Two

by LeighAnn Kopans

  “Some Supers have greater atmospheric affect than others, but we all fall into a standard range. We’re only human, after all.”

  “So there’s no one who’s, like, crazy powerful?”

  “Sometimes we’ll see huge disturbances when the sun is really active with flares or there’s increased geomagnetic shift.”

  “I see.” I nod as if I perfectly understand everything he just said. Really, I just want to get to searching.

  Then, mercifully, he asks if it’s okay to leave, since it’s lunchtime.

  How did it get to be lunchtime already?

  I don’t care. I know for sure that Nora and Lia are out there, and with this tool at my fingertips, I’m finally willing to articulate what I knew was true all along. No matter what everyone keeps saying, they wouldn’t be acting so irresponsibly if they were doing okay. Something has to be wrong with one or both of them.

  I shake his hand and thank him for his time and watch him walk out of the echoing dome.

  There’s a pang in my stomach, and I realize I didn’t eat breakfast. I don’t care. The promise of figuring out where the girls are and maybe how to help them is too great for me to stop. The whispers are more intense now, slithering through my brain and vibrating throughout my body. When I fire up the search engine is when they get really intense. I notice the correlation a few searches in — every time a dot lights up on the globe, the words, the tone of the voice in my head become clearer. More urgent and more real.

  What the hell? I shake my head. I have to focus on finding Nora and Lia. I knew there was some way, a better way, than trying to catch news updates and going it alone. For the first time, I feel proud of myself. I confronted Masters. I did this.

  It was the right thing, too. I can’t wait for Merrin’s biotech formula research or for years of Clandestine Services Hub training to start looking.

  I start small. I type “teleportation” into the search bar. Hundreds, maybe thousands of pinpoints of light glow to life, like the most intensely starry night sky you’ve ever seen.

  This many Supers can teleport? Masters was right, if most of the U.S. knew how far-reaching Supers’ abilities were, the public might not be so calm about our existence.

  As I stand amidst the lit points in the dome, each representing a Super. The whispers that were almost too faint to notice build inside my brain, quickly becoming a buzz. I slam my finger down on the button to stop the search, and immediately, they diminish.

  No mistaking it now. I’m definitely hearing things.

  I push the thought back. I can worry about that later. Like when the girls are safe and Merrin’s stopped obsessing over injecting herself with formulas.

  Another search. I input “teleportation” and “super-strength.” Fewer dots, but still over a hundred I’d guess. Their energy spikes and their voices, which surround me in an instant, feel like needles driving into my brain.

  I concentrate on taking deep breaths.

  The third combination I put in — teleportation, super-strength, and super-speed — rains a smattering of pinpoints across the globe. When I check the readout, I can see that the few people using those abilities are outputting them over a few seconds only. There’s a nice wave to the pattern, but nothing insane or erratic. Nothing that would shake walls or make the news. The voices in my head ease up a little bit but seem to work their way deeper into my brain. I grimace. Whatever this is, it’s going to be unpleasant.

  I think back to the news I scanned through on my tabletop this morning. Nothing too out of the ordinary had caught my attention, but what were the isolated incidents? A car crash in Baton Rouge, unexplained cause. No one was hurt, thank God. I move to the adjacent screen, where the official showed me how to roll back and replay the Funnel report, the same way you can with a weather satellite. I turn it back to the time they reported the crash — around 8:15 AM — and set it to replay the feed from there. On the graph, there’s a normal, steady, bright green line of activity. The whispers that skitter through my head recede to something fuzzy, like a ghost of what I had been hearing — hollow and breathy. The line twitches upward just the slightest bit, then just a little bit more. Then, just as the readout line shoots straight upward, the most piercing scream I’ve ever heard rips through my ears and knocks me flat on the floor like a wrecking ball. The sound freezes my muscles and my blood , and for one, two, three agonizing seconds, I’m trapped there, inside my own body, the screeching, piercing wail invading every cell of my being.

  And then, just as quickly as it started, it stops. I stand up, staggering with the lingering throbs of pain ricocheting from my head all the way down my spine. The whispers are still there, but they’re like a balm to my aching brain after what I just heard. Before the readout runs off the screen, I stop it and stare at where it stretches across the screen.

  Right as I’d heard the scream, the energy readout had gone off the chart — literally. Even though it should be impossible with a system this sophisticated, it did — go completely off the charts. And what seemed to me to be three or four agonizing seconds was actually one twentieth of a second, a nearly undetectable blip, before the line jumped back down to normal levels again.

  In my gut, I know exactly what this is, who this is, but I have to do a little more digging around to be sure. My hands tremble as they tap the buttons to zoom in on that particular disturbance. A holo pops out from the dome, projecting the image of a street into the air. Cars zoom past one another in their lanes calmly for a long moment, and then I see it — a ripple of air and flash of color that’s gone again so quickly I might have imagined it. It’s so fast that, when one car veers across the center line of the road and crashes into the side of the other, anyone might think they’re unrelated.

  Except I know that that flash of activity was human-shaped. I know that it caused that accident.

  I try to focus on taking deep breaths to calm the empty, aching feeling in my gut. I play back the feed, slowing it down as much as possible, which isn’t much. Clandestine Services may think they’ve seen everything, but they obviously haven’t been looking for the things that are supposed to be impossible.

  I guess I wasn’t either until a few months ago.

  Voices still buzz in my head, but they’re no longer at the front of my mind. I have to get out of here, somehow talk Masters into doing more.

  Even as I think that, I know he can’t. A sense of utter helplessness washes over me as I command the computer to shut down and start walking out.

  Funnel bids me its standard farewell, and once again, I leave rubber-legged. Outside the elevator, Hub personnel and even a few students speed walk through the hallways, not paying attention to each other. I’m no different.

  I bend my lips close to my cuff. “Kara, is there a computer lab around here?”

  “Yes, Elias.” My cuff lights up with a map of the Hub, where I’m standing, and where the computer lab is. But about three-quarters of the way there, I pause. Do I really want everyone using those computers — which are probably more powerful than the one in my room — to see me looking into earthquakes, car crashes, and break-ins? I don’t know how everyone else here views me, but I do know that my access to the Funnel is based on Masters trusting me and no one hassling him about it.

  I turn and go back to my room. Even though I’m sure the tabletop in there is a tiny, slow, pain in the ass compared to the ones in the lab, I sit in front of it and compile a list — in my memory, not in my cuff — of any weird activity reported on the evening news. Normal news that could have been caused by some small fraction of the huge-powered freakiness of my sisters. I look up the longitude and latitude of each location where it occurred, record it in my head.

  Memorizing stuff has never phased me, and I’m really glad for that at this particular moment. It’s not automatic; I still have to run the lists of numbers over and over in my head as I make my way back down to the Funnel and go through both retina and handprint scans.

  I input the f
irst set of data I memorized. Seattle: a store break-in. One wall reported cracked from top to bottom. Again, the Funnel’s scream rips through my brain.

  Yesterday, in Montreal, residents reported what felt like an earthquake tremor. Again, spiked super activity.

  And the last one, another car crash in D.C. My fingers tremble as I put the date and time into the computer.

  Instead of the scream this time, though, I’m plunged into darkness. Walls take shape around me, patterns of rectangular bricks shaded with soot and debris.

  Then the voices start. Not whispers, not screams, but unmistakably, the voices of my sisters.

  “I know things have been rough, Lia, but you have to hold on, we’re close to the Hub now…”

  “Not…going into…another Hub.”

  The further I walk down the alley, the longer it seems to stretch. Their voices get closer and closer with every step, but I’m not any closer to reaching the end. My head whips from side to side, taking more of my breath away each time it does, searching for someplace to turn, some offshoot where the girls could be hiding. Why can’t I see them? Panic seizes my chest.

  Lia’s breath quickens, and she gasps.

  “Lia. Lia! Leelee!”

  I hold my breath, waiting, hoping. The sound of palm against skin slaps against my ears, reverberating through my skull, and I let it out.

  Finally, Lia speaks again. “I’m so tired.”

  “I know. I know. We’re gonna figure it out.”

  Everything around me starts to crumble. I recognize my dream from last night as the walls turn to dust and skitter away on the breeze. The world is white again, and I’m staring at the energy readout. Which spiked for half a second and then dropped again. Immediately.

  The girls are so high-speed they can’t even keep up with themselves. Their bodies are operating at such hyperdrive that they’ll waste away. The disturbances their powers are causing last for a fraction of a second, but they’re so fast and so far off the charts they’re not registering at all.

  Except me. I can see them. In real time, it seems, right inside my head. As long as the Funnel is amplifying their actions inside my brain.

  And somehow I’ve got to convince someone at CSH to help them.

  FIFTEEN

  I’m a tall guy. When I’m hurrying somewhere, I’m sure I look like a scarecrow or a grasshopper. All disjointed and crazy. I try to keep it in check right now, but seeing as how I can barely control my breathing, how I look when I’m walking is pretty low on my list of concerns.

  Even when I found out Hoffman had taken Merrin’s blood and I knew they’d go after her, I still had her right there in front of me, breathing and okay. My sisters are not okay. Lia is definitely not okay.

  And not even the highest-tech piece of Super location equipment on the planet can find them.

  But I can hear them. I still hear them, curled up at the base of my brain, throbbing there. Desperate. Freaking out, scared. No one to help them, no one to hear them. Except for me.

  I get back to Masters’ office and rush past Amanda, shooting an “I’m sorry” over my shoulder. Merrin would laugh at me for that, I’m pretty sure.

  Where the hell is Merrin?

  I shake off the thought. Leni was right. As long as I know she’s safe, it doesn’t matter. I should probably stop worrying about whether she’s safe, too. None of us may ever be safe again.

  Masters is sitting in his office on the phone and murmurs, “I’m going to call you right back.” As he’s hanging up, he booms, “Looks like you’ve had an exciting first day in the Funnel, Mr. VanDyne…” But when he looks up and sees my face, he stands. “What is it?”

  “I found them,” I say, tapping madly at my cuff to pull up the data I transferred there.

  Masters strides toward me from behind his desk, his face contorted into some expression I don’t understand. Concern? Pity? Shit-this-kid-is-crazy-and-I-just-pushed-the-panic-button?

  I flip my tablet out so he can see the screen and race to bring up the information. He still has that “is he crazy” face on, so I force myself to take a deep breath, filling my lungs, remembering that getting Masters to believe what I saw and heard is the most important thing right now. Too bad my damn hand is shaking so much.

  Words. Saying words would be a good thing. “Those whispers that are always there in the Funnel…” Still the crazy face. Another deep breath. “I narrowed a search down to my sisters’ specific abilities like the tech showed me. I just wanted to see if I could… Anyway, I saw a few things in the news that made me worry about the girls… A car crash, a building break-in. Convenience stores, you know. They have to eat. So I zeroed in on those times.”

  Masters raises his eyebrows. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  I swallow and shake my head. “No, sir. Let me show you.”

  “Can I record this conversation? Just so you don’t have to explain it again and because it’s fresh in your mind.”

  “Whatever you want.” Nothing’s a secret here anyway, and I just want to get through this before I lose the memory of the voices and whispers that snaked desperately through my brain.

  I go through both graphs with Masters and show him how the spike in activity lasted for the barest fraction of a second. I explain the weird slowing down of time when I somehow got zapped into Nora and Lia’s conversation, into their surroundings.

  I’m glad I showed him the graph first, glad I had a straight enough head to remember to put it on the damn tablet, because the whole time I’m telling him about the girls, he just stares at the graph, his brow creeping closer and closer to his eyes as he leans further and further in.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” he says. “This is not enough time for any Super to… Let alone a conversation like that to…” He stands up straight and swipes a handkerchief over his forehead. “Well, clearly your sisters are special.”

  “In a way that’s going to get them killed. Yeah.” The panic is creeping back to the edge of my voice, but I try to remind myself that this man is listening to me, probably in large part because I’m standing here like a sane person instead of climbing the walls like I want to.

  I’ve only cried in front of one person about my sisters — Merrin — and I felt stupid even then. Like I’d lost something, some foothold on my credibility with her. The fact that she’d tried to appease me with a movie night and snack foods after that dumbass little episode confirmed it.

  And it got me into some deep shit afterward because she probably thought I was going crazy. She didn’t listen to my warnings like I’d wanted her to.

  “Elias, I appreciate you bringing this to me. I know you must have been worried I wouldn’t believe your account, but if this spike in activity really does coincide with the news events, I will run an investigation into this. I’m going to have mission control put together a tactical team right now to work with local law enforcement to inspect the scenes. I’ll have a Funnel team also look into this to see what we can do to slow down the data readout.”

  “But I can see them. I can. Right now. I can help them right now. Lia isn’t doing well.”

  “I know you feel this connection to your sisters, Elias. And I know what you’ve been through. But there is nothing that can help them more right now than our equipment and our teams. We will call on you when the time comes. I promise.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and looks right into my eyes. “So for now, as a team member of the Clandestine Services Hub, I am asking you — no, I am ordering you — to sleep while you can. The time may come when you can’t. That’s one of the first things everyone here learns, and it could just as well apply today. Am I clear?”

  Everything screams that this is wrong, that I have some connection with them that no one else has. They gave me their invincibility, for God’s sake. There has to be something that I can do, and it has to be now.

  Or they’ll die.

  The whispers in my head seem to agree as they lash and protest and hiss that, no, I need to
be back at the Funnel. But I have no power here in this office or in any Hub. And I still do trust that this Hub is the absolute best place for me to be figuring this out.

  I want him to know that. I want him to be sure of that, partly so that he’ll continue to take this seriously and partly so he won’t kick me off the case. Or the mission. Or whatever my sisters are now.

  I’m just glad they’re not an experiment anymore.

  Masters places a hand on my shoulder. “Can I have Amanda walk you to your room? Send some food there?”

  The truth is, I’m starving. Even though eating seems trivial when there’s so much to figure out and I feel so, so close to helping my sisters I could throw up.

  “Yes, I’d appreciate that. She doesn’t need to walk me back. I can get there.” This may not be the best time to tell him about my map-creating-and-memorizing prowess. It’s badassed, and Masters, like the other Hub presidents I’ve met, is interested in badassed things. I try to suppress my shudder, thinking about that.

  Yeah. It’s best to keep stuff like that under wraps.

  SIXTEEN

  The whole way back to my room, I alternate between quick, frantic strides and trying to slow down and focus on deep breaths. The walk is seemingly endless.

  I burst through the girls’ wing of the dorms and am automatically on edge, looking for Merrin. I want her to be here like you want rain on a hot summer day. Not because it’ll make anything better but because it’s a promise of something. Because it’s a moment of relief even when you know things are still going to be horrible and oppressive on the other side.

  She’s not there.

  The next best thing is doing whatever Masters told me to do. Getting to my room, sleeping. Maybe eating if food comes.

  I turn the corner to the guys’ wing of the dormitory, and she’s the first thing I see. The second thing is that she’s standing next to Gallagher. They’re standing close, like friends who have known each other forever. Like Leni and I would stand together. In the twenty steps it takes me to reach them, I watch. Their speech isn’t like ours. It’s not close, not gently laughing. It’s quiet and quick. Like they’re keeping a secret.