Faceless

by Jus Accardo

  “Probably not.” She closed the door, and when I turned, I saw she was playing with the thin silver band on her thumb.

  God, she was pretty.

  I took a long pull from the soda and kicked my feet up without yanking off my shoes. “Did you need something, or are you just here for the scenery?” Crap. Biting down on my tongue, I internally cursed Cain. The guy always had to have the last word.

  “Henley hit you.”

  The obvious statement had Cain wanting to shoot a sarcastic reply, but I managed to control the impulse. “Got him to leave though.”

  “I can’t figure you out,” she said, pulling out the chair in the corner. She smoothed her skirt and sat down, her eyes never leaving mine.

  “You keep saying that. Really, I’m not hard to figure.”

  “No, you really are. It’s like you’re two different people. One minute you’re a complete and total dick, and the next you’re…not as much of a dick.” She looked uncomfortable. “Anyway, I was thinking about it in the car, and I sort of owe you an apology.”

  I tried not to seem interested. “For?”

  “Well, for starters, I was pretty rude to you tonight. For the most part, you’ve been astonishingly nice.” She shrugged. “I mean, nice for you, anyway.”

  I waved it off. “No big.”

  She shifted in the seat, obviously uncomfortable. “There’s one more thing. It’s about the other night… You seem to genuinely feel guilty about it—which totally doesn’t seem like you, by the way—so I wanted to set things straight.”

  “The other night?” I ran through our interactions in my head, not understanding at first. And then it hit me. A tidal wave of relief flooded through the room. Relief that quickly turned to annoyance. “Don’t even tell me… You mean I didn’t—I didn’t push you to kiss me, did I?”

  She looked away.

  “That was a really crappy thing to do!” I was angry, but even more than that, I was relieved. When I managed to successfully push Wentz at Skinners and nearly had an aneurism, I should have figured it out.

  My name is Brandt Cross, and even under the influence of someone else’s personality, I knew I’d never do that…

  At least she had the decency to look sorry. “I didn’t realize it at first—”

  “Didn’t realize it? You let me think I’d pushed you into kissing me. That I’d forced you to do something against your wishes—that’s pretty huge, Devin. How do you not realize you’re kissing someone of your own free will?”

  Her expression hardened. “I didn’t want to believe it, okay?”

  “Wow,” I said, sliding off the bed. Cain wasn’t my kind of guy. His wardrobe consisted of near-goth wear—everything was either black or dark blue, and had skulls on it. A lot of frigging skulls. But as far as guys went, he wasn’t leper material. “I’m no Prince Charming, but I’m not Bart the Dog-Faced Boy, either.”

  She stomped her foot. “That’s not what I mean. I just—I didn’t want to admit that I felt any kind of attraction to you. You’re kind of an asshole.”

  I folded my arms. Sure, I was angry, but it was fun to watch her squirm. The right hand corner of her upper lip kind of trembled and her left eyebrow rose just above the right. It left me twitching in places that might get me into trouble if I wasn’t careful. “Not helping your case here…”

  “I just mean that I tend to attract a certain—type.”

  I set the soda down and glared at her. “Meaning me?”

  She didn’t answer so I kept going.

  “I hate to burst your little self righteous bubble, but you don’t know what type I am. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure you’ve never met my type.”

  “I want to trust you,” she said softly. “I need to. I need to trust someone here. What you said in the car—about these people—about what they’re doing… I agree with you. Something isn’t right. But…” She sighed and glanced at the closed door. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to me and said, “Do you know why they have me working at Dromere?”

  Some of the tension left my shoulders and the venom drained from my voice. “I barely understand why I’m there.”

  She stood and came a few feet closer. Lowering her voice, she said, “Information. They want me to find and steal files from Wentz’s main computer. Something called Dromin12.”

  “Same here.”

  “I know,” she said sadly. “They have us working against each other. Whichever one of us finds it first gets the prize.” She stopped playing with the ring on her finger and squared her shoulders, looking me in the eye. “My father is sick. If I find the formula, Anderson promised to heal him.”

  “He promised me a cushy lifestyle. But if we’re working against each other, why tell me?”

  Her expression turned steely. “Because I want to appeal to the tiny shred of humanity I hope is hidden somewhere in that sludge you call a brain. My father’s life is at stake. I want you to let me find the formula. Let me be the one to deliver it to Anderson.”

  In that moment, I wanted so badly to tell her the truth. To admit that I needed the formula not for material reasons, but to save lives. But I couldn’t. It was too risky. “Do you even know what it is? What it does?”

  “Don’t give me that look,” she snapped defensively. “I know it’s probably a bad idea to get it for them, but this is my father’s life we’re talking about.”

  My name is Brandt Cross, and I’m here to save many lives…not just one…

  “Have you found any information on it yet?”

  She hesitated. “No, and that’s why I’m telling you all this. I want you to help me find it.”

  “You want me to help you make me lose?”

  Her face turned red. “This isn’t a game, Cain! My father’s life is on the line. All you’ve got at stake is power and a cozy place at Anderson’s side. Are you really that much of a bastard? Please…” Her desperation made my insides clench. “Please. Just push Wentz to give me the formula.”

  What could I say? There was no way I could let her get the formula and hand it over to Anderson—but I couldn’t tell her the truth. Not yet. “I’ve been trying to push him since day one and I’m having some trouble with it…”

  Everything about her seemed to deflate.

  The defeat in her eyes really got to me. It filled me with determination. To help Dez—and help her. “But our abilities aren’t the only way we can find something,” I rushed on. I would still keep trying to push Wentz, but time was getting short, so I needed to explore other options.

  She brightened. “What else could we possibly do?”

  I flashed her a sly smile. “Maybe there’s a way we can find out how Anderson planned to help your father. If it was another Six, we can find them ourselves. We start digging.”

  My name is Brandt Cross, and I would have made an awesome investigative journalist…just like my father…

  Chapter Twelve

  As much as I wanted to, I didn’t visit Devin that night. Instead I jumped into Ginger’s dream to see how Dez was doing. Dez had gotten really sick not long ago, and in order to get the medicine she needed, her boy Kale was forced to trade himself to uncle Marshal. I knew she was having a hard time with him being gone, and hated not being able to be by her side when she needed me, but what I was doing was important. If I went to see her again directly, I might be tempted to drop everything and run home.

  I asked Ginger not to mention to anyone what we were doing just yet because I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up about the cure. Getting the formula from Wentz was only half the battle. From what Ginger told me, we’d still need to get our hands on uncle Marshal’s mysterious component.

  Ginger told me not to worry. She hadn’t told anyone other than some guy named Dax what I was doing

  The next day was Saturday. Both Devin and I had the day off from Dromere and had the usual weekend plans. Chores. We didn’t pay rent to live at the boarding house, but Anderson felt it was only fair for everyone to chip in
and take care of the place. Anyone not in training or assigned a specific job was given a list of chores to do.

  When I rolled out of bed and stumbled from my room, I found mine taped to the front of my door. Great. Number one on the list. Yard work. I wasn’t even living at home and my least favorite chore in the world still haunted me.

  Two hours and about a gallon of sweat later, the leaves were raked, the weeds pulled, and the hedges trimmed. I’d just sank into a chair in the kitchen to suck down a soda and ease the blisters on my feet—Cain hadn’t been a manual labor kind of guy—when Devin blew through the room and yanked me off the chair. “What the—”

  “Shh! Just follow me and keep it down.”

  I let her drag me from the kitchen and in the direction of Anderson’s study. With a quick glance down the hall, she pushed through and closed the door behind us.

  “Ya know, closets work much better for—”

  She glared at me.

  “I was just sayin’…”

  “We’re not here for a grope fest,” she snorted. “As if I’d go there again. We’re here to snoop.”

  I liked this girl more and more with every passing minute and knew my father would approve. I’d dated a few high maintenance types—afraid to get their hands dirty or break a nail—and Dad always rolled his eyes when he met them. He kept telling me I needed to find a real girl. Someone with a stomach for horror movies and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. I’d always wondered about that because my mother hated the sight of blood and ran screaming from the room the moment anything remotely scary came on the television.

  Pushing Dad out of my head, I made my way around to the desk and started pulling open drawers, while Devin dove into the filing cabinet. The first one was loaded with file folders. All the residents that had arrived in the last two months. Cain’s folder was in there, along with five others and nothing else.

  The next drawer had an array of office supplies. Everything from number two pencils and a box of ball point pens, to a handful of loose paper clips and rubber bands. Pads of paper, erasers, Post-It notes—nothing nefarious or suspicious. Just general desk stuff.

  The last drawer was empty.

  Thirty minutes later, we’d gone through pretty much everything—not that there’d been much. Anderson seemed to settle in the less is more school of thought. The furnishings were scant and he kept very little in the room.

  “Crap.” She sank into Anderson’s chair. “This was a waste.”

  “Not at all,” I said bending to look her in the eye. “This was a good start. It made sense to think he wouldn’t keep any important info stashed in his office, but you never know. This wasn’t a waste. This was a check mark.”

  “Check mark?”

  “Yeah. You know, like a thing on the list to check off. We checked here, and we know it’s not here. We can move on to the next.”

  She just stared at me for a moment. “That’s pretty insightful for—well, you.”

  “Me?” I feigned insult. “I’m not the least bit insightful. I used to know an investigative reporter. He showed me a thing or two.”

  My name is Brandt Cross, and everything I know I learned from my dad… Oh, and cable television…

  She let her guard down for a second and graced me with a smile that made my stomach do an odd little flip. “That’s pretty—”

  “I want that list by five,” a voice said from the hall. I clamped my hand over Devin’s mouth and held my breath. Footsteps. Getting closer.

  “Anderson?” I whispered, frantic.

  “No way,” she insisted, prying my fingers loose. “He was supposed to be gone until four. I checked his schedule book. He went into town!”

  “And make sure we have everything ready to go. I have people on the inside that should ensure the acquisition of the formula with no problem. This needs to be wrapped up by early next week. The council wants to see results and Cross is breathing down my neck.”

  Council?

  “Well, he’s back early.” I pointed to the closet on the other side of the room. If I got caught, it was all over. “Quick. Hide!”

  She jumped from the chair and stumbled to the closet, nearly tripping over the obnoxious shag rug in the middle of the room. I beat her to the door and threw it open. Suddenly I understood why the office itself had little—because Anderson had shoved everything into the damn closet. I wedged in next to Devin—he must have been a pack rat because there wasn’t enough room for one person, let alone two—and got the closet door closed just before the office door opened. Footsteps rattled the floor as Anderson made his way across the room. A moment later, the chair creaked and I prayed he didn’t look this way. The closet door had slats, so anyone looking too close would surely see us.

  I tried to put my finger across my lips as if to say Shh, but we were crammed in so tight, that the move—super smooth in my mind—didn’t go as planned. I got my arm free, but when I tried to bring it to my face, my hand caught on the edge of Devin’s shirt. Panicked, I jerked my hand away, pulling up the material in the process.

  With a flash of lacy white, my fingers rubbed against warm, bare skin, and while I would have loved to blame the whole thing on Cain, truth was, I was a seventeen-year-old guy. Watching paint dry made me think about sex. Being crammed into a closet, crushed up against one of the cutest chicks I’d met to date? Yeah… There was bound to be some kind of reaction.

  Devin’s eyes widened and her mouth opened as my traitorous body gave me away. “You— Eww!” she mouthed.

  Heat flared in my cheeks. “Sorry!” I mouthed.

  “Get me Marshal,” Anderson’s voice said from the other side of the door.

  I froze. He was on the phone. This time, I effectively managed to put my finger to my lips—without ripping Devin’s clothing off.

  Several moments passed before he spoke again. “Yes. It’s Anderson.” Pause. “Good, good. I just wanted to update you on the state of things here.”

  Papers shuffled, and the chair squeaked again as Anderson got to his feet. Peering through the thin slits in the door, I watched him begin to pace. If that was uncle Marshal he had on the line, then I understood. The guy had that effect on people.

  “No. My residents haven’t been able to locate it yet, but I can confirm your tip. Franklin Wentz has found a way to alter the Six mutation.”

  Pause.

  “I believe so. And if that’s true, sir, then not only will you be able to amp the abilities of unborn Sixes in utero, but also modify the abilities of existing Sixes. The Council should be very pleased.”

  Another pause.

  “Yes. I’m confident that one of the three people I have on the inside will have it before tomorrow night.”

  Three? So there was someone else skulking around Dromere.

  “From the information one of my people presented, there seems to be a flaw in Wentz’s calculation, but I believe with the component you tried to use previously, it will work to not only cure the second trial, but create a new, successful one.”

  There was a short pause.

  “I understand,” Anderson said with a bit of bite. “I’ve discussed this with the Council.”

  The Council again. I’d never heard it mentioned before and wondered if Ginger knew anything about it. I made a mental note to ask her, and pressed myself a hair closer to the door.

  Anderson chuckled. “Denazen would have a new army of powerful Sixes at its disposal—without waiting for them to grow into it.”

  My throat was like the Sahara. Cain Jr. lost all his umph as I strained to hear the last few words of Anderson’s conversation. Modify existing abilities? There was no limit to the damage they could do if able to play God like that. This was getting bigger by the minute.

  Anderson disconnected the call and sat back down, the chair giving a loud squeal. Crap. We needed him to leave. If we didn’t get out soon, someone was going to notice we’d gone missing.

  I shifted to reposition my ear to the door. When I looked ba
ck at Devin, her eyes were closed. Something beeped on the other side of the door, followed by a curse from Anderson. A moment later, the chair squeaked again, followed by the echoing slam of his office door.

  Devin opened her eyes and shoved me. “Hurry. Move!”

  “What—I don’t get it.”

  She reached around and turned the knob, pushing me out. She crept to the door, pressed her ear against it, and listened for a minute. “He just got an email from Fitz. You know, that whiney guy with the wonky Midas touch ability? He wanted to meet him ASAP to discuss something important.”

  When she was sure the coast was clear, she cracked open the door and peeked through.

  “You can do that?” I said in awe as we stepped into the hall.

  She shrugged it off like it was no big thing. “’Course. I just hacked Fitz’s email address and sent it. Not a challenge at all.”

  “Well, I’m impressed.”

  She snorted. “Then my day is complete.” She turned and marched down the hall, making sure to keep her face turned away from me, but I could tell she was smiling.

  My name is Brandt Cross, and I think I’ve got a mad crush…

  Chapter Thirteen

  As if my double—technically triple—life wasn’t bad enough, over the next few days, things splintered into even more fragments.

  During the day, Cain worked with Wentz. I tried to push him, but had little success since Skinners. I started feeling like I’d have more luck if I didn’t like him so much. Something told me my emotions were getting in the way. It would explain why Cain tried so hard to distance himself from everyone. Wentz had admitted the formula was in his head. I hadn’t told Devin—something I felt guilty about—but I knew the only way to get it was if I figured out how to push him. He was a Nix, so dream jumping was out of the question, and there was no way I could tell him the truth.