Enhanced

by Carrie Jones

  “Yeah…” He is quiet for a second. “We need to find her. He left me in that car hours ago. They could be anywhere.”

  “And where do we look?”

  “Food?” Lyle suggests. “Let’s stop for food and figure it out.”

  “I don’t really want to waste time, Lyle.”

  “It’s midnight and we have no idea where to even begin.”

  “Fine. What’s open?”

  “Denny’s or something. There’s got to be a Denny’s. Or we could go to a convenience store somewhere.”

  “Do you even know where we are?” I ask.

  “Maine? Canada? Vermont?” He peers into the darkness. “Somewhere with a lot of trees.”

  “It can’t be Vermont. We haven’t been driving that long. I think we were just up north by the border of Maine and New Hampshire.” I decide that our first goal should be to figure out where we are. Our next goal should be to find some food. Our third goal is to figure out what to do on the bigger scale of things, which means rescuing Seppie and hearing the rest of Lyle’s story.

  The first goal is simple because it turns out there’s a GPS in the car.

  “Can’t they track us if we turn it on?” I ask.

  “Possibly. But we could just turn it on for a second.”

  We do. It appears that we are actually still in New Hampshire, just northern New Hampshire, in the White Mountains. My mom’s ancestors were the white people who settled here. There were other people who lived in these mountains for twelve thousand years before white Europeans came, but nobody ever mentions them. But they were the Abenaki, linguistically Algonquian, and pretty cool people, which I tell Lyle once we realize that we’re by Willey Mountain and if we follow the highway, we can probably get to food in less than a half hour.

  “You always say you’re stupid, Mana, but you know a lot about things. That’s history right there.”

  “Not the kind we get tested on.”

  “True.”

  “I’ll find the convenience store. You finish telling me what’s been happening to you,” I suggest as I switch the GPS back off and continue through Crawford Notch on Route 302. If it wasn’t so dark, we would be able to stare up at the snow-covered mountains and down at Saco River, which sort of follows the two-lane highway. Mom loved it up here. Even without the GPS, I know that we’re headed for Attitash Mountain Resort and the town of Bartlett. There has to be a convenience store there.

  “So, the woman tells me all about the organization and how they have successfully incorporated aliens, such as Pierce, who we met if you remember—”

  “Of course I remember. Don’t be insulting.”

  He talks right over me. “—and how they think that I am sympathetic to humanity’s cause and should be incorporated into the organization as well.”

  “So they recruited you.”

  “Basically.”

  “And you didn’t tell me because?”

  I swear he actually stutters. “Because … because … they told me not to? And I wanted to figure out what was going on? I knew I could convince them to take you in too eventually, because you’re awesome, obviously, and China had told you that you would be able to help, but then they said…”

  “They said what?”

  “That you were unstable and too risky. They said they had determined more information about your usefulness and it looked like you were too much of a risk.”

  “Because…”

  “They didn’t tell me the because. I asked, though. I asked a lot.” He touches my shoulder. “Don’t be mad.”

  “Of course I’m mad! You didn’t even trust me enough to tell me what was going on. That’s a big deal, Lyle.”

  He says nothing.

  “I thought we were friends. Cap and Bucky.”

  He still says nothing.

  “Xena and Gabriel. Kirk and Spock,” I rattle on, totally annoyed. “Say something.”

  “There’s nothing to say. You’re right. I was an ass. I thought I was protecting you and—”

  “I don’t need protecting!” I shout. Enoch barks, in support, I think. “I’m not the one who got brainwashed. I’m not the one who was tied up in the back of a car. I’m not the one who abandons her friends because she got a damn job offer.”

  “You swore.”

  “I’m mad.”

  “You never swear.”

  “I’m never this mad.” My hands tighten around the steering wheel.

  This is truth. Anger courses through my muscles. Every neuron in my body feels … it’s hard to describe, but the closest word is electrified. I feel electrified. How could they possibly act like I’m the one who needs protecting when I am the only one who doesn’t get kidnapped or knocked unconscious or …

  “Agh!” The word explodes out of me. “You told me that you couldn’t do us anymore? What is that supposed to mean?”

  I slam my fist into the dashboard. The dashboard cracks.

  “Mana.” Lyle’s voice is quiet but obviously trembling. “Um … maybe you should pull over.”

  “Just tell me what you meant when you said you couldn’t do us anymore.”

  “I don’t know. I already told you I don’t know, didn’t I? I just … I couldn’t lie about the camp and be a couple. You can’t be with someone you’re lying to. It made me feel all gross inside.”

  “Not good enough, Lyle.” The words come out through gritted teeth and I yank the car to the side of the mountain road. There’s a lot of snow up here and barely a breakdown lane so even though I am trying to be stealthy, I throw on the hazard lights. There is no point in having us and a car destroyed by another driver who doesn’t see us in the dark night.

  “Mana, you’re kind of worrying me.”

  “Why? Do you think I’ll kidnap you? Betray you for a job opportunity? Lie to you? Because I’m not going to, Lyle. Do you know why? Because I know how to be a friend and a girlfriend, unlike you, who have dated pretty much every girl in school except me and Seppie.”

  I throw open the door and hop out into the night. The light from the car’s interior illuminates things. I slip on some tiny patch of black ice and scream in frustration, but instead of falling, I do some sort of side aerial. The motion shakes the crystal out of my pocket and right into my hand. My fingers wrap around it instinctively. Anger just rips through me. We are up against so much—aliens, agencies that betray us, some random guy who has kidnapped my best friend as bait. Bait. Like she isn’t human. Like she’s a toy, something to be used. And if she had trusted me—if they both had trusted me—maybe this wouldn’t have been the result. Who knows? I’m not just fighting against aliens, I’m fighting against my whole entire life.

  Lyle opens his door as I land. He peers out. His voice is quiet. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay. I’m a genetically enhanced freak whose mom is in a coma, whose pretend dad is missing, and whose friends betrayed her, whose boyfriend dumped her because he felt gross inside, and now one of those friends is kidnapped. I am one hundred percent okay.”

  “So … you’re not okay.” Lyle steps gingerly around the front of the car toward me, without falling. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” I glare at him, huffing like I’m some sort of Big Bad Wolf, some sort of monster. But I’m just me, Mana, cheerleading freak, toyed with by aliens, lied to for forever. It hurts too much to keep thinking about.

  “For not being honest with you?” he offers, hands spread wide open.

  “It sounds better when you don’t make your apology into a question.”

  His hands drop and he actually scowls at me. “You know what sounds better? When you don’t pick apart someone’s apology and make it not an apology.”

  “It wasn’t a real apology.”

  “How do you know? You aren’t in my head.”

  “It. Was. A. Question!” I holler and all my anger come thundering out of me like some sort of sine wave or something. It is physical and green and you can see it.

  You
can see it.

  “Lyle! Duck!”

  He dives out of the way as the wave of my anger hits the car. The car disintegrates when the wave hits it. The wave rumbles into darkness. And the anger inside of me is gone—just gone—replaced by terror.

  “Enoch! Where is Enoch?” I scream into the newer, deeper darkness. This has never happened before. Why is this happening?

  The crystal in my hand shimmies and falls into the snow a few feet in front of me. Enoch rushes out from behind where the car was, whining, tail between her legs. I squat down. “Here, baby … Come here, baby.”

  “I’m totally all right. Thanks for caring,” Lyle says, standing up and brushing snow off his pants.

  Enoch licks my face. I let her. Having her there calms me. I wrap my arms around her and breathe in her doggy smell.

  “Sorry…” I start to apologize to Lyle. “I’m not sure what—”

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s why they don’t trust you.”

  I bristle. “Nice.”

  “You know it’s true.”

  I do, but whatever. Having some sort of adrenaline-based power that I know nothing about doesn’t mean I should be put to death, which I start to explain to Lyle, but he’s too busy whining about me vaporizing the car and how now we’re going to have to walk and how cold it is and why this has never happened before and so on.

  “You’re a runner,” I say. “You can run a marathon. You can walk two miles to a town.”

  “But it’s dark and cold. And we need to find Seppie.”

  “First we need to find the crystal,” I say, “but you’re right. We do need to find Seppie.”

  Something moves in the darkness.

  “What’s that?”

  Enoch barks.

  “The crystal?” Lyle’s suggestion is a question, just like his apology.

  I bite my tongue. There’s no use fighting with Lyle about his betrayal right now. We’re in this together, or at least we should be, and honestly, I need all the help I can get. If I vaporized a car because I was angry, my emotions are a little out of control. Plus, you always do better rescuing people if you have friends with you to help.

  Lyle’s by my side now, squatting down next to me. Enoch licks his face, but he doesn’t really see. Instead, he points to the general area where the crystal fell into the snow. “I know we have to get Seppie, figure out where she is, but something … whatever that crystal thing is, something is going on with it.”

  He’s right. The crystal makes a whirring noise.

  “You hear that?” I ask, peering into the darkness.

  “Yep … It sounds like … It sounds like … There!” Lyle points in front of us and slightly to the right and there it is. The crystal. It hovers above the snow. It isn’t as high as it was when I was at school and it shot up to the ceiling. It’s only levitating about three feet into the air.

  “Should I get it?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Enoch?”

  Lyle squints at me. “You’re asking the dog?”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure she’s a regular dog,” I admit. “She seems to communicate a lot.”

  Before I can explain the rest of my observations about Enoch, the crystal spins, emitting a light.

  Lyle gasps. “It’s a hologram.”

  “But what is it showing us?” I ask as the images begin to take shape.

  There’s the back of a man’s head again—square, crew cut. Beyond him there’s a girl, strapped to a table. Fully clothed, thank god, but in some sort of hospital garb. Almost like what nurses wear—made of that weird material and with drawstring pants.

  “Is that Seppie?” Lyle asks, stepping forward. “I’m pretty sure that’s the guy who put me in the car. Yeah … yeah … that’s the back of his head.”

  Enoch growls and Lyle stops babbling.

  “Usually they can hear me. Maybe we’re too far away.” I step into the deep snow toward the crystal just as the man jerks forward toward Seppie. The back of his head is the same as the man’s when I used the crystal before and saw that hospital room. What is he doing to Seppie? Horror takes my voice, but I find it again in a whisper, “Where are they?”

  And then the crystal moves again, spinning. It’s an outside shot of what looks like a YMCA on the outskirts of a town. Behind it is a brick building, a crosswalk and sidewalk in front of it, marked with evenly spaced trees, branches naked from winter.

  “Whoa,” Lyle whispers. “It’s like your personal Google Earth or something.”

  “I guess. It’s never done this before. I’ve seen people but not places.”

  “Do you know how to work it? We need to know where this is.”

  “No idea,” I say, but I move closer to the hologram, trying to figure it out. Enoch stays close at my heels.

  The YMCA is aluminum-sided, gray and squat, and not too big, with a flat roof and a green racing stripe near the top of it. The picture whirls around and I can see the sign with the Y logo blasted across a silhouette of an island. Underneath, there are letters spelling out MOUNT DESERT ISLAND.

  “Is that where she is?” I gasp.

  “It must be. Why else would it be showing us?”

  “I don’t understand how the crystal is showing us things at all,” I say as it flies back toward me. I grab it and stare. It looks normal, just warm and nice in my hands.

  “It’s like it can divine your thoughts or something,” Lyle suggests as I pet the crystal with two fingers.

  “Good crystal. Good crystal,” I croon.

  “It’s not a dog, Mana,” Lyle scolds.

  Enoch grumbles.

  “If it’s sentient, I want to be nice to it,” I explain as I tuck it back into my pocket and plow out of the snow and back onto the road. “I mean, it’s trying to help us, I think. That’s super-nice.”

  “That looked like a military compound, not a YMCA,” Lyle says.

  “So we need troops,” I add, walking down the road. “We need to infiltrate that place, get Seppie back, and get on with things. But I think it was just a Y. They are in there somewhere, some back room or something.”

  He ignores most of what I’ve said and asks, “What sorts of things do we have to get on with?”

  “Saving-the-world-and-humanity sorts of things,” I say, “but it looks like we’re going to have to depend on ourselves. Not Mom and China’s agency. Not the government’s Men in Black. Just us. Are you with me, Lyle?”

  “I thought you didn’t trust me.” His voice is rough and low with emotion.

  He’s by my side, walking with me, and he’s right. I didn’t trust him because I knew something was off, but I can’t let a week or so of weirdness ruin a lifetime of friendship. It’s not as if I feel all rah-rah-Lyle at the moment, but he’s still my friend and I need him. I need him to rescue Seppie. But I also really want him to kiss me again, right now and here, to have him just do it. But he isn’t even facing me. He’s staring straight ahead and it’s obvious that some declaration of love isn’t going to happen. I have to be mature about that, right? It’s better to save a friendship with Lyle than to have nothing.

  “You betrayed me,” I say, “but I get why. I just wish you had told me what was going on. It hurt, Lyle.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I … It was the wrong choice.”

  His apology is way better now. We both know it. I tuck my hand into his arm as we fast walk down the mountain road. “Forgiven.”

  CHAPTER 12

  We walk down the icy, dark road as quickly as we can. No other cars come. No headlights slice through the darkness. No tires crunch across the salty, gravel roadway. We use my cell as a flashlight. The signal doesn’t work, but the light still does. Enoch trots calmly beside us, not even on a leash. I worry about the road salt and sand hurting her paws, but she seems fine. As we travel, Lyle gives me a few more details about what he knows and what he’s done.

  “There’s a whole training center,” he tells me. “They have Futures.”
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  “Futures?”

  “Future agents. I wanted to call us Futures, but that was done in Buffy, I guess. I wanted it to be an homage. Anyways, I was the only alien. I went there last weekend.”

  A sickening feeling fills my heart when I think about how he got to go and how he’d said he was at Dartmouth for some sort of sub-frosh, early acceptance weekend.

  “They should have let you go, too,” he says.

  I’m not sure what to say to that. So I just say, “You’ve already said that.”

  “I know. I just—”

  “Feel like a dick?” I suggest.

  “Pretty much,” he admits.

  I decide to let it go. “So, where was this place?”

  “Portsmouth.”

  Portsmouth is an artsy little city right on the Maine and New Hampshire border. It’s full of brick buildings and theater people who spell theater with an re at the end. It’s a good place to spend New Year’s Eve because there are free events everywhere, including ice sculpture contests and fireworks. Seppie always loved the ice sculptures. Just thinking about her fills me with worry.

  Lyle keeps talking. The camp happens on the weekends until full integration is achieved and then it’s a weeklong thing. Most of the campers initially think the training is premilitary and don’t really know it’s about aliens. The camp directors tell them after the initiation, a couple weeks into the program.

  “Seppie and I were the exceptions,” he admits.

  “They mentioned you guys being recruited at the compound. I didn’t really want to believe it. And Seppie admitted today that she was going away. She said it was for something else, though. She lied.”

  “We weren’t supposed to tell anyone.”

  “I’m not anyone.” Then I ask the question I don’t really want answered even though I’ve already asked China himself. “And China was okay with it?”

  Lyle gives me the answer I really don’t want. “Yeah, I guess.”

  No wonder Seppie told me to stop texting him. She knew it was pointless, that I was making a fool out of myself. Shame mixes with anger and it makes me ill inside, like I’ve eaten too many pizza slices or something.

  “He trusted you,” Lyle says. “He thought you’d be a great agent, better than me, but he didn’t have enough pull. The woman in charge was set against it, he said.”