Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy

by P. Anastasia

  “Don’t come any closer,” Brian growled. “I swear to God I’ll—”

  “Stop.” I came between them and took Taylor’s hand. “Just let him go, okay?” I said, looking him in the eye. His fingers were cold and clammy.

  The elevator dinged and Brian and Alice disappeared behind the metal doors.

  Taylor took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.

  “What happened between you two?” I asked, squeezing his hand gently.

  “It’s a long story. To make it quick, our parents were horrible, and when I turned eighteen, I got out of that house as fast as I could and never looked back. Maybe I should have done something for Brian, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t take him with me. He would have been a liability since he was so young at the time.”

  “Your mom went crazy last year. Tried to kill herself and everything. It was scary shit for Brian to go through all by himself, you know? He’s got a lot of problems and a lot of weight on his shoulders now, not even counting those nut jobs up there who…” I lowered my voice. “Who put this stuff in us.”

  “They haven’t said much to me yet,” he said. “I don’t really know what’s going on or what this stuff is doing to me.”

  I could see light flickering in his right side and all the way down into his fingertips in arcs of white and violet energy. Same overall look of Brian’s, but light fluorescent purple, and in his right arm instead of his left.

  “Do you want to go sit at the café?” I motioned toward the lobby. “We can talk there for a while.”

  “Sure.”

  “Brian will cool off eventually,” I said, trying to sound optimistic. “He’s… hotheaded.”

  “Same old Brian.” Taylor laughed quietly to himself. “He hasn’t changed at all, apparently.”

  I smiled. Brian wasn’t known for making the best choices, but I knew he had good intentions.

  The two of us exited the main hall and passed the receptionist desk where I caught a glimpse of the lady with the weird darkness crawling inside her. I stopped walking and looked her over briefly.

  “What is it?” Taylor asked.

  “Uh… nothing. Sorry.”

  “You’re looking at her like there’s something wrong with her. Can you see something I can’t?”

  “Yes. Well…” I turned toward him and looked up into his eyes. “Um, Taylor. Can I…” I looked down at my hands and then back at him. “Would you forgive me if I did something to you that might cause some slight pain, but… well, it will help you see what I’m seeing. It will be temporary and the pain won’t last. I promise.”

  “Uh, I guess.” His eyes wandered. The lobby was fairly deserted for the time being, so I wasn’t worried about people seeing us. That didn’t mean he wasn’t concerned, though. “What are you going to do to me?”

  My hands were already level with his temples. “I can touch you and let you see what I’m seeing for a few moments. It will be quick. I promise.”

  He just stared at me like I was crazy, clearly unable to process my peculiar request. Even though he was still uneasy, he nodded in agreement. I pressed my fingertips against the sides of his face and he squeezed his eyes shut, wrinkles of pain crinkling his brow as pink fluorescence invaded his body through my fingers.

  I removed my hands and he grunted, shaking his head.

  He opened his eyes. “Oh my God,” he said, staring at the receptionist. Magenta glinted across his pupils. “What is that inside her?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” I said, pulling him past the desk so we wouldn’t draw any more attention. “Let’s keep moving. I’ll explain more after we sit down.”

  He shook his head and cupped his forehead with his hand. “Ugh… my head.” He grimaced and blinked several times. “I feel like I’ve got a migraine.”

  “I’m sorry. I had to do it to let you see what I was seeing.”

  “I’ll be fine. It’s only a headache, right?” He squinted. The pink light quickly faded from his eyes.

  “Yeah. It’s only a headache.”

  . . .

  “The Saviors told me there were others out there, but I had no idea one of them would be my brother.” Taylor lifted a cup to his lips and took a sip of black coffee.

  “It must be because you have similar genetic makeup,” I said. “They told us they needed us because we were compatible with them.”

  “That makes sense, I guess.” He set the cup down and it clinked against the glass table.

  We’d been talking for nearly an hour. I’d quietly told him about what had been happening to us over the past year and a half. I didn’t tell him about Alice’s pregnancy, but I did tell him about David’s early attempts to overpower us. I told him about the man at the diner who had dropped dead mysteriously and how the receptionist at this hotel looked as though she had the same messed up light inside her.

  I stirred my cherry cola with a straw to blend the grenadine and soda together. The café had been quiet and nearly all of the patrons had taken their drinks to go. I wasn’t concerned about being overheard, though. How many people would have thought we were telling the truth if they actually had been listening to our outrageous conversation about aliens and glowing super powers?

  “So, do you have any idea what your fluorescence does?” I asked.

  Taylor used a napkin to wipe a smudge of fingerprints off the clear glass table. “No.” He shrugged. “I just got it a few months ago and I’ve been so busy flying back and forth between business trips, I’ve hardly thought anything about it. From what you told me, I don’t think mine flares up like everyone else’s. I’ve hardly seen it since the beginning.”

  When he ran away from his crazy parents, he went to Canada of all places. Taylor was now a public relations consultant for a printing company in Calgary.

  “Do you think you should go check on my brother and the others?” he asked, adjusting the cuffs of his blazer. “They haven’t come back down yet.”

  “No. He’s probably starting shit with David—the one I’ve been staying with. David won’t take any crap from Brian, that’s for sure.”

  “Ah.” Taylor nodded. “It would take a lot of guts to do that. Even as a kid, Brian would get riled up about little stuff.”

  “Now more than ever,” I chuckled. “Especially since his girlfriend is with him constantly.”

  I had also told Taylor how the two of them had run away from home. I told him almost everything, but I didn’t tell him about the earthquake or that the Saviors had ripped out my implant. I made up a lie about the injury, and I kept my knowledge of the Prism out of the conversation.

  “That’s one thing I’ll give Brian credit for—he’s determined,” Taylor said. “I try to stick with something, too, when I commit to it, but learning all of this really changes the game. I can’t go back to work and pretend none of you are out here fighting for your lives and that my own brother isn’t in danger. I need to do whatever I can to help out with the mess we’re all in now.”

  We? I perked up. “Oh?”

  “You’re in trouble, too, aren’t you?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “I mean, technically we both are. It seems those aliens haven’t been very nice to you four in general. I’m probably next on their list, so we should start working together before it’s too late. Before… something really bad happens.”

  I was surprised by how quickly Taylor seemed willing to join us in our fight against the Saviors, but we could use another ally and I didn’t want to question his motives. Taylor may not have taken part in everything we had thus far, but he had been infected for a reason. It wouldn’t be long before the Saviors started pulling his strings, too.

  Chapter 13

  “So you’re the new one?” David asked. He’d just wandered into the café and had come over to our table. “Name’s David.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Taylor replied, offering out a hand.

  David half-grinned and shrugged.
“Not to be an ass, but I don’t know what your fluorescence does just yet and… well, I don’t want to find out the hard way, if you know what I mean.” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Anyway, I didn’t come down here with any news. I was going out for a smoke and a walk. I’ll be back later.”

  “Alright.” I wanted to wave goodbye, but it seemed childish, so I didn’t. “See you, David.”

  “Isn’t he worried about the others leaving without him?” Taylor asked, leaning over the table so I could hear his hushed voice.

  “No. He’s a Tracker. He could probably find us with his eyes closed.”

  “That sounds like a useful talent.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a talent.”

  “True. Well, a useful ability then.” He folded his hands together on top of the table. “It’s better than whatever I have, apparently.”

  “Or more obvious. Don’t worry so much about what you can do. The important thing is we’re together, and together we’ll be much stronger. All of us—the Fluorescent Ones.”

  “Fluorescent Ones?”

  “That’s what we’ve been calling ourselves. Maybe it’s lame, but…”

  “No. I like it.” His lips separated into a toothy grin.

  “He’s not one of us,” someone said in a husky voice from behind me.

  I swiveled my chair around.

  “Brian!?” I groaned, disgusted with the bitter look on his face. “Jesus, don’t start this again.”

  “Don’t butt into things you don’t know shit about, Kareena,” Brian said, rolling his shoulders back as he approached. “You don’t know him like I do. You don’t know who he really is.”

  “And you do?” I glared back at him and scoffed. “He left when you were, like, what? Eleven? And you think that after all these years, you still know who he is?”

  “I asked you to stay out of this, Kareena.” Brian made a fist. “I ought to rearrange your face for what you did to me back then, Taylor.”

  “Brian, come on.” Taylor got up from his seat. “Let’s talk about this, please.”

  “Talk about what? How you abandoned me because you were a coward? About how you left me as the only target for our freak parents to pick on? You knew I had a heart problem and you knew how much it disappointed them. But you… you had to run off and save your own ass. You had to leave me there to rot in that nightmare other people thought was a normal family. Mom and Dad didn’t give a shit about either of us, but at least when you and I were together, I felt like we had a chance.”

  The hostess at the café podium looked over at us and I tensed up.

  “Guys. Stop,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “You’re making a scene. People are looking.”

  “I’m sorry, man, really,” Taylor said, keeping his cool. “I didn’t mean to leave you there like that. I just—I just had to get away.” He shrugged. “You know Dad, always going on about how we’d have to enlist and then Mom always freaking out about everything. What was I supposed to do? Stay there and let them take me down with the ship?”

  “You could have gotten me help. You could have done something for your own brother, damn it!”

  “It’s too late for that,” I interjected. “Brian, please. You can’t change the past, and even if you could, it wouldn’t change the fact that he is one of us right now.”

  “I don’t care what he is, I—”

  “Excuse me?” It was the woman from the podium. “Could you take this outside, please? This isn’t the time or place.” She crossed her arms. “Don’t make me call security on what’s obviously some kind of… family matter.”

  “Ma’am, we’re sorry for the trouble,” Taylor said, lowering his head. “I was just leaving anyway.”

  “I thought so.” Brian sneered, scoffing at the sight of Taylor turning away.

  “Shut up, Brian,” I growled. “You’re only making things worse. Go back upstairs and pack your shit or whatever.” I glanced at the hostess. “I apologize, Ma’am. We’ll settle this elsewhere.”

  “Let’s go, Kareena.” Brian gestured for me to follow him. I glanced at Taylor, who was already walking off, and then back at Brian.

  “I’ll meet up with you guys in a little while.”

  Brian rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine.” He walked off toward the elevators and I waited for him to get out of sight before bolting off after his brother.

  “Taylor, wait!”

  He was already unlocking the door to his room.

  “Yes?” He propped open the door with his shoe.

  “They want to leave, but I want to say goodbye first. I couldn’t really do that in front of your brother. I mean, he’s really not himself at all right now. I’m sorry. I tried. I really—”

  “Kareena?” He paused and looked around nervously, letting his foot slip from the doorway and the door click closed.

  “Yes?”

  He bit his lip and then ran a hand through his short hair. It was a classic Brian-like thing to do, actually, and it made me laugh to myself.

  “This is going to sound crazy,” he started, looking me in the eye, “but just hear me out, please.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Do you feel like you fit in with the others?”

  The question caught me off guard. “Uh… Well, obviously we all have the same stuff in us, but I don’t know if I fit in. They have their own drama going on most of the time.”

  “Brian has his girlfriend, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And David?”

  “He can take care of himself,” I added with a shrug.

  “Then I’ll be honest with you here. I can’t promise to do any better than they have, but if you want, you can come with me and I’ll try to put you up someplace a lot nicer than this. Somewhere you can get some fresh air. A place to clear your head, even if only for a little while.”

  I stood there, silently staring at him. “Are you serious about this?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  Run away with Taylor?

  I hardly knew him, and yet his offer made more sense to me than anything the others had said in the past forty-eight hours. This guy had a real life—a real job and a plan to keep on living. As long as I was with the others, my future had been stunted. It wasn’t about me anymore. It was about them. Always about them. Hell, I was old enough to make my own decisions. I could do whatever I wanted.

  If only I knew what that was…

  “I don’t know, Taylor. It’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? I mean, the Saviors pick us up and move us whenever they want, and who can say when they’ll tear me out of whatever place you put me up in and drop me right back in the middle of these three again? Really?”

  He took my hands into his and our eyes locked.

  “I don’t want to leave you with them,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”

  I gasped. A warm stream of purple light leached through his fingers and into mine, making my hands tingle.

  “Why do you care about me so much?” I asked, trying not to lose myself in the oddly pleasant sensation of his fluorescent touch. “We barely know each other.”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I just feel like I need to help you. But like I said, I can’t promise you anything better, even though I’ll try. I know you want something better than this, and you deserve it. They’re not really pulling for you right now. If all you guys do is fight, what good is it doing for you to even be with them at all?”

  David and I didn’t fight. Well, okay, maybe we did. He had something wrong with him and didn’t want to admit it. Brian was glued to Alice and couldn’t think about anything else because of it. Alice was… ugh, Alice.

  “Okay, let’s say—hypothetically—I agree,” I started. “How am I going to go back with you to Canada? I don’t have a passport and…”

  “I’ve got friends, too, you know? We’ll stay near the border if we have
to. I know it’s a crazy idea and… ah, forget it. It was stupid of me to even—” He released my hands.

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “No. I mean it’s not a stupid idea. If I get teleported back here, then, oh well. I’ll deal with it. But, I have a suspicion you’ll be coming with us next time anyway. There’s no way this whole meeting was coincidental. We were all drawn to this place because of what we are.”

  “I was drawn here all the way from Canada?” He chuckled lightly.

  I crossed my arms. “And that purple light inside you is a hallucination, right?”

  “No.” He fell silent. “Okay, well, what do you want to do? You don’t have to—”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Y-you will?”

  “Yeah. I’m kind of screwed right now anyway. Maybe I can enjoy a few minutes of life in between all of the drama. I don’t own shit anymore, so what have I got to lose?”

  . . .

  Taylor offered to buy me a few things to help get me back on my feet once we got to the new city, so I decided not to return to my room. I had David’s coin in my pocket still, and if I had gone back to say goodbye, I’d probably have ended up being confronted by Brian. It didn’t matter what he thought about Taylor. I had a good feeling about him and that was all that mattered.

  I mean, yeah, maybe he looked a lot like Brian and that might have influenced my decision. Hell, I wanted Brian and couldn’t have him. Maybe… just maybe, Taylor might want me. Or maybe I could get out of the way of Alice’s and Brian’s emotional rampages. David and I almost had a thing going but… I didn’t really want him. We agreed—no broken hearts; no hard feelings.

  Taylor finished packing his carry-on bag and double-checked all of his dresser drawers for leftover items.

  “I already checked,” I said, trying to smile even as a twinge of nausea roiled my stomach.

  “Thanks.”

  We headed to the door and then down the hall to the front desk to check out.

  That’s when I started to second-guess myself.

  What the hell am I doing? What kind of idiot girl runs off with a guy she met only a day ago—regardless of whether or not he happened to have the same kind of alien DNA surging through his bloodstream as she did?