Ginger watched him carefully for a moment before leaning back. There was something in her eyes that made me twitchy. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but she either didn’t trust Vince or knew what he was going to say and didn’t agree. “So what do you suggest?”
“Kale needs to go back. I think that much is a given. But he should go in with support.” Vince nodded toward Mom. “Sue’s right. If he goes in alone, everything we’ve done in regards to getting him back could be too easily undone. He needs a show of good faith…”
“Good faith?” Kale asked, suspicious.
Kale didn’t understand what Vince was getting at. I did—and it was kind of brilliant in a scary, impulsive, and reckless sort of way.
“An offering,” I said, rushing on before I gave it too much thought. “Me. I’ll go.”
24
Everyone’s mouth opened in protest, but I held up my hand. Sure. Now they spoke up.
“I know, I know. This is crazy, but hear me out at least, okay? I think Vince is on to something here. Dad is a douche but he’s smart. He’s going to figure Kale’s already been corrupted. Think about it. There’s no way they didn’t see us together at the airport. Hell—the whole place saw us. If he shows up back at home base, they’re going to wanna be sure he hasn’t switched sides. But,” I said, taking a deep breath. “If he shows up toting the one thing Dad wants—me—and says it was all an act, I bet my board they won’t question him. Denazen wants to silence the Underground. If he thinks I can tell him where we’ve been hiding, and that Kale is still loyal, he’s going to shit rainbows of happy.”
Mom frowned, apparently not sold on the idea. “What about the Resident using her ability to keep Kale’s memories at bay?”
“Like Brandt said, hopefully we won’t need that much time,” Vince said. He turned to Kale with an encouraging nod. “Stall them. Make excuses. Tell them you let Dez remove the tracker to gain her trust.”
Dead silence.
“I don’t like it,” Kale said quietly. “But she’s right. They’re less likely to suspect something’s wrong if I don’t show up empty-handed. Without, as Dez said, a show of good faith, I might not be able to get anywhere near the blood.” He turned to Vince and nodded. “There’s something very familiar about you. Are we friends?”
“Vince was the last person we visited over the summer to warn about Denazen,” I said, smiling. “See? Things are starting to come back.”
“That must be it,” Kale said, but something about the way he watched Vince didn’t leave me convinced.
Unfortunately, now wasn’t the time to worry about it because Alex was going berserk. “This proves you’ve flipped to the other side of the moon,” he growled at Kale, stomping his foot. “There’s no way you’d let her do this if you were in your right mind.”
“Let me?” I choked. “Are you serious? Since when—”
“I won’t let anything happen to her.” Kale stood and leaned across the coffee table, expression loaded.
“Why? Because you love her? You can’t even remember how much you hate me, and brother man, that’s saying something.”
“I may not remember any of you, but let me guess. You’re the ex, right? The one who can’t let go?” He glanced back at me and I fought a shiver. There was a gleam of something feral in his eyes. Something possessive. It was a hint of the old Kale mingled with something new. Something darker. “Seems like she made her choice.”
“You’re a dick,” Alex spat.
“Something tells me I feel the same way about you,” Kale countered, straightening and folding his arms.
“And something tells me this is going to lead to a migraine,” I said, standing. No one looked happy, and I couldn’t blame them, but we were kind of low on options and time was running out. “Like it or not, this is our best bet.”
“We need to move quickly,” Kale agreed. “She’s showing signs of decay.”
I groaned and let my head fall back into my hands.
“I knew you didn’t feel that cut at the party,” Alex snapped.
I picked my head up. “We knew it was inevitable. My ability already spiked and changed. It was only a matter of time.”
“How bad is it?” Brandt asked. He looked a little pale.
I tried to shrug it off. “It’s not. Little things here and there—nothing major. Some issues like keeping focus and”—I turned to Alex—“occasionally a lack of physical pain.”
Kale frowned. “It will only go downhill from here.”
“But walking straight into hell?” Mom practically squealed, frantic. Well, Mom’s version—which looked a lot like annoyed with a side of homicidal anger. It had taken some time, but I pretty much had her moods and expressions pinned, not that she had many. She shot Vince a furious scowl, then turned it on Kale. “I know what goes on behind those walls. You may not remember, but I do. The idea of letting my daughter willingly walk into the devil’s den isn’t something I can agree to.”
“Do you think I want to go?”
“Yes.” She folded her arms and hit me with her best Mom stare. She had perfected it over the last few months. She’d gotten pretty good, too. “I think you probably see it as a challenge.”
Ouch. She knew me so well. But she had to see it was more than that. This was about survival. Adrenaline junkie or not, even I wasn’t willing to skip through Denazen’s doors without a really good life or death reason—and that’s what this was now. Life or death. Mine and a whole lot of others, too.
“Last call for brilliant ideas.” I looked at Mom. “If you can come up with something better, believe me, I’d be thrilled to hear it.”
But she had nothing. I could see it in her eyes. Defeat and, ultimately, acceptance.
Looking back to Kale, I said, “How should we do this?”
He didn’t answer me. Only stared. I’ll admit it. In that moment, I started having doubts. There was something foreign in his eyes. A spark of something I didn’t recognize. It was dark, but worse than that, it was angry—and I didn’t know if that anger was directed at the situation or me.
…
“Are you scared?”
Everyone had gone their separate ways, leaving Kale and me alone in the hall. I started walking, too antsy to stay in one place. “I’d be crazy not to be, right?”
“I won’t force you to do this,” he said softly. “We can try to think of another way to get the vial.”
“There is no other way.”
“Agreed.”
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. I couldn’t help it. “Alex was actually right about one thing. My Kale would never have agreed to this.”
He didn’t answer right away, and when I turned to look at him, his expression was a cross between angry and stricken. “I don’t remember what we had—yet—but I know now in my heart, in my soul, that I am your Kale.”
I reached over and ran my fingers across his cheek. He felt the same. The same electric tingles shot through my body each time we touched, and that dizzy, falling-into-oblivion feeling overcame me each time our eyes met, but there was something else. An almost scary, raw gleam that reminded me of darkness. “Are you?”
“I’m different than I was—and maybe I’ll never be quite the same—but the one thing I’m sure of… The one thing I know without a doubt in my heart is that I’m yours. I feel it with every breath I take, Dez. From that moment behind Ashley Conner’s house, I felt it bubbling inside each time I looked at you. And if you and the others feel like I’m being careless by bringing you to Marshal, then think again.” He took my hands. “Maybe the old me wouldn’t have agreed to this because he was scared. I’m not scared. I think we make an amazing team. Together, I know we can do this. You’re the most able person I know.”
“One hell of a pep talk,” I said with a nervous giggle.
He started to say something, the hint of a smile tugging at the right corner of his lip, but someone down the hall let out a terrified scream. We bolted toward the sound, rounding t
he corner of the last room at the end of the hall.
“What the hell?” I snapped, busting into the room.
Lu was on the ground, scooting along the far wall as Ben loomed above.
“Y’all watch yourselves! He’s lost it.”
Ben whirled around with a sick grin, and I had to force myself not to look away. He was pale as paper, eyes sunken and bruised. At the corner of his mouth, a thin trickle of blood trailed down, collecting at the tip of his chin. Every few seconds a tremor would run through him, shaking his entire body.
“Bubbles have come to make it all better, aye?” Lu forgotten, he advanced a step in our direction. Rapping his knuckles against the side of his head, he said, “The swirly soup in there is all amiss. All sorts of holes like cheese.” He froze, then let go with a bout of hysterical laugher before exclaiming, “Like Swiss!”
Kale stepped in front of me, black gathering at his fingertips, but I pushed him aside. “No way. He’s sick, remember? We can save him. We just need to get the cure.” I inclined my head toward the door. “Go. Make the call you need.”
Kale’s eyes went wide. “You want me to leave you here with him?”
I turned to Ben, whose expression had changed, and pulled out the chair in front of Lu’s desk. “Take a seat, Ben. It’s gonna be okay.”
After a moment of hesitation, he nodded and sank down. “The bubbles in my brain are hurting me,” he whined.
“I know.” I turned to Kale. “See? We’re fine. Go—and let Ginger know we’re probably going to have to keep Ben quarantined for now. I’ll meet you back in the common room.”
He didn’t look thrilled about it, but he left.
I stepped around the chair and held my hand out to Lu. Her hair was sticking up and the sleeve of her hideous pink sweatshirt had been torn, but otherwise she looked fine. “You okay?”
She let me help her up. “Right as country rain.”
“What happened?”
She waved a hand back and forth in front of Ben’s face. He didn’t so much as flinch. She stepped away and fell back on her bed. “He came in and just stopped in the doorway lookin’ kind of like this. Then he yelled something about soup and charged me.”
I remembered all too clearly the encounter with Fin as the Sanctuary began to burn. The guy who’d attacked us had been barely human. “It’s the drug—I’ve seen it before.”
Her eyes were wide. “This is normal?”
“Well, I don’t know about normal, but this is what happens.” I snuck a peek at Ben. He was silent and staring at the wall. The tremors seemed to have subsided. “That’s what would happen to us if we didn’t get the cure—which we will. Don’t worry.”
Lu sighed and looked at the clock above the door. She seemed sad all of a sudden. Folding her hands in her lap, she said, “You’re a good egg, Dez. I like you. I wish we could have gotten to know each other.”
“We have plenty of time. When this is all—” It was in that moment I remembered the conversation we had her first night here. It was also in that moment Ben let out a feral roar and flew from his chair, straight at Lu.
It was over before I could even blink. She never tried moving from his path. Ben’s hands were a blur, wrapping around Lu’s neck. There was a horrific sound—the almost echoing crack of a brittle branch—and then silence.
Three seconds. Possibly four. That’s all it had taken. I hadn’t even had the opportunity to try and stop it.
Lu’s eyes were wide yet unsurprised as she wobbled for a moment, then fell sideways across the bed. It was pointless—the whole thing was over and done—but I screamed it anyway. “No!”
It wouldn’t help Lu. It couldn’t help Lu. But it did remind Ben that there was someone else in the room.
25
Ben’s lip twitched with the slightest hint of a smile before he charged.
I managed to sidestep him—barely—but ended up tripping on the corner of the rug in my haste. I went down hard, the side of my head kissing the corner of the small dresser. Stars exploded behind my eyes and the floor tilted sideways as the room began to swirl.
I tried to roll onto my side but a heavy weight on my chest prevented movement. “You’re just like the others,” Ben said with a snicker. “Beautiful and deadly and made up of bubbles.” He leaned close, yanking a chunk of my hair aside so he could whisper in my ear. “I’m onto you, though, Bubble Girl. You can’t have the soft stuff inside my head!”
“Ben, please…” The room still spun but things were getting clearer. I sucked in a deep breath and tried to push him off with no success. For such a scrawny guy, he sure as hell was heavy. “You’re sick. You’re not the kind of guy who goes around hurting people.”
Although I was pretty sure Lu would have had a different opinion on that.
“Self-preservation,” he snapped. All the amusement in his expression was gone, replaced now by something dark and unreasonable. “If I wipe you away, you won’t be able to hurt me anymore.”
“Wipe me—” And then I understood—he intended to wipe my mind.
And honestly? I freaked the hell out.
Bucking and kicking, my arms flailed in every direction. A chunk of hair, a patch of skin—anything that would shift his weight and allow me to wriggle free. But the way he was on me didn’t allow for any advantage. I couldn’t move much and it was hard to breathe. Playing the distress card turned my stomach—but I had enough common sense to know when I needed help. So I did the one thing I blasted movie starlets for doing—I called for help from the big strong man.
“Kale!” Over and over, I screamed for him, but he didn’t come. Of course not. I’d sent him away. Assured him there was nothing to worry about.
Ben’s hands clamped around my head, the tips of his fingers digging through hair to reach my scalp. The pressure was enough to make me scream. In fact, I did. I let out a howl that probably could have shattered glass just as another voice rang out.
“What the fu— Shit! Dez!” Alex.
I gasped for air, on the verge of praying for death to come swiftly. Every second Ben’s hands stayed attached to my head, the pressure continued to build. Scenes—memories—rose like a dust storm in my mind. Each one I focused on—Dad screaming about me breaking curfew, a particularly bad book report in eighth grade English, ten minutes in heaven with Steve Gander at my first co-ed party—exploded with the tiniest of pops, stealing what little air was in my lungs and disappearing forever.
Something above me shifted, and suddenly there was air. Lots and lots of glorious air. I threw myself sideways, coughing, in time to see Alex haul Ben off the floor and fling him toward the bed.
“What the hell happened?” Alex helped me off the floor.
Obviously he hadn’t paid attention when I told him Ben needed the cure more than I did. “Supremacy decline. Lu…”
When he didn’t answer, I followed his gaze to the bed. Ben sat there, skin pale as paper, staring down at Lu. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
Alex took a step closer. “Is she—”
“She knew,” I whispered, keeping my eyes on Ben. If I didn’t look—didn’t blink—then I wouldn’t cry. I wasn’t ready to subscribe to Ginger’s school of thought—don’t ask, don’t tell—but it seemed to me that the Sixes with an inside line to the future had more to deal with than anything I’d ever want to consider. “She told me when we first met that she was going to die.”
“And she just accepted it?” Alex turned back to the bed, angry.
And that was it. The last thing I truly remember in detail. I was there, talking to Alex, and a blur of white and blue came at us from behind. The room dipped sideways and a sharp pain bloomed on the right side of my head, just a few inches from my eye.
There was a scream—something I’d never forget for as long as I lived, and then, there was nothing…
…
“She’s okay,” someone said. He sounded muffled and far away. “I think she’s okay.” It was Dax.
“
Back away. Give her some damn room.” Ginger. Definitely Ginger. There was no mistaking that bark, along with the distinct sound of her cane tapping the floor.
“She’s right,” I mumbled, opening my eyes. Kale, who was on the floor behind me, helped me sit up. “Kinda hard to breathe with you guys sucking up all the air. What happened?”
No one answered.
“Anyone feel free to jump in,” I tried again. “Alex?”
My heart gave a squeeze as I looked to the bed where Lu’s form was draped with a blue afghan. Peeking out from the edge was a single finger adorned with a pink plastic mood ring. On the floor a few feet to the right, another body lay still beneath a sheet.
No. It was the word that repeated over and over again inside my head. Like a CD on skip. NoNoNoNo.
I shoved Kale away and rose up onto my knees, crawling several feet before falling back. The room started to swim. “It can’t—”
Kale was right there beside me, trying to pull me away, but I wouldn’t be moved.
“Alex— He—” And that was all. I couldn’t push any more words past my lips.
“It’s not him,” he said quietly. “It’s Simmons.”
It was horrible, and I knew in the back of my mind I should be appalled, but the joy that swept through me was overwhelming. Alex and I had our differences, but a part of me would always love him.
“I was on my way back. I made the call. You weren’t in the living room so I came here.” He cupped my face, thumb passing lightly under my eye to catch a tear. “He was on top of Alex when I entered. I separated them. I hit him, but not hard. He was fine—and then he just fell down.”
“Heart failure,” Dax said, frowning. “His body couldn’t fight it anymore—that would be my guess.”
“Insanity then death,” I said with a shiver. “Where’s Alex?”
“By the time I arrived, Alex had stopped screaming. I pulled Ben off but I think I was too—”