Nerve

by Kirsten Krueger

  “What? Terrorist? I wasn’t saying it like an insult, man. It’s just a fact.”

  “No, Salty.” He glanced briefly at Jamad in nervous offense. “You shouldn’t call her names.”

  “It’s an affectionate nickname.”

  “She doesn’t seem to be very affectionate of you.”

  Naretha snickered from where she was wedged between the corner and Avner. “For a computer nerd, you can really read people, huh?”

  The guy’s cheeks burned as vibrantly red as his floppy hair. As he toggled through various windows on the computer screen, an image caught Jamad’s eye that had him bolting upright.

  “Go back,” he commanded, crawling across the floor to get a closer look at the computer.

  The guy shielded it with his body like a bear defending her cubs. “Get back in your spot. You’re still a captive—”

  “No, he’s not,” the woman intoned from the driver’s seat. “Are you watching porn again, Kevin?”

  “No! I-I—”

  Too distracted by his own spluttering, the guy, Kevin, didn’t notice when Jamad slipped beside him and tapped a few keys, bringing the screen back to the picture that had sparked his interest—the picture of Naretha. Her pale pink eyes were narrowed, as usual, but her pixie-cut hair was styled more fashionably than Jamad had ever seen, and she wore an elegant black gown.

  “What are you—a Wacko celebrity? Princess of the Wackos?” Jamad joked before receiving a withering glare from Naretha.

  “You took a picture of me at last year’s gala?” Her raised eyebrows set Kevin into an embarrassed state of panic.

  “I-I—well, I took pictures of everyone—”

  “Even creepier,” she noted, smirking faintly when he tried to stutter an explanation.

  Jamad resumed his seat between Meredith and Avner. “What gala?”

  “Ephraim liked to hold a gala every year at one of his mansions, where all of the Wackos—back then, Affinities for Freedom—could unite.”

  “Sounds a little reckless. Didn’t the government ever find out?”

  Naretha shrugged as she rotated a thick crystal of salt between her fingers. “Probably. There was never anything they could do about it, though, considering how easily we could annihilate them. Now, though, with those suits…”

  “With what suits?” one of the men asked, rotating his head of sandy hair to face them. He clearly wasn’t a natural blond, since his warm brown skin was nearly as dark as Jamad’s. His equally beige eyes indicated his features had morphed with the development of his Affinity.

  “The Reggs have Affinity-proof suits now,” Naretha explained.

  “Bullshit…”

  “Don’t accuse her of lying, Vishal,” Kevin defended, though he immediately cowered when the guy in the front shot him a murderous scowl.

  “There’s no way the Reggs have that kind of technology,” Vishal insisted. “Where did you hear of these suits?”

  “I didn’t hear of them; I saw them with my freakin’ eyes, asshole. The Reggs have suits that can’t be penetrated by my salt, or his ice”—she jabbed her thumb toward Jamad—“or his electricity”—she nodded toward Avner—“or any Affinity. We experienced this technology when we were prisoners of the Regg researchers—just a few hours ago, if you were looking for a specific time.”

  Kevin’s eyes bulged. “You got stuck in one of the Reggs’ labs—and you escaped?”

  “No, I died there.”

  For a moment, the guy looked unsure as to whether her tone was sarcastic. Jamad would have laughed if the tension in the van weren’t so severe. Vishal, despite Naretha’s explanation, still eyed her skeptically.

  “It’s rare that anyone manages to escape a research facility, especially without outside help.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s also rare that anyone manages to sleep with the leader of the Wackos, but here I am.” Naretha’s smile was so perfectly patronizing that Jamad had to chuckle now.

  “Oh, pulling out the Wacko Princess card,” he sang, clapping deliberately to agitate Vishal. “Do we not look like we could have just escaped from a research facility? I’m not wearing clothes, dude. Zeela’s eye—” He paused, realizing Zeela wasn’t here.

  She’d managed to “escape,” but now they weren’t even captives. Part of him wanted to ask the woman to turn around, so they could retrieve the other Affinities, but Avner’s strange silence stopped him. If he wanted Zeela in this van, he would have said something before it started moving. Even though Jamad thought his friend was being a self-righteous prick, he had to respect his wishes to keep Zeela out of trouble.

  “We’re all practically bald,” Jamad decided to say, tapping his fuzzy head. “We didn’t get buzz cuts to match.”

  “She has hair,” Vishal huffed, nodding toward Meredith. She swallowed under his scrutiny, hugging her skinny legs.

  “Because she was at the facility long enough for it to grow back,” Jamad retorted. “We’re Affinities just like you, man. Why don’t you believe us?”

  “Because we’ve had Affinities just like you sneak into our ranks as government spies. We can’t blindly trust everyone.”

  “Drop it,” Naretha warned Jamad, her jaw tight. “We’ll clear this all up once we get to Headquarters. Have you alerted Danny of our impending arrival? He’s not a fan of surprises.”

  “I don’t think he’ll really be a fan of anything right now,” the woman muttered, shaking her head. “We’re not going to Headquarters tonight. Best to let Danny’s wrath settle—”

  “What do you mean we aren’t going to Headquarters tonight?” Naretha ground out, leaning forward aggressively.

  “We told you there were three escapees.” The driver twirled her dark green hair through her fingers with unease. “Danny is…not pleased. He blew up a police station.”

  “Mm, shame I missed it,” Naretha hummed, tapping her fingers on her kneecap. “Danny will calm down if you bring me to him, so stop being babies and let’s go.”

  Vishal ignored her demands and asked, “Where is the Reggs’ research lab located?”

  “I’ll give the approximate location to Danny when we reach Headquarters.”

  The other guy in the front seat sighed and didn’t even bother pivoting his purple-haired head when he said, “Headquarters is probably compromised.” Though he’d been fairly chill about his near-death by ice, Jamad was still leery, waiting for the man to exact his retribution.

  Judging by Naretha’s harsh tone, she had no fear of enraging him. “Why would Headquarters be compromised?”

  “Because three people escaped,” Vishal snarled, as if he’d said it fifty times. To be fair, they had reiterated this fact quite a few times, but Naretha seemed convinced it was irrelevant.

  “There’s no way they would remember the exact location. Most of the houses on the lake look the sa—”

  “These weren’t ordinary prisoners. It’s likely all of our Ohio locations—possibly even our locations in other states—will be compromised. We’re headed back to our house now to purge it of any evidence.”

  “What prisoner would know all of our locations?” Naretha demanded. “Did Danny imprison Josh for leaving me behind? Good riddance if he did, but making Josh an enemy was a poor choice.”

  “We did hear that Josh was locked up, but he didn’t escape,” the woman said. Through the rearview mirror, Jamad saw the disquiet in her forest-green eyes.

  “Then who?”

  Exchanging a look, Vishal shook his head at the woman, but she bit her lip and then blurted out, “Ashna.”

  That one word drained all the fury building in Naretha. Her face blanched and she stared ahead with such stillness that Jamad worried she’d gone into shock.

  “Who’s Ashna?” he asked tentatively. Mostly, he posed the question to see if he could elicit a reaction from Naretha and break her out of her state of stupefaction.

  It was obvious enough that this Ashna was an extremely powerful Affinity—one with vast knowledge of the Wa
ckos’ whereabouts—but the way Naretha answered sent an unsettling chill down Jamad’s spine, a sensation that was becoming abominably familiar.

  “Our doom.”

  20

  New Acquaintances and Old Enemies

  The first thing Seth noted when he awoke in a state of grogginess was that his sweatshirt reeked of vomit. The second thing he noted, through the hazy morning light of his dormitory’s window, was a lump beneath the blankets of Hastings’s bed.

  For a moment, he was content, thinking everything was normal—that Hastings was sleeping late, as usual, and that he would get up and get ready without his roommate even stirring—but then the body in the bed did stir, and reality smacked Seth in the face. Hastings was dead, and someone was sleeping in his bed.

  After scrambling out of his blankets, Seth found shoes on his feet. How had he gotten here? They’d visited Adara at the police station…and he had consumed quite a bit of alcohol in quite a short time… The rest was blurry. He did recall puking into a toilet with Ackerly, and he was fairly certain he’d revealed some outlandishly embarrassing details about Adara’s childhood to the kid. After that…Wackos—they’d met three Wackos. One of them, he realized, as the sheets of Hastings’s bed shifted, was in his room.

  He shouldn’t have been panicked. A super strength Affinity dwelled somewhere within him, after all, and if this Wacko attempted to murder him, he’d be ready. As the girl finally shimmied out of the blankets and squinted open her peachy eyes, though, he came to the conclusion that she was harmless—and hot.

  In a weathered volleyball sweatshirt with her rosy-bronze hair contained in a chaotic bun, she looked like she’d climbed out of a garbage can. Everything about her was so far from Kiki’s style and elegance. She reminded him of…Adara…but she wasn’t Adara—she wasn’t his sister. A grin spread across his lips.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” she mumbled, face scrunched in befuddlement. Rubbing her forehead, she stumbled out of bed, revealing that, beneath her baggy sweatshirt, her legs were bare. “Where’s Cath? Did she go to breakfast?”

  Seth averted his gaze and stared at the ceiling. “Uh…you’re not wearing pants.”

  From the corner of his eye, he noticed her glance down and wince. “Oh. I’m not. I didn’t think you would wake up.”

  “Ever?”

  “Well, not for a while. You were not doing well last night, my friend… Damn, I forgot where I was. Can’t believe we made it to Periculand.” Her eyes cut toward him and she awkwardly said, “I’ll put on my pants.”

  “Thank you,” he sighed, rolling off his bed. “I mean, I have no problem with nude girls, but I don’t want to be labeled a perv.”

  “Mm, how gentlemanly of you.” After a few moments of shuffling, Seth spun around to see her wearing a pair of Hastings’s purple cargo pants. “You are skinny. These fit me perfectly…” Her gaze flew up to him, and when she surveyed his legs, she frowned. “There’s no way in hell you fit in these. Whose pants am I wearing?”

  “My…” Seth scratched the back of his head. “Dead roommate’s.”

  “Oh. Oh… Would it be offensive if I didn’t take them off?”

  Seth pondered a second and then shrugged. “As long as you don’t tell Eliana where you got them, you should be good. Are you a Mental?”

  “That’s a rude question. Do I seem insane to you?”

  “What? Oh—no, I meant are you in the Mental class…of Affinities?” he added, his eyebrows wrinkling when she continued staring at him. “You don’t know about the three classes of Affinities? I don’t pay attention in class and even I know that.”

  Her lips quirked as she crossed her arms. “Enlighten me.”

  “Well, uh, if you want the technicalities, you’ll have to ask my brother, but basically there’s Mental, Physical, and Natural. The Mentals wear purple”—he nodded toward her pants—“and the Physicals wear orange.” He picked up a pair of his orange cargo pants. “I’m a Physical.”

  “And each represents a type of Affinity. I see… So, what’s yours?”

  “My…”

  “Affinity.”

  “Oh.” He shook out his hair, hoping his bedhead wasn’t too atrocious. He’d never cared much about his appearance before, even around Kiki, but the way this girl examined him was nerve-wracking. “I…don’t know.”

  She nodded, unsurprised by his answer, but he was surprised by his answer. He’d meant to tell her he had super strength, like he told everyone—like he told himself—but those three words had come out instead. Did he really not know his Affinity? He’d been so convinced he had super strength, but Tray was stronger than him.

  “Don’t tell my friends,” he said, rather than retracting his previous statement. “They…believe I have super strength. They all probably think I’m incompetent. I don’t want them to see me as completely useless.”

  “Well now, completely useless is a bit of an overstatement. You are particularly skilled at getting drunk, from what I saw last night.”

  Seth grimaced, glancing at her long enough to spot the cut on her cheek. Vaguely, he recollected noticing it last night. “Who’s Danny?”

  Her smile was humorless. “Ah, you remember that. You were very determined to receive a response. Danny’s the leader of the Wackos.”

  “And you?”

  “I…” She hesitated just long enough for Seth to wonder if the rest of her reply would be truthful. “I’m not a Wacko—definitely not. They’re…awful. And if I’m not allowed to stay here, they’ll find a way to kill me—and Cath and maybe Ashna.” Slipping on her boots, she switched to a less dreary topic. “Is there a cafeteria at this school? I’m famished.”

  “You—like to eat?”

  “Of course I like to eat. Those cheap Wackos were so conservative about rations… I need fuel if I’m expected to exert any physical energy.”

  “The Reggs recently cut back on our food, too,” Seth admitted dejectedly, “but I’ll take you down there. Just let me change out of this…pukey…thing.”

  Her returning giggle actually made Seth blush—so much that he had to turn around when undressing and wiggling into his school uniform. Though he couldn’t see her, he was keenly aware of her eyes on his back; it made the immoral part of him wish he’d opted for being a pervert when she’d been unclothed—only so they would be even, of course.

  “She wears the pants of the Mentals, yet she is not one.”

  Remaining neutral and not rolling his eyes proved an arduous task for Calder as his roommate pointed out irrelevant facts about every person who entered the cafeteria. When Calder had returned from his excursion to the police station the night before, Colton had been deep in the realms of sleep, unwilling to be bothered. As soon they’d awoken this morning, though, Calder immediately prompted him on what information needed to be discovered. Though he’d agreed, Colton, as usual, was obnoxiously difficult.

  “What class is she in?” Calder droned, idly stirring his food around with a plastic fork. The portions had been noticeably smaller since the Reggs took over; luckily, they found his defensive capabilities useful enough that they didn’t make him pay out of pocket for this unappetizing food.

  “She is of the Natural class, but she is not aware this label has been placed on her,” Colton narrated, his pine-colored eyes fixed on Naira, seeing more than an ordinary person ever would. “Within her dwells an Affinity for natural gases—and a budding attraction for Seth Stark.”

  “I know you’re fond of romance, Col, but I’ve told you to leave it out of the reports. It’s unnecessary and, frankly, obvious.”

  Colton didn’t flinch at the harsh words; he simply continued staring ominously at Naira and Seth as they joined the other primaries. Tray was already seated at their typical table, his plain brown eyes darting back in Calder’s direction every few minutes. Sometimes he wished he could throttle the kid or drown him again—this time long enough for the snooty know-it-all to start valuing his own life.
If Nero saw them interacting…well, avoiding that was the reason Calder had decided to sit at a different table with Colton this morning. The few other secondaries at this table were quiet enough not to earn any negative attention from Big Boy.

  Although, it wasn’t like Nero was lucid enough to notice Calder’s whereabouts, anyway. He probably could have started dancing atop the primaries’ table, announcing his tentative alliance with them, and the brute would have been too dizzy to acknowledge it. To no one’s surprise, Nero had utilized the confiscated alcohol for his own enjoyment last night, and now he sat beside Nixie, his face resting on the table as she lovingly rubbed his back.

  “This romance would be insignificant, if not for the dire consequences it elicits,” Colton continued in the voice that was the reason Calder was his only friend. Even his own cousin, Demira, could barely put up with his narration nonsense half the time. Over the past year, however, Calder had learned to admire his roommate’s personality—and his Affinity for reading life like a book.

  “Do these consequences have any effect on me or the fate of Affinities?” Calder questioned, studying Seth and Naira’s interaction. Calder had kissed Naira in sixth grade. It wasn’t an event that ever entered his consciousness, considering how many girls he’d kissed since then, and there wasn’t a hint of emotion toward her lingering within him. Regardless, the way Colton met his eyes then made him wonder if one of his many childhood crushes could possibly influence his life now.

  “The Demoness will awaken.”

  Calder stilled, clutching his plastic fork more intensely. Normally, he would have assumed the diction was merely part of Colton’s theatrics, but the term was far too specific to be coincidental. “Repeat that again.”

  “Seth Stark’s new infatuation with Naira Steele will spark the wick within Adara Stromer’s chest. Her jealousy will consume her and all others with an eternal fire—”