by Lola Dodge
Usually, I melted right into him, but today he hummed with tension. I leaned back to peer up at his face. Tair’s genes had been chosen, so he tended to look a little too perfect for real life. Now his even bronzy skin looked worn, and he kept fiddling with his glasses the way he did when he was upset or agitated in general. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you later.” He readjusted his glasses and slipped an arm around me.
I wished we could still talk brain to brain, but recent events had fried my psychic circuits. Instead of grilling Tair in front of the others, I settled against his side. We both had a bigger problem to deal with before we could talk.
Cipher set spoons and warmed-up food packets in the center of the table. “Good luck. We’re all going to need it.”
She ripped open her packet and my stomach rebelled as the stench hit. Whatever it was smelled halfway between socks and old dog meat.
It was really time to plan our next move.
Chapter Two
ALTAIR
After enduring dinner, the six of us headed back to the control center for our weekly contact with Eva. We were flushed and exhausted after days of training in desert temperatures. Quanta’s health worried me the most—as always—but she walked in a straight line, with clear gray eyes and head held high. The timeghosts weren’t plaguing her the way they used to.
It was a weight off my mind, but with Quanta doing so well, there was nothing to distract from my other worries. My sister wasn’t responding to my messages. It hadn’t been a concern at first. Cassie always went on days-long programming tears, forgetting to sleep, let alone contact anyone.
A week later, I couldn’t be so cavalier. Cass had gone underground when Quanta and I first escaped Alpha Citadel, and I’d trusted her skills would keep out of the clutches of the Seligo and our senator parents. We’d agreed I shouldn’t know where she was hiding, but Cass was supposed to send the occasional encrypted contact to let me know she was safe. I didn’t need a long message. Just a ping. A blip to tell me she was all right.
Quanta’s face appeared in front of mine. She lifted my glasses to stroke the furrow between my brows. “Whatever it is, I’ll help you.”
The intensity of her gaze relaxed some of my worry. In all the time I’d known Quanta, she’d rarely stared at me so directly. She was always looking elsewhere, at figures no one else could see. Now that the full force of her attention fell on me, I felt understood in a way that made me sit up straighter.
No one else would notice I was bothered. Knight and I had come to a truce, but he’d accused me of being a robot more than once in the past. They all thought me cold and indifferent.
Quanta knew better.
I cupped her face in my hands. “I’ll be counting on you.”
She opened her mouth, starting to say something more, but another voice cut her off.
“Hey, lovebirds.” Dex gestured to the viewing screen, opening his arms as if he were presenting the award on a game show. “Do you want to unglue yourselves before this thing, or are you planning on sucking face in front of the Lady?”
My brows lifted. Dex had no room to be lecturing anyone about propriety. Barefoot in surf shorts with his long gold hair pulled into a bun, he looked more prepared for a beach party than a communication with the Shadow Ravens’ leader. His T-shirt put the look over the edge—the screen-printed letters read Ask me about my motorboat.
The appearance was calculated to make people underestimate him, but I’d known Dex too long to be fooled or baited.
Quanta gripped her temples and shook her head. “Could you not bring up sucking face ever again? I don’t want to see your conquests.”
Dex grinned. “Not liking the show?”
“We’ll be late if you don’t stop screwing around,” Cipher said.
“I wasn’t the one screwing—”
“Enough, Dex.” Knight tugged Dex back into a chair before he could finish. “If we miss the time slot, we won’t get any news until next week.”
A sober silence fell over the six of us. After a month in hiding, we had another five months of food supplies left, but none of us would be able to tolerate the hangar that long. Even though we were safest off the grid, relying on Eva for information was too restrictive. And if I didn’t hear from Cass soon, I was going out to find her myself.
Quanta and I settled on one of the sofas as Knight typed into the comp console. A few beeps sounded from our speakers before the screen flickered and a face appeared.
Eva.
Her crow’s-feet had deepened and new strands of gray wound through her red-gold bun, but even when exhausted, she looked as sharp as ever as she scanned our faces. She lingered a little longer on Quanta and her expression softened slightly, but Eva was back to business when her attention reached Knight. “Agent Marquez. Status report.”
“We’re holding tight, ma’am,” Knight said. “Conditions aren’t ideal, but we’re off the grid and able to run the girls through training ops. We were hoping you’d have better news for us this week.”
“None pleasant, I’m afraid.” Eva made a flicking gesture and her face disappeared from the screen, overtaken by a list of names. My spirits sank. Shadow Ravens, Red Helix girls, and a few who fit both categories. Now all were marked MIA or KIA.
“All of them…” Quanta gripped my arm.
“I finally managed a tally, but the list is likely to grow. Twenty-two of my people killed or missing since we left the compound,” Eva said. “We believe these were Ravens Nagi knew about but had been observing until now. After your mission to Theta Citadel, he started collecting them.”
“But why now?” Cipher’s voice spiked, and Knight wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders.
Quanta caught my eye and I wondered if we were having the same thought. Without Quanta, and now her only functioning clone, Doctor Nagi had no clairvoyant help on his side. He had to be collecting targets before they could slip his grasp.
I also wondered how long Eva had been working on this tally. Had she avoided telling us knowing we’d all want to step in?
“How do we help?” Dex leaned forward on his folding chair, his easygoing facade abandoned as his gaze flicked across the names on-screen.
“You don’t.” The list disappeared, and Eva’s exhausted face returned. “I’m giving you the same orders I’ve given to all the agents I can still contact. Hold tight. We’ll regroup once we’ve weathered the storm.”
Light rippled at the corner of my eye. Devan stood, gripping her arms with hands that beamed sunshine yellow. “I’m so tired of this! My friends are—”
“Devan.” Eva’s voice was calm and soft.
I angled my body in front of Quanta just in case Devan lost control of her light waves, but after a second she dimmed back to less alarming levels.
“You’ll be the first to know if I hear any news of your friends,” Eva said. “The only thing I’m positive of now is that Kiri and Aliya would be heartbroken if you were captured for their sake.”
Devan’s jaw clenched. After a long silence, she fell back into her chair, still gripping her arms.
Even though Eva was right, her words weren’t easy to swallow. And if this waiting kept up, Devan wouldn’t care what happened to herself. I felt the same about Cass.
“Is there anything else you’d like to report?” Again, Eva’s gaze lingered on Quanta. Instead of sharing whatever she saw in the future, Quanta kept silent, fiddling with the hem of her T-shirt.
I hadn’t planned to ask—I didn’t like putting my sister on Eva’s radar—but as the pause dragged, my worries wouldn’t let me keep silent. “Have you heard anything about my sister?”
“Cassiopeia?” Eva blinked. “I have not, but I wasn’t keeping an eye on her. Should I put out feelers?”
“I’d appreciate that. She’s never good about responding to messages, but it’s been more than a week since I heard from her. I’m worried she might’ve…” I didn’t finish the sentence because I di
dn’t want to think how it ended.
“I’ll let you know what I can discover. If that’s all?” Eva gave the room a last scan, but no one else had questions for her. “Good. Now don’t go looking for trouble.”
She didn’t wait for us to respond. The screen faded to black and the speakers cut to silence. None of us budged. I was busy imagining more days and weeks of relying on secondhand news and sitting on our hands while Reds and Ravens were rounded up outside.
Quanta was the first to her feet. “Can we do another run through the training house? I need to shoot things.” She offered me a hand up from the sofa.
“I’m done for the day.” Cipher smoothed back her fading blue hair. “Unless anyone wants in on a game?”
Knight and Dex started hooking up their gaming console to the big screen, while Cipher flopped onto the couch. Devan headed for exterior door, flashing invisible just before she opened it. The sun was setting, and rather than being bothered by the heat, she seemed to enjoy it—or at least she enjoyed the UV rays.
We all decompressed our own ways. And we all needed space.
Quanta tugged me away from the group, but she didn’t head for the training house. Instead, she pulled me toward the hangar’s far wall. “No shooting practice?”
“I thought of something better to do with our time.” Her voice rang with mischief, and all I could do was return her grin.
Chapter Three
QUANTA
My stomach fluttered as I dragged Tair for the bunks. I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d do when we got there, but I had some ideas and a whole lot of inspiration from the saucier futures that had been dogging me since the moment Tair and I met.
The others would be busy for a while. Right now, I just wanted to be alone with him.
The “bedroom” we all shared was just a cluster of bunk beds and lockers hanging out in the hangar’s empty space. Luckily, we had a lot more bunks than people, so we’d stripped off the mattresses and pushed the empty frames into squares, hanging up sheets between them to give the illusion of privacy. I pulled Tair through the sheet into our little cubby.
I only let go of him when I realized my half of our mattress on the floor was a mess again. The few sketchpads and drawing pencils I’d gathered had exploded into a poky, crinkly minefield in my nest of blankets.
Tair helped to pick out the sharpest bits. When the worst of the clutter was on the floor, he smoothed a hand over the sheets. “It should be safe now.”
“Very funny.” I plucked off his glasses and set them on the nearest bunk frame. With all obstacles out of the way, I climbed into Tair’s lap, burying my face in his neck and wrapping my arms around him.
His arms circled me right back. I rested against his shoulder. He smelled like soap and sweat at the same time, and his heart beat a little faster than normal.
So did mine, but I could tell he was still distracted. I squeezed him tighter. “Your sister will be fine.”
He chuckled. “Do you really want to talk about my sister now?”
“Definitely now.” I leaned back to look at him. That laugh sounded forced, and I wasn’t letting him get away with it.
I opened myself to the flow of time. Where’s Cassie?
I wouldn’t usually be able to pick up much about a person I’d never met in real life, but Cassie and her brother had always been close. These days, I could see more of Tair’s futures than anyone else’s—including my own.
Timeghosts fuzzed around him, layer after layer. I flicked away the ones that looked like the past, with lines that were solid, but faded. The futures had a hazy blue potential about them, and they spanned a crazy range of possibilities.
Tair and I snuggle in a rocking swing, gliding and back and forth on a misty porch somewhere, watching the sunset; I collapse in an ear-splitting burst of gunfire, Tair screaming as I fall; Tair lies cold and lifeless on a lab table, while I lie next to him, painfully alive and struggling against the ropes that tie me down; Tair sits across a table from his parents, all three of them trading glares—
I pushed a little harder. Cass had to be there if I dug far enough.
Tair hunches over a compscreen; Tair drums his fingers against his thigh on a pod ride through one of the Citadels; Tair wears long white robes, and his pointy ears scream VR, but he holds a long stick of pepperoni instead of a weapon. “Come on, Cass.”
“Cass is still in your future.” Letting out a breath of relief, I pulled my mental walls back into place. I wouldn’t see her if she’d already met her end in the present. That didn’t help us figure out what the girl was up to now, but it was better than fearing the worst.
“I’m glad you can see her, but I’m still worried.”
“I know.” I rubbed his back. “If you want to, we can always go looking for her.” It wouldn’t be a vacation, but neither would anything else we did, and I’d rather do something to help than watch Tair be all thrown off.
He leaned to plant a kiss on my forehead. “I don’t want to risk you. But if we go a few more days without hearing from her…”
“Then we’ll go. As long as she’s not hiding in a desert, too. I’m starting to value AC more than my safety.”
He laughed just the way I’d hoped he would. “I’m surprised. The heat is bothering you more than the food?”
“Don’t get me started.” I shuddered. “I’d kill for a chocolate cake.”
Tair laughed again, finally relaxing. Now, the tension in his body was just right for melting.
I tilted my head to reach his mouth. He met me softly, his lips just brushing mine, but the sensation lit me up inside.
Even better, I didn’t see any futures where people came to our side of the hangar. I smiled against his lips. “Nobody’s coming anytime soon, and I see a future where you—”
Tair’s mouth pressed against mine, cutting off my breathing, let alone my thoughts. His tongue teased my lips open, and he didn’t pull back until I was panting.
“Why don’t you let me surprise you for once?” His smile was so smug, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere but the present. He eased me onto my back and shifted to hover over me. After he kissed down my neck, his lips found my collarbone. I twisted in the sheets, feeling fully alive for the first time in a long time. Everywhere Tair touched, caressed, or kissed went wild with heat and energy.
The weight of his body and his scent felt so right. So safe. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, not wanting to let go.
“GUYS!” Dex’s voice boomed across the hangar.
I groaned. He had to mess with us now?
“Get over here,” Knight called. “Now.”
Dex would jerk us around, but Knight? Nope.
My brain clicked straight into action mode. “Emergency?”
“Let’s find out.” Tair grabbed his glasses and tugged me to my wobbly feet. Together, we booked it to mission control.
I could tell it was bad from halfway across the hangar, but everyone stood staring at the vid screen in horror instead of arming up. The hangar wasn’t under attack. So what was happening? Tair and I sprinted so fast we were on top of the group before the timeghosts could hint what I’d missed.
“What—” As soon as I spoke, the future twisted. My vision cut to pure blue as timeghosts took over my head, flashing me a thousand death scenes at once. Tair. Cipher. Knight. Devan. Dex. And me.
All falling, screaming, bleeding.
I gripped my temples hard and tried to shake free of the images, but they kept hold, death after death after death. Whatever was set in motion, it wasn’t just the six of us who’d suffer. Oliver. Mona. Lady Eva. Kiri and Aliya. More Shadow Ravens.
Everyone.
Everyone was in danger.
“Quanta.” Tair held me in his arms, and panic rang through his voice. “Quanta.”
I gripped his T-shirt and rebuilt my mental walls. When the timeghosts disappeared, I finally blinked back to the present, where I needed to finish the question I’d started.
&nb
sp; I staggered out of Tair’s arms. “What just happened?”
“Eva sent… Just watch.” Knight only stepped away from Cipher long enough to cue up a video file. Then he wrapped her back into his arms, whispering reassurances I didn’t get to hear.
The vid screen stole my breath away.
Doctor Nagi stared dead at us. He wore his dark hair slicked back the same as ever, and his thin lips twisted in the cold, familiar smile that made me want to throw up everything I’d ever eaten.
It’s just a video. A video couldn’t hurt us, but I could only suck in shallow breaths as the footage rolled on.
“This message is for the criminals Emma Jean Boyd, Hunter Marquez, Devan Coda, Altair Orpheus, and Quanta.” His face shifted on the screen as five new cam views appeared in the frame below him.
The prisoners sat or paced in narrow cells. Some were tied up. I took a step closer, and—
The first one looked up at the cam. Her thick black curls were pressed down by a set of goggles.
“Cass…” Tair slumped into a chair. I only kept standing because I’d frozen.
Cassie sat in the corner of her cell, hugging her knees. On the next cam, Oliver struggled against the plastic cords binding to a chair. Then Mona, pacing, her long blonde hair not quite hiding a tear-streaked face. And the last two cams…
Aliya was the dark-haired one lying hooked up to whirring machines on a lab table. Bundled up in a straight jacket, Kiri lay curled into a ball on the floor.
All of them. Captured. But…
I couldn’t get air into my lungs. All those white prison cells. The florescent lights. I could practically feel the tubes and bindings on my skin. They were all living my worst nightmare. I hugged shaking arms to my chest.
“Your friends and family have found their way to me, but you’re the ones I want.” Not even Nagi’s voice could make me look away from the cam views. My gaze stayed locked in horror as he spoke. “You have three days to present yourselves at Alpha Citadel. For each one of you, I’ll release one of your friends. But if you don’t arrive soon…” The cams disappeared, and Nagi’s face expanded to take up the entire screen again. “Their time will expire.”
