imperfect (31 page)

“
No, I’m not kidding.
Let’s go.”

“
At least give us a good
reason why we should turn back now,” said Jaiden.

“
I lied.” Chelsa’s eyes
evaded Jaiden’s.

“
I don’t understand,” said
Jaiden.

“
There is no one waiting
for us at Jabber Boulevard. At least no one that you would want to
meet. Unless you want to be caught by the United Region Homeland
Security law enforcers.”

“
Are you saying you led us
straight into an ambush?” Kristi said, not believing what Chelsa
was telling her.

“
Yes—
get behind those recycle bins!
”

Chelsa shoved Kristi behind several bins
sitting by the curb just as someone walked off of Jabber Boulevard.
Then she walked away from the bins and towards the person.

“
Chelsa, good to see you,”
the person greeted her. The woman was dressed all in black, from
her combat boots to her helmet.

“
Greetings, Officer Zala,”
Chelsa replied.

Officer Zala frowned. “You’re late by over
fifteen minutes. And where are the others you promised you would
bring? My people have been waiting for over an hour now.”

“
I’m sorry. I thought I
could convince the others to follow me with the fake instafication
I sent myself. I was wrong though; they weren’t willing to break
curfew.”

Zala ground her teeth, whether out of
frustration or anger, Kristi couldn’t tell.

“
I expected better of
you,” Zala said. “I will call my men off duty then. Remember, the
faster you bring the other freaks to us, the faster you’ll get what
you want. I will be awaiting your next instafication and
updates.”

“
Is that all there is?”
Chelsa asked.

Officer Zala gave a sharp nod and left. A
few minutes later, three black vans pulled out of Jabber Boulevard
and then roared off. Kristi quivered, thinking how close they had
been with getting caught.

She looked at Troop, Jaiden and Finn, trying
to gauge how they were handling this rapid turn of events. Troop
and Finn seemed shocked; Troop’s jaw was tightly clenched, trying
to hold back his fury of Chelsa’s betrayal. Jaiden was deathly
still.

Kristi was glad Chelsa had a sudden change
of heart and decided not to turn them in to the government. On the
other hand, she was shaking with anger; Chelsa had the nerves to
fake a friendship with her.

Chelsa started coming back towards them.
Kristi had a lot of acrimonious words in store for her.

“
How could you?” she
asked. “I trusted you.”

Chelsa refused to meet her eyes and looked
down at the ground. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. Nothing went as
planned. I didn’t know this was the way things would turn out.”

“
Sorry doesn’t change the
fact that you almost killed us,” Jaiden snapped.

Ghost appeared out of the night and looked
up at Chelsa.

“
You’re right and I’m
wrong, Ghost,” she said.

Chelsa reached down to scratch Ghost behind
the ears. Ghost closed his eyes and rumbled.

Suddenly Kristi understood why Ghost and
Chelsa had been in a fight; Ghost knew Chelsa was planning on
betraying them. He had been trying to signal Chelsa not to turn
them in.

“
Let’s head back,” Finn
said. “No point in staying out any longer than we need
to.”

“
Okay,” Kristi said, and
then she faced Chelsa who still wasn’t meeting her eyes. “You have
a lot of explaining to do once we get back to Finn’s
house.”

“
I promise I’ll explain
everything.”

“
You’re promises aren’t
worth a lot to me right now,” Jaiden retorted. He sounded furious
and wounded at the same time.

They speed-walked in an uncomfortable
silence. The walk back to Finn’s home seemed both quicker and
slower than before. Finn unlocked the door to the house and
everyone slipped inside silently so as not to wake up the
adults.

They headed into the living room and Kristi
adjusted the lights to the dimmest setting. Jaiden, Troop and
Kristi sat together on a couch while Finn remained standing by the
doorway. Chelsa settled on the ottoman; the whole setup reminded
Kristi of an interrogation being taken place.

“
Start talking,” Jaiden
commanded.

“
First of all, I feel
extremely guilty right now. I know that probably doesn’t mean much
to you guys, but I truly apologize to you,” Chelsa said.

“
You can save your
apologies for later.”

“
Just tell us why you
pretended to be our friend,” Kristi said.

“
It’s a long
story.”

“
We have all the time we
need.”

“
Do you remember Alex?
Officer Zala contacted me shortly after Alex died. It turns out the
government has known that there were four living Accidents for a
while; however, the Revealers had done an excellent job of
concealing our locations. By pure chance, Officer Zala happened to
find me after being assigned to document Alex’s death. She offered
me a deal: if I could somehow manage to steer the other three
Accidents, which are you guys, into one place together where she
could seize everyone at once, she would bring Alex back to
life.”

Kristi closed her mouth when she realized it
had fallen open in disbelief. “That sounds like something from a
science-fiction book. No one has ever been brought back from the
dead.”

“
That’s true,” Chelsa
said. “But Officer Zala knows several scientists that have been
working on ways to revitalize the deceased; it’s a government
funded research department and the scientists think that they will
have a method to bring a person back to life using their DNA
soon.

“
At first, I brushed off
her offer for two main reasons: first of all, the whole deal
sounded preposterous; second of all, I had absolutely no idea how
to find the other Accidents. Heck, I thought I was a
one-of-a-kind-freak. But when I accidently met Kristi, I began to
reconsider Zala’s offer. I told myself I would just pretend to
befriend Kristi and let her lead me to the other Accidents then
turn you all in and be done with it.

“
I wasn’t expecting to
actually befriend you guys. And I most definitely did not foresee
myself falling in love with Jaiden.” Chelsa threw him a pleading
look, which he returned stonily. She dropped her head to her hands
and muttered, “I really screwed up, didn’t I?”

“
You really, really
screwed up,” Troop affirmed.

Chelsa’s face crumpled. She looked at
Kristi, awaiting her verdict.

Kristi found her voice and said, “You hurt
me, Chelsa, you’re one of the few people I trusted.”

“
I know you probably don’t
trust me anymore,” Chelsa said. “But will you at least not hate
me?”

Kristi sighed. “I don’t know what to do or
feel. I believed you were my friend—I wanted you as my friend. But
your actions tonight proved otherwise. Yet, if you hadn’t changed
your mind and decided to fork me over to Zala, we wouldn’t even be
having this conversation.”

“
Does that mean you’ve
forgiven me?”

“
I suppose. I do have a
question though: was the government somehow involved with our lack
of bandit encounters on South Lane?”

“
Yes. As the Revealers
have suspected, the government is working with several bandit
groups. The bandits were instructed to leave us alone. It is also
why the government didn’t try very hard to capture Kristi and
Jaiden; they wanted to wait until Finn, Troop and Kristi were
together before swooping in.”

Troop gave Kristi a look
that read,
“Isn’t that what I said
before?”

“
I haven’t known you for a
long time,” Finn said. “But if Kristi thinks you’ve definitely had
a change of heart, then you’re cool by me. But take notice, I’ll be
watching your moves closely, so you better not screw up again.”
Finn said the words as if simply stating a fact.

Troop didn’t offer his thoughts.

The rest of them waited for Jaiden to speak.
He looked squarely into Chelsa’s eyes and said, “It’s over.
Whatever we had going on between us is over.”

Then he stood up and strode out of the
room.

This living room sure
witnessed a lot of dramatic exits today,
thought Kristi.
First Finn’s mom and
now Jaiden.

“
Well,” she said, “just
when I thought things couldn’t get worse they did.”

“
You think?” Troop said
sarcastically.

Jaiden didn’t join them
for
brunch that morning. The grownups
seemed to have noticed some of the tension in the air, but to
Kristi’s relief, they didn’t ask about it.

“
Where’s Dr. Hanson?” she
asked Finn’s dad.

Finn’s mom had left for her office shortly
after making sure the teens had enough to eat. Kristi was glad she
had departed—her interactions with Finn still seemed strained at
best.

“
He left already. He had
some business to attend to and headed out when you were still
asleep. He did leave this for you though.”

Finn’s dad handed her a sealed envelope.
Troop put down his dirty dishes in the sink and peered over
Kristi’s shoulder.

“
What is it?” he
asked.

“
Hold on. Have some
patience.”

She carefully slid her finger underneath the
flap and pulled out a single piece of paper. In neatly printed
letters were the words:

If I recall correctly,
your parents believe Stevey holds valuable information in which you
may be interested. Stevey’s house:
41
°
39'
58.1008” Burn after reading. Do not share this information. A
driver will take you to a twenty-mile radius within Stevey’s house.
The driver should arrive a bit after noon, so you will have time to
gather your belongings. Your droid-horses will be transported to a
stable run by a Revealer member. Good luck.

“
As usual, he’s one step
ahead of us,” Kristi said to herself, but loud enough for Troop to
hear.

She entered the longitude and latitude into
her electro-slate, then tossed the paper into the incinerator.

Clang!

Finn accidently dropped one of his
crutches.

Troop retrieved it for him and said, “I’ve
been meaning to ask but keep on forgetting: how did you hurt your
leg?”

“
Hiking
accident.”

“
That stinks. How much
longer until you’re off crutches?”

“
Um, never.”

“
Never?” Kristi
asked.

“
I paralyzed my left leg
four years ago.”

“
Couldn’t the doctors do
anything? If they can bring back the dead, surely they can mend a
paralyzed leg.”

Finn shrugged. “I hurt my spinal cord pretty
bad. The spinal cord, which is part of the nervous system, was too
messed up to be fixed. As a result, I lost all sense in my
leg.”

“
I’m not trying to impose
on your personal preferences, but have you considered getting a
prosthetic?”

“
My parents and I did look
into it, but we couldn’t find a surgeon willing to perform surgery
on me to remove the paralyzed leg; none of the surgeons we
approached wanted to help an Accident. To quote the last surgeon we
visited, ‘This is natural selection doing its job of making sure
only the fittest survive.’”

Troop snorted. “That’s BS.”

Kristi couldn’t have agreed more. “Couldn’t
Dr. Hanson remove your paralyzed leg for you?”

“
He’s not a surgeon,” Finn
explained. “He isn’t trained to perform operations.”

“
Someone better wake
Jaiden up,” Chelsa said. She had been so quiet this morning Kristi
had forgotten she was still in the room. “He doesn’t know we’re
leaving in a few hours.”

“
Want me to do it?” Kristi
offered.

“
Yes, please,” Chelsa said
gratefully.

Kristi left the kitchen and headed up to the
guest bedroom. Jaiden was already awake and seemed to be deep in
thought, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

She gently coughed, as not to startle him
when she spoke, “Are you alright? We’re going to be heading out
soon.”

“
I don’t think I’ll be
coming,” he said.

“
What do you mean? Surely
you’re not so furious about Chelsa you’re planning on staying
behind.” Kristi couldn’t imagine solving the two cases without
Jaiden. He was her brother, her friend.

“
I’ve already spoken with
Finn’s parents,” Jaiden continued on like he hadn’t heard Kristi.
“They’ve agreed to let me stay with them until I get a steady job
and am ready to live on my own. They’re also nice enough to get me
a new ID and paperwork—that’s the upside of being in contact with
the Revealers.”

“
Jaiden, you’re not
serious! How can—”

“—
it’ll be great. I’m
getting the chance to have a fresh start. No one knows me in
Oppidum and Finn’s parents have agreed to pose as my aunt and
uncle.” Jaiden paused in his talking and looked at Kristi. “What do
you think?”

She took a gulp and replied, “If this is
really what you want to do, I guess I’m more than happy that an
opportunity like this has presented itself to you. But at the same
time, I’ll really miss you traveling with the group.”