The Alpha Drive

by Kristen Martin

  Unfortunately, she had no such luck. Emery tried to sneak in as quietly as she could, but much to her dismay, Rhea was wide awake in her bed. As soon as the door opened, her roommate sat straight up and gave her a wicked smile.

  Emery put her hand up, even though she knew it wouldn’t keep Rhea from asking questions.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Rhea teased, her eyes twinkling. “I assume you slept well?”

  “Don’t patronize me. And yes, I did sleep well.”

  Rhea rolled her eyes. “Not that I should even have to ask, but where exactly did you sleep last night?” She fidgeted with her hair, unable to sit still.

  Emery hesitated. Lying crossed her mind, but any excuse she came up with would be met with doubt and suspicion. She couldn’t say that she’d stayed at Anthony’s because of the massive blowout Rhea had witnessed, and she wouldn’t have stayed anywhere else because Rhea was basically her only friend at Darden. “I slept at Warren’s,” she answered as politically as she could, “but nothing happened.”

  Rhea cocked her head. “You’re telling me that you slept in a bed with a gorgeous guy and nothing happened? I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “First of all, I didn’t sleep in bed with him. I was in the bed and he was on the couch,” Emery responded, trying not to let her agitation get the best of her. “Nothing happened.”

  “Well, sleeping over at a guy’s place who isn’t your boyfriend while you still technically have a boyfriend isn’t exactly innocent,” Rhea pointed out as she hopped down from her bed. “Some people might even consider that cheating.” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to tell Anthony?”

  “And add fuel to the fire? Of course not.”

  “No need to get defensive,” Rhea muttered.

  Emery glared at her roommate, wishing that she’d just let it go and stop talking.

  An awkward silence filled the room.

  “Alright, then. Enough about that. Do you want to go shopping this afternoon?” Rhea asked in an effort to lighten the mood.

  “No,” Emery said, her voice flat. “I have some homework and studying I need to catch up on. I think I’m just going to head to the library.”

  Okay, so that wasn’t entirely true. Spending her Saturday studying and doing homework was what she should have been doing, but Emery’s next round of training was in a couple of hours.

  “Oh,” Rhea said with a hint of disappointment. “I guess I’ll see you later then.”

  Emery grabbed a change of clothes from her closet and headed toward the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She turned on the faucet and stepped into the shower, trying to clear her mind as the water trickled onto her skin. If only it could wash all of my lies away. It was becoming harder and harder to recognize herself. The real Emery wouldn’t betray her boyfriend. And the real Emery certainly wouldn’t lie to her friends and family. Who am I becoming?

  After washing the conditioner out of her hair, Emery turned off the faucet and reached around the curtain for her towel. Little droplets of water dripped steadily from her elbows as she stepped onto the bathroom mat. She pressed her ear against the door, trying to make out any noise that would signal whether or not Rhea was still in the room. After a few seconds of silence on the other side, Emery opened the door, cautiously poking her head around the edge. Rhea was nowhere in sight.

  One less confrontation to deal with.

  Emery trekked toward the library, realizing it had been a couple of months since she’d spoken to her best friend. She pulled up Riley’s contact information, a picture of a blonde girl with stunning, sapphire eyes staring back at her. If only Riley would transfer to Darden.

  Her call was answered in two rings.

  “Em, there you are! I was wondering when you were going to call. It’s been way too long. How are you?”

  Emery smiled. Her best friend’s voice immediately reminded her of home. “It’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve been meaning to call you, but—” she paused, shaking her head. “Well, there is no excuse. I should have called a while ago.”

  “Pumpkin, don’t worry about it. We’re all busy,” Riley reassured.

  Emery laughed. “Okay, good. How have you been?”

  “I’ve been great, but really, enough with the pleasantries! I want details. So,” she paused for dramatic effect, “tell me about this dreadful roommate of yours.”

  Emery laughed. That was Riley—always blunt and straight to the point. It was just one of the many things she loved about her best friend.

  “Dreadful? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, please. I’ve seen the photos of you two online. She seems . . . well, not like us. I’m actually surprised you two hang out so much. You seem like polar opposites.”

  Emery could have sworn she heard a dash of envy in Riley’s voice. “Actually, Rhea’s not that bad,” she said, preparing to eat her words. “I think you might like her.”

  “Uh huh . . . right. Just be careful,” Riley warned. “I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her.”

  It was typical of Riley to be forthcoming, but it wasn’t like her to attack someone she’d never met. Emery knew that her best friend wasn’t the jealous type, but maybe their infrequent communication over the past couple of months had hit a soft spot. She couldn’t risk having her best friend freak out on her, especially during a time like this. Riley was her support system, her rock.

  They talked for ten more minutes. Emery was even able to mention her “new lifestyle” without worrying that Riley would take it literally. Indeed, she had a new lifestyle as a participant in The Alpha Drive, but adjusting to a new school also conveniently fell under that category.

  Near the end of the conversation, Riley offered two pieces of advice. The first was to end things with Anthony. Emery knew this was coming since Riley had witnessed their downhill spiral over the past year. The second was to make more friends and slowly push Rhea out of her social circle. While Emery didn’t necessarily agree with these ideas, she pretended to, just to appease Riley.

  As she hung up the phone before her best friend could interject any additional thoughts, Emery realized she’d been walking aimlessly in front of the library. It wasn’t like she’d planned on doing any homework or studying—she’d just wanted to get away from Rhea’s judgements. Her boyfriend constantly judged her and now her roommate and only friend at Darden judged her.

  Great.

  Her thoughts were interrupted as her phone pinged with a reminder. I’m supposed to be somewhere.

  Emery looked down at her watch, realizing that her next round of training started in exactly five minutes. She dashed back toward Rosemary Hall—almost running into fellow students along the way—through the deserted lobby and over to the elevator doors.

  Once inside the FCW’s common room, Emery threw on her training clothes, which were, not surprisingly, folded into a neat, orderly pile, and double-checked the holoschedule for room details. It read ignis.

  As if I haven’t played with fire enough the past couple of days.

  Emery followed Theo down the corridor, palms sweating. She entered the ignis room with caution, half expecting the room to be on fire the minute she set foot inside, but it was pitch black. Giving her eyes a second to adjust, she walked further into the room. A couple of minutes passed as she stood in the stillness, her loud gulps the only thing audible in the eerie silence.

  After five more minutes of waiting, she figured that her training must have been cancelled or rescheduled. Maybe Theo had brought her to the wrong room. She turned toward the door to leave, but there was one small problem.

  The door was gone.

  Suddenly the floor beneath her began to tremble, as if a volcano were about to erupt. Her knees buckled as the floor began to split, creating a deep crevice in the landscape. Emery stumbled backwards as fiery red and orange flames exploded from the crack, a piece of ash landing next to her shoe. She looked around for something to climb, her eye
s locking on a large piece of concrete that jutted up from the ground.

  Emery darted toward the formation, hopping over the cracks and molten ashes along the way. She pulled herself up onto the concrete, her hands burning from the intense heat. A cough tickled her throat as a heavy cloud of smoke formed in her chest. Just as she was about to pass out from the fumes, she heard a familiar voice screaming in distress.

  Riley’s voice.

  Panicked, Emery peered over the edge, watching as her best friend was eaten alive by flames. The pit was deep, a never-ending black abyss.

  “Put her out of her misery,” a voice boomed from overhead.

  Without thinking, Emery dove headfirst toward Riley. She watched as the flames danced on her clothes, expecting third-degree burns to sear through the fabric on her arms and legs. It was then she remembered that her clothes were flame retardant. Newfound adrenaline coursed through her veins. “Climb onto my back!”

  Riley reached out, her consciousness wavering, and Emery grabbed her hand, pulling her best friend’s body onto her back. Riley cried out in pain as the fire burned through her flesh, her fingers melting into one other. Emery scaled the formation, her fingers latching onto the crevices in the rock. She clenched her teeth through the heat until she finally reached the top. Lugging herself and Riley up over the edge, she gently placed what was left of her burnt, decrepit friend on the ground. Smoke lifted from Riley’s body, her skinless face frozen in terror.

  Riley was dead. Her best friend was dead.

  Unable to control herself, Emery wept hysterically. First her mother, now her best friend. What was the point of this training? How was killing off her mother and best friend training her to defeat 7S?

  Between coughs and sobs, Emery noticed something odd. Riley’s right hand was clenched into a fist, just like her mother’s had been. There was hardly any skin left on Riley’s hands, so she gently pushed her deformed fingers back to reveal another capsule.

  Except this one wasn’t orange. It was green.

  Before she could analyze any further, her ears began to ring and her vision grew fuzzy. Emery fought to keep her eyes open, but finally succumbed, the image of her dead friend vivid against her eyelids.

  18

  An unfamiliar room surrounded her. Emery lifted her head and gazed groggily at her surroundings, the sound of Theo’s voice echoing in the distance. She laid her head back down and blinked rapidly, trying to restore her vision. Footsteps approached the table, and a large head appeared above her.

  “You’re awake,” Theo observed, looking her up and down. “And your wounds have healed nicely. In record time, I might add.”

  Emery lifted her arms in the air, trying to recall exactly what had happened. It had been hot. There had been fire. And . . .

  “Riley!” she shrieked, her body shooting straight up from the table. She began to shake, jolted by the sudden memory.

  “Riley is fine,” Theo soothed as he helped her lay back down. “It wasn’t real. Your chip was programmed to make you see her.”

  “Wait . . . what?”

  “It wasn’t real.”

  Emery stared at him with unforgiving eyes. “Your whole organization . . . they’re monsters. What kind of cruel training is this?”

  Theo turned away from her and began pacing back and forth across the room. “Training has to be physical, mental, and emotional. We have to test your limits. Push you to see how far you can go. Like I said, we don’t know what 7S will have in store for us once we deploy our forces.”

  “But someone told me to kill her . . . to . . . to put her out of her misery,” Emery stammered as the gut-wrenching image of Riley’s burnt body resurfaced.

  “It was a simulation. We wanted to see what you would choose.”

  Emery gulped. “Did I fail?”

  “On the contrary, you passed with flying colors.” Theo tipped his fedora at her. “Well done.”

  Emery slowly brought herself up to a sitting position, gently placing her feet over the edge of the table. “My hair and my face . . . they were burnt to a crisp,” she recalled. “Any part of my body that wasn’t covered by the flame retardant fabric was completely deformed.”

  “Sanaré fixed all of that.” Theo pointed to the empty syringe sitting on the counter, checking his watch at the same time. “Well, it’s getting late and I’m sure you’re exhausted. I’ll let you get your rest.” He grinned. “I’ll see you at your next training. Good job today.”

  “Wait. That’s it?”

  “You’re not the only participant, Emery. I have others who require my assistance.”

  Before she could say another word, Theo was halfway out the door.

  After thirty more minutes of much needed recovery, Emery regained her strength. She stormed back to the common room, wanting nothing more than to rip off her training clothes and destroy them. She tossed her overshirt onto the table, covering the holodevice that had revealed her training schedule just hours earlier.

  “Hello?” a voice echoed from under her shirt. “Is anyone there?”

  Confused, she quickly swiped her shirt from the table and bent down so she was eye-level with the device. There was no image, just sound. She paused before answering. “Who is this?”

  “Who are you?” the voice countered.

  “This is Emery. Emery Parker.”

  “Really? The Emery Parker?”

  Emery pushed the device with her index finger, wondering if maybe the sanaré was causing her to hallucinate. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “It really is my lucky day. Hold on just a second.”

  There was a brief pause followed by a bunch of short beeps, as if a madman were furiously punching numbers on a phone. A green light on the holodevice blinked and Emery watched incredulously as a hologram of a young guy, about her age, appeared.

  “Emery Parker, I have waited for what seems like years to meet you.” He grinned, shaking his wavy, brown hair out of his eyes. “I’m Torin Porter.”

  The name didn’t ring a bell. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  “No, but you’re about to.” He cleared his throat. “I was messing around, hacking into things like I normally do, when one day, I finally cracked the code to access your world’s mainframe. I’ve watched everything that’s been going on ever since.”

  Emery brought her face closer to the hologram, lowering her voice to a whisper. “What do you mean my world?”

  Torin nodded. “Your world. Dormance.”

  Okay, so he knows about Dormance. “What exactly have you been watching?” she questioned, her heart racing. “Are you a member of the Seventh Sanctum?”

  “It’s not what you think, Emery,” he responded, seeing the fear in her eyes. “I need to show you something. Do you trust me?”

  She hesitated before answering. She could run and tell Theo, but what good would that do? He’d just put her through hell, forcing her to save her best friend from a scalding, fiery death in a training simulation.

  Screw him.

  Emery met Torin’s gaze. Even through the hologram, she could tell his eyes were pleading, and although she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, she trusted him. Sort of. She grazed the back of her neck, remembering the microchip. “I want to, but I can’t. They’ll know.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he coaxed. “I manipulated the status of your chip before we started talking. The FCW will think you’re asleep in your dorm room. They don’t monitor you while you’re sleeping,” he assured, grinning mischievously.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “I’ve been watching, remember?” Torin glanced to his left, his patience wearing thin. “I need you to come with me. Now.”

  Before she could respond, a second hologram appeared, two dime-sized, crystal objects floating in mid-air. Emery reached out to touch them, quickly withdrawing her hand as the objects materialized and descended toward the table. They clinked as they hit the surface.

  “Whoa,” Emery breathed as
she reached out to touch them.

  “I need you to take the crystal dials and place one on the inside of each wrist,” he instructed.

  Emery did as she was told and, just as she was about to ask what they were for, the crystal dials spun clockwise, making one full, 360° rotation before merging with her skin. Amazed, she flipped her forearms upside down and shook them, expecting the dials to fall out, but they remained one with her skin.

  A gust of wind swept through the room, forcing her to close her eyes. Her feet began to tingle as an odd sensation moved slowly up her body, all the way to the top of her head. It was like being poked over and over again with dull pins and needles.

  Suddenly, the tingling stopped. Emery looked down at her arms. Her eyes widened as thousands of particles danced in the open space. I’m a hologram. She wiggled her fingers, amazed at the technology. Even as a hologram, she could smell, feel, and hear like a normal human being.

  When she looked up, she was no longer staring at a holographic image of Torin. There they stood, face to face, his piercing, aquamarine eyes staring into hers.

  Emery shifted her feet back and forth, testing the legitimacy of the ground beneath her. She surveyed the overly tidy room she was standing in, trying to make sense of her surroundings. “What just happened? Where am I?”

  “In my apartment. In the real world. The 7S world.”

  He stepped back, preparing for her reaction. “You’re the holoversion of yourself.”

  Surprisingly, Emery didn’t react. Not even a flinch. She was too preoccupied by the sights outside the double paned window. From what Theo had described, she’d expected to see a dismal world, covered in ash and dust, not a soul in sight.

  This was exactly the opposite of that.