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Tim’s locket dangled between my fingers. Even when we won, we lost.
My bedroom door rattled as Inese tried to pick its lock. I crossed my vines over the knob. I huddled in the corner of my bedroom, vines curled around me. I didn’t want anyone here. I wanted sleep. It hadn’t come in the jet or at the rebel operative’s house in Cedarville, and when I finally did sleep, I’d been plagued by nightmares. Nightmares of the Legion Spore merging around me before being torn apart like taffy. Nightmares of Tim’s burnt corpse staring at me, his charred mouth asking why I didn’t save him. Nightmares of the empty forest stretching around me, on and on, never ending and filled entirely with Lance and Lily’s laughter, their jeering moans scolding me for trusting them. Nightmares of succumbing to Ivy Man’s wishes, of crushing my teammates’ limbs, my vines covered in sticky blood. Nightmares that I was on an airship with no friends to trust, that the Community’s ideals were a vicious lie, and that a vengeful spirit was threatening to destroy us all if it found us with the person we harbored, the person who had betrayed us.
That last nightmare, unfortunately, was real.
I pried the locket open. Inside was a small cutout picture of Tim and Val. I snapped it shut and stared across the room. I’d been wrong about them. They had loved each other. If I was wrong about them, what if I had also been wrong about Lance and Lily? What if they made a better pair than I could be with either of them?
The door caught against my vines. “Jenna? I brought food.” An empty bowl angled through the door, followed by a box of cereal and a glass of milk.
I eyed it warily. Considering I hadn’t left my room since the mission two days ago, and all I’d had were a few snack bars and what Dad managed to get through the door, food sounded more like a requirement than a choice.
I unraveled my vines and pushed myself up from the floor. Inese peered through the crack. I let the vines part so she could step through. Food in hand, I plopped on the bed for a late breakfast of corn puffs—a comfort Mom had found during our previous shopping trip—and raisins.
Inese settled in the chair by my desk. “Nice decorations. A bit dark though, isn’t it?” I took a bite. She fiddled with her key-ring. “I talked to Gwen,” she said, flipping through her lock-picking set. “She’s been healing what Ron couldn’t, and she got a glimpse at Lance’s and Lily’s memories in the process. I know you don’t want to hear this, but whatever Ivy Man did... he didn’t plant any false memories. He did possess them a couple times, so they may have said things that weren’t true of the past, but their emotions now... those are real. They might not have had those feelings before, but it seems he amped up our basic human desires and opened the floodgates on anything we normally wouldn’t let ourselves feel.”
I eyed her over the bowl. “So they didn’t care about each other before he messed with everyone, but now they actually like each other?”
Inese let out a slow breath. “Yes. It’s like how, on some primitive level, you might feel attraction when a hot guy—or girl—walks by. But you don’t normally go jumping in bed with them just because you have the hots for them. Unfortunately, Ivy Man lowered their usual inhibitions and made sure they noticed each other. He cranked up those particular desires.”
I snorted. “Those ‘desires’ sound inefficient.”
Inese clicked a couple of the lock-picking tools together and stared at the floor. “Well, can’t argue with you there. You’re not the first one to get stung.” She cleared her throat. “Gwen is trying to help them sort through the emotions Ivy Man tweaked to see which ones might be natural, but she’s exhausted between healing them and Val.” She pocketed the key ring and removed her sunglasses from her forehead, flipping them in her hands. “Pops tested Val with his powers and Gwen probed her thoughts. She didn’t do anything to coerce Tim. His actions were his own. And, evidently, she never meant for him to be captured in Australia.”
I jutted my jaw. “She stole the car.”
Inese rubbed her temples. “Believe me, I know. Indirectly, she’s responsible for Crush’s death and for landing you with that brain seed. We have her and the agents locked up in separate rooms. Would have stuck her in the brig, but it’s still too cluttered with books.” She sighed, and then replaced the sunglasses on her forehead. “Once we’ve talked with the South African government, we can figure out what to do with our prisoners. Until then, maybe... maybe you should go easy on Lance and Lily. Whatever their feelings are now, they didn’t have a choice in the matter. Val chose to betray us. But Lance? Lily? They didn’t.”
I glanced to the vines on the wall. Ivy Man had enhanced inefficient, primitive desires that had made me want to kill them both. I could have killed them, just like he wanted. Just like, for a little while, I’d wanted.
Inese laid a hand on my knee. “Try not to be too hard on them, okay? It’s not their fault.” She stood, making her way to the door. “By the way, Pops wants us to meet in the command center in an hour. He wants everybody there.”
I grimaced. As long as I stayed in my room, I could pretend everything was normal. “Is it about the last time stone?”
Inese nodded. “We’ve got the coordinates.”
Good. We needed that thing if we wanted a chance at stopping the Camaraderie... and Legion.
“I’ll be there.”
