by Jasmine Walt
I stared mutely. They’d heard everything. And there was only one way I knew could make something—or someone—invisible. “Chameleons…” I murmured. But they didn’t appear to be wearing any devices.
“That’s what we call ourselves.” The siblings exchanged identical grins. “Pretty neat, right? It was almost worth it. Almost worth what the Alliance did to us.”
I shook my head, slowly. “You what?”
“You’re an experiment, too, aren’t you?” said the girl. “Well, Delta said you were different. Said you were only a baby, and magic was common on your world. You could hide it. We never could.”
“Experiments.” Crap, what had Kay said? “The Alliance? They-”
“Tampered with us,” said the boy dismissively. “This nut-job Alliance-council guy Walker started it. He injected us with pure magic and then threw us out on the streets. It happened when were sixteen.” He glanced at his sister. “Then we went into the Passages for the first time. It was like being reborn. Too bad it nearly got us locked up back here on Valeria when we moved here. They’re not a fan of natural magic-wielders here. But luckily, Delta helped us. His family took us in.”
“Yeah, Delta rocks,” said the girl. “You were his friend? Or something more?”
“God, no,” I said automatically. Didn’t mean the betrayal hurt any less. “So you’re what, his bastard father’s pet magic-wielders?”
The girl burst into delighted laughter. “You’re just like he described you. This is gonna be so much fun.”
“What is?” I glared at both of them. “I reckon I can take on both of you. So don’t try anything.”
The boy laughed. “Yeah, sure you can. We’re here to bring out your potential. Hit us with everything you’ve got.”
I gaped. “You what?”
“Seriously,” said the girl. “It’d be my honour to get beaten up by Adamantine, Royal of Enzar.” She snickered. The siblings grinned at one another again and turned back to face me. Creepy as hell.
“I think we’re freaking her out,” said the boy.
“Brilliant deduction,” I said. “Thing is, you’re between me and the door.” I let magic flow towards me, as a warning. I didn’t want to hit them. They acted like little kids, though I suspected they were about Alber’s age. Not that I was usually averse to violence, but if it was what Delta and his family wanted, they could go to hell.
“Ooh, she’s ready.”
“Well, so are we.” Magic crackled, sending red lightning streaks through the air. I gathered a palm full and threw it at them. First level, enough to knock them off their feet.
But they were quicker. Hands pinned my arms to my sides, and the shot I’d fired bounced harmlessly off the wall. But the backlash caught all three of us. My back slammed into the floor, and the girl laughed delightedly from a few feet away. “Do it again!”
“Shut up,” I hissed through my teeth, climbing to my feet. I gathered magic again and fired it at the floor, angled so the backblast would strike the door. The boy leaped in the way, and the impact sent him sprawling.
“Come on, you can do better than this.”
The girl appeared behind me and kicked me viciously in the knee. I was too slow to react, and pain shot through my leg. Swaying on my feet, I aimed a punch at her, but she’d already moved, and the boy caught my arm. He twisted my wrist, hard.
“Delta didn’t specify what he wanted us to do,” he said. “But you know, being locked up for so long is kind of boring. Delta said your guardian taught you to fight, not to question. Right?”
No. That wasn’t it, at all.
“He hit me, sometimes,” said the girl, and while I gaped at her, eyes streaming from the pain in my leg, she hit me. Agony exploded in my jaw.
I knew how to defend myself in almost every situation—but there was a world of difference between Nell’s lessons and this. They were kids who thought violence was fun, and the shock of it made my attacks clumsy, weak.
The boy kicked my legs out from under me, and I hit the ground again. My head struck metal and I tasted blood at the back of my mouth. Groaning, I tried to sit up, but the boy pressed the heel of his shoe into my stomach. I whimpered.
“Fight back,” the girl hissed, crouching beside me and whispering in my ear. “You’re angry. Fight back.”
The magic responded, crackling around her, reflecting in her pitch-black eyes. It was in the eyes, I thought. Whatever the experiment did had given them that unnatural spark, like my own eyes reflected my Royal status. Like gleaming purple meant mageblood.
And with a thrill of horror, I knew where I’d seen that colour before.
Kay. His eyes were the same unnatural gleaming dark shade as the twins’. There was no mistaking it. I’d spent my life looking out for these “tells”, as Nell called them. Signs that someone was different.
No. It couldn’t be true.
Walker…
Who had orchestrated the experiments? Had he even volunteered his own son?
The girl smiled at me. “Bye, Ada.”
Boy and girl moved in unison, mirrors of one another, twin fists coming at my face. Something snapped inside. I pulled down on the magic, and it came in a swirling mass, unlike it had ever done before. The boy went flying, over to the other side of the room, and hit the wall with a crack. The girl, too, went head over heels. And then came the backlash. I screamed aloud as it flooded my body, expecting it to burn me to cinders.
But it didn’t. It fizzled out, becoming mere sparks, which danced over the floor, over me.
“That’s more like it!” The girl bounded to her feet, clapping. “You just needed an incentive. You have to really want to use it for it to work. I’m surprised you didn’t experiment more.”
So was I. But Nell’s warnings had stayed me, kept me sane. Whether she knew about this or not, she’d done a good job of warning me of the dangers. And I’d done a bloody awful job of repaying her.
“Oh hey, Eddie,” said the girl, calling to her brother. “Rise and shine!”
He didn’t move.
Shit. Shit.
“Eddie!” She threw a blast of magic at him, almost playfully. The magic turned him over, but he didn’t get up.
I wanted to throw up. But everything seemed to be stuck in place, including me. My chest felt like it was caving in. I wanted to scream and sob uncontrollably. But no tears came. Nothing, nothing, like the boy’s, like Eddie’s silence.
Dead silence.
“Eddie?”
The shrill pitch of her voice coaxed my limbs into motion again. I stood, no longer caring if movement got me hit, and grabbed the door, shoving at it. I pulled on magic and used its force to drive me, and the wrenching motion sent me flying backwards.
But the door slid open.
“Eddie!”
I ran, jerkily. Not looking where I was going. Anywhere. There were several other warehouses nearby. And offices beyond that. The city. An alien city. One I’d wanted to visit as long as I’d known Delta.
Keep moving, whispered a Nell-like voice in my ear. Don’t think.
Time passed in stop-start motions. Suddenly, I was in an alley between two warehouses with no recollection how I got there. Two bodies lay prone at the end, one surrounded by a halo of blood. Hell. I didn’t do that, did I?
I didn’t trust my own memory. I didn’t trust myself. Not anymore.
Run. Ada. Run.
And I did. I circled the block and found myself heading east, away from the warehouses, towards the sound of traffic. This was a secure area, I guessed. Important. Delta’s family were important.
Delta’s family had turned me into a murderer.
I stopped running. My heart beat fast, too fast. Don’t pass out. Not now. One foot in front of the other.
“Ada.”
I had to be hallucinating. Kay was approaching me, utter shock stark on his face. The ground swayed under my feet, and it took everything I had to stay in the here and now, not give in to the scream fighting
to burst from my chest. I couldn’t say a word. I killed him.
Kay looked papery-white, eyes deep and staring. I must look worse. I steadied myself against a nearby streetlamp before he reached me, hands out like he’d intended to catch me.
“Ada. Come on.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Come on.” Hysterical laughter rose in my throat, and with a wrenching sensation, I shoved it behind a barrier. “Gotta—find the Passages.”
“This way,” he said, indicating a locomotive track over the other side of the bridge. “There’s a ground-level one. We’re going to have to sneak onto a train.”
After everything I’d been through already, I didn’t question it. Kay looked at me with what might have been concern. I walked fast, not speaking, thinking only of the next step. And the next. Ad infinitum.
Kay was speaking again. “We’ll have to jump on here.” We stood on some kind of platform. I had no recollection of climbing up, but I must have done it. And there was a locomotive zooming towards us. Hovering over the gleaming tracks, like everything in this world. A hover train. I giggled, and Kay’s concerned expression deepened.
“Ada, don’t zone out on me now. Jump when I say. Okay?”
“Oh… Kay.” I pressed my hand to my mouth to muffle another giggle. I was losing it, all right.
But I managed to hold myself together. When the train whipped past, the wind buffeting us, Kay shouted, “Jump!” And I did. He’d timed it perfectly. Trains here were windowless and we landed in the middle of a packed carriage. Several people gasped, and most backed away from us. I sprawled on a seat, half-upside down. I righted myself and fell into Kay as the train picked up speed. His arm wrapped around my shoulder, and he steered us into a newly vacated pair of seats.
I closed my eyes, willing the world to disappear. To fade out.
“Breathe, Ada. Concentrate on your breathing.”
Wait, I wasn’t breathing? So that’s why I felt lightheaded. Seemed good advice to me, so I did as Kay said.
“You’re all right. It’s going be all right.” In my half-dazed state, I thought he was talking to himself as much as me.
Breathe.
We were getting out of here, we were free.
20
Kay
Ada’s breathing steadied. What the hell had they done to her? I couldn’t ask, not with all these people around. They probably assumed we were—I cut off the thought before it got to the words criminals and murderers.
“Where are we going?” Ada looked up at me. She’d lost some of the dazedness in her eyes, though I could still feel her trembling against me.
“There’s a Passage entrance in the north of the city,” I said. “Easy to get out, nightmare to get back in, unless you live here. It shouldn’t be a problem for us. I have my Alliance ID, and by now the word ought to be out that the council’s under threat.”
Ada made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You really think of everything, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “If I thought of everything, I’d have seen Ellen for what she was. I could have…” I stopped. “Never mind. It’s done now. We’ll go back to Earth and let the Alliance take care of the rest.”
If it’s not too late. And the Campbell family wouldn’t take our escape lying down. I glanced at Ada, wondering whether it was worth risking a question.
“How were they planning on attacking Central?” I asked. “You said they wanted–” I checked to make sure no one was listening, but the other passengers had done their best to squeeze themselves into the neighbouring carriages, and more than a few had got off at the stop we’d passed—“to use you as a weapon.”
“They didn’t get that far.” She swallowed. “I was supposed to show them what I could do. They tested me—on two other magic-wielders.”
Oh God. I knew what happened. Because I’d almost caused similar carnage myself. When magic took control… anyone who stood in the way could get killed.
There was nothing I could say. Adding my pain to her own wouldn’t help her, anyway.
Instead, I forced out the question, “How did you escape?”
She took a shaky breath. “Turns out they were in the room with me, can you believe it? Two—two of them. They were mad, totally crazy. They wanted me to hurt them.” Her hand gripped mine convulsively, making me jerk back in surprise. Her fingers were icy cold. “They were experiments,” she said. “The Alliance did some kind of experiment on them a few years ago. They could turn invisible. They had magic, like, inside them. Like–like–”
Like Ada. Was it the same thing? It seemed unlikely, unless of course the Alliance had got the substance from Enzar. But I knew my father had connections with other worlds where magic-based sources were commonplace. I wouldn’t put anything past him. He’d just left the other victims to their own devices—let them walk around with a dangerous power and no clue how to use it. No way could he have known the results. He’d never have left me behind otherwise, even though I’d flat-out refused to have anything more to do with him. A magic-wielder with a permanent inbuilt magic source would be a perfect weapon. As was all too clear, someone else had made the connection first.
Ada’s hand held mine, tighter, and I realised I was shaking, too.
“They could turn invisible?” I asked.
She nodded. “Like human Chameleon devices.” She fiddled with something on her ear. The earpiece. “This is only part of it. The devices can turn someone completely invisible, for a few minutes, anyway. I used it to sneak into Central and steal the bloodrock. That effing bloodrock.” She laughed shakily. “It’s what made the Chameleons invisible. Maybe that’s what they injected those kids with. It’s sick, so sick…”
“I know,” I said quietly.
She tilted her head back so our eyes met. And… I knew. She’d found out, all right. But that wasn’t pity in her eyes: it was understanding.
“I could have stopped them. They…” Ada’s grip tightened. I was beginning to lose feeling in my fingers.
“Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault,” I said.
Ada shook her head. “You didn’t… didn’t see…”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I had to repeat that. No one had said it for me. I still didn’t think I’d deserved it. But Ada hadn’t chosen this for herself.
The locomotive slowed and most of the people clustering at the edges of the carriage disembarked. I glanced up. “We’re almost at north-side. One more stop.”
“How in the Multiverse do you know all this? I thought you’d never been offworld.”
“I checked out the directions on my communicator.”
“What, you have like a photographic memory or something?”
“Habit. Never mind that. There’s an entrance to the Passages on the other side of the station. We’ll go through there. And then…”
Then I was going to have to tell her. She couldn’t go back to Earth, not with the Campbell family out looking for her and waiting to destroy the Alliance.
There was only one option.
But I couldn’t say it with her half-lying in my lap, her hand clenched around mine. “Wait, what happened to your shoes?”
“Oh,” she said. “I stole Delta’s hover boot.”
“You did what?” Just when I thought she couldn’t surprise me anymore. I glanced at the few remaining passengers. No point in debating when the Multiverse might be depending on us right now. “Hey, over there,” I called, and several people squeaked in terror, trying to hide behind one another. “For God’s sake, I’m not going to hurt you. We need some shoes. It’s important.”
Ada stared up at me like I’d started speaking another language. But a terrified-looking woman tossed over a pair of shoes. I caught them by the laces and handed them to Ada.
“Thanks,” she whispered. “Gods, this is the weirdest…”
“Tell me about it. We have to get off at the next stop, anyway.”
The locomotive glided into north-side station. I pulled Ada to
her feet and she responded by yanking her hand out of mine and saying, “I can get up by myself, you know.”
At least that meant she was recovering from whatever happened back at the warehouse. Good. I needed her to be prepared for what I was about to say to her.
Out into the station, through the sea of commuters, past the ticket machines—ordinarily, I’d have noted everything in case I needed to remember later. But we needed to get out as fast as possible. To the Passages. At least it was signposted. Valeria’s Alliance didn’t live in the shadows, but out in the open.
Finally, we stood before a security guard, who stared as I pulled out my Alliance pass. I caught sight of our reflections in the opposite wall—in Valeria, all buildings seemed to be made of this strange reflective metal, the name escaped me—and I saw why. Ada’s clothes were torn and her face bruised. She was far too pale, dead on her feet, her clothes still spattered with blood from killing the wyvern. As for me… my eyes shone black, even from a distance. A killer’s eyes. I turned away and told the security guard in an undertone that there had been a threat to London’s Alliance branch, and it was imperative that we be allowed back into the Passages now.
For once, luck was on my side. The alert had gone out, and once I’d identified myself by my Alliance codes, he let us through without a fuss. The Passages were all but deserted. I’d never been in this particular area before, but I mentally mapped it out. We were three corridors from the door back to Central. Which made the US branch two corridors the opposite way.
I headed that way, making sure Ada stayed at my side. “I can’t believe you did that,” she muttered. “You can’t go stealing people’s shoes…” She bit her lip. I guessed the impact of the other lawbreaking had hit her again. That was the thing about dealing with a shock, or upheaval—it never stopped hitting you. But then, maybe it was easier when you’d already long since walked out of a hell to which nothing else in the Multiverse could ever compare. Pretending had become second nature. Pretending I could sleep more than two hours at a time without reliving a memory that ought to be long dead. Pretending I could walk out of the shadow of a name other people would kill to have, without the compulsion to glance over my shoulder at every turn.
