Getting Rod out without the others seeing was tricky. Priya slung his bulky body over her shoulder—given her unnatural strength, the hardest thing to deal with wasn’t his weight but his awkward size. She jumped off the balcony outside the master bedroom and hit the ground hard, and then she carried Rod all the way down the long driveway to where Lorraine’s car was parked. But not Lorraine’s car. Danny’s. That realization made Priya sick to her stomach. Lorraine leaned against the hood with crossed arms and a face like metal.
When she saw Priya, she popped the trunk of the car open. Priya slung Rod inside and slammed the trunk closed over him. Then she turned away and found Lorraine with her hand stuck out waiting for a handshake.
The moment their hands touched, Lorraine could shock her to the ground.
But this whole plan required trust. So Priya shook Lorraine’s hand, and then Lorraine got into her car and drove away.
Through the entire exchange, neither of them had said a word.
Back at the house, Priya returned the same way she’d left, crawling up the wall to the second-story balcony outside Stephanie’s parents’ room. She lay on her back on their bed and considered her next move. The rest of the Reds had to find out eventually, but if it came from Priya they’d hate her for it. They’d crucify her. So she had to first convince one person it was the right thing, someone the rest would listen to.
Connor was with the others. They were passing around a bowl of metal bolts, eating them like M&Ms, and talking about things that didn’t matter. Priya came up behind the couch where Connor was sitting and put a hand on his shoulder. “Come with me?” she said to him, voice low.
She led him to a room the Reds hadn’t really used so far, a study decorated with pictures of Stephanie’s dad posing with captain-of-industry types.
“What’s this about?” asked Connor. The question made Priya unreasonably angry, because it reminded her of Rod asking “What do you want?” and “What are you doing?”
“Did you see when Rod… did it? I mean when he killed Danny?”
“Yeah. Yeah I did.” Connor visibly shuddered. “It was the worst moment of my life. I don’t think I’m ever going to have a worse one.”
Maybe it was the red hair, but Connor could look extremely vulnerable sometimes. If he knew that about himself, he probably hated it. Priya’s unreasonable anger simmered off to nothing.
“So you understand why I had to do something about Rod.”
“Um, what?”
“You understand that we couldn’t just let it go. We couldn’t pretend—”
“You did something about Rod? Past tense?”
Priya leaned back against the edge of the heavy desk and did not look away from Connor’s eyes. Avoiding eye contact was for the weak and the guilty. “I turned him over to Lorraine.”
Connor’s eyes flew open. He moved, turned, paced, as if he couldn’t look at her or even stand still. “They’ll kill him.”
“I know. That’s the point.”
“That’s the point?”
“He has to die, Connor. It’ll solve all our problems.”
“How does that solve any problems, Priya? You’re the nonviolent one, Priya.”
“If Lorraine kills Rod, we’ll be even. It stops the escalation. And it puts us all on the same side.”
“The same side against who?”
“Against the police. Once Rod is dead, we’ll have killed one of them and they’ll have killed one of us. We’ll need to work together to get our story straight with the police. And then, if anyone else gets hurt it’ll bring the cops down on all of us, so we’ll have to leave each other alone. It will all be over.”
“Get our story straight? What story could we possibly tell that’ll explain two missing people?”
“Lorraine and I talked about that. They were best friends. We’ll say they were always talking about running off and traveling the country. We can make a call from Rod’s phone to Danny’s before we get rid of them both, so there’s a call on record the night they disappeared. We’ll say Rod thought college was stupid, which is exactly the sort of thing he would think, and everyone knows how much he hates his parents. We’re surprised Danny went with him, though. Danny would talk but he was such a—a respectable guy we never thought he would go through with it. I guess you never really know someone. We—”
“Rod doesn’t hate his parents.”
“What?”
“You said Rod hates his parents. He doesn’t. He thinks he’s smarter than them, yeah, but he doesn’t hate them. Last year, his mom wouldn’t talk to him for some reason I can’t remember, he was a punk about something. She’d been mad for weeks and it was bothering him bad. You could tell because he was being mean to everyone else but not in a funny way.
“So finally he bought her a bracelet. Silver with little black bits on it. It was obvious he felt stupid doing it, but he couldn’t think of any other way to make her not mad anymore. She wears it all the time, now. Except sometimes when she’s mad at him she takes it off.”
Priya shook her head. “Connor, I know Rod is— He killed Danny, Connor.”
“No he didn’t. I did.”
For some strange reason, Priya laughed. “No you didn’t.”
“I did, Priya. I killed Danny. I didn’t mean to, but I did. We’re stronger than we think, you know. Rod took the blame so it wouldn’t be on me. But it is on me. And now, because of you, Priya, Rod’s on me too.”
Priya could feel hot, frustrated tears trying to force themselves out of her eyes. “But you’re… you’re not…” Connor killed Danny. Connor killed Danny. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She knew she should hate him, now, like she hated Rod, but instead all her feelings were still about Rod, about what she had done to him, about what Lorrain was going to do to him. She grabbed her hair with both hands so tight that her nails scraped her scalp. “What if we just don’t say anything?”
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“Priya, they’re going to kill him.”
“I know. And then he’ll be gone.”
“’He’ll be gone’? That’s it! This isn’t about the police. This isn’t about a truce. This is because you hate Rod and you want him dead.”
“It’ll all be gone. That’s what I meant. This whole situation will be gone, and no one else has to die.”
“Then trade me for Rod. If someone has to die, it should be me.”
No. Connor wasn’t a martyr. He didn’t want to die. He wasn’t… well… bold enough for that. But that wasn’t true, was it? That tentative, fragile look to him she’d noticed earlier was gone. His confession seemed to have wiped it way. Now he was standing tall, straight-backed. Unlike her, he didn’t seem anywhere close to crying. His face was set, determined. He was transformed. It made him look a little like Danny, and that broke Priya’s heart.
Worse, he was right, wasn’t he? She gave Rod to Lorraine for the reasons she’d said, to stop the feud. But if she’d known it was Connor who killed Danny she wouldn’t have done it. And when Connor had told her the truth and she’d suggested they simply leave Rod to the Blues, she’d meant it, at least for a moment. Now she knew that her true heart, or part of it, would rather an innocent person she didn’t like die than a murderer she did.
She always tried to be honest with herself, so she could become better, but this was the bitterest piece of honesty she’d ever swallowed. It burned her throat like battery acid.
Priya sank to the floor and leaned back against the desk.
“So we trade me for Rod,” said Connor.
She wiped a tear off her cheek and took a deep, steadying breath. “No, we don’t. We break Rod out.”
###
TRUEWORLDORDER.NET, FORUM POST BY USER MANOFWAR57:
Proof of alien life disguised as human.
This happened yesterday in my hometown. I saw it with my own eyes. I always knew and now I saw it with my own eyes. My wife saw it too. She’s never listened to me but now she’s seen it with her own eyes.
PICTURES.
###
When Elias picked Kess up, the sky was a silky, sun-down, deep blue. He didn’t say hello or even look at her as she settled into the passenger’s seat.
They rolled out in the direction of Johnston and drove in silence. Kess pushed her hands far into the pocket of her gray hoodie (actually Marlie’s hoodie. Marlie had let her borrow it because it was relative-to-summer cool outside). Without conversation, Kess had nothing to distract her from thoughts of the impossible and possibly-deadly thing they were going to attempt. For the first time, she was beginning to get scared, not of Elias losing his humanity or of the Grays coming after the other Blues, but for her own sake.
She called her mother. “Hey, Mom. How’s the baby? How’s Aunt Mary?”
“The baby is adorable. Healthy. Pink. Aunt Mary is dramatic.”
“Well, she did just give birth. I’ve been told that’s very difficult.”
“I have heard that as well. Anyway, I can be patient with Mary for a while longer. Has Priya had Danny over to the house?”
“You know I wouldn’t tell you if she had, right?”
That made Mom laugh. “Hard to blame you for that.”
“Besides, she broke up with him pretty soon after you left.”
“That’s too bad. He seemed like a nice boy.”
Kess nodded even though her mother couldn’t see her. “He is. He’s a really good guy.”
“Well, I trust Priya not to get too broken up about it. She gets over boys so quickly. Really, it’s a talent.”
“Yeah. Priya’s going to be alright.”
“And what have you been up to?”
“I—” Have friends now. Have my own boyfriend. Have superpowers. Might die tonight. “You know. I’ve been wasting time. Reading, playing games. Being a general degenerate.”
“Well, enjoy it while you can. Soon you’ll be in college and you won’t be able to spend the summer lying around.”
“I love you, Mom.” Kess didn’t normally say it like that. Even the word ‘love’ felt cottony and awkward on her tongue.
If Mom thought it was odd, she didn’t say anything except “I love you too, darling.”
Kess hung up. The sky had gone from blue to black during the call. “I can drive,” she told Elias, “if you want to call your parents.”
“No.”
“So you said goodbye to them before you left?”
“No.”
How Gray was he? Holifeld had said they had another week before Elias was Gray enough not to be trusted. That was three days ago. If the two of them succeeded in getting the Nox, they could freeze Elias in his current state, even if they couldn’t cure him.
“I really think you should call your parents, Elias.”
“The point of parents is little kids. Making sure they don’t starve to death.”
“When I was a little kid I was in an orphanage. I told you that.”
“Did they not feed you enough?”
“No, they didn’t touch me enough. I told you.”
Elias didn’t reply. Kess didn’t think he understood what she was trying to say. So she said something else.
“When Holifeld was first figuring out whether you were Gray or not, he asked you what you liked about me.”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
There was a long pause. Elias didn’t look away from the road, not even flicking his gaze over to make split-second eye contact with Kess. That was probably smart, safe driving and everything, but it also made the conversation feel uncomfortable, cold. Finally, Elias said, “It’s hard to remember.”
“I thought you had a perfect memory now.”
“Only for things that happened after I started my transformation. And even then more so for certain things. Numbers, lists. A lot of before is hazy. I think my Gray mind, as it grows, is pushing out stuff it doesn’t think is important. Certain details, and how I felt about things as they were happening. It must be part of why Grays are so bad at pretending to be not-Gray. I had a best friend when I was little. I know that yesterday, for some reason I was thinking about him, I remembered things—our secret code words and the things we’d do together. Today I can’t remember what his face looked like. So no, I don’t remember what I told Holifeld about you.” Elias still didn’t look away from the road, but he did frown just a little, as if thinking a difficult thought. “I do remember the night I met you. I remember your brown eyes.”
After that they drove in silence, and darkness wrapped around the car, and there is something about being in a dark car that’s like being alone in the world.
#
Eventually, they turned onto a road that appeared to have been abandoned a long time ago. Kess assumed Holifeld had told Elias where to go. Ahead of them, the headlights showed pavement broken and rumpled and shot through with living stuff. Trees pushed in on either side. They drove bumpily along until the road was nothing but disconnected pavement pieces and then stopped the car and stepped out into the darkness.
Elias walked into the trees without saying anything. (He didn’t use any of the connecting words anymore, “hey” or “yeah” or “this way.”)
They walked for quite a while without any illumination except watery half-moon light, Kess stumbling on bits of underbrush. She saw the lights of Holifeld Company before anything, yellow stars in the distance that, as they got closer, turned into windows in a hulking shadow of a building that rose above the trees. They came to a chain link fence and Elias brought a wire cutter out from his pocket.
“You and Holifeld must have talked a lot on that little communicator thing he gave you.” Kess kept her voice low, not sure where guards might be.
“Just about strategy.” Elias cut wires as he spoke and pulled away a smallish section of fence. Now there was a hole big enough to crawl through.
Elias put his hand on her elbow and squeezed a little too hard.
“What are you doing?”
“Reassuring you.”
“Please don’t.”
He dropped his hand, and a moment later he was on his knees going through the hole in the fence. Kess watched him crawl and decided that instead of being scared she was going to be cool and numb and focused on the immediate task.
There should be a control panel for your mind, a set of switches on an armband.
She followed Elias.
###
SECURE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ELIAS KAPLAN AND VANCE HOLIFELD:
EK: In.