Elias cried out, and the other customers turned to look, but it was too late—he was already hurting, his face already twisted. Kess grabbed Silver’s shoulder with one hand and poured electricity into her. Silver froze, locked in place by the current—but so did Elias, his body rigid and unable to pull away. For a split-second they all stood like that, a horrible three-person statue. Then Kess yanked her hand back. Silver swayed on her feet, and Elias fell backward, the needle no longer in his arm, and hit the floor.
“I’m sorry,” cried Kess without thinking. “I’m sorry.” She grabbed Elias and tried to pull him away from Silver, but he was heavy and she was weak and tired from having expended so much of her charge, which had been low when she walked in. She should have charged up first, she should have known it would be dangerous—
Silver, calm and seemingly recovered from the shock Kess had given her, looked around. They were in the back room of the coffee shop, so there weren’t many other customers there, but every single one was looking at them. Most were confused, but one—a large man—was headed towards them with the look of someone about to sort something out.
Silver pulled something out of her pocket. What was it—a tissue? Some sort of gauzy fabric? She pressed it to her face, where it covered her mouth and nose and clung to her skin.
Without meaning to, Kess squeezed Elias’s shoulder so hard her nails dug in. “Cover your mouth,” she whispered in one panicked breath. “Hold your nose.” He did so, and so did she, just as Silver held up a glass orb the size of a golf ball and threw it to the ground. It smashed at the feet of the concerned citizen marching towards them, and he stopped and stared down at it.
Silver walked out of the room at a business-like pace.
Elias struggled to get to his feet one-handed, his other hand holding his nose. Kess had to help him by pulling his shirt with her free hand. Then they ran, charging in the opposite direction from Silver. Running while you couldn’t breathe, even just a little way, was torture. Elias drew ahead of Kess (why was she so slow?) but he reached back and grabbed her free hand, pulling her along. They reached the back door and slammed it open, stumbling out into the sunlit air.
They let themselves breathe.
Kess collapsed against Elias. He put his arms around her to hold her up, and his heart beat against his chest against her ear, and his heavy, gasping breaths moved through her hair.
“That stuff in the syringe,” she said when she’d caught her breath. “Did she manage to inject you?”
“I don’t think so,” said Elias, “at least not with much of it. Before we ran I saw it on the floor mostly full.”
“Okay. Okay. We have to go. She might circle around for us.”
“But what about the people inside? What did that gas or whatever do to them?”
“It already happened, whatever it was.”
“Yeah, but we have to know. We have to know what she’s capable of.”
Kess sighed and pulled away from him. As he let go of her, some part of her mind realized that this was the first time a boy had ever held her like that, and that she felt thinner and shakier standing on her own. She approached the shop with three wary steps and looked through the little window in the backdoor. “They look… fine.”
“How could they be fine? She did something to them.” He reached out as if to push the door open.
“No, it might still be in the air in there. Look, that big guy is getting up to leave. We can meet him at the front and ask him what happened.”
“She might be there.”
“Our cars are there anyway. And I think if she were coming for us she’d be here already.”
So they walked around the side of the building, and despite what Kess had said she couldn’t stop looking for Silver. She never saw her, however, and they caught the big guy on his way out.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Kess. “What happened in there?”
“What do you mean?” asked the guy, looking taken aback by the sudden question, but friendly.
“After that woman broke that thing,” said Elias. “What happened? Did you feel different or notice anything…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. A woman broke a thing? Maybe that happened before I got here.”
Kess frowned. “But it broke right—”
“That must be it,” said Elias. “Thank you anyway.”
“Sorry I couldn’t help,” said the man, and he walked away.
“It broke by his feet,” said Kess.
“I know,” said Elias. He looked around as if scanning for spies, and then turned his face down to hers. “It erased his memory.”
#
Elias drove Kess to his house. On the way, she told him all about her and Priya’s encounter with the man called Stone, and how he spoke and acted and even dressed (now that she thought of it) exactly like Silver.
“What do you think their game is?” asked Elias. “Why did they contact me on the True World Order forums? Why did they give me that lead about Holifeld company?”
“I don’t know.”
They reached Elias’s house, and he pulled into the driveway and shut off the car.
“We should go to the hospital,” said Kess, not moving to get out. “Right now we should go.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“And tell them what?”
“That a strange woman jumped out at you and stabbed you with a syringe.”
Elias shook his head. “They’d call the cops.”
“And you’d tell the cops that a strange woman jumped out at you and stabbed you with a syringe. I know they won’t believe you about the conspiracy, but you don’t have to give any details.”
“I feel fine,” he said. “Really. She was only injecting me for a second before you, uh…” He laughed.
“What?”
He laughed again, louder.
“Is this how you deal with shock?” she asked.
“No. I mean, maybe, but also it’s actually funny. You’ve accidentally electrocuted me twice.”
“I said I was sorry!”
“I know. It’s just not the sort of thing you expect to happen two times.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, realizing with horror that she was about to cry. She turned her face away from Elias and bit her lip.
“No—Kess—I don’t care. You know that. You know I wouldn’t think it was funny if I was holding it against you.”
She took a second to breathe to make sure she could speak without getting all squeaky. “Every time I do it, there’s a chance I’ll seriously hurt you.”
“But you didn’t, and you got Silver and her scary needle off me.”
Alright. Maybe that had been the right thing to do. Kess let herself look at Elias again.
“I’m just worried I’m going to Pavlovian condition you into hating me.”
In one smooth motion, he unbuckled his seat belt, leaned over, and kissed her.
###
TRUEWORLDORDER.NET, FORUM POST BY USER CLEEREYED:
I hve been VISITED!
My memry has been ERASED!
Lucky I was TRAINED to know the SIGNS!!!
I know WHY I was TARGTED I must be CLOSE to something TRUE!!!!!
###
Having kissed a boy twice was a peculiar and glittering state entirely distinct from having kissed a boy once. There must be a point of diminishing returns to kisses, after which each was only as pleasant as the last and caused no permanent changes to a person’s mental state. Kess wondered when that point would be. Perhaps she should make a chart.
Winding between and around those thoughts were admittedly more important concerns. She had to tell the other Blues about the—what should she call them? Not the Consortium. The Grays. Silver and Stone were both named after gray things, and besides, there seemed to be something gray about them, about the way they stood and spoke and looked at you.
She had to warn the others about strangers in business clothes, whose faces didn’t move enough and who might try to kidnap you or stick you with needles.
And should she warn the Reds too? The thought seemed bizarre and scandalous and even traitorous, but who knew what would happen if the Grays tried to kidnap Priya again or did some other nefarious thing to one of the Reds?
When she got to the cabin, everyone was there. They were all in the living room, sitting on the floor in a line and holding hands. It seemed strange and childish until Kess saw that Breanna, on one end of the line, had her finger stuck into an outlet. On the other end of the chain, Danny had one hand in Lorraine’s hand while his other rested palm down on the floor. All of their faces looked… content.
“There’s something I have to tell you all,” she announced. “It’s important. Could you please, um, take a break while you hear me out?”
They started to grumble, but Danny cut them off. “Later, Kess. I promise we’ll all hear what you have to say. But please, sit with us for a minute first.” He took his hand off the floor (Lorraine sighed as his palm left the wood) and held it up to Kess.
Awkwardly, Kess settled to the ground beside him and took his hand so that their metal stars rubbed together. She put her other hand on the floor.
Wonderful ran through her. A wire. There must be an actual physical wire winding through her body. It would need to bypass her heart, to be safe. And whatever changed her body had also changed her mind so that she loved it, this bright shock running through her, slowly charging her up. She glanced over at the others. The same lightning ran through each of them, tying them hand to hand. It was intimacy better and purer (Kess could only assume) than the sexual kind.
Of all the friends in all the world, of all those who had ever been friends and were now dead, Kess’s friends were the only ones to ever share like this.
#
When they were alone in Stephanie’s parent’s huge master bedroom, Priya explained what she wanted from Connor.
“I want you to hold me still, and I’m going to try to break away from you.”
If Rod knew how Connor’s mind caught on the words “hold me,” he would have mocked him for an hour straight. “Why?”
“I need to see if you’re as much stronger than me now as you were before.”
“When me and Rod did something like this, you thought we were idiots.”
“I never said that.”
“Well, I’m not actually an idiot, so I knew you thought it anyway.”
“This isn’t for fun,” said Priya. “This is to be prepared. Does our strength even have anything to do with the size of our muscles? If you don’t help me experiment, we won’t know those things when we need to.”
Connor wanted to say something flirty about “experimenting” but his mind drew a blank (he never knew what to say to girls). “Alright,” he said. “For science.”
“Really try as hard as you can to keep hold of me, alright? I know I can’t hurt you badly so I’ll try anything to get away. No holding back for either us.”
“Got it. No holding back.”
Priya turned her back to him and waited.
Connor had grabbed girls before, you know, playfully. But he’d never held a girl as hard as he could, never really tried to keep her from getting away. The thought was so uncomfortable his mind scattered off of it. He told his arms to grab Priya, but some other part of his brain canceled the order.
“If you don’t want to do it, I’ll ask one of the other guys. It’ll just be weird.”
“And it won’t be weird with me?”
“Just grab me, Connor.”
And so he did. He pulled her into his chest and pinned her arms to her side and didn’t think about the curve of her waist or how nice she smelled or anything in that entire neighborhood of thoughts because that would be too creepy to bear under the present circumstances. She pushed back at his arms and of course she was strong but he kept his grip.
She kicked back at his leg, and her foot connected with a sharp jolt of pain. Connor’s breath left his mouth with a hiss.
“Was that too much?” asked Priya.
“It hurt,” he said, “but you know something like that doesn’t hurt long for us. Keep going. No holding back.”
But instead of kicking him again, Priya kicked the floor, sending them both flying backwards off their feet. It wasn’t a move that would have worked for normal girl Priya’s size against a normal guy Connor’s size, but while they were heavier than they used to be (Stephanie had insisted everybody weigh themselves to establish that she wasn’t the only one to suddenly gain fifteen pounds) Priya’s new strength was enough to compensate, and more. Connor’s back hit the carpet, his breath thumping out of him, and Priya managed to yank one arm out of his grasp before his hand flicked up and grabbed her wrist.
He rolled over, tugging her with him, until it was her with her back to the floor. He couldn’t rely on his weight to pin her, she was too strong for that, so he had to use his muscles and push her down with his arms and his knees.
She was strong, but he was, still, stronger.
She gave up and lay back against the floor, beneath him, and the part of Connor’s brain that had skittered away from the whole idea of this “experiment” caught up with the rest of him. He leapt off of her, backed away. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She sat up and smoothed down her short hair with one hand. “Don’t be sorry. You did what I asked. The point of the experiment was to find out.” She sighed. “This isn’t fair. Kess and Lorraine aren’t lower voltage than Danny.”
“I don’t think ‘fair’ is really an option with this stuff.”
Priya pulled her knees up and rested her head on them, looking thoughtful, and Connor wished he’d never agreed to this.
#
Some part of Priya told her that she shouldn’t worry, none of their boys would ever hurt her and she should relax. Priya ignored that part and thought up ways to bring down someone stronger than her.