Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy (40 page)

“You’re a real buzz kill, you know that?” she added with a huff. “Some of us want to move on. Some of us want to believe this shit’s temporary.” Kareena turned her back on me again and started walking away. “I’m not letting you ruin a good day for me, Brian. I’ve got friends waiting.”

“Kareena, wait!” I called after her, but she flipped me a
middle finger and then jogged off, disappearing into a crowd
of other graduates.

I hadn’t been trying to upset her. I had only wanted her to come to terms with reality. Was I wrong to be so worried?

We weren’t normal teenagers anymore. If Alice and Kareena thought we were, they were lying to themselves.

Chapter 25

M
y surroundings began to materialize.

Midday sky. Faded blue, muddled with puffs of white and
grey. Long stretches of city sidewalk on both sides of an asphalt road, and industrial buildings as far as the eye could see. Transparent, blurry outlines of people appeared all around me.

No blinding neon signs or blaring music, but the hellish, sticky heat overwhelmed me. I took in a deep breath of thick humidity and dirty air.

“Alice?”

I started off toward a nearby building made of huge grey
cinderblocks. A large decorative brass emblem of a caduceus
—a winged staff entwined with two snakes—loomed above the glass doors. A pharmaceutical industry building.

I craned my neck back. Reaching up what looked like a hundred floors, mirrored glass windows reflected the sooty-blue sky. The skyscraper loomed over the rest of the street, taller than anything I’d ever seen.

I bent over to rest my hands on my knees and groaned, exasperated by the scorching heat. I loosened my tie and rolled the sleeves of my dress shirt up to my elbows.

They’d taken me straight from work this time, the Saviors.

“Alice!” I called out. “Where are you!?”

Sweat drizzled off my brow, stinging my eyes. I grimaced and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. The roar of city traffic and disgruntled drivers honking at each
other made it almost impossible to hear anything else. People
at a nearby crosswalk raised their voices to combat the noise.

The heat bore down on me, making it hard to breathe. I unbuttoned the top few buttons of my shirt and shrugged off my satin vest. It slid to the ground, and within seconds it materialized on the other plane. The small cursive embroidery that read “Jacques’” glittered in the light, catching the attention of a passerby. A woman stopped dead in her tracks just a foot away from me, looked down and tilted her
head to the side. Then, she glanced back up—straight through
me—and her eyes almost made contact with my own. Oblivious.

“Brian!”

I jerked my head toward the sound of the voice.

“Alice?”

She came running full speed around the block. I hurried to meet her.

“I was worried about you,” she said, panting. “I yelled… but I didn’t hear anything.” She doubled over to catch her breath. “Then I heard you call my name and… I didn’t stop running until I found you.”

“Thank God you’re okay. Any sign of Kareena or…?”

“David?” She shook her head. “No. I was hoping we wouldn’t find him, actually.”

“I kind of hoped we would.” I cupped my fist with my other hand.

“What?” Her eyes widened and she straightened up. “Why?”

“I already told you. He needs to be stopped.”

“Yeah, but… I didn’t think you were serious.”

“I don’t talk shit, Alice. You know that.”

She swallowed hard. “Yeah. I know.”

We walked along the sidewalk, avoiding people as much as
we could. A group of kids came bounding toward us on skateboards. They
blurred by and we narrowly avoided them by pressing ourselves flat up against the wall of the nearest building.

Alice sighed. “I hate this,” she said.

“Me, too. And this heat!” I plunged two fingers into my collar and pried it away from my neck. “We should get out of it.” I wiped my forehead again.

“But we need to find Kareena.”

“She’ll find us. Hopefully.”

“Kareena!” Alice had cupped her hands to her face and shouted at the top of her lungs. The sharp pitch pierced my ears.

“Keep it down! What if he hears you?”

“We need to find her! Karee—”

I grabbed Alice and covered her mouth with my hand. She grunted, struggling to push me away. I released her and she stumbled forward several steps.

“Brian!?” She swerved around and glared. “What’s your problem!?”

“Shh. We’ll find her, okay? I just don’t want
him
to find us first.”

She huffed. “Don’t treat me like I’m useless.”

“I
never
said you were useless.”

She marched off in the direction I had come from and I bolted after her.

We walked a few blocks and then circled back around toward where I had been dropped off originally. We turned a corner and Alice gasped. Kareena stood leaning against the wall of a building, her arms folded together.

“Kareena!” Alice rushed ahead of me.

Kareena cracked a weak, fatigued smile and took a step toward us. Her head dropped and she toppled over. I darted after her and barely caught her in my arms.

“Hi,” she muttered, hardly able to lift her face.

Heat exhaustion?

“How long have you been waiting for us?” I asked. “Never mind.
Let’s get inside.” I motioned toward the doors of the pharmaceutical company.

“Wh-what about all of the infected?” Kareena murmured
, resting a lot of weight on me as I helped her back to her feet.

“Screw it for now. We need to rest.” I swept Kareena’s thick, disheveled hair back. “You need rest.”

Alice pried her fingers between the sliding glass doors and forced them open.

A burst of ice cold air shocked us. Goose bumps rose all over my skin and I shivered.

Inside, we found a quiet, low-traffic corner and I helped Kareena down to the floor so she could sit.

“How’d you know we would come here?” Alice asked, sitting
down beside her and leaning against the glass curtain
wall that ran around the entire perimeter of the ground floor.

“I found Brian’s vest on the ground there.” She twisted
around and pointed out the window. It was still there. Trampled
on and kicked off to the side, but there.

If only I’d been smart enough to have left it on purpose.

“Smart girl,” I said, putting a hand onto her bare shoulder.
Her skin felt hot and moist with sweat. “I’m glad we found you. I was… worried.”

She smiled a genuine smile at me. My heart sank.

I cared about her. But I didn’t care about her the way she hoped I would. It really got under my skin some days—
how badly she wanted something more from me. Other times,
it just made me feel terrible—like I was betraying her somehow
—leading her on.

But I wasn’t; my intentions to keep up a relationship with Alice were obvious, and they nearly always had been. Kareena needed to accept the truth.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked.

“Yeah. Thanks,” Kareena replied.

“Good.” I glanced around the office building, watching out-of-focus men and women in dress suits hustling in all
directions, briefcases in hand. Headset pieces slung over their ears
—speaking to phantoms.

A slender woman wearing a dress jacket and skirt came rushing past us; her hair had been pinned up into a tight bun and an earpiece was clasped over her ear. “What do you mean, one of the subjects had a seizure?” she said, furrowing her eyebrows and coming to a sudden halt right in front of us.

Alice shrunk back against the wall. Kareena came to her feet.

“That wasn’t even a side effect in the original trials!” she continued. “I’ll have President Greenmire get
back to you.” The woman pressed the side of her earpiece and shook her head. “Liars. Seizures. He’s full of it.” She rolled her shoulders
back and closed her
eyes a moment while she tried to regain her composure.

We waited quietly for her to move on, but she just stood there a while, staring out the window—through me—at the street. I swallowed hard when she took a step closer.

“Damn.” The woman brought a hand up to her ear again and pressed the receiver. “This is Davis.” She turned away and rushed off down the hallway.

I exhaled. Alice stood up beside me and wrapped her hands around mine.

“I wonder what she was talking about,” she whispered.

“I don’t know, but it’s none of our business.”

Alice nodded. She turned to the side and gasped.

“Brian!” Her grip on my hand tightened. “It’s him.”

I veered around to look out the window behind us.

“Shit! It is!”

The three of us ducked. David had been walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

“He’s coming this way,” Kareena said, backing away from
the window. “We have to go.”

Yeah.

We
should
have run as fast as we could in the other direction.

“Brian! Where are you going!?” Kareena trotted after me, Alice close on her heels.

“Stay here, you two,” I said, craning my neck back. “I’ll settle this.”

“But—” Alice started.

“I mean it,” I said, swerving around. “Stay here.” I glared
, pointing firmly at them. “Please.”

Alice looked down at her feet and nodded.

“Don’t be a dumbass,” Kareena snapped, squinting and shaking her head at me.

“I’ve got this,” I said reassuringly.

Kareena crossed her arms.

“Be careful, Brian!” Alice muttered.

I’d already placed a hand on the glass doors.

No turning back.

They slid open. Hot, steamy air rushed against my skin and I scowled.

“Hey!” David instantly made eye contact with me from the other side of the street. “I’ve been looking all over for you little shits. Where the hell have you been?”

I clenched my fists.

Breathe
.
Stay calm.

“What do they have on you?” I asked, raising my voice and stepping forward just as David jogged up onto the sidewalk. “Why are you doing this for them? What’s in it for you?” From over David’s shoulder, I saw Kareena and Alice watching me intently from the window, their faces nearly pressed to the glass.

“That’s none of your business,” he growled, baring his teeth in an angry sneer. “Where the hell’s your girlfriend? And the other one?”

“We need to talk, David.” I shook fresh sweat from my brow.

“Like hell we do.” David narrowed his eyes and took a
step closer. “Now where are they?” Golden light sparked from
beneath his shirt and a warm amber-yellow glow radiated from the center of his chest. He raised a fist.

“Why don’t you fight like a real man?” I said, struggling
to keep my voice from breaking. My heart raced. “Stop relying
on your powers. It only proves how much of a coward you really are.”

“Shut up, kid! Unless you want me to hurt you again.”

Another step closer.

I held my ground. Shallow breaths. Knees tingling. My
short fingernails pressing into the flesh of my palms. Stinging.

He looked down his nose at me, his dark-brown, near-
black eyes judging me—evaluating my strengths. My weaknesses.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he said, so close to my face his hot, cigarette breath wafted into my nostrils. I turned my head to the side, but the scent lingered and I coughed.

“Tell me where they are, or…”

“Or you’ll what?” I sucked in a breath of muggy air and my eyes darted again toward the window.

“Or I’ll… Wait a minute.” His eyes narrowed and he began to t
urn.

Shit!

I lunged after him.

We hit the concrete with a thud, rolled off the curb and onto the street. I straddled his back and hooked an arm around his throat, taking advantage of the fact that he was winded. He arched and reached behind, twisting his fingers around my shirt. A forceful tug and I landed on the ground beside him.

Then he came at me again. I kicked his outstretched arm
away from me and wriggled out of reach, trying to scramble to my feet. My shoe caught in the storm drain and I fell forward over the curb, slamming into the pavement.

Damn it!

Black spots flashed before my eyes.

I choked, the breath knocked from my lungs.

David came up behind me and locked me against the ground on my stomach, pinning me at the waist with all of
his weight. He yanked my arms behind my back and pressed
a knee into my neck. I struggled to push him off, but his iron grasp drained my strength.

A bolt of electric energy shot through me and my lungs seized. Crushing pain flooded every inch of flesh and tissue, twisting and knotting me up inside. I couldn’t breathe.

My heart throbbed. Irregular. Pulsing up into my throat.

Surroundings blurred.

Sweat trickled into my mouth. Salty. Metallic.

I coughed, spitting up bright red.

My face burned with feverish heat, and then a headache exploded in my temples. My shoulders weakened and sharp waves of pain ripped across my sternum, crushing through my ribs.

I’d felt it once before.

Before David.

Before my pacemaker…

I choked. More blood.

“What’s the matter, Brian?” David hissed, forcing all of
his weight against my spine, smothering my face against concrete.
“Something wrong with your heart?”

Light faded. My eyelids pulled down.

Alice.

I had to stay conscious.

Allowing my eyes to close for only a second, I mustered up what little strength remained and reeled to the side.

David tumbled off me. I wiped blood from my mouth
and coughed again, propping myself up on flattened hands
against
the hot asphalt. The heat burned my palms, stimulating me just as the warmth of my fluorescence kicked in.