Infinity Son

by Adam Silvera

  Back when I was a kid, oblivious to the world’s ugliness, I always imagined myself marrying princes, and Brighton only expressed interest in a princess sitting on the throne beside him. We never questioned this, and the same went for our parents. I had been talking about beautiful princes for so long that I never had to come out to my family, but when I got older and found the word that best fit my romantic worldview—gay for the win—it was awesome for telling new people in my life, and most important, how comfortable the word felt on my tongue. It’s as normal as my hazel eyes and constant bedhead. I grew to understand that acceptance like that was a miracle.

  But the word specter doesn’t feel good in my heart, and building the nerve to tell Ma I somehow am one is far scarier. Will she ever talk to me again? Kick me out? I won’t be able to stay with Prudencia since her aunt is painfully monstrous about all gleamcraft. Maybe I’ll move with Brighton to Los Angeles and sleep in his dorm room on an air mattress, but it breaks my heart to even think about leaving Ma behind all alone. I hope I don’t lose her love.

  Ma and Prudencia return, and my chest tightens as they hug me.

  Ma strokes my hair. “How are you feeling, my Emilio?”

  I’m freaking out and confused, but I simply tell her that I’m sore while massaging the bruise on my head.

  “The police are going to find the monsters who did this to you,” Ma says, and even though there’s a comforting reassurance in her voice, I can see this helplessness in her eyes. “I’ll call for someone now.”

  “Don’t!” If the police officer who shows up doesn’t like specters, they will stop seeing me as a victim and treat me as nothing but a walking weapon. They might even get enforcers involved. “I just want to be done with this.”

  “You have nothing to be embarrassed about,” Ma says. “Speaking to the police will be good so we can get your attacker off the streets.”

  I have no intention of letting Orton actually roam wild. I just needed to catch my breath before everything comes out, but the sucker-punching guilt makes me want to spit it out. “I get it, I—”

  “Let him breathe, Ma,” Brighton interrupts. “You can’t force him to speak up before he’s ready.”

  “It’s okay,” I cut in. I look up at Brighton. “Enforcers are going to find out anyway.”

  “What enforcers?” Ma asks.

  I sit up in bed with Prudencia’s assistance. “This dealer at the park was selling some new drug, and things got out of hand. He and his partner followed us onto the train and came at us with his powers. And I . . .” Everything feels so chaotic in my head. “I defended us with my own.”

  These powers are mysterious and terrifying, and I don’t know how I’m going to bounce back from this.

  Ma holds herself up by the wall as she walks to the chair, but can’t make it before her knees give up on her. I throw the blanket off and shoot to her side, taking her hand in mine.

  “You okay, Ma?”

  There are tears in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

  I don’t feel okay, inside or out.

  “Emil saved us,” Prudencia says. “He’s a hero.”

  “You could’ve told me you had powers,” Ma says with a crack in her voice.

  “Today was the first time. The dealer tried throwing Brighton onto the tracks, and I panicked and got really hot, and suddenly my fist was on fire.”

  Ma takes my hand and inspects it, but there’s no marking. “Fire-casting wasn’t part of our bloodline.”

  We’re all quiet. Brighton is staring at me like I’m some stranger who needs to spit it out.

  “Please believe me, Ma, but . . . I think it’s phoenix fire. I didn’t do this to myself—”

  “No one wakes up with phoenix blood inside of them, Emil!” This is the second time this week Ma is shouting, but she’s even more consumed in fury and disappointment now. I feel like a kid all over again. “You know what I’ve seen patients go through, what we saw your father suffer through, and you got involved with blood alchemy anyway?” She turns to Brighton. “I take it you have powers of your own too, huh?”

  “I don’t have powers,” Brighton says. “Emil didn’t do this to himself. If you watch the video—”

  “What video?!”

  “Someone recorded the fight,” Brighton says. “Watch and you’ll see that Emil is just as surprised as anyone else.”

  The chaos of the video begins, and I force myself to look after seeing the horror and heartbreak on my mother’s face as she watches us get rattled around by Orton. I feel guilty for a fight I didn’t start. I hear the burst of fire, followed by the stillness of the quiet car, and from the corner of my eye I see Ma shaking, well past the video’s ending.

  “I’m so sorry, my Emilio, I’m sorry for not believing you,” Ma says. “But now I don’t know how to protect you. What if that man hunts you down to retaliate? What if the enforcers find us at home? I cannot lose you too. . . .”

  I was counting on my mother to reassure me that everything will be okay, even if it was an empty promise, but she’s already so defeated, and my panicking keeps increasing and increasing, screaming at me to do the only thing that feels right.

  “I need a second by myself.”

  “I’m going with you,” Brighton says. “Alone together.”

  It’s been a while since we’ve joked about being alone together. Whether it was in our bedroom or riding the train together, we could always go into Alone Mode. And no one disturbs Alone Mode. But this is different.

  “Alone-alone. Sorry, I need to wrap my head around all of this.”

  “I’m here if you need me,” Brighton says.

  “Me too,” Prudencia says.

  I leave the room and rush toward the nearest exit. I assumed I was at Ma’s hospital, but several practitioners here are all dressed in midnight-blue cloaks with speckled stars. I can’t believe I ended up in Gleam Care, but I’m getting out. Between my long legs and New York speed, I’m already such a fast walker, powering through all soreness, and I don’t stop until I’m a couple blocks away from the hospital.

  I’ll go back home, pack a bag, and come up with a battle plan. I’m praying some shelter for celestials will take me in, even though I’m a specter. Someone’s got to help the famous Fire-Wing on his life-changing, life-ending day, right?

  Eleven

  The Blood Casters

  NESS

  I’ve been role-playing my entire life. Too bad my line of work won’t ever get me the audience I once dreamed about.

  Times Square is extra hellish this evening. Tourists are lining up around the block to see some show about a historical privateer. Casting sheets were circulating in sophomore year, and I didn’t bother auditioning because I swore it wouldn’t grow beyond whatever small theater hosted the show. Going ahead and blaming my inherited arrogance for that error. That could’ve been my face lighting up on the Broadway marquees. I always imagined my acting career would involve action blockbuster movies and award-winning indie roles and musicals that get all the love on Tumblr. Instead I’m shape-shifting into whoever the Blood Casters need me to become.

  Life’s funny that way.

  I’m making my way back to base when I catch the reflection of the disguise I’m currently wearing. Dark blond hair, pretty enough, and most important, the pale skin that lets me coast by during charged moments. The impression is not a perfect match, but it doesn’t have to be. I can get by with a misshapen nose, shorter eyelashes, hazel eyes instead of brown. It’s the key targets that have to be studied carefully. The crow’s-feet, the gnawed-on nails, the birthmark on the neck, everything in place so loved ones don’t ever second-guess me. Tonight didn’t require a deep morph, so I lifted the look from someone swiping his way into the train station while I was on my way out. I needed to get far away from those enforcers after Orton broke code.

  Luna is going to have his head if he’s still out there.

  Mine too, maybe.

  I’m not unfamiliar with great housing, b
ut our current stay in lower Manhattan’s Light Sky Tower with the other Blood Casters is something else. Security for the city’s tallest building is intense, but as long as I have my password, they’re instructed to let me in at the back entrance, no matter what I look like. “Breath of wraith,” I say. The guard eyes me like he’ll be able to see past my disguise if he squints hard enough before letting me into the elevator that shoots me up to the one-hundred-and-tenth floor.

  The penthouse is the only place in this skyscraper where I’m allowed to drop my morph. Only the gang knows who I am; the rest of the world can’t find out. Blessing and a curse. It’s worth it if it means the people I’m hiding from won’t ever find me, but it also guarantees no one will ever know the real me. Whoever that is these days.

  I wish morphing were as effortless for me as it was for the shifter whose blood Luna stole to give me these powers, but unfortunately, holding a shape weighs on me. It’s tougher than holding in a piss on a full bladder. I feel lighter as my disguise falls. The pale skin finds its natural brown complexion. Hair turns dark and shrinks on the sides and curls on the top. My mother’s amber eyes are restored; I miss her, but I’m relieved she’s not around to see who I’ve become.

  Blessing. Curse.

  I cross the empty living space. Dione has been out for days gathering intel on the hydra shipment, but I don’t know how Stanton is keeping busy tonight. I go to the balcony, expecting to find Luna gazing at the Crowned Dreamer through the massive telescope. But the only ones out here are June and that awful alchemist, Anklin, who reeks of days-old corpses. I was raised to maintain straight posture whenever I’m in the presence of people I should respect, but I relax my shoulders now because I wouldn’t move a muscle if Anklin or June fell over the railing. Luna swears June is a miracle, but I believe she’s the end of everything we know. Still not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

  “Good evening,” Anklin says to me as he studies June.

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” I say. “Would you, June?”

  June is still as a mannequin. She doesn’t answer, of course. She never speaks. Luna is probably the only one who has ever heard her voice. She’s short like the first girl I kissed and has the same dead-eyed stare as the first boy I admitted having a crush on. It’s chilly tonight, especially way up here, but June isn’t shivering, even with all the goose bumps running along her white arms. None of the Blood Casters are natural, but June is the strangest of all. Maybe she’ll be the one tasked with taking out the Senator before November.

  “Ness,” a deep voice says from behind me, with a hint of a hiss.

  Stanton is as stealthy as the basilisk he personally hunted to steal its blood. Well, stealthier since he beat it. Before his days of oily blond hair, yellow eclipse eyes that narrow like a serpent’s, and dark green veins glowing beneath his white skin like poison, he charmed tons of people into following him home so he could kill them. A little harder these days.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  Between his muscles, his powers, and his past, I try to stay on his good side.

  “Luna wants to see you in her quarters,” Stanton says.

  I’m quick, because you don’t keep Luna waiting.

  The room is dim, and the glowing tablet lights up Luna’s features—tired green eyes, wrinkled moon-white skin, long silver hair. “I am designing new life from which we all stand to benefit, but that’s only if I live,” she says. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  One day I better be able to serve myself instead of others.

  “I want the boy from the train.”

  I tense up. Has she had me followed? I’m the one tasked with following her targets.

  “You understand you were being recorded, yes?” Luna flips her tablet toward me, and there’s a video of Orton’s fight.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “I don’t care if there are eyes on you as long as you are aware of them. It would be a great loss should you become exposed. . . .” Luna coughs violently and wipes her lip with a silk handkerchief.

  “No one will ever know who I am,” I say.

  Fusing someone with shifter blood is complex, and she worked extra hard to make sure I didn’t lose myself to the powers—or die—but if I want to live past the average curtain call of a Caster, I have to step up my game.

  Everything about this objective is the oddest coincidence considering I’m in the business of never being seen as the same person more than once. I’m uneasy running into the same stranger twice in a gigantic city. But all that matters now is finding and delivering him to Luna to save my own neck.

  Twelve

  Fire-Wing

  EMIL

  Ten minutes into my journey, I ignore everyone’s calls and speed up before they figure out what I’m up to. I’ll reach out later when I’m somewhere safe. I round the corner to my building and rush up the steps. I bump into my fifteen-year-old neighbor and knock the trash bag out of her hand.

  “Watch it, you—” Her eyes widen.

  “Sorry,” I say, picking up her trash bag.

  “Hi.” That’s a first. “I need a picture with you!”

  “I have to go, sorry.”

  Everyone thinks my life is so damn cool right now. They don’t have to live it.

  I’m nervous when I enter the apartment. Whenever someone finds out they’re special in movies, they return home and find upturned furniture, scattered papers, and broken glass. But all is good up in here. I’m the only piece that feels out of place. I grab a duffel bag and resist throwing any mementos inside, just clothes. I cast one last look at the bedroom where I grew up and wonder if anywhere else will ever feel like home again. I fight back tears and leave my bedroom before I talk myself into staying and endangering everyone.

  The door opens, and I freeze, expecting the worst. Brighton walks in, panting, and locks the door behind him.

  “You ran,” Brighton says, setting down his backpack.

  “You left Ma and Prudencia?”

  “To rent a death-trap scooter and chase you down. Where do you think you’re going?”

  “If enforcers swing through, I can’t be here. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but this phoenix fire business is my mystery to solve, and I can’t risk you getting hurt while I figure it out.”

  Brighton shakes his head. “Too damn bad. Wherever you go, I go. It’s us against the world. The Reys of Light.”

  “You have to protect Ma,” I say. “You’re all she’s going to have left.”

  Someone knocks on the door.

  “Probably the neighbor,” I say.

  “Stay back.” Brighton looks through the peephole.

  I stay put even though I’m the one who can set someone on fire, but fear strikes hard at the possibility of enforcers waiting for me in the hallway for damaging public property and endangering passengers during the brawl.

  “No way,” Brighton says.

  My heart races. I’m about to make a run for it to the fire escape until Brighton smiles.

  “It’s Atlas.”

  “I can hear you talking. Open up, it’s urgent,” Atlas calls from the hallway.

  A Spell Walker is here—this unreal day keeps topping itself.

  Brighton opens up, and Atlas lets himself in. He’s wearing his power-proof vest again and appears incredibly nervous. He looks over Brighton’s shoulder and locks eyes with me. “You already packed a bag. Great. We have to get out of here now,” Atlas says. “People are coming for you.”

  “Go where? Who’s coming?” I ask.

  “Taking you to base.”

  “I’m going with him,” Brighton says.

  “Absolutely not,” Atlas says.

  “Then I’m not going with you.” If the Spell Walkers are offering me refuge, I want protection for my people too. If not, maybe we can all escape to another country where specters aren’t public enemy number one.

  “Do you have powers?” Atlas asks Brighton.


  “No. I would’ve totally helped you the other night if I did,” Brighton says.

  “What?”

  “When you fought off that specter. Remember? I was the one who asked to take a photo with you,” Brighton says, though Atlas cocks his head in confusion. “It’s okay. There was a lot going on, and you meet a lot of people. I’m a huge fan. I loved when you fought off those traffickers and rescued that psychic from her father. I have your Funko Pop and—”

  “Stay here and play with your toys,” Atlas says. “Emil, come with me. Leave your brother out of this.”

  I stare at Brighton. It’s his call if he wants to follow me or not. Brighton holds out his fist, and I do the same, fist-bumping and whistling. We stand together.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Atlas says. “There’s no time to pack. Let’s go.” He rushes out the apartment, immediately returning and locking the door behind him. “Blood Caster is outside. Is there another exit?”

  “Blood Caster?”

  “Another exit! Come on!”

  “Fire escape.”

  I lead the way as the front door flies off its hinges and in walks Atlas. Again. The Atlases stare at each other. The new one is wearing a solid black T-shirt underneath his power-proof vest, and a scar peeks out of his sleeve. The shadows under his eyes are darker than I remember.

  The new Atlas stares at the other. “What the hell?”

  “That’s an imposter,” the first says. “Probably has shifter blood.”

  “That’s you and you know it!” The new Atlas stares at his twin. “You got my freckles all wrong. Not enough on the forehead and none on the neck.” He smiles. “You also can’t do this.” He lifts his hand, and a funnel of high-pressured wind blasts into the first Atlas’s chest, flipping him over the couch. “Come with me,” he says to us.

  There’s a grunt from behind the couch and up comes someone else—a boy whose face and body keep stretching and shrinking and changing skin tones. The Spell Walker gear fades in a dull gray light, replaced with a basic tee and jeans. In seconds the shape-shifter has a new face—still pale but longer, with a crooked nose and one eye that’s twice as large as the other. I don’t know if this is who he is or another impersonation, but my stomach tightens as he withdraws a wand from his waistband and shoots a black light at Atlas.