Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (61 page)

It was oddly clean for belonging to three men. The tile floor sparkled and the freestanding sink was polished and mildew free. I rummaged under the sink for some sort of weapon and came up with a bottle of spray bleach. Not ideal, but it would burn like hell. So far, no one had stormed the bathroom.

I had to get out of this. How? They hadn’t given me ultimatums, or made me promise anything before revealing their secrets. They told me things on faith, while withholding the one answer I needed more than any other. The one “why” haunted me. I owed it to Teresa to get this answer. She deserved to know why she took a bullet.

“Dahlia?” Noah’s voice, muffled behind the door.

“I’m armed.”

“With what, bleach?”

How the—?

He opened the door and poked his head inside. “Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Glad we agree.” He stepped in, closed the door, and
leaned against it, hands behind his back. I kept the bleach at waist level, nozzle facing him, too angry to risk pointing it directly at his eyes. I might squeeze. “I’m so sorry, Dahlia.”

“They’re just words,
Ace.
” I had to stop thinking of him as Noah, no matter whose face he wore, the deceitful bastard. “You can say them again a thousand times over, and it won’t change that you lied.”

“I never lied.”

“No?”

“Name one thing I ever told you that wasn’t true.”

“Your name.”

“My name is Noah Scott. We are one person now, Dahlia. Forever.”

“Or until you get sick of being him.”

His lips puckered. He pushed away from the door and crowded my personal space. Annoyance danced in his eyes and radiated from the tension in his shoulders.

“I want to make you understand, but I don’t know how,” he said. “Growing up, I never had an identity. I was Test Subject 0983, also known as Ace. My brothers were Test Subjects 0982 and 0984. We never had parents, friends, a family, or a future. We didn’t even have faces, unless we borrowed them from other people. I never had a real life until now.”

“Until you stole Noah’s,” I said.

“No, until I saved his.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “We saved each other. Noah Scott was dying, Dahlia. He battled lymphocytic leukemia before, and it recurred again last year. Treatments failed. He gave up. It was one of the reasons
Dr. Kinsey chose him, chose all of them. Noah would have been dead in a month.”

“So you stole the rest of his life?”

“No, he gave it up willingly when I asked him.”

I felt faint. Completely unseated by the statement. “You what?”

“I didn’t want to make our father responsible for the choice to absorb the Scotts, so I went to Noah. I told him what I was and what would happen when we joined. I promised he and his brothers would all be stronger, healthier, that we were immune to human disease. They would all live long lives.”

“As other people.”

“Not exactly, no. Noah was afraid to die, but more than that, he was afraid to leave his brothers. He’d always tried to take care of them, and he was terrified that if he wasn’t around, Jimmy would die of an overdose, and that Aaron would eventually self-destruct. He wanted to save them. He made the choice for all of them. It’s my burden, not my brothers’.”

“So, Noah’s cancer?”

“Gone.”

He freaking cured cancer. Jimmy was a recovered heroin addict. Two lives put on the straight and narrow, given a second chance at a good life. Memories were still intact, remembered as though actually lived. Emotions and desires keenly felt, experienced through new eyes. Amalgamated eyes.

“What about your feelings?” I asked. “Am I the old Noah’s former schoolmate, or Ace’s obsession?”

He shook his head and grabbed my hands. The touch sent a strange tingle up my arms. I didn’t pull away. “Neither,” he said. “And both. I was always me, from the second you walked into the shop and my heart started racing. I had Noah’s memories of you from school. He had a crush on you since junior high, Dal. He never forgot you. I never forgot you, and it’s killing me to see you look at me like I’m a stranger. Like you think I’m going to hurt you.”

“You have hurt me.”

“I know. There were so many times I wanted to say something, to point you in the right direction, but I have to protect my brothers. This has all been about protecting them.”

“And I have to protect my friends. I have to tell them what I know.”

“You can’t.” Panic washed across his face and widened his eyes. He gripped my hands painfully tight.

“Why not?” I challenged.

“Because I’ll never see you again.”

“You’ll live.”

He took a step back as though physically struck, radiating frustration and hurt.

“Will you tell me why King used Stark to shoot at me?” I asked.

“I can’t.”

I glared at him, my right hand tucking into a fist. “Then you and your fucked-up family can go straight to hell.” I punched him square in the temple. The action sent a shock of pain up my knuckles and wrist. He stumbled sideways and
cracked his head off the wall. He crumpled to the floor in a heap. I felt no satisfaction—only wrenching guilt.

I yanked open the door and shrieked. Dr. Kinsey loomed in the doorway, cold and resigned. Something stung my arm. I saw the flash of the syringe tip and King standing just over the older man’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry it came to this, Miss Perkins,” Kinsey said.

His image blurred into a Picasso of colors and shapes. Sounds muffled. I pitched forward, against something warm. Giving. And floated down. Down. Darkness.

Sixteen

Comprehension

C
onsciousness returned slowly, through a haze of scents and sensations—the odor of earth, heavy and dense, and the sharp tang of grass. Wetness had seeped through my shirt, soaking my back. I swam upward, past the throbbing at the base of my skull. I pulled, reaching for the light, and found only darkness.

I blinked the night sky into focus, blurred by light pollution, yet still dark blue and cloudy. The twisted green and brown of a tree branch invaded the left corner of my vision. No breeze stirred the air, as thick and humid as during the day. Daylight. Hours ago.

How long had I been here? Where was here, anyway?

They knocked me out. Cowards. Bastards. Scum-sucking trolls.

Noah said he’d never see me again. The memory of that statement brought fresh tears.

A sound drifted around me, carried from a great distance. I concentrated. It repeated, louder. Again. A single
word, over and over. Not just a word. No, someone was calling my name.

I tried to reply, managing only a croak. My mouth was dry, tongue thick. Water. Spit. Anything wet. I collected a bit of energy and rolled onto my left side. Found myself face-to-face with a stone wall. Chinked and mossy, it ran at least six feet high, and the length of whatever yard I lay in. It seemed familiar. A neighbor, perhaps. I was close to home. Noah hadn’t dumped me across town where I’d be hard to find—not that I planned on thanking him.

Forgoing any attempt at actual words, I let loose a scream of frustration, anger, sorrow, and hate. It echoed off the stone wall and bounced around, fleeing on the night air. The other voices drew closer. I flexed my hands, feet, legs, and found them all in working order. I rolled over the other way, toward the open lawn, and was greeted by the sight of three pairs of feet racing in my direction.

“Dahlia!”

Marco, Renee, Gage—streaks of black, blue, and brown flying toward me. I licked my lips, grateful for the rescue and ashamed of its need. Ashamed at sneaking out. Getting caught like this. For being weak and young and stupid. And grateful that both Marco and Gage had excellent senses of hearing and smell.

I managed to prop up on one elbow before they descended upon me. Questions blurred together, a cacophony of words that made no sense, and only served to make my head ache harder. Someone shushed them. Blissful silence.

“Ascua?”
Marco’s face hovered in front of mine. I focused in. His eyes moved so fast, checking me everywhere, it made me dizzy. “Are you all right?”

I’m so far from okay it’ll take a week to get there. Okay and I aren’t even on speaking terms right now. What the hell kind of question is that?

“No, I’m not,” I said.

Strong arms slipped around my torso. I launched into Marco’s embrace, desperate to hold something, anything, as long as it was solid. He pulled me tight. I anchored to him for a while. My head throbbed and my chest hurt, but that pain was bearable.

The ground rushed away. I let him carry me, too exhausted to protest. I pressed my face into his neck, against velvet-soft hair that caressed my cheeks, and just held on.

I told them
everything over two large glasses of water and a plate of saltine crackers. Story time took place in my room, because that’s where Marco deposited me once he walked three blocks back to the house, never once complaining. I immediately felt better out of the heat and in air-conditioning, and the effects of the syringe wore off fast.

They sat in a circle, listening and asking few questions. Ethan, Gage, Renee, Marco, and Simon, an attentive audience I couldn’t look at for most of the story. I didn’t want to see the anger or accusations, not if I was going to get through it all and leave nothing out. Every single detail, from my recognizing Noah that first day in the shop, to Noah’s confession
about choosing to join with Ace, all the way to Kinsey poking me with a needle. No stone unturned, no truth untold.

As I described waking up in the yard without any idea how I got there, the natives grew restless. Butts shifted, clothing whispered. Someone cleared their throat. I fiddled with my water glass, waiting for a verdict to fall.

Or at the very least, someone to speak. Fill the void. Break the silence. Put me out of my damned misery.

Marco was the first to speak. “That is unbelievable.”

“Which part?” Renee asked.

“Todo.”

I dared to look at him and saw no judgment. Only keen interest, curiosity, and mostly a sense of understanding. The same expression was shared by everyone else in the tight circle, occasionally tempered by a flicker of annoyance. I had expected their wrath. Unbridled fury at being left in the dark, lied to, and danced around. Righteous indignation at furthering the investigation on my own. I didn’t deserve their calm acceptance.

“That was pretty brave, Dal,” Ethan said. “Brave and kind of stupid, going back there on your own.”

“I know it was stupid.”

“In a way,” Gage said, “it worked out in our favor. They may not have been so forthcoming if we’d descended on them like a flock of swarming buzzards over a warm carcass. They trusted Dahlia enough to confide in her.”

Noah trusted me. King did not. He’d openly threatened to turn me into his next suit of clothing, and I didn’t doubt for a second he would have done it. “Not all of their secrets,”
I said. “They outright refused to talk about the shooting.”

Gage sucked his lower lip into his mouth, a nervous gesture he never seemed to consciously notice. “Which makes me think there’s more to the shooting than we know.”

“They admitted to so many other things,” Renee said. “To taking the lives of four people and lying about it, and a mass deception on a scale I’ve never seen before. What’s one more attempted-murder charge?”

“Remind me to ask them when we catch them,” Gage said.

“If we catch them,” I said. “They won’t go back to the apartment. Kinsey can’t go back to Weatherfield. If they’re smart, they’ll leave the city and go into hiding somewhere else far away from here.”

“No.” Gage offered a wan smile. “They won’t be smart about this. They still have one brother, Aaron, missing. I don’t see them leaving him behind.”

“So what now?” I asked. “Would it do any good to let Simon take a look at the apartment?”

“It probably couldn’t hurt,” Simon said, joining the conversation at last. “They were there in the last few hours, so any psychic residue will be fresh. I can’t guarantee anything, except a good old-fashioned try.”

“I want to go with you,” I said.

Simon shook his head. “Dahlia—”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, still woozy but stronger. “I’m going. This is my mess, and I’m going to help clean it up.”

“You’re going to need a big mop,” he said. “So what do we tell Detectives Pascal and Forney about all of this?”

Five heads, including mine, swiveled toward Gage, waiting for his decision. He remained silent for a few moments, worrying his lip.

“Nothing, for now,” Gage finally said. “We don’t know if Ortega is still being used, or has been discarded, and the minute they hear this, they’ll think of King—King?”—he looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded—“as a cop killer. They’ll have all four of them posted on every bulletin in the city.”

“Shoot to kill,” Simon added.

“Precisely.”

My stomach tightened at the idea of Noah being hunted down by a mob of angry police officers. Wounded, beaten, and strung up as an example, all for making the choice to live. He had not taken anyone against their will, not like his brothers.

“Simon, Dahlia, and I will go check out the apartment,” Gage said. “Renee, I need your ears on the police scanners, in case something turns up. Marco, Ethan, think you can do a little scouting from the air? We may get lucky.”

“We haven’t been very lucky so far,” Ethan said. Off Gage’s glare, he held up his hands in surrender. “Air scouting, absolutely.” Ethan’s ability to manipulate and channel the wind allowed him to glide along on the air currents and fly just like the raven form Marco morphed into.

Gage stood up. “Five minutes,” he said to me and Simon, and then strode from the room.

I remained on the bed, wanting everyone to leave before I attempted to stand. Just in case I wobbled or fell or something equally weak. Only Marco lingered, thwarting my plans. He scuffed his boot on the floor. Great, no lecture from Gage or Renee. Just him.

“Well?” I said.

“I am sorry, Dahlia, so sorry.”

I gaped. Not what I expected. “For what?”

“For being a self-centered ass these last few weeks,” he said. “You were my best friend and I could not respect that enough to accept your . . . rejection. I should never have been so rude to you. I wish to be your friend again.”