Fear My Mortality (23 page)

Waves of orange heat washed over me. The concrete pillar I’d hidden behind fractured. One chunk of rock followed by many more, lit up golden in the fire, pelted the air and my body. My skin split in a hundred different places, a multitude of hairline cracks that closed as soon as they opened. Then more. As fast as the wounds appeared, my body healed them. I didn’t know if I was screaming because the world had gone silent. Somewhere inside the building there must have been a gas bottle because a cascade of explosions suddenly ripped through me. More glass. More metal. More blood suspended that never left the surface of my skin.

The roof came down and that was when I made a leap for it. Out into the air, into space, with fire and bricks bursting around me.

I thwacked into something softer than gravel. Someone held me tight.

Michael pulled me down, waiting for the heat to end, for the flames to die. I sought his eyes, holding on to his shoulders, struggling to believe he was there. He came back, he must have escaped, but the look on his face told me it wasn’t so. Too soon, he stood up and pushed me away from him.

“Michael … ”

“They want you to … ” His jaw ticked. “They want me to tell you to come in.”

I looked around, ready for uniforms and wasps, but it was just him with that same haunted look on his face that I’d seen a hundred times before, something in the back of his eyes that curled up tight and never let go.

He said, “I’m not alone, Ava. We can’t run this time. They want you to come in or they’ll take you in.”

“Why now? Why not last night? Why not days ago?”

“It took them that long to make the ampule. Once they shot you with it, they planted the bomb in my bag so you’d be hurt and it would trigger the nectar. It’s settled into your body now.” He took a step toward me, grabbing my arm in a fierce grip. “They’ll use it to control you.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he cried out, his face scrunched up in pain.

“Michael, what have they done to you?”

“Why didn’t you get rid of it?”

I wanted to tell him about the addict, but all I said was, “I couldn’t reach.”

His expression softened and became wry. “Yeah. They think of everything.” The pain on his face lessened. “I couldn’t reach mine either.” He pulled up the back of his shirt, all the way up to his neck. His lump was red and surrounded by scratches and welts. I stared at the implant and the wounds around it, thinking I couldn’t be seeing straight. He should have healed already …

I wanted to touch him, but I stopped before my fingers connected. “Why have they given you nectar? You don’t need it.”

“It’s not nectar.” He dropped his shirt. “They gave me you. Your mortality.”

I wrenched my hand away. “I don’t understand.”

He shook his head. “I can’t even begin to … ”

I shook my head, over and over, trying to deny what I saw: the cut on his cheek, the bruise at the base of his eye, the scratches across his arms. He shrugged his shoulders as if it didn’t matter.

“Michael.” I touched him. No zap. None at all. “That’s not possible.”

“Believe it, star girl.” He winced, tried to smile, an expression that contorted his face. “I’m really sorry about the methylated spirits. I didn’t realize how much it kept hurting.”

“It’s okay. That bottle saved my life. What will they do to you if I don’t come in?”

“My dad’s not happy. Cheyne said he won’t protect me. The thing is, Ava, you shouldn’t either. I don’t deserve it.”

A lump formed in my throat. “Is this about Josh? You know that wasn’t your fault.”

“No. It’s not about Josh.” He suddenly gritted his teeth. He was hurting again, I could see it, as though every time he tried to tell me something important he was punished for it. He dropped to his knees—I followed him down, trying to see his eyes, to see what he wanted to tell me—and his voice became a whisper. “It’s about the walls.”

Then he writhed and screamed and crushed his head between his hands.

“Michael! What are they doing to you?”

He collapsed all the way to the ground, almost in a ball, locked and stiff. He gasped and I ached for him. “Back of my neck.”

I pushed aside his hair. At the base of his head, in between the vertebrae of his spine, was a second lump.

He grinned, tears running down his face. “Electrocution. I tried to rip it out, but they turned it on until I blacked out. They attached it to my nerves and told me if I remove it, my legs will stop working. I won’t be able to walk again. It’s no use. You should get out of here while you—” His voice rose into another scream. He curled tighter, his arms and legs trembling in fits.

“Stop!” I shouted as loud as I could, hoping that wherever they were, they could hear me. “Stop! I’ll come in.”

Michael stopped screaming, but his body trembled and jolted in the aftershocks. I waited, standing over him, daring them to hurt him again. A truck rumbled in fast from our left.

He looked up at me, his face covered in sweat. There was something new in his expression, a strange mix of disbelief and gratitude. “What are you going to do, Ava?” he asked, his voice low. “Be my human shield?”

He’d spat out bullets for me, walked from a burning car. I tried to smile but failed. I took his hand and helped him to his feet, bearing most of his weight as more tremors racked his body. I sensed the rippling in his skin, a different kind of electricity, not the living kind that brought regeneration, but the bad kind that took life away. It was wrong. It shouldn’t be in his body. Just like my own ampule, I would find a way to remove his, too. “If I have to be.”

“I don’t know how much time we have.” His eyes met mine, sunlight reflecting off them. He looked as if he wanted to tell me something, but I hurried to interrupt him.

“Don’t say anything else. They’ll just hurt you for it.”

“It’s not something I want to say.” He dropped his head into the curve of my neck and shoulder, resting there, and it was all I could do to keep us both upright under his weight. The reversal of our roles shocked me. Suddenly I was the one protecting him. They’d made him like me. To feel pain. To feel fear. Mortal.

He crushed my hand in his. “I just wanted to do this.”

“What?”

He didn’t say anything, just squeezed my hand harder. “This, star girl.” He let out a deep breath. “Because you might never let me hold your hand again.”

I concentrated on keeping us on our feet as the roar of the truck came closer. Around the bend in the road, a massive armored vehicle ground to a halt. Then there were men with drones all around us—ten of them all dressed as though they were Hazard officers, but none of them carried a recovery pack, and I was sure they were just like Reid. Black Ops. Not one of them asked questions or hesitated as they dragged Michael away.

He didn’t shout or try to resist. Instead, he pulled me with him, not letting go of my hand. One of the soldiers smacked him over the head, telling him to let go, but he didn’t. His fingers stayed clamped around mine all the way across the road toward the back of the truck. I stayed close to him until another soldier slammed a metal baton across Michael’s forearm with a sickening crunch. I clamped down on a scream. If I fought them, they’d only hurt him more. Michael didn’t yell, but his fingers finally unclenched.

I stopped in the middle of the road, standing away from him, not wanting to give them an excuse to break anything else. They dragged him into the truck, his feet bouncing on the gravel.

Someone tapped my shoulder. When I turned, Reid looked grim. His red hair was even brighter against his pale skin. “Cheyne was right,” he said. “You’re ready now.”

He seized my forearm and pushed me toward the vehicle, saying, “Michael will die if you do anything we don’t like. You know what that’s like, don’t you? Thinking you’re about to die. You don’t want him to die, do you?”

I shook my head. “Don’t hurt him any more.”

His forbidding expression disappeared. He gave me a grin. “We’ll see.” His grip would have bruised me before. My skin hurt beneath his fingers, but as soon as he let go, the bruise disappeared.

“In here.” He motioned inside the truck, at what looked like a cage in the center. Two long benches lined either side, and at the front of the truck was another panel with a door. I didn’t see Michael anywhere and I was sure they’d taken him into the front.

I peered into the cage, empty other than a chair with straps on it. Climbing up the ramp, scraping my legs on the metal bumpers, I sat down, letting him restrain my arms and legs.

Six soldiers filed in behind him and lined the area, all of them glaring at me. They were well-muscled, bulky, taller even than Michael, handling their weapons with complete ease, as though they’d been specially chosen for this task.

“I came prepared this time,” Reid said, tightening the final strap as one of the soldiers grinned at me. “Just in case we’ve miscalculated your dosage and given you too much.” He tapped my shoulder where the ampule rested and closed my new prison door, padlocking it. “Sit tight. We’ll be there soon. In the meantime, you can catch up on the latest news.” The doors shut and lights switched on. I clutched the edge of the armrest to keep from overbalancing as the truck headed around the first corner.

Reid clicked a button and a miniature air screen flickered on.

The local news jingle jarred my ears and the newsreader’s voice blared in the cramped space. “We have reports of yet another Basher attack this morning, similar to the explosion yesterday that caused the sixth death of eighteen-year-old, Jeremiah Isaacs, and the first death of his ten-year-old brother, Thomas.” They cut to a photo of the guy with the gun we’d encountered the day before, and then showed footage of two bodies encased in recovery domes being wheeled away from the front of my house, as though they died when Michael’s car exploded.

I tried not to react as I watched the screen. That hadn’t happened. We’d left Jeremiah and Thomas alive. I remembered the boy calling me an angel. My jaw ticked, but there was no way I’d show emotion in front of Reid.

The newsreader continued. “This morning’s explosion occurred just minutes ago inside a vacant mechanic’s shop off the NorthWest Motorway. Hazard Police are on the scene.” They cut to an aerial shot showing the truck disappearing off camera. I looked away, not bothering to hear the latest theory about the explosions until I heard my name.

“ … missing teenager, Ava Holland. She was last sighted in notorious Bridgefield Park.” The screen showed a reporter sticking her microphone in the face of the drug addict who’d tried to strangle me. He grinned. The camera was close enough to see that one of his teeth was in backward. He pointed to the photo of me, nodding and smiling, “Sweetie nectar.”

“At this time, Hazard Police advise that Ava Holland should be approached with extreme caution. Anyone with knowledge of her whereabouts is urged to contact police immediately at the number on your screen.” The news reporter’s solemn face brightened. “On a more cheerful note,” she said, swiveling to her co-reporter. “The Terminal has announced its latest experience—a combat room like nothing before.”

Her co-anchor gave the viewers a knowing look. “They’re calling it ‘the Dojo’ and it’s equipped with the latest technology, even gravity defying fields so you can fight like the ultimate ninja. We can’t show you pictures before the unveiling tomorrow night, but we can tell you it is ah-mazing.”

The woman said, “All you fans of martial arts out there, don’t get too excited, though. Only the best five fighters of the night will be allowed inside the Dojo.”

I focused on the floor of my cage and tuned out. I wondered if I should be paying attention to where we were going—the curves in the road, the sounds. The cabin became even darker and I recognized the
whoosh
-
whoosh
of the inner city bypass tunnel. Five minutes later we hadn’t made a turn, so I guessed that meant we were going toward the city. Twenty minutes later I still didn’t know for sure because when the truck finally stopped and the doors opened, we were already inside the building.

Keys rattled. Reid opened the cage and put a bag over my head.

Half an hour later, the bag came off, but I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

My eyes failed to adjust and, at first, there was only my own face staring back at me, reflected in a glass panel. Reid had cuffed my hands, yanking my arms back harder than necessary, especially since I didn’t intend making an escape anytime soon. Not until I figured out how to help Michael.

From what I could see, I was in a room without furniture. Just four walls with a door, except that one of the walls—the one facing me—was thick glass and my face, reflected back at me, looked old. Dark under my eyes, cracks in my lips, my hair lank.

I tried to remember the last time I’d had a drink of water. My last meal had been oat bars and apples the night before. I would survive a while longer without food, but I was sure I’d need water soon. I wondered how the nectar would cope with dehydration and whether my body would shut down into a coma like the boy who got lost in the national park. That wouldn’t do me any good right now.