Born Bad

by Sarah Noffke

  “There was no one there,” Haiku said, his words sounding strained from the act of breathing.

  “Or she was invisible,” Mika said, pulling his fist to his chest before slamming it across the various objects lining the table next to Haiku’s bed. They spilled to the ground with a clatter, but the disturbance had no effect on Haiku, who looked close to falling asleep.

  “The whole fight was confusing. I was running after Kaleb and then he was beside me,” Haiku said, entirely too slowly for Mika’s patience. “And then I charged him a second time and he was at my back. I didn’t understand—”

  “He can stop time,” Drake said, interrupting Haiku. “I measured the hallway at Parantaa Research for remnants of relativity after a similar situation happened to me when I had Adelaide in custody. The space proved positive for elements left behind when time is altered.”

  Mika pressed his head down, feeling the tense muscles stretch. He let out a long breath as his shoulder blades pinched together. “Kaleb can stop time,” he said, drawing out the last word. Mika had been successful. He’d created werewolves with incredible abilities, even more powerful than any Dream Travelers. However, to have these extremely powerful weapons stolen from him was the biggest injustice and someone would pay. They’d all pay.

  “Drake, get back to work on creating a clairvoyant. That’s our best hope for getting ahead. They might be able to stop time, but if I can see the future, then it won’t matter,” Mika said, turning and marching out of the room.

  Chapter Ten

  “To dream travel, a person simply lies down and relaxes. They must stay aware, not allowing their mind to fall into dream-filled sleep. Instead, they need to direct their consciousness where they intend to travel. The mind will do the work, as long as they don’t change their mind or do anything that negates their prior intention. Self-doubt is the biggest obstacle in this for some individuals.”

  - Dream Traveler Codex

  Adelaide observed that Zephyr looked paler than usual. However, he was alive, so what did she care if he looked a bit pasty. Welcome to her world as a redhead and a permanent resident of an underwater facility. Aiden had said the first drug trial went as well as could be expected, although Zephyr had thrashed around while clenching his teeth. He was such a fucking drama queen.

  She pulled her eyes over to Kaleb, who wore a dejected expression she had mastered. Adelaide was well acquainted with defeat. It was fair to say she had a graduate degree in the emotion, actually. However, if she’d been an optimist, which she wasn’t then, she’d say that defeat propelled a person on to better things. Pushed them toward their full potential. Kaleb was going to complete agent training and that was the only silver lining in his mistakes while out in the field. The problem wouldn’t have happened at all if Trent hadn’t thrown out her father’s protocol and allowed Kaleb to bypass required agent training.

  Adelaide brought her gaze to her boss, who wasn’t much older than her. It had been Ren who hand-picked Trent to take over for him as head strategist. At night, when she should be sleeping, she dreamed about having his position. Wouldn’t that be the one thing that would have really made her father proud? For her to take over his old position, the one created for him that he held for over twenty years? However, when she allowed herself to dream, her nightmare involved her failing as an agent, and as head strategist.

  “Okay, for those who don’t know, Mika has an alien,” Adelaide said, clicking the remote so that the image she’d sketched of the Arcturian popped up on the projector, displaying on the screen at the front of the conference room.

  “Holy mother of shoes,” Rox said, slapping her hands on her bare thighs.

  Pants. What the FBI hooker needed was a pair of pants, but instead she preferred to wear ass-hugging shorts and skirts. The one pair of jeans she wore was two sizes too small.

  “Well, now I’ve seen everything,” Trent said, combing his hands through his appalling dreads. Scissors. What that guy needed was an hour with a pair of scissors. If everyone just took Adelaide’s advice then they’d all look way more tolerable and not make her throw up.

  “That’s what you saw when you were at Parantaa Research?” Connor said, pulling a pair of glasses from a case he’d withdrawn from his jean pocket. Adelaide didn’t know he wore glasses, but once he’d put them on and squinted at the image, she kind of liked the way he looked in them. Like he was smart and bad. Visually flawed, but also strangely hip. Tossing the observation away, she pushed her hair behind her ear.

  “Yes, he was keeping it in the storage room where you all ran into him,” Adelaide said. Yes, she’d held on to all of this information, waiting until this meeting to reveal it, knowing that surprising everyone with things they didn’t even know they didn’t know about all at once would be more fun. She remembered how thick her head felt when she learned aliens were real. Aiden helped her to pinpoint exactly what kind of alien this was that Mika had in possession, but someone else had been able to help her figure out exactly what this specimen was going to be used for.

  “What could he possibly do with an alien?” Zephyr said, his voice sounding uncharacteristically tired.

  Rio caught the change in Zephyr too, based on the concerned expression he gave him.

  “That was the question I had too,” Adelaide said, picking up her leather-bound book, the one Ren had written.

  “Has Aiden been consulted? He’s the resident alien expert,” Trent said.

  Adelaide didn’t hide the scowl he deserved to receive. “I do know what I’m fucking doing,” she said, earning a horrified expression from both Zephyr and Rio. No, that’s not how most talked to their superior, but most weren’t Adelaide. What was Trent going to do, fire her? Then he’d roast and he knew it.

  “I was only checking. Honestly, I’ve never seen an actual depiction of an alien. I’m just surprised,” Trent said, probably not as offended sounding as everyone in the room thought he should be.

  “Aiden was able to help me identify this as an Arcturian. They have an incredibly long life span. Furthermore, they’re considered higher beings by the quack population on earth that follow the creatures. Apparently there’s a group that’s waiting for them to beam them up, since they can apparently transcend the fifth dimension.” Adelaide said all this in one long bored set of sentences.

  “How did Mika catch a being like that?” Zephyr asked.

  “Who knows. They are, according to what Aiden dug up, the guardians of the earth,” Adelaide said.

  “I thought that’s what the Lucidites were,” Kaleb said, scoffing. “How dare they?”

  He’d been more sullen since the whole thing with his mum, but it was probably what he needed for closure.

  “If we have anyone who is helping us to protect this planet, I’d think it would be an alien race like this,” Trent said.

  “Anyway, Aiden was able to supply me with one bit that I was able to use. Besides from being incredibly powerful, the Arcturians apparently use a vibrant liquid to rejuvenate themselves,” Adelaide said, pausing and waiting for the dawning.

  Blank faces stared back at her. Damn it, these people were a bunch of bloody gits.

  “You all don’t get it?” she said.

  “Get what?” Kaleb said. “That you think we’re all mind readers?”

  Adelaide cleared her throat. Had she read all this into the situation and was actually far off base? She desperately hoped not. “We know that Mika has a sick obsession with creating things from horror movies. Kris said he manufactures different skills, such as super speed and heightened senses, as well as created a Neanderthal, werewolves, and other monsters. So if we use what we know about Mika, I think the dots are pretty easy to connect,” Adelaide said.

  “You think he’s making a vampire?” And it was Connor who finally said the words that flooded Adelaide’s chest with warmth. Finally, someone was on her wavelength.

  “I know he is,” she said, injecting confidence into her voice.

  “A werewolf
’s natural enemy,” Zephyr said, almost to himself.

  “Yes, like cats and dogs,” Rox said.

  “So he’s going to make a man who feasts on blood and is unstoppable?” Rio said, whistling through his teeth. “That guy just doesn’t stop.”

  “Actually, that’s where Aiden’s information came up a bit incongruent. He’s not wrong that Arcturians need a liquid to revitalize, but that’s only when they are weak. And yes, we could think of that substance as blood, which I presume is what it translates to on our planet,” Adelaide, said, thumbing to her bookmark in her book. “However, I found other data that suggests something else.” She cleared her throat a second time and read. “The race of alien known as Arcturian might need the liquid form of replenishment when reserves are low or it’s damaged. Nevertheless, my investigations show that these creatures mostly feed off of pure energy. Positive energy fuels them. They are the leeches of the emotional world, feasting off humans’ good emotions.” She brought her eyes up to her team when she finished the passage she’d found that morning. It had astonished her probably more than it should have that she’d flipped the book open that morning to find that section on aliens. Ren really knew every-fucking-thing.

  “Who the hell wrote that?” Rox said, pinching her brow. “That almost made my head explode.”

  “That sounds like something Ren Lewis would say. He often spoke like that,” Trent said with a warm chuckle that made Adelaide want to kill him.

  No! He hadn’t just done what she thought he had.

  Zephyr’s chin shot to the side. “Ren Lewis? The main contributor of the Dream Traveler Codex? He wrote that book? How do you have it?”

  “I-I-I. It’s not mine,” Adelaide said, words not being supplied to her consciousness. “I was simply—”

  “Ren left behind a book?” Trent said, opening his fucking mouth again. “Makes sense he’d leave it to his only daughter.”

  And just like that, Adelaide’s world crashed down on her.

  All eyes shot to her, all but Connor’s. His dropped to the table, regret for her secret being leaked instantly writing itself on his face.

  Well, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck. Adelaide was going to the Lucidite prison now. That would be her sentence after she killed Trent.

  “Your daddy was the famous Ren Lewis, huh?” Rox said, her eyes dazzling like a hooker who has just been tipped for taking it right. “No wonder you get special treatment.”

  Adelaide pulled in an unfulfilling breath. This was exactly what she’d been avoiding. Zephyr and Rio exchanged unreadable expressions. Kaleb perked up, his eyes changing, his expression seeming to say “I don’t know you.”

  “I don’t get special treatment. I’m my own person,” Adelaide said.

  “With the power of mind control, which we knew, but also telepathy linked to touch,” Rox said, having apparently memorized the fucking Dream Traveler Codex, which included her father’s biography. “That explains so much.”

  “It explains so much that I’m about to make your head explode. What you’re all missing is that—”

  “Where is Ren?” Zephyr said, daring to cut her off. “The Codex doesn’t say. No one will say. He’s not at the Institute, from what I can tell.”

  “Well, we all know that you have the detective skills of a plate of bangers and mash, so no surprise there,” Adelaide said, feeling the familiar ache rise to the surface. It had been hard enough to grieve with everyone at the Institute knowing her situation, but not her team, not the pack. Most didn’t know what had happened to Ren, except that he was dead. And still, that was enough to pierce her every time people offered words of condolence.

  “I bet he works for the CIA. I always took him as the traitor type, based on what he wrote in the Dream Traveler Codex,” Rox said, with a laugh.

  Trent opened his mouth to say something. Words Adelaide knew were untrue. Words she hated to hear because they were lies. They were what other people thought. Only Aiden and Adelaide knew the truth; well, and Connor now too. That’s why Adelaide did something she never ever expected to do. She fled the room, unable to take it anymore. Like a sissy of a girl, she did the one thing she’d promised herself she was through with doing. Adelaide ran away.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Once the consciousness links to the location it is deposited into the delivery device. This appears as a silver tunnel. The Dream Traveler does not have to do anything from this point forward except enjoy the ride through space and time.”

  - Dream Traveler Codex

  Connor stood from the table as soon as Adelaide had fled. He didn’t watch her go, but rather directed his hot gaze at Rox. “Trent, why don’t you inform this insensitive diva where Ren is?” he said, watching as Rox’s expression dropped into one full of instant regret. Without Trent saying a word, she knew what his answer would be.

  “Ren is dead,” Trent said, his voice faltering.

  “What?” Zephyr said, leaning forward. “What happened? He sounded like one of the most powerful Dream Travelers to ever live, according to the Codex.”

  “Which he wrote,” Kaleb said, remorse not written on his face like it was on everyone else’s in the room.

  “Hey, pipe down, Runt. That was Adelaide’s dad,” Rio said, taking his familiar role, disciplining the youngster.

  “I think if anyone is in a position to sympathize it would be me, Dimples,” Kaleb said to him.

  “I shouldn’t have teased her,” Rox admitted, “but how was I supposed to know?”

  “You weren’t,” Connor said. “But you shouldn’t have teased her. That’s exactly why Adelaide didn’t want any of you to know who her father was. She’s trying not to live in her father’s shadow.”

  “Oops, that would be my fault,” Trent said, covering his long forehead with his palm. “I just assumed you all knew or that Adelaide was proud of who her father was. He’s why she’s an agent, after all.”

  Connor pressed his spread fingers to the side of his head before sending them out in the air. “Damn it! That’s exactly what she doesn’t want people to misconstrue. Did Adelaide earn her position?”

  “Well, yeah, of course she did. She completed agent training in record time with full marks. It’s just that she never wanted to become an agent, but Ren pushed her. He knew what kind of potential she had and could lend to the department,” Trent said.

  “Then say that. Don’t make it sound like Adelaide was handed her role because of who her father was,” Connor said, storming from the room.

  “Who was Ren?” he heard Rio ask at his back.

  “He was the stuff of legends,” Trent said, as Connor exited the strategic department.

  “Books have always been a great comfort to me, as well,” Connor said, his voice quiet.

  Adelaide didn’t look up from the book she was reading, De Profundis by Oscar Wilde. The author wrote it while imprisoned, and like her father’s book, it wasn’t published until after his death.

  “You know libraries are where people go to be alone?” Adelaide said.

  “I’ve never been alone when in the company of a book,” Connor said, taking a seat next to her on the couch.

  “Can we save the attempt at clever dialogue for another time? I’m busy,” Adelaide said, pulling the book back up to her chin, reading it like how she read her father’s: randomly.

  “I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.”

  Wilde and Ren also had their writing styles in common. They both seemed to be saying something profound, while not saying anything at all.

  “I think we both know that I’m unable to just turn off my clever dialogue, so you’ll have to suffer through it,” he said, casually leaning back and depositing his feet on the coffee table in front of them.

  Adelaide knew Connor was just here to comfort her and she wanted none of what he had to offer. Why hadn’t she gone to her room, which had a lock and a door and a way of escaping others…
Connor?

  “So a little light reading to take your mind off your troubles,” Connor said, pointing at the worn book cover.

  “My only troubles involve a bunch of hairy beasts and their maker,” she said, rereading the passage she’d just read.

  “Some find De Profundis to be incredibly sad, because Wilde speaks so much of the life he lost, and his tone is often morbid in the long letter,” Connor said, like they were sitting in a literary analysis class discussing the elements of the story.

  “He was in prison when he wrote it,” Adelaide said, trying to not appear as astonished as she felt. The fact that Connor could discuss one of the more obscure works of Oscar Wilde’s was beyond the framework of her mind. Most weren’t so well read.

  “Yes, but I’d argue that Wilde found himself while in prison. He at least found meaning,” he said.

  “True. Wilde had found peace in his sorrow,” Adelaide said, her eyes roaming over a set of sentences.

  “…sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye… but out of sorrow have the worlds been built…”

  “You seem to be lost in the book,” Connor mused. He was still there, just watching her, like that was a natural thing they did together every day. Sit. Enjoy each other’s company. But that was not an experience Adelaide knew. She’d never been the type for such things.