“They are. But Nonna’s a bit much.” He sighed and hit the down button so they could get on the next elevator.
“Are you sure you should be going home?” Gaia asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Jake said. “I fully expected my dad to show up and yank me out of here. He always says the best way to get sicker is to spend time in a hospital. I guess from working in them. This thing does ache, though.”
“Yeek.” Gaia peered at the big bandage. “I don’t think you’re going to be doing much intramural karate.”
Jake groaned. “I know,” he lamented. “You’re off the hook, though. If I’m not competing, we won’t win, anyway.”
“God, you’ve got the fattest head!” Gaia complained. “You think I couldn’t beat everyone single-handedly?”
“You could, but you won’t,” he pointed out. “I was really looking forward to it, though. I was all revved up for the competition. Without it, the next few weeks are going to be so boring. And I’m going to get so out of shape.”
Gaia felt the bud of an idea fatten in her head. “Hmm,” she said.
“Hmm, what?” Jake asked, poking the button a few more times.
“Hmm, I was just thinking. When I was going through my martial-arts training, my dad showed me a bunch of techniques for working out that give various muscle groups a rest. I could teach them to you, just so your precious muscle mass doesn’t evaporate during your recovery.”
“Gaia Moore, are you offering to be my personal trainer?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. If you’re going to be an idiot about it, I won’t bother.”
Jake smacked her lightly in the back of the head. “Cut it out,” he said. “I’m sorry. I would be really grateful if you could show me your special commando workout.”
“Fine. I will,” Gaia said.
“But only if you go to school tomorrow.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
“Of course, you’re going to be gone within a day or two,” Jake pointed out, as the elevator finally arrived and the doors creaked open. “Your visa’s going to come through and you’re going to be out of here, and I’ll be left with atrophying muscles and a gunshot wound.”
For a moment, Gaia had a vision of Sam Moon’s scarred back—another wounded friend, a love destroyed by the life she was forced to lead. She had to remember to keep her distance this time. Within her heart, and out in the world. She wouldn’t let that happen to Jake.
“Oh, that visa’s never going to come,” she said, refusing to betray the emotions roiling inside her gut. “You’ll be sick of me and my commando workout.”
She was silent, watching the numbers light up in descending order. This was the slowest elevator in the world. She noticed Jake giving her a look.
“What?” she snapped.
“I think it’s funny,” he said.
“What’s funny?”
“The way every single thought in your head goes walking across your face before you shove it back in its closet,” Jake said. “You really think that because you don’t say things out loud, you can deny they’re there, don’t you?”
“All right, smart guy. So what thoughts am I repressing?” she asked, crossing her arms and still staring as 9 flipped to 8 with agonizing sluggishness.
“Oh, no. I’m not making things easier for you. You’ll open your mouth when you’re good and ready, not before.”
Gaia clamped her mouth tightly closed, sucking her lips in for extra emphasis and refusing to look at Jake. He was so close to her, she could feel the heat from his body making the left side of her face flush. Without her meaning to, her eyes flicked toward him, then away again. The expression in his eyes—he seemed to know her in a way that others didn’t. Gaia wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. He was teasing her, daring her to feel something for him. It was maddening, annoying.
The doors finally opened. “Jake!” Mrs. Montone called out, her arms extended as if she were about to reach in and yank him out. “Why you sneak off like that? Come here.”
Jake shot Gaia one last look and joined his father and grandmother, who draped a coat carefully over his shoulders.
“Gaia, can you get home all right?” Mr. Montone asked. “Should we drop you somewhere? We’ve got a car service waiting.”
“Oh no, it’s all right,” Gaia promised. “I can take the subway.”
“Are you sure? It’s no trouble.”
Gaia was touched. If he’d had any idea of what she’d been through in her life, he’d know that a midday subway was hardly an inconvenience to her.
“I promise. It was nice to see you again. And nice to meet you, Mrs. Montone.”
“Yeah, I see you again,” she said, nodding cheerfully.
“So I’ll see you tomorrow after school?” Jake asked. “You’ll show me that stuff we were talking about?”
Gaia felt herself nod. Maddening, yes. Annoying, yes. But whether it was out of guilt or some kind of fascination, Jake was now an official friend of Gaia Moore.
Subconscious Voice
OLIVER SEARCHED THROUGH THE databases he had found stored on his computer for half a day, just to gain access to his own information. It was like he was trying to put together one of those all-black jigsaw puzzles—in the dark, during a windstorm. If something looked familiar, he then had to ask himself why, and what it might connect to, and how he should approach it. He felt like a blind man in a maelstrom.
Uncovering this information required the highest level of mental functioning. It was exhausting for someone who had just woken out of a coma. But that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was that to access some of the memories he needed—passwords, log-in names, locations of files, meanings of notes—he had to force some of Loki’s memories to the surface. And Oliver was not a computer. He couldn’t just pull up one file out of a folder and leave the rest safely closed. As he exposed one memory to the light, others tried to bubble up as well. And it took all his psychic energy to keep those memories submerged.
He was dancing a dangerous tango with his evil former self.
He took a long drink of bottled water and turned his eyes to the screen again. He had to secure transportation for himself and Gaia. Airline tickets. How did this work again? He had to get the passports in another name, the visas to match, enough tickets for everyone . . . The screen began to swim in front of him. It seemed to morph into a television screen. On it, he saw a man—a man dressed as a doctor—in an antiseptic room; a white room, but not a hospital. A loft of some kind. A young woman was there—a girl, a friend of Gaia’s. Something in him told him that. The scene was new but dripping with familiarity, like the subconscious voice in dreams that acts as narrator for unfamiliar terrain.
The girl bent over and the doctor injected her with something. Oliver squinted to see more clearly. Then the screen split; on one side, he saw the beautiful woman struck blind as a result of the injection. On the other side, he saw the doctor raise his face. With horror, Oliver recognized the eyes staring back at him from the television screen. They were his own.
Jolted, he jumped back, knocking his chair to the floor with a clatter. The noise made him look down, and when he looked back, the taunting television screen had become his computer again—his safe, familiar computer, quietly listing his old contacts for him to pore over.
“Loki,” he said out loud. “It was Loki, and I have control over him.”
He straightened the chair and placed it in front of his desk again, glancing nervously at the computer screen. But it was still covered in calm, static numbers. No more streaming video straight from his buried internal hard drive. Oliver took a deep breath and sat down again.
He needed to find a few contacts who would still do favors for him. He needed to check those favors, to be sure he was not being scammed. He had to secure passports and visas. His brother’s life depended on it. Gaia’s happiness depended on it.
He mustered his energy and forced himself back to work.
* * *
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Simon Pulse edition July 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Francine Pascal
Cover copyright © 2003 by 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company.
SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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www.SimonandSchuster.com
Produced by 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company
151 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
For information address 17th Street Productions, 151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001.
Fearless™ is a trademark of Francine Pascal.
Library of Congress Control Number 2003101744
ISBN: 0-689-85765-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-4424-8943-1 (eBook)
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