ARC: The Almost Girl

by Amalie Howard

  “How would she know anything about you? You just met.”

  I stare at him sadly. “Because she’s my sister,” I say, and gun the engine on the bike, pulling away as fast as I can from the shattered look on his face. At the end of the parking lot, I wait, watching as he gets into the car with Shae. He doesn’t even look at me as they drive past, and I’m grateful for that even though it cuts through me like a hot blade.

  As I follow Shae’s car, my thoughts inexorably return to the kiss. It had been so unexpected and so fiery that even now my chest heats up just from thinking about it. I don’t know what I feel about Caden and whether those feelings are indeed separate from Cale. The thing is that Cale is like a brother to me, but with Caden, there’s something more. I was primed to love him just from knowing Cale, but I’m falling in love with him because he’s Caden. I’m so confused that it’s making me crazy, my thoughts whirling into a blurring jumble in my head. The only thing standing out from everything else is whether I’m being disloyal to Cale.

  Because I can’t help but feel like I am betraying him somehow.

  Ahead of me, Shae slows down in front of a wide iron gate. I can’t see the house from where we are, but I expect that there is one behind the imposing wall of metal. The gate is attached to a high stone wall, and for a second I wonder what whoever lived in there wanted to keep out. Or in.

  There is a small camera on the right side of the gate, and I can feel its eye centered on me. After a couple seconds, the gate slides open. My pulse is racing, but I follow Shae inside onto a long and narrow driveway flanked by slender pine trees. The gates close noiselessly behind us, and the creepy silence of it is unnerving. The thought of an asylum drifts through my head and I shiver. Something isn’t right. I don’t know if it’s nerves or adrenaline, but I’m on edge and my instincts are screaming.

  Before I can accelerate to cut in front of Shae to voice my misgivings, we pull up in front of a looming stone house. It’s as forbidding as the iron gate and stone wall surrounding it. Removing my helmet, I dismount and check to make sure all my weapons are in place, just in case. Even if they’re Shae’s friends, I still don’t trust easily. Everyone is an enemy until they prove otherwise.

  There’s a person on the stairs in front of the giant double door, and Shae’s shaking hands with him. I follow, intentionally tucking Caden behind me. His feelings toward me are obvious, but I ignore them. His safety is paramount. The person turns, and for a second, my breath halts in my chest as a pair of familiar obsidian eyes freeze my body in its tracks.

  “Mrs Taylor?” I say, dumbfounded. “You’re the Guardian?”

  A tight smile. “Riven,” she says with a nod. “Welcome to my home. Any friend of Shae’s is a friend of ours. Please call me Era.”

  Caden’s eyes are as wide as my own, but he remains silent. I hide my own surprise with indifference as I walk past her through the door. Her home is dark on the inside with heavy shutters covering all the windows. My tension mounts a notch, and the hairs on the back of my neck are at stiff attention. It takes everything inside of me not to draw my weapons.

  “Drinks? Food? Can I get you anything?” Era asks as we follow her down a few steps into a long hallway that has no windows.

  “No, thanks,” Shae says. Caden nods that he didn’t want anything either, and I stay silent. There’s no way I’m eating anything in this house.

  Shae and Era are at the front with Caden behind them. I’m bringing up the rear. In the narrow hallway, I feel my instincts kicking in, and not in a good way. I catch up to Caden and squeeze his arm. His eyes meet mine. For a minute, it seems like he’s going to ignore me, but then he falls back alongside me.

  “What’s up?”

  “Look,” I whisper. “If anything happens, get behind me, OK?”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  I purse my lips and shake my head, any awkwardness between us forgotten for the moment. I pause, checking that Era and Shae are still far enough ahead of us. “Something doesn’t feel right. If Mrs Taylor knew about us, why didn’t she say anything? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know,” he says. I feel his eyes studying me. “I didn’t even know you and Shae were related, remember?”

  “Stop,” I hiss at his potshot. “Even if she didn’t know about me, she had to know about you. And if she is a Guardian, why wouldn’t Shae have warned her about me?”

  There’s a long pause before Caden answers. “I see your point.”

  Up ahead, Shae and Era have stopped at a gray metal door at the end of the hallway. It reminds me of the door that June had in her house, the one leading to the secret room in the basement. Only on either side of this door, there are two recessed keypads with LED biometric pads. The lights in the corridor flicker and I frown. Era turns to me with a tight smile.

  “It’s nothing; don’t worry. A power surge,” she says, and nods to a white table in the corner. “Please leave any weapons you’re carrying over there.”

  “What’s behind that door?” I counter flatly, ignoring her reassurance that does nothing to reassure me one bit. Neither does the command to leave my weapons out here. The muscles in my neck remain as tight as coiled springs. A power surge? What’s in that room that would affect all the power in the house? Some kind of electrical torture chamber? My frown deepens.

  Era smiles a smile that goes nowhere near her eyes. But it doesn’t surprise me – she’s a Guardian, and an active Guardian at that. They’re chosen for their complete lack of reaction. They make decisions based on logic and reason, and they don’t deviate from the jobs they’re supposed to do.

  It’s hard to reconcile the two Mrs Taylors – the teacher at school and the uncompromising Guardian standing in front of me. Without a doubt, I know that she’s a Guardian first and a teacher second. She isn’t my friend – after all, I’d flaunted the Guardian’s cardinal law by defecting to this universe. The only reason she’s giving me the time of day is because she thinks I’m an ally of Shae’s. I wonder just how much Shae has told her about me. Would she have told Era the truth? I take a deep breath to calm my panicked thoughts.

  “I mean it. I’m not going in there,” I repeat. “Especially without my weapons.”

  “It’s OK, Riven,” Shae says. Then she grasps my arm, and leans in. “You have to trust me. We’ll be safe. Just do as she says.”

  I shoot her a scathing look but remove my jacket and harness, tossing my backpack into the corner. Caden does the same. Era nods with satisfaction before she and Shae punch in some kind of simultaneous code on either side of the door and lean in for a retina scan. My unease spirals.

  What in hell is behind that door?

  As the door swings open on noiseless hinges, I don’t realize I’m gripping Caden’s wrist so tightly that he winces and pulls away. But I can’t even think to apologize. Instead, as pale blue fluorescent light and the nauseatingly familiar smell of formaldehyde rush out to greet me, I’m frozen into immobility.

  The room is circular. The floor is metal. There are men in blue head-to-toe suits walking past us with steel trays and tablet computers. There are computer flat-screens everywhere full of trending data that I can’t even begin to process, but I’m guessing that it’s some kind of laboratory. My eyes take in the details, categorizing them in my head and assessing for danger. And there’s a lot of it… that I know for certain.

  Caden pushes past me to follow Shae and Era inside, and I do the same only to be assaulted by what awaits me. I forget the men in the blue suits immediately. A row of Vectors stand in circular man-sized specimen tubes strapped vertically to the wall, a handful of them to the right of where I’m standing. My jaw drops to the floor and stays there.

  “What is this place?” I hear Caden say.

  “It’s a research facility,” Shae responds. “Era’s been studying them for years, trying to recreate the parameters to evert as they do.”

  “But you have to be dead,” I say automatically.


  Era impales me with an unnerving, piercing stare. I hold it this time and raise an uncowed eyebrow. “Not necessarily,” she says. “We can reduce certain things to mimic the state of the Vectors, to put a body at rest if you will.”

  Skepticism threads my voice. “No, the bodies have to be dead to withstand eversion from anywhere. Anything less than a zero gravity point will pulverize us.”

  A slow smile. “Come now, Riven. Put that physics knowledge of yours to good use,” she says in a patronizing voice that sets my teeth on edge. “Why do you think the Vectors generate so much electricity when they evert?” She waits, and I shrug. I never got into the technicalities with my father. All I knew was that they were dead things that could jump from anywhere and we could not.

  Era smiles. “The electrical energy generated by the nanoplasm inside of them acts as a force field to protect the human tissue. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. We can increase the electricity inside our neurons to jump as they do.”

  “How?”

  “We’ve developed a serum,” Era says, her hand gesturing to the men walking around us. “Come, let me show you.”

  We follow her past the Vectors, but I can’t help staring at the darkly veined, translucent bodies on display. On close inspection, I can see the outline of their bones as well as the metal wires from the lithia core connecting the spine to the skull. I step closer. Numbers are inked into their skin. One reads 104. The one closest to me twitches, and I almost jump out of my skin.

  “Are they active?” I blurt out.

  “Of course not,” Era says. “Don’t worry, pet; you’re safe. They can’t hurt anyone.”

  Ignoring her supercilious tone, my gaze falls back to the Vectors. They’re all still functioning, but somehow they’ve been neutralized. I wonder for a second how they’d been able to deactivate them. It isn’t like they have a kill switch, and all of my father’s programming is strongly encrypted. But then I remember. Shae would have provided some, if not all, of that information.

  “How did you get them?” I ask, nodding at the five Vectors standing inside the glass half-tubes against the wall. I can’t help the edge to my voice. “And how did you deactivate them?”

  “With great difficulty.”

  Shae turns toward me. “They were older, first generation. When we… left, I took any of Father’s research I could get my hands on. I knew he’d send the Vectors after us, and I was hoping I could use it to avoid them. Era discovered that they were programmed with some kind of kill code.”

  “The Vectors all have self-destruct codes,” I say slowly. “It’s in their operating parameters. If their objectives are compromised, the nanoplasm shuts down.”

  “That’s where I come in.” I dimly recognize the voice but not the face behind the blue mask.

  “Philip?” Caden asks, and his voice startles me. I’d forgotten that he was even there. But he’s staring at the person removing the gaskets connecting a wide helmet to a blue safety suit.

  “Wait, Philip?” I echo.

  “Extra credit,” he says in a bland voice. “And training. I’m next in line.” He jerks his head toward Era. My brows snap together, eyes darting between Philip and Era. The resemblance had not been obvious before, but now I see the same long noses and the wide, angular cheekbones, even though Philip’s hair is blond and not dark like Era’s. I feel a flush redden my cheeks as I recall the strange look Era had given me when I’d lied saying that Philip seemed to like me. Cringing embarrassment hardens my voice.

  “Wait, what? You’re in training to be a Guardian?”

  Philip nods briefly and gets back to business, consulting an tablet he’s holding in his left hand. He types in a sequence. “I embedded a code to override the self-destruct programming. These three on the left,” he says gesturing to the Vectors closest to us, “have been completely deprogrammed.”

  “And the other two?”

  “They were the last ones we got. Still working on them. Their security has an additional layer that we haven’t been able to get past, some kind of eleven-digit code. They’re slightly more advanced. I’ve run different algorithms, and nothing.”

  My mind is racing. I still don’t quite understand what they want to achieve by everting from any point like the Vectors, especially using first-generation Vectors from twelve years ago. My legion had been third-gen, and I’d bet anything that Vector Commander we had fought before was far more advanced than any I’d ever had under my command.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t get it. Why would you want to evert from anywhere? What’s the point?”

  Philip doesn’t answer and Shae avoids my eyes. Of course; I see it now. It’s an exit strategy if anyone pursing them – like me – somehow manages to get too close.

  Shae nods, confirming my guess. “It was our way out if they sent anyone after us.”

  Her voice is quiet, and I notice she doesn’t imply that I’m one of the people chasing them. It occurs to me right at that moment that she hasn’t told Era the truth about me. It seems odd that Shae would protect me, even after everything. “I just didn’t think it was going to take this long to get a workable serum.”

  “So how does the jump work?” Caden’s voice is small. He’s been quietly listening all along and trying to put together the pieces, from what Shae and I had told him earlier to what he was hearing now.

  Philip brings up a controller on his tablet and keys in some numbers. A picture forms on the flat-screens in the center of the room. It looks like an hourglass broken up into small squares. “That is a two-dimensional drawing of a traversable wormhole. It’s basically a bridge in space with two different end points. Think of the universe as made up of an infinite number of universes. Some of these universes are coupled by a gravitational field, which means that we can communicate between them. OK so far?” Caden nods, and Philip continues, pointing to one side of the diagram. “In this case, this is our world, and that is Neospes, where Shae – and the Vectors – are from.”

  Philip pauses to bring up another image on the computers, this time a series of numbers and symbols on a graph with moving waves. “How it works is a whole other story. We’re talking string theory and sub-quantum mechanics, basically the relationship between space-time, gravity, energy, and matter. OK?”

  “Not really. You lost me at string,” Caden says, dazed. I bite back a smile.

  “What Philip is trying to say,” Shae explains, “is that our physicists figured out a way to manipulate electrons and gravity to jump between one universe to the other. Like through a kind of passage.”

  “You mean like a stargate?” Caden offers, remembering my earlier jibe. “You know, the movie?”

  Philip sighs and rolls his eyes. “Sort of, only there’s no gate, but the transference is similar.”

  “OK, so why doesn’t everyone know about this? I mean, it’s amazing,” Caden says. “Can you imagine if everyone could do that?”

  “They can’t.” Era moves to the front screen and taps in some more commands that clear them all. Her voice is hard. “Though the universes exist in parallel, we’re not meant to go between them. We were breaking the laws of evolution and nature. And nature has a tough way of evening things out. Where do you think the bubonic plague came from that wiped out millions of people in Europe? We couldn’t control it, so we closed the wormholes and founded the Guardians on this side.” She nods toward Shae. “They created the Vectors on theirs to police and deal with illegal jumpers.”

  “What about them?” My voice is harsh in the vacuum of silence following Era’s words. “Why wasn’t Leila or Shae dealt with for jumping illegally?” I’m more curious than anything – the Guardians have such rigid laws that it doesn’t make sense as to why they would allow Shae to remain here.

  “Caden’s mother was seeking asylum to return home with her son from the Lord King at the time,” Era says. “The Faction could not deny it.”

  At her words, Caden is already backing away, his face confused and betrayed, staring fro
m Shae to Era to me. His anger finds an easy mark.

  “I’m the target you were talking about in my house that day?” he hisses in my direction. “I’m what you were looking for? The next in line to your stupid monarchy?”

  “It’s not what you think –” I begin, but he cuts me off.

  “No. It’s not what you think,” he says. “I don’t belong there. I belong here. I’m not going with you. Not now, not ever. I could care less if your idiot boyfriend is dying.”

  I’m flinching inside at the words he’s throwing so carelessly at me, but the truth is, I am there to take him back. My voice is cold when I respond. My words are for everyone.

  “That idiot boyfriend is your brother and the reason you’re even alive. And you’re going whether you like it or not.” I turn to Philip, who’s staring at me like I’ve grown a pair of horns on my forehead. “Try these numbers.” I reel off a series of numbers and he hastily enters them onto his tablet.

  “What are they?”

  “My name and my birth date. Trust me, that’s the code you’re looking for.”

  Philip punches in the numbers and for a second, nothing happens. My father had been anything if predictable with the earlier versions of his pet project. Maybe I’ve got it wrong.

  “I’m sorry–”

  But the wailing of a loud siren – the sound of security being breached – cuts off my words. Philip’s eyes are wide and horrified, focused on something behind me. Era is already diving for some kind of control pad on the computer desk, slamming her left hand down so that more alarms are shrieking. In her right hand, she’s holding an electro-rod. In that millisecond, I notice that it’s not set to stun.

  It’s set to kill.

  Shae screams and pushes Caden to the floor as people in blue suits streak past us. Doors start closing, separating the room into smaller quarters. I turn in slow motion, only to meet the cold dead eyes of one of the Vectors that I had clearly just activated.