Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy (57 page)

“No. He’s a Tracker. He could probably find us with his eyes closed.”

“That sounds like a useful talent.”

“I wouldn’t call it a talent.”

“True. Well, a useful ability then.” He folded his hands together on top of the table. “It’s better than whatever I have, apparently.”

“Or more obvious. Don’t worry so much about what you can do. The important thing is we’re together, and together we’ll be much stronger. All of us—the Fluorescent Ones.”

“Fluorescent Ones?”

“That’s what we’ve been calling ourselves. Maybe it’s lame, but…”

“No. I like it.” His lips separated into a toothy grin.

“He’s not one of us,” someone said in a husky voice from behind me.

I swiveled my chair around.

“Brian!?” I groaned, disgusted with the bitter look on his face. “Jesus, don’t start this again.”

“Don’t butt into things you don’t know shit about, Kareena,” Brian said, rolling his shoulders back as he approached. “You don’t know him like I do. You don’t know who he really is.”

“And you do?” I glared back at him and scoffed. “He left when you were, like, what? Eleven? And you think that after all these years, you still know who he is?”

“I asked you to stay out of this, Kareena.” Brian made a fist. “I ought to rearrange your face for what you did to me back then, Taylor.”

“Brian, come on.” Taylor got up from his seat. “Let’s talk about this, please.”

“Talk about what? How you abandoned me because you were a coward? About how you left me as the only target for our freak parents to pick on? You knew I had a heart problem and you knew how much it disappointed them. But you… you had to run off and save your own ass. You had to leave me there to rot in that nightmare other people thought was a normal family. Mom and Dad didn’t give a shit about either of us, but at least when you and I were together, I felt like we had a chance.”

The hostess at the café podium looked over at us and I tensed up.

“Guys. Stop,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “You’re making a scene. People are looking.”

“I’m sorry, man, really,” Taylor said, keeping his cool. “I didn’t mean to leave you there like that. I just—I just had to get away.” He shrugged. “You know Dad, always going on about how we’d have to enlist and then Mom always freaking out about everything. What was I supposed to do? Stay there and let them take me down with the ship?”

“You could have gotten me help. You could have done something for your own brother, damn it!”

“It’s too late for that,” I interjected. “Brian, please. You can’t change the past, and even if you could, it wouldn’t change the fact that he
is
one of us right now.”

“I don’t care what he is, I—”

“Excuse me?” It was the woman from the podium. “Could you take this outside, please? This isn’t the time or place.” She crossed her arms. “Don’t make me call security on what’s obviously some kind of… family matter.”

“Ma’am, we’re sorry for the trouble,” Taylor said, lowering his head. “I was just leaving anyway.”

“I thought so.” Brian sneered, scoffing at the sight of Taylor turning away.

“Shut up, Brian,” I growled. “You’re only making things worse. Go back upstairs and pack your shit or whatever.” I glanced at the hostess. “I apologize, Ma’am. We’ll settle this elsewhere.”

“Let’s go, Kareena.” Brian gestured for me to follow him. I glanced at Taylor, who was already walking off, and then back at Brian.

“I’ll meet up with you guys in a little while.”

Brian rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine.” He walked off toward the elevators and I waited for him to get out of sight before bolting off after his brother.

“Taylor, wait!”

He was already unlocking the door to his room.

“Yes?” He propped open the door with his shoe.

“They want to leave, but I want to say goodbye first. I couldn’t really do that in front of your brother. I mean, he’s really not himself at all right now. I’m sorry. I tried. I really—”

“Kareena?” He paused and looked around nervously, letting his foot slip from the doorway and the door click closed.

“Yes?”

He bit his lip and then ran a hand through his short hair.
It was a classic Brian-like thing to do, actually, and it made me laugh to myself.

“This is going to sound crazy,” he started, looking me in the eye, “but just hear me out, please.”

“I’m listening.”

“Do you feel like you fit in with the others?”

The question caught me off guard. “Uh… Well,
obviously we all have the same stuff in us, but I don’t know if I
fit in.
They have their own drama going on most of the time.”

“Brian has his girlfriend, right?”

I nodded.

“And David?”

“He can take care of himself,” I added with a shrug.

“Then I’ll be honest with you here. I can’t promise to do any better than they have, but if you want, you can come with me and I’ll try to put you up someplace a lot nicer than this. Somewhere you can get some fresh air. A place to clear your head, even if only for a little while.”

I stood there, silently staring at him. “Are you serious about this?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

Run away with Taylor?

I hardly knew him, and yet his offer made more sense to me than anything the others had said in the past forty-eight hours. This guy had a real life—a real job and a plan to keep on living. As long as I was with the others, my future had been stunted. It wasn’t about me anymore. It was about them. Always about
them.
Hell, I was old enough to make my own decisions. I could do whatever I wanted.

If only I knew what that was…

“I don’t know, Taylor. It’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? I mean, the Saviors pick us up and move us whenever they want, and who can say when they’ll tear me out of whatever place you put me up in and drop me right back in the middle of these three again? Really?”

He took my hands into his and our eyes locked.

“I don’t want to leave you with them,” he said. “I’m worried
about you.”

I gasped. A warm stream of purple light leached
through his fingers and into mine, making my hands tingle.

“Why do you care about me so much?” I asked, trying not to lose myself in the oddly pleasant sensation of his fluorescent touch. “We barely know each other.”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I just feel like I need to help you. But like I said, I can’t promise you anything better, even though I’ll try. I know you want something better than this, and you deserve it. They’re not really pulling for you right now. If all you guys do is fight, what good is it doing for you to even be with them at all?”

David and I didn’t fight. Well, okay, maybe we did. He had something wrong with him and didn’t want to admit it. Brian was glued to Alice and couldn’t think about anything else because of it. Alice was… ugh, Alice.

“Okay, let’s say—hypothetically—I agree,” I started. “How
am I going to go back with you to Canada? I don’t have a passport and…”

“I’ve got friends, too, you know? We’ll stay near the border
if we have to. I know it’s a crazy idea and… ah, forget it. It was stupid of me to even—” He released my hands.

“No.”

“I’m sorry. I—”

“No. I mean it’s not a stupid idea. If
I get teleported back here, then, oh well. I’ll deal with it. But, I have a suspicion you’ll be coming with us next time anyway.
There’s no way this whole meeting was coincidental. We were all drawn to this place because of what we are.”

“I was drawn here all the way from Canada?” He chuckled lightly.

I crossed my arms. “And that purple light inside you is a hallucination, right?”

“No.” He fell silent. “Okay, well, what do you want to do? You don’t have to—”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Y-you will?”

“Yeah. I’m kind of screwed right now anyway. Maybe I can enjoy a few minutes of life in between all of the drama. I don’t own shit anymore, so what have I got to lose?”

. . .

Taylor offered to buy me a few things to help get me back on my feet once we got to the new city, so I decided not to return to my room. I had David’s coin in my pocket still, and if I had gone back to say goodbye, I’d probably have ended up being confronted by Brian. It didn’t matter what
he
thought about Taylor. I had a good feeling about him and that was all that mattered.

I mean, yeah, maybe he looked a lot like Brian and that might have influenced my decision. Hell, I wanted Brian and couldn’t have him. Maybe… just maybe, Taylor might want me. Or maybe I could get out of the way of Alice’s and Brian’s emotional rampages. David and I almost had a thing going but… I didn’t really want him. We agreed—no broken hearts; no hard feelings.

Taylor finished packing his carry-on bag and double-checked all of his dresser drawers for leftover items.

“I already checked,” I said, trying to smile even as a twinge of nausea roiled my stomach.

“Thanks.”

We headed to the door and then down the hall to the front desk to check out.

That’s when I started to second-guess myself.

What the hell am I doing?
What kind of idiot girl runs off with a guy she met only a day ago—regardless of whether or not he happened to have the same kind of alien DNA surging through his bloodstream as she did?

Who would tell the others where I’d gone?

Oh, screw it. The others don’t care about me.

I sat down on a burgundy leather couch in the lobby and watched Taylor from a distance. The receptionist with the weird dark jagged lines going through her light was there, checking him out of his room.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying very well, but she was pointing at some paperwork and he was looking it over. Then he folded the papers and tucked them into the pocket of his coat.

He thanked her and handed her his keycard. Their fingers touched briefly and I saw his color flash.

I covered my mouth to stifle a yelp of surprise as my heart almost leapt from my chest.

As Taylor turned to walk toward me, the brown ridges of the receptionist’s infection softened and faded away. Then the dull grey light inside her burst to life, glowing like an orb of white energy.

“What the hell?” I whispered beneath my breath.

Taylor approached me and bent over at the waist to look me in the eye. “Hey. Everything okay?” He waved a hand in
front of my face, but my eyes remained locked on the woman.

“Having second thoughts?” he asked. “You don’t have to come with me if you don’t—”

“Shh!” I silenced him with a flattened hand toward his face.

The sickening darkness inside the receptionist had changed.

Holy shit.

She’d been started…

Chapter
14

S
hould I tell him?

Should I tell the others?

“Is something wrong?” Taylor propped his carry-on back on its feet and took a seat beside me on the couch. “Do you need a few minutes or something?”

“You’re a goddamn Starter,” I muttered.

“What?”

“A-a… Starter. Like Alice. The Saviors must have made another one because they knew she didn’t want to do it anymore. Oh, Jesus Christ.” I folded over and dropped my face into my hands. “Shit. Shit. Shit!”

“Kareena, keep your voice down. What does that mean? Starter?”

I hadn’t explained to him in much detail what Alice could do.

“I can’t talk about it right now. Can we just get the hell out of here, please?” I bounded up off the couch.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Kar—”

“Yes!” I’d already started toward the exit. Taylor had to dart after me to keep up.

We left through the rotating glass doors, rushed across the crosswalk, and then turned a corner at the end of the block, finding ourselves on a sparsely populated stretch of sidewalk.

“Okay, what now?” he asked, leaning over to investigate the heavy scuff marks on the wheels of his roller bag. “Crap. This was kind of expensive and not really meant for—”

“Damn it! They screwed us.”

“Who?” Taylor tipped his head to the side. “I have no clue what you’re going on about.”

“We have to go somewhere safe. Somewhere there aren’t
many people. It’s only going to be a matter of time before those things start pushing you around—making you do things you don’t want to do.”

“Does this have something to do with the Saviors?” he asked.

“Yes! They’ve…” My head started pounding again. “Oh, no.” I doubled over as a massive headache flooded my skull. “Oh, God.” I held my face in my hands and blindly reached out for Taylor as my surroundings closed in on me. The pain in my temples increased.

“Kareena!” A familiar voice called to me from the distance.

“David?” I could barely see him through warping spirals of light flickering in and out of my vision. I cupped my forehead and squinted, trying to see where he was coming from.

“Kareena, are you okay?” he asked, jogging up to us. “Taylor, what’s going on? What's happening to her?”

“I-I don't know, man. We were just leaving and—”

“Leaving!? What the hell do you mean? Leaving?”

Warm, strong fingers wrapped around my wrist—definitely David’s.

“It’s okay. It was my idea,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “Back off.” The light brightened even more until I could see nothing but—the Prism.

“You cannot go with him,” it said, its voice wavering while rainbow flashes of color sparkled all around it. “His fluorescence is tainted.”

“
What?” I shook my head and grunted against the
pounding headache just beginning to taper off. “What do you mean?”

“His fluorescence is unnatural. What the Saviors have done to him may put us all at further risk of infection. For your own safety, stay with the others. The other Fluorescent Ones need you.”

“What? Wh—” My head felt heavy and I tumbled backward. David caught me in his arms and helped lift me back onto my feet. I pushed his hands off me. The radiant lights faded into nothing and my peripheral vision came back into focus.