Toxic Heart

by Theo Lawrence

  Behind him, my mother purses her painted lips. She’s wearing a white blouse with a black pencil skirt, her hair dyed blond and blown out so that it falls past her shoulders. She looks so put together. So elegant. I highly doubt that anyone would guess she had me handcuffed to my own bed, made me a prisoner in my own apartment.

  “Your brother is such an ass,” Turk says. “No offense.”

  “I know. None taken.”

  I scan the screen and see another familiar face: Elissa Genevieve. The supposedly reformed mystic who works in my father’s office, who befriended me only to betray me.

  She’s at the edge of the screen, wearing a cream-colored suit with a soft-pink blouse underneath. Her blond curls are pinned back, and she has an easy smile on her face—pretending to be nice when she is anything but. Seeing her reminds me of how I trusted her, how she stood up for me when Patrick Benedict and my father were giving me a hard time.

  I thought she was my ally.

  But it was all an act. Some sort of sick game. Benedict was the one looking out for me—I just didn’t know it then. Elissa was two-timing me, pretending to be on my side when really she was my father’s secret weapon. I think about how I brought her along with me and Turk the night my parents abducted Hunter, how she shot Turk and stole the passkey to the underground, betraying her own kind to my father.

  Pretty much everyone I hate most is being displayed on this screen. I look away.

  Turk sees her, too, and lets out a sharp hiss. “I hate that woman,” he says. “She’s a vulture. A traitor. A mystic who used her own energy to make the bomb that caused the Conflagration—she told us that night! She’s—”

  “Terrible,” I say, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I know. We both know.”

  “If I ever run into her …” Turk makes two fists. “She’ll be sorry.” Then he lets out a deep breath and rubs his palm over his head, letting some of his stress dissipate. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to not having hair. Come on.” He rubs his finger over my scalp. “Fuzzy,” he says, then laughs. “Let’s get back to the others. I’m sure they’re wondering where we went.”

  “I doubt Shannon cares.”

  Turk takes back his hand. “She might surprise you, Aria. Shannon is a woman of mystery. But she has a good heart.”

  “Okay,” I say. “You keep telling yourself that.”

  Turk says something in response, but I can’t hear a word.

  Because my ears are filled with a bomb blast.

  Noxious gas is everywhere.

  The toxic mist fills the square, creeping into my chest and making me cough viciously, like I’m hacking up a lung. I close my eyes but it’s too late—they’re burning, leaking tears.

  “This is a safe zone!” one of the nurses screams. “A medical zone! Leave us alone!”

  People rush past me like confused cattle, and I don’t dare open my eyes for fear of the blinding gas. “Here,” Turk says. He stuffs something thin and papery into my hand. “It’s a surgical mask. Put it over your mouth.”

  I do as he says. The mask snaps around the back of my head. I inhale cautiously. My lungs are still raw, but at least I can breathe. “What’s happening?”

  “Tear gas,” Turk says. “Not sure why.”

  An amplified voice pierces the din. “Aria Rose is here.” The voice is channeled through what seems like a dozen speakers ringing through the triage area. “We want her.”

  “We’re supposed to be safe here!” a woman hollers. People are pushing blindly through the crowd, some crying, “Aria Rose! Turn yourself in before we’re all killed!”

  “Don’t listen to a word those fools say,” Turk says, grabbing my arm. “Turning yourself in is the last thing you should do.”

  My eyes are still tightly shut against the tear gas. “Maybe I should,” I say. “Maybe that would—”

  “Win the war for your brother, that’s what it would do.”

  Someone shrieks and falls into my back, nearly knocking me over. I open my eyes, and for a second I see the entire square in chaos: hundreds of people swarming together with nowhere to go, thanks to the crisscrossing of silver electrical wire that has quickly been put up around the perimeter.

  Masked guards dressed in black are flooding the square now. A glowing red rose is stitched into the backs of their uniforms.

  I recognize the uniform immediately. These are my father’s men.

  Then my eyes begin to burn and tear again, and I close them. All I see is black.

  Somewhere nearby, I hear a painful howl and the smell of sizzling flesh. It reminds me of the attack at the mystic compound, the fire.

  “Do not touch the blockade,” the amplified voice says overhead. “The wires are live. I repeat, Do not touch the blockade. You will be electrocuted.”

  I can’t believe my family is going to all this trouble to track me down. They don’t love me, not since I betrayed them and chose Hunter. And yet they’re looking for me. They think I’m going to help them win the war, that they can brainwash me or threaten me and make me their figurehead.

  I will never support them. Too many fingers have already been pricked by the Roses’ thorns.

  By now, the worst effects of the gas have worn off, and we can open our eyes.

  The square is stuffed with people. The tents have been emptied, and everyone has been divided into ten lines of probably more than a hundred people each. Some of the injured can’t even stand, let alone walk, so the healthier people are carrying them. Two lines down from me, I see three men with gaunt eyes and crooked legs leaning against a nurse wearing a mask and gloves and holding two babies, one in each arm.

  My father’s soldiers spread out. Some stand facing us; others fan down the lines, making sure people stay standing. “Every single person needs to be checked,” I hear one of them saying.

  Another soldier chuckles. “Even the babies? And the men? Obviously they’re not Aria Rose.”

  The first soldier growls. “Who knows what they can do with their mystic voodoo powers. Aria may have disguised herself.”

  “But if she’s disguised herself, then how will we find her?”

  The first solider smacks the other one’s cheek. “It’s amazing you can even talk, you moron. Her eyes will be the same. Look at the eyes.”

  On the JumboTron, the live footage has been stopped. Now there’s a picture of me that takes up the entire screen. It’s my senior picture from Florence Academy. My hair is down, framing my face, and I’m wearing a simple navy dress and the teardrop diamond necklace my parents gave me for my seventeenth birthday.

  I am grinning like an idiot.

  I think back to when the picture was taken—the beginning of the last school year. Almost an entire year ago. I hadn’t met Hunter yet. Or Thomas. I didn’t know anything about mystics or the Depths. My biggest problem in life was being photographed and speculated about on gossip blogs.

  “Keep your eyes down,” Turk whispers. “And don’t say a word.”

  Soldiers are pushing people forward, up to the line of guards who are comparing each person to my picture. “Come on, come on!” one of them shouts at an old woman whose right leg has been amputated below the knee.

  “But I’ve lost my other crutch,” she replies, sobbing. “I only have one—”

  “One’ll do,” the soldier says, pushing her forward. She loses her balance, and the crutch slips out from under her. She falls to the ground. “Get up!” the solider says, kicking her in the stomach. But the woman doesn’t move.

  “Aw, Christ,” the solider says, cupping his hands over his mouth and calling out to one of the other men. “Someone come here and help me, would ya?”

  Another soldier rushes over. I can’t see his face, only the shiny red rose on his back. He takes out a pistol and shoots the old woman in the head. People in the line start shrieking, and one man steps out, fists clenched, mustache twitching, looking ready to attack the soldier.

  The soldier shifts his pistol to the man
. “Take one step closer and I’ll blow your brains into the canal.”

  The man shakes his head and steps back in line.

  Nobody even bothers to clean up the woman’s body. She’s just left there on the ground, and people step over her as the line surges forward.

  Ahead, all I hear are rounds of “Next!” as the guards compare the people in the square to my picture. The people who pass inspection start filling up the empty tents. A dozen or so bodies still cling to the electric fence—people who tried to escape the blockade and were burned to a crisp.

  “When they reach us,” Turk instructs, speaking low, “just close your eyes and start crying. Say they burn from the tear gas. No one will recognize you. I promise.”

  I don’t believe him. I’m bound to be recognized. And if I’m not, what if someone is mistaken for me? I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt.

  The waiting is tedious. I am sweaty and tired and nervous. I clench my hands together in front of me to stop them from shaking, and before I know it, one of the soldiers butts me with the end of his rifle. “Move up, girlie. Watch it, now.”

  Turk is pushed off in a different direction, and one of the guards curls his finger at me. I walk toward him and close my eyes. “Name?”

  “J-Jessica,” I stutter.

  “Open your eyes.”

  “They burn,” I say, just as Turk told me to. “From the gas.”

  There’s a sting against my cheek. The guard has slapped me. “Open your eyes.”

  I follow his order and stare at a soldier who can’t be much older than I am. I’ve never seen him before, but he has my family crest tattooed on the side of his neck.

  He holds up a picture of me—the same one from the JumboTron. I watch as his eyes flick from the picture, to me, then back to the picture.

  It seems to be taking forever.

  The guard raises an eyebrow. Have I been found out?

  He opens his mouth and calls out, “Next!”

  Suddenly, I’m being shuffled forward. The line of guards is now behind me. “Our source must have been wrong,” I hear one of the soldiers say. “Or else she left before we got here.”

  I search for Turk but it’s hard to find him amid all these people—especially now that his Mohawk is gone.

  I go into one tent, then another. Then I head toward the far end of the square. I’d like to stand on one of the benches to get a better look over the crowd, but I don’t want to call attention to myself.

  “Well, that was messed up.”

  I spin around and there’s Turk. I’m so happy to see him that I throw my arms around him. He flinches, stiffening like a board.

  “Let’s hide in one of the tents until they’re done and they cut down the wire,” Turk suggests, gently pushing me away. “Then we’ll head back uptown.”

  “How did they know I was here?” I ask. “Did someone at the triage center tell them?”

  “Unlikely,” Turk says. “Everyone here is sick—and the nurses would’ve wanted to prevent something like this from happening, even if they don’t like you. It’s possible that someone in the Depths saw us on the bike on our way here, but it’s not likely, and anyway, they wouldn’t have known where we were going.”

  “The only other people who could have known are back at the hideout,” I say. “But we snuck out.”

  “Maybe one of them followed us.”

  “Even so,” I say, “they’re all on our side.”

  “Apparently not all of them,” Turk says with a grimace. He gulps. “I hate to even think it, Aria, but … there must be a leak. And now we’ve gotta find out who it is.”

  Turk hasn’t even closed the town house door behind us before Landon whistles. “Nice haircut,” he says.

  Landon and Shannon are standing in the foyer—waiting for us, I assume, since Turk texted them about the attack on our way uptown. “Aria shaved her head!” Landon shouts to whoever is listening, heading toward the kitchen. “She looks weird!”

  Shannon is standing with her arms crossed over her chest, dressed in workout gear. She gives me a once-over. “I didn’t think you could get any uglier,” she says. “But I was wrong. You look like a Chihuahua.”

  “Shannon,” Turk warns. “Be nice.”

  “I am being nice. She should know what she looks like.”

  I ignore her, pushing my way into the living room at the same time that Ryah and Jarek come tramping down the stairs. “Oh wow!” Ryah says. She’s traded her overalls for a short-sleeved pink shirt and white leggings. “You look … different.” She glances at Turk. “You too?”

  Turk nods.

  “But your Mohawk was a part of you. It was like a limb. Like another arm.”

  “It’s just hair,” Turk says. “It’ll grow back.”

  Ryah carefully touches the tips of her blue spikes, which are gelled and pointed with precision. “Hair is not just hair,” she says. “It’s art. You of all people should know that.” She shifts her attention back to me. “All those long brown waves … gone …” She places her hand over her heart. “I could just weep!” She leans into Jarek, who’s standing right behind her. “Jarek, I’m weak! Catch me if I fall!”

  He ignores her and says to me, “Aria, you should rest.”

  “I’m okay,” I tell him. “Honestly.”

  Jarek shrugs. He’s wearing a washed-out red henley shirt, his brown locks pulled into a ponytail. “Rest is good.”

  “Hair,” Ryah whispers, talking to herself. “Gone.” She rests the back of her hand on her forehead and sighs.

  “You’re okay this time,” Shannon says in a voice as tough as leather. Then she picks up a lamp from a side table and throws it.

  Right at my head.

  It comes at me like an oversized ceramic bullet. I throw my hands up and catch it just before it meets my skull. “What’s wrong with you?” I shout. “Why would you throw a lamp at my head?”

  “To see if you managed to learn anything when I was teaching you to defend yourself,” Shannon says, flicking her hair back. “You’re rusty. You need to be more prepared, in case there’s another attack. Am I right, Turk?”

  Turk lowers his eyes. “Aria, you do need to be able to defend yourself—”

  “I can defend myself.”

  Turk shakes his head at me. “Not well enough. It’s nothing on you. But lots of people are after you, and we got lucky today. If they had recognized you, we would have had to fight them—us against a slew of soldiers. I can handle myself, but I can’t take care of both of us. So tomorrow? We start training you hard-core, picking up where you left off with Shannon.” Turk cocks his head at the staircase leading to the library. “But first, we’ve gotta talk to Hunter. I already texted him.”

  The guard posted outside the library lets us in, and there’s Hunter, huddling over some printouts with the same group of men who were here yesterday.

  I glance at the table. Maps of the Aeries, specifically the West Side. The man to Hunter’s right sees me looking at the papers and flips them over.

  No one’s paying much attention to him, though. All eyes are on my hair.

  Or rather, my head.

  Hunter’s expression is hard to read. “Guys, give me a moment with Aria and Turk.” The men exchange glances, then stand, their chairs screeching as they pick up their TouchMes and coffee and shuffle out of the room.

  Hunter stands, too, closing the door once they’re all gone. The door clicks, and I suddenly feel odd, positioned between Hunter and Turk with a shaved head and a bucket full of questions.

  Hunter struts up to me and places his hand on the side of my face. My entire body warms at his touch. Is he mad at me? Surprised? Disappointed?

  He leans forward and kisses my fuzzy head. Then he smiles. “Smart.”

  “Hmm?”

  “This will endear you to the poor even more.”

  I think back to the moment after I shaved my head—when I rose from the stool and people cheered. I didn’t shave my head
because I wanted them to do that. I did it in support of Steve and Yolie and Kerry and everyone else at the triage center.

  Because it felt right.

  “It wasn’t so … calculated,” I say to Hunter.

  “Look, Hunter,” Turk says, stepping beside me. “We were raided.”

  Hunter’s eyebrows shoot up. “You were what?”

  “Aria’s family, they sent out troops. They closed off the square where the triage tents are and searched for Aria. They didn’t recognize her because of her hair, and her eyes were pretty red from the tear gas—”

  “Tear gas? Aria, are you all right?” Hunter asks, reaching for me and holding me tenderly. My heart beats faster at his touch.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “The thing is,” Turk says, “how did they know she was there? I can’t imagine anyone caught a decent glimpse of Aria on my bike—we were going fast. The only people who saw us leave here, who could have followed us and guessed where we were going—”

  “Are inside the hideout,” Hunter says, finishing Turk’s sentence. He pulls away from me and rubs his temples. “Damn. It’s hard to believe.” The color drains from his face, and it looks like he might topple over. He sinks into an empty chair at the head of the table.

  “I’ve been working so hard,” he says. “And it’s all for nothing if one of my guys is leaking our plans to your family and the Fosters.”

  Hunter rests his head on the table, clearly upset. My family and the Fosters …

  “Wait!” I cry. I turn to Turk. “When Thomas kidnapped me, he said that they were able to locate me at the compound. But he never said how. And now this incident with Kyle … What if there’s some sort of tracker on me?”

  Hunter looks straight at me, concerned. “Hmm,” he says. “Seems like it’s time for a trip to the infirmary.”

  Hunter and Turk lead me through the main floor, past the kitchen and the armory. They’re both walking swiftly. Nervously.

  At the end of the long hallway is the infirmary. Hunter punches the touchpad, and the door opens onto a small room painted white with three empty cots and a station full of medical supplies. Much like at the triage center, there are bandages and gauze, empty syringes and vials of antibiotics, rubbing alcohol and medical instruments.