Nerve

by Kirsten Krueger

  The beast barely fit in the tiny kitchen, forcing Richard and Charlie against the walls. Though Zeela couldn’t detect their emotions, she imagined they must have been as panicked as she was, especially when Richard yelled, “LINDA! BEAR! RUN!”

  “Bear?” Linda repeated, whipping to face Zeela. “I thought it sounded like a dog!”

  “Well, it’s definitely a bear now,” she said, her eye wide and posture paralyzed as she watched it prowl toward Richard. The Regg man was completely defenseless against the deadly beast, but Charlie, abandoning his useless chair, wasn’t.

  As the man crouched down beside the bear, close enough that the beast could have effortlessly ended him, items flew from the counters, cabinets, and drawers, all aimed for the human magnet. With the bear between Charlie and most of the kitchen appliances, they rained down on the animal instead.

  Pure metal was easier for Zeela to discern than anything riddled with plastic, but she still recognized the toaster, bowls, and utensils crashing into the bear with a force that managed to delay its attack. As soon as the barrage of objects ceased, a roar ripped through the air, halting Linda, who had resumed searching for the gun.

  “Oh God,” she whispered, her body trembling as the bear’s enraged breaths echoed from the kitchen.

  Zeela was certain Richard and Charlie were about to be devoured when a bang sounded on the front door, accompanied by a familiar female voice. “NATE! YOU CAN’T KILL THEM!”

  Silence ensued, and Zeela desperately wanted to watch how the bear reacted to this command—to see if the men would survive—but the two silhouettes of heat, muscle, and bone stationed beyond the front door captivated her attention.

  “They’re right outside,” she murmured, loud enough for Linda to hear.

  “They shouldn’t be able to get in. Everything is electronically locked.”

  Just as Linda spoke, though, the lock clicked. The wooden front door swung open, granting access to the intruders, surely the same two people they’d escaped at the site of the burned barn. How they’d managed to unlock an electronic handle with such ease was beyond her, but it didn’t matter now as they stalked into the cabin.

  Though they were both roughly the same height, the one was clearly female while the other was clearly male with their differing organs and bone structures. The woman stood only a few inches taller than Zeela, but her athletic gait, thicker muscle mass, and higher fat composition affirmed that she would stand no chance against her in a physical brawl. The man’s stature was rounder and his width was probably double Zeela’s, but with his frailer muscles and clumsy movements, she might have been able to beat him…if she had weapons to match theirs.

  Both intruders held dense wooden clubs, the material pure enough for Zeela to view with relative clarity. The woman also possessed a wooden spear, tipped with a firm, sharp stone. Apparently, they’d taken note of Charlie’s magnetic Affinity and had come prepared this time.

  “Who are you?” Linda demanded, voice wavering slightly. “What do you want with us?”

  “I’m Kevin.” The man waved his empty hand in greeting. The woman proceeded to smack his upper arm with her club, and he squeaked. “What? I was being polite.”

  “We aren’t here to be polite,” she muttered before redirecting her attention toward Zeela and Linda. “Surrender and we won’t hurt you. We don’t want violence.”

  “Tell that to your bear-friend.” Zeela jerked her head toward the kitchen, from which a symphony of chaos still emanated.

  “NATE!” the woman yelled, quelling all noise. “STOP BEING AGGRESSIVE FOR ONE GODDAMN MINUTE, WILL YOU?”

  Evidently, he acquiesced, because the kitchen was peacefully quiet for the first time since the invasion began. The woman opened her mouth, probably to explain their purpose here, but then, to everyone’s surprise, the door flew open behind Zeela.

  A minute ago, she would have been relieved to see Key Fingers bounding out of the bedroom, fingers shaped into ten sharp drills, but now, when they’d been close to a real discussion, Zeela almost jumped in front of the old woman to thwart her. Sacrificing herself proved unnecessary, however, because the man named Kevin had taken the task upon himself, plowing through the living room and bashing his club over the woman’s head.

  Although tough, Key Fingers was no match for the solid club, and she toppled to the floor like a doll, consciousness lost. The only reason Zeela hadn’t fallen into a frenzy was because she could still see the woman’s heart beating, and the wound swelling atop her skull appeared superficial enough to heal.

  “Kevin, you just killed an old lady,” the female intruder said in disbelief.

  “I-I—She was gonna murder us!”

  Sighing, the woman said, “I’m sorry. My friend isn’t suited for combat.”

  Linda seemed to have decided she was suited for combat, because while the female intruder apologized, Linda had rapidly retrieved a lamp from the end table. The object was hazy to Zeela, but she clearly saw the Stark mother lift it above her head and then hurl it at Kevin, the ceramic exploding into shards as it collided with the man’s head.

  Screaming, Kevin wobbled, on the verge of collapse. There was no way his female companion wouldn’t retaliate with an attack now.

  Using this moment of distraction to her advantage, Zeela whipped around and grabbed the television, its cord cleaving out of the wall as she launched it at the woman. The cooling blob of heat struck her left shoulder, thrusting her backward and forcing the club from her left hand.

  Linda threw everything at Kevin: books, cushions, pens—none of which Zeela could fully distinguish. Still, she adopted the same method, scrambling to grab objects on the TV stand, but there was nothing of substantial weight or impact, and since she didn’t have the strength to lift furniture, she was left unarmed. The woman possessed her spear, though, and she flung it through the air, the pointed stone aimed straight for Zeela’s chest.

  The spear’s elements were detectable to her eye, but the weapon glided through the room with too much speed for her to do more than dodge to the side in an attempt to evade it. An involuntary cry escaped her mouth when the tip embedded below her left clavicle, not far above her lung. Her knees gave out with the dizziness, plummeting her body to the wooden floor.

  Everything was a torrent of incoherency. Heat and flesh and metal swam through her vision, and pain—a stinging, throbbing ache so powerful it made her gag and writhe. The bullet wound she’d suffered had been wildly unpleasant, but this was unbearable. She couldn’t suppress a moan as she stared up at the ceiling, seeing colors and shapes she’d never witnessed before. Blood seeped into her shirt, clinging to her skin in a way that induced nauseating claustrophobia.

  In the lab, when they’d carved out her eye, she’d passed out from the trauma. She hadn’t wanted to wake up—but she had because she’d known that when she did, Avner would be waiting there for her.

  In the woods, when they’d shot her, she’d been disoriented to the point of debilitation. She’d wanted to collapse and cry—but she hadn’t because she’d known that if she ran, she would have the opportunity to save Avner, Jamad, and Maddy.

  Now…what awaited her if she gritted through the pain? How could this scenario end in any way other than her capture or her death? Wherever these Wackos took her wouldn’t bring her back to Avner. Even if she managed to fight her way out and kill these assailants, she wouldn’t have the strength to search for her friends; she’d be cooped up in this cabin for another week—and then another and another, while her friends were probed and maimed and tortured.

  Better to let her uselessness kill her now than to let it gnaw at her for the rest of her miserable life.

  “Please,” Linda sobbed, distantly…so distantly… “Don’t hurt her—don’t kill us. She’s just a child—we have families—please!”

  The sound of bodies dragging across the floor reverberated in Zeela’s ears, along with the pounding of bare footsteps.

  “They aren’t dead,” a de
ep voice said somewhere to her left. “I merely knocked them out. Happy, Devika?”

  “Overjoyed, Nate,” the woman responded agitatedly.

  “Rich,” Linda moaned quietly, somewhere to Zeela’s right.

  “Throw those two in the van,” Devika commanded. “Kevin, take her out with them.”

  “Wh-what about the other two?”

  “The lady with the drill fingers could be useful, if she’s breathing… I’ll check. We’ll leave the other one. Looks like she’s blind—I doubt Danny’ll want her. She’ll probably bleed out soon, anyway…”

  Various footsteps vibrated through the floor, a heavy pair exiting the cabin, dragging those bodies, and a clumsier pair following after alongside a staggering pair. The last set approached Zeela, pausing not far from her head. When she squinted her eye open, an ambiguous figure crouched beside her, examining unconscious Key Fingers. With a weary exhale, Devika hauled the elderly woman into her arms and stalked out the front door, leaving not a muscle or bone in sight.

  Blood was everywhere, though—Zeela’s blood.

  Her veins would drain onto the floor, and no one would be here to watch her die. No one would even know she was dead. Avner, wherever he was, would always wonder, and if he ever escaped, he would always search.

  As she closed her eye to accept her fate, a blip of heat flew through the open doorway, so small she barely noticed it. For a moment, she believed it was the shapeshifter named Nate, returning in the form of a bug, perhaps to save her. But as that heat expanded, Zeela realized that it was not the controlled morphing of one living creature into another: It was the building of a fire.

  Flames latched onto the wooden structure of the cabin, consuming it inch by inch. They would eat her, too, and she would let them. She just hoped that someone would know of her fate—that Avner would learn of her fate. Because, even though she had failed him, he wouldn’t settle for failing her. He would tear apart the Earth to find her, and if he survived, she didn’t want his hopeless search to devour him in the way this inferno devoured her now.

  She recalled the way he’d sacrificed himself for her in the barn, how he’d gone back to fight the Reggs even though it seemed futile. It had resulted in a fire like this one, but he hadn’t succumbed to it; he hadn’t died.

  As she stared up at the heat licking the ceiling and inhaled the noxious smoke, she knew she would.

  Kiki Belven hadn’t made any efforts to maximize her connection with Eliana over the past week. Rather, she’d avoided her roommate as much as possible. She spent little time in their dorm room, sat on the opposite side of the table during meals, and forced Hartman to be her partner in training, leaving Eliana to work with ruthless Lavisa. If it had been anyone else she’d raided Than’s office with—anyone else she’d mounted and practically made out with—she would have been entirely indifferent, but Eliana…innocent Eliana… She felt like she’d violated the girl.

  At the same time, she wasn’t sure if apologizing was appropriate. An apology would imply she regretted it—that she wouldn’t do anything like that again—but was that true?

  Kiki wasn’t ready to answer that question, and considering Eliana had the ability to read her mind, she didn’t even want to think about it. She knew how to build walls around her brain—to an extent—but it was an exhausting feat, and she simply didn’t have the patience to exert herself. So she opted to focus on shallower things and remain out of Eliana’s range whenever the deeper ponderings threatened to enter her consciousness.

  For most of that Monday afternoon, Kiki had relaxed in the lounge, pretending to read magazines while discreetly eavesdropping on gossip. Drama was nearly nonexistent here compared to her old high school—probably because she hadn’t bothered to provoke any herself—but it was still amusing to listen to a group of secondary girls gush over how hunky Tray Stark was. God, if they’d seen that kid before he hit puberty… It had proven difficult for her not to emit a snooty giggle.

  Obviously, as soon as Nero had announced his party to the entire lounge, Kiki abandoned her magazines and hurried up the spiral staircase to fix her makeup and replace her skinny jeans with a mini skirt.

  Upon approaching the door to room 305, she paused, sensing Eliana within. Of everyone at this school—perhaps of everyone everywhere—Eliana was the only person she had the capacity to mentally feel. She knew it was linked to their strange connection—Eliana’s ability to decipher Kiki’s hidden visions. Their brains could have been connected in numerous ways, and Kiki was tempted to explore it, but…Than’s office…

  Now, as she stood before their door, she knew she would have to confront Eliana. They’d been in the same room alone since the incident, but typically one of them was asleep—or pretending to be. With the fuzzy nature of Eliana’s consciousness, she could have been asleep, but there was something foreign about the nature of this fuzziness.

  Regardless, the need to beautify herself, coupled with the innate pull from Eliana’s abnormal cognitive state, drew her into the room. Keeping her head high, she plunged through the doorway, refusing to give her roommate a substantial glance as she sauntered directly toward the closet. She’d noticed immediately that Eliana sat at her desk, drawing, but she hadn’t bothered to acknowledge Kiki’s presence, so Kiki wouldn’t acknowledge hers.

  As she searched through her copious amounts of clothing for the perfect skirt, she kept her movements quiet, listening intently to Eliana’s pencil strokes. They were normally so soft and soothing, but today the sounds were aggressive, rushed, as if her arrival had deeply aggravated the artist.

  Kiki couldn’t dwell on it; Eliana would follow her thoughts unless she guarded them, a task that would be utterly impossible if she wished to focus on finding a skirt of party quality. Instead, she masked her concern with obnoxiousness.

  “Can you please quiet down back there? I’m trying to concentrate.”

  Pausing for one moment to make a show of examining one of her skirts, she listened for any change in Eliana’s behavior. She hadn’t expected a response, but she had expected Eliana to at least slow her drawing pace, perhaps halt completely to scowl at the back of Kiki’s head. There was absolutely no change, though. When Kiki finally grew impatient and whipped around to face her, she found her roommate hadn’t flinched in the slightest. She was still hunched over her desk, scribbling furiously as if her life depended on it.

  Kiki should have left her alone. She should have grabbed the skirt she’d chosen five minutes ago and retreated to the bathroom, but there was something almost disturbing about the fervor with which Eliana drew. In the three months she’d known the girl, she’d never witnessed her do anything with such haste and imprecision.

  Gently removing her chosen skirt from her closet, Kiki hugged it to her chest and slunk across the room, sneaking behind Eliana’s blue head to peer over her shoulder. In the pale tank top she wore, a few black dots poked out beneath the fabric—a tattoo on her left shoulder.

  The unexpected revelation was rapidly disregarded when Kiki’s vision landed on the desk. With the speed of Eliana’s hand, the sketch should have been sloppy, but somehow, it was the most lifelike piece of art she’d ever crafted. When Kiki finally recognized what was strewn on the page, she nearly dropped her skirt at its eerie familiarity.

  Reds, oranges, and yellows popped on the paper, composing a raging sea of fire. At the center dwelled a figure lying on her back, arms splayed lifelessly. Kiki’s first instinct was to assume it was Adara, especially with the black t-shirt and jeans, but this girl’s features were delicate, and her head was devoid of Adara’s dark hair—or any hair at all. Unless Eliana had neglected the eyes, this girl only had one, and it was completely white.

  A sickening feeling snaked through Kiki’s core as she recalled the drawing Eliana had worked on in the library last week, so similar to this but with one major difference. In the first drawing, Zeela had been alive; in this drawing, she was dead.

  Eliana’s sister was dead—or she would be.
How could Eliana draw this so emotionlessly? Why had she put so much precision into every line, every detail, as if the hue of a flame mattered more than the end of her sister’s existence? Kiki hated her own sister, but if she saw Orla like this, she’d break.

  Unable to quell her quaking limbs or repress her panic, Kiki fumbled to place her hand on Eliana’s shoulder, right above that mysterious tattoo, and shook it as gingerly as she could.

  “Eliana… Eliana.”

  Her red pencil continued stroking lines in the fire, inflating the inferno to the point that it nearly engulfed Zeela’s body.

  “Eliana,” Kiki tried again, shoving her shoulder with more force. It didn’t make a difference; she maintained her hurried drawing pace, not reacting when the momentum of the shaking resulted in a wayward stroke of red across the paper.

  Unnerved, Kiki tossed her skirt onto her bed and then encased Eliana’s eyes with her hands, essentially blinding her. She was certain this would deter the drawing, but it didn’t. Even without her sight, Eliana persisted as if in a trance.

  With a groan of frustration, Kiki ripped the pencil from her hand, leaving her without a drawing utensil. In response, Eliana simply retrieved the orange pencil, and then when Kiki extracted that, she retrieved the yellow, then the brown, then the blue, then the black—until Kiki had snagged every one of her pencils and hurled them at the wall, leaving marks of color.

  She didn’t care, because Eliana still tried to draw, her empty hand dragging across the paper, smudging it. The only way to stop her would be to extricate her from her desk.

  Inhaling deeply, Kiki gripped her roommate’s shoulders and, with a wince, yanked her from her chair, throwing her across the floor with more strength than she’d intended. Eliana’s head collided with Kiki’s bed frame, and her hand finally stopped moving.