“What? No!” I answered, not sure what he was talking about until I remembered that my aunt had been listening to the police scanner yesterday.
“So you weren’t put in custody by Sweeper droids at the school?” My uncle’s jowls wrinkled back like a hound dog’s when he pressed his lips together into a tight line, waiting for my answer.
I shook my head and made a concerted effort to keep my voice steady. “That was nothing. Lauren Stover tried to start a fight with me in the cafeteria,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “They just wanted to get both our sides of the story.” I nodded casually, hoping my uncle wouldn’t be able to see the holes I was leaving in that explanation.
He gave me a hard look for several seconds. “Alice!” he shouted toward the back door. “You said that girl went to the hospital?”
“Uncle Ray,” I said quickly, my heart jumping into my throat. “We really have to go. Like, right now. Internship follow-ups,” I stammered.
Ray narrowed his eyes at Max. “Mr. Barrett… You still working for that cog in the machine, Burke?”
Max swallowed hard. “Uh, yes, sir.”
“You know he’s just part of the problem, conditioning everyone to be dependent sheep instead of growing their own goods. Selling that cheap, cloned produce. Probably what’s giving everyone The Wasting sickness around here. No damn nutrients!”
I felt compelled to roll my eyes and call out the lunacy of this logic, but that would mean we’d have to stand here under threat of my aunt coming back at any second, not to mention breathing in more of the radioactive sewage she was simmering in the kitchen.
“I think I have some internship leads you’ll approve of, Uncle Ray, but we have to go right now before they’re inundated with the other people who applied,” I babbled.
“Nothing in the valley, I hope,” Ray mumbled. “Nothing by the—”
“OK, bye!” I added before he could say anything else, then grabbed Max’s arm and rushed out the door. Both Max and I sucked in a huge breath and jogged out of the noxious cloud surrounding the house.
“What does she put in that stew?” Max scrubbed his hands over his face as if to wash the smell away.
“It’s never smelled that bad,” I answered. “They’ve been getting creative with food now that my uncle has decided Mr. Burke is part of some big government conspiracy to further oppress the people in The Grind. I tried to tell him prices just go up sometimes.”
Max sighed. “So, what’s with your arm?” he asked, dismissing the other conversation. I rolled up my sleeve to show him as we made our way through the woods back to town.
“It had to be whatever Jen did I guess,” I added. “I just woke up today and the bite mark was gone.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Antibiotics don’t just do that overnight,” Max said, darting glances from left to right as we approached the eye of the forest. “You haven’t seen that guy who tried to sell you the vials again, right?”
“Not since yesterday.” I shook my head. “And you’ve been with me every time I’ve passed through here since then. Lauren had been talking to him just before everything went sideways, though,” I added.
“Are you thinking she took one of the vials?”
“I don’t know. But people don’t just change like that—her arms and legs bent like you said. They’d know what was wrong with her at the hospital, right?”
“If anyone would…” Max nodded, and we made our way to St. Agnes’s before following up with Jen. Whatever we’d maybe learn after talking with Lauren might be something Jen could use to figure out how the bite wound healed so quickly.
It was early enough on a Saturday morning that most of the shops hadn’t opened yet, which meant that most of the people who would otherwise harass us weren’t loitering outside the doorways begging for cash from people walking in and out. I paid more attention now that I knew there had been more Feral attacks within the last few weeks. I tried to stay away from the newsfeeds because they never had anything good to say, but that meant I also was probably taking more risks that I should by walking straight down the middle of the valley in The Grind on my own all the time. I sighed and pushed the thought out of my head. We had other things to deal with right now.
We made it to St. Agnes’s in record time and walked right up to the reception desk. An older woman with a tight, gray bun flashed a big smile as we approached.
“We’re here to see Lauren Stover,” I said, smiling back at the woman. She nodded and tapped the holographic display in front of her. After several scrolling swipes, her brows started to pinch together.
“Stover, you said?”
“Yes,” Max answered. “She was brought in yesterday after a fight at Portland Prep.”
I shot Max a quick side eye, a twinge of guilt pulling across my chest. But Lauren had started the fight by shoving me into the pillar in the cafeteria.
The woman suddenly covered her mouth with her hand, then cleared her throat and looked up at us.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, noticing the sudden chill in the air between us.
“I’m afraid Lauren Stover is no longer here,” she said. “But I’m sorry, that’s all I can tell you if you’re not immediate family members.”
“She went home?” Max asked, sounding as confused as I felt about why that would be a confidential kind of thing.
“I’m sorry,” she continued. “That’s really all I can say.”
We thanked her after another few seconds and went out the way we’d come in.
“Should we go to her house?” I asked Max, since we weren’t far from the school, and if she lived in the same house she’d been in since we were in elementary school, it wasn’t far.
Max narrowed his eyes at me. “And walk up to the door to say what? Hi, I’m Halsey, the one who kicked Lauren’s ass so hard she turned into a grasshopper?”
I laughed and rolled my eyes, but instantly felt guilty about it. I didn’t see Lauren in that state the way Max did, but I imagine it wasn’t painless. “Who do we know who hangs out with her? Is there anyone we can get on the queue?”
Max shook his head. “I guess let’s just walk by her house. Maybe a little sister or a neighbor will be outside and we can just ask as we pass by.”
“Good idea.”
We were in her neighborhood about ten minutes later, and I was momentarily grateful that I lived up on the hill on the other side of the woods. The street was full of trash, and loud, bratty kids were throwing pieces of broken pipes or rocks at each other while screaming at the tops of their lungs. If this was a game, I’d hate to see what fights looked like. No wonder Lauren was the way she was.
“Does she still live in that yellow house?” Max asked as we turned a corner. Several junky cars were parked in front of the house, and a fairly large group of people were going in an out. “Oh shit, is that Brian?” he said, quickly darting behind a tree in the next door neighbor’s yard so we wouldn’t be seen.
“Yeah, and Mr. Warren! Look on the porch,” I said. “I think he’s talking to her mom…”
“She’s crying?” Max asked more than stated, but it was obvious she was crying when she turned to greet someone coming up the porch steps.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said as a chill ran through me.
“Who are you?” an abrupt voice said behind us, which made me nearly jump out of my skin. Max and I both turned around to find a little girl standing indignantly with her hands on her hips, her messy ponytail full of leaves and twigs like she’d just fallen out of a tree or something.
“Do you know Lauren Stover?” Max asked, not missing a beat. The little girl wiped her dirty face with the back of her dirty hand.
“She caught on fire,” she said casually, and all the blood in my veins turned to ice.
“What did you say?” I whispered, only because my voice had completely left me.
“She caught on fire at the hospital yesterday.”
I blinked at the girl. “How? How do
es that happen?”
The little girl shrugged. “Dunno. Her mama said the para-somebodies didn’t check her right before they took her out of the ambulance.”
“What does that mean?” Max asked. “How would she catch on fire?”
The girl shrugged again, this time, annoyed. “Do I look like a para-somebody to you? The oxygen blowing all over from her mask maybe. Like maybe they were smoking or something and blew everything up. Duh.” She rolled her eyes at us like we were the stupidest people she’d ever met, then wiped her nose again with the back of her other dirty hand and yelled at the top of her lungs to the people in Lauren’s front yard. “Hey! Lauren blew up because the para-somebodies were smoking, right?”
“Oh my god,” I gasped as Max and I both took off in the other direction, running like the whole world was about to start chasing us.
Chapter Eight
Max and I were only a few blocks from Jen’s practice before we finally slowed down to catch our breath. Only when we stopped, I wasn’t out of breath.
Max was a sprinter on the school track team, and while running what had to be a quarter of a mile may have been pushing his limits, I couldn’t understand why he was bent over his knees heaving and sucking in air while I wasn’t. From the incredulous look he gave me, neither could he.
“How…?” he gasped, shaking his head at me. “How are you good?”
“I don’t know,” I said, not even remotely winded. “I was just wondering the same thing.”
“You were…ahead of me,” he panted. “Most of the way.”
“I don’t know how,” I said again, confused because not only was I not winded, but I felt like I was just getting started—like that run was about as hard as stretching after first getting out of bed. “We need to talk to Jen and find out what she really gave me.”
Max straightened and gave me a quick nod as we started walking the rest of the way to Raphael’s Tea Shop.
“I guess that’s why the lady at St. Agnes’s wouldn’t tell us anything,“ he said.
“How does someone just catch on fire?” I asked. “We need to talk to Mr. Warren and find out what actually happened.”
“Maybe it’s on the feeds,” he added, and I tapped my temple until I heard the news playing in my ear.
“Filter for Portland Prep,” I said, hoping this would weed out all the regular horror stories that happen in The Grind on a daily basis, including, but not limited to those Feral attacks and Red Fever.
“Well?” Max said impatiently.
“There’s nothing.” I shook my head, then looked at him. “How could there be nothing?”
“Maybe that kid didn’t have everything straight,” he said, clearly scrambling for an explanation. “Let’s just follow up with Jen, and then we can worry about this.”
We walked for another five minutes or so before coming upon Raphael’s Tea Shop again. The front counter was abandoned when we first walked in, but Jen almost immediately poked her head through the curtain and motioned for us to follow her.
“How do you feel today?” she asked, eyeing my arm as we walked down the corridor to her examining room.
“Better than I probably should,” I answered after a beat. We walked into the chrome-covered examining room a few seconds later, and Jen motioned for me to sit on the metal gurney. I did, and she reached for my arm, her eyes darting to mine the instant she saw the bite was gone. Her dark, feathery brows crashed together as she quickly looked at my other arm, then at me.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We were going to ask you the same thing,” Max said with a sigh. “What kind of antibiotics did you give her yesterday?”
“Some jicambi bark enzyme.” Jen shook her head. “It basically supercharges the immune system for a week or so, but it wouldn’t have completely healed the wound like this.”
“Would it supercharge her speed, too?” Max raised an eyebrow at me. “And her lung capacity?”
“Uh, no,” Jen said, now looking even more confused. “OK, what happened?”
“Just what Max said,” I answered. “I woke up this morning, and the bite mark was gone. We had to run from a messed up situation just before we came here, and I was really fast, also, not even a little out of breath. That has to be from the hiccup bark enzyme or whatever.”
“Jicambi bark,” Jen corrected, but then shook her head again. “Well, I don’t have another theory other than it’s because your test results are off the charts. Have you been feeling particularly aggressive lately?”
“What?” I said abruptly. “I mean, I’ve felt a little edgy, but there’s been a lot of stuff going on.”
Jen crossed to the counter and brought back a handheld tablet. She entered a button combination, and a hologram of scrolling data started populating.
“This is your resting oxygen level,” Jen said, pointing to a bar on the graph chart. “And this is a normal resting oxygen level,” she added, pointing to a blue, horizontal line that ran a good inch below the top of the bar.
“Damn, Halls…” Max’s eyes widened. “Your levels are like somebody who’s about to be attacked by a tiger.”
“Or like a tiger who’s about to attack someone.” Jen glanced quickly from Max to me. “Halsey, you’ve heard about Red Fever on the feeds?”
I narrowed my eyes at her because the air in the room suddenly started to feel thick and heavy.
I nodded. “It’s what’s causing the violence outbreaks—the people going Feral,” I finished, stopping just before launching into how my uncle thought it was all just a media overreaction so no one had to talk about the pent up hostility and oppression of people in The Grind.
“Right.” Jen gave me a flat smile. “Well, some of my colleagues and I have been trying to isolate the cause, but we haven’t been able to find anyone with active symptoms who wasn’t already irrationally violent—Feral.” She nodded slowly this time, a resigned conciliatory nod as if to say, you understand, don’t you? In the same moment, two vacant-eyed, very tan men came into the room, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
I got to my feet, but two men shut the door behind them.
“Max, let’s go.” I started walking toward the door, my heart pounding like a hammer in my chest. Jen turned away from me and took a long syringe off the table at our side just as one of the men grabbed Max and the other grabbed me.
“Hey!” Max struggled.
“I only need to run a few more tests, Halsey,” Jen said as the man wrestled me back to the gurney. “I won’t even charge you for the treatment of the bite.”
“Stay away from me!” I shouted. Max kicked a rolling metal table at the man holding onto me, but it just ricocheted off his leg and clattered to the ground.
“Jen, what are you doing!?” he shouted, but Jen didn’t acknowledge him.
“If you struggle, this is going to hurt,” she said, reaching for my sleeve.
“Jenifer Kwan?” a tall woman loudly announced, her dark hair cut in a razor line at her chin. Everyone stopped moving.
“You can’t just come in here and—” Jen started to protest, but two cylindrical Sweeper droids hovered behind the woman and immediately drew laser tracks on Jen and both of the men restraining Max and me.
“Miss Kwan,” the tall woman started. “You’re under arrest for illegally dispensing medical services. Sam here will read you your rights, won’t you, Sam?” She tilted her head toward the Sweeper droid that was currently centering a red guiding laser on Jen’s forehead. A second later, the light pulsed, and Jen fell to the ground.
“Miranda rights uploaded,” the metallic droid next to the woman said, its male voice surprisingly calm. It moved toward Jen and lifted her off the floor in a suspension field, which looked like a blue cocoon of light. She’d be out cold for the time it took them to put her in a cell. I’d seen this go down too may times in The Grind.
“You two go jump in the bay,” the woman said to the men, narrowing fiery green eyes at them. To
my surprise, both men let go of Max and me immediately to follow Jen and the droid floating her out of the room. The other droid stayed with us, but it turned off its laser.
The tension in the room got thicker in new the silence, and I was terrified she was going to arrest us, too, for receiving unauthorized medical treatment.
“Look, nothing happened here,” Max spoke up. “Jen was just getting started. We didn’t break any laws,” he continued. And he was right, as long as he meant we hadn’t broken any today.
“It would make my life much easier if I could just haul you in, but—”
“Run!” I gave Max a quick look, and we both darted out of the room.
“Halsey, stop! You’re on the radar now!” the woman called after us.
A wave of panic ran through me at her words. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she had Sweeper droids listening to her, and she just put Jen in a custody bubble, which meant she was with the police, and there was no way in hell I was going to pay a twenty-year legacy fine, plus whatever else they would charge for the treatment Jen gave me. I’d take my chances in The Grind.
“Go! Go!” Max shouted as we made our way up the winding corridor, through the curtain, and finally, out to the street.
We ran as far as we could in the opposite direction of Raphael’s Tea Shop, but it soon became clear we had no idea where we were running to until we found ourselves in the southern parking lot of Portland Prep. Several cars were parked outside the baseball diamond, and it looked like the coach was hitting fly balls to the outfielders. Max and I leaned against the brick wall of the school. Again, he was winded, but I felt like I had only walked a few steps.
He shook his head at me. “What the hell just happened?” he asked, though the question seemed rhetorical. A million non-rhetorical questions flooded into my mind. What did she mean by saying I was on the radar now? Did they know who I was? And then there was the matter of what crazy biology was currently playing out in my body.
Academy of Magic Collection Page 60
