* * *
“Okay, we go up this wall. There’s an access door on the roof that’s going to get us in real close to where they’re housing Anderson.”
The girls hadn’t wasted any time getting Angeline to explain the file to them. Elle had already been ready to go on a crusade for these kids, and Angeline had told her she believed she might have the very Talent that could help them. So without me as the voice of reason, they came up with this great plan to visit Anderson, which had Elle and me staring up the side of this building the next night.
Elle squinted up and tugged on her braid. “Ethan, I can’t climb that.”
“I know, don’t worry about that. We can do this two ways. I could climb up and lower down a rope and then pull you up. But you’d have to wait down here by yourself while I made climb. I think it would be better if I just carried you up on my back. If…uh…that’s okay with you.”
“You can do that?”
“Uh...yeah.” I felt like an idiot. I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging or showing off or something, but I wanted her to understand she’d be safe. “Look, I’m a shapeshifter, right? It pretty much means I can give myself as much muscle mass as I need. The only thing is that I’ll need my arms, so you’ve got to be sure to hold on. It shouldn’t take too long, though.”
“Yeah, okay, I can do that.”
I turned around and Elle clambered onto my back, wrapping her arms around my neck, legs around my waist, and making me really glad Karen wasn’t here to read my thoughts. I leapt up for the first handhold, testing our weight, and then started climbing.
“Is this why you didn’t want to bring Karen?” Elle asked in my ear.
“Karen doesn’t have any business climbing buildings in the middle of the night. Not that you do either.”
“You’re very protective of her.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
“I guess. I mean, yeah, I am. Do you know why I’m on probation?”
“What do you mean, ‘on probation’?”
“I mean, like, one more strike and I’m on the next bus to Everlast. You didn’t know that?”
“Why would they send you to Everlast, Ethan? You never do anything wrong.”
“Nothing except sneak around the restricted zone after hours, steal files, carry girls up the sides of buildings.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.” I pulled us over the edge of the roof. Elle slipped away from me and I shook out my arms, let my form settle, caught my breath, while she sat beside me in the shadows. I wanted to take a minute to let my form settle, so this was probably as good a time as any to clear this up. “I’m sorry, I just figured you and Karen talk so much… Don’t look so worried. It’s not a big deal, I just thought, since you asked about Karen and me—”
“I didn’t mean to—”
I cut her off, figuring we didn’t have all night to do the awkward word dance thing. “When I came here, I was one of those kids who had a lot of trouble controlling their Talent. I had a really bad temper and my Talent feeds on that. On stuff like anger and frustration. So I was like any other kid with a bad temper who had trouble controlling it and sometimes lashed out, except that when I lashed out, I lashed way out. And it may not surprise you to learn that coming here didn’t really help out with that a whole lot.”
“What? You take a little kid away from his family and put him into a military institution with a bunch of freaks and he doesn’t immediately find inner peace?”
“I know, right? What can I tell you, I was a tough case. Long story short, Karen decided to get into my head and start saving me from myself. She said I was supposed to have an inner voice of reason or something, and since I lacked it, she was going to be it. And she’s pretty much been in my head ever since.”
“She never said.”
“I may not give her enough credit on the whole privacy thing. She really, literally, saved my life. It was close, though. I was really angry and it took me a long time to get it under control. It’s been years since my temper’s been a problem, but they’re still waiting for me to screw up again.”
Yeah, trouble controlling my temper. That’s all there was to it. This was such an over-simplification I was afraid my nose was gonna start growing.
“I don’t think I’ve ever even heard you raise your voice. I almost think you’re making all this up.”
“Anyway, I didn’t let Karen come because we didn’t need her for this and it seemed too risky to try to look after both of you. I did go on record, right, about hating this whole idea? I don’t think any of us should be doing this.”
“Yeah, you mentioned. So, um, thanks for doing this. I know you didn’t have to get involved.”
“Why are we doing this? I mean, why are you? What possible reason could you have for wanting to help Anderson?”
“It’s not so much him, it’s the little kids, you know? Angie thinks I can actually help them. It’s hard for me to believe she’s right about that, but if she is, I’ve got to do it. But I want to try it on Anderson first. So I don’t get their hopes up. And Anderson…he’s a jerk and stuff, but he’s still a person. And he’s a Talent—one of us, not one of them, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I found my feet and held out my hand to her. “Let’s go fix the jerk.”
A few minutes later we were in Anderson’s private room and he was looking at us skeptically.
“You’re going to fix me? Fix what?”
“She’s talking about trying to disconnect,” I jerked my chin in an imitation of his tick, “that chip,” I did it again, “in your head.”
He glared at me. “That’s impossible.”
“What have you got to lose? Or do you enjoy being their pet monkey? Or is it more like a robot?”
“Ethan, cut it out,” Elle said. “Look, I fix things, okay. I can see how they used to be and I can fix them. Like the lock on the door. Or if you broke a dish. I think I might be able to see how your brain was, before the chip, and make it that way again. The chip would still be there, but we’re talking about…disconnecting it from the circuit.”
“So if this works, it will still seem to them like it’s receiving their signals and delivering them, but I won’t hear them anymore?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what your experience will be. I don’t even know if this will work.”
“And why are you even here?”
“Because they’ve started working on a bunch of little kids here, and they’ve got a bunch more they’re starting in on next week,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. So you’re using me as a guinea pig before you go mess with the kids’ brains.”
“Basically,” Elle said honestly.
“Yeah, all right. Do your thing.”
“All right, just sit back and try to relax,” Elle said, moving around behind his chair. Her hands settled on his shorn hair and I sort of wished Karen was around to tell me what he was thinking. Elle’s eyes were closed, and she frowned in concentration. Anderson continued looking at me, but then his eyes lost focus. His pupils dilated. Elle’s hands were moving over his scalp and then I saw a tear fall from the corner of her eye. I got up just in time to catch her as she stumbled back from Anderson’s chair.
“What? What is it? Did that hurt you?”
She reached up brushed the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand. “No. No, I’m fine, Ethan.” But she was leaning into me and I wasn’t sure. “Anderson? Are you okay?”
Anderson got up out of his chair and walked a few steps away. He shook his leg, and I remembered how it had sort of dragged as he walked into the classroom the other day. He paced back and forth and then turned to us.
“Something’s different. Something’s definitely different.” He sounded excited. Hopeful. “Look, I can still…feel it. In there. Still hear the hum of it. But other stuff is different.”
“I think the tick is gone,” Elle whispered.
“There’s no way to be
sure, not until they give me a command. But I think this might actually have worked.”
Elle was beaming. I was very concerned that there might be crying.
“Listen, you guys, you should know something.”
Here it comes, the big ‘I was being used’ apology thing.
“When you’re a lab rat, they see you as a lab rat. These guys talk in front of me all the time, like I’m not even there. I guess they figure it doesn’t matter, who am I gonna talk to, right? So look, the guy who did this to me, Dr. Piers, he’s here. At least, he was supposed to arrive tonight. They’re not happy with the results of the first round of experiments here, so they’ve flown Piers in from Delta Facility to perform the next round of implantations himself. I heard they were moving the surgeries up to Friday.”
“As in the day after tomorrow?”
“Right. He’s giving himself a day to look over subjects, then he’s planning all the surgeries for Friday, and he’s flying out again on Friday night.”
Elle clutched at me. “We have to do something.”
I didn’t know what to say.
She turned back to Anderson. “We’ll come up with something. If there’s a part for you to play, will you help us?”
“If I’m not under NIAC control anymore, I’m going to owe you, bigtime. And even if I didn’t I wouldn’t mind getting a chance to get in the way of Piers’ success. If I can do it, count me in.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see how well this worked.”
“I guess so. See you in class, Ethan.”
As much as I was clear on the whole Talents vs. NIAC thing, it was still hard not to be uneasy at the thought of possibly having helped someone like Anderson out of his cage. I hoped we didn’t regret it.
Outside we waited in the shadows for the break in the surveillance loop that would allow us to cross back to our own building with the least chance of being spotted. Elle’s back was pressed to the wall and I was using my own bulk to try to shield her from any possible view. It seemed like she was glowing. She wasn’t. But she was wired, practically bouncing and humming with excitement.
“I can’t believe it! I mean, Angie said I should be able to, she explained it really clearly and it made sense, but I didn’t really think I could, you know?”
I almost reminded her that we didn’t actually know if it worked or not, but I looked into her sparkling green eyes and couldn’t bring myself to be that much of a heel. So I just smiled at her and glanced around at the guard towers again.
“Ethan.” She tugged at my jacket and I looked down at her. She looked very serious all of a sudden. It kind of made it hard to breathe. “You didn’t have to do this for me tonight, and now I get what a big risk you’ve been taking.”
“I don’t know why I told you that. Forget about it.”
“No, I won’t. Thank you.” She reached up and curled her hand around my neck. I followed her lead, bending toward her as she rose on her toes. Her lips brushed my cheek, and then she started to ease back from me again. But she stopped.
We stood there for a moment, me bent awkwardly at the waist, she on her toes, holding herself up with her grip on my neck, our lips inches apart, both of us barely breathing.
“Elle?”
“Yeah?” She was so close that when she whispered back to me it was like I could feel her words against my lips.
“I think I’m gonna have to kiss you.”
“Do what you gotta do.”
I let myself sink those last few inches until my mouth touched hers. God it was soft. My heart was hammering hard against my chest, and I told myself just one more second and then I’d step back from her. Just one more, because I couldn’t believe that anything could feel this good. But we weren’t safe and we had to get back. Then she sighed my name and I felt her fingers in my hair and I forgot all about everything else. There was just Elle and the feel of her body in my arms, her mouth moving against mine, the taste of her, her scent.
When we finally came up for air, I had no idea how much time had passed. We were both breathing heavily. My lips tingled and I ached to go on kissing her.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’ve got to start over watching this loop.”
“Like what?”
“You know like what.” I was trying not to look at her, but I couldn’t help stealing glances. She looked happy, beautiful, mischievous, and enchanting. And her eyes kept moving to my lips with this wolfish look that was driving me crazy. As evidenced by the fact that I thought, if it could be just me risking it, I thought I’d brave Everlast just to go on kissing her.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pulled herself up on her toes and kissed my neck. I was not going to give her the satisfaction or encouragement of groaning about it, though I wanted to.
“You’re going to be the death of me.”