Rogue (Exceptional)

by Petosa, Jess

  "I can take you to him. That is why I came to find you," he held his hands out as though giving a peace offering. "You won't believe the changes he's made."

  "He?" The word slipped out before she remembered she was supposed to mad at him.

  "Yes, a he. And he won't talk to anyone but you." Max pushed his pointer finger into her chest to make a point.

  Sadness crept in underneath her anger as she mulled over the fact that she was only being sought out because they needed her for something. More than Max valued her friendship, he valued her knowledge. Ally realized they at least had that in common.

  "Interesting, how you suddenly need me to do something for you and expect me to do it," She smirked at him.

  "Really, the childish thing again?" Max crossed his arms over his chest.

  "I spent a lot of my childhood working," she pointed out. "I think maybe now is a good time for a redo."

  He brought one hand up to cover his eyes. "Please, Ally. Do this one thing for me."

  Ally faltered at the pleading in his voice. Something heavy sat in the back of his words, as though there was more on the line than her just speaking with the Rogue.

  "Show me the way," she said with a sigh. "But I am not doing this for you."

  They stepped up to the porch of a large, stand-alone home. It was nestled on a street with other homes almost exactly the same. She wondered if the prominent people in town lived here, just like it seemed to be in the City. Although, Heath and his wife lived in a converted building that also served as his office.

  "Whose home is this?" she asked.

  "Technically it’s mine, but I don’t live here anymore," Max said quickly before pushing the front door open. He motioned for her to step inside and followed behind her.

  Ally worked to hide any surprise and moved past him into the vast foyer. The home reminded her so much of Luke's, her chest tightening at the thought. The main difference was that Max's home was completely empty. She could only see the foyer, and into the large rooms on either side of it, but so far she didn't spot a single piece of furniture on the floor or pictures on the wall.

  "It's..." She paused, her voice bouncing off of the walls.

  "Cozy, I know," Max said under his breath. Ally recognized the sarcasm in his voice. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the room on the right, which led into a large kitchen.

  The kitchen had a small table with a few mismatched chairs thrown around it, but that appeared to be all. Ally wondered if he even kept food in the fridge. Max led her to a thick, wooden door stuck in a narrow wall in the middle of the kitchen. He opened it, revealing a set of stairs to a lower level. They were already lit, as if someone had used them recently. He released her wrist and moved down the steps in front of her, seemingly expecting her to follow. The steps wrapped around the wall near the bottom, and then opened up into a large, well lit room.

  The first thing Ally noticed was that this room was nothing like the first level of the house. Sofas and chairs were shoved into random positions around the room, and there were multiple tables with different sizes of lamps lit on top of them. The second thing she noticed was the group of six townsmen staring straight at her, and she recognized two of them from the night she captured the Rogue in the woods. They were a good mix of young and old, and all were well muscled. Heath stepped from the group, his face set with determination.

  "Ally, thank you for coming," he said.

  Ally bit her tongue, holding back the angry words she wanted to fire back at him. Instead she chose silence, watching him with what she hoped were intimidating eyes.

  Heath raised one eyebrow before continuing. "I'm not sure how much my nephew has told you, but the Rogue has been changing rapidly since we brought him in last week. He started talking this morning, and he has been asking for you. He doesn't know your name, but he keeps asking for the "pretty girl from the woods." Would you be willing to speak with him?"

  Pretty girl from the woods?

  Ally looked at Max, who was back to using his eyes to plead with her. Or maybe threaten her. She couldn’t quite tell at the moment.

  Ally nodded and followed Heath toward a room in the back of the basement. It opened into a large bedroom, and chained to a large bed was the Rogue. At least, she thought it was the Rogue since this was the room Heath brought her too, but he looked much different than the creature she encountered in the woods a week ago.

  For one, he was Ordinary. He sat up in the bed when she entered, and she noticed that one of his arms was cuffed to the post. He was bald at the moment, but the little hair he was growing appeared to be light. He looked up at her with big, green eyes and Ally stiffened at the familiarity she saw in them. The color was similar to that of her and Stosh's. Was this really the creature that had attacked her in the woods? He seemed to be about her age, but it was hard to tell in his weakened state. His skin sagged in certain areas, now back to a regular, pale complexion, and his mouth, nose, and ears were now misshapen.

  "I'd like to speak with her alone," his voice was raspy, as if he hadn’t talked in weeks. Months. And he probably hadn’t.

  "I don't think that's a good idea," Max said. Ally hadn't noticed that he had come to stand right beside her.

  "He is harmless, Max," Heath said. "Let's give them a moment and then we'll come back and all talk together."

  Ally had no doubts that Heath had his ways of listening in on the conversation from the other room. All he cared about was listening to what the Rogue had to say.

  Once the others had left, Ally took a seat in a chair by the bed. She felt awkward with the Rogue—now Ordinary— staring at her. For a minute she looked anywhere but at him, playing nervously with her hands. Finally she crossed her legs and gripped either arm of the chair, bringing her eyes up to meet the boy's.

  "Shut it off," the Rogue spoke.

  "What?" she asked.

  He motioned to the upper corner of the room, where a small black ball hung from the ceiling.

  "Is that a camera?" Ally asked.

  He nodded. "You have the abilities to shut it off."

  Ally focused on the core of energy within her and then on the camera in the corner. Like she had done with the small objects she moved around in the woods, she focused on the change she wanted to happen. She focused on the camera shutting itself down.

  A muffled complaint came from outside the door, letting her know she had succeeded. She half expected that Heath would come bursting through the door to stop their conversation, but no one did. Ally could at least expect to be questioned on it later.

  "I'm Wyn," the boy watched her with interest.

  "Ally," she responded. "Why did you want to talk to me?"

  "You're an Exceptional. That was my life before this all of this started. It is what I know, and I know that I can trust you."

  Ally had to stop herself from telling him that she had only just recently become an Exceptional. It wasn’t important information to share right then.

  "I remember everything," Wyn started talking again. "I remember my old life, I remember getting sick, I remember the transition into becoming a Rogue, and I remember everything I did during my time as a Rogue, right up to attacking you."

  Ally thought over his words carefully. Was he admitting to being aware and willing to attacking her? Wyn continued.

  "I didn't have control over my actions as a Rogue. I felt like a bystander in my own mind, watching my body do horrible things to Ordinarys and Exceptionals alike. I murdered people, Ally. Innocent people." His words caught in his throat and Ally watched his green eyes glaze over with tears.

  "Why are you telling me this?" Her voice sounded small as she spoke. She wasn't going to comfort him and tell him it was okay, because it wasn't. Nothing about any of this was okay.

  "A group of four of us left our City, heading east for a while and then cutting south. The two females got into a fight over a kill on the third day and both died from their injuries. The other traveler, a male, tried to gut me
in my sleep and I was forced to kill him. Well, the Rogue in me was forced to. My body and mind were driven by a hunger and a need; for flesh and death. I felt pulled in this direction, pulled toward you."

  "That doesn't make any sense," Ally interrupted.

  "It doesn't at first," Wyn agreed. "But before I became a Rogue, when I was still an Exceptional, my abilities centered around being able to create the situations I wanted. If I wanted to win a girl, she would suddenly find herself fancying me. If I wanted to ace a training test, I suddenly gave my best performance. Things like that. Before my mind was completely taken from me, and the Rogue instincts took over, I kept thinking about how much we needed help, and how we needed a cure."

  He paused, waiting for my response. I brought my hand up to my mouth. ".... and you ended up with me."

  "And I'm cured," his words came out with a hint of gratitude. "I kept seeing your face in my mind as I traveled here from the City. It took me two months, and it was if my body was pulling me along, but I finally found you. I literally ran right into you."

  "You tried to kill me," Ally said.

  "I was a Rogue, through and through," he said with a smirk. "It is a good thing you are quick."

  "It wasn't me that cured you. It was a vaccine," she wanted to move the conversation along. Heath was likely to burst in at any moment, and then he would be leading the discussion. "It was originally created to turn Exceptionals back into Ordinarys. I had no idea it would work on you as well, it was the only weapon I could reach in the moment."

  "I don't think it happened by chance," Wyn said with a smile. "But now we can go to the eastern City and help my family, and my friends. We have a cure."

  Ally held up her hands. "Wait a minute. I don't have enough of the vaccination to cure an entire City. K..." she caught herself before she gave up his name, "the man who gave it to me only gave me enough to give myself."

  "You don't like being an Exceptional?" Wyn asked.

  "It's complicated," Ally leaned toward him, resting her elbows on her knees. "I'm sorry, but I just don't have enough."

  Wyn’s face changed, his expression growing angry. "Then find more. This man must know how to duplicate it."

  "He might," she said with a nod. "But right now no one knows where exactly he is."

  "I DON'T BELIEVE YOU." Wyn suddenly lashed out, using his free hand to grasp her neck. "You want to keep it all to yourself."

  Ally clawed at his hands, finding his grasp unusually strong. She watched as his mouth pulled up into a half smile and his green eyes shifted, becoming a brilliant violet. Her eyes widened and if she could pull air into her lungs, she probably would have gasped.

  "Cloaking was, or should I say is, another one of my abilities as an Exceptional. I worked as a spy, disguising myself as an Ordinary and going into the settlements," Wyn said.

  The door behind her burst open and Ally wished she could warn them. With one sweep of Wyn’s arm, Ally heard the sound of bodies hitting the wall behind her.

  "Let her go," Max growled from the other side of the room.

  With what little oxygen it had left, Ally's brain was able to compute that she was an Exceptional and that she could fight back. She didn't know the extent of Wyn's abilities, but she knew that her own were pretty strong. She focused on the energy, feeling it rush up and into her arms. Her hands glowed and as she raised them toward Wyn's chest, and as the last bit of oxygen escaped her lungs, she wished deeply that the blow would not harm him.

  His grip disappeared from her throat and she sucked in big boughs of air, never realizing that oxygen filling her lungs would taste so sweet. Wyn had been blown off the bed and against the back wall. He was groaning and holding his right arm, which was now handless and seeping blood onto the floor. She remembered that he had been cuffed to the bed when she came in, and the force of her abilities had thrown him hard enough that he had been dismembered. Ally fought back a gag and she took her eyes off the gruesome mess, surveying the damage behind her. The townsmen had already regained their footing, and Max was rushing toward her.

  Ally was surprised when he threw his arms around her and pulled her into a hug, but she returned the gesture with ease. When she pulled back, she noticed that Max's cheeks were flushed.

  "I thought for sure he was going to kill you," he said, cupping one of her cheeks with his hand.

  The touch felt very intimate and Ally immediately stepped back. "I did too. Then I remembered that I'm an Exceptional, too." She said the last part with a small laugh.

  "How did you guys miss this?" She didn't want to sound angry, but surely their tests would have detected the virus in his blood.

  "He has been so weak through the change that Carla said she was afraid that taking any blood might kill him, and she didn't know if using donated blood would have any effect on him. She was planning to come in this afternoon to do the blood draw, but he had asked to see you first. Now we know why." Heath’s voice was deep with anger.

  Ally was still wearing her hunting pack around her waist and she pulled open the top pocket, reaching her hand inside. She withdrew another vaccine, uncapping the needle and walking over to Wyn.

  "Don't do that," Heath's voice came from behind her. "Not yet."

  "Sorry," she said, trying to keep her eyes off Wyn’s mangled hand. "But I'm not asking."

  Wyn looked up at her, fear filling his eyes. "Please don't, Ally. My emotions are all over the place. I didn't mean to attack you, it just happened. I promise I'll be more careful. I'll do whatever you want me to."

  Ally looked down at him, managing to find a small amount of pity for him. "I can't take that chance."

  She jammed the needle into his neck and injected the vaccine, watching the clear liquid disappear into his body. If the vaccine worked on him like it did other Exceptionals, he would truly be an Ordinary in a few days. She wrapped the syringe in cloth and placed it back into her pack, knowing she would need to dispose of it in a safer place than this.

  "You should have come for me earlier," was all she said before she walked out of the room and out of Max's house.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The following morning Ally was intercepted by Heath as she left the house. He was leaning against the post at the end of the walk, and the bags under his eyes told her that he had had a long night.

  "I'd like to request a meeting with you, Ally," he started speaking as soon as she stopped in front of him.

  "Request a meeting? Why so formal, Heath?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

  "I feel like we've been going about this in the wrong way." He rubbed a hand across his forehead, momentarily rubbing at his eyes. "We should have included you in this from the beginning. We have some thoughts and ideas we'd like to pass by you."

  Ally couldn't help but feel smug, and she was sure the smile on her face didn't hide that sentiment at all.

  "When?"

  "Now, if possible," Heath responded.

  Ally had planned on going out with one of the hunting parties but he was giving her a chance to be involved, and she was going to take it. "Let's go."

  Heath led her back to Max's house and into the basement, where the same townsmen from last night sat around a large, round table. Max was nowhere in sight so she had no idea if he was even aware of the meeting taking place in his basement.

  They all greeted her as she took a seat. There were piles of papers and writing utensils laid out before them, but nothing had been scribed just yet. They were obviously waiting on her to start.

  Heath settled into his own chair and clasped his hands together on the table. "I've been up all night thinking about the situation with Wyn." Ally was surprised he called the Rogue by name. "Ally, we have a valuable resource in this vaccination. You hold the cure for the Rogue outbreak, and also a cure for the Exceptionals."

  Ally's skin bristled. She hadn't been an Exceptional for long but his words cut into her emotions. "I'm sorry, but what exactly about me needs to be cured?"

  "I told you her a
ge would get in the way of what needs to be done," one of the men said.

  "Sean," Heath growled with a warning. He turned back to Ally. "I need you to understand, Ally, we don’t believe that anything is wrong with you. I believe that you can truly grasp why the Rogue situation needs to be handled with the vaccination, and quickly."

  Ally nodded. That was something she wholeheartedly agreed with.

  Heath continued. "As for curing Exceptionals, we have a chance to start over. We have a chance to rebuild the world, as it once was, where Ordinarys and Exceptionals did not exist. We could restart society, and bring back the old ways of life. Ordinarys wouldn't need to work for the Exceptionals anymore."

  Ally ran his words through her head. A life of Ordinarys and Exceptionals was all she knew, and all these people knew as well. It had never seemed that awful growing up, but after being in the City, she could see the unfairness and unequal treatment of others. Yes, Luke had told her how the old world before hadn't been perfect either. She had seen it herself through the movies they sometimes watched together. There were wars, sickness, and shortages of food.

  “There is no way you’ll convince the Exceptionals to take the vaccine willingly. Aden tried to have it destroyed, and no one has been asking for it,” Ally pointed out.

  Heath shrugged. “We think we can convince them otherwise.”

  "Can we take this one step at a time?" Ally offered to the others. "Let's take care of the Rogues first."

  Heath nodded in response, while the others seemed hesitant.

  "What do you need from me?" Ally asked.

  "We need a vaccination sample, to see if we can replicate it in our labs. Either that, or we need the formula." Heath responded.

  Ally pulled two vials from the pack she wore around her waist. "Is this enough?" She was running low on supplies, but if they could replicate it, it wouldn’t even be an issue.

  Heath eyed the vials and for a moment, Ally feared the look she saw in them. It was a mixture of longing and greed, which gave her a moment of doubt about handing over the vaccination.