by Sara Preucil
Chapter 23
That night, Emmy laid in her hospital bed, tossing and turning restlessly against the scratchy sheets. The air conditioner whined noisily, but that wasn’t what was keeping her up. She couldn’t stop thinking about the boy she saw. For some reason, while she was in the deprivation bath, all thoughts of the boy had been pushed to the back of her mind, but once she returned to her room, they all came flooding back.
He must have been a patient as well; he certainly looked ill in the sauna.
But why had he acted that way when he saw her?
She couldn’t shake the inexplicable feeling that she knew him. And the more she thought about him, the more compelled she was to see him again.
Closing her eyes, Emmy conjured the image of his face, trying to place its familiar edges, the blueness of his eyes. She focused on the memory of his eyes, feeling like they were somehow the key. Her brows furrowed as she squeezed her eyelids even more tightly closed.
Slowly, the face in her mind began to shift, mature, form stubble, his blonde hair darkening a few shades and now tied back at the nape of his neck. And then something changed. A door at the back of Emmy’s mind, long forgotten, unlocked.
Images flooded her mind.
The man stood over her, dripping wet, hand outstretched. The scene changed and he was chopping wood, the construction of a half-built cabin stood in the background. Then he was standing next to her on a raised dais as the world around them burned. And then he was holding her in the small bed that they shared, her head resting against his bare chest. And finally he laid on a table, a symbol carved into his forehead, his unseeing eyes glossed over.
Her eyelids flew open.
“Kai!” She gasped.
Chapter 24
Kenna opened her eyes to find herself sitting up in a narrow bed, in a tiny, chilly room lit only by a small yellow light that seemed to be fastened to the wall. A strange box protruded from the wall above the light, rattling loudly as it spewed icy air. Her head felt heavy, slow, and her senses felt dulled; she was certain this box was the culprit.
She swung her feet over the side of the bed. Her bare toes making contact with the cold, glossy floor. There were two doors connecting to her room. Quietly, she crept toward the closer of the two. She tried turning its cold, metal handle. It didn’t budge. The second handle turned successfully, and she stepped into another dark room.
Muscle memory had her hand roaming the smooth wall for something. Sure enough, there was a small rectangle against the wall with something poking out from its middle. She flipped it up, and immediately, a bright, unnatural light filled the room.
Squinting her eyes against the sudden brightness, she took in the space. Everything was white, the walls, the ceiling, the standing basin, the tub. There was a sharp smell in the air; it burned her nose.
She turned around and gasped.
A young girl was staring back at her. She was pretty, with porcelain skin, raven hair dipped in scarlet, and small heart-shaped lips.
Kenna’s gaze followed the features of her face to her eyes. These she recognized. Her brown eyes so dark that they were nearly black.
Something glinted behind them. A small orange spark.
The room tiled and the memories slammed into Kenna with such force that she had to grab the edges of the basin to steady herself.
Another lifetime of memories collided into her, fusing to her soul.
Being passed around from home to home in foster care; scraped palms and knees from getting into a fight on the playground when a boy called her homeless; moving to Bellingham; Mariah plopping down next to her at the lunch table on her first day at BHS, and helping herself to her chips; Austin and her at the lake during summer; Dylan staring at her during the football game.
Not Dylan. Kai.
She remembered Kai, the lives they spent together, the lives they spent apart. Lives spent fighting them.
She also remembered who she was. What her soul was.
An elemental. That’s what this language roughly translated it to.
Kenna—Emmy—looked at herself in the mirror once more, as she slowly knit past and present together.
The act would have been disorienting and terrifying if she didn’t remember merging into about half a dozen other lives before. Now she just breathed, letting the memories come until she was whole.
Suddenly, she remembered something else—
Austin’s research. The two overlapping triangles doodled in the margins.
Emmy’s stomach tightened. She needed to get out of here.
She needed to find Kai.
She walked back into the hospital room, but of course, this wasn’t actually a hospital and she wasn’t actually sick.
They had found her. What exactly that meant, she wouldn’t know until she had more information. Whatever the Order’s goals in this lifetime, they were apparently far more complex than in the past, which were simply to find and destroy.
Could it be that they had finally figured out what had eluded them for centuries? Did they somehow know that they couldn’t so easily destroy that which could reincarnate?
Chapter 25
On weakened legs, Emmy stumbled from the bathroom to the door. She grabbed the handle; the freezing metal stung the skin of her palm. She wrenched on it. It didn’t budge.
Locked. Of course.
Panic welled up in her chest. She needed to get to Dylan—to Kai. That he knew who he was, who she was, was without a doubt. He had come to find her. She recalled the searching looks he had given her in class, the words he spoke to her. The meaning of both she had been completely blind to. If only she had remembered sooner.
She remembered the despair on his face when he saw her through that small window, when he realized the Order had her too.
She squeezed the frigid handle, trying to find the fire within. But something was wrong. What used to come as easily as breathing was choked off somehow. There was no inner heat, no ember in her belly waiting to ignite.
Fruitlessly, she yanked at the handle. Tears pricked at her eyes as she remembered the last time she was unable to help Kai. She could hear his screams as clearly as if they were happening now, could smell the burned flesh where the symbol of the Order had been branded into his forehead.
Something stirred in her gut as she remembered Kai’s face. It faded, morphing into his likeness now, into Dylan.
She wouldn’t let them kill him this time.
The handle began to warm under her hands as she thought of the first time she saw Dylan in this life—a memory, she now realized, and not a dream. When he approached her at the shore of Lake Whatcom. The teasing smile he wore as he showed her the control he had over water. The stormy look in his eyes, hands clenched at his sides, as Emmy allowed Austin to lead her away from him.
The metal started to glow orange, but the heat didn’t scald her skin—something Emmy, not Kenna, was mildly surprised by. She could feel the metal softening, becoming malleable beneath her fingers, and then it melted, dripping into a molten mess on the floor, scalding the tile.
Emmy pushed the door open and stepped into the dark hallway. It was easily twenty to thirty degrees warmer out here, and with each passing moment, she felt stronger and stronger. The fog in her head was slowly beginning to lift; as she grew more alert, it dawned on Emmy that she didn’t know where his room was.
For a moment, she considered attempting to retrace the winding route that she and that girl Krystal—which Emmy now remembered was the same girl that headed the internship program—took earlier which led them to the sauna. But even if on the off chance Emmy could find that room again, it was a treatment room and not the one he’d be sleeping in.
While Emmy pondered her next move, a strange sensation began stirring in her gut. She suddenly felt a pull, like a magnet being drawn to its mate, and had the strangest feeling that she was supposed to head down the corridor to the left.
Hesitantly, she began to walk in that direction, her step
s growing more confident as the pull seemed to strengthen.
Guided by this inexplicable intuition, Emmy took a right at the end of the hall, and then continued into another corridor lined with doors. About midway down the corridor, she paused, and then turned to her left.
This door. She was certain of it. Dylan was behind this door.
Heart pounding, she reached out and touched the handle. Unlike the doorknob in her room, this one was warm. She turned the handle and the door swung open easily.
They must only lock from the inside, she realized.
Emmy stepped into the room and was greeted by a sweltering wave of heat and sudden light. Unlike her room, which had been kept dark and freezing most of the time, Dylan’s room appeared to be perpetually lit and boiling. A heating unit was roaring, and multiple salt lamps were propped up on high shelves, sucking all moisture from the room as they glowed a bright orange. Her eyes adjusted to their light, and she quickly located Dylan.
He was lying on his back in his bed, his long, lean limbs splayed out away from his body in an effort to get cool. His face shone with perspiration, and the white t-shirt he wore stuck to his damp chest.
Emmy padded on bare feet across the tile toward Dylan. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she gave him a gentle shake. His skin felt hot through the t-shirt.
“Dylan,” she whispered urgently. “Dylan, wake up. We need to get out of here!”
He stirred, murmured something, and lethargically tried to swipe Emmy’s hand away.
Time was running out. Surely someone would soon notice that she had broken out of her room. She tried to shake him again, but he didn’t budge.
“Kai!” She hissed frantically. “Get up!”
His blue eyes snapped open, latching on to Emmy’s face. They stared blankly, almost unseeing for a moment, but then recognition blossomed into his features, and he sat up.
“Kenna,” he whispered, smiling his crooked smile. But then their situation seemed to dawn on him, because his smile faded.
“Let’s go.” Emmy tugged on his arm.
Sluggishly, Dylan got out of the bed, and allowed Emmy to guide him out of the room. He slumped against the hallway wall, hands propped against his knees, taking deep breaths. The cooler air appeared to be helping, because after only about half a minute, he was able to stand straight.
The urgency of flight was beginning to make Emmy feel twitchy. She grabbed Dylan by the hand, and started pulling him down the hall. Just as they turned the corner, the slapping of shoes against the tile echoed down the hall they had just vacated.
“Shit!” A man swore. There was a crackling of a radio, and he spoke into it. “Subject 2307 is out of confinement.”
Eyes wide with fear, Emmy stared up at Dylan. Anxiously, he looked around, and then pointed. Halfway down the hall, marked by a small sign, was a door to the stairs. They ran for it.
Dylan reached the door first and yanked it open as the man’s footsteps behind them signaled his pursuit. Emmy slipped inside and he shut it behind them.
Thinking on her toes, Emmy quickly placed her hands, about a foot apart, at the seam where the metal door met the metal frame. Almost instantly the steel surface heated under her hands, fusing metal to metal. She pulled her hands away, and two crude lines now welded the door to its frame.
“I don’t know how long that’s going to hold,” she said, just as the door shuttered with a loud bang.
Dylan grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her away from the door. They hurried down the first flight of stairs. They just hit the landing when the door in front of them flew open. Dylan was closer to the door, so when the man charged out of it, he went for Dylan first. The guard was larger than Dylan, outweighing him by at least fifty pounds, and was able to easily tackle him to the floor. Then the guard pulled something from his pocket—a loaded syringe.
Emmy jumped. She landed on the man’s back, grappling around him like a monkey. She went for the place that was most exposed.
One arm hooked around his neck for purchase, Emmy slammed her other hand over the man’s face. Heat surged through her arm into her hand.
The man screamed. He released Dylan, focusing his energy now on trying to pry Emmy off him.
Dylan scrambled to his feet as the smell of burnt skin filled the stairwell. The guard fell to his knees, and Emmy jumped off his back, landing easily on the cold cement. She skirted the man, who was now cradling his ruined face, to join Dylan.
Without missing a beat, Dylan took the very same hand that just mutilated the guard into his own, gave it a squeeze, and continued leading them down the stairs. They only had one more flight to descend before reaching the ground level. They pushed through that last door, Emmy prepared for whatever was on the other side.
At least, she thought she was. She stared, open mouthed at the familiar white lobby.
Of course. She really should have put it together sooner.
They were in the office building of Modern Alchemy.
No wonder the last time she was here, Emmy inexplicably wanted to visit the upper floors. Dylan was already here. Kenna, although still locked away, had felt his presence.
Emmy had no time to wonder at this; they were already running across the open floor to the glass doors. Behind them, the elevator chimed, and two more men pushed out of the opening doors, sprinting after them.
Dylan pushed open the glass door, setting off a security alarm, and they stumbled out into the sidewalk.
It was a stormy night, and deep puddles had accrued all along the road and sidewalks. Dylan let go of Emmy’s hand.
“Get behind me,” he instructed, turning to face the entrance of Modern Alchemy just at their pursuers spilled out of the front doors. In one deft move, Dylan raised his hands overhead. As he did so, water rose from the puddles at the men’s feet, following his fingers like molten metal to a magnet. Nearby raindrops flew from their normal path, sideways to add to the growing liquid mass until it was as tall as the guards. Dylan then clenched his hands into fists, and the water condensed, freezing around the men, suspending them in large blocks of ice.
“Come on!” Dylan took Emmy’s hand, and the two of them started running along the dark, sodden sidewalk.
Chapter 26
This way!” Dylan took the lead, turning the corner of the next building and cutting through an alley. Emmy hurried after, their bare feet splashing in puddles of what she prayed was water. Just as the fear of tetanus sparked in her mind, something dark caught Emmy’s foot, causing her to stumble.
Dylan reached out, grabbing her arm and catching her before she could fall to the ground. He pulled her up, so that they stood only inches apart.
“You okay?” He whispered.
“Yeah,” Emmy held on to his arms, working on catching her breath. “Where are we going?”
“I stashed my Jeep before they took me. Hopefully, it’s where I left it.” Dylan’s hand slid down Emmy’s arm to take her hand. Emmy entwined her fingers with his, knowing exactly how they would fit together. How right it would feel.
They stood there for a moment longer, she in her hospital gown, he in scrub pants and a t-shirt, finally reunited in this life. With his free hand, Dylan caught a strand of Emmy’s hair, tucking it behind her ear, letting his fingers comb through the scarlet tip.
Voices echoed from somewhere nearby.
“We need to hurry.” Still holding her by the hand, Dylan led Emmy down the alley and across an empty side street that ran along behind the buildings of a mixture of apartments and shops. A pair of headlights bloomed out of the darkness, and they ducked inside a stairwell, crouching down as the car slowly drove by. “Just a few more blocks, I think,” Dylan said as they watched the light fade.
They set off again, sticking to the shadows, travelling two more blocks which took them to a main three-lane street. They crossed it quickly, having to travel half a block along it first to stay out of the glare of the street lights. Beyond were the train tracks, and then the ground sloped do
wnward to the bay. Dylan led them down a gravel path, which was agony against Emmy’s bare feet, but she shoved the pain out of her mind, focusing on what they needed to do. They made their way into the shipyard, Dylan heading straight for a group of shipping containers.
Parked behind a stack of these large containers was a turquoise Jeep. Dylan crouched down at the rear bumper, felt around for a moment, then straightened up with a key in hand.
“Knew this spare would come in handy.” He grinned at Emmy. “Get in.”
Emmy hurried to the passenger side, Dylan was already inside and leaned over to unlock her door. He grabbed a duffle bag from the passenger side floor and tossed it in the back seat. Emmy climbed up onto the seat as Dylan started the Jeep.
“Where are we going?” Emmy asked as Dylan pulled out of the gravel drive on to the main road. She was going to ask if they could swing by her house, to at least get her a pair of shoes, when she remembered that her things probably would have been packed into her car, which, apparently, had been driven out of state.
“My friends in Houston hooked me up with a contact from Seattle; he’s got a place in Mount Vernon that we can crash at for now. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
Emmy’s stomach gave a little flip at the way Dylan said “we” so naturally. She smiled to herself.
They both fell silent, keeping a look out as Dylan drove as quickly as he could through town without arousing suspicion. When they got on the on-ramp to I-5 southbound, they both let out audible sighs of relief.
For the next few miles, they drove in silence. The frequency in which Emmy kept glancing over her shoulder lessened, until she was finally satisfied that they were not—at least for the moment—being followed. She relaxed, letting her head rest against the back of the seat. Out of the corner of her eye, she peeked over at Dylan.