by Leigh Walker
Josh sat down next to me, his tall, bony frame dwarfing me. He smiled, his coffee-colored skin contrasting with his white teeth. He rubbed my back. “It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
A sense of calm flooded me, and I jerked away. “Don’t. I need to…feel this. Okay?”
Josh was an empath, with the ability to manipulate the moods of others. I usually appreciated the hell out of his talent, but the ache I felt made my mother’s pain seem more present, more real. I should suffer, too. I owed her that much.
Josh released me and winked. “Got it, Hanover. But I’m here if you need me.”
“Thanks.”
That was the upside of being recruited into The Division—I’d finally made friends. The downside was pretty much everything else, including what the government had done to my family.
I shook my head to clear it as Nicole marched in, clapping her hands together. Energy radiated off her in waves. “I have updated intelligence. I’m sharing everything I learn with you as soon as I hear it.”
Josh and I looked at each other. Cranston had never told us what was going on. Maybe things were changing for the better.
“Management has provided specific information related to our mission. We have two objectives. Obviously, we need to get the technology they stripped from C-fab. We can’t let Remington replicate the Artificial Intelligence—it would be a disaster.” C-fab was the artificially intelligent robot Nicole had engineered in her prior life as a Silicon Valley CEO.
“We also have to locate and procure the top-secret information that Althea’s spies stole from us,” Nicole continued. “And now I know what that is.”
We all waited as Nicole stalk-paced the front of the room. “It’s an antidote. Our intelligence reports that Remington has been developing a virus that would give her the capability to infect the remainder of the civilians.”
My heart stopped as Nicole continued.
“We’d begun manufacturing an antidote, and that’s what Althea’s spies stole, and they were thorough. They took the samples and all the specs and wiped our hard drives clean. We didn’t realize they’d hacked us until the lab workers went in to continue their testing and realized the original specs and all the backup copies had been tampered with.”
Nicole clasped her hands behind her back. “We need to get the antidote back. That’s the mission. Now, any questions?”
Finn looked at me, not bothering to speak into my brain. His haunted face echoed what I already knew. The virus. His sister. My mother.
Things hadn’t changed with the agency—they were still using us to get what they wanted. Our innocent families were still paying the price.
The ultimate price.
3
All The Rage
I struggled to get my emotions under control as the others murmured around me.
Nicole watched us, confused. “What’s the matter?”
Emma gave me a quick look before she raised her hand. “Riley’s mother and Finn’s younger sister were just diagnosed with a virus. They’re both in the infirmary at their base, quarantined. They each got sick in the last twenty-four hours, and they’re already relying on ventilators.”
Nicole’s shoulders slumped. “I’m so sorry. Is that what Nora told you this morning?”
I nodded, while Finn looked at the ground.
“And you think this is related?”
“I didn’t say that.” I shook my head. “I don’t…I don’t know.”
Nicole cursed, turned on her heel, and stalked out without another word.
I swallowed hard. “Do you guys trust her? Nicole?”
Micah frowned, but his wide-set brown eyes softened. “I sort of do. And you guys know me—I don’t trust anyone.”
Kyan nodded. “I feel the same. I think Nicole’s good people.”
Emma pursed her lips. “You’re both thinking with your hormones.”
“I trust her, and I don’t want to date her.” Maya flicked her flame-red ponytail in the direction of her twin, Morgan. “Don’t you agree?”
Morgan chewed on her lip, her amber curls spilling past her shoulders. “I think she’s the reason Dave’s still alive, and the reason I’m still allowed to see him.”
I winced on my friend’s behalf. Dave, her civilian boyfriend, had been separated from us and locked up. “How’s he doing?”
She smiled. “He’s amazing. He never has a bad day, even though he’s practically incarcerated. But back to Nicole—I think she helped Dave because she believes it’s the right thing to do, not for any sort of selfish reason.”
I nodded. “I believe that, too.”
Josh shrugged. “Rachel likes Nicole, and she trusts her. She said Nicole saved her ass several times back at the prison.”
Rachel, our resident teleporter and Josh’s girlfriend, was still in the infirmary recovering from our last battle. She and Nicole had immediately hit it off and become impromptu fighting partners.
“Finn?” I waited as he continued to stare at the floor.
“I don’t trust anyone, but we have to do what they say.” He didn’t bother to look up. “I’m not letting any more innocent people die because of my choices. We have to get that serum and take out Althea Remington, once and for all.”
Even though she’s not our only enemy, he thought-spoke into my head. Management’s on that list, too.
I know, I thought back. Trust me, I know.
“Nora wouldn’t see me.” Nicole snorted then hit the punching bag, hard.
I held the bag, wincing as she pummeled it again. “Do you think she’s avoiding you?”
“Of course she’s avoiding me! She knows how I feel. I don’t believe in some of their tactics. I’ve been very vocal about it.”
“What do you mean? Which tactics?”
Nicole frowned at the punching bag as if it had personally insulted her. Then she wailed on it again. “Management lies. They hide the truth and try to manipulate others into doing what they want without divulging the reasons for it. Look what she did to me about my Silicon-Valley team—she had a GPS chip and a video feed on C-fab the whole time, but she never told me. My team was kidnapped and locked up, and she didn’t say a word. She said she ‘didn’t want me to worry.’ Bullshit!”
“But why did she keep it from you?”
She took off one of her gloves and swiped a sweaty lock of hair from her forehead. “Because they always have another move. In this case, I’m thinking she wanted a backup plan in case I became too headstrong or argumentative to deal with. Then she would’ve just gone for C-fab herself and maybe even left my employees behind. She never cared about them. All she wanted was the robot. So she chipped him to ensure she could get him back, and screw the rest of the Conscience team.”
Conscience was Nicole’s Silicon Valley start-up. They’d developed sophisticated artificial intelligence before the war broke out and had built a robot prototype named C-fab. Althea Remington had stolen it and stripped it of its technology.
“But Nora didn’t leave your employees behind,” I reminded her gently. A small part of me—a very, very small part—still wanted to believe that Nora wasn’t all bad.
Nicole started punishing the bag again. “With no help from her, might I remind you. She made me leave Rachel lying in a ditch so I could get C-fab away from the fighting. Remember that?”
“Yeah.” Of course I remembered, just like I remembered how Nora had tortured Micah with a Taser to get me to showcase my telekinetic powers. “I’m not defending her. Trust me, your mother’s not my favorite person.”
Nicole stopped punching and scowled at me. “She isn’t anybody’s favorite person, but she is my mother. And I don’t want to believe that she infected your mother and Finn’s sister with a deadly virus to force you to cooperate.”
“But?”
She frowned. “But I know she needs to get this serum back, and I wouldn’t put it past her. She wants us to have a sense of urgency.”
I swallowed hard. “When
do we leave for our mission? They’re really sick…” Again, I forced myself to control my emotions. If I started crying, I might not stop. My mother needed me. Falling apart wasn’t an option.
Nicole’s face softened. “They’ve assigned us another team-building exercise, then they’ll release the coordinates to us. I expect we’ll be able to leave by tomorrow night.”
“Okay.” I sighed. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“Riley!” Emma waved at me from across the room. “C’mere.”
Nicole nodded, excusing me, and I jogged over to where Emma stood.
“You might want to tell him to chill.” She motioned toward Finn, who appeared to be trying to kill his punching bag. He’d forgone gloves and had his hands taped, but blood stained his knuckles. He’d taken his shirt off, exposing the hard planes of his muscles. Sweat ran down his torso in rivulets.
You’d look pretty hot if you didn’t look crazy.
He ignored me, swinging hard at the bag.
“Finn. Finn.”
He ignored me for another minute, pummeling the bag, then finally stopped. He wiped his face then looked at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Training.”
“You look like you’re trying to kill the punching bag, or your knuckles. Maybe both.”
Finn played with the blood-soaked tape, but he couldn’t get it to stick.
“Hey.” I stepped closer. “Tell me what’s going on. I can help.”
He didn’t look up. This is my fault. It’s on me.
No.
Yes.
I reached for him. “Let’s go take a break.”
He sighed, giving his punching bag one last longing look. “Fine, but I’m coming back.” He threw his shirt on and grudgingly followed me out.
“Let’s go take care of your knuckles, then we’re getting cake. You missed it—it’s the chocolate, square kind with the fudge-y frosting.”
He stared down the hall, lost in his own thoughts.
“Finn.” I squeezed his forearm. “Why’re you hurting yourself like this?”
We reached the med supply closet, and he still didn’t say anything. I grabbed a fresh roll of tape and some hydrogen peroxide. Then I gently unwrapped his hands. His knuckles were torn open, raw and weeping. I carefully dabbed them with peroxide. “You don’t need to punish yourself.”
The muscle in his jaw jumped. “The hell I don’t.”
“What’s going on with you?”
He grunted. “It’s a little thing called karma. You might have heard of it.”
I knew where he was going with this, but I waited for him to say it.
He waited a minute, then said, “Hurting people is what they do. It’s how they control us—by hurting the people we love. I’ve been responsible for that, too. You of all people should know.”
I carefully wrapped clean tape around his left hand, not looking up. I knew that Management was responsible for my father and Katie’s death, not Finn. But thinking about how it happened still made me ache. And I didn’t want him to see that.
“Now I’m paying for what I’ve done. Tess and your mom are sick. I know Management did this. It’s insurance that we’ll perform.” He shook his head. “I deserve this, but you don’t. Our families don’t.”
I stopped taping. “No one deserves this, not Tess, not my mom, not you, and not me. Neither did my dad and Katie.”
Finn winced, and my heart broke all over again for the both of us—for what I’d lost and for what they’d made Finn do.
I gently covered his hand with mine. “You don’t deserve the blame for what happened to them. Management made you do it. They use people, Finn, and they don’t leave us with a choice.”
He leaned back. “You always have a choice.”
I took his other hand and started doctoring it. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Of course you do. We’re going to go after the serum and save our families, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s our choice. We could leave them to die—that’s a choice, too.”
“That we would never make.” I frowned. “Why is Management doing this?”
“Because they know we’re strong and that we want to leave. They hurt us so we’ll do what they want.”
I finished taping Finn’s hands and threw the used supplies away. “We would have gone on the mission, anyway.”
“But now it’s personal, and it’s life or death.” Finn’s brow wrinkled. “There’s one thing I’m still working through in my head.”
“What’s that?”
He hopped off the table and grabbed my hand, careful of his new bandages. “Nicole said Management’s been developing the antibody to the virus. Where’d they get the actual virus if Althea’s the one who invented the strain?”
I blew out a shaky breath. “Maybe we have spies of our own.”
“Maybe. I wonder if the vials we stole from the Sonora Caverns had anything to do with this. Management took them and we haven’t heard about them since.”
With his brow still furrowed, Finn led me down the hallway then pulled me into the now-abandoned cafeteria. He headed to the walk-in refrigerator, assembled two large slices of cake onto plates and slid them onto the nearest table.
I sat while he got forks, napkins, and milk. We ate in silence for a minute, and I was glad we’d come back to the kitchen. Stress eating chocolate was, in my humble opinion, the very best form of self-care on the planet.
“Mmm.” I closed my eyes, relishing the flavor. “Do you think this cake tastes better because it’s square? I’ll never be able to figure out what makes it so good.”
“Maybe.” Finn nodded, his mood only slightly improved by the chocolate. “Listen, I’m sorry for being sort of a douchelord. I’m just so angry.”
“You’re allowed. Douchelord it up. I’m so angry, I might even join you.” I scraped some frosting off my plate with my fork. “Nicole said we’ll be cleared for the mission soon. She thinks we might be able to leave as early as tomorrow night.”
“Good.” Finn’s expression grew dark again. “We need to move fast. I don’t think we have much time.”
“Yeah.” I pictured my mom and Tess hooked up to those machines. Losing my appetite, I cleared our plates. “Do you want to go back and work out some more?”
Finn looked down at his shirt, which was sticky with sweat. “I think I need to shower. Will you wait for me?” The muscle in his jaw jumped. “I don’t really feel like being alone.”
“Of course.” Finn rarely asked for help, even when he’d been beaten to a pulp. “I’ll be your towel attendant.”
We headed toward our room, passing several officers on the way. Per protocol, they saluted but said nothing. I often wondered what the officers and employees at the base thought of us—nine teenagers, thick as thieves and often bruised beyond recognition, skulking about and eating more than our fair share of the cafeteria’s desserts. We were top secret, but because the war had closed most of the bases, we were here with the general military population.
I’m sure they had questions, but they knew better than to ask us.
We reached our barracks, and Finn grabbed some clean clothes and toiletries. “I’ll be right back.”
While I waited, I decided to practice using my powers. If we were going to be fighting Althea Remington again as soon as tomorrow, I needed to be ready. I decided to stage a mock battle. Closing my eyes, I focused on the pillows on each bunk, agitating the air around them. I raised them into the air, then I made them brawl.
I opened my eyes and watched. Observing my work in progress was something I’d been practicing. I telekinetically moved the pillows, having them circle each other and swat. I couldn’t help but grin. Even though I was the puppet master, I still enjoyed the show.
Finn came out during the final match, towel-drying his thick hair. “They’re vicious, huh?” He watched pillo
wcase A annihilate pillowcase B, throwing it onto the bed and pummeling it.
I giggled. “I guess I get a little theatrical.”
Finn grinned, which was a welcome sight. “You’re good at what you do. I admire the flourishes. It makes it more fun.”
He sounded better, lighter. I smiled. “Why, thank you.” I sailed the pillows back to their respective beds, arranging them neatly.
Finn came and sat next to me, smelling fresh and clean and looking as though he’d calmed down from his boxing mania. He reached for me, pulled me closer, and kissed the top of my head.
“What was that for?”
“The cake. And the pep talk.”
“Don’t go getting all soft on me. We have some serious ass to kick.”
He stroked my hair. “I know.”
My heart rate kicked up, like it did every time we got close. “When this is all over, and Tess and my mom are better, we should take a vacation.” I smiled at him, even though I suddenly felt like crying. The idea of taking a trip was so normal. But I knew it was impossible, which made me so sad. Forget about our own crazy situation—the old world wasn’t out there anymore.
What’s even left?
Finn’s gaze burned into mine. Don’t think about it.
“Where would you like to go?” he asked softly.
“Hawaii,” I said immediately. “It’s been number one on my bucket list since I was five.”
He tapped me under my chin, raising my gaze to meet his. “It’s a date.” He leaned in closer, his gaze searching mine.
I parted my lips, breathing hard. He wrapped his arms around me, then very gently, but very firmly, put his lips to mine.
I melted into him, my whole body tingling from my lips down to my toes. I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, deepening the kiss. He ran his hands down my sides, making me shiver. I scooted closer, never able to get close enough.
He pulled back a second later, breathing hard. “Whoa.”
I delved my hands into his thick hair. “No whoa—more.” We hadn’t kissed like this in what seemed like forever, and I wanted more.
