Marco rolled his eyes. “Am I the only one who gets it? Y’all keep forgetting why Ozark camp was founded.” He began to stack free weights back on the rack with more force than was probably necessary. “But now, after all this, I don’t think they care anymore. Heck, maybe they figured out how to escape from the hospital and are on their way to the courthouse right now. I haven’t seen them since they ran off.”
“Where’s his team?” I asked, looking around the otherwise-empty gym.
“Last I heard, they were headed to get some new clothes and then get settled in,” Reid said with a shrug. “We’ll probably see them at dinner.”
Marco finished stacking weights. “Do you think they’ll let Jill out for meals if she’s feeling better? And if not, do you think we can take our meals in her room? I wanna visit her.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I doubt they’ll let her out as long as she’s hooked up to the IV, but I know she’d like some visitors. But before we go see her, there’s something we need to talk about. Let’s go wake up Ember.”
The Saint Catherine and Baltimore teams were crammed into Jillian’s hospital room. When Ember had heard what I’d wanted to talk about, she insisted that the Baltimore team be present, too. Only Abby was absent, since nobody had seen her since she’d absconded with Edward, and Ember refused to reveal their whereabouts, only giving me a knowing smile when I’d asked.
Berenice was whispering animatedly in a corner with Lark. Reid and Ember sat entwined on the small guest bed where I’d spend the night. Marco had scrounged up knitting needles and yarn from who-knew-where and was clicking away, the beginning of some woolly garment already apparent. Jillian and I were on the bed again, holding hands.
She looked at me uncertainly, and I squeezed her hand. “You’ve got this.”
She squeezed my hand in return and took a deep breath, then said, “I’ll cut right to the chase, guys. I’ve decided to retire after I’m discharged. I’m going back down to Saint Catherine to settle all the details with the city, and then…well, I don’t know, but I’m not going to be in service anymore.”
Marco stopped knitting.
Everyone just stared at her for several seconds, until Berenice said, “You’re quitting? Why?”
“Because I’ve dealt with more than enough crap to last a lifetime,” Jillian replied in a hard voice. “And now I’m moving on to other things.”
“But what are you going to do?” Marco asked. He seemed so small, now that he was faced with the possibility of not having his longtime friend with him.
“Get a job, maybe,” Jillian said, picking at the sheets. “Help the government round up the elders and Westerners. Go to school.”
“Have kids?” Reid asked, but he was looking at me. “You’re going with her, right?” His tone brooked no argument.
“Of course I am,” I said evenly. “We’ve only just decided this, but whatever we do, we’re doing it together. We’d like to start a family someday, but now is a bad time,” I said, giving Jillian a sidelong smile. “We should probably wait until the furor has died down.”
Her eyes sparkled for a second, and then she turned back to the crowd. “What you guys do is up to you. As soon as I leave the hospital, you’re no longer under my command in any way.”
Marco crossed his arms. “I’m leaving, too.”
“What?” Reid gasped. “Just like that?”
“Yeah, just like that,” Marco said. “I was sent to Saint Catherine with Jillian, and I’m leaving it with her. I’m young enough that I might try to enroll in high school.”
“You’d be the first high school graduate from the camps in generations,” Lark said. “That’s something.”
Ember and Reid looked at each other, their minute facial expressions shifting back and forth as they argued silently.
Suddenly, Ember said, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that the two of us can’t help a city of a quarter million.”
“But we have a duty,” Reid replied. “And…well, you did remind me of that in Liberty. We can’t just leave the city on a whim.”
Jillian and Marco flinched back as if they expected Ember to detonate.
However, Ember just sighed. “I know, but we can’t keep those vows now. A team of two isn’t a fighting force, it’s an easy target. We’d be doing Saint Catherine a disservice by staying.” She tapped her index fingers together as she thought. “What if we formally retire as superheroes and offer our time and abilities to the city in a different capacity? That way we’re still in good faith, and if they let us go, it’ll be because we were asked to leave.”
He hesitated. “Well…okay. But where will we go?”
“I don’t know,” Ember admitted. “But I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”
Reid and Ember shared a loving smile for a second, then joined hands and faced us. “We’re in,” Reid said. “Well, out, I guess.”
So our whole team had decided to dismantle. It was a quiet end to a team that had had such a momentous beginning seven months before, in the Saint Catherine Police Department’s interrogation room. But it also felt right. We’d come together democratically and by choice. Now we were disbanding the same way.
“What about you guys?” Jillian asked Berenice and Lark. “With Reuben, Topher, and Peter gone, there’s not much left of the Baltimore team.”
“She’s right, you know,” Lark said to Berenice. “And I have a feeling that we might be losing Abby soon.”
“Abby won’t ditch us for some guy,” Berenice insisted, but I heard the doubt in her voice. “He wasn’t even important enough to her for her to mention him once in all these years.”
“She mentioned him to me,” I said, casually picking at my nails.
Berenice’s shocked face was worth the pounding I’d probably get later.
“I have a feeling that Edward isn’t just some guy to her,” Lark said, a curiously gentle element in her words. “He was the one that she couldn’t be with because of her camp’s rules. Maybe she didn’t mention him because she felt ashamed for wanting someone her family kept saying she shouldn’t. I’m sure, if you try very hard, you can summon some sympathy for her?”
There was much hidden meaning in her words, again making me wish I knew the history of the Baltimore team.
Berenice stared down at her boots. “I hope they’re very happy,” she finally mumbled.
“So I guess this is it,” Marco said. “The two best teams in the country are over.”
Ember let go of Reid and stepped forward, her mouth a grim line. “We’ve got one last battle. I meant to talk about this with you two first,” she said to Jillian and me, “But as long as we’re all here, I’ll do it now. I was half asleep when I overheard Dr. Gibson’s meeting with the hospital director, but I heard enough to gather that they’re planning on keeping Benjamin here permanently. They’re debating retiring the rest of us to the Virginia camp, and I don’t think that’s up for negotiation.”
Marco threw aside his knitting needles. “What the hell? Why?”
My skin crawled with unwelcome deja vu. It hadn’t been a full month since the camps had sold me like chattel to the Westerners because of my power. My team had been similarly maltreated at the same time—and now we were all facing the same situation. Unlike the first time, it would not be so easy for us to escape.
Jillian frowned. “What was their reasoning for retiring us? We’re not overage or maimed.”
Ember shook her head. “I have no idea. Like I said, I wasn’t fully conscious, so it was just snatches of conversation. But the intent was clear: Ben stays, we go.”
“Screw that,” Berenice snapped. “The only way I’m going to the Virginia camp is in a body bag. This is obviously punishment for us being us.”
“I don’t know,” Ember said, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t hear any hostility in the staff. They live on campus and haven’t had a new rotation of staff members in over a month, so they haven’t heard about the broadcast. Mo
st of the staff actually like Benjamin, and are grateful for his involvement with the Burlington team. Only one or two of the doctors were annoyed, and that was because they’re rule people who don’t like superheroes messing up how the hospital runs. It’s not personal for anyone.”
Lark frowned. “Something’s not adding up. I can believe that they’d bend over backwards to keep Benjamin around. Heck, if I ran a hospital, I’d do everything I could to keep you here,” she said, pointing at me. “That’s logical. But why retire the rest of us? That’s just plain suspicious. If it’s not personal, if the staff doesn’t even really know who we are or care that we’ve pissed off the elders, then why…make us disappear…”
She trailed off slowly, her gaze darting back and forth. “Where even is the Virginia camp? All the camps are named after the national forests they used to be, but the Virginia camp is just that, ‘Virginia.’”
We all looked at one another, and I sensed that we were thinking the same thing: something here wasn’t right. Like so much of the camp world, this entire scenario had an odor to it. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more illogical the very idea of the Virginia camp became.
Why was there a retirement camp at all? Why didn’t perfectly useful, if aging, former superheroes return home and train the future generation? And if there was such a population crisis in the camps, why weren’t younger, injured, still-fertile superheroes encouraged to have children and replenish the pool? What were the retired superheroes doing in the Virginia camp?
The answer supplied itself, and the realization made me feel as though I were a child again, crying in my bedroom at night because I was certain that the darkness hid monsters.
I took a deep breath. “Has anyone here ever met someone from the Virginia camp?”
Reid shook his head. “They don’t supply anybody.”
“Doesn’t that seem weird, though? Lots of people go there who are of child-begetting age. Look at us, right? We can’t be the first group of young people to be sent there for whatever reason. In fifty years, they’d produce somebody with a combat power. Or if not, wouldn’t they at least participate in a courting swap?”
“What are you saying, Trent?” Berenice asked, folding her arms across her chest.
“He’s saying they’re dead,” Ember replied quietly. “That there is no Virginia camp…or that it’s a death camp.”
“A death camp?” Marco repeated. “That’s hard to believe, even in light of the other activities the elders have done.”
“Is it really, though?” Lark said, her face thoughtful. “The elders have shown that they value power for power’s sake. They’ll sell their own into slavery to maintain control over us. They fed us lies for years about the outside world.” She made a little circle with her finger in the air. “This group can’t be the first in history to figure out that they’re lying.”
“I see what you mean,” Jillian said, her face suddenly more lined than I’d ever seen it. “Knowledge is power. And if people with real knowledge of the civilian world went back to the camps and corrupted the youth, then the elders would lose some of their power. Or all of it.” She rubbed her eyelids. “Good God, how far down does the well go? When will it end? It’s getting to the point that I want to take a shower every time I even think about the elders.”
Berenice studied her fingernails. “Well, then. I guess we’re going to have to come up with some daring-do to get out of here. Fun.”
Jillian yawned, and I tenderly pushed her back onto her pillow. “How about we come up with that daring-do later, when we have more information. We’ve still got a pneumonia patient in the group, and I think Abby will want to be on board. Maybe even the Burlington team.” They owed me a favor.
“Fine,” Marco growled. “But I swear to God, if they shoot you in the neck like the Westerners did…” The terrifying expression on his face was the most reassuring thing I’d seen all day. After all, this was the guy who could put Reid into a choke hold. I had no doubt that he could effortlessly turn that move into a broken neck.
“Pleasant dreams, everyone,” Lark said as she stretched.
“I hate our lives,” Berenice said matter-of-factly. “Topher was lucky.”
With that shocking statement, she opened the door and stormed out. Lark closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, then followed Berenice.
Everyone else wandered out of the room and left Jillian and me in peace. She rolled over again, faint shadows under her eyes. “Don’t be scared,” she said. “Forewarned is forearmed. It’s not going to be like last time.”
Her IV hissed and released more fluid into her veins. Now that I knew what I knew, I couldn’t appreciate the effect of the tranquilizer. It wasn’t pacifying her, it was making her docile and easier to control. Elijah did the same thing for the rest of the hospital. Everything—every damn thing about my friend’s lives—was designed to keep them under control.
Going back to Liberty didn’t sound so bad now. For all his unsavory qualities, Dean Monroe and his army had never tried to hold me against my will. I had half a mind to remove the IV from her, but it also contained her medication. Soon, but not now.
“You know what I want to do?” Jillian said, her voice thick with sleep.
“What’s that?” I said, still glaring at the IV.
“I want to go to the beach. Saint Catherine is famous for its beaches, but I’ve never been. When the weather warms up, let’s get some swimsuits and go. We’ll pack a lunch, bring some beach books, and have fun.”
My suspicions about the IV’s true purpose deepened. She’d just heard that I was going to be kidnapped, and that the rest of them were slated for euthanasia, but here she was, talking about a beach trip.
Drug-free Jillian would’ve been half-dressed already, pacing around the room and fuming. Heck, she probably would’ve had a plan already formed that involved crawling through an air vent and hijacking a helicopter. It was a wonder that we all weren’t hooked up to IVs for some made-up reason.
I just kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep now, sweetheart,” I whispered. “You need it.”
“Benjamin?”
“Mmm?”
“Thank you.” She closed her eyes. “For everything you’ve done for me.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and kissed her forehead again. “You’ve done more. I was just along for the ride.”
“...love you,” she breathed.
“I love you, too.”
She was already asleep.
I silently got out of her bed and pulled off my tunic and vest, then slipped into the small bed to the side of the room. The events of the past twenty-four hours had caught up with me, and exhaustion crawled through my veins. I laid on my side and watched Jillian’s chest rise and fall with her blessedly clear breaths.
I pretended we were safe and closed my eyes.
The roar of multiple helicopters overhead pulled me out of my sleep. At the same time, the gnawing emptiness in my stomach told me that I wouldn’t be going back to sleep until I’d eaten. Night had fallen, and the small digital clock next to my bed read 20:42—I had only eighteen minutes if I wanted to get dinner.
I put on my boots and clothes and kissed Jillian’s cheek, being careful to not wake her, then left her room and hurried out of the patient wing. Soft bulbs in frosted sconces lit the hallway, illuminating the passage perfectly without being painfully bright.
Raucous laughter echoed down the hallway as I approached the cafeteria. As soon as I walked in, I saw the Burlington team, now dressed in clean gray sweatshirts and khaki pants, sitting at a table in the corner with their dinners. Despite our hostile first meeting, it warmed my heart to see them happy.
However, Edward wasn’t with them. Where the heck had he and Abby gone?
I walked past them to the dinner line, searching all the while for my own teammates, but they weren’t there. The flirty cafeteria woman from before heaped stir-fried vegetables and baked chicken onto my plate with another hearty wink, and t
his time I merely thanked her and chose a table far, far away from the line.
When I’d eaten, I set out to find my team. Hospitals were lonely enough without the knowledge that I was being preyed on. I wasn’t going to be alone if I didn’t have to be.
Berenice and Lark were the easiest to find. I heard them before I saw them, with their loud, furious female voices clashing with faintly desperate voice of a young man in the rec room. I peeked in and had to cover my mouth to hide my laughter.
They were standing, hands balled at their sides, in the center of a circle of chairs. An older man, one of the eye-patched gentlemen I’d seen earlier, was holding a copy of Leadership and Wisdom and trying to placate the Baltimoreans. Half a dozen other residents were watching, their faces varying between amusement and shock.
“That is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to me,” Berenice replied, her face red. “If my leader tells me to commit suicide, he’s the one who’s going to die, thank you very much!”
Lark teleported behind the beleaguered man and snatched the book from his hand. “Seriously, who wrote this?”
“Ladies, please! I’m just tonight’s reader,” he pleaded, wringing his hands.
The gym was much quieter.
Though there were enough machines for at least half of the hospital to work out at the same time, only one person was in there. Marco was on a treadmill at the far end of the long room, running at a steady pace. I raised my hand and waved to get his attention, but he didn’t look over at me.
Instead, a few seconds later, he turned off the treadmill and stepped off of it, sitting on a weightlifting bench and wiping his face and the back of his neck with his shirt. When he was done, he leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling.
I left him alone with his thoughts.
If I couldn’t be with my friends, then where was I supposed to go? I didn’t want to go back to my room, lest I wake Jillian. Also, the hissing IV would just piss me off.
The one last place I hadn’t visited was the large indoor courtyard I’d passed earlier.
Mercury Page 24
