Toxic Heart (14 page)

“When they reach us,” Turk instructs, speaking low, “just close your eyes and start crying. Say they burn from the tear gas. No one will recognize you. I promise.”

I don’t believe him. I’m bound to be recognized. And if I’m not, what if someone is mistaken for me? I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt.

The waiting is tedious. I am sweaty and tired and nervous. I clench my hands together in front of me to stop them from shaking, and before I know it, one of the soldiers butts me with the end of his rifle. “Move up, girlie. Watch it, now.”

Turk is pushed off in a different direction, and one of the guards curls his finger at me. I walk toward him and close my eyes. “Name?”

“J-Jessica,” I stutter.

“Open your eyes.”

“They burn,” I say, just as Turk told me to. “From the gas.”

There’s a sting against my cheek. The guard has slapped me. “Open your eyes.”

I follow his order and stare at a soldier who can’t be much older than I am. I’ve never seen him before, but he has my family crest tattooed on the side of his neck.

He holds up a picture of me—the same one from the
JumboTron. I watch as his eyes flick from the picture, to me, then back to the picture.

It seems to be taking forever.

The guard raises an eyebrow. Have I been found out?

He opens his mouth and calls out, “Next!”

Suddenly, I’m being shuffled forward. The line of guards is now behind me. “Our source must have been wrong,” I hear one of the soldiers say. “Or else she left before we got here.”

I search for Turk but it’s hard to find him amid all these people—especially now that his Mohawk is gone.

I go into one tent, then another. Then I head toward the far end of the square. I’d like to stand on one of the benches to get a better look over the crowd, but I don’t want to call attention to myself.

“Well, that was messed up.”

I spin around and there’s Turk. I’m so happy to see him that I throw my arms around him. He flinches, stiffening like a board.

“Let’s hide in one of the tents until they’re done and they cut down the wire,” Turk suggests, gently pushing me away. “Then we’ll head back uptown.”

“How did they know I was here?” I ask. “Did someone at the triage center tell them?”

“Unlikely,” Turk says. “Everyone here is sick—and the nurses would’ve wanted to prevent something like this from happening, even if they don’t like you. It’s possible that someone in the Depths saw us on the bike on our way here, but it’s not likely, and anyway, they wouldn’t have known where we were going.”

“The only other people who could have known are back at the hideout,” I say. “But we snuck out.”

“Maybe one of them followed us.”

“Even so,” I say, “they’re all on our side.”

“Apparently not
all
of them,” Turk says with a grimace. He gulps. “I hate to even
think
it, Aria, but … there must be a leak. And now we’ve gotta find out who it is.”

Turk hasn’t even closed the town house door behind us before Landon whistles. “Nice haircut,” he says.

Landon and Shannon are standing in the foyer—waiting for us, I assume, since Turk texted them about the attack on our way uptown. “Aria shaved her head!” Landon shouts to whoever is listening, heading toward the kitchen. “She looks weird!”

Shannon is standing with her arms crossed over her chest, dressed in workout gear. She gives me a once-over. “I didn’t think you could get any uglier,” she says. “But I was wrong. You look like a Chihuahua.”

“Shannon,” Turk warns. “Be nice.”

“I am being nice. She should know what she looks like.”

I ignore her, pushing my way into the living room at the same time that Ryah and Jarek come tramping down the stairs. “Oh wow!” Ryah says. She’s traded her overalls for a short-sleeved pink shirt and white leggings. “You look … different.” She glances at Turk. “You too?”

Turk nods.

“But your Mohawk was a part of you. It was like a limb. Like another arm.”

“It’s just hair,” Turk says. “It’ll grow back.”

Ryah carefully touches the tips of her blue spikes, which are
gelled and pointed with precision. “Hair is not just hair,” she says. “It’s art. You of all people should know that.” She shifts her attention back to me. “All those long brown waves … 
gone
 …” She places her hand over her heart. “I could just weep!” She leans into Jarek, who’s standing right behind her. “Jarek, I’m weak! Catch me if I fall!”

He ignores her and says to me, “Aria, you should rest.”

“I’m okay,” I tell him. “Honestly.”

Jarek shrugs. He’s wearing a washed-out red henley shirt, his brown locks pulled into a ponytail. “Rest is good.”

“Hair,” Ryah whispers, talking to herself. “Gone.” She rests the back of her hand on her forehead and sighs.

“You’re okay
this time
,” Shannon says in a voice as tough as leather. Then she picks up a lamp from a side table and throws it.

Right at my head.

It comes at me like an oversized ceramic bullet. I throw my hands up and catch it just before it meets my skull. “What’s wrong with you?” I shout. “Why would you throw a lamp at my head?”

“To see if you managed to learn anything when I was teaching you to defend yourself,” Shannon says, flicking her hair back. “You’re rusty. You need to be more prepared, in case there’s another attack. Am I right, Turk?”

Turk lowers his eyes. “Aria, you
do
need to be able to defend yourself—”

“I can defend myself.”

Turk shakes his head at me. “Not well enough. It’s nothing on you. But lots of people are after you, and we got lucky today. If they had recognized you, we would have had to fight them—us against
a slew of soldiers. I can handle myself, but I can’t take care of both of us. So tomorrow? We start training you hard-core, picking up where you left off with Shannon.” Turk cocks his head at the staircase leading to the library. “But first, we’ve gotta talk to Hunter. I already texted him.”

The guard posted outside the library lets us in, and there’s Hunter, huddling over some printouts with the same group of men who were here yesterday.

I glance at the table. Maps of the Aeries, specifically the West Side. The man to Hunter’s right sees me looking at the papers and flips them over.

No one’s paying much attention to him, though. All eyes are on my hair.

Or rather, my head.

Hunter’s expression is hard to read. “Guys, give me a moment with Aria and Turk.” The men exchange glances, then stand, their chairs screeching as they pick up their TouchMes and coffee and shuffle out of the room.

Hunter stands, too, closing the door once they’re all gone. The door clicks, and I suddenly feel odd, positioned between Hunter and Turk with a shaved head and a bucket full of questions.

Hunter struts up to me and places his hand on the side of my face. My entire body warms at his touch. Is he mad at me? Surprised? Disappointed?

He leans forward and kisses my fuzzy head. Then he smiles. “Smart.”

“Hmm?”

“This will endear you to the poor even more.”

I think back to the moment after I shaved my head—when I rose from the stool and people cheered. I didn’t shave my head because I wanted them to do that. I did it in support of Steve and Yolie and Kerry and everyone else at the triage center.

Because it felt right.

“It wasn’t so … calculated,” I say to Hunter.

“Look, Hunter,” Turk says, stepping beside me. “We were raided.”

Hunter’s eyebrows shoot up. “You were
what?
”

“Aria’s family, they sent out troops. They closed off the square where the triage tents are and searched for Aria. They didn’t recognize her because of her hair, and her eyes were pretty red from the tear gas—”

“Tear gas? Aria, are you all right?” Hunter asks, reaching for me and holding me tenderly. My heart beats faster at his touch.

“I’m okay,” I say.

“The thing is,” Turk says, “how did they know she was there? I can’t imagine anyone caught a decent glimpse of Aria on my bike—we were going
fast
. The only people who saw us leave here, who could have followed us and guessed where we were going—”

“Are
inside
the hideout,” Hunter says, finishing Turk’s sentence. He pulls away from me and rubs his temples. “Damn. It’s hard to believe.” The color drains from his face, and it looks like he might topple over. He sinks into an empty chair at the head of the table.

“I’ve been working so hard,” he says. “And it’s all for nothing if one of my guys is leaking our plans to your family and the Fosters.”

Hunter rests his head on the table, clearly upset.
My family and the Fosters …

“Wait!” I cry. I turn to Turk. “When Thomas kidnapped me, he said that they were able to locate me at the compound. But he never said
how
. And now this incident with Kyle … What if there’s some sort of
tracker
on me?”

Hunter looks straight at me, concerned. “Hmm,” he says. “Seems like it’s time for a trip to the infirmary.”

Hunter and Turk lead me through the main floor, past the kitchen and the armory. They’re both walking swiftly. Nervously.

At the end of the long hallway is the infirmary. Hunter punches the touchpad, and the door opens onto a small room painted white with three empty cots and a station full of medical supplies. Much like at the triage center, there are bandages and gauze, empty syringes and vials of antibiotics, rubbing alcohol and medical instruments.

Unlike at the triage center, though, there’s a tall glass cabinet half the length of the wall that is full of bottled mystic energy: small vials glowing with green extracted energy that pulses and swirls, protected by thin layers of quicksilver.

Quicksilver, or mercury, is the only material that can contain mystic power. Elissa Genevieve told me this back in my father’s office, when she and I hid in the draining room and watched a mystic’s energy be stolen from her. I can still remember the piercing, painful sound of the mystic’s cries as the life was torn from her body.

“Here,” Hunter says. He points to a tall oval contraption fashioned out of glistening black metal.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“A scanner,” Turk replies. He presses his thumb to a touchpad built into the metal. There’s a whirring noise as the machine comes to life and a slight hiss as an invisible lock is opened. The machine springs open like a clamshell. It’s hollow, lined with soft-looking white padding.

“Step inside,” Hunter says to me. He sits down at a narrow white desk and cues up a TouchMe. “If there
is
a tracker on you, this thing will detect it.”

I shake my head, thinking of the coffinlike contraption back at Dr. May’s office and the awful noise it used to make—
bang, bang, bang
.

“I really don’t want to,” I say. My lips begin to tremble; I touch my fingers to my mouth, trying to make the trembling stop, but I can’t. “Please don’t make me.”

“Hey,” Turk says. He places one hand on my lower back and a zip of mystic energy shoots up my spine—which only makes me more upset. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you. Trust me. Okay?”

I take a deep breath. Of course Turk and Hunter won’t let anything happen to me. “Okay,” I say.

Hunter smiles. “Don’t worry, Aria. It’ll be over in a minute.”

I nod, then step inside the machine as it closes around me.

Everything smells like lemon. Clean. Fresh. I close my eyes, try to think of happy things: the first time Hunter kissed me—the sweet
taste of his tongue on my lips, the soft feel of his hair beneath my fingertips, the coiled muscles of his shoulders, the firmness of his chest.… We haven’t kissed like that in so long.

Then I think of the sound of his laugh—the throaty scratch of his voice as he whispers in my ear. The stirring in my body every time we touch. The strong rays of energy that jet from his fingertips, shooting out green blazes that ignite the sky; the way his arms wrapped around me as we plummeted through the roof of my parents’ apartment building. His magic. His power. His love for me—what he would do, has done to protect me. To save me.

There is no banging in this machine. There are no scary thoughts. There’s just a soft, low hum as sensors scan me from the top of my bald head to the tips of my bare toes and I overflow with memories of Hunter, the boy I love.

The first thing I see when I step out of the machine is Turk.

Frowning.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Hunter glances up from the TouchMe. “You’re clean,” he says. “No tracker.”

“But … how did Kyle find me at the triage center, then? And Thomas back at the compound?”

Hunter sighs. “I have no idea. But I’m going to find out.”

“Meanwhile,” Turk says, “we have to assume this means there’s a traitor after all. And it’s up to us to figure out who he or she is.” He glances at Hunter, then at me. It’s shocking to see Turk so serious, with no jokes or witty remarks. “Nobody speak a word of this
to anyone. If it gets out that we know someone at the hideout is betraying us, whoever it is might try to cover his tracks.”

“Agreed,” Hunter says.

Suddenly, I feel my eyes begin to flutter, and I realize I’m exhausted. “Guys? I’m going to go upstairs and rest.”

“Of course,” Hunter says, getting up from the desk and putting his arm around me. “I love you.”

In my room, I take off my—no,
Shannon’s
jeans and shirt and toss them into a pile of clothes next to the bed.
Must do laundry
, I remind myself. Though I don’t want to admit to anyone here that I have no idea how.

I’m about to crawl into bed and get under the covers when there’s a loud buzzing noise. A TouchMe.

Whipping my head around the room, I quickly realize that it’s
my
TouchMe, which is on my desk. But who in the Aeries would be calling me?

I grab it and glance at the screen. Restricted. I slide the lock and press Accept with my thumb. “Hello?”

There’s a second of silence. Then I hear someone breathing.

“Who is this?” I ask.

A familiar baritone says, “Well, hello there, little sister. I’ve been
dying
to hear your voice.”