Belligerent (Vicara)

by B. N. Mauldin

  Aria’s smirk turned into a genuine smile. “You look decent enough now.”

  “I look more than decent,” Clarisse said with a wink and started walking back to the villa. Aria easily kept pace with her. “Why were you angry?”

  “Why would you think I was angry?” Aria asked, not pulling away when Clarisse placed one hand in hers.

  Clarisse sighed as if it should be obvious. “I know when you're angry.”

  “I saw you jerk away from him,” Aria said.

  “So? Why would that matter? It was a part of the act.”

  “I know when you're acting.”

  “Not always,” Clarisse murmured.

  Aria ignored that comment. “He scared you.”

  “He didn't scare me. I was startled. That's all. It does happen sometimes, ya know. Even to the most talented of us. I knew he would believe whatever I said, so I wasn't putting that much effort into watching his body language for cues.”

  Aria knew that wasn't completely true, but she couldn't figure out in what ways it was a lie. She was always surprised by how easily she could get Clarisse to drop her guard and wondered why no one else seemed to have any effect on the girl. Even Kenichi often complained that he had trouble telling when Clarisse was acting and when she was genuine. To Aria, it was usually far too easy. They made it back to the villa as the others were leaving. Everyone froze for a moment when they saw Clarisse's runny makeup.

  “What happened?” Daylan asked with an edge to his tone.

  “Fake tears,” Clarisse assured. “I just forgot to wear waterproof makeup.”

  Aria noticed that Clarisse's grip on her hand tightened ever so slightly before she began swinging their hands back and forth as if the handholding was only a thing done for Clarisse's amusement and not because she had needed the touch. Clarisse had taught her once that if you wanted to detract from the importance of something, it was better to shove it out in the open where people tended to overlook it rather than hide it where people would think it was worth snooping out.

  Logan and Daylan seemed to accept the explanation and grabbed their bags to leave. Kenichi approached Clarisse and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I hate to see you cry even if it is fake,” he said as he stared at Aria for a moment. “Are you two planning on skipping classes?” he finally asked.

  “Only the morning ones,” Aria said.

  Aria felt Clarisse's hand drop from her grasp as the girl was tugged away by Eva. The combat specialist had retrieved a makeup remover cloth from her own backpack. She scrubbed at Clarisse's face and whispered something to her that Aria couldn't hear. Kenichi took the opportunity to lean towards Aria.

  “You'll stay with her. Right?” he asked. “You won't get antsy and wander off to do your own thing?”

  “We were just going to pack my things for the pit games.”

  “Don't leave her alone. Something's got her shaken. She's been on edge ever since before breakfast. I don't think all those tears were fake.”

  Aria nodded slowly. “I'll keep her with me.”

  Kenichi swung his bag onto his shoulder. “If you can't seem to manage that, then contact me.”

  Aria narrowed her eyes. “She and I will be fine alone for today.”

  Daylan appeared behind Kenichi and threw an arm around his shoulders. Leaning in, Daylan said, “We can all see you whispering about something. You're not very good at this stealth thing right now,” he stage whispered. Kenichi glared at him which only caused Daylan to grin before tugging Kenichi closer to plant a kiss on Kenichi's temple. “Don't be in a bad mood so early in the day.” Then, to Aria, he said, “Have a fun day. Keep Clarisse out of trouble.”

  The boys left, and Eva trailed behind them pausing at the doorway to wait for Mackenzie.

  “Did Ryan agree to the meeting?” the strategist asked.

  “He agreed,” Clarisse assured her.

  “What of his body language? Did he seem...?”

  “You can interrogate her later,” Aria said, annoyance in her voice. “If you don't leave now, you'll be late for class.”

  “She's right, Mac,” Eva called from the doorway. “I doubt Ryan will join us for lunch. You can discuss things then.”

  Mackenzie grabbed her bag. The girl truly did hate to miss any classes. It was the one thing they could all count on. Once Aria and Clarisse were left alone in the villa, they retreated to Aria's room. Clarisse wasted no time in leaping onto Aria's neatly made bed.

  “Going to tell me what the news is?” Aria asked.

  “What news?” Clarisse asked.

  “Don't play clueless. What news has you so jittery?”

  Clarisse rolled over to look at Aria. “There's been a change with James.”

  Aria froze. “Good or bad?”

  “I don't know,” Clarisse admitted. “Shifter didn't say.”

  “What did the files say?” Aria had no doubt that Clarisse had used her sources to find more information.

  “That's what concerns me. There's nothing. It's as if he doesn't exist,” Clarisse whispered.

  So that was the reason for Clarisse's mood. She had probably been up the entire night researching, and some of the tears she had shed during her conversation with Ryan had been true tears of frustration and exhaustion. Aria started pulling clothing back out of the suitcase she had planned on taking with her to the pit games that weekend. She placed her shoes back in the closet and folded her clothing up.

  “What are you doing?” Clarisse asked.

  “I have a feeling there won't be any pit games for us this weekend.”

  “I called Shifter, but I couldn't get through. We should hear from him today though.”

  “If he's not shown up himself then maybe it's nothing too serious,” Aria said optimistically.

  “Or maybe he doesn't want to be within Mackenzie's reach,” Clarisse said.

  Aria collapsed onto the bed and thought that over.

  Clarisse spoke up again. “There's more. Ryan was talking to Stewart and Eloise today when I approached him.”

  “Doesn't he have classes with Eloise though? Maybe they're friends.”

  “That's what I'm concerned about.”

  Aria glanced over at her friend. “Will you tell Mackenzie?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Clarisse asked while reaching up to tug off her cross-tie.

  “What are you doing?”

  Clarisse huffed. “I'm not going to afternoon classes either.”

  “What will you do instead?”

  “I don't know. I'll search the files again. Talk to some sources. Maybe I'll check in on the whole Ryan thing.” She shifted out of her blazer next. “There's a lot that needs to be done.”

  “I could help.”

  “You have your own work to do.”

  “That can wait. Just tell me what I can do.”

  *

  Ryan didn't have lunch with his team that day. Instead he walked down to the campus market to buy something for lunch. It was the first time he had tried using the credits in the allowance that Shifter granted each of them, and when he checked out and saw the remainder of his balance, he stared for several moments at the quantity of digits in the number.

  After lunch, he wandered around for a while, surprised when none of his teammates tried to contact him. He guessed that either they were giving him time to cool off or were grateful for his absence. For the nearly two weeks that he had been on campus he had spent most of his time either in the villa or in his classes. He hadn't realized how large the campus was. Villas were spaced out extremely far from each other, but all of them were closer to the campus than his team's residence was.

  “Having fun exploring?”

  Ryan flinched. “Who are you?” he asked the boy who had managed to sneak up on him.

  “I'm Leon, the retrieval specialist on Mystique's team.”

  “Who's Mystique?”

  Leon shook his head. “You really haven't been told anything have you? Mystique's my Owner. You kno
w Stewart and Eloise, right?”

  “Yeah. What do you want?”

  “Just doing my job. They sent me to retrieve you.”

  “I thought normally informants picked up the people.”

  Leon shrugged, his broad shoulders nearly touching his ears. Ryan didn't know how a guy his size did the same tasks as Kenichi. He couldn't imagine any way that Leon could squeeze through an air vent or free scale a wall without making a sound.

  “Yeah, well. Our informant has his hands full at the moment with some other job, so are you going to come or not?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my team's villa.” Leon started in the opposite direction of Ryan's own villa. “You coming? It's not like it's a long walk or anything, and we need to go before your team realizes you're with us.”

  “Should I turn my comm off?”

  Leon spun around. “Comm?”

  Ryan tapped his ear.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, probably. Actually, you should let our techie make sure the tracker on it has been turned off.”

  “They have trackers?”

  “Not all of them are activated. Delilah could just double check.”

  Ryan followed Leon down one of the many cobblestone paths until they were in an area where the trees grew wildly around them. The villa was smack in the center of the grove. Leon held his banded wrist up until they were granted entrance.

  “Hurry up,” Leon called, ushering him inside. “Delilah!” he shouted once they were inside. A voluptuous girl wandered out to them.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Give her your comm,” Leon instructed. “Need you to make sure there's no tracker on this, Dee.”

  Delilah took Ryan's comm and rolled it around in her hand. “Give me a few minutes. The others are in the main room if you want to head in there.”

  The layout of the villa appeared to be the same as the one that Ryan's team lived in, but with marked differences in the decor. The main room in this villa had a smaller television screen with two sleek, uncomfortable-looking couches facing it. The walls were mostly bare. There wasn't a billiards table set up on one half of the room or a cozy fireplace in one corner with plenty of comfortable seats for everyone to sit around and read together. No game stations or shelves of movies were anywhere to be seen. All there was in the room beside the couches and one television was training equipment and two chess tables.

  “Hey, Ryan!” Eloise greeted warmly while running up to hug him. “Everyone, meet Ryan!”

  The present members of the team smiled and said hello. It was a completely different atmosphere than the one Ryan was used to experiencing around his villa. While his teammates were friendly with each other, the distance they kept from him here was nearly to the point of being alienating.

  “So I assume you guys came up with a plan?” Ryan said and took the seat that he was offered on the couch between Eloise and one of the other girls on her team.

  “I'm a strategist. It's what I do,” Stewart replied. “It's not one of the most complex plans, but it should work.”

  “Should?”

  “It will work. My plans always work.”

  Ryan wondered if all strategists were so self-assured. Mackenzie had always seemed just as arrogant about her own plans as well.

  “Then what's this flawless plan?” Ryan asked.

  “Let's wait for Delilah to get back first,” Stewart suggested.

  “How are things going over at Shifter's camp?” A girl still dressed in the uniform of a medical specialist asked him. “My name's Teresa by the way.”

  “I'm not sure how to answer that,” Ryan said.

  “Well, obviously things aren't going very well, or you wouldn't want to risk everything just to get out of here,” one of the boys spoke up. “I'm Jon, the combat specialist.”

  “Maybe things are going fine. Maybe I didn't want to be a Belligerent, that's all.” He may not have been that fond of his own team, but it felt wrong to be criticizing them to someone else.

  “Most people don't want to be a Belligerent, but you have to admit that it's better to be a Beta than an Omega. I can't see why you'd want to risk your life just to get out of here.”

  “You enjoy being a Belligerent, Kat,” Stewart reminded the girl who had just spoken.

  Ryan guessed she was the science specialist since only that position and the informant one were the ones left without attached names. Besides, Leon had mentioned that their informant was a guy. There was one fellow left sitting over by himself with his attention seemingly on his tablet, though if he was anything like Clarisse he was aware of everything happening in the room around him.

  “I'm Karl. You can quit staring at me,” the guy said. While his words were harsh, the smile he gave dulled their severity.

  Delilah returned then with the comm. “What were you working on, Dee?” Stewart asked as she returned the device to Ryan.

  “Just making sure Ryan's comm didn't have its tracking device activated,” she said while taking a seat nearby.

  “Oh, right. Well, let's get to work on our plan now that we're all here,” Stewart clapped his hands together and wandered over to a board that took up a large portion of one wall. He waved his hand in front of the board and a map of the campus appeared. “Dee has found a way to temporarily deactivate a band which means we can remove yours.”

  Ryan nodded in understanding. “I don't understand why you guys haven't left this place if you know how to escape,” he said.

  “I can only deactivate one band without alerting the main system. If one band goes off for only a few seconds then the system reads it as a small glitch in the receptors and doesn't do anything as long as the signal comes back on within a certain amount of time. However, if multiple bands are deactivated then the main system goes into lock down, and everyone gets injected with the sedative until disciplinary squad can determine what's happening,” Delilah explained.

  “Plus we're not going to leave unless all of us can leave together. Your team might not be a family, but ours is,” Stewart said.

  That envious feeling emerged in Ryan's chest once more, but he forced himself to smile. It wouldn't matter for much longer. He would be with Alex soon enough.

  “What happens after my band is deactivated? How long do I have?” he asked.

  “I can deactivate it for approximately ninety seconds without it alerting anyone. I'll be able to remove it during that time, and then we can slip it onto a simulation mannequin which Leon will obtain from the medical department. Teresa will adjust the dummy to mimic your body’s temperature, heart rate, blood pressure and such. It should fool the system long enough that you should be able to get off the campus and a decent distance away.”

  Stewart drew the attention back to himself and the map. “I've had Karl arrange for your way out of here. He's called in some of his outside sources and is having an alumnus transportation specialist he knows pick you up in this location.” He gestured to a location on the map that appeared to be about five miles off campus. “Eloise is going to help you 'borrow' one of the hover-bikes to get you to where the next transportation specialist will be waiting. She'll then use the distance controls to have it drive itself back onto campus once you're finished with it. Once you get picked up by the transportation specialist, he'll get you to the central hub and from there it's up to you where you go. I suggest you lay low for a while if you don't want to end up back here or worse, end up in an Omega cell somewhere.”

  “You really think this plan will work?” Ryan asked. It sounded like a reasonable plot to him, but he figured there was a reason he wasn't a strategy specialist.

  “Like I've said before, my plans always work,” Stewart said with no humor in his voice.

  “Good. This is good. Thanks so much, all of you,” Ryan said. He couldn't believe it. He was being handed a way out. He could finally get home.

  “We're happy to help any friend of Eloise's,” Stewart said. The others voiced their own agreement
quickly.

  Ryan swallowed to get rid of the choking sensation building in his throat. “When are we going to do this?” he asked.

  “This Thursday. You should leave after lunch while the others are in their specialty classes. That will give you a few hours head start.”

  “If that's all, I really need to be getting to class. We're scheduled for the obstacle course in twenty minutes.” Leon was already dressed in the retrieval training gear and was edging toward the door. “The rest of you should probably be getting to your classes as well.”

  “He's right. We have lessons to attend. A new challenge will be coming up soon enough,” Karl reminded them.

  “Then we can consider this meeting adjourned,” Stewart confirmed.

  “What should I do in the meantime?” Ryan asked.

  “Go to classes, training, or whatever it is you usually do. Don't let them get suspicious.” Karl swung his messenger bag over one shoulder.

  “We should get to class then,” Eloise said tugging on Ryan's hand. “I heard that they've got some new parts in for us to play with, and we're not too late to test some of the stuff out.”

  Chapter 9

  Eloise and Ryan got to their class in time to get a pick of the new parts, but they both decided to stay late in order to actually get in enough time working with those parts on their latest projects. When Ryan did finally return to the villa, it was an hour after classes had ended for the day. Everyone was gathered in the main room. Kenichi and Clarisse were curled together like two kittens on a pallet they had assembled out of over-sized pillows and blankets in front of the roaring fireplace. Aria was sitting next to them reading a book aloud in a soft voice. Mackenzie and Daylan were engaged in a billiards game. Every so often, Kenichi would call out for Daylan to beat Mackenzie already. Eva was playing a chess game against Logan, who seemed to be too distracted by Eva to be doing very well at it.

  It seemed too much like a family, and it felt like a punch to the stomach to Ryan, who knew that he wasn't a part of it. He hadn't been accepted since his arrival, and it seemed like he never would be. It was the story of his life. The only person, whoever proved different was Alex. He missed her so completely, that he wanted to run back out of the villa and back to Mystique's team to demand that they go through with the plan that night regardless of the risks. The only thing stopping him was the knowledge that such a risk could mean that he might never get back to Alex.