adara questioned flatly. “How prude of you, Nerdworm.”
“I’m sure they’ve got eyes on Hastings somehow.” Seth glanced back at his roommate, who walked behind Lavisa and Hartman with Eliana—though the two of them weren’t really walking together. Since the night of the Wacko attack, both had seemed fairly distant, even with each other. “If the mind reader hasn’t been instructed to protect him, then they’ve probably got someone with an invisibility Affinity tracking him and making sure he doesn’t get taken, you know.”
“Yes, the thought of someone with an invisibility Affinity is making me feel much safer,” Tray snapped. “I love that we’ve been imprisoned in a town that’s become a target for a terrorist group. And, to make everything truly disastrous, we have a huge science test tomorrow and I’ve barely had time to study with the distractions.”
Adara gasped theatrically, dropping the potted fern but then swooping it up in midair before Ackerly could have a heart attack. “Tray Stark is going to fail a test? Oh, the Wackos simply must be imprisoned now. There is no higher crime than to distract poor Nerdworm.”
Tray rolled his brown eyes at her as they entered the gymnasium, already filled with upperclassmen. Some chatted in huddled groups on the orange mats and others practiced their Affinities, all carefully monitored by the looming teachers scattered throughout. Aethelred was having an in-depth conversation with a short boy with aqua-colored hair while Floretta demonstrated her Affinity to some secondaries by making a flower twine almost magically up her own arm. Adara wasn’t surprised when Ackerly began to drool.
“I hope Avner and Jamad do something cool today,” Seth said as the incoming primaries flooded the room. Grumbling, Tray stalked over to the bleachers and set down his books—not so he could train but so he could read. Ackerly had already picked an empty part of the gym near Tray, and Adara and Seth followed him without question. “Jamad always makes the coolest ice sculptures.”
“I don’t think either of them will be doing anything particularly interesting today,” Adara replied as her vision wandered over to where her brother sat on the opposite side of the room, slumped at the top of the bleachers. Zeela was beside him, her eyes closed as she rested her head on the wall behind them, and Jamad was hunched over in front of them, rubbing his forehead. “They’re still grieving their stretchy friend.”
“Oh, right; I forgot about that,” Seth said, deflating slightly as Adara placed Ackerly’s plant on the first row of the bleachers. The mossy-haired boy had already positioned his books on the floor and was now pulling up the sleeves of his white sweatshirt. “It really sucks she was taken. I feel like we should do something, you know, to get her back. If they’d taken you, I would have broken out of this town with my super strength and chased them to the other side of the country.”
Although Adara’s smirk up at him was sarcastic, her insides danced with ecstasy. “If the Wackos had taken me, they would have immediately regretted it. I would kill them with my annoyingness.”
“We’re already aware that your disagreeable personality is like a disease,” Tray said almost absently as his eyes scanned the oversized textbook in his lap. The doors to the gymnasium were closing now, but he was oblivious to the obnoxious chatter and Affinity usage. Water powers, acid spitting, and teleporting had become such a common sight to them over the past month that it was hard to believe Tray had ever doubted the possibility of such things.
“Why don’t you do something, Nerdworm?” Adara asked as she plopped down on the bleachers beside him. Seth sat on her other side, and he watched in fascination as Ackerly knelt on the ground near them and began working with his plant. A few moments passed before anything substantial occurred, but as he rubbed his fingers against the curled tendril, it began to gradually rise from the soil until it unfurled and sprouted willowy leaves.
“Look at Greenie,” Adara went on, gesturing toward Ackerly, who was too focused to have heard her. Tray didn’t bother looking up from his book as she spoke to him. “He practices, and he’s already improved so much over the past month. You are just going to be a dull blob who has potential and never reaches it.”
“I’ve been practicing,” Tray muttered, flipping a page aggressively. “I could never carry all of my books at the same time and now I can.”
“Bravo,” Adara droned. “You have super strength and all you’re going to do with it is carry books.”
“Once my super strength starts to increase, I’m gonna do awesome stuff,” Seth bragged, stretching his muscled arms. “Like…fight Nero when he tries to beat up Hartman, or—or pummel that water kid when he tries to drown people. Or bring you a hundred-pound donut.” H
is eyes slid sideways toward Adara, and she pressed her lips together to suppress a girlish smile. “I mean, I’m probably buff enough to do all of that now, but it’ll be easy once my Affinity kicks in. I won’t be lazy and selfish like Tray—I’ll help people.”
“How noble of you,” his brother mumbled resentfully.
“I would challenge Nero if I had super strength,” Adara said, eyeing the big-boned brute where he stood across the room amongst his friends.
Since the Wacko invasion, he’d been bragging to everyone about how he single-handedly captured Naretha and fought the monster. No one questioned him, of course, and they all praised him for his bravery and superiority. Nixie stood by his side even more proudly than before, and all of his groupies seemed enthralled…except Calder, who leaned against the wall near the gym’s exit, alone. He twisted an orb of water in his hands, his ocean blue eyes slivered in his friend’s—or, more accurately, ally’s—direction. An odd sensation pricked at Adara’s stomach as she watched him, but she tore her vision away from him before any kind of emotion could form.
“Nothing good came out of you discovering your Affinity,” she went on, now glowering at Tray. “Super strength isn’t an Affinity I’d want, but you could do something with it. And, to make your existence even more pitiful, you don’t even have your nice blue eyes, anymore—now they’re just ugly, poop brown.”
With a suddenly hostile posture, Tray finally glanced at her with his ugly, poop brown eyes. Up close, she noticed, they were actually interestingly intricate, stemming brown from the pupil with a few flecks of blue remaining on the outer rim of the iris. Maybe it would have been better for him not to practice his Affinity—not to improve—so the piercing blue wouldn’t be overtaken by the dull brown that perfectly matched his hair.
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