Redux (The Variant Series, #3)

by Jena Leigh

  He looked so different, here in the past.

  His normally short hair was surprisingly long, pulled back into a tangled knot at the base of his neck. When he’d removed the tie earlier in a moment of frustration—running his hands roughly through his black locks before once again pulling them away from his face—his wavy black hair had fallen nearly to his shoulders.

  His dark clothes, the beard, the untamed hair and his deeply tanned skin…

  Where the Nate of her own time had always seemed put-together and in control, with an almost military efficiency and sense of purpose, this Nate was brooding and less composed.

  Angrier.

  Edgier.

  He was a strange shadow of his future self, and Alex couldn’t help but wonder why. What would happen here in the past to change him so completely? To turn him into the Nate she had come to know so well?

  Seeming to sense her gaze upon him, Nate shot her a glance over his shoulder.

  Embarrassed at having been caught mid-stare, Alex shifted her attention to her feet as she walked.

  The light rains that had fallen across the city earlier in the night had let up, leaving the cement and scattering of cobblestones of the Seattle sidewalks dark, slick, and marked with puddles that glowed white and yellow beneath the streetlights.

  The trio was silent as they made their way uphill, deeper into the city and away from the waterfront. At this time of night there were only a few cars on the road, and only a handful of people moving through the empty streets. The office buildings they passed were closed for the night, with only the occasional illuminated storefront display or 24-hour establishment offering any signs of life within the sleeping city.

  Their destination wasn’t far according to Aiden, but Alex—her entire body still sore and aching—faced a stabbing sensation in her ribcage with every step, while her lungs burned painfully from the exertion and the cold.

  It quickly became obvious that she’d fractured a rib or two during her fall.

  And, man, was she ever out of shape.

  Just when Alex was certain she wouldn’t be able to make it any further up the hill, Aiden turned right at an intersection and the sidewalk leveled out.

  Along this strip of road, most of the buildings had been constructed using pale stone, metal, and glass. Their accented features were painted dark colors that Alex thought might have appeared olive and burgundy in the light of day. The trees lining the roadway were still relatively young, planted equidistant from each other, and each had been draped with soft white string lights, causing the droplets of rain to sparkle brightly upon the leaves.

  The effect made for a beautiful sight. Forgetting her troubles for a moment, Alex drank in the gorgeous glow and tranquil feeling of the night.

  There was something about a city street, just after a drenching rain, that made it feel washed clean, like all the world had been given a fresh start. A second chance.

  Alex wished the rains could offer her the same.

  What she wouldn’t give right now for a do-over.

  A few feet ahead, Aiden came to an abrupt halt and turned to approach a black door set into the pale brick wall. The door had been left unlocked and Aiden tugged it open to reveal a stairwell leading to the building’s upper floors.

  Aiden didn’t take the stairs. Instead, he walked down the hall and around the corner.

  Following in his footsteps, Alex realized that another door had been set into the wall at the other end of the room. Aiden opened it to reveal a second set of stairs, this one descending toward basement level before disappearing into a pool of darkness.

  “Where does this lead?” asked Alex, following Nate and Aiden through the doorway. “To a storeroom of some kind?”

  Aiden flipped on a light that only barely illuminated the entrance as the heavy door slammed closed behind them. The concrete steps were old, showing chips in places and worn down heavily in others. As they descended, the air grew increasingly stale.

  “Not exactly,” said Aiden, then mumbled to himself in an undertone, “Great. This isn’t the right basement. Now what, Jezza? How the hell am I supposed to help you when you don’t tell me where you are?”

  The scent lingering in the room reminded Alex, oddly, of the attic in her best friend Cassie’s house. The smell of cool air, dust and plywood had greeted the girls when, at eight years old, they had snuck into the only off-limits area in the Harper household—the attic—in an effort to locate Cassie’s Christmas presents a month early.

  Thinking of that moment now as she stood next to Nate in the shadows brought her the first pangs of homesickness.

  She missed her friends. Her Aunt Cil.

  How long would it be before she saw them again? Months? Years? The possibility that she might be taking the long way home again made her queasy.

  Eager to bury that thought, Alex cleared her throat. “So what now? Can you call your friend to find our where she is?”

  Aiden shook his head. “Tried that a few minutes ago. No one’s picking up.”

  “Any clue as to where they might be?” asked Nate.

  “Jezza lives in this building, in a loft apartment upstairs. I thought maybe she’d called me from down here, but if she’s not here, there’s really only one other place I can think of,” he said.

  Aiden made no move to retrace his steps back up to the main level, instead he squinted at an open doorway positioned at the far side of the basement.

  Using the Maglite he’d grabbed earlier, he made his way slowly along the inside wall. When he reached a gray metal box, Aiden opened it up and flipped one of the circuit breakers inside. A string of bulbs hanging from the ceiling sparked to life, causing Alex to flinch.

  “You’re thinking they’re under Lincoln’s shop?” asked Nate.

  Aiden sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Can we even get there from here?” asked Nate.

  He nodded. “I’ve done it before, but it’s been a while.” Turning to Alex, Aiden added. “The Seattle you see today was actually built on top of the Seattle that was here over a hundred and twenty-five years ago. So this cellar? A long time ago, it was actually positioned at street level. It’s one of the basements here in the city that connects to the underground.”

  “The underground?” she echoed.

  “A fire basically devastated the city back in 1889 and when they rebuilt, they put the new construction over top of the original buildings,” explained Nate.

  “So this underground place is, what?” asked Alex. “The remains of the original town?”

  “Give the girl a prize,” said Aiden.

  “Most of it’s condemned,” said Nate. “But there are parts you can still walk through, provided you know what you’re doing, and you move through it carefully.”

  “Let’s save the history lessons for later,” said Aiden. “Right now we’ve got to help Jezza and Lincoln, assuming they haven’t gone and drowned themselves yet.”

  “So do you think you can find your way back to your friend’s basement using the tunnels?” asked Alex. “Or should we head back upstairs?”

  Instead of answering, Aiden trudged off toward the opening he’d been appraising earlier.

  “Watch your feet,” he said. “I’ll do my best to light the way for you, but the floor’s uneven in places and some of the areas we’ll be walking through are filled with debris and random obstacles.”

  Aiden wasn’t kidding.

  Alex struggled to follow in his footsteps, the white glare of his flashlight illuminating only half of her path from up ahead, as the bobbing glow from Nate’s cell phone lit other sections of the ground from behind her.

  “What sort of shop are we talking about?” asked Alex.

  “Tattoo parlor,” said Nate, shortly, before asking, “What do you think happened, Aiden?”

  Aiden shrugged. “Lincoln’s family has owned the building for ages and they rent out a part of the basement to that company that gives the underground tours. I’m assuming the dumbass
called Jezza to come help him with a leak down here instead of calling the city maintenance guys like he was supposed to.”

  “Ah,” said Nate. “Because the city would take a few days to fix things, possibly affect the shop, and almost definitely put a halt to the tours, but for a few bucks, Jezza would have him back in business by morning.”

  “Exactly.”

  Alex could feel the air around them growing heavy with moisture. Focusing on that sensation, she stretched her senses until she could detect water flowing swiftly through the exposed pipes that stretched up the walls and occasionally crisscrossed the ceiling.

  And then she sensed something… weird.

  Aiden must have located the anomaly at the exact same moment, because he let out another tired sigh and muttered, “Why, Linc? Why must you be such a tightwad?”

  Roughly two blocks from their current location, Alex sensed a body of water that was absolutely massive in comparison to anything nearby… and it appeared to be growing larger by the second.

  Aiden broke into a jog and Alex once again struggled to keep up, the pain in her side almost blinding her with every footfall.

  They wound their way through tight corridors and across large, open rooms. There were oddly placed doors and windows set into what were once exterior walls. Openings faced onto slabs of cement or nothing at all except the next empty expanse. Some of the areas were lit up, but for most of the way there were no lights and the trio was forced to rely on the bouncing circle of illumination cast by Aiden’s flashlight.

  They turned another corner into one last, long hall. The cobbled floor was oddly sloped. Alex had to fight to maintain her footing. Then they slipped through a doorway. Alex stumbled to a halt and saw the anomaly for herself.

  “What the hell?” said Nate, sliding to a stop just behind her.

  The lights in this section were turned on, revealing one massive open room that must have stretched a couple hundred feet across in both directions. Strategically placed posts held up the ceiling and a skeletal wooden framework seemed to outline the boundaries of invisible rooms; ones that no one had actually gotten around to building.

  At the very center of the maze of frames, however, a rectangular area roughly the size of a tennis court was rapidly filling up with water.

  The same water that Alex could sense pouring out of a large clay pipe that stretched from floor to ceiling alongside one of the columns. The massive pool of liquid was being held within the rectangular confines of the “room” by walls composed entirely of thin air.

  At the center of the pool stood a girl Aiden’s age with a head full of long blonde hair, pulled back into a cascading ponytail threaded with dozens of bright pink braids. She had her arms outstretched as she attempted to hold the water in place, her face scrunched into an unflattering snarl.

  Judging by the way the water slowed and occasionally flowed back into the fractured pipe, it was clear the girl was attempting to push the water into the busted water main. But for every two steps forward, her abilities seemed to lapse and she took three steps back as water cascaded into the already flooded room.

  A trail of blood trickled steadily from the girl’s nose and across her lips, staining her teeth a muddy red. The water was already up past her chest. She’d obviously been at this for a while.

  She’s pushing herself too far, Alex thought, hurrying toward the exhausted girl.

  Aiden got there first, assuming control of the room’s watery confines as he stepped inside and ensured that the barrier held and the invisible walls remained in place. The girl exhaled slowly as her muscles began to relax, relieved to be free of the burden.

  Alex waded into the pool of icy water behind Aiden. The girl was taller than Alex by a good four inches, and so the water was already up above Alex’s chin. She began treading water in order to keep her head above the surface.

  Aaaannnd I’m soaked again, she mused. When this is all over with, I’m moving to the desert.

  The stray thought dovetailed into an unexpected image of Aaron, alive but at the end of his rope as Alex struggled to make sense of his vague instructions. Of the terrifying storm cell that had formed over the barren landscape surrounding them. Of Aaron collapsing into the pale dirt, leaving Alex alone to figure out how to use the weather ability she’d mistakenly absorbed. To sink or to swim, and to do it entirely alone.

  And then she saw Aaron lying not on the desert floor, but on the floor of his obsidian-lined cell, surrounded in a pool of his own blood, a dark hole in the center of his forehead.

  Her stomach turned at the memory and she was overwhelmed by a sudden rush of anxiety. Alex slammed her eyes shut against the panic as she momentarily forgot where she was. She could taste bile rising at the back of her throat.

  He’s gone.

  Aaron’s gone and it’s all my fault. It’s always my fault…

  “Jezza, let the water go, dammit!”

  Aiden’s barked order snapped Alex back to the events unfolding around her and what she’d been attempting to do. She struggled to steady her breathing and focus.

  “Nate!” said Aiden. “Pull Jezza out of here while she’s still upright. Even if she had her strength and could help me, we still wouldn’t have enough power between the two of us to hold these walls in place and put the water back in the pipe. I think we’re gonna need to just seal the leak in that pipe somehow and then deal with the mess the water makes later.”

  With that, Aiden let go of the walls.

  The water remained in place.

  In her peripheral vision, Alex noticed that Aiden’s head had whipped around in her direction. He knew. He could sense that she was the one who had taken control.

  Here goes nothing, she thought as she set her focus on reversing the flow of water and sending it all back into the pipe. Man, I hope I’m making the right decision.

  Inch by quarrelsome inch, the water responded to Alex’s command, returning obediently to its source.

  In less than a minute, the basement was once again dry as a bone.

  With one hand hovering over the fracture in the clay pipe to ensure that no more water escaped, Alex split her attention and began pulling the moisture away from her saturated clothes, carefully lifting the droplets from the surface of her skin and ordering them to evaporate into the air.

  Much better, she thought to herself.

  Easy-peasy. And far preferable to traipsing around Seattle in 40-degree weather while wearing a wet pair of jeans.

  One of these days, she really needed to remember to just split the water before wading into it, a lá Moses at the Red Sea, so that she could avoid the cycle of getting drenched and drying off altogether.

  Satisfied that she was once again dry, Alex turned to see what sort of reaction the others had to her efforts. It was hardly a “fantastic” display—certainly not Mac-truck levels of awe-worthy—but she hoped it would at least have hinted at what she could do.

  An odd silence had replaced the rush of moving water.

  Taking in their expressions, Alex realized she might have underestimated the magnitude of what she’d accomplished.

  The others—Jezza included—were all standing outside the former boundaries of the room, dripping wet from the chest down… and each one of them was blatantly gaping at her.

  Eleven

  “No freaking way,” said Jezza, her eyes wide.

  The whispered exclamation summed up Nate’s own reaction pretty well.

  Moving such a massive body of water back into a pipe against that sort of resistance? And in under a minute?

  Even Aiden, who was far and away the strongest water-wielder Nate had ever met, never could have done what Alex had managed to do so quickly without passing out or giving himself an aneurysm in the attempt.

  And yet this wisp of a girl managed to accomplish it without showing the slightest hint of a struggle. The lines of her face and her posturing showed no outward signs of exhaustion. Sheepish embarrassment, perhaps. But she sure as hell wasn�
�t tired.

  To his right Aiden stood scrutinizing her, openly astounded, and more than a little confused.

  “The water pressure she just fought back…” Jezza still clung to Nate’s arm for support, exhausted by her earlier efforts. “I mean, damn. Color me impressed, New Girl.”

  Alex shrugged, her cheeks aflame.

  How could someone so small possess so much power?

  Nate didn’t remember much about Mr. and Mrs. Parker, but he remembered their abilities quite clearly. Like Nate, Alex’s dad had been telekinetic, and her mom was a jumper.

  So where had this water-wielding ability even come from?

  The milk man?

  Either there was something very screwy about Alex’s family tree, or this girl was no ordinary Variant teenager.

  “You and I are going to have a little chat about what you just did as soon as we’re back at the apartment,” said Aiden, pointing at Alex accusingly before switching his attentions to the waterlogged girl still clinging to Nate’s elbow. “You, on the other hand, are going to explain to me right now what in God’s name you were thinking attempting to fix this by yourself.”

  Jezza huffed, her voice low and exhausted as she released Nate’s arm and walked over to a toolbox and a canvas bag of supplies that had been left on the floor a few yards into the dry-zone.

  “I was thinking that it was just a little crack in an ordinary pipe.” Jezza wiped the blood from her upper lip with the back of her hand, then sniffed. “Lincoln didn’t tell me that it was a damn city water main that was about to blow.”

  “Where is this Lincoln, anyway?” asked Alex, moving slowly to stand at Nate’s side, her right arm still held taut as she contained the water within the broken pipe.

  “Upstairs,” said Jezza, tugging on a pair of bright pink work gloves. “He was pissing me off and making it difficult to concentrate, so I ordered him back up to the shop to wait for me once I knew that you were on your way.”

  Jezza stood, a roll of something that looked like tape in one gloved hand and a couple of white patches the size of post-cards in the other. As she sauntered back across the room, she met Alex’s eye and smiled wryly.