Forgotten (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 3) (10 page)

Then we all returned to the control room, where Camuto and Hughes waited for us in bodysuits of their own.

“Nice trick on the highway, Cap,” said Hughes in his usual know-it-all tone. “What are you doing here? Do your suicide mission on your own and leave us out of it. You see how it turned out for Eris.”

Courtney said something from behind the panels. I’m positive, by the way she pronounced her syllables, that it was incredibly profane.

I pursed my lips, trying not to curse, as well. My thoughts centered on one thing. To do that, I needed to trust them. “Help her,” I said, “and I’ll let you run your tests on me.”

Hughes acted surprised. “You’re serious?”

“Help her do
what,
exactly?” Camuto asked me.

I had gotten her interest. With Courtney laid up, Camuto would be the one doing the poking and prodding. I’d saved her life, too, giving her the heliodor she now wore around her neck when she wanted me to let her die. She said she was grateful, that she owed me. I was about to find out if her word was worth anything.

“Scan her, do…something…” Suddenly, the world around me spun violently in circles. “figure out…what’s going on…in her body.”

The bottom dropped out of my balance and I tumbled to the floor. Closing my eyes made for dark spinning. Sasha called my name. Rhapsody did, too. Esteban and Hughes sounded hurried. Another thump hit the ground. Mom was down, too. She was the only other person it could have been.

Whatever was wrong, I hoped it ended quickly.

I’d only been out of a hospital bed for a little while and when I came back to consciousness, I was back in one. This time no tubes ran into my arms. Not yet, at least.

Camuto inflated a black cuff around my right bicep to take my blood pressure. After placing the cool stethoscope at the bend in my arm and releasing some pressure, she took the reading. Without a word or expression, she broke the latch and removed it. I wondered what it said. Before I could ask, she told me.

“One thirty-five over eighty.”

My head hurt too much to analyze the numbers myself. “Meaning?” 

“It’s too high.”

That explained the labored thumping in my chest. Sweat stuck my t-shirt to my skin.

She had unzipped my bodysuit and pulled it down to my waist. The heat in the room was sweltering. “Tur-rn up the air conditioning, w-will you?” My words came out slurred, like the night Hughes made me drink a glass of expensive whiskey.

Camuto sucked her teeth. “It’s never warmer than seventy-three degrees in here. Your temperature is at one hundred and two point five.”

Fever? High blood pressure? Had I eaten something bad? Everything felt terrible, and twisted. I’d never been invulnerable and experienced pain – it didn’t make sense. The weight of the prisms on my skin let me know I had my necklace on. Why wasn’t it working? I shouldn’t be sick! And if Mom shared my powers, why hadn’t she healed herself, either?

Camuto must have seen the questions in my face. “Solomon is tending to her. There’s not much we can do to make either of you comfortable beyond ibuprofen.”

“Why?” I mouthed to her. My condition had further weakened me, too much to speak above a whisper.

Her lips became thin lines on her face. She knew what was going on but something kept her from telling me. Instead, she leaned close and focused her eyes into mine. I shook my head. Tired, hurting, feverish, and off Adderall, I couldn’t focus enough to read a sign much less a mind. Camuto held me by the chin and stared at me again. She was letting me read her mind.

“It’s the reason he wanted to become immortal in the first place.” She was talking about King and the aquamarine in her thoughts. “The power is symbiotic.”

I couldn’t remember what “symbiotic” meant, except it had to do with science and it wasn’t a good thing.

She rephrased. “Interdependent. Parasitic.”

I drew a blank on interdependent. “Parasitic” I understood. Mom’s power relied on mine, so if I lost my abilities, so did she. This sickness had to pass. Removing my necklace or Mom’s would turn her to a pile of ash like Taylor.

“Almost done, Amauri?” Hughes’ voice had a twinge of suspicion to it.

“Almost.” She’d spent more time taking my temperature and blood pressure than was necessary. “I have an idea.”

Camuto disappeared behind the curtain. When she came back a few minutes later, she had a goshenite prism in her hand. They did not keep them in the compound, so she must have gotten one from Rhapsody or Sasha. I jerked away. She laid a hand on my chest to calm me. “I’m lowering your invincibility so I can take your blood and test it.”

Good. “Do the same thing for Mom.”

My statement gave her pause. What was the problem? Why couldn’t she give my mother the same treatment they gave me?

“If Hughes won’t do it, the deal is off.”

“No,” she finally said. “That’s not it.”

‘Then, what’s the problem, Amauri?”

Camuto composed herself and said, “She’s walking around without a pint of blood in her body.”

CHAPTER TEN

i’m gonna die

I’d survived a nuclear explosion. This information hit me just as hard.

My mother, the woman who nursed me a little too long, was no longer human. She,
it,
whatever had Mom’s memories, her mannerisms, the same laugh. Most of the behavior. I didn’t get it. How could she have a beating heart and a functioning brain without blood running through them? I fought back tears. It had all been a lie. She’d died all over again.

“It gives her vital organs,” she said of the aqua-marine. Camuto tied a rubber tube around my forearm and asked me to make a fist, which I did. “As long as you keep it on, too.”

I choked up. “What happens to me?”

“Not sure.” Camuto inserted the needle and collected a small vial of blood. She said it so fast that I thought she could be lying about the effects. She pocketed the goshenite and the injection site on my arm healed by itself. “I’ll talk to Solomon and let you know.”

She circled the privacy drapes. No one was around, except for Courtney in the bed to my far left and whatever it was that looked like my mother across the room. Hughes wheeled her away, I assumed, to get the testing done on her like he promised. The idea that she may be an alien or a zombie repulsed me. But she looked and acted like Mom and I missed her, almost enough not to care about the weirdness.

I called for Rhapsody, hoping she was somewhere in the room. Sure enough, she did appear, ghosting through the privacy panel. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a car.” Actually, that’s exactly what my body felt like. I’d been hit by a car or two, so I knew from experience.

I scooted my legs over. After unlocking the side rail, she sat on my bed. We’d done this so many times in the past month, it was routine. “How’s your Mom?”

Not knowing how to answer, or whether or not to call her my mom, I said, “Same.”

The subject of her condition remained untouched. “I’m jealous,” she admitted. “Truth? If I had an aquamarine, I’d go straight to Pápa with one.”

She’d have a different opinion if I told her everything. “What if George came back…different? Would you still do it?”

She folded her hands on her lap. “Anna was in the bathroom forever and I had to pee. You were in the other one, and I wasn’t peeing in the ocean. I ghosted into the bathroom invisible. The bathroom’s back door opens to a grooming area big enough for Beyonce.”

I could’ve done without the details of her bathroom habits, but the rest was interesting.

“She was in front of a mirror, pulling at her face like it was a mask or what not.” She demonstrated by fingering the outsides of her eye sockets and stretching her mouth open. “Then she stabbed herself with a pair of scissors. Swear to God, I almost fell off the seat.”

Rhapsody listened as I recounted everything Camuto had told me, about the aquamarine’s power being symbiotic. She stopped me before I could finish telling her about the lack of blood. “Wait, it’s symbiotic?”

“Yeah. She also said ‘parasitic’.”

She gasped and pointed at my chest. “Take the aquamarines off. Now.” I propped myself up on my elbows. “Why?”

“Leeches are parasitic. Tapeworms are parasitic. Do I need to keep going here?”

That’s why I’m sick? I touched the necklace’s clasp and unlocked it. With the prisms still in my left hand, the power was still present in my body. My mother’s, too, I assumed.

I’d toss it across the room, long enough for the aquamarine’s power to wear off. Then I’d put it back on and this sickness would leave me.

Closing my fist around the prisms, I sighed. I couldn’t do it.

Rhapsody watched me the entire time, never moving or making a sound. Her eyes welled with sympathy for me. This was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

She stroked my feverish face with the back of her hand. It was an encouragement to let go. My fingers tightened around the shiny tungsten. I clutched her hand and kissed it. Cocking my arm back to toss the necklace, the muscles in my arm seized up. Not now, maybe ever.

“Jason…” She called my name, as if she knew what I was thinking. “You don’t know what those things are doing to you or your mom.”

We hadn’t even seen the results of Mom’s testing. She could be generating enough power to sustain herself in no time and not need me anymore.

“Camuto never said the aquamarine’s parasitic nature was permanent, though.” “Jason…” This time, her tone echoed with pity and sadness.

Perhaps she could latch onto something else and still survive. I locked the necklace back around my neck. “No judgment?” I asked her.

It was one of her personal mottos. Any time she could have a negative opinion, except Sasha’s sex tape with Selby, “no judgment” had been her response. Like when her dead friend Cherish came out and told her she was a lesbian. This couldn’t be different. She had a dead parent, too. I waited for her to respond. She didn’t.

She just said she’d do the same thing, and she’s judging me? “Sasha’s not the only one you’re jealous of, huh? My mom is down the hallway and George is sitting on your mantle.” She bit her lip to keep herself from crying. Replaying the last thing I’d said in my head,

I regretted saying them. Crap. Unfortunately for me, rewinding time wasn’t one of my powers.

“Unbelievable,” she said.

I reached out for her. “Rhapsody…”

“Don’t!” she shouted before turning invisible. “I’m out.”

Mentioning George and his cremation was cruel. Especially since she was pretty much an orphan now. Her mother didn’t show for George’s funeral. Me neither, since I was in a coma. George’s factory worker friends, his rich brother Harper and his pregnant wife Charlotte, and George’s daughter Sofia by his first marriage were the only ones who attended.

Since I wasn’t connected to anything, I rolled my body to my right and swung my legs out. Lowering myself to the ground, I got to a standing position. My vision didn’t spin. The balance wasn’t back, however, and I would have fallen if Sasha hadn’t seen me stumble and reached out to catch me.

“Easy,” she said, offering her arm for support. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I could almost hear the blood straining to get in and out of my heart. “After Rhapsody.” “Not like this, you’re not.”

She spoke out of concern, not jealousy. Feeling like this, there’s no way I should be standing, let alone trying to walk. Taking a deep breath, I tightened my grip on her arm.

“Help me get better.”

Together, we took a few steps forward. My heartbeat and body temperature started regulating. Around the privacy panels. Then, halfway across the control room, I got close to normal. Still, Sasha did not withdraw her arm and I held onto it. Just in case.

“Thanks, you know, for the elevator,” she said. “It’s three floors, but still.”

Claustrophobia’s not anything to play around with. “Thanks for the arm.” “Anytime.”

At the metal door leading from the control room we stopped and faced each other. “I’m thinking if there’s an award for saying stupid things, I’d be the unanimous MVP.”

Sasha giggled. “Yeah, probably. But you’re sweet, too, when you want to be.”

The space between us grew tighter. Too awkward to keep standing that close, I led with my shoulder and gave Sasha a “friend” hug, distancing my lower body from hers. Somehow, she ended up near me anyway. The scent of her freshly-washed hair was an amazing mix of rainwater and melon. She locked her hands around my neck as we hugged and tickled my skin with the edges of her thumbs. We’d end up kissing if I didn’t pull away. “Jason,” she said just above a whisper.

I dove in for a kiss, which Sasha returned at first. “Do you want me back?” she asked between kisses.

She knew I still had feelings for her. Otherwise, every time we got close, there would be no gravitational pulling of our lips together. I wouldn’t answer yes and I couldn’t say no. Instead, I said nothing, which in girl-speak, is the worst answer you could give.

“I’m nobody’s side chick,” Sasha said with an ounce of attitude. She poked her finger into my chest. “Me or her. My lips are on lockdown until you figure it out, Captain.”

That was fair. I watched her put extra swish in her hips as she walked away. Letting time pass between our exits meant I’d be less likely to run into her again. I had nothing to say. Choose between my best friend and my hot ex-girlfriend? Rhapsody and I had been through everything together. I was starting to think that “something missing” between Sasha and I had to do with the fact she’d lost her virginity to Selby and not me. It’s nothing I’d ever openly admit, and one of them would have to pry my brain open to find out.

I’d have to sweep the entire compound to find Rhapsody to apologize and even then, she could go invisible to avoid me. She wasn’t the girl to chase. In time, we’d run into each other and then we’d talk. By then, I’d have to say something before Sasha or someone else did. What that would be, I wasn’t sure. They didn’t get along, so dating them both wouldn’t work. I’d kissed both of them while dating the other. No way I’d come out of this a winner.

Where’s Esteban? I could have used a guy’s opinion on what to do in this situation.

Hughes had centuries of experience, but he was running tests on Mom. He might not tell me anything. I’d get a glass of aged scotch whiskey and advice I might not understand. Principal Welker said Hughes was a former slave. I wondered what his life was like before all of this. Our history books recounted events and dates, not the firsthand accounts he could give me.

Wandering around the dusty compound coughing and sneezing for what felt like hours, I found myself alone in the room where they stored the provenance crystals. I hadn’t seen them all together since they exploded. The last time I was down here, I was moving them to Positive Growth – a boot camp for “at-risk youth” where I almost ended up going. Vivienne Coker, a member of the Collective, ran the place. No way Debra would’ve wanted to send me there if she knew that beforehand.

Lined along the wall were the green emerald, scarlet emerald, goshenite, morganite, and heliodor. All five were bare of prisms, faintly glowing in their natural colors. A cycle. This must have happened after Carrington and every other large solar storm that ever happened. The crystals get powerful, blow up, die and are reborn.

Courtney hacked loud enough for me to notice her presence. Still mending from the fight with Taylor, she walked with a slight limp. The cuts on her face had formed thick black scabs. “I thought you might be down here,” she said, clearing her throat.

“Why?”

Wincing with each small step, she eyed the human being-sized goshenite crystal. “It’s the one place around here where an invisible girlfriend can’t sneak up on you.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way. Truth was, I needed some quiet. “Kind of dangerous keeping the five of them in one spot. I thought you didn’t harvest prisms here.” Courtney chuckled. “This is the ‘winter phase’. They’re like annual flowers. Still radioactive, but they won’t bear new prisms to harvest for another year or two. David won’t come after them now. He doesn’t have the patience to wait out the process. Never has.”

I thought of my necklace and the prisms in the storage unit. Why hadn’t they exploded?

“Lead shielding?” I pointed to my neck.

She nodded. “Yup. Sunlight at the storm’s height would’ve detonated them. We

gathered as many aquamarines from the site as we could.” She shrugged. “Some got away, I’m sure.”

The whole tone of our conversation sounded scripted to me, like she’d already had this dialogue and she was rehearsing what already had been written. What if I tested her? Asked a question she didn’t expect? “What’s your power, Courtney?”

I did catch her off-guard. “Come again?”

“You know everything we can do. What can you do besides the force fields?” The lines in her face deepened. “Foresight. I see things before they happen.” Say what? “Like a psychic or fortune teller?”

She licked her dry lips and wobbled forward a step. “I don’t read tarot cards or palms. They’re visions – accurate but involuntary and random.” I needed an example. “When you met me…”

She finished my sentence. “…I saw you landing in Rhapsody’s backyard before you did it. Ruby was there, too. She worked the morning to afternoon shift. Eleven to four or from one to six. So, I camped out in my Cougar for a while and played the odds.”

Stalk much?
“How long of ‘a while’?”

“Couple hours, every day for a week. I could tell the time of day by the sun’s positioning, so I ballparked it. Day seven is when you showed up.”

This was the Collective’s mode of operation. Peters had studied us after we found the green emerald, and now, Courtney said she did the same thing. It was incredibly unsettling, like finding out a peephole had been drilled in my bedroom wall.

The whole thing felt as if me, Rhapsody, Sasha, even Selby, had been played since the beginning. Like living chess pieces the Collective moved around to their satisfaction. They needed to find the green emerald and we did that for them. I saved the planet, but only because they wanted me to do it. It was a big game to them, only we’re just now realizing it.

I’m sure the rabbit hole went deeper than that, so I kept digging with more questions, specifically about her helping us. “Our escape wasn’t an ‘escape’, was it?”