Fearless Read online

  “Stay here, stay low,” he tells me, his voice clipped and methodical. He’s not Nick anymore. He’s PJ Carver now. “Wait until we sound the all-clear. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  He lifts a questioning eyebrow, the Nick I know and love peeking through the military man. “Do you? Do you really?”

  “I’ll stay put,” I promise, meaning it. “I’ll listen to you. I swear.”

  “Thank you.”

  He leaves, closing the door behind him, and my heart rate spikes again as the lights go out in the other room. I watch them disappear, the glow under the door blinking out in one quick, heart-stopping shot. I can still hear the feet in the hall, but I don’t hear anything from Campbell and Nick. They’re obviously the ones who turned out the lights, but whatever else they’re doing, they’re doing it silently.

  Someone bangs on the outer door to the hotel room, making me nearly jump out of my skin. They shout something in Japanese that I can’t understand on a linguistic level, but I understand the tone.

  Open up!

  They bang again, not waiting for a response. There’s a loud creak as the door swings open under their fist. Light is coming in from under the door again, creeping inside the bathroom, faint and yellow. There’s more shouting. Heavy footsteps, maybe two sets. I can’t tell for sure.

  Someone jiggles the handle on the bathroom door and I bite down on a worried moan building in the back of my throat. Their feet are blocking part of the light from the hall. They jiggle the handle again.

  There’s a slam and the light is gone.

  Someone closed the front door.

  They cry out in Japanese, this time sounding anxious. There’s a loud shout, the sound of shoes scuffling over the carpet, then a heavy thump followed quickly by another.

  Either Nick and Campbell are down or the two cops are. I hold my breath, my heart pounding in my ears, but as much as I want to bolt from this bathtub out into that room, I stay put. I wait because I promised I would. I wait because deep down I know who’s still standing out there.

  I wait because I have faith.

  Someone knocks on the bathroom door twice, quick and calm.

  “Alex, let’s go.”

  I leap from the bathtub, stumbling slightly over the slick tiles on the floor, and come careening out of the room. I run right into Nick, who grabs me firmly, holding me up. My shoulder screams in protest where he stitched me up, but I don’t care.

  I can’t help smiling up at him. “You’re okay?” I ask.

  “I’m good.”

  “And Campbell?”

  Shadows come to life behind Nick. They take form in the faint light of the room and I can see Campbell’s eyes, sharp and glowing. They’re a different color entirely but they still remind me of Nick’s. They’re a little intimidating.

  Or they would be if I hadn’t spent the last year under the most intense glare on earth. Now I’m pretty sure I could look an atomic bomb in the face without flinching.

  Campbell’s shoulders flex and I hear the distinct sound of a gun being cocked.

  “Are you two gonna make out for a while or are we getting out of here?” he asks sarcastically.

  I frown at him. “Are you going with us?”

  “I just helped assault two Japanese police officers. There’s a mad scientist out there with my phone number. I’m knee-deep in this now. There’s no going back.”

  “That’s not true. You don’t have to—”

  “I had to the moment you guys called me,” Campbell interrupts me sternly. “You put me in their sights and made me a part of this.”

  “He’s right,” Nick agrees, his face blank but his voice low. “He’s read the files, he’s talked to Evans, they know he’s helped us. If he stays behind, they’ll use him. They’ll try to flush us out with him.”

  I feel sick inside. Part of me wanted it, I wanted him here to help Nick, but I still hate it. Another life ruined. Another future destroyed, and it all started with me. I have so much guilt inside me over Cara and Nick and now Campbell, I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk out of here under the weight of it.

  “I am so sorry,” I tell him.

  “Sorry doesn’t change anything,” Campbell replies brusquely, “but you can make it up to me by not getting me captured or killed. Can you run?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. We’re going to be doing a lot of that.”

  He throws the door open before looking quickly up and down the hall. Nick pulls me in line behind him, both of us following after Campbell.

  “What about Walters?” I whisper to Nick.

  “What about him?”

  “Will they come after him too?”

  Nick pauses before shaking his head. “I doubt it. I haven’t talked to him in a while. We won’t go anywhere near him, though.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “What we need to worry about right now,” Nick continues, his voice hushed, “is the guy outside.”

  We clear the hallway and start heading down the stairs. People poke their heads out of doors to see what’s going on, but when they spot three Americans, two of them with guns (Campbell wasn’t kidding—he’s packing now), they slam the doors shut and lock them quickly. When we hit the lobby it’s deserted, the phone ringing incessantly on the counter. It’s the only sound in the whole small room, and it echoes off the cold stone floor until it feels like it’s everywhere.

  “Hey, Carver,” Campbell suddenly says, snatching a sheet of paper off the front desk. He wads it up, tosses it to Nick. “You’re famous.”

  I look over Nick’s shoulder as he unravels the sheet of the paper. What we find when it’s open makes me nearly choke.

  It’s a wanted poster. It’s in a foreign language with a foreign currency, but I recognize the layout. They’ve used my driver’s license photo, where I look inexplicably cross-eyed, and Nick’s military photo, where he looks like a dead-eyed, neo-Nazi skinhead. He had to be fresh out of basic, where he wasn’t allowed to have hair or feelings—not that he would have if he could have. Which he couldn’t.

  “For a beautiful girl, you’re not very photogenic,” Nick comments offhand.

  I snort. “For a smart guy, you say some seriously dumb things.”

  “Your boyfriend’s here,” Campbell warns darkly.

  There’s a stocky guy standing just outside the glass doors, maybe five feet back. Behind him the walls of nearby buildings are bathed in white, blue, and red light. They flash and pulse like the inside of a club, and I’m just as excited to be here as I would be to be inside one of those bars.

  Nick drops the paper, shoves me behind him, and raises his gun level with the stocky guy’s chest. Whatever it is that Nick saw him start to do back in Nebraska, it has him on high alert. This guy is deadly death danger and I’m not even a little ashamed of cowering behind the boys. I’m unarmed and out of control. They both have guns, they’re fully trained in combat, and Nick… well, Nick has the stones I picked up back in Nebraska.

  Wait.

  Back in Nebraska.

  “How did he get here so fast?” I whisper.

  Nick shakes his head. “I was wondering that myself. He had to Slip.”

  “He can’t. Only Liam and I can.”

  “You keep saying that, but we don’t know that for sure. I saw someone Slip into the apartment in Nebraska.”

  “And I told you it must have been Liam.”

  “Then where is he?” Nick challenges. “He brought this guy here and then what? Disappeared?”

  I shrug. “He’s probably hiding like a coward.”

  “It’s possible.”

  And there’s that tone again: the one that says I could be right, but I’m actually wrong.

  “Get behind the desk,” Nick tells me. His voice is instantly so casual, almost conversational, as though there isn’t a potential X-Men murderer waiting right outside. “It’s going to get ugly.”

  I don’t hesitate to hurry behind the desk, where
the phone is still ringing. I watch the boys from over the top but they’re all just standing there. The guy outside has his hands outstretched, his palms pointing toward us, his fingers splayed and twitching faintly, but he doesn’t make a real move. Nick and Campbell do the same—they point their weapons, they hold their stance, but no one moves a muscle. I watch and I wait and eventually I start to wonder just how long this is going to go on.

  And through it all, the phone keeps freakin’ ringing.

  Finally I can’t take it.

  “What?!” I shout into the receiver.

  There’s silence for a moment, then an annoyed sigh. “Miss Mills, your manners seem to be even further on the decline since I last saw you—a feat I scarcely imagined could be possible.”

  “Doctor Douchebag, how are you?” I ask sarcastically. “Things going well in your neck of the woods? Did Liam ever find you after you ditched him in the middle of a war zone?”

  “My son, who is sitting beside me as we speak, is more than capable of taking care of himself. Thank you for your concern.”

  “Glad to hear it. Who’s the guy with the hands?”

  “He’s the reason I’m calling. I hear you’re in something of a standoff situation? And you’ve taken on a new member, one impervious to bribery.”

  “Something like that. Is Jazz Hands with you?”

  “He is indeed. His orders are to detain you until Liam and I arrive.”

  “You’re on a plane?”

  “No, my dear,” he chuckles lightly. “I’m in a car.”

  My hand holding the phone sweats until the greasy receiver nearly slips out of my grasp. He’s here in Tokyo. We’re not that far from the Behring Sea, and if he jumped on his jet the second things started going down… Russia. That’s why Liam kept referencing Russia. That’s probably why he was left behind like he was—to talk to us. He was trying to put it in my head and convince me to Slip to Russia where he knew his daddy would be waiting, but then the Skype call to Campbell tipped them off to where we really were and it wasn’t far—not on a private jet—so father and son hopped on over.

  “Tell Liam he sucks, will you?” I request bitterly.

  “I will not, no.”

  “He’s right there next to you, you said?”

  “Yes. He’s in the car beside me.”

  “Okay.” I take a deep breath, fill my lungs with anger and air, then scream into the phone: “Liam, you suck!!!”

  “Alex, what’s up?” Nick asks, never taking his eyes off his nemesis.

  I can hear angry shouts from the phone, so I hang it up with an annoyed slam. “Liam screwed us. Can you believe it?”

  “I’ll try to come to terms with it.”

  “He kept bringing up Russia to try to make me Slip there, because that’s where Dr. Evans went. They were waiting for us but we didn’t show.”

  “Then we landed on the radar here in Japan.”

  “And they’re here to collect us,” I finish for him.

  “So Liam is with his dad, not with this guy?”

  I roll my eyes. “It doesn’t mean he didn’t bring this guy here and then jump to wherever his dad was. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’re close.”

  “How close?”

  “Close enough that I think you should inject me again.”

  Nick’s shoulders flex, tightening and loosening. He’s annoyed. “I’m not doing that.”

  “It’s our only way out.”

  “I don’t think it is anymore. The serums nearly knock you out afterward, and we’re on the run. Besides, you can Slip with me but what are we going to do about Campbell? Do you really feel confident enough to try to Slip with us both?”

  I shake my head, knowing in my heart that he’s right. I could lose one of them, or both of them. I could Slip us all to the middle of nowhere. I could lose us in the Great Nothing. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Campbell tells us. “Whatever this Slip thing is, do it without me. I’ll be fine.”

  “Leave no man behind,” Nick counters.

  “There are always exceptions.”

  “I thought we were brothers. You think I’d leave you behind in the middle of my mess? We’re getting you out of here.”

  “Nick,” I say with resign, coming out from behind the desk to stand beside him. “Use a stone.”

  He nods faintly. “I was thinking the same thing, but that would leave us with only one left, and who knows when we’ll get to the lake to get any more of them?”

  “We won’t have any left if Dr. Evans gets his hands on us, and he’s coming.” I glance outside, squinting at Hands. “Do we know exactly what this guy can do?”

  “He can manipulate heat, that’s all I know. Some kind of energy focus using his hands.”

  “Is he twitching?”

  “He’s vibrating. I think that’s how he does it.”

  “I can shake my hands around too and I don’t get fireballs.”

  “Not this fast, you can’t. He’s not going full speed yet. He’s revving up. Can’t you feel it?’”

  I can. It’s faint but I feel it: a weird tingle in the air that makes me uncomfortable, makes me worried, but about what I’m not sure.

  “So you think this guy can vibrate so quickly he’s creating heat?”

  “Either that or he’s from the Fire Nation,” Campbell throws in.

  “Airbender?” I scoff. “Are you for real? I thought you were a nerd, not a ten-year-old.”

  Campbell cracks a grin. “I’m hating you less and less, Sleeping Beauty.”

  “She grows on you,” Nick agrees. “So what do you want to do?”

  “I say we poke the bear,” I tell them, stepping past Nick.

  He goes to stop me and he’s fast enough to do it, but the damage is already done with just that one step. Jazz Hands takes my move as a threat and his entire body begins to blur and hum. I can feel it against my skin like a wave of heavy air, the tingle growing along with my anxiety. Almost immediately a faint blue light coils and rolls in his palms.

  “No friggin’ way,” Campbell breathes.

  Up until this moment he didn’t believe us. He had no faith in any of us having any kind of abilities, but Jazz Hands is giving him a free demonstration right now and even I, someone who knows firsthand that all of this is real, am impressed by the show.

  The color and size of the coils build. They circle and roll in the guy’s palms until I can’t see his skin through the hot haze.

  “What will he do with it?” I whisper.

  “He won’t kill us,” Nick assures me. “Evans wants us, you specifically. But he might— Campbell! Down!“

  Jazz Hands moves quickly, dropping down to one knee and throwing his hands out in front of him. Two blue bursts of fire or plasma or straight-up, stone-cold magic come hurtling through the door, blowing it off its hinges. Glass shatters everywhere. I scream as I hunch down to cover my face with my arms as debris crashes down on top of me.

  When it stops, when the surreal symphony of glass clinking off the stone floor ends, I peek through shaking fingers toward Campbell.

  He’s on the ground flat on his back. His eyes are staring blankly at the ceiling, unblinking. The front of his shirt is covered in dark burn marks that streak in every direction and mix together with… blood. There’s not a lot, but he’s bleeding from several different places on his chest. A chest that, thankfully, is rising and falling rapidly.

  “Campbell?” I ask, creeping toward him. I have to be careful as I crawl over broken glass and smoldering wood shards, my already cut-up hands wary of a second round.

  “That… was… the most amazing thing… I’ve ever seen,” he whispers breathlessly. He turns his head to me, a grimace pinching his wild, excited features. “Can you get him to do it again?”

  “Probably not without killing you. Are you okay?”

  He sits up to look down at his chest and stomach. I hope he can’t see it very well, because it looks like it hurts a
nd if that were my body I’d be freaking out. I’m surprised when he shakes his head after only a cursory glance at his burned torso. “He singed me but I’ll survive. I don’t think he meant to kill me.”

  “It was a warning shot,” Nick agrees.

  He’s standing in front of the gaping hole where the front of the building used to be, his gun trained on Hands again. Hands isn’t moving. His face gives nothing away, and if you’d just walked in on this very weird scene you’d never know the dude had recently summoned an unholy fireball to burst through the door.

  I stand up beside Nick, feeling frustrated and mad. “All right, fine. That’s what he’s got. Time to show him what we’ve got.”

  “The stone?”

  “I’d use the gray one.”

  “Why the gray one?”

  “It’s always felt angrier to me.”

  Campbell stands up slowly behind us and grunts, “There’s an interesting correlation I’ve noticed in the sci-fi world regarding the color gray and a person’s powers.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard it,” Nick interrupts, not interested. “We’ll all discuss it later, I promise. Alex, I’m going to give you my gun. Campbell, do you still have yours?”

  Campbell raises his weapon in answer, pointing it directly at Hands.

  “Good,” Nick says. Then he hands me the gun.

  It feels weirdly hot and heavy in my hands. I do my best to mimic Campbell’s stance, trying as hard as I possibly can to look like I know what I’m doing, but I’m freaking out a little. Do I have what it takes to shoot a man if I have to? Do I even know how? Is the safety on? Where is the safety? Do I have to cock it like they always do in the movies?

  Suddenly it doesn’t matter. All of my worries about the gun fade away when I see Nick pull out the pebble. It no longer matters if I’m holding a gun or a grenade, let alone if I’m doing it right. My weapon is nothing. It’s a toy. A laughable joke of the material world compared to that stone.

  It’s such a small thing—nothing more than a smooth river rock—but in his hand it holds all of the potential in the world. It’s bigger than anything that’s ever been. It’s from another dimension, where rules and regulations like gravity and sanity mean nothing. It’s everything anyone ever wanted it to be and everything you always hoped would never exist. It can be the monster under your bed, the witch in your closet, and as I look at Nick thoughtfully rolling it around in his hand, I wonder what it will become in the control of a man who knows no fear.