My emotions are back under control by the time I walk into the living room. Haint and Pollyanna are staring blankly at the television. I worry for a second that the noise might cause a neighbor to come check or call the police, but they’ve got it on too low to even really hear what the news anchors are saying. The majority of the neighbors are at work, anyway.
The twins are manning their laptop and iPad, fingers flicking and poking and clicking. Athena looks more than a little nervous that his brain might be about to get melted, closing his eyes every time he pushes a button, but it’s not stopping him from trying.
I sit next to Goose and pull my laptop out of my bag, connecting to the internet.
“What time do we need to leave?” Haint asks, listless as though the day has sucked out all her energy. We’re a pretty motley crew at the moment.
“My father never gets home before six.”
“We’ve got a little time, then,” Athena grunts, trudging to the overstuffed chair under the window, the one flanked by full bookcases. He flops onto his back, legs askew on the ottoman, and looks up. “Goose is researching Hatfield. I’m trying to find out something about the virus. So far, all I’ve been able to learn is that they think it originated near Siberia.”
“I’ll check out that area, then. Maybe there’s a history of weird crap or a more information about this terrorist group or something.” I cast a glance at Goose. “Anything on Hatfield yet?”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s a totally anonymous parent company that owns a slew of applied-science research firms.”
“Well, that’s suspicious.” My head spins with the possibilities. Research firms? Applied science? That type of business would be the perfect candidate to team up with the Olders at Saint Stephen’s, but it doesn’t tell us why. We’d need a way to contact them.
“Yeah, and what’s even weirder is that I can’t find any information as far as who owns Hatfield or even who manages it. No address, nothing. It’s privately held. The only thing on their website is a mission statement.”
“What’s it say?” Haint asks, her eyes bright.
“The Future Belongs to the Brave.”
No one seems to know what to make of that, and it’s too vague to really tell us much, anyway. We lapse into silence, the only sounds in the room the soft murmur of the news on the TV and the clicking of fingers on computer keys. Haint falls asleep, and Pollyanna and Mole go for a walk, leaving those of us with access to the internet to our research. I have a hard time finding anything of interest in the vicinity of Siberia until one bizzare story about a group of college students disappearing back in the fifties catches my attention.
I spend half an hour clicking on one story after another—their mysterious deaths are still unsolved, and there are enough theories to fill an eight-hour miniseries. The way they were killed makes it seem as though something supernatural took place out on the tundra, but I don’t believe in things like that. There’s nothing that hard facts and science can’t accomplish.
Which makes me wonder whether people like us could have been involved. Whether their “talents” could have killed those kids and that’s why the government covered it up.
“Why are you staring at the computer like it has herpes?” Athena’s eyebrows knit together as he watches me from his spot by the windows.
“Why are you staring at me like a creeper?”
“Get over yourself, Gypsy.”
I sigh, not even knowing why I snapped at him. “Sorry… There’s just a weird story about these kids who were cross-country skiing in Siberia back in the fifties. They disappeared, and when a rescue party found their bodies the scene was…abnormal.”
“They died?” Goose purses his lips. “And what do you mean by abnormal?”
“They clawed their way out of the tent from the inside and ran out into the snow in their underclothes, for one.” I squint at the screen, scanning for details. “One group froze to death, but there was one girl with massive internal injuries and another whose tongue was missing.”
“Her tongue?” Athena turns green. “Do they think it was an animal?”
I shake my head. “They don’t know. The case was marked classified right after it happened and never solved. The official ruling was some crap like a compelling natural force.”
“Sounds like an unnatural force to me,” Goose muses. “Which means the real question is, what were they covering up?”
“It’s interesting, for sure, but I don’t see how it could relate to this current virus. There were barely computers in the fifties.” Athena looks back to his iPad, having lost interest in the story that grabbed my attention.
“So, how are you holding up?” Goose’s soft brown eyes catch my blue ones as he scoots a little closer to me.
“Me? Fine. Why?”
He rolls his eyes, tugging on the ends of his red hair as though he wants to slap them into place. The exercise fails when he lets go and tufts spike out in at least four different directions. “Why? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because everything’s gotten flipped on its head sixteen different ways since we left Darley Hall almost three months ago? You can pretend all you want, but I’ll be honest and say I’m not fine. I don’t know which way is up, and since we started taking those injections, I’m terrified that I’m going to lose control of my ability. That I’m going to start running and not be able to stop. How’s that for going first?”
I pause, wary of breaking the seal that’s holding back the flood of my emotions but also wondering if it wouldn’t be a giant relief to be able to let someone else share the storm. “I miss my dad. I miss my friends. I’m worried about Jude and Reaper and Flicker—even Dane for some reason—and I don’t like that the Olders are keeping things from us. I want it to be the ten of us again. Even if it was usually just really seven or eight.”
“Those were the days, right?” He shakes his head with a smile, but his gaze doesn’t leave my face. And he doesn’t stop asking questions. “What about your visions? Are you still seeing details about people’s deaths?”
It’s like he read my mind, knew which part of my worries I was smothering. I swallow, then suck in a deep breath, knowing the time for keeping secrets has passed. My powers are what they are, whether they ever become useful or not, and I’m done feeling inferior. “Yes. And a little bit more every day while taking the injections. When I touch the headstones now it’s like…I don’t know, like I’m transported to the scene of the person’s death.”
Goose furrows his substantial eyebrows. “What do you mean, transported? Like, you actually leave?”
“Not actually. And it’s not like they can see me or anything. But I can hear what’s happening and smell the room, and somehow I sense how they’re feeling.”
“That’s intense. But you haven’t tried it with anyone alive to see if it’ll work that way, too?”
“No.” Fear makes my mouth go dry. “I don’t want to know that about any of you.”
“Fair enough. But what about a stranger? Now that we’re out for a few days, might be a good time to test it.”
My mind jumps immediately to Jude, whose number is up, so to speak, in only a few months. I hate that I know that, and there’s not much my heart wants more than to be able to change the outcome of his death at age eighteen. But trying means having hope and failing means dashing that hope to smithereens. Maybe I need to have more courage, to use my ability more often so I can see if there’s a way to harness it.
“What about that guy? Um, the one who showed up at the warehouse. You know about his…death. Now that you’re stronger, you might see more.”
I close my eyes and try to flick away the images of him bleeding in the purple hydrangeas, me standing over him. With a gun.
I don’t think I want to see more.
“Jude.” I may not have any intention of touching Jude Greene again if I can help it, but Goose bringing him up encourages me to voice an idea. “I was thinking he might be able to help us find Dane.”
“Really?”
My throat tightens at the excitement in Goose’s eyes. It means the possibility of talking to Jude again just crawled toward likely. “Yes. They let him go, but he knows about us. About what we can do. There’s no way they’re not keeping tabs, which means Jude probably knows how to contact Dane, or at least the CIA.”
“And you’re okay with seeing Jude? Asking him for help finding Dane?”
A memory of Dane Lee seated on a cold stone bench in the creeptastic yet beautiful Unitarian graveyard sends a shiver down my spine. The warm December sunshine strikes his glossy black hair, and his matching, bright eyes reflect understanding and concern—he promises that not fitting in right away isn’t the same as not fitting in at all, and that, at seventeen, no one expects me to have all of the answers.
It’s still hard, reconciling the Dane who put me at ease without even trying, who I thought had been my friend, with the Dane who had been lying the entire time in order to make sure the government didn’t lose a potential Asset.
The second one is the real Dane Lee. I know that. But I can’t shake the idea that maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that he’s a little bit of both.
“Earth to Gypsy…” Goose’s smile is lopsided, but there’s real concern in his chocolate gaze.
I shrug, unwilling to make a promise my heart might break. “No, I’m not okay with it. I don’t want to talk to either of them. But I’ll do it.”
He nods, understanding etched on his face. The twins were as okay as I was in the real world, but they weren’t as sorry to leave it. I wonder if he and Athena are at all worried about their hacker friend, the one who helped us crack the security on Dane’s laptop once we found out he was CIA, but I can’t remember his name so I don’t ask.
“You should go tonight. We’re coming up mostly empty with the internet. We need the information the CIA has on the Olders and honestly, now that we know something about Hatfield and the GRH-18, we have something to trade.”
“Yeah.” I worry my bottom lip. “There might be a basketball game or something.”
Jude’s the star of the high school basketball team, and even though his grades were declining fast before I left—his father can’t afford the school any longer and Jude doesn’t want him to feel guilty about it so has been trying to flunk out—I doubt he could have done enough damage in half a semester to get booted off the team.
“Well, look it up.” Goose gives me a crooked smile. “I have to say, I have missed cyberspace, even if it can literally fry your brain now.”
I wrinkle my nose but pull up the Charleston Academy website. There is a basketball game tonight, but it’s at home and an early one, six p.m. It’s a simple guess that everyone will head to Kaminsky’s for ice cream and coffee afterward, so I’m guessing he should be home before nine, just like the other night.
“We need to find someplace to stay, too,” I remind him. “Since you’re useless as far as research, apparently, how about you figure out the best homeless shelter in town. I mean the swankiest one, Goose. No fooling.”
“Now that sounds like a job for me.”
Pollyanna and Mole come through the kitchen, their laughter bouncing off the stainless appliances and ceramic floors, announcing their arrival. The racket wakes up Haint, and the twins and I put down our devices, ready for a break.
“Hey,” Polly says, a little breathless. She’s even more beautiful than usual with her cheeks pink from the cold, and I think for a brief, weird moment that I’m glad Mole can’t see her.
Which is awful, to be thankful for his blindness, but whatever.
“Hey,” I reply with a smile. It’s an attempt to make up for my horrible thought. “How was the walk?”
“Invigorating,” Mole replies, his sightless eyes chasing my voice. He looks better than yesterday, much improved since Madeline gave him the super dose of GRH-18, but he’s still too pale for comfort. “And we had a thought.”
“The two of you had one thought?” Goose grins. “That’s scary, my friend. You shouldn’t admit to having the same things going on in your head as in Pollyanna’s. She’s crazy cakes.”
Polly launches the nearest throw pillow at his face but Goose has already moved, standing over by Athena at the windows before the pillow hits the back of the sofa. It bounces onto my lap and she frowns.
“What’s the idea?” Haint prods us toward productivity, as usual.
“That maybe we should practice sparring.” Pollyanna sucks in a breath, not pausing long enough for anyone to interrupt. “Gypsy’s dad has a shed out back that probably has some tools in it, or maybe we could use kitchen knives or whatever.”
“We thought the training was a good idea,” Mole adds. “Most of us are too dependent on our abilities to help us out of sticky situations, and if the CIA has a nullifying serum, who’s to say other people don’t, too? Or that some people might be naturally immune?”
Pollyanna casts a glance his direction. “We also think everyone should go back on the GRH-18. At least until we’re done dealing with the CIA or can be sure we won’t need to heal quickly.”
If they’re waiting for any of us to argue, they must be disappointed. Their reasoning is sound, especially for someone like me who doesn’t have a talent to fall back on for defense. As far as the drugs, I’ve been thinking the same thing, even if it does let the Olders track us. They found us without it last December, and there’s not a doubt in my mind they could do it again.
“Yeah, okay. That sounds like a good idea.” Athena gets up, stretching his long legs. His quick agreement reminds me that we’re in the same boat, even if his super hearing is still the far more desirable ability.
“Let’s go check out the shed, then.” Polly purses her lips, her gaze falling to our closed laptops. “If y’all are ready for a break.”
We traipse out through the screened-in porch at the back of the house, across the brittle, frosty lawn, and into the blue shed that, thankfully, isn’t locked.
I never came in here while I was staying with my father in Charleston—he said he kept gardening and yard tools inside, and since it was winter and he employs a gardener, there was no reason to go snooping.
It’s a good thing I didn’t, too, because my overactive imagination might have come to the conclusion that my father is a serial killer based on all of the potential weapons hanging on the walls.
The shed is as clean as an outbuilding gets, the floors swept, everything organized. Hoses, saws, an axe, shovels, and a bunch of other crap hang on the slatted walls, and there’s a bench at the rear of the space that’s covered with drills and a nail gun and a scattering of small power tools.
“Dude, this is like Jeffrey Dahmer’s wet dream,” Athena comments, picking up a curved saw with a nasty-looking blade. “Wait, is he the one who cut up his victims?”
“You might be thinking of Hannibal Lecter,” Goose helps.
“He ate his victims, numbnuts.” Pollyanna trails a finger over the blade of the axe.
“You’re telling me he didn’t need to cut them up first?” Athena gives her a look, like duh, and she shakes her head, looking a little green.
Haint frowns. “Let’s get serious. Whatever weapon you choose, make sure you can control it because we don’t have time to clean up messes. Or take a side trip to the hospital.”
“And try to keep it down. Don’t smash weapons together if you can help it,” I caution. “Most people probably aren’t home, but no reason to draw extra attention.”
Everyone selects something to fight with and we pair up. I’m across from Goose this time, even though after his performance with Pollyanna the other day, I feel as though I could do with more of a challenge. He’s wielding a pair of hedge clippers while I face him with a sharp spade with a handle that’s just long enough to keep me out of his reach.
Pollyanna challenges Mole, which leaves Athena across from Haint, who, lucky for him, is almost totally visible now. They’ve got hands full of saws, a length of pipe, and one shovel that looks like it weighs more than I do.
“Ready?” Goose raises his eyebrows at me, and I nod.
The clang of metal-on-metal suggests the others have started warming up, too, but from the moment Goose makes a move, everything else fades out.
He feints to the left, a choice that he betrayed seconds before actually doing it, and I’m waiting for him with a smack to the kidney. Goose grunts and falls backward, leaving me room to move in for another tap, this time to the gut. I’m touching him hard enough to make him feel it but not rough enough to really hurt him.
He regains his footing and lunges toward me, hedge clippers aimed at my neck. I fall sideways, shrieking when a chunk of my long, dark hair falls to the dusty floor. “Hey!”
Goose grunts in response, still trying to subdue me with his ridiculous choice of weapon, but losing some of my hair only makes me focus harder. I spin to one side as he rushes me, leaving me at his back, where I plant a firm foot in his backside and shove. He topples forward onto his face, clippers skittering across the floor, and rolls over to find the tip of my spade inches from his nose.
His hands go up, a lopsided smile emerging through a grimace. “Uncle.”
I wipe my sleeve across my forehead. “Good. Let’s go again.”
“Give me a minute.” Goose groans, rolling over onto his belly and then pushing up to all fours.
While he’s getting himself together, I check on everyone else’s progress. Haint and Athena are pretty evenly matched, both of them starting to sweat now as neither can get the upper hand, no matter how hard they work. Pollyanna and Mole are a different story. She gets the drop on him every time, and in the thirty or sixty seconds I watch them spar, she knocks him down four times. He keeps getting up, his jaw clenched and determination in his green eyes, but she doesn’t take it easy on him.
Not that I would expect her to. It’s Pollyanna, and anyway, what good is practicing with each other if we’re not going to face a challenge?
“He’s not doing too well, is he?” Goose is up, standing at my shoulder, his voice low.
Athena jerks at the sound, obviously attuned to the exact timbre of his twin’s voice, and it gives Haint the moment of advantage she needs to whack him in the spine with her pipe.
“Victory!” she crows.
He glares at her, rubbing his spine, but then we’re all watching Mole and Polly.
“I mean, he’s got a distinct disadvantage at hand fighting,” I mutter back to Goose, answering his original question.
“But he always seems to sense our movements so well, even though he can’t, you know, see us. I thought he would be able to pick this up.”
Pollyanna knocks him down again and turns to the rest of us, eyebrow raised in a silent challenge. None of us says anything and Mole rolls to his feet again, settling into a defensive stance.
Polly waves a hand in his direction. “No, let’s take a break or switch it up.”
The press of Mole’s lips says he wants to argue but is holding it back. In the silence, we take Polly’s suggestion, trading partners and going at it again as the late-afternoon sunlight grows weaker outside our tiny, dusty training ground.
The shelter Goose chose after an extensive five minutes of research isn’t the worst place in the world. There were more people here for dinner than I expected, but it’s slowed down for the night. A few men huddle in blankets having a chat, and a filthy young mother breastfeeds an infant while a toddler sleeps with his head on her knee. The workers have mostly gone home, but I doubt anyone would have noticed me leaving or cared to ask where and why even if the place had been packed.
A sharp chill sweeps into Charleston, along with a few clouds obscuring the moon as I hike the several blocks to Jude’s house. It’s not that late—a few minutes after nine—so he should be home or on his way there, at least. The streets are quiet since the entire city closes its doors against the nighttime when there aren’t tourists to entertain.
Then, instead of hiding behind the live oak across the street, I’m standing in front of the shambling single-story house staring at dark windows. Nothing moves inside, or in the yard, and for long moments I breathe the cold air in, blow it out, and try not to wish my life was completely different.
The front door swings open, and Jude’s tall, broad frame fills the doorway. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me gawking at him from the end of the driveway, despite the fact that it’s been weeks since we’ve spoken, and for a long moment, neither of us moves.
Then Jude bends his knees and plops down on the short, concrete step in front of the door. Unlike the grandeur of the houses in the historical district, including my father’s, Jude’s house has no sweeping patio or porch, no second-floor piazza designed to welcome a breeze on a sweltering summer day.
The single stoop seems altogether less inviting with Jude watching me, no smile of welcome or even surprise at seeing me here basically stalking him after ruining his life. He’s just watching me stand here like an idiot, and eventually my feet take control of my body, planting one in front of the other until I’m standing a couple of feet away, nerves jangling through my limbs. I wring my hands, glance around the yard, then back at the boy who kissed me just days before Christmas. The boy who gave me perfect gifts and said beautiful things and made me yearn harder than ever for some other seventeen-year-old’s life.
“Hey,” I mumble, my voice soft and odd to my ears.
“Hi.” His reply sounds gruff, as though begrudging me even that small response. “Sit?”
He doesn’t ask what I’m doing here, but maybe Maya told him I’ve been spying from across the street like some kind of deranged shadow.
Or maybe he doesn’t care.
I sit on the porch beside him, careful to leave at least six inches of space between his left hip and my right, which is about all the extra space the concrete allows. It transfers a chill through my jeans to my skin, but the cold helps jar my brain into focus. It doesn’t do anything for the anxiety twisting my stomach up like a dishrag, or stop my hands from shaking like leaves in a fall storm, but those are pretty average reactions to being in close proximity to Jude Greene.
We’re in some kind of standoff with unspoken rules, but one thing’s for sure—the boy sitting here might affect me like the old Jude, but Peter’s right that he’s different. He hasn’t offered the barest smile. He hasn’t touched me or asked me how I am or where I’ve been.
It makes me worry all over again that the government has gotten to him. Changed him or the way he thinks about the world. The way he thinks about me.
More likely he’s just pissed off at me for not telling him the whole truth, or like Maya, for leaving and disconnecting my phone at the same time.
The quiet has gone on for too long. If it stretches any further I’m afraid it will open its jaws wide enough to swallow whole the friendship we built with such care, brick by brick from the ground up, during the month of December.
I can’t imagine anything much worse, so I swallow hard and do my best to muzzle the silent beast. “How are you?”
Jude snorts as though on instinct but seems to consider a more thoughtful response. “I’m still here. Which is more than I can say for my father.”
My heart stops in my chest, and the world blurs at the edges of my vision. “What?”
“He said he was going out to Darley the morning after…the whole warehouse thing went down. He never came home.”
It’s hard to breathe, hard to imagine what he’s been going through or why on earth Maya didn’t mention anything about Mr. Greene going missing. “Oh my lands, Jude. Do you know what happened to him?”
I’ve been trying not to look at him. My heart and high-flying emotions are easier to control without the reminder of how utterly handsome he is, how his kind eyes burrow straight through any resolve I have to keep him at arm’s length. A tiny voice from the depths tries to remind me that none of what’s happened is my fault, and that it’s happened to me, too, but the vision of me standing over Jude’s dead body brings with it a guilt that trumps everything else.
It takes every last ounce of courage to look Jude in the face. It’s the same as I remember but changed, too, with the pain and accusation in his eyes. They leave no room for any good humor or affection in an expression so twisted by misery and guilt.
“Yes. And I know what happened to you, too, in case you’re wondering. Nice that you and your friends are tucked away all comfy and safe in the country while my dad’s rotting in a government facility, probably being tortured for information he never had.”
I swallow again, trying to dispel the bile coating my throat. When I’d met Mr. Greene he’d been a sweet, if scattered, man who seemed more like a child than a grown-up. Thinking of him hurt or confused stings my eyes with tears, even if he is the one who started this whole mess.
Facing this Jude who’s totally new to me, one that’s angry and bitter, does nothing to salve my swollen throat.
The fact that what I want to ask most is how he knows where we’ve gone, and not what’s happened to his father, blackens my insides with a stain that’s been growing every day. “Who told you what happened to us after we left the warehouse?”
Thunderclouds form on his cheeks, roll through his eyes. It’s not lost on him, that my first concern is about me, about the Cavies, and not about his father or the way his life has been turned upside down. Lightning flashes and his lips press together, but Jude doesn’t unleash on me. For now.
“Lee,” he mutters through clenched teeth, the ire in his normally soft gaze taking my breath away.
Or is it the confirmation that Dane walked away from the warehouse with his life, and that he’s at least part of the reason Jude’s still playing basketball and hanging out at Kaminsky’s and not behind bars or in a padded room somewhere like his father.
“I’m so sorry that happened to your dad, Jude, and that you had to find out everything about me the way you did, but there’s a lot going on that has higher stakes than you and me or our lives in general.” I steel myself, build walls around my sensitive heart. “I need to get in contact with Dane. Can you tell me how?”
My chest is tight, aching, and puzzle pieces are struggling to line up in my mind. Jude’s father is in prison, but Jude is right here—going to school, playing basketball. Knowing about the Cavies and heaven knows what else.
Why?
“I have his phone number, yeah.” Despite Jude’s hostility, he’s not pulling away. He’s not yelling at me to get the hell off his porch and out of his life. “We’ve been in touch.”
I swallow hard. “What happened after we left?”
Jude has avoided looking at me this entire time, choosing instead to stare into the sky, as though the moon and the stars have as many secrets as I do. “The agents at the warehouse were pretty out of it after y’all disappeared. I used my shirt to try to stop Dane’s bleeding and called 9-1-1, even though I wasn’t sure that’s what he would have wanted. Or how in the world I was supposed to explain anything that had happened.”
It’s not lost on me that Jude hasn’t asked me about my mutation—about what I can do. It could be he’s scared, or he doesn’t want to know, or he’s plain not interested in me anymore, but whatever the reason, I’m glad of it. I’d rather he look at me like this. Even angry, it’s preferable to pity or fear.
“Why didn’t you just leave when you had the chance?” My mouth is dry, thinking about Jude there alone, trying to figure out the best thing to do. I would have run. I think.
“I honestly didn’t think about it, not with Dane bleeding and in trouble. By the time the agents snapped out of their stupors, the ambulance sirens were right outside and then it was too late.”
It’s amazing. Jude’s amazing. Neither his first nor second thought in that situation was for himself or his safety. I hate that there’s a suspicion brewing in my gut, but that’s my life now. His reaction is noble and brave, but it’s not normal for a high school kid who just saw some seriously weird crap. “Then what happened?”
“They loaded Dane up and took him to the hospital. One of the agents, Marlow, started talking to the rest of the medics and the firemen that showed up afterward. No cops ever came. Marlow loaded me in an unmarked car and took me to some kind of questioning facility. A safe house of some sort, I think, because we didn’t go far enough to get to the city. Any city.”
Instinct takes over, a natural urge that I’ve fought with every other person throughout my entire life, and my hand steals out to cover his. The vision comes to me in an instant—the same one I’ve had since the day we met, but more intense. It surrounds me, fills my nose and my eyes, and my ears ring with the sounds of the day Jude will die.
He’s there, lying in the hydrangeas with a blood-soaked shirt. I can smell it—the sweetness of the flowers, the coppery scent of his life spilling onto the bright-green grass. The snub-nosed revolver is heavy in my hand and transfers an ice-cold chill halfway to my elbow. Jude is still. There’s nobody there but us, no one else to blame the horror on, no one else to beg for help.
Then Jude’s eyes open. They’re mired in pain, slightly unfocused but swimming with tears that I somehow instinctively know have nothing to do with his wound. I drop to my knees and the grass is dewy, but I don’t feel the wetness that must stick to my bare skin. My hands go to his face and a slight stubble scratches my palms as he opens his mouth to speak.
“Norah. Norah, what’s wrong? Talk to me.” It’s real-life Jude, still alive, unwounded. He’s pulled his hand from under mine at some point, maybe because he’s concerned or maybe before that, but either way it’s broken the spell cast by my genetics.
It takes a few blinks to refocus, but in that brief moment, I glimpse the old Jude. The guy with a ready smile, whose concern for me and desire to make me feel better trumps everything else. Once he realizes I’m back, and I’m fine, he hides that boy away again.
Knowing he’s still in there somewhere lifts a tangible weight off my shoulders.
“I’m fine.” I give him a small smile that he returns, the first one we’ve shared tonight. “Keep going.”
I want to hear how Dane got involved.
“There’s honestly not much to tell. They kept me at the safe house for several days—I’m not sure how many since I couldn’t see the sun or anything. Then Dane showed up.” He swallows and glances heavenward again, but this time his gaze comes right back to mine. “I was glad he was okay, I guess, but pissed off and scared, too, after being holed up and barely having anyone talk to me at all.”
There’s fear on his face now and his cheeks are whiter than they were a few minutes ago, but there’s something else. It’s smudging the edges, there and then gone, but it looks like guilt.
My fingers tighten into a fist so I don’t reach out and touch him again. “They didn’t ask you anything?”
“No. I think they figured they didn’t need to. They were aware of everything I saw and probably deduced, so no need to go over it.” He licks his lips, distracting me briefly. “Anyway, Dane showed up and unplugged the cameras in the room. I figured it was all for show, like on Homeland or something, but maybe he did it for real, I don’t know. He told me what he knew about you and your friends from Darley—pretty much confirmed most of what my dad had guessed—then he dropped the bomb that the CIA snatched up my dad and all of the research he’d managed to reassemble at the house.”
“How can they just grab a citizen like that? Without any arrest or trial or…anything?”
Jude shrugs. “Who’s going to ask questions other than me?”
“Why did they let you go?” I’m glad they did, but it still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
“Dane said he convinced them that there wouldn’t be any benefit to keeping me in custody. That I don’t know anything about Darley Hall or whatever they have going with you guys—which is true—at least, not the way my dad does. They also figured that them being able to do whatever they want to my dad, whenever they want, would be more than enough incentive for me to keep my mouth shut about the things I saw.”
“And I guess it has.”
A muscle clenches in Jude’s jaw and tells me something I might not have guessed before all of this happened. Jude’s not the type of guy who likes to be pushed around or strong-armed or told what to do.
“I don’t have too much of a choice, do I?”
I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling him we always have a choice. Every day, every relationship, every situation—there may only be a single option that appeals to us, but there’s always more than one.
As good as it’s been to see him, as helpful as it is to know that he’s free and that Dane and the CIA are still in Charleston, the conversation leaves me on edge. The answers Jude gave only deposited more residual questions—like why would Dane tell Jude everything about Cavies and Darley Hall and all, and then let him go? Why tell him anything in the first place?
“It’s good to see you,” I whisper, daring to take a peek.
A smile softens the corners of his mouth, and for a moment, his blue eyes sparkle. “As mad as I want to be at you for not trusting me before all this happened, I’ve been watching for you ever since the other night.”
My cheeks go hot. “Maya told you she saw me.”
“Yeah.” Jude nudges my hip with his, leaving me to wonder when we scooted closer together. “Stalker.”
“I was worried about you.”
“I was worried about you, too.”
A pause stutters, then lengthens between us. To my ears, it’s filled with all of the what-ifs and might-have-beens that wrap around our brief relationship, none of which will probably happen now because who wants to date a freak show that disappears into thin air without explanation?
A freak show who has mutated genes that he’s too afraid to even ask about?
Jude holds out a hand. “Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
“So I can give you Dane’s cell number.”
I hand it over, blinking back the emotion making me feel soggy from head to toe. He gives it back a minute later, his smooth fingertips grazing my palm. A shiver zips up my arm, then down my spine, the faint, stark outline of the number eighteen barely distracting me.
“Thanks. I guess I’d better get going.” I slide my fingers back into my gloves.
Jude nods and stands up, then reaches back to help me to my feet.
He doesn’t ask me to stay, to let him help, the way he did just weeks ago when he sensed something amiss, something brewing. It’s not that I want him to, because having to walk away again is hard enough the way it is, but part of me wishes he still wanted to.
“Take care of yourself, Norah.” He runs a hand through his sandy hair, leaving it mussed. “I put my number in there, too. Maybe you could trust me now. With the real you.”
My heart swells, and something like trust—which is such a new and rare thing for me outside my Cavies—blooms in my blood.
I should have trusted him. Maybe we could have avoided all of this heartache.
A little voice in the back of my mind insists that, if he doesn’t know about what makes me a Cavy he doesn’t know the real me at all, but I silence it. The Norah that Jude met is the real Norah. My genetics don’t define me. It’s something I can do, not who I am.
“It’s not as easy as you’d think, admitting you’re different. Trusting someone new with a secret you’ve been told over and over again will get you and all your friends killed.” I take a deep breath and push on, even though I’m shaking from top to bottom. “I can say I’m sorry and that I should have handled things differently, but the truth is, I’d do it all the same way. I’d have to.”
As we part ways, a feeling tickles my palms and the tips of my ears. It whispers that I’m missing something, or maybe asking the wrong questions, and keeps fluttering in the corners of my mind as I start the twenty-minute hike back to the shelter.
It has to do with why the government is letting Jude walk around knowing what he knows, and that Jude doesn’t seem upset or surprised or scared to learn that his father had been right about what happened at Darley Hall.
Or maybe I feel this way because every time I replay the scene of his death—the new, enhanced version—I get more and more desperate to hear the words he was about to speak in the vision before he broke the connection in real life. I can’t put my finger on why, but I’m sure that he might have been about to hand over the key to saving his life.