Rebels Rising (Dark Rebels, #1) (6 page)

“Why would they steal children to build clones?”

“They had to have a tree to graft onto. They had not learned how to grow from utero back then.”

“Back then?”

Tawny shrugged. “This has been going on for a very long time. When it started, they thought that the new millennium would bring spaceships taking people back and forth to work, and domes covering the cities. I know that sounds absurd now, all things considered, but when it started it was the Ice Age people were afraid of, not global warming.”

A thought occurred to Krista. If she were a Natural, why had they opened her? To harvest her DNA, maybe? There something more sinister there, something more than what she could see. She kept silent, some inner voice warning her not to ask that question—because to do so would be dangerous in the extreme.

The wind stopped. The clouds dispersed. Everything took on a heavy, pregnant pause. Neither of them spoke. Blake swooped over them, his strong winds flapping in the dead air. “Take us back!” He called down to Krista. “We need to get somewhere safe.”

“Is there such a thing?”

His grin made butterflies fill her stomach. Noite’s words came back to her...
Just a warning, don’t fall in love with either of them. Don’t fall in love with anyone; all it does is get you hurt.

“No, but we are going anyway.” He dipped lower, so low his wings drifted across her cheeks and mouth. They were soft and yet stiff. They felt like tiny kisses. Her belly went weak and loose once again. What would it be like to be kissed by Blake?

Or Connor?

Really, Connor was a better choice; he was a heck of a lot nicer...

There was a long, loud grumble. “You can’t keep us here anymore.” Tawny said quietly. “You need to eat, and there is no way to conjure food. That is one thing nobody can do.”

“Yeah, well, if someone had given me a choice, I would have opted for making chocolate show up whenever I wanted it.”

“Me too. Think, a chocolate rain storm with hail sprinkles. Yummy.”

Unbelievably enough, she could still find something to laugh about, and hope for.

“S
o I have superpowers, but I still have to steal clothes. This sucks.”

“You are not stealing anything,” Tawny said.

The streets of the city were crowded with tourists and pedestrians. Women with handbags that cost a month’s salary slung carelessly over their shoulders strolled past, models coming from photo shoots or go-sees walked by as well, their faces unmade up and their hair pinned high on their heads, their long legs looking strikingly slim in the fashionable leggings everyone seemed to wear.

“I need jeans,” Tawny said. “No way is my butt going to look anything like that in a pair of leggings.”

“I’m in running shorts, dirty ones at that, and it is cold out here.”

“Quit complaining,” Tawny said. “Go get us some food.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“The same way you are going to get us clothes. Pay for it.”

“What? Are you tripping? I don’t have a single dollar to my name. I seem to have forgotten my purse on the way to the rescue.”

“You might have the power of suggestion though.”

“What is that?”

“You know, you suggest to the clerk that the piece of paper you are handing over is money.”

“That sounds like bullshit. What if I don’t have the power of suggestion?”

“Then you grab the stuff and run like hell. I’ll be right behind you.”

“So much for being Bat Girl.”

“Look, we do not have money, or rich people who help us out, or any of that. I know you would like to think we do, and it would be freakin’ great if we did, but we don’t. Those are the facts. Welcome to the S.R.”

“The what?”

“Se răscula. It means to revolt. Like, a verb rather than just “revolt,” the noun, because we believe in action.”

“Okay. It sounds Spanish.”

“Romanian. I guess languages aren’t one of your things.”

“Nope, there is a chink in my armor after all.” She was trying to be flippant because at the moment, her spirits were low and her mood too. She wanted Cheetos,
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos,
at that. Those would be worth stealing.

She was grimy, tired, and hungry. The weather was dreary and chill. The people walking past kept looking at her like she was scum, and she knew why: she looked as grimy, dirty, and hungry as she felt.

Blake and Connor had gone to try to find them housing. It was too dangerous to use any Power strong enough to attract attention right then. They had looked as tired as the rest of them, their wings tucked out of sight under coats they had stolen from a store that they walked past.

“I could not use the power of suggestion anyway,” she pointed out.

“Even more reason to grab and dash.”

“That is stealing.”

“Yes, it is. It is a hard world, Krista, and you are just one more babe in these woods. Do you want to die?”

Tawny had stopped dead and was staring right into her eyes. Krista caught sight of them in the plate glass window of the fashionable boutique they stood in front of: she was messier than she had thought, paler too. There were circles under her eyes, and her cheeks had hollows under them.

“Junkies,” a woman with a fur coat and Hermes bag muttered as she went past, her nose in the air and the scent of Escada trailing behind her.

Krista did not even think about it. She dipped a hand into that bag and hooked out the wallet so quickly she barely knew it had happened, and her victim did not see it at all. Tawny did though, and she grinned before walking quickly around a corner.

Krista followed her. They huddled in an alley, ripping the wallet apart. They found a few hundred dollar bills, a stack of credit cards, and a small bag of white powder. “Who’s the junkie?” Krista asked as she dropped the baggie into the dumpster. “Let’s get some food! I am starving.”

An hour later they all met up again in the park that sat at the northernmost corner of the city. Tawny had stolen pants and a coat from racks hanging outside a store in a seedier section of town; Krista had gotten leggings and a skirt and a thin jacket that was better than nothing but still not warm enough.

They carried bags of food, and when they sat down on the bench, the rest of their group fell onto the white Styrofoam trays and wolfed down every morsel. “We have to split up,” Steven said between bites. “I was hoping not to have to, but it is clear we cannot move as such a large group right now. We need to be as mobile as possible to minimize our losses.”

Krista said, “Wait, if we split up, we will be worse off than before. As a group, we can at least help each other.”

“Yes, because that has worked so well so far,” Blake said.

“If you got any snarkier they would have to invent a new word for it.”

“Thanks.”

He was so infuriating!

“So who goes with who?” One of the others asked, and there was a general assenting whisper to that query. Steven cleared his throat. “Blake and Connor will go with Krista and Tawny. The rest of us will split into smaller groups. Nobody, I repeat, nobody, is to use their Powers until we all meet back up.”

“How will we know when and where?” Krista asked.

“The Connection, of course,” Blake said.

“Yeah, the Connection I don’t have.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled over. She had never felt so lonely in her life, so left out. “I mean, since I am so deadly and all.”

“It’s okay.” Connor folded her into his arms. He smelled like blood and falafel and sweat and a musky aroma that was sexy as hell. He did not give her butterflies though, not like his brother. She wished he did, but he didn’t.

“No, really it is not.” Her tears trickled down her face. “I know you all think I am just a lame jerk! I keep getting people hurt, and I don’t know who I am or how to control what I do.”

“Not everyone is fortunate enough to have been raised inside Luke,” Steven said calmly.

She gawked at him. “No, I guess not.”

“No. So let’s head out. Everybody keep your eyes open, and remember, we have to be safe out here. No Powers.”

Krista had nothing to take with her when they left the park. Her dirty old clothes were left behind in a trash can, and her shoes given to a girl sleeping under a bench. The boots on her feet were used, worn in, and too tall for her liking; they were combat boots with broken lacings, but somehow they felt right on her feet. They seemed to symbolize her new life.

***

T
hat night they slept in a hollowed out doorway in a shabby neighborhood. They piled together like kittens, and the only consolation was that at one point, when the cold became too much to bear, Connor wrapped his wings around her and enfolded her within their heat.

The next day they sleepwalked through the city, stealing bits of food and searching for a place to sleep. Finally, they found a burned out tenement deep downtown, and they slept indoors that night, but they were no warmer or more comfortable for it.

Krista woke up with her eyes gritty and her body aching. “I was so looking forward to the glamor of being a superhero,” she groused. “You know, private schools...”

“Like Luke?” Tawny asked.

“No , like Xavier’s. And with all those perks too: fighter jets, cool costumes that could double as fetish wear, teachers that were hot in a beastly kind of way. Oh, and  people with superpowers.”

“We have superpowers,” Blake pointed out.

“Yeah? Make a cheeseburger and space heater show up then.”

“Don’t worry, we will be in a nice warm building tonight.”

“Are we renting a motel room?”

“Nope,” Blake gave her a roguish grin. “We are breaking into a lab.”

Tawny yawned so widely her face crinkled and her pink tongue showed clearly in her open mouth. “Nice. Do you think they might have some doughnuts somewhere? Or coffee?”

“Why are we breaking into a lab?” Krista asked.

Blake answered, “To get some supplies.”

“Why not just rob a convenience store?”

“Because we need answers too.”

That made her sit up. “Answers to what?”

“You.”

Her heart stopped beating, restarted, and her voice was a breathless gasp. “What do you mean, Blake?”

“We have to find out just what all you can do. We need a place to do that; it is not like we can just turn you loose in the park to test your Powers. If they get noticed, well, the lab we will be in is part of DARK’s network. They might question it, but we will be long gone by then.”

Her mouth went dry. “What do you mean, ‘tests’?”

Tawny said, “Don’t worry, nobody is going to cut you open.”

They had all had that done to them. Looking at the three faces around her, Krista knew that was true. They had all suffered, and a lot. For the first time she noticed the scar on Blake’s arm, a jagged line that ran from his inner elbow to the top of his wrist. Connor had the same scar on his left arm.

She turned to Tawny, searching, and saw a long thin scar on her right arm as well, one that matched Blake’s almost perfectly. What were those scars from? What had been done to them, to her, in those labs? Had she been subjected to experiments? Why, why could she not remember?

They remembered, and they had said that when she had been opened, they had all felt it. Something about that statement bothered her, but she could not put her finger on the reason. She felt like there was something she was missing, something she should know, did know, but it hovered just out of her reach, like an apple on a branch just a shade too high for her fingers to touch.

“Breaking into a lab, now that sounds pretty glam,” she said in an attempt to lighten the tension in her gut. “Now you are talking. Is there any chance we can steal a super-fast sports car that turns into a mega fighting machine while we are at it?”

“You’ll be lucky to get some stale doughnuts,” Blake snapped, but he smiled. That smile lit his whole face up, made her legs feel weak and her belly fill with tingles. Connor looked at her, his gaze level and searching, and she dropped her eyes. Why couldn’t she like Connor like she liked Blake? Blake was an asshole.

“Bring ‘em on,” she said recklessly. “I love sugared lumps of old dough.”

But her gut twisted as she spoke. She had a sinking feeling that something was wrong, terribly wrong, or about to get that way. Later she would regret not speaking up then, but by then it would be far too late.

***

T
hey stayed in the tenement all day, venturing out only once in small groups to steal food. They all came back with something, and they all shared. Krista’s contribution was a pack of hot dogs, buns, and a can of soda. They had to eat the dogs cold, the buns were sticky and stale  at the same time, and the shared sips of soda were the only thing that made her feel slightly better.

Tawny grabbed a pizza from a counter; it was cold and the cheese had settled into a hard crust by the time she made it back, but they all fell on it and ate it in a few bites. Blake and Connor fared less well: Connor came up with a few hard bagels stuffed with souring cream cheese, and Blake came up with a blueberry pie. It was hardly the stuff nutritionists would have recommended, but they did not care; it kept them going.

Krista in particular needed to eat. She was “like a battery, you have to get recharged all the time,” was how Tawny put it. When she was not using her Powers, the drain was less, but she still required a lot of food.

“I bet I could make a fortune on the diet market,” she said, patting her belly with blueberry stained fingers. “Mutant weight loss. Wow. I could start clinics all over the country.”

“Models hate you as we speak,” Blake intoned.

Connor gave him a light punch on the arm. “Hey, you are not exactly packing on the pounds either, bro.”

“Yeah, is your metabolism like mine?” Krista asked.

“No, not exactly. The doctors knew at some point that having people who constantly needed food could be a problem. Keep in mind, they were building what they saw as a super race. Humans who were superior in every way, people for the new world order.

“They envisioned a world where food would change due to weather and so on, and since they planned for lifespans of at least two centuries, they knew they had to have people who could survive and adapt to dietary changes, even starvation.”