Authors: Theresa Kay
A screech. Palms pressed to temples, I fall to my knees. Get them out. Out. Out. Out. Banging hands on head. I forgot to breathe again. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly my breaths even out, oxygen bringing reality back into focus, bringing Flint’s gun back into focus, the gun that’s pointed at Lir.
“Get out of her head.” Flint’s words are a hiss beside my ear.
“I’m not… I didn’t…Blazes, do you really think I would do
that
to her?”
With one shaky hand, I push the barrel of Flint’s gun away. “Stop. Not his fault.” My tongue loosens with each word I manage to push out. “A flashback. A panic attack. Old news now, right?”
“Jesus, Jax.” Flint puts his arms around me and pulls me back into his chest. “Since when do you have them when you’re awake and no one else is anywhere near you?”
“Since today?” Breathing is still work right now. “At least one that bad. It’s been a rough couple weeks.” I clutch his arms folded in front of me and close my eyes as my heartbeat stops racing.
The gray sludge of sadness laps at me from across the driveway. Lir. I wasn’t imagining it then. I open my eyes and meet his. There are so many emotions there I almost drown. Sorrow. Anger. Regret. And even something else that I don’t want to face. I see a realization cross his face and the flow of emotions from him slams shut, leaving me strangely empty.
* * * * * * *
I spend about twenty minutes getting my bearings back before following Flint to the other side of the house and walking into the woods. He glances back behind us as he walks until the house cannot be seen through the trees.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He places a hand on my shoulder and comes to a stop.
Still a little shaky, I almost dodge his touch but I pull myself together before he notices. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” Squinting at him, I tilt my head to the side. “Why did you assume Lir was doing something back there? What did you mean by get out of my head?”
Flint blows a loud breath out through his lips and paces a few steps with his hands clasped together behind his back. He pauses and looks up at me from under his brow before taking a few more steps. “They have some sort of mind connection thing…Jace can…He does it too. That’s how he’s always able to calm you. He can push emotions at you or something.” He shrugs and shakes his head. “I don’t really know how it all works, but I figured you were looking at…him… when it happened. He all but admitted to being in your head, you realize that right?”
“Yes,” I say. Up to this point, I’d been handling the whole half alien thing rather well. I don’t
feel
any different, but the idea that Jace had been in my head outside of whatever twin connection we shared sends my mind reeling.
How different are we? Am I? What other strange abilities will manifest? How much did Jace keep from me? How long has he been manipulating my emotions? And has Lir been doing the same?
“Though, as much as I don’t want to admit it, I don’t think he was trying to hurt you,” Flint says, breaking me out of the escalating cycle of worry spinning in my brain. He rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “He seemed genuinely upset to see you in that much stress.” I raise my eyebrows and he frowns. “Doesn’t mean I trust him. There’s a lot more to the situation with Jace and the aliens, a lot of things you don’t know…”
“You’d be surprised about how much I do know. I know about Jace. What he’s done.”
He flinches and purses his lips together. “He didn’t want to do any of that. That’s not him.”
“I know that.” I fold my arms over my chest. “As much as he’s obviously hidden from me, Jace is not a bad person.”
His mouth turns up into a small, sad smile. “When did you find out?”
“A few days ago.”
A wrinkle forms on his brow. “But… you’ve been gone for weeks? How’d you find out about it?”
“Lir told me.”
Flint stops pacing altogether and gapes at me. “He
knows
. He knows
who
he’s helping and he’s still doing it?”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
His eyes roam back toward the house and he shakes his head softly. “That’s interesting.” Another noisy exhalation. “How much do you trust him?”
Good question. I trust Lir with my life, but with Jace’s? I’m still not so sure about that. “Why?” I ask
“Jace was assisting my father with an attack plan.”
“A plan to attack what?”
“The city. The aliens.”
I scoff. “Impossible. There’s no way he could get through the barrier.”
“The alien ships get in and out,” says Flint. “How do you think they do that?” When I don’t respond, he continues. “He hasn’t told you much then. There’s a small device installed on each ship that lets them pass. That’s what Jace stole off the last downed ship. That’s what got them all worried and trigger happy. They know we can get in now.”
“Why hasn’t Dane already attacked? What’s he waiting for?”
Flint laughs nervously and rubs his hand over his head. “That’s a funny thing. Seems the device disappeared the same night you did.”
The little metal object I took from the locked desk drawer. Has to be. “So his plan was what? Send you out to drag me back?”
“Uh, not exactly. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Well, I was planning on rescuing you from the erk,” he says dryly. I open my mouth to respond, but he holds up a hand to stop me. “Obviously, that’s unnecessary. But …I’d like you to give me the device.”
“So you can take it back to Bridgelake and hand it over to your father?”
He shakes his head. “No. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not stupid. The second he’s got that thing back, he’ll attack and he won’t be selective about targets.” He pauses and swallows. When he looks at me again, his eyes are shiny with the start of tears. “Jace is in there and…for now…he’s at least alive. If there’s any chance… I can’t lose him.” He bites his lip. “I promised him I’d protect you, but instead I’m begging you to go in and get him. I’ll hold on to the device only as a backup plan, just in case…I need to come in after you, in case you can’t get out on your own.”
“Lir won’t let anything bad happen to me.”
“You don’t know that. I know you think he’s being up front with you, but what if he’s not? You have no idea what you’re getting into in that city. They might look like us, but they’re still aliens. They came here and never offered to help us, never suggested integration, nothing. Just holed up in the city and ignored us. But it turns out they’ve been here a while, you and Jace are proof of that. What if they’ve been here even longer than that? What if they caused the Collapse and now they’re just biding their time while the rest of us die off?”
The implications of that make my head spin. What if…?
He must take my silence as understanding. “As crude as it is, there’s a reason for the breeder camps. Fewer children are being born and those that are, they’re sickly. Every child born in the last ten years.” I fill in the rest of that thought on my own. Every child born since the aliens moved into the city…
I’d known there were tensions between humans and the aliens, but it had never been something I paid attention too. Dad hadn’t raised us that way, though I guess I now know the reason why. Even level-headed Emily didn’t trust Lir, yelled at him, called him ‘it’ like the others. Once again, there’s so much more going on that I’ve been completely oblivious to. What else have I been blind to?
Flint sighs and studies his feet. “Unless, you can talk the erk into bringing me in too, I
need
you to do this. Jace would never forgive me if I let you walk into that city without some kind of back up plan.” He raises his face, anguish etched into his features. “You know what they’ve been doing to him, you’ve seen it. What if they get their hands on you too? I don’t think you’d come back from something like that, Jax, not again, and we have no idea how much damage they’ve already done to him.”
As I study his features, pain and longing obvious on his face, another thing I’d been too selfish to see becomes clear. “You and Jace, huh?”
Shock crosses his face and he shakes his head frantically and takes a step back. He watches my face for a beat and then his shoulders slump, he sighs and nods. “Nobody else knows. My father would… not be happy.”
“How long have you guys been…together?”
“There’s always been something between us, but we didn’t…act on it until about a year and a half ago.” He meets my eyes. “I love him. I would do anything for him.”
“That makes two of us then.” I smile. “With the two of us on his side, no one can stand in our way.”
He laughs and wipes at his eyes with his sleeve. “So you’ll do it? Give me the device to hold on to?”
“Yes, I trust you. Though I might have to smack my brother around a bit for keeping this from me,” I say, throwing one arm over his shoulders. “You guys could have told me you know.”
Flint brings his other arm around and pulls me into a hug, resting his chin on my head. “Yeah. We were just so used to hiding it and we thought—”
“—you were doing what was best for me.” His chin bobs. “Do me a favor, next time you and Jace decide to do ‘what’s best for me’ without consulting me, smack yourselves upside the head.”
“Will do,” says Flint, chuckling.
NINETEEN
Two hours later, I watch Flint’s form recede into the distance as Lir drives us down Peter’s driveway. Flint and I spent a while in the woods discussing our plan and by the time we got back to Peter and Lir, they had gotten the truck running. Peter was chattering away to Lir in the passenger seat as the alien drove around in a circle. So, by default, Lir will be doing the driving.
Flint raises one hand in a wave, a somber expression on his face. When he lowers his hand, he pats the front pocket of his jacket lightly, the pocket that contains the small metal object from Dane’s desk. The reassurance I get from knowing he’ll do what’s needed is barely enough to edge out the gut-twisting guilt from not telling Lir about any of it. One week and then Flint will come in after me. I only hope I don’t need that time. I return his wave and send a second, happier, wave to Peter.
The silence between Lir and I borders on uneasy. He hasn’t said more than a few words to me since my breakdown in the driveway. Actually, the whole bordering thing isn’t true; It is uneasy. My mind still reels from my stupidity for kissing him and, even more important, the new knowledge of my heritage and potential abilities.
Obviously, the alien part of me can connect with Jace and had connected to him in my dreams. That part sounds similar to the mental communication Lir described to me, but it is the emotion thing that really worries me. Jace used it to control me. Even if he was trying to help, the fact that he did it without my knowledge has nausea brewing in my stomach. How do I tell what thoughts and feelings are mine?
Back at Peter’s, I’d recognized the foreign emotions coming from Lir, but they were strong and almost overwhelming. I can’t pinpoint any other time when I… connected with Lir, but would I have even noticed something more subtle? Jace had managed to use the connection without any training and Lir would be used to it, he would understand it, know how to use it…Pieces fall into place. The calm I get from his touch. The shorter nightmares. The draw I feel toward him. That stupid, impulsive kiss…
I burrow back into my seat, pull my legs up, and tuck them under me. Flint’s words dance in my head, poking at my own doubts and fears. I’ve spent barely over two weeks with Lir. Is that really long enough to know someone, to trust someone? Especially considering we weren’t speaking for a few days and I was out of my mind for another few.
When not sleeping or ill, I’ve been the one doing most of the talking. He’s been a steady, quiet presence, giving very little away. Or has he?
He said he’d heard rumors, but rumors of what exactly? The aliens as far as anyone knows stay in their city. How would the possibility of my heritage, my existence reach their ears? If they knew… that would mean that, as Flint said, they have been here far longer than anyone realized. But why hide that? What isn’t he telling me?
Driving is much quicker than hiking and it’s a little over an hour before we reach the outskirts of the city. The closer we get to the towering buildings in the distance, the more his muscles tense. His shoulders push back and he sits straighter. I can see his hands clenching around the steering wheel and I want to comfort him, reassure him that this is going to be okay, offer him the same comfort he has offered me before. But I don’t know how to bridge this distance forming between us, how to cross over the gaping chasm of my uncertainty and newfound distrust.
The wind has pulled my hair from its braid, so I run my fingers through it and redo the braid, twisting it into a bun on the back of my neck. Waves of tension cross the car and roll into me. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans and try to focus on keeping my breath steady. He’s doing it again. Has he been doing it all along? I want to ask, but icy trails of my own fear are starting to climb my spine as we draw even nearer to the city.
As my pulse ratchets up, the flow of… whatever it is coming from Lir cuts off abruptly and even more abruptly, the tires move into the gravel on the side of the road as he pulls the truck to a stop.