Absolved (Altered series)

by Marnee Blake

  Bet Dr. Fields hadn’t anticipated that side effect when he’d developed Solvimine.

  Maybe that was all this was. Straight up physical attraction. No one could control that. Didn’t mean she was into him as a person.

  If it were him, he’d steer clear of his sparkling personality, too.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Kitty Laughton sank into the desk chair next to him, glaring at him.

  “I wasn’t talking, Kit.” He grinned. There was something about Kitty. She didn’t have a malicious bone in her body, so when she sat there with her mean face on, it amused him.

  “No, but that stuff in your head is toxic. Worse, it’s complete garbage.”

  “Which part?” He lifted his eyebrow at her. “The part where I’m suddenly not as dorky and awkward as I used to be, or the part where I’m Captain Personality?”

  She sighed. It came out exasperated, but the effect was ruined by the softness in her eyes. “You are neither of those things.” She blushed. “I mean, your personality is fine. And, your, the rest of you…” She waved her arm toward him, the color on her cheeks high. “You’re fine, too.”

  “Aww, Kitty. Thanks. You say the nicest things.”

  She scowled, but ruined it by laughing. “You’re awful.”

  He smiled back. “I got what you meant.” He might be okay to look at now, and he might function well enough in normal situations, at least compared to his dorky, high school self, but the person he’d become since Solvimine had changed him? He wasn’t okay with that guy. Not at all.

  But he would be. Once he stopped Jack and Parker, undid some of what he’d done… Then maybe he’d be able to breathe in his own skin again.

  “You’re too hard on yourself,” Kitty whispered, low enough that no one would hear her. Around them, there were three other computer guys, all keeping their eyes focused on their screens.

  “You give me too much credit,” he whispered back.

  Grabbing his arm, she dragged him from his seat. He should put up a fight. They needed everyone searching for any sign of Jack and Parker. But he didn’t mind the break.

  In the hall, she shoved him. “You aren’t a monster.”

  He squirmed under her too-knowing eye. Maybe he shouldn’t have come out here, after all. “Kitty…”

  “Before you say anything else, yes, I do know what happened. I was there, remember? Besides, I’ve seen it all in your head dozens of times.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ve made this into something that it isn’t. You’ve made yourself into a monster when you aren’t.”

  “I left you behind, Kitty.” He bit off the words. “I left you and ran away like a chickenshit to Mexico. Then, when I came back, I brought Jack and Parker with me.” He stared her down. “I should have guessed they were up to something awful. There had been signs. I brought them anyway.” Maybe she could forgive him for the soldier in La Junta, even if he couldn’t. But she couldn’t overlook that. Maybe the soldier in La Junta had been an accident, but Luke’s reactions and his choices since then? Those hadn’t been.

  “We all got thrown into this, Luke.” She managed to sound both censorious and sympathetic at the same time, something only Kitty could do. “None of us were prepared for it.”

  It wasn’t that simple.

  She shifted closer. Kitty wasn’t tall, but her eyes were such a clear blue that she arrested attention. Now, she trained that icy gaze on him. “It isn’t simple. But, I know. You think you’re the only one who felt responsible for things? The only one who regrets things?” Her eyes narrowed. “I was kidnapped because I didn’t pay attention to Blue, to Seth. They warned me that Jeremy wasn’t a good guy. I ignored them. It was a mistake.”

  “You can’t be held responsible for that. Jeremy’s an…”

  “Jerk. A complete jerk.”

  That wasn’t what he was going to say. But he’d never heard Kitty swear, so he imagined that was as close as she’d get to what he intended. He nodded. Jeremy was a user. He’d sold Kitty out to get a job at the defense contractor in charge of creating Solvimine. “Jerk” didn’t cover it.

  “Nick came to get me, and he could have been killed. When I went back to stop Fields, I forced the rest of you to follow me.” She shook her head. “I could have gotten you all killed. That was probably a mistake. People make mistakes. I made mistakes.” She squeezed his hand. “You made mistakes. It happens.”

  It wasn’t the same. “You mistakenly trusted people. Going back for Fields… You were acting for the greater good. I let people down. It’s different.”

  “The greater good.” She snorted. “What is that, anyway?”

  He didn’t want to talk about this anymore, so he changed the subject. “Did you know?”

  Wariness bled into her features. “Know what?”

  “Oh my God, you did.” She’d known that Beth was attracted to him and hadn’t said anything.

  “Oh, goodness, Luke. Seriously.” She rolled her eyes, smoothing her long ponytail on her shoulder.

  He exhaled. “Kit, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” Her brows popped up. “That the girl you’ve thought was amazing for months now liked you back? I expected you’d figure it out.”

  “I didn’t think…”

  Kitty lifted her hand. “Don’t even try to tell me you haven’t noticed her. How she looks, how she walks. How smart and interesting she is. How good you feel when she’s around.” She dropped her hand. “Because, please—I’ve listened to you both. I know what’s going on.”

  “I don’t… I mean, I do, but…” He sounded like an idiot. “I do think she’s great, but not like you think…” In mid-argument, he paused to think about what he was saying.

  Beth was all the things Kitty said. With her curls and her glasses and her smarts, he constantly caught himself looking at her. She was small, and when she was close, he wanted to be closer, to pull her against him. To curl himself around her.

  “Beth would be great for you,” Kitty offered, “if you gave her a chance…” Her voice trailed off at the end. Her eyes cast around, and she didn’t look at him.

  People did that when they were lying.

  “You can’t believe that.” No one was going to be able to deal with his mess. He couldn’t even deal with his mess. And even if she was good for him, Kitty couldn’t possibly think he would be good for Beth. “You can’t think we’d work out. I’m not a good fit for Beth.”

  Kitty stilled, her eyes closing.

  That’s when he noticed Beth, standing around the corner behind Kitty. Today’s T-shirt, peeking out from between the open sides of a bulky cardigan, showed two atoms. One said, “I lost an electron,” and the other said, “Are you positive?” He would have laughed at the nerdy science humor any other time, but right now, nothing was funny.

  “Kitty.” Though Beth’s eyes were broken, her voice remained strong. “They need you, in the infirmary.” Her back was straight, her mouth tight and pinched like she suppressed pain.

  Maybe she did.

  His stomach twisted. How much had she heard? He’d been saying they wouldn’t work out. How bad did this look to her?

  “Beth,” he started. “I didn’t mean it like you heard…”

  Her smile squeezed his heart. “It’s okay, Luke. No problem.”

  Apparently, it looked really bad.

  She turned to Kitty, then, dismissing him. “I came to tell you that another survivor from Parker’s meeting died.”

  The words halted everything in him. Not another one…

  Kitty’s head dropped, and her lips pinched together.

  “There was too much damage…in his brain,” Beth offered, as if the silence hurt too much. “He wouldn’t have regained consciousness even if his breathing hadn’t stopped.”

  That meant only one survivor remained, and she hadn’t awoken yet. “The last one…”

  “She’s hanging in there. We need to get back.” She motioned toward the i
nfirmary and talked to Kitty as if he wasn’t even there “You need to listen to her, to make sure she keeps her spirits up.” Kitty could place ideas in others’ minds. If anyone could keep the survivors alive, it was her.

  Kitty glanced between them, her mouth opening and closing. He recognized the look. It was the one that said she heard everything they were thinking but had no way to fix it. Finally, she closed her mouth, her eyes sad. Spinning, she hurried down the hall, her head down.

  Beth followed, her chin up.

  “Beth,” he called out. “Wait…”

  She lifted her hand without pausing. A moment later, she was gone.

  He should go after her. Every decent fiber of him screamed for him to do so, to apologize. To tell her that he did admire her, that her huge brain turned him on, that her lower lip drove him crazy. That he wished that he was a better man, the kind of man that deserved her attention and attraction.

  But he wasn’t. So he stayed where he was.

  He leaned his head back, banging it against the wall behind him. He squeezed his eyes closed.

  “Luke.” The voice broke into his mental flaying.

  He swallowed hard, gritting his teeth, doing what he could to pull his shit together. It took a long moment before he opened his eyes and answered Sayan, one of the other guys on his computer research team. “Yeah.”

  “We found something.”

  Luke pushed off the wall, catching the door before it closed, following him.

  Sayan and Dave hunkered over one of the computers. A second later, they had the screen projected onto the smartboard in front of them. Sayan turned to Luke, explaining what he was seeing. “It’s a link between five different posts. We connected it using the underlying metadata. But the posts are all similar. They all reference the same main points as the original meeting’s post—an invitation to come and get superpowers.”

  The screen split into five. Sure enough, the posts were comparable. Not the same but close enough that he could see the parallels. “Where did you find these?”

  “Two are on different gaming forums. One is on an apocalyptic forum.” Sayan glanced at him from the side. “You know, the guys who think the U.S. is better than everyone else.”

  “Yeah, I know them.” There had been a few outlier, end-of-days groups situated near Glory, off the grid. Preppers.

  “Another is a paramilitary enthusiast site, and the last is a comic book forum.”

  All of the groups were different, but he could see why Parker chose them. Each audience would find something valuable in the idea of superpowers.

  “Get Martins on the line. And round everyone up. ” They’d need everyone who was changed, as well as all their support staff. “I’ll find Beth.” He might have fucked things up with her on a personal level, but they would agree on this.

  Sayan nodded, turning to the phone. Luke swept out of their conference room, heading for the infirmary, breaking into a run. He tried to calm his mind, to focus on the positives. They had intercepted this early. They had time. The meetings were scheduled for this evening. They could prepare.

  His fists clenched at his sides. Parker and Jack weren’t going to get away. Not again.

  Chapter Eight

  Beth slumped in front of a bank of computer screens in the back of a surveillance van in East DC. Next to her, Dave, the technician she was supposed to be supporting, stared at the same screens. They were parked two blocks from the meeting site advertised on one of the gamer forums. On the screens were views from every angle outside, as well as feeds from the body cameras Luke and Kenny wore. Microphones hummed and lights blinked, signaling that everything was being recorded. It was a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds, and on most days, Beth would have found it all overwhelming.

  Tonight, none of it compared to the cacophony in her head.

  She was an idiot.

  What had she been thinking, telling Luke she was attracted to him? What did she think that would achieve?

  He’d been trying so hard to convince her that he was no good. All the while, everything in her brain flashed, “Does not compute.”

  She hadn’t considered the aftermath of her revelation, though.

  The shock froze his face, and then she ran away.

  If she hadn’t overheard him and Kitty from the hallway, she might have been able to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  You can’t think we’d work out. I’m not a good fit for Beth.

  Her eyes closed briefly, her throat tightening. Not a good fit, huh? She’d never fit with anyone. Being the smartest person in any room would do that to someone. She was more than aware that she was different, but having him point it out? It had hurt far worse than she’d ever expected.

  From her perch on the stool, she scanned the monitors in front of her, propping her elbow on the dash and resting her chin in her hand. Pausing at Kenny’s feed, she watched Luke. His dark hair fell over his forehead. Though the body camera produced black-and-white footage, she could picture the exactly milk-chocolate color of his eyes.

  She had it bad.

  Forcing her gaze away, she spotted something on the screen next to Luke’s—a figure entering the nearly abandoned office building where the meeting would take place.

  Pointing, she nudged Dave. “Who’s that?”

  He shrugged, unconcerned. “Another attendee?”

  Except something about this man’s walk was familiar. She tapped the zoom button, magnifying the view. Freezing the frame, she leaned in, her heart pounding. “That’s Jack Barnett.”

  Dave surged forward, drawing his face closer to the monitor. “Are you sure?”

  She’d watched the snippets of surveillance video they had of him too many times to count. The cocky tilt of his head, the slouch, the stubborn set of his jaw—she’d recognize him anywhere. “Definitely.”

  The van went dark. All the technology in front of her flickered out.

  “What happened?” She lifted her microphone, pressing the button that was meant to send her voice into Luke’s ear. “Luke. Luke. Jack’s coming in. Do you hear me? Jack is outside.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Luke!” she yelled. “Can you hear me?”

  In the moonlight filtering through the front windows, she met Dave’s eyes, seeing her own panic reflected there. “They can’t hear us,” she commented needlessly.

  What the hell had happened? Something had taken out all the electronics in the van. She scurried to the front, scanning the street.

  No lights. Anywhere.

  At the end of the block, in the middle of the intersection, a man had gotten out of his car and was studying it as if it were foreign to him.

  Or as if it had stopped inexplicably.

  She pressed her finger to her temple. Inside, Luke and Kenny were completely unaware. She had no way to warn them that Jack was there. He could recognize them. He might not know Kenny, but Jack and Luke had grown up together.

  They’d be blindsided.

  She stood in a crouch in the van, grabbing her gun, the one she’d only ever fired at the shooting range. “I’m going in.”

  “What?” Dave pressed his glasses up his nose. “You’re not supposed to leave. It’s against protocol.”

  “They don’t know he’s here.” She snagged her jacket, draped over the stool she’d vacated, and threw it on. “Someone has to warn them.”

  She refused to leave Luke vulnerable in there.

  “It’s not safe… You aren’t a fighter. You can’t…”

  “Solvimine’s the threat, right?” She buttoned the jacket. “I just won’t drink anything. Simple.” Sounded easy enough. She opened the back door of the van, hopping down. The frigid wind greeted her, whipping at her coat. “If your phone works again, or the power comes back on, call Martins. Have them send more people.”

  “Beth…” he started, but she closed the door on his argument, heading purposefully across the street. Slush squished under her boots, and she tugged her lapels closer, doing her best
to ignore the anxiety licking at her stomach.

  Luke and Kenny had planned to stop any mass consumption of the drug, to take whoever was leading the meeting into custody. Jack was a wild card, one they couldn’t afford to leave unaddressed.

  She’d sneak in, give Luke and Kenny the heads up, and then get out. How hard could this be?

  As she hurried across the slushy street, her head swung up and down, scanning for anyone who might be watching. When it came to not looking suspicious, she was probably failing. Opening the steel side door that all the attendees had entered, she stepped in, taking the stairs to the second level two at a time.

  The lights were on. There wasn’t any power on the street, but this broken-down facility had electricity? The hair on her arms stood up.

  A young man, probably no older than her, sat behind a card table in the upstairs hallway under a building directory. All but two slots were blank. He barely contained his hostility. “Can I help you?”

  “Is this the meeting? From the forum?” She did her best wide-eyed and innocent impression, pushing her glasses up her nose. Sometimes it paid to wave her geek flag. “Am I in the right place?”

  “Sign in.” He tapped the sheet in front of him. “They’re about to start.”

  She jotted down a name—Beth Thompson—and offered him a smile that he didn’t return. Then she ducked inside.

  …

  Five minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin, the power went out.

  Luke stilled in his seat in the dark, listening to the murmurs around him. Tension buzzed through the room and his own alertness tightened. He tapped his microphone, wondering if Beth had been affected out on the street by the outage. He didn’t get a response.

  Not good. Damn it. Where was she? Was she all right?

  What the hell happened?

  Panic for her safety gripped his stomach, and it took everything to stay in his folding chair. He couldn’t exactly get up and go outside to check on her right now. That would raise suspicions, and he needed to blend in.

  As endless moments ticked by, his brain offered him a bunch of things that could be happening to her in the van, each one more frightening than the last.