by Laura Winter
She didn’t make it to the door before it flung open and Nate ran in. He dropped to the floor on the other side of me as Glitch moved me into Nate’s arms.
Clara, just focus on me. Don’t listen to anything but my voice.
Nate gathered me in his arms as he pulled my pain away. I hated not being in control of what was happening to me. I opened my eyes to see Luci staring in fear as Glitch tried to push her out of the bathroom, worried she might get hurt. Jackson watched from just outside the door, his thoughts spinning around and echoing the word ‘dangerous’ throughout my head.
I shoved my face back into Nate’s chest and let his heartbeat pound through my forehead. My breath kept catching as Nate ran his hand over my head and cheek.
It’s okay. Just keep breathing. Match my breath and keep counting my heart. I’ve got you now.
The pain was gone, but I didn’t want to leave Nate’s arms. Everyone had seen how weak I was; how easy it was to send me into a destructive explosion of power. I was dangerous, and I was out of control. The Cold Soul outbursts would haunt me forever.
Nate leaned his head down to whisper in my ear. “This is not going to be forever. You have to keep focusing on the things you’ve gotten through to get to this point. You faced the clearing again and got through it. What’s happening right now is not your fault.”
As soon as he said the last sentence, I felt his face lift off my head.
“You,” Nate growled, his voice full of hate. I opened my eyes to see Jackson still standing in the doorway and Glitch guarding Luci protectively. Nate leaned me up against the wall and jumped up, shouting. “You did this to her!”
He dove at Jackson who took a step back, but it wasn’t needed. Glitch launched forward and stopped Nate, holding him back before he could make it out the door.
“Nate, stop,” Glitch grunted against Nate’s weight, continuing to push him back. “Clara doesn’t need this from you right now.” Glitch struggled to keep Nate away before finally grabbing the neck of Nate’s shirt and holding him in front of his face. “You take care of your fiancée. I’ll take care of Jackson.”
Nate seemed to listen as Glitch loosened his grip. Glitch swung around to face Jackson but froze as we all watched Luci swing a right hook, connecting with Jackson’s cheek in a loud crack. He dropped to the ground, groaning.
“That’s for messing with my best friend,” Luci said, kicking him before turning around to face the bathroom. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
Luci was still flexing her fingers as Nate bent down to pick me up. He held up a lot of my weight and grunted as he lifted me off the ground. I was trying to help, but my legs were still weak. Glitch ducked under my other arm and helped me walk out as Luci led the way.
None of us knew where we were going, but we just kept walking around the edges and following the hallways until we finally found stairs that led to a hatch in the ground. Glitch let go of me as he and Luci pushed against the doors, finally shoving them open and sending dirt and old leaves showering down at our feet. Daylight spilled in from the opening and blinded us.
We walked out of the cellar-looking exit built into a small hill. It had been covered up by old sticks and mud to keep it hidden from sight. Nate and Glitch collapsed to the ground, out of breath from carrying me so far. I was starting to get my strength back, and I knew I was going to regret using my powers for something so stupid, but I did it anyway. I wound back and punched forward, splintering the trees around the hill as it caved in around the opening we had just escaped from. I dropped onto my back as the rest of the hill crumbled and settled into a messy mound of wood and dirt.
“Nice touch,” Nate said, letting out a breath as he dropped his head back down to the ground next to me. The three of us stared up at the sky until Luci finally stuck her head into our sight.
“I’ve stopped freaking out now. Can someone tell me what’s going to happen to me?”
20
Nate
Luci seemed to be taking things better, even though she was disappointed we didn’t have any answers about what powers she might have, or if she would have them at all. We knew a power source could also not affect a person, so it was possible she didn’t get any. Glitch was going to keep an eye on her just in case. I was happy their relationship seemed to survive this massive revelation. I definitely hadn’t handled it as well as Luci had.
Glitch helped me get Clara into the passenger seat and I moved around to start the car. Luci tapped on Clara’s window, but Clara couldn’t find the controls herself. I lowered her window from my side.
“Clara?” Luci frowned. “I’m really sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have been so rude to you. I should have trusted you and given you the chance to explain. You’ve been so nice to me and you didn’t deserve that from me.”
Clara reached up and held Luci’s hand. “Hey, can you remind me to tell Luci I’m not mad at her?”
We all held in a laugh as Clara leaned her seat back. I wish she didn’t have outbursts, or concussions, but sometimes it was really funny when she was delirious.
“Also,” Clara continued, “I’m going to have her teach me how to punch. That was badass.” She rolled over in the seat and promptly fell asleep. I reached across her and buckled her seatbelt.
“I’ll meet you guys at House. Give us a head start so I can explain this to Ellie and my parents.”
I rolled up the window as Luci turned to Glitch, confused. Explaining why we referred to Clara’s house as a person would be an interesting conversation. I had a feeling House would welcome Luci faster than he had welcomed me.
I parked in front of House and went to scoop Clara out of her seat. She groaned and rolled into my arms, but I wasn’t going to be able to get her out of the car door without hitting her against the frame a million times. I tightened my grip and created a shadow instead, pulling her with me and into House. Ellie and my parents were sitting in the living room. They watched my shadow sliding on the ground and jumped up to chase us. I slid out in Clara’s room and set her down on the bed.
“Where the hell have you been?” Ellie was the first into the bedroom as her eyes locked on Clara in bed. Her face went pale. “What happened to her?” She ran forward and sat on the edge of the bed, running her hand over Clara’s cheek. My parents were close behind, sliding in the doorway to find us.
“We ran into some people with powers,” I said, keeping an eye on Clara as she shifted and pressed her face harder into the pillow. “Some guy named Jackson is running another Complex. He thought Clara was the Cold Soul and they did something to dampen her powers. She got sick and had a mini outburst when they started flooding back. I think she’s just tired, but she also has a concussion.”
“Dampen her powers?” Ellie asked, looking up at me as she slid her fingers around Clara’s hand. She flinched for a moment, probably using her powers to help Clara heal.
“Some guy was able to block them for a while. On top of that, they had this metal cuff that kept all of us from using our powers,” I replied, pulling the metal band out of my pocket. I handed it to my mom. It was probably best to keep it away from the people with powers.
“Good thing Finnley replicated the library before she ran away. We’ll be able to look something up.” My mom didn’t really think twice about her selection of words, but the rest of us hesitated and looked at Clara. She didn’t shift.
“It gets more complicated,” I said, shifting in my stance. “Luci came in contact with a power source. We don’t know if she got any powers from it, but she and Glitch are on their way. Try not to freak her out, because she’s handling this as well as she can. We owe it to Glitch to not drive her away.”
My mom handed the cuff to my dad who headed out toward the library. They had been busy cataloging the shelves for the last few months to help make their research a little easier, so hopefully he’d be able to find some answers for us.
“I’ll help with Luci,” my mom said, keeping her eyes on me as she walked over
to sit next to Ellie. “Any idea which power source she came in contact with?”
I shook my head. “No. All I know is that it was yellow. I only saw it for a minute before those guys knocked us out. They must have been protecting themselves from powers because Clara didn’t hear them approaching.”
“Interesting,” Ellie whispered, looking back down at Clara. The front door opened as Glitch was in the middle of explaining House to Luci.
“Come on,” my mom said, standing up to guide me out of the bedroom. “Clara will be fine.”
Luci was standing just inside the front door, her mouth hanging open as she looked around.
“Hi Mrs. Beckett,” Glitch said, looking exhausted.
“Wait,” Luci hesitated, looking at my mom. “You used to run the same kind of place as Jackson?”
“From what I can gather, we ran ours a little more smoothly. And we weren’t psycho,” she replied. I shot her a look and she corrected herself. “Okay, everyone but Richard.”
Luci’s mind was spinning as she tried to keep everything straight. “I’m getting there, slowly. Richard is Clara’s dad, right?”
“Yeah. Best to avoid that subject around Clara.” I went to sit on the couch. Exhaustion was starting to hit me too.
“And before she was Clara, her name was Finnley. She had the Cold Soul in her when she was a baby, lost her memory just before she came to school, and then you had to defeat your evil twins with black blood.” Luci came over and dropped down to the couch. “It’s really weird seeing her with blue blood.”
“I have it too,” I said, pulling off my key. Luci gasped as the scar appeared on my arm. She didn’t even notice my eyes until I started talking again. “We share the Blue Soul power. Clara and I together are called the Blue Star because her supernova explosions and my black hole counteract each other. That’s how we trapped the Cold Soul in the end, creating a Blue Star cage that’s constantly exploding and imploding. We complement each other.”
Luci slid into the back of the couch. “Glitch can teleport, you can travel through black holes, and Clara has telekinesis.” She sounded overwhelmed again.
“And Clara can read minds,” Glitch added, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table which was suddenly full of food. I’m guessing Clara was starting to wake up if House was preparing for her.
“Well, that’s not embarrassing or anything,” Luci groaned. “And no one knows what’s going to happen to me?”
“We aren’t sure,” my mom chimed in. “If you could tell me anything you can about what you feel, anything that might be different, we could try to narrow it down. Even if something seems inconsequential, noting any change could put us closer to figuring that out.”
“Jackson said he was tracking that yellow source I touched. Something about the signature changing that made it difficult to find? I don’t know if that means anything,” Luci said, shaking her head. “I really have no idea what I’m feeling. I told Clara I felt funny when I woke up in the room, but I can’t pinpoint what exactly felt off. And after walking in here, I suddenly feel exhausted again. That’s about all I can tell you. I think I’m just tired.”
Glitch took a bite of donut. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
Clara walked in with her arms folded, Ellie following close behind. “Mom, I’m fine. Nate, tell her I’m fine.” Clara looked at me, pleading. I hate being babied. Please make it stop.
It wasn’t her fault, but I could see the embarrassment on her face. She hated when she couldn’t control her powers, and it was clear she felt guilty even though the outburst wasn’t her fault, but it didn’t matter. She hated being seen as weak.
“If you eat something, I’ll believe that you’re fine,” I said, ignoring that she rolled her eyes at me.
She walked over and took the donut out of Glitch’s hand, shoving it in her mouth. “See, I’m fine,” she said, spitting pieces out of her mouth.
“Yup. That’s the girl I’m going to marry,” I said, laughing.
Luci looked at all of us like we were crazy. “You know, you guys handle these situations in really weird ways.”
21
Clara
Glitch, Luci, Nate, and I were still in the library well after Angie and Tom had gone home. My mom had gone to bed an hour ago… no, two hours. Glitch was leaning back against the bookshelf across the way, fast asleep. Luci shifted slightly and slid her feet out from under her, laying her head on Glitch’s lap to get more comfortable.
Nate had been reading next to me as we sat on the ground, leaning against the bookshelf, but it was clear he wasn’t conscious anymore. His head was resting on my shoulder as his breathing got heavier. I smiled to myself and went back to reading, turning the pages quietly.
It felt oddly satisfying to be researching things like I had once done when I didn’t know who I was. What was still strange, though, was seeing my notes on the pages of some books but not remembering when I wrote them. Mostly the scribbles were just referencing things I was studying for the Trials, but every once in a while, the words would run off in tangents. I had to remember that at the time, I had been slowly going insane with the Cold Soul voices in my head.
I picked up another book and opened the front cover to find more of my handwriting. It looked like I was transcribing a one-sided argument. I was probably responding to the Cold Soul voices that were fighting for space in my head. The more I kept reading it, the more I thought I might have been on to something.
I was arguing with the Cold Soul about how to find new power sources. From what I could understand, the Cold Soul was just trying to keep me focused on itself, but I believed there were more power sources than the ones at The Complex. Mostly I was trying to reason that I would be able to counteract the voices in my head somehow. To me, it seemed too convenient that The Complex thought they were the only ones with powers, but I thought I could find a way to track the different energy signatures to find more sources. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was trying to find a way to track Nate’s power.
Damn, I knew Finnley was brilliant, but this was beyond revolutionary. She was trying to find a way to do what Jackson had done. He had said he was tracking the energy of that yellow source when he came across ours. What if there was a way to find out what power Luci had based on those energy signatures? That’s how Jackson knew one of us had the Cold Soul power.
I kept flipping through the pages, digging through my notes that were scribbled between lines and margins. Finnley had been researching and theorizing how to predict powers, but the notes completely contradicted everything that was printed in the book. She was challenging the idea that power sources gave people specific abilities. Finnley theorized that the power sources only contained energy, but they brought out the true nature of a person in the form of abilities.
The poem about myself and Nate started to make more sense. Maybe it was different now, knowing that we had been born with our powers, but Finnley believed she was cold, not knowing it was the Cold Soul in her. Her feisty personality explained the telekinesis, or in her understanding, the destructive outbursts. She also didn’t really care how other people saw her, so maybe it was a cosmic joke that I was also given mind reading abilities.
Nate had been the darkness because he could swallow the voices and pull away our pain. He always wanted to be let in so he could help. My mom was a kind and caring person, so she was able to heal. And that’s why Finnley was so afraid Richard’s power. He could change the weather because his nature was demanding and controlling. The Ruby amplified that when he found that source.
I looked over at Glitch and Luci, still sleeping. Glitch could teleport, but I didn’t really know what nature that reflected. Maybe his boldness and jittery personality? So what could Luci’s be? I thought back to every clue I could think of that Luci had mentioned before.
When she woke up in that room with me, she said she felt funny. There wasn’t anything in that dark room besides us. She had punched Jackson as a protective measure,
but I don’t think she was any stronger than she had been before. Then, when we finally got out of that Imperium place, she had gotten her energy back. But when she came into House later, she mentioned she felt tired again. What was the common denominator in all of that?
I had a theory, but I couldn’t test it in the middle of the night. I leaned over and kissed the top of Nate’s head as he started to stir.
I’m awake. I’m reading. I was just… resting my eyes for a second. He groaned as he sat up, rubbing the back of his neck.
It’s late. Let’s get Glitch and Luci to my room. We can go to the treehouse since House is out of beds.
Glitch opened his eyes as Nate and I got up. I went over and scooped Luci up in my arms, carrying her into my room. She stayed fast asleep the entire time, even as I set her down in bed. I felt bad, but it had been a really long day for her and she needed the sleep. Glitch slid in next to her as Nate carried me in the shadows to our treehouse.
