One night, Lex freed the insects from Anders’ jar without asking him, then turned to him, hands balled into fists like she wanted a fight. “They don’t want to be in there, Anders.”
Anders worked hard to tamp down on his anger and keep his cool. “Oh, did they tell you that personally?”
“They have wings. They need to be free.” Her big brown eyes lifted, watching as every single one of Anders’ fireflies escaped.
“They were free.” Anders went after the closest ones, trying to get them back. “Free to light up my awesome jar.”
“To contain them, you need a lid, and your stupid lid always suffocates them.”
“Whatever,” Anders said as he dropped a firefly back into his jar. It tried to crawl up the side, but slid straight to the bottom, landing on its back. “They’re just dumb bugs. If I wanna keep them in a jar, that’s my choice, not yours.”
“You’re just choosin’ darkness and dead bugs, then. Look!” She threw out one skinny arm at the blinking lights that danced along the forest path, around tree trunks and bushes, fireflies drifting upward in random patterns toward the sky. It had been bright that night—illuminated by an enormous, orange-hued full moon. The buck moon. July.
Anders and Lex had gone perfectly still… absorbing it, becoming part of it, feeling that place in that moment. The random blinking pattern took on a sort of rhythm that matched the crickets and frogs singing in the dark, and every one of Anders’ senses responded, the glow growing more vivid, the scent of crushed, dry pine needles intensifying, the entire place vibrating through his body.
“They can only do that…” Lex had said quietly, “when they’re free to fly.”
Anders swallowed, his throat thick, and he slowed down his bike as he coasted onto the main road that led into town. For the short time he’d known her, Lex had made Anders feel like there was something more in the world than what everyone else saw. It didn’t matter that his overactive imagination had been responsible for those feelings. What mattered, was that, overnight, his traitor dad took Lex away, and Anders couldn’t do shit to stop it from happening. But he wasn’t a kid anymore with no control.
Selene was special, just like Lex. She had a fire in her, something more. She was different. He’d felt it from the moment he met her, and it wasn’t just because she was a Protected.
She didn’t belong in an Infinitek prison—she wasn’t meant to be contained.
And Anders was going to do whatever it took to free her.
The Defective saga continues in Book Two of the Fractured Era Series. Sign up at AutumnKalquist.com to get updates on the series and free Defective prequel stories, including a short story that illuminates what really happened between Lex, Bas, and Dr. Dalton at the Protected research facility in New York.
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Defective (Fractured Era Book 1) Page 27
