Connor was surfing the Internet in a bored, only-half-paying-attention way when someone knocked on his bedroom door. Before he could respond there was another knock, and then a wild flurry of knocking like someone was truly desperate to get inside.
“You can come in, Lily.”
His little sister flounced through the door and hopped onto the bed. “Good morning. Did you have dreams?”
“One or two.”
“Were they about girls?”
“No,” Connor lied, “they were about yellow elephants.”
“Yellow elephants. Yel-low el-e-phants. Yeeeeelllow Elephaaaaants. Danny’s here for you.”
Connor leaped up from his chair. “Why didn’t you say that first?”
“I wanted to hear about your dreams. Why are you—”
But Connor was already out the door and on his way down the stairs.
Danny was in the kitchen, and Connor’s mother was serving him breakfast.
“Thank you so much, Mrs. McKenna,” said Danny after taking a bite of scrambled egg. “You didn’t have to.”
“Oh, I was making a batch anyway. And I haven’t seen you in a while. Connor keeps disappearing off to your place.”
“I think my mom is getting sick of us.”
“Hah. Morning, Connor.” She handed him a plate already heaped with eggs. “When does soccer start up again, by the way?”
Danny smiled, but shook his head. “I’m actually not sure I’m going to do soccer this year.”
“What? Why not? Connor needs you.”
“Connor’ll have Rod.”
Mom’s lip twitched the way it always did when someone reminded her of Rod and she had to keep herself from looking disapproving.
“Can I have the red pepper?” asked Lily, taking the stool at the bar next to Danny and pulling close a plate of eggs.
“It’s cayenne pepper, sweetie,” said Mom. “Here you go, but you won’t like it if you use too much.”
“Have you done any good puzzles lately?” Danny asked, and Lily launched into a detailed description of the 3d puzzle she wanted for her birthday.
What if Danny infected Lily? He was breathing Blue breath on her right now.
“Come on,” said Connor, clapping Danny on the shoulder.
“Thanks again for the food, Mrs. McKenna. Good luck with that puzzle, Lily. It sounds really cool.” Danny followed Connor outside, past the chicken run and rabbit hutch and behind the big grayed-wood storage shed.
As soon as Connor was sure no one could see them he spun around to face Danny. “What was that with my Mom and sister?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you being so nice-y nice to them?”
“I like your family. I’ve always liked your family. The way I feel about them hasn’t changed.”
Connor huffed in a way he meant to come off as dismissive and cool. He realized too late that there really is no cool way to huff. “You’ve gotten better at lying, by the way.”
“I could always lie, Connor. I just didn’t do it because it was wrong.”
“And it’s not wrong now?”
Danny sighed. “No, it still is. But now we do wrong things. It’s how it goes.”
“So why are you here?”
“Our formal group summit ended badly. I thought a friendly one-on-one meeting might work better.”
“Work better at what?”
“At making sure nothing stupid happens. Here.”
Danny kneeled down and held his hand out a few inches above the ground. Blue-white electricity crackled between his palm and the dirt and kept crackling for what seemed like a long time. When it fizzled out, Danny swayed and almost fell over and caught himself. He wavered a little as he got to his feet. “That’s all my charge. Getting rid of it like that tires me out—now I’m two kinds of harmless.”
“I don’t know what you expect, Danny. And I don’t know why you came to me.”
“I believe they’ll listen to you, Connor. You’re everyone’s friend. You think I should have gone to Rod?”
“No. I meant… What about Priya?”
For the first time since he’d shown up, Danny looked uncomfortable. “I don’t like seeing Priya, now. It’s weird.”
“Because you two used to…”
“Yeah. But anyway, what I want from you is a promise that you guys—the Reds—won’t do the next thing.”
“The next thing.”
“No breaking stuff, no graffiti, no attacks. No—I don’t know—kidnapping? Libel? Whatever.”
Connor frowned. “Why do you assume it would be us doing the libel and graffiti? This whole time it’s been you just as much as us.”
“You’re right, it has been. And if the Blues do the next thing, you guys are free to respond.”
“You’re doing it again, Danny.”
“Doing what?”
“Assuming you’re better than us. Assuming we’re the ones who have to be reined it, and if it’s up to you and your Blues everything will be fine.”
“That’s not what’s happening. I’m giving you the opportunity to help me—”
Connor pushed him. He didn’t mean to.
Well, he didn’t mean to mean to.
Danny’s back hit the shed wall with a sound like a door slamming shut. It had to have hurt. He winced as he hit, but then relaxed against the wall as if he meant to be standing there. He looked freaking casual.
“So what do you say?” Danny asked.
He was going to tell people about this. Lorraine, probably. He was going to tell the whole story and he’d look level-headed and noble and Connor would look… Connor wanted to run away or yell or rip the shed down with his bare hands or something.
“Fine,” he said instead. “I promise we won’t be the ones who do ‘the next thing.’ It’s all on you.”
“Sounds good to me.” Danny stuck out his hand.
Connor shook it and added, in a low voice, “Sorry about, you know…”
“Forget it.” Danny started to leave, but before he did he turned back in a one-more-thing sort of way. “Look, I don’t want to offend you, so just take this how I say it. Why spend a lot of energy worrying about someone else thinking they’re a better person than you when you can spend that energy just being a good person, and then it doesn’t matter? Say goodbye to your mom for me.”
Connor waited until Danny left. And then he punched the shed. The old wooden board splintered beneath his fist. He let his hand drop, and bits of paint crackled away and fell to the ground. He shook the stiffness out of his hand and went inside.
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###
E-MAIL FROM ELIAS KAPLAN TO KSENYA CARPENTER.
I lost music today, all of it. It’s just sounds now.
###
Elias’s mom answered the door. Kess had met her once before, the day they met Silver and Elias got injected with the goop that was now turning him into a Gray. After that encounter, they’d gone back to his house to listen to music and pretend nothing weird or scary had happened. His mother was a tall dark-haired woman who radiated intelligence and smiled wide with crooked teeth.
“Kess!” she said when she saw the girl on her doorstep. “It’s good to see you again. Elias will be so happy you’re here. He’s been… Anyway, I’m glad you came. Elias!”
She disappeared into the back of the house as her son came down the stairs. He wore a short-sleeved dark shirt, and his left forearm was covered in pen markings. He’d drawn neat squares in black ink across his skin up to his elbow. It was just like the pattern the little girl, Cara, had drawn on the pavement in Johnston.
“So,” he said, “why are you here?”
“You sent me an email.”
“Yes.”
“It said you lost music.”
“Yes.”
“And when you first played me your favorite song, you acted like a missionary sharing the key to life eternal.”
“Yes.”
“So I thought you’d be sad.”
“You thought I’d be sad,” said Elias. “So you came here to see me.”
“Well… yes.”
He nodded. “Let’s go.” And he stepped out of the house and took her hand and led her away from the door. He took her around the corner of the house to the backyard and through a gate in the wooden fence, all without saying anything else. Now they were in a long alley facing backyards on either side. The ground was grass and gravel. Elias hadn’t said anything in long enough that Kess didn’t want to ruin the hushed mood by speaking.
He led her down to the end of the alley, where the houses stopped. A deep, cement-lined ditch stretched out perpendicular to the alley, with a thin dark trickle of water running along the bottom. On the other side was unruly long grass and a chain-link fence. Elias helped Kess hop down into the ditch. They walked along it with the soles of their shoes squelching in the shallow water.
Finally they came to the end of the ditch, where it disappeared into a large cement block set into the ground. Between the block and the corner of the chain-link fence, two trees grew at odd angles that made it clear they hadn’t been planted on purpose. Elias climbed out into the scraggle-grass and helped Kess up after him.
She found herself in an odd, forgotten piece of the world. There was a patch of dirt surrounded by long ragged grass. The sight of nearby houses was obstructed by the bulky cement block and the two ramshackle trees. On the other two sides, the chain-link fence made a corner. Beyond the fence a wild field stretched off to the road, which was far enough away you couldn’t hear the cars.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“This is where I come to be emotional. You know—write in my diary, weep softly, listen to music by guys who dye their hair black.”
“No, really.”
“This was my hideout when I was a kid. I’d come here and read. I haven’t been in years.”
“So why’d you think of it now?”
“I thought you might like it.”
Kess turned around, taking it all in. “I do,” she said. “Like it. It’s private.”
“I know it’s ugly. Sorry about that.”
“Privacy is beautiful, Elias.”
He smiled, but didn’t laugh. She thought he would have laughed at that, before.
“There’s something I want to show you. Let me see if it’s still here.” He kneeled on the ground and pushed apart the long grass at the base of one of the trees. This revealed a rusted metal box sitting between the roots. He pulled it out and opened it, red rust rubbing off onto his fingers. Kess kneeled beside him to see what was in the box.
An action figure in black and purple plastic. (“Captain Neutrino. I wasn’t sure what a neutrino was, exactly, but I knew it was sciencey.”)
A white cassette tape with GOOD MUSIC written on it in permanent marker. (“I was just learning that retro is cool.”)
Twenty-seven dollars sealed in a plastic bag, though water had gotten in anyway and the dollar bills stuck together with their green dye splotched and running. (“I was going to buy a telescope.”)
Kess looked away from the stuff in Elias’s box to Elias himself.
His deep-set eyes were serious and tired. He had missed a spot shaving, and coarse dark hair bristled from his chin. His black shirt wasn’t tight, exactly, but it did follow the lines of his chest and waist.
And it occurred to her that, well, lust was a lot like music or laughter or chocolate. And maybe Elias had already lost it, and he didn’t particularly want to touch or kiss her, not anymore. She knew it was self-centered and silly to worry about that when Elias’s entire life was in the process of turning upside down, but it had made her really happy, knowing he thought she was pretty.
He met her gaze, and then he put his hand on her leg above her knee, and then he kissed her like he really, really wanted to.
She hesitated for a moment before touching him back, remembering the electricity flowing from her hands the first time they kissed, but she was in control now, wasn’t she? She wrapped her hands around his sides, her fingers following his angles. He leaned forward, pushing her back until her shoulders hit the cement block.
This was the third time they had kissed, and if Elias kept changing it might be the last. And so Kess kissed his neck, even though that wasn’t the sort of thing she thought she did. He made the most wonderful sound.
But there was another sound. A sort of whir. She opened her eyes and looked up into the air above them.
She screamed. Just a little scream, but enough to make Elias jump back from her. “What’s wrong? Did I—”
“There’s a flying robot helicopter thing!”
He leaned back and craned his neck to look up. “A drone. That’s a drone.”
Kess glared up at it. “It has a camera.”
The drone hovered about ten feet above them, near the top of the scraggly trees. It was painted black like it was meant to be stealthy, though of course in the middle of the day the black was stark against the blue sky. The drone had a round body and five arms that stuck out starfish-like around it, each arm tipped with a whirring helicopter fan.
A tiny hatch opened in the central body and a slip of white paper slid out. The paper drifted about, fluttering like a white moth, until Elias caught it out of the air.
“Need to talk in person,” he read. “Very urgent. Follow messenger. I am on your side. Power is knowledge.”
“Power is knowledge. That was the name of your Internet conspiracy friend.”
“Yep.”
They both looked back up at the drone. It started to fly off across the field on the other side of the fence. When it had gone about ten feet it stopped, waiting for them.
“It wants us to climb the fence,” said Elias.
“It is overestimating our athletic abilities,” said Kess.
“Come on. I’ll help you over first.”
Getting over the fence wasn’t actually that hard, though Kess did rip her jeans above her right knee. The two of them followed the drone across the field. Kess knew she should feel excited about the prospect of getting answers and making progress on the big mystery. Instead she felt pettily put-out.
They had been having a really nice moment.
When they got to the road on the edge of the field, a black car with tinted windows was waiting for them. They got into the backseat, just like the kids in a Very Special Episode about kidnapping. From the outside the windows had looked like normal tinted plastic. From the inside they were jet black, even the front windshield. The effect was claustrophobic.
There was no driver. The car drove away anyway.
“Huh,” said Elias. “This didn’t look like a self-driving car.”
“How do those look different?”
“They have sensor dealies on top. I didn’t see anything like that on this. How does it see?”
“He doesn’t want us to know where we’re going,” said Kess, putting a hand on the opaque window beside her. She pulled out her phone. “And look at this. No signal and no GPS. He’s blocked it somehow. This is… This could be really bad. Should we have gotten in here?”
Elias shrugged. “The point of fear is to tell you what not to do,” he said. “We already got in the car, so fear isn’t useful anymore.”
She stared at him, speechless.
“What?”
“That’s exactly what Stone said.”
“Stone? That Gray guy who looks like the scion of a privileged east coast family?”
“Yes. When he first stopped me and Priya in the road, he held a gun to my head. He said…” She closed her eyes, remembering. “He said, ‘Fear is only useful in so far as it tells you what to do. Right now it tells you to do what I say. Since you know what to do, fear is no longer useful.”
“Well… he was right.”
“He was Gray. That’s what they say, stuff about emotions being useful or not useful.”
Elias didn’t say anything. But he did take her hand, cautiously, as if maybe he did have a little fear left in him. She was stiff for a second, but then she let herself relax. Elias may have been transforming into a Gray, but he wasn’t turned yet, and there was no point wasting time freaking out about the transition. She leaned against him and put her head on his shoulder.
They couldn’t see where they were going, but Kess felt it when they turned off of smooth pavement onto some kind of much-bumpier road. They followed this for ten shaky, winding minutes until the car stopped and released them. They’d been driving for about an hour in all.
“There’s nothing here,” said Kess, standing beside the car. There were trees to one side of the dinky dirt trail they’d driven here on, a nondescript field to the other. “I’m not just not seeing it, right? There’s nothing.”
“Underground,” said Elias.
“What?”
“He’s rich, and he has access to technology that shouldn’t be possible yet, and he’s paranoid. He’s underground.”
“You’ve figured out who it is?”
“I bet you know too, if you think about it.”
Sure enough, there was a faint hissing sound, and a square section of grassy ground pushed up, supported by spindly metal arms. It revealed a set of concrete steps leading down into a hole. Once they were inside, the ground closed up over them, cutting off the sun. Small white lights flickered on, revealing a door at the base of the steps. The door and its frame were covered in some kind of ugly greenish-gray material patterned with overlapping diamonds. On a hunch Kess switched on her super-vision.
“It looks exactly like the dirt,” she said, cycling slowly and methodically through wavelengths. “Not like metal or anything. The stuff that bounces off the dirt bounces off it, the stuff that goes through the dirt goes through the door. Or it looks like it does. It can’t actually, because I don’t see anything on the other side. It must be absorbed somehow.”
Elias nodded as if he had expected her to say that, which he couldn’t possibly have done.
There was a click, and orange light pulsed from a point above the door, washing across Kess and Elias for a moment before blinking away. There were more blinks of light in different colors, more signals Elias couldn’t see in flashing rainbow sequence.
Then the door opened. The man on the other side looked seventy-ish or older, with untidy gray hair and a pale, papery face. “Come in,” he said. “Quickly.” His voice was pale and papery as well.
As soon as they were inside, the door shut behind them. They were in an entry-way with concrete on all sides. Kess guessed that the outside of the walls, facing the dirt, would be covered in that green-gray camouflage stuff. The floor was set with small white lights that shone up at the three of them and gave their faces unsettling shadows. The old man stepped back, his eyes flickering between Kess and Elias. Elias stuck out his hand for a shake. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Holifeld.”