The tremble in Haint’s voice betrays her barely suppressed panic.
“Deep breaths,” I mutter. “Stay calm. Do you want me to get one of the Olders?”
“Give me a minute.” Her voice is tight and her breath comes in small gasps.
I’m watching her—or where I suppose she is—waiting for something to happen, for her to reappear.
“Where’s your partner?” Zombie’s right at my elbow and my heart jackhammers into my ribs. I didn’t even hear him coming.
A quick glance around the clearing reveals Pollyanna and Goose sparring now, and it’s not pretty. She’s so much more aggressive than he is that he might as well fall down and cover up his face, because that would be as effective as what he’s doing now.
“Um, she…had to go to the bathroom.” I don’t know why Haint’s stuck invisible, but it’s not hard to jump to the conclusion that it’s because we stopped taking our GRH-18. And there’s no reason for the Olders to know that we went ahead without telling them first.
“Does she always walk to the bathroom while invisible?”
“She was embarrassed,” I improvise. “I never did anything better than her before so I think she needed a minute.” I wince as Haint’s foot stomps on mine, silently voicing her displeasure at being painted as an insecure, jealous brat.
I’m doing the best I can, I think while glaring in her direction.
Zombie’s eyes narrow. “Something wrong?”
“No. I just…think I pulled a muscle or something.”
“Hmm.”
A girlish shriek pulls both my attention and Zombie’s to Polly and Goose, the latter of whom has his hands cupped around his nose. Bright-red ribbons of blood trail through his fingers, and the betrayal and pain in his eyes makes Pollyanna grin.
“You broke my nose!”
She shrugs. “It’ll heal.”
He glares at her, and Gills breaks out into a satisfied smile. “I think that will do for today, children. It was a good start.”
“Goose, you seriously suck at hand fighting,” Pollyanna says as she sits down at the dinner table next to him and picks up her fork.
“Yeah, well, not all of us have nothing but mean bones in our bodies. You didn’t have to smash my nose like that,” Goose whines, fingering the bloodied bandage still crisscrossing the center of his face.
Polly rolls her eyes, leaving Goose to frown at his plate of fresh vegetables. I did the best at hand-to-hand combat, and Athena claims Mole has an odd affinity for martial arts, given that he’s blind and all. The twins’ hearts are too soft to intentionally cause harm, so apparently they both spent more time wincing with their eyes closed than actually trying to hit anyone. Aside from Pollyanna, no one looks all that happy with today’s lessons, but the practice left me with an unfamiliar feeling of empowerment. Confident.
I’ve never felt as though I could protect myself before, not without help. It’s nice, even though I’m smart enough to recognize that practicing on my friends and hurting a real live stranger are two different things. The others have always had their extra genetic abilities to fall back on, something no attacker could guess they possessed, but it’s never been that way for me. My power isn’t very useful in a fight. But maybe that doesn’t mean I’m not.
My eyes roam the room searching for Fake Flicker, missing from our table. She’s still in line, but she’ll join us soon enough. It’s a relief, to be able to breathe even for a few minutes without her lurking over our shoulders.
Goose nudges peas onto his spoon, keeping his eyes on his food. “Tell them what you’ve been hearing, A,” he says just loud enough for us all to hear.
His twin jerks and frowns at his own plate, then surveys the room. I know he’s looking for Fake Flicker, too, or maybe trying to detect an Older who might have the ability to listen in from across the room like Athena himself can. “I’m sure it’s nothing. It doesn’t even make sense.”
“It’s weird. And you’ve heard enough people mention it that it can’t be nothing,” Goose presses.
“Fine.” Athena glances around again, then swallows. “But it sounds ridiculous. The rumors started far away but they’re getting closer now—all kinds of chatter about some killer computer virus.”
“What?” Mole asks the question, curiosity tipping his head.
None of us are very good with computers. We didn’t have them at Darley and we weren’t in the real world long enough to gain any proficiency. But it sounds insane.
“It kills computers? Or people?” Haint’s voice wafts out of the empty space between Goose and Pollyanna. That whole constantly invisible thing is going to take some time to get used to.
“People. Literally melts their brains,” Athena replies. Despite what he said about this all being nonsense, he’s pale. As though he’s heard some stuff he’d rather he hadn’t.
Peter’s voice rings in my ears, drowning out my friends. I mean, it’s not like a computer virus is melting his brain out of his ears, but still.
He’d heard about this thing, too. On the news.
“It sounds impossible,” I breathe. Maya thought so, too. Called it a conspiracy.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to confess everything—stealing the car, my clandestine trips into town, talking to Maya and Peter—but that’s when every plate on our table bursts into flames.
Fire leaps from Athena’s empty plate to his arm. The scent of burning hair fills my nostrils and the smoke rising from our table alerts the Olders to what’s happening, which is when the room erupts into chaos. It’s a melee, with Athena howling in pain and the others beating at the flames crawling from plates to vegetables to the tables. But then a spontaneous downpour of fat raindrops falls, extinguishing the flames.
The building is far too old to have a sprinkler system, but who needs that when we have a “friend” who can make it storm indoors.
It’s not until I swipe the thick beads of water out of my eyes that I realize Mole is on the ground. Upended trays and plates scatter on the dirty linoleum and pieces of leftover food stick in his hair.
He’s on his back, eyes wide open as he convulses. The strong muscles in his arms and legs are rigid as they jerk, and I fall to my knees beside him. Every movie I’ve ever seen where someone has a seizure floods my mind at once, and even though my short stint in a non-Hollywood reality convinced me the people who make films have little to no idea how the rest of the world lives, I roll Mole onto his side.
Pollyanna’s there, too, holding on to Mole tighter than I can while trying not to let my skin come in contact with his. It’s been weighing on my mind that as my power grows stronger, farther reaching, that clothing might not be enough to block unwanted information much longer.
When Polly has him steady, I let go as if Mole’s the one on fire.
He stops shaking and lies still, now taking deeper breaths as his eyes stare blankly up at the ceiling. Fear pools inside them, turning his green irises into dark lakes of distress. My tight smile does nothing to dispel it.
“What happened?” he gasps.
I look up to find too many pairs of eyes focused on my face, on Mole, on all of us Generation Fours, then I squeeze his bicep, hard. “Don’t know. Things just went up in flames. What happened to you?”
He gasps as he struggles to sit up, failing before Pollyanna helps him. “I don’t remember anything after sitting down with my food.”
I bite my lip, and even with the Clubhouse off-limits, I know exactly what they’re all thinking—we skipped our first injections a few hours ago and now Haint’s invisible against her will and Mole’s having seizures.
Maybe we really can’t stop taking them.
Chameleon pretty much threatened as much in his office earlier. Implied we’re at their mercy, that we’re not safe without them and their enhancement serum and this place.
There’s still no Haint at the table, but Athena’s arm is already healing and none of the Olders seem all that concerned with the commotion surrounding Mole. We get him to his feet and I look over at Chameleon, who has a strange, knowing smile on his thin lips.
“We’ll take him to his room and keep an eye on him,” I promise, my voice as unsteady as I feel in this ever-shifting landscape.
A petite, younger Older I’ve not met steps up, concern wrinkling her pale brow. “I really think he should go to the infirmary so we can run some tests. Seizures are an indication of abnormal brain activity and not anything to be taken lightly. Especially for us.”
“Maybe later,” Pollyanna snaps, standing up beside me. “It might be because you forced us to swat at one another’s heads all day.”
The young woman steps back as though she’s been slapped, twisting her red hair between her fingers. “As you say.”
The Olders watch as the seven of us file out, and I know they must be counting. Must realize we’re down one. The fact that Haint, with her tall stature and chocolate skin, is the hardest to miss doesn’t help.
They don’t say anything, which is somehow worse than if they had.
Thick down quilts and a constant, roaring fire compensate for the chilly draft in the boys’ room as Mole sinks down onto his bed and the twins flop onto the mattresses on either side of him. The rest of us gather in silence, worry thickening the air like flour in a roux, sitting down more softly.
I gather my knees into my chest and hug them close, desperate for the warmth and comfort I used to feel in my room at my dad’s house in Charleston. But I might never have the chance to feel that way again, and with Fake Flicker hovering as close as ever, it’s not going to happen here.
Now that Mole’s episode appears to be over, terror rips through me so hard I have to bite my bottom lip to stop from sobbing. He’d been on the floor, his body acting without his approval. Without control over his mutation that, given that it’s centered around fire, could have caused so much more damage.
Panic shreds my lungs as an image of Mole lighting himself on fire instead of the plates flashes in my mind. The mental pictures ram me like Mack trucks driving straight into my chest. What if he’d died right in front of us?
Geoff shoots me a concerned look, and it’s only then that I realize hiccupping gasps are squeezing from my throat. I struggle to get a handle on my emotions but the fear doesn’t go away easily, no matter how much oxygen goes in through my nose and out through my mouth.
“Are you okay?” Pollyanna asks Mole softly, as though she’s scared the tiniest break in the quiet will let through another bout of whatever escaped downstairs.
Mole swallows, then reaches for the bottle of water next to his bed and downs it in three gulps. He replaces the cap, tosses the bottle into the trash can, then nods. “I think so. I still feel…strange. Not totally myself. Shaky.” He pauses a beat. “Haint?”
“I’m here,” she whispers from the floor between Mole’s and Goose’s beds. “Still stuck. And I feel the same way you do, maybe. Like there’s something cutting me off from my ability. Making decisions for me.”
Polly looks toward Athena, who glances down at his arm. “What about you?”
There’s not a stitch of evidence that it was on fire fifteen minutes ago, but he’s green in the face. “I’m fine. Healing is getting easier and faster every day.”
Fake Flicker stands at the foot of Mole’s bed, watching us carefully. She doesn’t seem surprised to learn that Haint can’t reappear, but we shouldn’t disclose anything else. If we go into the Clubhouse, she’ll only follow. She trails us girls as we filter out to let Mole rest and head into our own freezing dormitory. The air in the room turns sooty as we settle in, toxic with worry and questions, but there’s nothing we can do until she goes to bed.
I’ve never missed the Clubhouse more.
We make our way down the hill in the darkness for the second night in a row. The dilapidated graveyard lurks ahead of us, the few stones and crosses and crypts that managed to survive the abandonment of nearly two centuries sit as misshapen lumps on the horizon. Some of the area’s original settlers fired Saint Stephen’s’ first bricks, erected its walls with their sweat and adoration for their god, but as the settlements moved either upriver or downriver, and the cities of Beaufort and Charleston were born as South Carolina’s bustling ports, people drifted toward fortune and away from this land in the middle of nowhere.
At least, that’s what we read in the few history books left scattered in the husk of the building.
Too bad for them but convenient for the Olders looking for a place to hide—and now, for us.
Mole shuffles along behind me, his palm on the small of my back. It’s stiff, the way it was earlier when we left Chameleon’s office. I’ve known him my whole life, and no matter what he said after having a seizure and lighting one of us on fire, he’s scared.
I cut a glance in his direction, unnerved by his silence, by his stoic reaction to today’s events.
Part of me is so desperate to believe things will be okay that I want to trust that the Olders have reasons for everything they’ve done. That once they feel as though we can be brought into the fold, we will be.
But I don’t.
It’s not fair to bring us here, to pump us full of drugs and tell us to keep our questions to ourselves. We might be younger than they are, and they might have been living these lives longer, but we’re not different from them. We’re just as important.
Despite knowing that heaping any more concern on Mole won’t accomplish anything, I can’t help peering at him from the corner of my eye, under my lashes, undeterred by the glares he keeps shooting my way.
“Stop, Gypsy. I’m fine.”
“I know.”
“Then stop.”
“Okay.”
“I still feel you staring.” He sighs and stops walking, tugging me against his chest.
I throw my arms around his neck and hold on for dear life, shoving away my concerns about touching even through clothes. If anyone’s watching, they’ll think my touching him voluntarily is weird because I don’t generally touch people, but at the moment, I couldn’t care less what other people think.
Mole’s shoulders flex as his arms circle my waist and squeeze tight, but he takes care to hold his head away from mine so our cheeks don’t brush. Still, the feeling of his breath on my neck, the solid weight of him holding me up, brings tears to my eyes that are equal parts relief and frustration.
“What are we going to do, Mole?”
“We’re going to see if Haint and Goose figured out what’s going on with Flicker, and then we’re going to get the hell out of here.”
It’s creepy at Saint Stephen’s, no doubt, but as much as I want to revel in relief that we might get out of here, we both know there’s not really anywhere else to go.
I give a wet laugh. “I was kidding about the Guam-Tahiti thing, you know.”
Mole pulls away, a faint smile finding its way from his lips to mine. “It might not be such a bad idea. I’ve always wanted to check you out in a swimsuit.”
“You realize ogling goes both ways, right?” I’m teasing him the way I always do, and it feels good.
“Oh, I’m counting on it.” The smile falls away as quickly as it arrived. “Seriously, Gypsy. I know you and some of the others will want to go back to Charleston, try your best to explain why we left and salvage those relationships…but not me. I want to find out where Reaper’s gone, maybe listen to Dane Lee’s recruitment speech. These are our lives, the whole rest of them, and we’ve got to be smart about what we choose.”
“I know.” It hurts to think we might split up, willingly or otherwise, but maybe it’s silly to think eight or ten people would all choose the same life no matter what they have in common.
My throat burns at the realization that it’s already started to happen. Reaper made her choice. She stood in that warehouse and watched us all get taken into custody without batting an eye.
“You really think we should consider working for the CIA?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean, we have to do something, and we only have the Olders’ word that the CIA is bad. They weren’t the ones abusing Flicker, though; we know that now.”
“They created us, Mole. They messed with our genetics and did heaven knows what to our poor mothers without their knowledge. That’s still pretty bad, even if they aren’t technically against us.”
“Granted. But the people they might ask us to help weren’t involved. Heck, the CIA agents we’re going to be dealing with didn’t have any say in our origins, so maybe we just have to drop the past and move on. Things are what they are, and snubbing the CIA isn’t going to change our existence. Or bring back our moms.”
My heart sticks in my throat. He’s right. I rub my cheek on the soft fleece of his jacket, taking comfort. “We might choose different things.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Gyp, but I promise, I’m not going to let you go that easily.” He pushes me slightly away, then reaches out like he wants to brush away the strands of hair the light breeze is sticking to the sweat on my neck, which is silly because he can’t see them. Hair doesn’t have a heat signature. “For now, we focus on Flicker. We can’t leave without trying to help her.”
Mole can’t know that he and I won’t end up on opposite sides, or separated forever, no matter what he says. I summon bravery from a reservoir that somehow hasn’t run out yet and straighten my back as we step into the empty graveyard. “I think that’s a good plan.”
“What’s a good plan?” Geoff asks, tromping up and blowing hot breath into his cupped hands. He tosses a glance toward Mole, concern crinkling the corners of his eyes. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Mole’s lips are tight. He’s already tired of the question, but the fact that Haint’s still invisible isn’t a good sign that he won’t blow things up again.
Athena and Pollyanna show up together. Mole sits next to me on one of the bigger stone monuments in the shape of a sarcophagus, which either has no occupant or one strangely immune to my abilities because no death scene or even number pops into my mind.
Maybe the corpse moved with one of the floods or fires or earthquakes that have devastated the area. At one point the tomb probably stood as high as our waists, but the ground has spent years coaxing it down under the earth, and now our feet easily reach the ground. His legs press against mine, and even though we’re both wearing jeans and we were hugging moments ago, the idea that our mutations are still, well, mutating tightens my belly with nerves.
I scoot a little ways away even though it means the cold of the stone replaces the warmth and comfort of Mole’s body.
“Where’s Goose?” I ask.
“He and Haint went snooping,” Athena supplies, slumped against one of the taller Celtic crosses.
Polly hops from headstone to headstone like they’re lily pads and she’s a frog in a pond while Geoff paces, a thoughtful expression on his face.
There’s an electricity around us, zipping along as though we’re connected by live wires or a continuous bolt of lightning. Things are changing again, and even though we’re together, the ties that bind us aren’t as unbreakable as they were two months ago. No one has said a single thing that makes me think they wouldn’t be on my side if things really hit the fan, but the conversation with Mole leaves no doubt in my mind that it’s coming.
We have choices now. Before, we all had one life at Darley, one common goal of figuring out how to live with our mutations and not expose ourselves to the real world. Now, it seems as though our options shift and expand with every breath we take, and it’s naïve to think that we’ll make identical decisions.
“If you could choose, right now, would you want to stay at Saint Stephen’s or leave?” Geoff puts the question to the group, absentmindedly twirling sticks above his palm again. This time they’re doing a more elaborate dance, as though they’re figures engaging in a waltz.
He’s improving, too. Exerting more control every day.
Pollyanna stops hopping. “Moot point. We haven’t figured out how to help Flicker, and that’s, like, the whole reason we got involved in this mess to begin with.”
“Not true.” I shake my head. “We got involved in this mess when the Olders decided to attack us on the street with syringes.”
“We would have gone looking at Saint Catherine’s, anyway,” Mole disagrees. “They might have lied to us, but we still would have gone after Flicker.”
The home where we were all born, Saint Catherine’s, is one of the most horrible places I’ve ever been in my life. They took in our pregnant, unwed, teenaged mothers, promising them discreet births and adoptions to good families, then knowingly let the government perform experiments on them. And us. Then they took us away and sold us to the people at Darley Hall so they could keep experimenting on us.
“Maybe that’s true,” Geoff concedes. “But if there wasn’t the Flicker…issue… What would you do? Stay here or go?”
“Where would we even go?” Athena wonders. “Back to our parents? To work for the government? Run away together to some deserted island and pretend we can’t do what we can do?”
Geoff shrugs. “Any of the above.”
“The only way to help Flicker is to confront the Olders. Tell them we know about her being here and that she’s upstairs unconscious.” The realization came to me a while ago but it seemed too obvious to state until now. “We don’t know enough about their research to help her on our own.”
“What would you do, Geoff?” Pollyanna shoots the question back at him, her gaze fixed on the whirling sticks. “Stay or go?”
“Stay,” he says softly. “Assuming the government is actually behind our origins at Saint Catherine’s and our time at Darley. The Olders have done more for me in the three or four weeks we’ve known them than anyone ever did before.”
“But we don’t know why,” Athena stresses, his head cocked as though he’s listening to the wind. He’s probably listening to much more than that. “And regardless of how we came to have these talents, we have them now. It’s not going to kill us to listen to the CIA. Maybe we can help people.”
“People who are getting their brains melted by computers?” Pollyanna rolls her eyes, plopping onto her butt and studying her chipped nail polish.
Athena crosses his arms and presses his lips into a thin line, not answering.
“We’re not leaving Flicker.” The finality in Pollyanna’s tone says the discussion is over.
I sneak a glance at Mole, earning another glare. I can’t help it. What if he’s never himself again after these injections? What if Haint’s invisible for the rest of her life, or tomorrow Athena starts hearing a million voices at once and can’t shut them off? What if Geoff stays here and Mole works for the CIA and Pollyanna buries her head in the sand?
Before my tumble down the rabbit hole of doom becomes permanent, Goose appears, accompanied by a stir of air and whirl of brittle, dead leaves, threading the scent of mold and firewood through my hair. We can’t see him arrive, but unlike Haint, he can’t do it silently.
Goose is sweaty and breathing hard, but he doesn’t look scared. He looks excited.