by Kailin Gow
Jack spins, staring at me with an intensity that has nothing to do with anger. “What do you want from me, Celes?”
“Everything. Right now though, I want you to believe that I didn’t deliberately set out to hurt you with Grayson.”
“You kissed him, though.”
I nod. “I kissed him back when he kissed me. We went through a bit when you were gone. We were knocked senseless, and I had to rely on Grayson to do the most basic things because they made me feel so helpless, so weak. I was vulnerable, Jack, and yes, it was the wrong thing to do. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. Gray and I have been together for so long before you came along, and things weren’t really resolved, and I was having these dreams…”
I can practically feel the tension in Jack. Or maybe it’s in me. I don’t know. I want to fight with him. I want to tell him that he’s being unfair by blaming me, except he isn’t being unfair. All the time I was with Grayson, I was trying to convince myself that everything was okay, and that it didn’t matter, being that close to him, but it did.
“Most of what’s on the footage isn’t how it looks,” I say. “Grayson helped me out with getting washed, because I couldn’t get the cuffs off to do it myself.”
Jack swallows. “I guess I should be grateful that he doesn’t generate enough heat with you to melt them,” he says. He still doesn’t sound happy, but I guess I can’t have it both ways. I’m the one who asked him not to shut me out, and to let me see some of what he’s feeling. If I don’t like that, it’s on me as much as him.
“What about the kiss, Celes?” he asks me softly. “Was that some kind of camera trick too?”
It would be so easy to say yes, but I can’t do it. I can’t lie to him. I shake my head.
“If you tell me that it was all Grayson, I’ll believe you,” Jack says. That’s the part that makes me feel ashamed of what happened. It’s not the hurt or the anger that Jack had before. It’s the way he’s willing to turn around and try to find a way to set it all aside, because he just cares that much, loves me that much.
And because he cares that much, I owe him the truth. “Grayson started the kiss,” I say, “but I kissed him back. I should have seen it coming too. We were packed together in this place, and I could see that we were getting closer, but I didn’t draw a line there. I tried to, kind of, but I didn’t stop it.”
Jack winces slightly, and I can see his face sliding into that carefully neutral expression that he uses so much. I reach out, putting my hands on his face.
“Don’t, Jack. Please don’t. Let me know what you’re feeling. I know it has to hurt.”
“It’s…” he let’s go of his control, and in that moment, I can see just how hurt he is by it. How vulnerable he is about his love for me. It’s not anger. It’s not resentment. It’s just a deep kind of pain at what has happened.
“Oh, Jack,” I say, reaching out to wrap my arms around him. He’s held me so many times when I’ve been afraid, or hurt, or unable to cope, so I hold him. I hold him to try to show him that I’m there for him too. That I’ll always be there for him. After all, if my dreams are anything to go by, I always will be.
He holds me too, for more than a minute. When he finally pulls back, he looks around the apartment with a professional eye. I take a moment to look too. It’s the same apartment I was in with Grayson, so nothing has really changed. It’s modern and elegant, with the sofa and the TV, the doors leading through to the bathroom and the bedroom.
“It’s kind of tacky,” I say, “putting us in the same place I was in before. It’s like they want to remind us about Grayson.”
“Maybe,” Jack says. “More likely, this is the only room they have stocked with food and ready to go. Plus, it makes the surveillance easier.”
I’d almost forgotten that, if they used cameras to get footage of me and Grayson, those cameras would still be there. “So we have to assume that they can see and hear us?”
Jack nods. “I’m not too worried about that. They’d spot us in the corridors if we left anyway. Besides, there are some things that I want the whole world to hear.”
He moves to stand in front of me, and the way he looks at me then is so intense. “I want you to know that I love you, Celes. I love you, and I’m willing to fight for you. For us. I’m not going to let anyone take you away from me. Not the Others. Not some senator. Not… anybody.”
He doesn’t say Grayson’s name, but I know it’s what he means.
He kisses me gently then, planting a second kiss on the tip of my nose when he’s finished. “Johnny says that you came back for me.”
I look around. “I guess that makes us kind of even. I mean, you came back for me too.”
“You followed me through time, Celes. I don’t remember it like you do, or like he does, yet, but I can… it’s like I can feel the memories in me, like I’m some kind of deep pool, and they’re swimming about near the bottom. I don’t actually remember them yet, but it’s like every time we touch, they swim a little closer to the surface.”
“Then we should be touching a lot more often,” I suggest, half joking.
Jack smiles. “That’s just what I was thinking. I was also thinking that we should get out of here soon, but those two are almost the same thing.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
By way of an answer, he kisses me one more time. This kiss is as hard and as passionate as anything I’ve had from him before. He kisses me like he plans to keep on going until we both forget to breathe, and his hands press me tightly to him while he does it. I don’t even hesitate; I just kiss Jack back as completely, and as thoroughly, as I can.
I feel the first stirring of the energy between us then, growing into something bigger. I kiss Jack’s mouth hungrily, wanting more of him in that moment than I have before. Jack’s the one who keeps control of the kiss though. His hands find mine, his fingers intertwining with mine as his lips tease me, moving over my mouth, my jaw, my neck.
The power in me rushes to the surface in each spot he kisses, and I can’t blame it. Right then, I want to be as close to Jack as I can be too. We kiss, and I know then it’s not just about doing what we have to in order to bring out the power that is glowing around us. Jack’s kissing me because he wants to, desperately, as though his life depends on it. Because I’m as important to him right then as he is to me. The fact that energy is glowing around us both, so bright that I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to look at it without my talent, is just a very useful byproduct.
Jack moves back from me, catching his breath. “Try the door.”
“Are you sure about this?” I ask. “Before, in the cell, it didn’t work, and these doors will be as strong.”
“Trust me, Celes,” he replies, “if you can melt their handcuffs, you can deal with a door.”
I nod, knowing that he has to be right. He has to be. I move over to the door, putting my hands against it, right against where the locking mechanism has to be. For a moment, the material around the door flares as it tries to resist the power I’m putting through it. Then it just… disintegrates. There’s so much heat that most of the door is blasted apart in a rush of power, leaving a hole in it where the lock used to be. Part of the frame is gone too. It’s easy then to just push the door back, sliding it back into the frame, and leaving the doorway to freedom wide open.
“I wasn’t expecting it to work that well,” I say.
Jack smiles. “You’re always full of surprises. Now, we should go, because there will be guards along in a minute.”
He’s right, of course. We’ve just broken out while on camera. There will be people running to stop us even now. I reach out to take Jack’s hand.
“Let’s get out of here, then.”
FOURTEEN
The weirdest thing as we start to make our way through the building is just how empty and quiet it is. I’m expecting alarms, guards, and a constant running battle. Jack obviously is too, because he moves through the place warily, not running, but staying ready to f
ight.
“Should we try for Johnny again?” I ask. “I know we have to get out of here, and I’m not sure whose side he’s on, but the thought of him being faded…”
Jack nods. “We can’t let it happen. We have to find out what he knows. But we can’t stop to talk this time. We go in, we grab him, and we get out. Even then, it probably won’t be easy.”
I’d kind of guessed that. If I were Senator Hammond, I’d triple the guards looking after his son, or keep him right by me, or something. “If it’s too hard…”
“If it’s too hard, we’ll have to leave him,” Jack says, “but since nobody seems to be reacting to us breaking out, hopefully we’ll have the element of surprise on our side.”
“You mean because nobody would think we’d be stupid enough to try to break Johnny out twice?” I ask with a smile.
Jack returns it. “Exactly.”
We head on up through the building, and it’s still almost eerily quiet. We make for the lounge room, ready to fight if we need to, but it’s empty. We try the room across the hall. That’s a large suite with views out across the small town that the Hammond Building is on the edges of, in an industrial park. I look out at the place. If the people out there knew what was going on in here, how would they react? Looking down at it, I’m not sure. It’s such a small town. The kind of town, in fact, where almost everybody works for the big local company, and where they wouldn’t want to hear anything bad about it.
Just looking down at the business park around the building shows me that it’s almost as quiet and empty as this building is, too. So maybe there aren’t even that many people in the houses I can make out in the distance. The whole place has the feel of a town that was mostly abandoned a while ago. That, or one that is still waiting for people to come to fill it up.
I’m still thinking that when a figure walks out of the adjoining room. I recognize the woman we tied up before, and she obviously recognizes us too, because she opens her mouth to scream. Jack manages to clamp a hand over her mouth just in time.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Jack says, before removing his hand. “Now, I didn’t get your name last time.”
“Janine.”
“Hi, Janine. Now, I want to know pretty much the same things as before. Where is Johnny?”
“He went with the senator,” Janine says. There is a sofa identical to the one in the apartment we’ve just come from. She sits down on it.
“And where did the senator go?”
Janine looks around, as though trying to think of a way out of the situation, but all there is there is a slightly more opulent version of the rooms below. I step into her eye line.
“You have to tell us. There isn’t much time.”
“He took his guards and those… other people, and they all left. There’s just me and a few guards on the lower floors, and I haven’t heard anything from them since they went to deal with some kind of disturbance.”
“That will be Grayson,” Jack says. “Did the senator say where he was going, or what he was planning to do?”
“Just that I needed to be ready to take care of Johnny when he came back, because he’d probably be confused.”
“They’ve gone after the fading machine,” I say.
“Which means that they’re going after my father,” Jack points out, “because the original was destroyed with Location Six. We have to get out of here now, Celes.”
We don’t bother tying Janine up this time. There doesn’t seem to be much point, with the building so empty. Instead, we race down through it, down stairwell after stairwell until we arrive at some kind of lobby. There are doors at the end, made of what looks like tinted glass. Through them, I can see…
“It’s Grayson and the Faders,” I say. “They made it out.”
Jack nods, though he doesn’t look as happy to see Grayson as I am. We head over to the doors, which have an opening mechanism beside them. It’s locked, but that doesn’t seem to matter once I put enough heat directly through the mechanism. It whirls briefly, and then the doors slide open.
We step out and the Faders all turn to look at us. They’re heavily armed, and they half-raise their guns before they spot who we are. Grayson looks like he wants to hug me, but he looks over to Jack and he stops short.
“Celes, Jack, you made it out.”
“So did you,” Jack observes. “But you’re still here.”
“We wanted to wait for you to get out,” Grayson says. “We wanted to secure your exit, but then we found we couldn’t get back in.”
“Couldn’t you just break the glass doors?” I ask.
Grayson shakes his head. “They aren’t glass. They’re like a see through version of the stuff on the rest of the place. We couldn’t break them. We tried shooting them. We even tried the kind of entry explosives they use to blow holes in walls. Nothing worked. We were planning on waiting for someone else to come out so we could go back inside.”
“You mean you haven’t seen anyone come out other than us?” I ask. That doesn’t make sense, if the senator has left.
“Hammond must have other ways out,” Jack says. “Though this place… it’s strange. It’s so fortified, and so shielded against all kinds of energy, but it’s so luxurious inside. It’s almost like it’s designed to keep the world out while the people inside are fine.”
“It’s like that entertainment lounge,” I say. “There’s no way that’s just for Johnny. Or for us.”
Jack nods. “That’s not important now though.”
Grayson looks over to him. “Why? What’s happening?”
Jack explains. Not just what the senator is planning to do next, but also what Johnny said about us, the presence of Richard, and how the fading machine might be a lot more than we’d previously thought. He explains that we’re from the future, and about the abilities people there seem to have. When he’s done, he looks around at the Faders.
“I know none of you were expecting that, and I know that some of you might find it hard to accept, but it’s the truth. I just hope that for now, at least, you’ll keep going with this mission. I told you because I think you all deserve to know.”
The Faders don’t reply. Mostly, they’re too busy looking shocked. Even Grayson seems surprised to hear all of it.
“I guess it makes a kind of sense,” he says at last. “I mean, it explains why the three of us should end up meeting like this. It explains why… why I feel…”
He doesn’t finish that thought. There are too many people watching. Jack’s watching. But so am I. I know what Grayson means. He’s made it very clear how much he feels for me.
“None of that matters right now,” Jack says. “What matters is that Senator Hammond wants to fade Johnny’s memories.”
“He said that was to keep memories of something he was going to do from him,” Grayson says.
“It might be,” Jack shoots back, “but it also means that we won’t have access to the knowledge of the future in Johnny’s head. They’re trying to get to a fading machine, and we have to beat them there.”
“Location Ten,” one of the faders says. “They’re heading for Location Ten?”
Jack nods. “Which is why we need to get out of here as soon as possible.”
As soon as possible turns out to be just a few minutes. During them, Grayson slips off to the side of the group, and I follow him.
“Before, I wanted to say-”
“I know,” I say.
“I didn’t believe in love at first sight until I saw you. Now though… well, I guess it isn’t first sight after all.”
“I’m still with Jack, Grayson,” I say.
Grayson shakes his head. “I won’t give up.”
“Even if I loved Jack so much I followed him through time?”
“Well, why did I follow you?”
I don’t have an answer for that. Thankfully, I don’t need one, because our extraction helicopter arrives. It takes us up, and we fly for what seems like an impossibly long time. So lon
g I lose track of where we’re going, except that there seem to be swamps below us. Are we in Florida?
The helicopter heads for a space in the swamp that seems like just a patch of water near some trees. It lands, and it’s only when a boat comes out of the trees to meet us that I realize that this is our destination. Jack hops down into the boat, lifting me down after him, and I can see the look on Grayson’s face as he does so, but the boat is already moving. I’m guessing it can’t take more than a few of us at a time.
We sit in the boat as it takes us over to the trees, and there, I find myself surprised. On the other side of the trees are a series of low buildings, each one obviously reinforced and camouflaged until it must be like they aren’t there from above.
“This is Location Ten?” I ask Jack.
Jack shakes his head. “This is Location Nine.”
“But why not go to Location Ten?”
“Because I asked him to bring you here when he went to rescue you.” That’s from Sebastian Cook, Jack’s father, and one of the leaders of the Underground. I’d thought that he was still hundreds of miles away, in Location Four. The surprise must show on my face, because Jack starts to explain.
“When I went back and told them what happened, and my suspicions about who might be involved he and Jonah evacuated. A compromised Location can’t be used. They went here, taking the rock we found.”
“Talking of which,” Sebastian says, “Jonah?”
Jack’s uncle comes out of one of the building, his limp as noticeable as ever. The two men don’t look much like one another apart from their graying hair and age. Jonah is much more rugged, looking like the farmer he was pretending to be at Location Four. Sebastian still dresses more like a successful businessman.
“Good,” Jonah says, “you’re back. We’ve managed to do more analysis of the rock, using what we know about the two of you. I should probably tell you what we found, Celestra. You too, Jack, if you have time.”
Jack shakes his head. “I have to go. It turns out that Senator Hammond, the presidential candidate, is working with the Others. He wants to fade his son, and that means he’ll probably be heading to Location Ten to do it. That is where we put the one fading machine that wasn’t destroyed in Location Six, right?”
