Indestructible (19 page)

“So?” I pressed my wet hand against my forehead.

“Do you think I could somehow reach out to you with my element or my disease? Or maybe both? Then you’d be able to walk around without touching me.”

“Sounds complicated.” I started washing my face. “How would that even work?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I could use my element and try to envelop you in it.”

“I’d freeze to death.” I flashed him a smile. “No, thanks. I’d rather just hold your hand.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” He bit down on his lip and I suspected he didn’t know how to explain his idea to me. “I’d do what Sara did with you, only I wouldn’t try to contact you. I’d only be connected to you so that you feel me and not the elements around you.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “We don’t even know what Sara did.”

“Well, we rarely know what we’re doing anyway. We could at least give it a try.” The hopeful look in his eyes made it impossible for me to refuse.

“I guess it can’t hurt to try.” I shrugged. We were running out of options anyway. Sooner or later, I was going to end up at some lab.

Chapter 28

Adrian and I stood in the middle of the clearing, facing each other. “Are you ready?” he asked, and I nodded. When he let go, I was glad I couldn’t feel any elements nearby. Our little experiment would be terminated immediately if a regular person with an element came here. I didn’t want to risk losing my mind again.

A cloud of cold air enveloped me, leaving me breathless. “Too cold.”

The coldness pulled back. “Sorry,” Adrian said. “I’m trying to figure this out.”

“Can you sense anything else beside your element? Maybe you can find the disease,” I said just to humor him. There was no way in hell this would ever work. Sara must have gone through God knew what tests and experiments. They might have altered her genetic code or injected her with some kind of a special serum.

“Not really, but I can try to touch you with my element without making you cold. If it worked while we were touching, it could work now.”

“Yeah, but when we did that, I had my elements. In fact, we exchanged them. Now I don’t have what to exchange.” I crossed my arms.

“You still have the disease. If we can find a way to exchange that instead of the elements…”

“Disease exchange sounds like so much fun.” I smiled for a fraction of a second. “Not.”

“Maybe it would work if you weren’t so pessimistic.”

Another wave of coldness surrounded me, but weaker than before. Yet, somewhere far, far from here, elements wanted me to come and play with them.

An hour or so later, Adrian was sitting on the ground, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t know how to do it.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re trying to do something impossible.” I took a bite of my sandwich. All the experimenting had made me hungry.

“Why would it be impossible? There were many things that I considered impossible and they worked out just fine in the end.” He took another sandwich from one of our bags.

“Then they weren’t impossible.”

“I don’t…” Adrian’s phone rang and he immediately answered it. “Lily, hey.” He set the phone in between us so I could hear too.

“There’s something I wanted to tell you before, but it wasn’t the right time. I suppose you didn’t hear it on the news,” Lily said.

“Oh, yeah, the birds let us borrow their TV,” I said.

Lily sighed. “The new government decided that more should be done to protect the rights of all carriers and people with weak elements, so they created a new organization. It’s more like a political party, really, but better something than nothing. Now that carriers are truly coming out and not merely gathering in anonymous protests, we’ll need this. The MDCA was of no use because it was led mostly by people who weren’t carriers at all, so they decided to close it.”

“Does this new organization have a dumb name?” I said.

“Not yet, but we’re thinking about it. It has to be something that won’t discriminate against anyone. Anyway, they chose me to be the leader of the organization.”

“Oh, wow. Congratulations.” This must be a big thing for Lily.

“Thanks.” There was an excited undertone in her voice. “I can’t believe we will no longer have to hide or try to infiltrate other big organizations just to be able to express our opinions. There’s one drawback, though.”

“Sounds like everything you ever wanted,” Adrian said. “What’s the drawback?”

“We are carriers, so the government doesn’t really trust us. They might give us more rights and let us voice our opinions, but we will be under supervision. That means all of our… umm, secret missions, illegal activities and such need to stop. Everything we do has to be for the good of the organization. Every cost, every action needs to be explained to the government.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “But I’m sure they’ll cut you some slack later if the organization works without problems for a year or two.”

“I know. That’s what I said to everyone,” Lily said. “Most of our illegal activities won’t be necessary anymore anyway. I mean, all we wanted was to have a voice and make sure no one tries to exterminate carriers.”

“What about all those groups you were trying to stop? Did my brother find a solution?” I highly doubted Oliver was good at negotiating with people who didn’t agree with him.

“I’ll have to stop pursuing those groups. Their existence is illegal anyway and I don’t want our new organization to be in any way associated with them. Oli was merely observing them and he concluded they aren’t a serious threat at the moment.”

“And you trust his judgment?” I wouldn’t be surprised if Oliver found a way to undermine Lily’s organization. He wasn’t really interested in peaceful solutions.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Actually, one of my men decided to leave and take care of those groups. He’ll form his own group, but he won’t be associated with our organization.”

“What about Oliver? Will he stay with you?” I couldn’t imagine that happening.

“Yes. Oliver will be my second in command,” she announced, her voice filled with pride. My mouth hung open.

“Since Ria isn’t able to pick up her jaw off the floor, I’m going to ask,” Adrian said. “Isn’t it risky to give Oliver such a high position?”

“You should have more faith in him.” Lily actually chuckled. “Oliver and I came to an agreement. I assure you he’s going to be on his best behavior.”

“If you say so,” I said when I could speak again.

“You really don’t have to worry. Your brother likes the idea of not having to hide. I know he’s done some… unpleasant things and wanted revenge against everyone, but this is his chance to start over.”

I’d spent most of my life judging my brother and thinking he didn’t care about me, but even if we had our differences, I couldn’t judge him. Not after what I’d done and experienced. He’d been forced to kill to survive just like I’d been. “Tell him that I’m happy for him.”

“Will do,” she said. “So how is your trip? Everything okay with your disease, Ria?”

“We’re trying something new.” Adrian went on to explain what we’d been doing for the last hour.

“I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to do,” Lily finally said. “Adrian, even if you managed to protect Ria from elements without touching her, I doubt you’d be able to do it for a long time.”

“I didn’t think that far,” Adrian admitted. “But it would be great if we could act like normal people without her losing control. Even if it’s just for a short while. Maybe with time her disease will stabilize.”

“I will talk about this to my scientists,” she said. “They might know more.”

“And we’ll keep trying,” Adrian said and I narrowed my eyes at him. I hoped we were done with the experiments.

“Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” Lily said. “We’re planning to build a place for carriers who can’t control themselves or don’t want to feel elements anymore.”

“Don’t you have enough labs already?” I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to live in such a place.

“It wouldn’t be a lab,” she said. “It would be a whole town just for carriers. No unprotected elementals allowed.”

“Sounds interesting,” Adrian said. “Do you think you could really find such a place? Wouldn’t carriers still be able to feel people from the surrounding towns and villages?”

“We’re trying to find a place where most carriers wouldn’t be able to feel elements. If we want everyone to feel safe, we need to do something about those of us who don’t want to hurt anyone, but can’t help themselves.”

It was a place for someone like me. “Do you really think anyone would want to live in a town that is cut off from the world? Isn’t that even worse? Normal people would have to avoid the town, so wouldn’t that make anyone who lived there feel ostracized from the society?”

Lily was quiet for a moment. “Like I said, elementals could still visit them if they wore the element-blocking jewelry. In an ideal world, we would find the cure for the disease or a way to live together in peace, but we have to work with what we’ve got. It’s better to live normally with other people like you without fear that you’ll kill someone one day. Or you’d rather we put those people in labs?”

I chewed on my lip. “I guess it is better, but while a couple of carriers live in separation, the rest of the carriers who can control themselves will do whatever the hell they want and visit whatever places they want.”

“I’m sorry, Ria. Our disease is a danger for people around us. I wish I could change that, but I can’t,” Lily said.

“I know.” I sighed in defeat.

“I have to get back to work,” she said, her tone cheerful again. “Good luck with your experiment.”

“Thanks,” Adrian said and ended the call.

I looked at him under my eyelashes. “Do we really have to stay here and keep trying to do the impossible?”

“Yes.” He smirked. “Actually, I have another idea.”

Aw, crap.
Here we go again.

Chapter 29

Adrian kicked at the ground, sending dust and pebbles flying into the stream. “There must be something else we can try.”

“No, there isn’t.” I munched on a chocolate cupcake. It was a little bit stale, but I’d go crazy without chocolate. Watching Adrian getting frustrated was not fun at all.

He paced up and down like a madman. I was licking the last bits of the cupcake off its wrapper when Adrian stopped and looked at me, his eyes wide.

“What?” I said, startled, and dropped the wrapper.

“I think I know what we have to do.” He crouched in front of me and took my hands. “We’ve been doing it wrong the whole time. You shouldn’t be standing away from me when I’m trying to reach out to you. You should be touching me.”

“Touching you?” My eyebrows went up. “I like to touch you, but I don’t see how that could help.”

“It will. Trust me.” He cupped my face and pulled me in for a kiss. I relaxed, focusing on the softness of his lips against mine. His hand ended up low on my back, pushing me closer to him.

An image of a frozen lake appeared in my mind, but it was flickering in and out of existence. Adrian and I were doing something similar to the element exchange, but since I didn’t have an element, I couldn’t just take his element as my own. I hadn’t been conscious when Sara got into my mind, and I wasn’t sure whether Adrian had really been in my mind when I was in a coma or I had imagined it all.

What had Sara told me? That she could get into weak minds. What did that even mean? I couldn’t knock myself out, but maybe I could relax enough to let Adrian in. Closing my eyes, I pictured a door opening to let the ice inside.

Adrian stood in front of me, surrounded with ice. His lips pulled into a smile.

“Are you really here or do I have an overly active imagination?” I asked, unsure what else to do. The image of Adrian flickered, but didn’t speak. Great. I was imagining the whole thing, wasn’t I?

“Ria, can you hear me?” Adrian said, but his image didn’t even twitch. Adrian’s voice must be coming from the real world, so I opened my eyes.

“What?” I found myself staring into real Adrian’s eyes.

“Can you feel any elements? Is it working?”

I looked down and realized our bodies weren’t touching. A cloud of coldness still clung to me, but it wasn’t too uncomfortable. “I think it’s working.” My astonishment couldn’t be bigger. I waited for elements to come back at me, but they didn’t. “We can’t be sure, though. Maybe elementals are not within my reach at the moment.”

Adrian laughed. “We did it!”

“Yeah.” My lips spread into a grin. “Oh my God. Does that mean we can finally leave this place?”

“I don’t know for how long I can keep this up.” He retreated a couple of steps. “And I don’t know how far we can be from each other until the link breaks.”

“We can test that. Just keep on moving and I’ll tell you when the elements come back.” I took my phone and turned on the stopwatch. “Even if we can do this only for a couple of minutes, it will still be amazing. We could avoid many awkward situations and people wouldn’t stare at us.”

“True. We can always touch again after some time.” He took another step back and the cloud of coldness vanished. At least three elements were in the area.

“Too far,” I said. “I can feel them.”

“Okay.” He looked around. “That’s enough space. I think you should be able to stay in one room while I’m in the other.”

“Great. That means you can stay outside the changing room when we go shopping.” I flashed him a smile.

“Is that all you care about?” He rolled his eyes. “We should see for how long we can do this. It wouldn’t be fun if you lost control in the middle of a store, because I’m planning to stay outside and wait for you.”

“Oh, I so plan to drag you in with me, but yeah, we should see if we can do it for a longer time. We did it for two minutes, but you went too far, so I guess that doesn’t count.” I restarted the stopwatch. “And we should really try this whole thing without kissing first.”

“Why?” He smirked. “You don’t like to kiss me?”

“I do. And that’s the problem. I don’t want to stop.”