“I know.” It hurts to think we might split up, willingly or otherwise, but maybe it’s silly to think eight or ten people would all choose the same life no matter what they have in common.
My throat burns at the realization that it’s already started to happen. Reaper made her choice. She stood in that warehouse and watched us all get taken into custody without batting an eye.
“You really think we should consider working for the CIA?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean, we have to do something, and we only have the Olders’ word that the CIA is bad. They weren’t the ones abusing Flicker, though; we know that now.”
“They created us, Mole. They messed with our genetics and did heaven knows what to our poor mothers without their knowledge. That’s still pretty bad, even if they aren’t technically against us.”
“Granted. But the people they might ask us to help weren’t involved. Heck, the CIA agents we’re going to be dealing with didn’t have any say in our origins, so maybe we just have to drop the past and move on. Things are what they are, and snubbing the CIA isn’t going to change our existence. Or bring back our moms.”
My heart sticks in my throat. He’s right. I rub my cheek on the soft fleece of his jacket, taking comfort. “We might choose different things.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Gyp, but I promise, I’m not going to let you go that easily.” He pushes me slightly away, then reaches out like he wants to brush away the strands of hair the light breeze is sticking to the sweat on my neck, which is silly because he can’t see them. Hair doesn’t have a heat signature. “For now, we focus on Flicker. We can’t leave without trying to help her.”
Mole can’t know that he and I won’t end up on opposite sides, or separated forever, no matter what he says. I summon bravery from a reservoir that somehow hasn’t run out yet and straighten my back as we step into the empty graveyard. “I think that’s a good plan.”
“What’s a good plan?” Geoff asks, tromping up and blowing hot breath into his cupped hands. He tosses a glance toward Mole, concern crinkling the corners of his eyes. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Mole’s lips are tight. He’s already tired of the question, but the fact that Haint’s still invisible isn’t a good sign that he won’t blow things up again.
Athena and Pollyanna show up together. Mole sits next to me on one of the bigger stone monuments in the shape of a sarcophagus, which either has no occupant or one strangely immune to my abilities because no death scene or even number pops into my mind.
Maybe the corpse moved with one of the floods or fires or earthquakes that have devastated the area. At one point the tomb probably stood as high as our waists, but the ground has spent years coaxing it down under the earth, and now our feet easily reach the ground. His legs press against mine, and even though we’re both wearing jeans and we were hugging moments ago, the idea that our mutations are still, well, mutating tightens my belly with nerves.
I scoot a little ways away even though it means the cold of the stone replaces the warmth and comfort of Mole’s body.
“Where’s Goose?” I ask.
“He and Haint went snooping,” Athena supplies, slumped against one of the taller Celtic crosses.
Polly hops from headstone to headstone like they’re lily pads and she’s a frog in a pond while Geoff paces, a thoughtful expression on his face.
There’s an electricity around us, zipping along as though we’re connected by live wires or a continuous bolt of lightning. Things are changing again, and even though we’re together, the ties that bind us aren’t as unbreakable as they were two months ago. No one has said a single thing that makes me think they wouldn’t be on my side if things really hit the fan, but the conversation with Mole leaves no doubt in my mind that it’s coming.
We have choices now. Before, we all had one life at Darley, one common goal of figuring out how to live with our mutations and not expose ourselves to the real world. Now, it seems as though our options shift and expand with every breath we take, and it’s naïve to think that we’ll make identical decisions.
“If you could choose, right now, would you want to stay at Saint Stephen’s or leave?” Geoff puts the question to the group, absentmindedly twirling sticks above his palm again. This time they’re doing a more elaborate dance, as though they’re figures engaging in a waltz.
He’s improving, too. Exerting more control every day.
Pollyanna stops hopping. “Moot point. We haven’t figured out how to help Flicker, and that’s, like, the whole reason we got involved in this mess to begin with.”
“Not true.” I shake my head. “We got involved in this mess when the Olders decided to attack us on the street with syringes.”
“We would have gone looking at Saint Catherine’s, anyway,” Mole disagrees. “They might have lied to us, but we still would have gone after Flicker.”
The home where we were all born, Saint Catherine’s, is one of the most horrible places I’ve ever been in my life. They took in our pregnant, unwed, teenaged mothers, promising them discreet births and adoptions to good families, then knowingly let the government perform experiments on them. And us. Then they took us away and sold us to the people at Darley Hall so they could keep experimenting on us.
“Maybe that’s true,” Geoff concedes. “But if there wasn’t the Flicker…issue… What would you do? Stay here or go?”
“Where would we even go?” Athena wonders. “Back to our parents? To work for the government? Run away together to some deserted island and pretend we can’t do what we can do?”
Geoff shrugs. “Any of the above.”
“The only way to help Flicker is to confront the Olders. Tell them we know about her being here and that she’s upstairs unconscious.” The realization came to me a while ago but it seemed too obvious to state until now. “We don’t know enough about their research to help her on our own.”
“What would you do, Geoff?” Pollyanna shoots the question back at him, her gaze fixed on the whirling sticks. “Stay or go?”
“Stay,” he says softly. “Assuming the government is actually behind our origins at Saint Catherine’s and our time at Darley. The Olders have done more for me in the three or four weeks we’ve known them than anyone ever did before.”
“But we don’t know why,” Athena stresses, his head cocked as though he’s listening to the wind. He’s probably listening to much more than that. “And regardless of how we came to have these talents, we have them now. It’s not going to kill us to listen to the CIA. Maybe we can help people.”
“People who are getting their brains melted by computers?” Pollyanna rolls her eyes, plopping onto her butt and studying her chipped nail polish.
Athena crosses his arms and presses his lips into a thin line, not answering.
“We’re not leaving Flicker.” The finality in Pollyanna’s tone says the discussion is over.
I sneak a glance at Mole, earning another glare. I can’t help it. What if he’s never himself again after these injections? What if Haint’s invisible for the rest of her life, or tomorrow Athena starts hearing a million voices at once and can’t shut them off? What if Geoff stays here and Mole works for the CIA and Pollyanna buries her head in the sand?
Before my tumble down the rabbit hole of doom becomes permanent, Goose appears, accompanied by a stir of air and whirl of brittle, dead leaves, threading the scent of mold and firewood through my hair. We can’t see him arrive, but unlike Haint, he can’t do it silently.
Goose is sweaty and breathing hard, but he doesn’t look scared. He looks excited.
Chapter Six
“Good news,” Haint says, her voice as excited as Goose’s face as it pops out of the air close to my ear. Goose paces in a manic walkabout, crunching grass under his big feet.
“You’re invisible on purpose?” Pollyanna asks in her best hopeful-smartass tone, which earns her a handful of leaves in the face.
“No. Brat.” T
hen, toward Goose, “For Pete’s sake, stop tromping around and tell them.”
Goose does as he’s told and perches on the lip of a gravestone, but his knees keep jiggling. “We found some files in Chameleon’s office. They’re keeping Flicker comatose with some major sedatives, nothing more, and in the sensory deprivation because it stops her from teleporting. The files say they’re doing it for her own good, since she’s never been able to master the ability to stay put when she wants to, but that’s a crock of shit—”
“—because they’ve never tried administering the GRH-18 to her,” Haint finishes, the words tumbling out all smooshed together, the letters landing on top of each other in their eagerness.
“You found out what they’re giving us? What’s in it, I mean?” Mole asks, perking up.
Goose shakes his head, frowning. “No, just that GRH-18 isn’t anywhere on the list of meds they have in her chart. Nothing weird is.”
“How long has she been here?” My throat feels dry. I don’t really want to know the answer but I need to.
“Almost a year and a half,” Haint replies, her tone oozing hatred. Funny how much can be communicated by a voice when there’s no face to go along with it.
We haven’t seen Flicker regularly in over two years, but now we have absolute proof that the Olders don’t have our best interests at heart. Flicker appeared to us last month, having been shot through the gut. Now we know she was with them…
My throat tightens around the horror of what they might have done to her. “So, when she came to us last month and said ‘they’re not going to let you go,’ she meant the Olders. For sure.”
We all make eye contact, urge verification from one another’s faces. It’s the Olders who were making Flicker do things she didn’t want to—the Olders who got her shot who knows where, by heaven knows who.
When we found her here, there was no way to know for sure if they’d had her the whole time or “rescued” her from the CIA at some point. But if they’d done that, if they were good guys, why not just tell us? Why trick us with Fake Flicker?
“That makes them the enemy,” Polly manages through clenched teeth.
“Agreed,” Geoff interjects in his thoughtful tone. “But it doesn’t make the government or the people who raised us or anyone else our friends. Maybe we don’t have anything but enemies.”
Impatience steams inside me, like boiling water left unattended in a pot on the stove. I don’t want to be the kind of kid who has powerful organizations for friends and enemies. I want to be normal.
It’s a silly, immature, pie in the sky thought. The sad thing, at least for me, is that it’s clear not one of them feels the same way. They like being different. They might not like our situation, or not having access to all the pieces of the puzzle of our lives, or not knowing who to trust right now, but not one of them wishes they weren’t special.
Only Mole’s expression holds understanding, sympathy. He’s not like me but he cares, and the sorrow painting shadows under his eyes and around his lips pricks my eyes with tears.
“We have each other.” Mole’s blind gaze is on fire as he looks straight ahead, determination setting his jaw in a hard line. “We can count on that.”
I know without having to speak it aloud that though we may go our separate ways after we sort out Flicker, we’re in agreement that the Cavies are paramount. I may envision a life different from the ones they imagine, but there’s no way I’m abandoning a single one of them until we’re out from under the Olders’ thumbs. All of us.
“What else did you find?” Geoff questions, bringing the discussion back on topic.
“Aside from the fact that I think we could probably wean Flicker off the sedatives—and maybe start her on the GRH-18, if it could help her stay in one place—nothing. Not a thing on GRH-18 itself,” Haint says, her hesitant tone setting my nerves back on edge.
“The only other thing we found is the name of a corporation listed on some business correspondence. Money stuff. It doesn’t explicitly say that they’re the ones bankrolling this place, but it’s a place to start,” Goose adds.
“What’s it called?” Geoff’s looking more intrigued by the moment.
“Hatfield, LLC.”
Frustration turns to bitter disappointment, sour on my tongue. “That’s not all that helpful.”
“It’s something,” Haint growls. “If we can get access to the Internet again, we could at least look it up and find out who cared enough to develop the enhancement drug.”
“I’m sorry. It’s good, and you’re right. We need some control over our lives, and knowledge is the only way we’re going to get it.” I glance at Mole, wondering if he’s waiting for me to bring up what we learned earlier today. It seems pretty lame, all told. “We talked to Chameleon. He refuses to tell us what’s in the GRH-18 or how they engineered it to interact with our genomes, but he did…indicate that it might not be healthy for us to quit cold turkey.”
“And he said there’s a tracking component to the serum,” Mole adds. “Right after he said we’re free to go anytime we want.”
“Of course they’ll let us leave if they can find us again, no problem.” Goose’s disdain wriggles through me.
“They can’t keep us here without making us into prisoners, and for some reason they seem to want us on their side. But they’re not going to lose track of us again, I agree with that.”
“Also, they don’t know we’ve stopped the GRH-18. Chameleon probably think his threats will force us to reconsider,” Mole says. “If they think they’re able to track us and they’ve still got Flicker, they’ll be confident we’ll come back one way or another.”
“And we will,” Athena speaks up. “We’re not leaving anyone behind.”
Polly gives him a grateful glance. “First things first—we have to figure out what to do about Flicker. Getting her coherent is goal number one, and if we can use the GRH-18 so that she’s not teleporting spontaneously, all the better.” Pollyanna lays down the plan, and no one argues.
I wonder whether they’re all feeling as doubtful as I am about us being able to fix Flicker on our own. We’ve been around medicine, genetic studies, and science all of our lives, but the Philosopher and the others took great pains to ensure we understood as little as possible about our individual mutations and how they work.
Now isn’t the time to throw cold water on the tiniest smolder of hope. It’s more than we’ve had in almost two weeks, and whether we’re all simply in denial or not, we need it.
“You might want to reconsider your priorities after you hear what I have to tell you, children.”
Chameleon’s cold voice comes out of nowhere, but it only takes a moment of squinting to see the depression of grass underneath his camouflaged footsteps. He blends perfectly with the night until he doesn’t, a milky outline at first, then he solidifies into the intimidating old man he is. The look on his face promises that he won’t soon forget that the eight of us were plotting against him.
And that it might not matter now, anyway.
The tension among my Cavies tightens up as we’re joined by more Olders. The rest of them gather, trekking down the hill either alone or in pairs, until there’s no one missing by my count.
The man in charge folds his arms over his thin chest, then peruses our silent circle as though counting heads himself. It makes me think about those who are missing and whether the Olders are ruminating on some of their own who are lost to the government or died during the early years of experimentation. They told us when we first arrived that ours is the first generation to survive with all ten members intact.
Chameleon doesn’t ask where Haint is, leaving me to assume that, at the very least, he knows she’s struggling to control her ability. Mole, too.
It doesn’t take much to assume he can also guess why.
“There’s no reason to mince words, since most of us are aware of what’s happening. There’s a global emergency brewing, and today it escalated into something th
e United States government isn’t going to be able to ignore. Terrorists in Russia who have been operating in violation of international arms treaties for many years have developed a computer virus that’s able to infect human brains. We don’t know details, because the CIA is run by a bunch of morons who are part of a bureaucracy with fifteen different heads, but we do know this: if they believe any of us have abilities that would be useful in trying to resolve this matter, they will be asking us to contribute.”
Infecting human brains?
It’s real.
“But they can’t find us here. That’s what you said.” Athena’s the first to speak up, but the question rolls around in my mind, too. “How will they ask for our help?”
The lies must go deeper than we thought, because the information the Olders have seems to be more detailed than anything Peter saw on the news or that Athena overheard. I doubt Russian terrorists being involved is common knowledge.
People out there must be panicking. Everyone spends hours a day in front of some kind of device these days. Three faces in particular flash in my mind—Jude, Maya, and my dad—and a surge of fear barrels through my chest. My breath catches, but I force myself to keep it even.
“You are safe at Saint Stephen’s, as long as you want to be,” Chameleon clarifies, putting a hand on the trunk of a tree. It turns rough and brown, invisible against the bark. “But as you know, there are Cavies who consider themselves CIA Assets. Some of those Cavies have talents—telepathy, hearing similar to Athena’s, dream manipulation—that allow them to contact us when necessary. In addition, each generation has a Clubhouse similar to yours. The bottom line is if the CIA wants your help, they’ll find a way to get you the proposal.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “I’m giving you the chance to think about it now, before they’re appealing to your philanthropic side.”
He says it like it’s a filthy word, as though it’s not much different than harboring a murderous sociopathic tendency, and I bite back the urge to ask what’s so bad about caring what happens to the rest of the world.
Alliance Page 6
