by Sarah Noffke
And as though controlled by instinct, I will the energy I leeched out of Zack out of my body. My hand raises up. From it a bolt of electricity shoots out and lands in the pit, igniting it into a spark and then lighting the dry wood, turning it to a small fire.
Zack jumps up, startled.
“Now that’s the best part!” Rogue says.
“You did that? How?” Zack asks, staring at me and then the fire I created.
“I’m a leech,” I say, like that should mean anything to him.
“And she’s electrokinetic,” Rogue says, lying back down.
Zack steps forward and grabs my hand, eyeing it like he’s looking for holes or damage. He shakes his head. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“I told you, you had to see it,” Rogue says with a smile, his eyes closed again. “You can lay down next to me if you want to, brother.”
Zack’s eyelids slip closed for a second longer than I expected. He takes in a breath and opens them. “I’m a little tired, but fine mostly.”
“Yeah, she steals your gift, turns it into electricity, and sucks the life right out of you,” Rogue says with a whistle, like he’s enjoying the drained state I put him in. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yes,” Zack says, looking at me in disbelief. “Em, that’s—”
I smile at him, wave him off, and turn away before he can finish his thought. I walk over to the tent, carrying the bag of clothes Zack brought, and toe Rogue’s mostly lifeless body. “Hey, can I have the tent for a second. I want to change.”
He opens one eye and smiles at me. “Of course, babe.” He sits up, a groan making mention of the effort it takes him. Then he half crawls, half walks out of the tent. “You sure you don’t need help?” Rogue asks, his voice low in his throat like he’s been asleep for days. “I can help you zip or button or whatever it is you need.”
I zip the flap up, creating some privacy as I say, “I think I’ve got it covered, but thanks.”
From inside the tent, I hear the guys roll into an easy conversation. I slip on a pair of khakis I often wear to the farm, a sleeveless knit blouse, and a pair of sandals. I fold up Rogue’s shirt, but wad up the ripped skirt.
Both guys are staring at me when I exit the tent, like I’ve interrupted their conversation. Rogue’s eyes roam over me, a satisfied grin on his face. I toss the ripped skirt on the still burning fire and he gives me an alarmed look.
“What?” I ask, afraid I did something wrong.
He dismisses me with a shake of his head. “Just gonna miss that skirt. Fond memories.”
I roll my eyes at him and take a seat on the ground, as far away from the hot fire as I can manage, while still being close to Rogue and Zack.
Zack returns his attention to Rogue, who’s gone to lie back in the tent. “So they have a guard on the lab. You can’t dream travel in there.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know,” Rogue says, using my duffel bag as a pillow.
“Yes, thought you would have come up against that security,” Zack says, nodding. “So I’m going to try and find you the codes to get in there. Before you’ve been sneaking in during open hours, right?”
“Can’t sneak a thing past you,” Rogue says with a nod. “Not easy to sneak around there during the day.”
“Right, but if we get you in there during the night then you’ll have more freedom.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Rogue says.
“We need to know where the meds are though,” I say. “Otherwise we could be there all night searching. That place is huge.”
Zack agrees with a nod. “Rogue, can’t you use your apportation ability to retrieve the meds you both need?”
Rogue shakes his head, one arm over his forehead. “Don’t you think I already would have the meds and be out of here if that was the case? I have to know where an object is to displace it. Just the same way Em needs to be close to leech someone or you have to see an object to move it. There are rules. Always stupid rules. Screw the gods,” he says bitterly.
“Okay,” Zack says, not deterred. “Then you need to dream travel into Government Center and find the inventory list. I’ve been keeping an eye out for them and my best guess is that they’re kept in Em’s father’s office.”
“Let’s go tonight,” I say to Rogue.
“No,” Zack says as once, a punishing look on his face.
“Zack, I know that office. I’ve already searched it once,” I say. “The inventory list will tell us where the meds are kept, right?”
He nods.
“Fine, it’s settled. You find the codes for the labs and we’ll find the location for the meds,” I say with conviction.
“Em, I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be out right now,” Zack says.
“Brother, do I need to remind you why you shouldn’t argue with her?” Rogue says and then rolls over like he plans to fall off to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
That night Rogue awakes with a howling scream. He’d been asleep since before Zack left. During the afternoon hours Rogue slept, I sometimes dared to tickle his brow and watch him clamber about trying to swat what he thought was a pesky bug. Now, though, I know an unbearable headache is ripping him in two. He’s not even all the way awake. I don’t know what to do. I stand watching as he scrunches up, burying his head underneath him, like he’s trying to entomb the pain. He moans, sucks in breaths, barks out indecipherable complaints. I watch, again and again paralyzed by the sight.
Rogue wouldn’t want me to watch him in pain, but I can’t turn away. Can’t leave him. And approaching him feels wrong too. My own undecided emotions of what I’d want in his situation plagues me. Pain isolates us. The last thing I can accept when in pain is comfort, although it’s exactly what I need. And all day long I’ve been waiting for my own headache, the first one, but so far nothing. It’s like waiting for a forecasted storm; each breeze is a potential threat and when it passes without incident there’s relief and also a foreboding.
Because I don’t know what to do for Rogue I prepare him water and a cold compress and station myself as close to him as I can without touching him. He said he’d be there for me when my headaches start. Why do I feel wrong being here for him? But Rogue is a lone wolf. Has been one for so long. He was never good at being vulnerable; he’s probably downright awful at it now.
After twelve excruciating minutes, Rogue rolls over on his back, knocking into me. It’s then that I realize he was so incapacitated he didn’t even realize I was that close. His eyes bolt open and stare up at me from his lying position, frustration lying dormant under the exhausting pain.
“Hi,” he says with a growl.
The bleary look in his face. The red edges to his beautiful eyes. The pain he’s trying to hide. It shatters my insides, tears me bit by bit, until I’m nothing which could ever be made whole again. Our fathers did this. Our government scarred Rogue. The look in his eyes makes me crave something I never thought I’d ever want. Retribution.
“What do I do for you the next time that happens?” I ask.
“Do?” he says and somehow an amused smile forms on his mouth. “Nothing. Sometimes you have to just allow yourself to be helpless.”
I offer him the water, but he declines it with a shake of his head. “Rogue, I understand that you’re used to not having help. I realize you’ve been alone for a long time.”
“All this time,” he corrects. Even after recovering from pain he’s still playing with me, giving me a teasing look from his laid out position.
“Well, you don’t have to be all alone anymore.”
“Are you saying you want to be with me, Em?”
I scoot over closer to beside where his head rests, encouraging him to slide it into my lap. When he does I stroke his hair off his sweat-covered forehead and wipe his brow and temples with the cold compress I made. He closes his eyes and sighs, one of relief. “I’m already with you, Rogue. What I want is for you to want me to be here
. To allow me to be here during the hard times.”
His green eyes flash open, their beautiful slant a little more pronounced from my viewing angle. He reaches out and strokes the side of my face. “I’m just not sure it’s necessary.”
“Is that because you don’t think I know how to take care of you? Do you think I’m that sheltered?”
I expect him to withdraw, to deny me, but instead he smiles back. “There’s no one else who knows how but you.”
***
I arrive a full minute before Rogue does. Every second waiting for him to appear in my father’s office is enough to make the panic overwhelm me. I don’t want to be here alone in this place. There’s an energy to my father and his belongings now that crystallizes my blood. I always knew he was cold, unaffected by his children, but now I know he’s soulless. How else could he do what he’s done to me? How else could he try and take away my ability to dream travel?
Rogue’s form solidifies in front of the cold fireplace. He looks out of place in my father’s neat office, arranged with perfect precision, without an ounce of dust. Rogue stands unshaven on the Oriental rug, his boots slightly covered in dirt that thankfully can’t flake off in dream travel form. Actually everything about Rogue here right now is perfect. He’s alive when he’s supposed to be dead. His appearance in my father’s office is a mockery to everything my father holds true. And Rogue represents that we are truly Rebels, not Defects.
I wave him over to the file cabinet. “There’s files in there that I know will give us the information we need.”
“Well, open it up,” Rogue says, his perfect smile crushing my focus.
I tug on the cabinet to prove that it’s locked. “I can’t. But you could get them for me.”
“Why don’t you do it,” he says, stepping up close enough that he’s pressing into me.
I smile at him and push him back. “Stop that,” I laugh. “I don’t want to leech you. I can’t have you passing out here.”
He bites down on his bottom lip and looks down at me. “Okay. But I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m gonna be pulling random files out of there. Seems a little inefficient. We should just pick the lock.”
“You know how to do that?”
He gives me a look of mock offense. “No, I’m not a common criminal.”
“You rob banks,” I remind him.
“That’s not common at all.”
“Okay,” I say, failing to keep the smile off my face. “If you take the files out using your gift, then can you put them back?”
“Sure, sure,” he says, nodding.
“Okay, we’ve got all night. Give me a file.”
He nods. Smiles. And three seconds later a file appears in his hand, which he dutifully hands over to me.
***
Good thing we have the entire night to find the inventory list for the lab. I’m starting to think we’ll need every hour of it. We’re laid out on the rug in front of the fireplace, a dozen files splayed out in front of us. This is harder than I thought it was going to be. First of all, there are a thousand files in my father’s office. Most of them aren’t even related to the lab. Most of them are numbers and figures, and not at all what we’re looking for.
“Can I just say that you’re the perfect partner in crime,” Rogue says, skimming through another file. “And I mean that in the literal sense, which no one ever uses that term for.”
“How do you know what people use that term for?” I say, tossing another file on the stack.
“I live alone, not in a bubble.”
“I live in a bubble,” I say, opening another file folder.
“Lived,” Rogue corrects. Everything about him challenges everything inside me. And I’ve never loved a challenge so much. “You popped that bubble. You’re free now, babe.”
I tuck my nose back in the file, knowing if I don’t then I’ll make a mess of the files stacked between us. He gives me a tempting look and then continues to read, seeming to have sensed my thoughts.
I’ve been scanning the files, looking for the list that must be buried deep inside the transcriptions of different histories. Zack had said that they’d recently reorganized the labs and there were inventory lists detailing where everything had been sorted. Zack’s father, the City Treasurer, had told him about this when he inquired. His father, unlike Rogue’s and mine, isn’t purely bad. Maybe he’s misguided, but John Conerly is more of a lemming who’s been following higher officials, believing they know better than he does. He’s an honest man, one who tells Zack everything he knows. Zack probed his father for information, and not ever suspicious of his son, for good reason, he told him about the reorganization that happened a few months ago. John must not know about the injections; otherwise, he would never condone them. He’s not the type. I want to believe that anyway.
I toss another file on the stack and sigh. Rogue’s eyes flick up to me. “No luck?”
“No, that had exactly what we were looking for. That’s why I threw it on the discard pile,” I say dryly.
“Look who gets sarcastic when she’s frustrated,” Rogue says, looking amused.
I turn around and size up the area behind me, like someone could be standing there. I turn back to Rogue and give him an ultra-serious expression. “Who?”
Rogue whistles through his teeth. “Oh, and she can act too.”
“Are you talking about me in the third person?” I ask.
“I am.”
“Is that a result of spending too much time with goats and horses?”
He seems to think about it for a minute. “No, they all refer to themselves in first person.”
“Rogue, do you know what I love about you best?”
He bristles at the question. I’m not sure why, and he recovers so quickly I don’t have a chance to think on it. “I’m sure the list is long. Give me your top ten.”
I shake my head. Smile. “You don’t take yourself too seriously. Everyone here does. They run around looking for a reason to be offended. I think half the time they offend themselves by not following some etiquette.”
Rogue nods and allows a slight seriousness to creep into his eyes. It’s quickly whisked away by a mischievous smile. I’m growing accustomed to those smiles. I’m starting to enjoy them, although I probably shouldn’t. “That’s what you like best? You need to see me without my shirt on,” he says.
I toss the file I’ve already reviewed at him. He doesn’t even complain that my lousy toss sends a dozen papers scattering out around him. Although he scowls at me, he unquestioningly goes to stacking them right and sliding them into their folder.
The next manila folder isn’t all the way opened when I quickly spy a half a dozen words that catch my interest. This file doesn’t have the inventory list. It tells a different story, not related to the reorganization of the labs. It’s dated four and a half years prior. Four lines gain my attention at once.
“The first specimen’s spinal fluid was harvested on January 11th shortly after birth. It didn’t survive the harvest.”
“After the failed harvest the specimen was taken directly to the lab for a full autopsy.”
“The council decides to wait to harvest specimen’s spinal fluid for injection materials until six weeks after birth.”
“Ciphering spinal fluid from Middling infants is believed to create a successful serum for injections for Reverian Defects.”
And just like that, a world I didn’t know could tumble further, cascades through space until it must be sucked into a black hole or into whatever would completely shred it in two.
I flip my head up from the file. Rogue must sense my anxiety because he looks up at once from the file he’s reading and finds my gaze.
“They killed Dean’s child,” I say, hearing my voice in my head, but disbelieving the words.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“What?” Rogue says, pushing the stack of files aside and staring at me, not at the file I hold clenched between my fingers. “Do you mea
n Dean Cooper? The farmer?”
I nod. “His baby died on January eleventh of that year.” I hand him the folder. He scans it and then his eyes widen with shocked repulsion.
“They harvest Middling children to get the ingredients they need to create the injections for Defects?”
I nod, my stomach turning over in my physical body, the feeling echoing in my subconscious form. “Rogue, I’ve got to get out of here. I’m going to be sick.”
“But we haven’t found the inventory list,” he says, staring at the stack of files in front of us.
“We’ll find the meds,” I say, standing, gathering the files. “I need to get out of here now. Have to.”
He nods, revulsion written on his face. He starts sending files back into the cabinet, one at a time. It’s not a quick business and although I want to desert him and be as far away from my father’s office as possible I stay by his side.
“Em,” he says, as he’s waiting for a file to disappear. “They didn’t kill all the babies.”
He’s trying to make me feel better, I realize. He has his eyes trained on me, although I know his focus is on moving the files.
I nod. “I know. I read the whole report,” I say, holding it up. “Twelve. They killed twelve babies before they figured it out. They devalued those lives, sacrificing them to find a serum. They killed twelve babies before they realized they had to wait for them to be six weeks older to ‘harvest’ them. Those were the children we heard in the lab. To this day, they must do this to every Middling born,” I say and realize at the same time.
“I knew they were experimenting on children, but I didn’t realize that they did it to them all. I didn’t know they let some of them die,” Rogue says, swallowing hard, like it took a great effort.
“Not let them die,” I say, anger rising in me. “They killed them. Experimented on them when they were at their most fragile, early state. They harvested their spinal fluid, knowing the implications. Innocent babies. And now they withdraw spinal fluid from every infant at age six weeks. You remember what the injections felt like. Taking their spinal fluid must be excruciating for those Middling babies, but they do it to every single one born. All to create Defects.”
