The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (25 page)

“
What
happened?”

“
Most were
killed.”

“
Is that why there aren’t
more of you—of us—here?”

Elena nodded. “They are afraid. Those
we manage to find rarely agree to join. They want to live simple,
happy lives, and I don’t blame them. I often wished to live such a
life.” She smiled and the wrinkles on her face bunched up in the
corners of her eyes. “But that was not my job. My job was to keep
the others safe.” She took a quick breath and coughed sharply, her
throat thick and raspy. “Haven,” she said quietly. “It’s you. You
must do this after I am gone.”

“
Do what?” asked
Haven.

“
You must find more, like
us, and bring them here. Keep them safe. You and Marius and
Corva—even Dormer—all of you must
keep
them safe
.”

“
But why? What’s going to
happen?”

“
I don’t know,” said
Elena, shaking her head. “I don’t know. But if Bernam succeeds at
becoming a hybrid, there is no hope for any of us.” She took a deep
breath. “I understand if you want to leave. You can try to live a
normal life—but I hope you will stay. You could make
such
a difference
here.”

“
I—I’ll do it.” Haven felt
as if she were making a promise she didn’t know she could
fulfill.

Elena smiled and leaned her head back
against the trunk of the tree. She looked up through the branches
and at the distant lights on the ceiling. The light filled her eyes
and sparkled like tiny stars. She let out a deep sigh, her body
relaxed, and she was still.

Haven reached out and gently squeezed
Elena’s hand.

The blue lights floating over the pond
drifted across the water and circled the trunk of the tree. They
landed on Elena’s body, covering her in a shroud of light. The
lights pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat, until one by one, they
blinked out and disappeared.

31

C
olton sat on the edge of a rickety old cot in a small room
with rounded corners and poor ventilation. The walls were rusted
red. He felt like he was in some sort of sewage tank that had been
drained and furnished just for him.

He gently rested the heels of his
palms against his temples and pushed until the sharp pain in his
head lessened to a dull, continuous pressure. The high-pitched
scream that had echoed in his ears ever since he awoke quieted to a
distant but constant drone.

White lights danced across his
vision—big white blobs chased smaller blobs, absorbed them, and
split into a dozen tiny dots, only to join with bigger dots and
begin the process all over again.

The headache, the noise, and the white
lights were bad enough that Colton wished he were dead or asleep,
but the worst part was the emptiness.

In the pit of his stomach, twisting up
his spine, was the distinctive feeling of nothingness. Colton felt
like he was missing a part of his soul, as if a deep hollow had
been carved into his very being.

Even his bones were cold.

He pinched his forearm hard enough to
leave a bright red mark but felt nothing. Colton bit the inside of
his cheek and tasted blood, but there was no pain.

He pushed himself up from the
squeaking cot and waited until the fireworks display of a thousand
new white lights slowly drifted out of his vision.

A single light bulb was screwed into
the short ceiling of the room and cast down a sad, yellow glow.
Colton reached up and touched it, focusing every bit of himself
into the tips of his fingers so that he could draw even a fraction
of the light’s heat.

Nothing.

He lowered his hand and stood in the
middle of the room, lost.

The last thing he remembered was
watching Bernam and Reece kneeling next to the old woman—the woman
that Bernam had asked Colton to hurt. The way she looked up—the
life in her eyes—had made it impossible for Colton to go through
with it. Bernam promised that it was the only way to help the
others that were being persecuted, but that wasn’t enough for
Colton to agree to take the old woman’s ability.

Does that make me
weak?
he wondered. Colton knew that some
people believed that hard decisions had to be made in order to
prevent great atrocities—that sometimes a few must be sacrificed in
order to save many—but could he be the kind of person to make those
decisions?

He had turned away from Bernam’s plan,
and it seemed that his punishment was to be stripped of his
powers—to be like he had been before he first realized he was
different.

Colton hoped the old woman was
okay.

The image of a girl lying in the grass
next to a house flashed across his memory and Colton suddenly
remembered that someone else had been with the old woman—someone
that had made him feel stronger and more confident in every way,
even if it the feeling had only lasted a brief moment.

He tried to picture the person in his
mind, but all he could remember was brown hair and—

A sharp pain in his stomach made him
double over. He dropped to his knees and clenched his teeth as an
imaginary knife blade twisted deep into his torso, all the way to
his spine.

The pain slowly faded but left behind
a lingering ache. Colton’s breaths came quickly, as if he had just
ran a mile uphill. His chest shuddered violently with the heavy
pounding of his heart.

He stood slowly and walked to the only
door in the room. The door had rounded corners and had been set
into the wall a foot off the ground, furthering the feeling that
Colton was stuck inside some sort of metal lung. He expected the
door to be locked and to find himself a prisoner, but the rusted
handle turned loudly and the heavy slab of metal swung open with a
soft groan. Stepping over the foot-high doorjamb was like going
through a submarine portal.

There were several doors along the
dark hallway that led away from his room. Each looked exactly like
his, and Colton assumed they were the entrances to equally dismal
lodgings. The hallway turned a corner and a room opened on his left
that had no door—a kitchen.

The cluttered room was packed with
short stacks of cast-iron skillets, racks of utensils, and two
refrigerators. Shelves loaded with jars of spices and boxes of
cleaning supplies lined the walls. An old, wide stove rested on one
side of the room, lines of ancient rust running down its broad
door. The window in the door was foggy with grime. A forgotten
microwave had been banished to the darkest corner of the kitchen;
it sat crookedly atop a pile of dirty dishrags, its plug cut off
halfway down its length, exposing the wires.

A pot of stew sat bubbling gently on
one of the stove’s burners, steam slowly rising from the thick
concoction. Colton sniffed deeply but could only smell the slight
metallic tinge that had been present since he had first
awoken.

He wanted to taste the stew—to find
out if all of his senses were completely muted—but he was eager for
answers and instead walked on, farther down the hallway.

He wanted to find his
mother.

Bernam hadn’t told him the whole truth
about what they were doing in that neighborhood—hadn’t mentioned
that the twins were going to set all those houses on fire—so Colton
was unsure if the man was lying when he said that another group of
Sources and Cons were holding his mother captive.

He had to be sure.

The hallway led to a huge, domed room.
Morning light poured in around a giant fan at the top of the
ceiling and bounced off mirrors bolted all around the dome,
illuminating the entire floor.

Many doors lined the bottom edge of
the concrete dome, some larger than others. The entire space was
littered with tables, machinery, books, papers, and other odds and
ends. Colton was alone; the cluttered floor was silent.

A pair of swinging double doors nearby
flew open and a small boy ran into the dome. He held a pair of
glasses in one hand and wiped streaming tears from his face with
another. The boy pushed Colton aside and disappeared down the
hallway that led past the kitchen.

The double doors from which the boy
had emerged swung slowly back and forth until they came to a
rest.

Colton walked toward the doors, moving
slower than he would have liked. Every time he walked too fast, the
knife in his belly would return, twisting painfully as it burrowed
toward his spine.

He passed tables full of obsolete
electronic equipment—boxy computer screens and big circuit boards.
Colton wondered if he had not only been taken to a different place,
but also to a different time.

There was a small window in each of
the swinging doors, but the glass was so dirty that Colton could
only see a vast, bright smudge of white.

He pushed open one of the doors and
stood in the entrance to a long, grassy field. Rows of trees had
been planted in a grid pattern on the half of the field closest to
the swinging doors. Some of the trees were rich with brilliant
green leaves, but others were dead, their black trunks crooked and
twisted.

Walking through the rows of trees
fifty feet away, her head cast downward to watch her own feet kick
through the grass, was a girl with brown hair. In the bright light
cast down from the ceiling, Colton saw that her hair was shot
through with light streaks of red.

He recognized her immediately and
waited for the strong connection to return—the feeling that he was
being drawn closer to her even though he was standing still. Colton
felt nothing. When he had seen the girl lying in the grass near the
old woman, the world around him had dimmed so that all he could see
was her eyes, looking back at him. All of that was gone.

Colton looked down at the ground and
realized that he couldn’t even smell the fresh grass beneath his
feet.

I’m dead inside,
he thought.

As if she heard him, the girl’s head
snapped up and her eyes narrowed as she glared at him with cold
malice.

Colton could tell she recognized him,
and the anger on her face made him wish they were only seeing each
other for the first time.

Blue light ignited in her eyes and
they burned like tiny stars. Without a moment’s hesitation, she ran
toward Colton. He stepped back in confusion, unable to decide if he
should try and defend himself or turn and run.

Thinking about it made him feel even
weaker, so he just stood there, frozen, until she jumped into the
air and slammed into him with her shoulder, tackling him to the
ground.

She grunted as she fell on him and
pinned his arms down with her legs. She straddled his chest and
pressed her open palms to his temples. The light in her eyes was
too bright and Colton tried to turn his head to the side, but she
forced him to remain still.

She was
strong
.

Concentrated blue energy trailed out
from the corner of her eyes and drifted up into the air in long,
wispy lines, dissipating above her head.

“
What did you do to my
brother?!” she said between clenched teeth.

Colton screamed as she pressed against
his skull. He had thought he could not feel anything but the dull
ache in his skull and the knife in his belly—that the rest of his
senses were numb—but he was wrong. The pain coursing through his
entire body was immeasurable. Every inch of his skin burned as if
he were being showered with acid.

The girl’s hands exploded with blue
light and Colton screamed louder.

“
Is he alive?!” she
shouted.

Colton writhed under her grip but she
kept him firmly pinned down. He couldn’t help but look into her
eyes and was blinded by the piercing blaze.

“
I don’t know!” he said
between screams.

“
Haven!” someone
shouted.

The girl kicked Colton’s stomach as
she was pulled away by two silhouettes. Colton blinked his eyes
until the blurriness cleared. A stocky man with stubble on his
shiny head held one of the girl’s arms and a pretty woman with
shock-white hair held the other.

Colton coughed and rolled onto his
side, clenching his stomach.

“
This is not a good idea,”
said the man. His Russian accent was thick. “You said yourself that
he did not hurt Elena.”

“
But she’s dead!” said the
girl—Haven—finding new strength and nearly breaking
free.

“
She’s dead,” agreed the
woman with white hair. “And this helps
nothing
.”

Haven glared at Colton until the blue
light in her eyes faded and blinked out. She relaxed and closed her
eyes. The man and the woman that were holding her slowly let go but
didn’t move away.

Colton pushed himself up to a sitting
position. He looked at the skin on his arms and felt the back of
his neck—the girl’s energy hadn’t physically burned him at all. A
slight tingling sensation still danced over his entire body, just
beneath his skin, as if a million tiny needles were jabbing down
just hard enough to draw blood.