Destination Unknown (Lumen Academy Book 1)

by Penelope Wright

  I do the same. If I mirror his behavior, I can’t trip up, right?

  He points the tip of the knife at me to punctuate his next few words. “I certainly hope you understand that you have bigger problems now. Your life as you knew it is over.”

  His abrasive tone raises my hackles. “My life as I knew it kind of sucked anyway,” I shoot back. “Maybe you’ve spent some time slumming as a gray, maybe not. But you were always just a hyper-color shift away from anyone you wanted to be.” My voice is low and my words slide out between gritted teeth. “The only reason I was so devastated when my relationship fell apart was because I thought it might be a way out of my caste.”

  “When you were a gray, no one wanted you dead.”

  “I’m still a gray, and nobody has ever cared if I lived or I died. Isn’t that basically the same thing?”

  Mars’s eyes narrow. “You had a Canceler after you,” he reiterates, like it’s going to get more meaningful the more times he mentions it.

  “So? Didn’t you say that Cancelers only had a brief window where they could act? I thought that threat was over.”

  “You’re right. That threat is over. But anyone who has the means and the desire to send a Canceler after you would also have access to more traditional methods of ensuring your silence.”

  I gulp, and my throat feels like I imagine Marston’s does every time he dry-swallows a rock.

  “They’ll assume we’ll hide you, but they’re still meticulous. They’ll cover their bases and send someone to your quarters. Do you have other family living there?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “My mother was transferred to Region Two when I was a little girl, after I failed my Lumen placement testing and I was assigned to a factory barracks.”

  “You failed your Lumen testing?”

  “Spectacularly.”

  He chews a bite of his sandwich more thoroughly than necessary, then sets it down on his plate. “Odd. Well, Mona will puzzle it out.”

  “I…I guess I don’t mind seeing Mona again,” I say slowly. “That might be good.”

  “It’s your only real option, so I’m glad you’re at least marginally on board.” Mars pauses for a beat before continuing. “Once I get you safely deposited with Mona, I’ll be off.”

  My stomach flipflops. “Where to?”

  “I’ve been away too long, and this trip has opened up some issues I’m sure I’ll need to deal with. I have to head home.”

  “Home? Don’t you live in Old Seattle?”

  “No.”

  “Where are you from?” I ask.

  “I live on a small island off the coast of Greenland,” he says, “which as you might know, is claimed by no region.”

  I didn’t know that.

  Mars continues, apparently not expecting a response. “I was born in Region One, however, just in case I need to become president someday.”

  I laugh at his joke, but he stares at me with such solemnity in his eyes that I stop abruptly. “Wait, are you serious?” I whisper, still afraid one of the other passengers will overhear.

  He nods and keeps his voice down too. “They split expectant mothers of the Lumen class into thirds. I was part of the group born inside the Old United States. Another third is born somewhere in Old Russia, and the final third comes from Old China. It used to be half and half, fifty percent United States, fifty percent Russia, but when China emerged as a global leader —”

  I push a hand in front of myself, palm out. “I’m sorry, but can we go back to the part where you said you might have to be president someday?”

  “I didn’t say I might have to,” Mars corrects me, “just that I can, should the need arise.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen,” he says.

  “Well, don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve got at least eleven years to wait.” I cross my arms over my chest. “President…jeez.”

  Mars looks at me solemnly. “We have people in numerous positions of power. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “So since apparently I can do what you can do and I was born in America, I could be president too?”

  When Mars presses his lips into a line and the ends curl up I realize it’s the first time he’s smiled since I mentioned John, but his smile is cold, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he says.

  I hate this hot-cold, hot-cold vibe I’m getting from Mars. Why did I have to even mention John? It’s not like he’s relevant in my life anymore. Which is weird but true. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that I woke up this morning despondent over him and now he feels like the faintest, most distant memory. But as soon as I brought him up, Mars went from treating me like…I don’t know, not an equal, but definitely not a lowly gray, to vacillating between acting like he can’t stand me and wanting to be uber-impressive. It’s disconcerting and has me way off balance.

  Before I can think any further on it though, the airplane is bouncing up and down. Oh my god, is this what they call turbulence? My throat squeezes up so tight, if I needed a tracheotomy, they’d have to use a greased toothpick.

  I don’t know what’s going on with this stupid flight or why all of a sudden I feel like the glitter in one of those baton sticks that little Lumen kids shake to taunt lower class children, but I desperately want someone to talk to because I’m losing my mind – but I’m too terrified to move or speak.

  Suddenly, I feel the plane tip forward and lose altitude. We’re going to crash. It’s my worst fear come to life. I bury my face in my hands as tears of terror stream from my eyes and I make incoherent blubbering noises.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Mars asks.

  “The plane’s going down,” I manage to choke out. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “We’re landing,” he drawls, acerbity dripping from each word. “They made an announcement, didn’t you hear it?”

  For some reason, his response makes me cry even harder, probably because now I’m still just as scared, with the bonus emotion of feeling totally stupid.

  Less than a minute later, I hear the most horrible grinding and thumping noise and I shake with renewed terror.

  “That’s the landing gear going down,” Mars says in a bored tone. “You want to hear that.”

  I feel a hundred percent more dumb while simultaneously being flooded with relief and again it’s a terrible mix of opposing emotions that leaves me feeling both limp and anxious at the same time.

  Mere seconds later, we touch down, and at this point, it seems almost anticlimactic, but I still let out a little yelp of terror.

  The plane makes a roaring noise, and Marston might be saying more words, maybe explaining what I’m hearing, but I don’t know or care. I simply press my face into my raised knees, wrap my arms around my calves, and try not to die. I don’t worry at all about what the other passengers think of me anymore. How can anyone just sit here calmly through this?

  I feel Marston’s breath hot against my ear. “Be ready to move.”

  “Is it over?” I ask tremulously. I still can’t open my eyes.

  “This part,” he says under his breath. “Our tickets say we’re changing planes and flying to Region One. We’re not.”

  There’s a dinging noise of a bell, and Mars grips my wrist like a vise. I finally remove my hands from my face and scowl at him. “What was that for?”

  “The tone was a near perfect B flat. I’m surprised you didn’t involuntarily Jump. It was the seatbelt sign turning off.” He reaches down next to my hip and depresses the button to my safety belt. The clasp pops open and my hips are no longer snugged down into my seat. “We want to deboard as soon as this plane is hooked up to the gangway.”

  The instant the words are out of his mouth, there’s a popping sound. The passengers to our left let out twin yelps. Two men in black suits and mirrored sunglasses have materialized in the bulkhead space in front of them.

  “Shit!” Mars bellows. The fingernails of his right hand dig even ti
ghter into the skin of my wrist, and he hauls me out of my seat, drags me painfully across the armrest between us, and wraps his left arm around me.

  “Hang on!” he shouts as bolts of electricity leap from two handheld devices straight at us. I catch a faint whiff of burning hair, and then, nothingness.

  The next thing I know, Mars and I are tangled up in each other’s arms and splashing in a seated position into shallow, ice-cold water.

  I shriek and jump up, my feet, clad in flip flops Mars bought in a shop at the airport, slip around and scrabbling against sharp rocks underfoot. My knees buckle when my flip flop slides all the way off and a particularly pointy rock jabs into the bottom of the same foot I injured just a few days ago, stabbing at the spot where I finally wiggled the last shard of metal out less than a day ago.

  Mars stands and helps pull me to my feet. Water swirls at mid-calf and I look around frantically. We’re very close to a rocky, desolate shore, but there’s nobody else here. The men from the airplane did not follow us…at least, not yet.

  “Who were those guys?” I gasp.

  “I don’t know.” Mars grunts. He reaches down, scoops a handful of rough pebbles from the ground, and brings them, dripping, to his mouth. He pops the whole handful and swallows, wincing.

  “Where are we?” I ask, sloshing through the water until it’s ankle deep, and then up onto dry land.

  “Aleutian Islands,” Mars says, talking around another mouthful of rocks and pebbles. “And I’ve got to recharge. We can’t stay long; they may contact trace us here, if they don’t guess our route outright. Dammit.”

  “I don’t know how to get at my power, but use some of it,” I urge.

  “No way.” Mars shakes his head. “I’m not doing another blind Jump with you, definitely not from an atoll like this. I just need a minute, and another handful of minerals, and I’ll have enough charge to get us all the way back to Mona’s.”

  “What should I do if those guys show up again?”

  “Hope they don’t.” Mars goes right to the waterline again, kneels down, and plunges both hands into the rocky muck at the water’s edge. He brings his cupped hands to his face, and, I assume, consumes more rocks. He’s facing away from me now. He freezes in place, and his hands fall to his sides, where he balances his body with his fingertips on either side of himself. Is he choking?

  “Mars?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer me, just stays right there, fixated on the sloshing water in front of him. Then his hands fly to his throat.

  Oh my god, he’s choking on the rocks – he must be. I know what to do. This happened once at the factory. I rush to him, wrap my arms around his middle from behind, ball my fists together, and yank up, sharp and quick.

  15

  Marston

  The foamy seawater swirls in front of me, but it’s not the regular ebb and flow of the ocean. It’s reflective, like a mirror, and now instead of a couple inches of water, it’s like I have a satellite view of a hurricane with a tight eye and I’m pulled into the vision. My fingertips touch the pebbly shoreline on either side of me and I lean into it because once a vision portal opens up, I must receive the message; I’ve never been able to resist the pull of the vortex. I stare, transfixed, into the tight eye of the lens and I see myself and Heidi. Holy crap. I’m having a vision about the girl directly behind me on the beach.

  I want to rip my eyes away from the porthole to check to make sure she’s still there, that she hasn’t leaped away, but of course I can’t. I’m completely immobilized until the vision is over. I’m at her mercy. I’ve never had a vision of someone I’m with, let alone a person I just met. This is the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me since I had my first vision eight months ago.

  I’m immobilized, but nonetheless, my body tightens. The look on Heidi’s face in the vision portal…the way she’s eyeing me with that suggestive curve of her lips, it looks like the future holds some interesting twists for us. She’s definitely not a mission objective or a wayward gray novitiate in this vision. Her shoulders are bare and her hair curls softly around her delicate collarbones, but I can’t see her body below that. If my vision pans down and anything else comes into view, I’ll look away. I swear I’ll try.

  She pivots her shoulders away from me but keeps her eyes locked on mine, the sexy smile still curled across her lips, transforming each corner of her mouth into a tiny question mark. I watch myself move in with my own lips, looking for answers. Wow, this feels really, really wrong. If it goes any further between us than a kiss, I’m going to have to figure out a way to force stop a vision, even though I have no idea how to.

  But it doesn’t get hotter. Vision-Heidi raises a fist and I see a glint of steel. Vision-me mouths, “No,” but there’s no sound associated with this peek into the future. Heidi doesn’t pause, and I don’t try to evade her as she rears back and plunges her blade deep into my chest. She rips it out and stabs again, slickening the dagger with fresh blood over and over.

  In real life, the vortex swirls shut and turns back into the choppy surface of the ocean. In the scant reflection of the bubbling waves, my own real eyes stare back at me in shock and horror.

  I lean back on my heels and try to slow my breathing.

  What did I just see? That’s a rhetorical question. I know exactly what’s going on here. Suddenly, everything makes a sick, terrible sense. I’ve been trying to rationalize and explain everything weird that’s happened since I got the call from Darius to go rescue the poor, helpless novitiate. It was all a lie. There’s a reason why Heidi was able to “leap” into Watcher Citadel. There’s a reason why she remained “undiscovered” in their midst until it was time to climb into my arms. There’s a reason why we got away.

  She’s a spy, a plant. She faked her own Cancellation. She’s a tool of the enemy. Is she like me, but the opposite? A Watcher who can Jump, with allegiance to her Citadel? I don’t know.

  My mind stumbles around the tangled web that just splayed out in front of me in the reflection of the water. I doubt I’m Heidi’s main target. Why would I be? I’m just her way in. But she definitely assassinates me; I just saw her do it.

  However, forewarned is forearmed. Now that I know who and what she really is, I can change the future. I won’t die by her hand.

  The men on the airplane don’t make sense. Why reveal themselves there? Unless…they were there to protect me! And I leaped away from them. Shit. I’ve got to get away from her.

  I touch my hands to the sides of my neck and search around inside my body for my power. There, the minerals ignite, I fix my coordinates in my mind and I feel that rush and surge of the approaching Jump a split second before thin but strong arms whip around me in a vise grip, and I pull her right into the void with me.

  16

  Heidi

  It’s scary finding myself crouched in the meditation studio, after what happened here last time, and it’s even more frightening when Mona steps around the corner and screams at the sight of us, an indecipherable expression on her face.

  My survival instincts take over and all I can think of it the need for escape. Forgetting all about the Heimlich maneuver, I release Marston abruptly. I rise from my hunched position, whirl around instinctively, and make to dart right back out the door, but Marston grabs my ankle and I fall heavily to the ground. I wrench away from him, but then Mona’s there and she’s gathering me in her arms like my mom used to do when I was a little kid and we still lived together.

  “Mona!” Mars shouts, but she shushes him and strokes my hair.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, Heidi,” she croons. “You’re safe.”

  I breathe in and squeeze my eyes shut. She smells like incense and wintergreen, and my fight or flight reaction dissipates immediately. I allow myself to lean into her embrace. I feel like I’ve needed a hug like this for about six years and I kind of don’t care who’s giving it to me or how scared I am.

  “Mona, step away from her right now,” Marston barks.

  Mona�
�s grip may be gentle, but her voice is strong and accusatory. Luckily, her sharp words aren’t directed at me. “Marston Faulkner, you stand down.” He must not immediately obey because her tone grows even steelier. “That is an order,” she snarls. This time, he must do as she says because her voice shifts from authoritarian to angry. “Why the hell didn’t you call me when you’d secured the situation?”

  I still have my eyes tightly shut, so I can’t read Marston’s facial expression, but I can feel waves of hatred radiating off of him through his tone of voice. “It’s a long story.” What on Earth? Is he still angry at me for having an ex-boyfriend? What is this guy’s problem?

  “You’re aware of the Canceler, I presume?” Mona says.

  I raise my head and peer over Mona’s shoulder in time to see Mars’s eyes pop a little wider open. “Yes, we slipped into the void and sidestepped the attempt,” Mars says, his eyebrows high. He narrows his eyes when they meet mine, though he’s still speaking to Mona. “But how did you know about it?” he asks her.

  “We’ll discuss that later,” Mona growls.

  She finally lets go of me and takes a step back. “Well, well, well,” she says, and her voice is appraising now that she’s gotten over the initial shock of my arrival. “You certainly gave us all a shock, didn’t you?”

  “Um, I think I’m the one who’s most surprised by all this,” I say, my voice trembling just a little bit.

  Marston lets out a strangled sound and I glare at him.

  “Marston,” Mona says, “I need you on damage control. Please wait for me in my office; we’ll talk privately in a moment.”

  A knowing look flashes across Marston’s face and I wonder what secret was encoded in Mona’s words, because he doesn’t argue, even though he looks like he wants to. Turning on his heel, he marches away. He doesn’t say one word to me.