Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy (32 page)

Kareena started to get grouchy.

We’d all had enough.

“I think we got everyone. Right?” Alice grumbled, doubling over.

“As far as I can tell. Yeah.” Kareena shrugged. “I don’t see anyone else.” She spun around a few times and scanned our surroundings. “I don’t see… wait.” Her eyes narrowed. “That chick behind the bar in the back there. In front of the Casino. By the orange palm tree.”

Alice stood on her tip toes to look over the crowd. Many of them were fully visible now—all the ones we’d started.

“The dark tan girl in the black bikini?” Alice asked. “The one holding the drink tray?”

“Yeah. That one.” Kareena confirmed.

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

Alice pushed through the crowd and I lost sight of her.

“Alice!” I shuffled past a group of opaque people and then darted past a few out-of-focus women who weren’t infected. “Alice!” I still couldn’t see her.

Just as I approached the bar, the waitress in black materialized in front of me. I gasped as she came within an inch of my face, almost swiping me with her drink tray as she
spun around and gyrated her hips to a song blaring overhead.

I ducked.

“Damn it! Alice! Where are you?” I looked back at Kareena, who shrugged.

“Alice?”

A breath caught in my throat and my skin tingled. The ground below me disappeared.

I couldn’t breathe.

My feet hit the ground and my surroundings went pitch black. I was blinded by darkness. In a few moments, my eyes adjusted and I realized where I was.

“Brian?” Alice came up next to me.

We were back in the middle of town square in front of the Christmas tree. The smell of pine filled my nostrils again. The lights had been turned off and all of the music had stopped. Darkness. Quiet. The shops had closed. The streets had emptied long ago. Our drinks still sat beneath the bench where we’d left them. Cold.

I felt a chill up my spine and took Alice by the arm. I pulled out my cell, which was conveniently functioning now.

Six missed calls. 2:00 AM. Unlike the previous times when the Saviors had taken us, time hadn’t stopped while we had been gone.

Great.

We walked down the block to the parking lot. There were a few cars still in the reserved spots, but my motorcycle was gone.

“Shit!” I looked around. Someone had either stolen it or…

“I’m guessing it was towed,” said Alice, pointing to the sign at the end of the lot. It read: No parking after-hours without a permit. All unauthorized vehicles will be towed.

Jesus.
Another expense I didn’t need, and more to explain.

Things couldn’t get any worse.

“Mom’s going to be really upset,” Alice said, swiping the lock screen off her phone. She had eleven missed calls. Most from Jane. Three from Sam.

The buses weren’t even running, so I called a taxi. I should
have called Jane, but I was too afraid of the assumptions she was probably already making. It’d be easier to explain things to her at the house.

. . .

We hopped out of the cab and paid the driver.

“Where the hell have you two been?” Jane crossed her arms and glared at me as we meandered up the driveway.

“Mom, we’re sorry but—” Alice started.

“I didn’t go through all of this trouble to help you, Brian,
only to have you disappear half the night with my daughter and not even tell me where the hell you were going!”

“We didn’t disappear, Jane. I swear. My bike got impounded and we had to get a cab home.”

“And how did
that
happen!?” She narrowed her eyes at Alice.

“Can we come inside first, please?” I asked.

Jane stepped to the side and let us in, then closed and locked the door behind us.

“Explanation.
Now
,” she growled.

I took a deep breath. “The three of us—Kareena, Alice and I—we were in Las Vegas.”

“What? That’s impossible. You weren’t gone that long.” Alternating looks of horror and confusion passed across Jane’s face. “How?”

“Apparently, it isn’t impossible,” I said, taking out my phone. “We couldn’t make any calls. We tried. I swear, we tried.”

Alice
nodded
in
agreement
. “Our phones
weren’t
working.”

We laid both phones out on the table so she could see our message logs.

“With the help of the Saviors,” I said, “we apparently can make it to Vegas in seconds. And we did. They teleported us there and it was like we were stuck in some kind of alternate dimension where others couldn’t see us or hear us. We were sent there to start others with fluorescence in them—those infected with Savior DNA. There were dozens of them there. We don’t know how many more there could be around the country or when they’ll move us again. It was unreal, Jane. You have no idea how frightened we were. I thought we were trapped.”

Stunned, Jane took a seat at the kitchen table. Her eyes
were wide and she was lost in thought—staring off at nothing
. Shaking her head.

“It never ends, does it?” she murmured.

I took a seat across from her. “I think it’s just begun. The plan they’ve had for us all along… starts now.”

Chapter 14

F
our o’clock in the morning. Wide awake. Exhausted
yet unable to sleep. Anxious. Frustrated. I couldn’t stop
thinking about what had happened. Everything we’d seen. All of the
lights. Sounds. People. So many infected sleepers. How many
more were out there?

I had always taken for granted how much atmosphere a sense of smell conveyed. Without it, surroundings become
creepy. Dreamlike. The air tastes thin. Hard to breathe. Bland
and stale, like the air in a museum.

Unsettling.

In Vegas, I’d expected the smell of beer and cigarettes to be wafting through the air, to get a whiff of someone’s bad cologne or a woman with way too much perfume. Food. Plastic. Sweat. Life.
Anything
. Yet there had been nothing but haunting emptiness. The sensory deprivation had made the entire thing seem like an out-of-body experience.

Alice had been so shaken by it all that she’d refused to be left alone. She’d curled up on the couch next to me and drifted off, her head nestled against a pillow in my lap.

It didn’t drain me to heal people the way it did for her to start them. Every touch sucked a little more energy from her and she needed time to recover from the fatigue.

The red scuff mark still colored her forearm. I traced my fingers over it and allowed my azure light time to sink into her skin. The scratch softened and the redness faded.

My first day legally allowed to stay with Jane and Alice and already things had gone to hell. One more week left of school before Christmas break. All I could do was hope the Saviors would keep their hands off us until then—until we could be safe from public places where people might see us vanish.

What if it had happened in school? During class? In the lunchroom? What then? How would we have explained it?

Kareena had been in her room at the time, so it hadn’t been a crisis for her. She usually hung out with friends at all
hours of the night, so her parents hadn’t been overly concerned
about her disappearance. But what if she had been out and about like we had? What if she had been… driving?

What if I’d been riding with Alice?

Jesus…

I had to sleep. Even if only for a few hours. I had to put
my mind to rest. Worrying wasn’t doing anything but making
me agitated.

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the couch, placing a hand on Alice’s shoulder. My head pulsed, thumping to the rhythm of all the bass music we’d been subjected to. Squeezing my eyes shut couldn’t snuff out the blinking fire of millions of lights. The huge spotlight blasting out of the center of that glass pyramid. Animated signs all around.

. . .

“So, Alice. You never told me what you wanted for Christmas. It’s gonna be here before you know it.”

We were standing at her locker between classes. Jane had driven us to school. Neither of us felt comfortable taking the bus after what had happened yesterday. Hopefully, Jane would get my motorcycle out of the impound lot soon. Though I wouldn’t have felt comfortable riding it again just yet, either.

“Oh, I don’t know, Brian.” Alice shoved her English book
into her locker and took out Chemistry. “How about a normal
life?”

I took her book from her and she shut her locker door and spun the lock.

“I don’t think that’s an option right now,” I said with a shrug. “But I’d make it happen if I could.”

“I know. Sorry.” She dropped her head down and heaved a sigh. “I’m just tired of this. It’s something new every time.”

We started walking toward our class.

“Kareena’s lucky she’s graduating in the summer,” I added. “We’re stuck here for a few more years. It sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Not to mention I’m a little worried about social services
coming to check on me in a few months. If I’m not there…
awkward
. You know? We can’t even predict this stuff. They just do it whenever.”

Alice nodded.

Before we entered our classroom, she stopped and turned
toward me. A group of students pushed by and we took a step back from the doorway.

“Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“Fixing my arm.” She brushed her fingertips over where the bloodied scuff had been last night.

“So you noticed?”

“Yes. I went to wash it off this morning and it was gone. Thank you, Brian.”

“You don’t have to thank me. It’s what I’m here for.”

She looked up into my eyes, contemplating my words. A tiny smile curled at the corner of her lips and she reached up to run a hand through the hair at the back of my head. The sensation of her warm, slender fingers sliding over my scalp made me sigh.

“I’m glad I have you,” she said, and then lifted up off her heels to kiss me. I closed my eyes and lost myself for a brief moment.

“I couldn’t do this without you,” she whispered.

“And I couldn’t do
this
without you, Alice.”

She grinned, her eyes narrowing.

“High school, I meant.” I motioned toward the classroom.

She laughed and it made me smile.

Chapter 15

N
ew Year’s Eve. The party and the countdown to the ball
drop had already begun in New York City, with only two hours to go before midnight on the east coast.

Jane hadn’t thrown a Christmas party this year. With the whole guardianship thing going on and me staying in the guest room downstairs, she didn’t want the hassle. She also didn’t want to deal with all of the questions her brother would have about me staying in the same house as the girl I was dating.

Alice sat beside me on the couch, leaning against me while fiddling with the silver dolphin earrings I’d gotten her for Christmas. I had bought them at a local art fair. Little curled dolphins set on posts with a small flower perched on the tips of each of their tails. Elegant, but cute. I would run out of dolphin-themed ideas eventually.

“You guys can stay up until a little past midnight if you want,” Jane said, “but then I want you to get to bed.” She carried a tray of cookies, crackers, and cheese over to the coffee table. “Okay?” She sat in the recliner next to us and twisted open the bottle of cream soda she’d brought with her. A low hiss sounded from beneath the cap.

I reached out, snagged one of Alice’s amazing chocolate chip cookies from the tray, and then sunk my teeth into the warm chocolaty goodness. They were as sweet and delicious as they had been last Christmas.

Junk food and music—a great way to send off our first official year “together.” An accomplishment most couples are usually psyched about. We were relieved to know we’d
survived
that long.

Literally.

Sam came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of chips and salsa and I quickly slid my arm off Alice’s shoulders. I didn’t want to make Sam uncomfortable, seeing how she hadn’t been dating anyone recently. No one likes gushy couples. With Jane and Sam there, we didn’t have much time to ourselves anyway.

“Who’s playing tonight? Anyone I like?” Sam flopped down on the end of the couch and shoved a nacho chip into her mouth. She passed the bowl to Alice, who took a handful of chips and then offered some to me from her cupped hands.

“Some super secret surprise guest. Oh, and they said the Backstreet Boys are getting together for a one-night-only reunion song.”

“They never quit, do they?” I laughed. I hadn’t even been
born yet when they had started hitting it big. I wasn’t a fan of their stuff, but Sam had some of their songs on her phone. She had a bunch of ‘80s songs on there, too. If she’d been born a few decades earlier, she would have fit right in amidst the boom boxes, the outrageous hair and the neon colors.

“Wonder who the special guest will be,” Sam said, kicking off her shoes and pulling her feet up onto the couch. She hoarded the chip bowl.

I grabbed another cookie from off the coffee table, took a
bite,
and winked at Alice. She averted her eyes for a second
and shyly smiled back.

The announcer on TV introduced another band—an all-girl group doing a punked-up rock version of a Lady Gaga song. It wasn’t bad—had a nice hard rock edge to it—but I didn’t like gothy girls with black lipstick and thick eyeliner. Torn skintight jeans and studded silver and black leather vests with frayed collars.

Sam bobbed in her seat and chomped on a mouthful of chips. While everyone was looking away, Alice reached to take my hand and moved in to kiss me. Just as my eyelids squeezed shut, the volume of the music cranked up and the
couch disappeared out from under me. My stomach churned
and Alice’s grasp on me tightened. I sucked in a breath and opened my eyes.