Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy

by P. Anastasia

  “Kareena!” both Brian and Alice called. Their voices resonated from the light as if they were only inches away. Another quick look behind me. Taylor was closing the distance between us, his anger making the violet in his arm outrageously bright.

  I went closer to the thing that appeared to be some kind of portal and watched as rings of vivid white spun through one another, making the large oval shape pulsate.

  “Go, Kareena!” an ethereal voice echoed in my head. I recognized it.

  A quick swallow and then I held my breath, closed my eyes, and passed through the light.

  A whirlwind tossed my hair all across my face and I felt a whoosh of cool, crisp air surround me. A second later, I was vomited back out onto solid ground.

  Brian and Alice came rushing over to me, their eyes darting around as they searched for the thing that had dropped me there. I turned and saw nothing. The portal had vanished.

  “You’re back!” Alice said, as if she were happy to see me. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I looked into her worried blue eyes and felt relieved. Then I looked into Brian’s and my heart plummeted again.

  “Are you alright, Kareena?” he asked, quickly looking me over. “Are you hurt?” His arm was already glistening with soft blue light.

  “No,” I replied. “Thank you for helping me get out of there.”

  “Helping you?” Alice cocked an eyebrow. “We were just here and suddenly heard you calling for us. The next thing we knew, you came falling out of nowhere.”

  “What? But I-I heard you two calling my name. I know I did.”

  Brian shook his head. “We weren’t the ones calling you, Kareena.”

  “Prism,” I whispered. “It must have been the Prism. It said it would try to help us. Maybe it found a way. Neither of you could see that thing at all?”

  “No,” replied Alice. “We couldn’t see anything until you appeared.”

  “It was as big as me. A swirling line of light just floating in front of me like someone cut a hole in the air and the sun was shining through it.”

  “We definitely didn’t see that,” Brian said. “Let’s get out of here in case anything or anyone else tries to come through that thing.”

  . . .

  I sat down on a bench near the hotel parking lot. It was a different hotel than the one we were at before. Rundown, but safe enough for now.

  Brian sat beside me. His troubled expression put my stomach in knots.

  “Now that you’re back and settled down a bit,” he started, “I have to ask you something.” His jaw tightened and he narrowed his eyes at me. “Why would you abandon us like that? Why did you leave without even saying a damn word about it?”

  “I… I’m sorry.” I entwined my fingers together in my lap. “I just—”

  “Didn’t think about anyone but yourself,” Brian cut me off. “You only thought about poor Kareena and what she wanted, right?”

  “Well, I—”

  “You thought that if you couldn’t have me, you’d have my brother.” His judgmental gaze made me feel so small. I looked down and hunched over. “Right?”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured beneath my breath. “I’m… sorry, Brian,” I whispered, my voice breaking.

  Brian took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The drawn-out silence made my chest tighten.

  He leaned closer to me. “Don’t be,” he said, his voice much softer than usual.

  “What?” His swift change of tone caught my attention. I lifted my head and looked him in the eye. “Aren’t you pissed at me?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, scoffing. “Of course I am. But by the looks of it, you’ve been through more than enough hell already.” He touched my shoulder gently. “You don’t need to be instigated by us, too.”

  I felt like shit, but I forced a little smile in reply. “Thank you, Brian.” His forgiveness was all I could ask for.

  “So… did Taylor try to hurt you?” he asked.

  In more ways than one.

  He pressed his lips thin. “Well?”

  “Yes.”

  “I tried to warn you about him, you know. But…” He sighed. “Never mind. Like I said, I won’t rub it in.” He patted me on the back and tried to grin. “At least you’re back.”

  “I don’t know for how long,” I replied.

  His brow furrowed. “What do you mean? Do you think they’ll take you again soon?”

  “They need me.”

  “They needed Alice, too.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “What?” Brian drew back, surprised. “What do you mean? Are they… done with us?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Probably not, but now that they have Taylor, they only need the two of us to do their dirty work. He’s… even more powerful than David.”

  Brian’s eyes widened. “What? But how can that be? What the hell does he have that’s more powerful than David’s fluorescence? What can Taylor do with his?”

  “He can steal mine.”

  Brian gasped. “Shit,” he muttered beneath his breath.

  “He can steal my powers as a Seeker, and… he can start people.”

  “No!” Brian’s jaw dropped. “No. No.” He ran his hands through his hair. “This… can’t be happening.”

  “It is. And we have to stop him. We have to put an end to this before he finds us. Where the hell is David, anyway?”

  Brian stared at me. “He left,” he said. “He told us he didn’t have a reason to stay. What did you expect him to do?”

  “I don’t know.” I crossed my arms and leaned back against the bench. “I thought he was overreacting. I didn’t think he’d actually leave you guys.”

  “We’re getting on fine without him,” Brian huffed.

  “Still, it’s us against the world. And David’s one of us, even if you two didn’t get along.”

  “That’s what you said about Taylor, too.” Brian tipped his head to the side.

  I nibbled my lip. “That was before I learned he was a psychopath bent on infecting everyone. He doesn’t care if it means killing people or not.”

  “How many people have you two started since all of this began?” he asked.

  “Hundreds. Thousands. I don’t know. Taylor does something to me at night. I can’t even remember what the hell I’m doing, where I am half the time, or what happened the night before. I wake up fatigued and blurry eyed. Then I black out again until morning. It’s happened almost every night since I left.”

  Brian’s eyebrows crinkled. “Taylor and I never got along well,” he started, “but I never would have known he could be so vicious. A liar and a jerk, yeah, but a killer? That’s just twisted.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  I hadn’t even told him about the second infected person I had to watch die.

  Chapter 18

  “I hope you can get some rest now that you’re back with us,” Brian said, ushering me to my room. This hotel was nicer than some we’d stayed in before. Maybe he’d learned a thing or two from David in the short time we were with him.

  “I’ll try.” I sat down on the crisp beige duvet and lifted a bleach-scented pillow to my face to nestle my cheek against it. It wasn’t home, but it was clean and comfortable enough.

  Brian headed for the door.

  “Brian, don’t leave,” I said, just as he wrapped his fingers around the handle. “Please.”

  “I have to go back to Alice. I can’t stay with you. You know that, Kareena.”

  I did, but… I didn’t care.

  “Please? Just for a few minutes? I’m…” I hesitated. “I’m worried they’ll take me again.” My voice was shaky. “I’m… scared, okay?” My throat tightened and tears started to well in my eyes. I didn’t want to cry in front of him. Brian didn’t like it when I complained. He’d probably hate it if I started whimpering like a child.

  Still, my heart was so tangled up in everything that had ha
ppened, with all of the fear and anger closing in on me. I wanted to believe I was safe now, but… I couldn’t.

  Brian paused and turned away from the door to come back over toward the bed. He sat on the edge beside me and cupped a hand over mine. An eager breath caught in my lungs and I tried not to seem overzealous.

  “I’m sorry you’ve been through so much, but we’re all living in hell right now,” he said. “We have to keep fighting back any way we can. Okay?” He reached for a tissue from the nearby dresser and handed it to me.

  I nodded and took the tissue.

  “What you did back there—running away with Taylor—was stupid. But… we all make mistakes. We’ve all screwed up.”

  I sniffled. “He’s nothing like us. He’s… evil.”

  “The powers the Saviors gave him are messing with his head, probably,” he replied. “You said it yourself, he’s more powerful than any of us, and it sounds like he can do a lot of damage. I’ll do what I can for you. I’ll try, but I have Alice to think about, too.”

  Sometimes I wish you didn’t…

  “Thank you,” was all I said.

  Brian looked down at me, a frown weighing on his lips. “I’m sorry for whatever he did to you.”

  Then he left the room.

  I kept my eyes closed and tried as hard as I could to sleep, but every few minutes they were wide open again. Staring at the clock beside the bed. Counting dots in the spackled ceiling. Listening intently to muffled, indistinct conversations of people outside.

  My heart was racing. I was exhausted, but I was also terrified the Saviors would grab me at any moment. Closing my eyes for a second made me vividly recall Taylor’s breath close to my neck. I whined in fear and finally sat up in the bed, pulling my knees close to my chest, then dragging the blankets up over them toward my neck.

  “Damn it, Kareena!” I groaned. “Why the hell aren’t you able to sleep!?”

  Brian was just next-door… but he couldn’t stop Taylor by himself.

  What if me being back with the others would put them in danger of being abducted?

  “Ugh!”

  All I wanted was one single decent night of rest. I’d been on a full-blown adrenaline rush for days. At least while I was conscious. At night, whatever Taylor was doing to me that was causing spontaneous blackouts kept me sleeping until midday. He’d wake me abruptly, just moments before we were teleported somewhere.

  I clicked on the lamp on the side table and dropped my head back, staring blankly at the ceiling. I stayed like that until I started seeing odd shapes in the spackling. Stars. Birds. Squiggly arms and legs without bodies. Twisted little creatures missing heads and limbs. Some of the simpler patches reminded me of scars—David’s scars. I remembered one that I could have sworn was from a bullet. I couldn’t guess anything about the rest, but that one in particular gave me chills. To think of all the shit he’d been through, and there I was fighting just to get myself to go to sleep.

  I lowered my head, stared at my hands in my lap, and then I looked at the clock again—1:37 AM.

  My eyes closed and I rested my head against the wall, taking slow, deep breaths to try to calm my nervous pulse. Warmth swept over me and my eyes opened.

  An intense flash of light lit up the room. The swirling blur of hot white at the end of my bed grew brighter and brighter until I could make out subtle veins of color flitting through it.

  The Prism.

  The warmth increased as the glowing energy neared me, and a small, less painful than usual headache swelled in my forehead.

  “That portal that opened up for me... was that your doing?” I asked, sitting up straighter on the bed.

  “Yes,” it replied, its light fading slightly in and out. “You may rest now without fear of the Saviors taking you again for approximately one earth day. We cannot stop them indefinitely, but the energy inside the portals is so potent, it masks your own fluorescence and distorts their ability to locate you for a short time.”

  “What about the others? What about Brian and Alice?”

  “We will do our best to watch you all and try to intervene if we detect activity on their part. We believe the Saviors have shifted their focus to the new one, however—the fluorescent abomination.”

  “Taylor.” The name was barely audible coming from my mouth.

  “Yes. As you have experienced firsthand, his power is corrupt and dangerous. Fluorescence is not meant to be modified into such a misshapen genetic pattern that it infests one’s mind with darkness and rage. He is unstable and his genetic code is not completely compatible with the light, unlike his brother.”

  I huffed, disgusted by the news. So the Saviors had only picked Taylor because he was close enough to what they needed. They probably knew damn well he’d start shit with us, too.

  Damn them.

  “As you have already witnessed, we are diligently working to improve the door of light—the portal between dimensions, which we used to tear a hole between the stasis realm and the natural realm.”

  “What?” I shook my head. “You’re getting too sci-fi on me. What’s a stasis realm?”

  “When you are sent places by the Saviors, you are placed within a layer between the natural and spectral realms—it is called the stasis realm, and while you are trapped within it, no one can see or hear you. It is a discreet layer in the fabric of time that allows you to interact nearly unnoticed while you continue to exist in real time.”

  The rainbow light started to dim, signaling our chat was about to end.

  “What else can I do to fight back?” I came onto my knees and crawled a few inches closer toward it. “What can I do about Taylor?”

  “We do not know how to deal with him yet. Please tell the others what we have told you. You and the Tracker are the only ones with the sight and ability to see the doors of light. Therefore, you cannot separate from the group or the Starter and Healer will be lost.”

  “But David’s already gone.”

  “Then you must find him and tell him what you have learned. There is no other way. He will not survive without this information. The group must stay together.”

  The light flickered again and then the entire mass of fiery colors vanished into nothingness.

  I knew it. The Prism had opened that portal for me.

  I vaguely remembered something about it in the vivid dream I’d had a few years back. The dream that had brought the three of us together—the one we experienced simultaneously. In it, we were searching for some way to escape. Some kind of “door.”

  I scooted back over to my pillow and reached into a pocket in my jeans. I pressed David’s coin into my palm and brushed my thumb across the surface, rubbing away a subtle layer of residue.

  The dream finally made sense. Pieces were falling into place after almost two years of ignorance. What now? The last thing I remembered happening in my dream was the ceiling crashing down on me. In real life, David had already rescued me from the debris after the earthquake. Now he was gone.

  I didn’t miss him, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel safer with him around.

  “What now, David?” I whispered to myself, squeezing the Libertad tightly with my fingers. “What now?”

  Chapter 19

  “What should we do if they take you again?” Brian asked, pouring boiling hot water from a glass carafe into a foam cup with a teabag in it. He dunked the teabag in his cup a few times until the water turned copper brown.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “The Prism are trying to help us and I think they’re getting closer to a long-term solution. Until then, we have to keep our heads down, I guess. I saw some pretty serious shit when I was with Taylor. The Saviors are screwing around with things they shouldn’t and… more people are…” I stopped.

  “Are what, Kareena?” Brian asked, leaning closer.

  “Dying.”

  Alice gasped.

  “What?” I continued. “You didn’t really thi
nk that guy at the diner was going to be the only one, did you?”

  I wrapped my fingers around the cap of my cola bottle and tried to twist it off, but I couldn’t grip it right. I tried again, grunting because the stupid thing seemed ridiculously hard to turn.

  “Damn it.” I sighed. Why was I so weak?

  “Here. Let me get that,” Brian said, setting down his tea and then offering out a hand to me. I passed him the bottle; he unscrewed the lid and then passed it back to me.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He grinned slightly and then his expression became solemn again. “Kareena, I don’t want anyone else to suffer or die as a result of their experiments.”

  “Neither do I.” I wedged the soda bottle between my thighs and held it there as I tried to decide what to do with it now that my stomach was suddenly feeling sick.

  “Would you like to try some tea, maybe?” Alice asked, offering me her cup, which she hadn’t taken a sip from yet. Steam wafted up over the lip as she held it out toward me. I glanced at it for a moment—black tea with cream and a single packet of sugar.

  “You can have mine,” she added. “It might be better for you than… pop.” She motioned toward my bottle “This early in the morning, at least.” She shrugged and smiled an honest, caring smile.

  My parents drank tea religiously, but I wasn’t much of a fan. We brewed homemade chai for holidays and family get-togethers. I used to really love it when I was little. Chai is basically the Indian word for tea, but it’s a lot more than that. Chai is rich and creamy. Sweet and spicy. Aromatic and hearty any time of day. Soothing to the stomach… and the mind.

  What Alice was offering me was anything but my mother’s delicious family chai, but it was something that (sort of, kind of) reminded me of home. I reached out to carefully take it from her. The cup was super hot.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly, meeting Alice’s gaze for only a moment. Her young, innocent blue eyes were starting to show signs of fatigue. It was unflattering, especially on a cute sixteen-year-old girl. Hell, it was unflattering on us all.