Adamant (30 page)

I was prepared for the recoil this time. He shuddered and went limp, but I could still feel the charge radiating from the stunner. No, not from the stunner anymore. From me.

I was controlling the magic. Pushing the level higher. He twitched all over with the same convulsive shudder as someone being electrocuted. The stunner broke apart in my hands as the backlash hit, and I dropped it as it seared my hand.

Third level. Fatal.

Somehow, I had time to think that in the endless seconds before his eyes went blank.

The other guy was half-slumped against the wall, blood pooling around his head. I crouched, felt for a pulse. Nothing.

I’d never killed anyone before. Not a human being. I’d always assumed that I’d feel something other than this numbness, a total disconnection from my surroundings. I took another step back. The roaring in my ears was my own heartbeat, like crashing waves.

Breathe. Breathe, Kay. You didn’t have a choice.

I did have a choice. It had been easy. And it had always been easy, because I was a goddamned Walker.

You finally did it, Kay.
Stark images quite unrelated to the horror in front of me threatened to break down the walls in my head. The world froze in that moment, the alleyway tilting, like I stood on one side of a gulf with the other side moving farther and farther away by the second, irrecoverable, irreversible. The same, but never the same.

Go. You have to go. Run… no one will know.

Precisely the problem. No one would know.

Ada’s face broke through the numbness.
Bet you have,
she’d said, pinning me as a murderer.

I had to find her.

I ran.

***

ADA

I gaped, looking around for the speaker. There was a soft laugh. And then two people appeared, a metre away from me. I yelped and jumped back.

“Hi,” said one. A girl. The boy at her side must have been her twin. They were
that
identical. Straight brown hair—the girl’s was cut short—eyes dark as black pits. There was something oddly familiar about those eyes.

Where the hell did they come from?

“Hey,” said the boy. “You’re Ada, right?”

I stared mutely. They’d heard everything. And there was only one way I knew could make something—or someone—invisible. “Chameleons…” I murmured. But they didn’t appear to be wearing any devices.

“That’s what we call ourselves.” The siblings exchanged identical grins. “Pretty neat, right? It was almost worth it. Almost worth what the Alliance did to us.”

I shook my head, slowly. “You what?”

“You’re an experiment, too, aren’t you?” said the girl. “Well, Delta said you were different. Said you were only a baby, and magic was common on your world. You could hide it. We never could.”

“Experiments.” Crap, what had Kay said? “The Alliance? They-”

“Tampered with us,” said the boy dismissively. “This nut-job Alliance-council guy Walker started it. He injected us with pure magic and then threw us out on the streets. It happened when were sixteen.” He glanced at his sister. “Then we went into the Passages for the first time. It was like being reborn. Too bad it nearly got us locked up back here on Valeria when we moved here. They’re not a fan of natural magic-wielders here. But luckily, Delta helped us. His family took us in.”

“Yeah, Delta rocks,” said the girl. “You were his friend? Or something more?”

“God, no,” I said automatically. Didn’t mean the betrayal hurt any less. “So you’re what, his bastard father’s pet magic-wielders?”

The girl burst into delighted laughter. “You’re just like he described you. This is gonna be so much fun.”

“What is?” I glared at both of them. “I reckon I can take on both of you. So don’t try anything.”

The boy laughed. “Yeah, sure you can. We’re here to bring out your
potential.
Hit us with everything you’ve got.”

I gaped. “You what?”

“Seriously,” said the girl. “It’d be my honour to get beaten up by Adamantine, Royal of Enzar.” She snickered. The siblings grinned at one another again and turned back to face me. Creepy as hell.

“I think we’re freaking her out,” said the boy.

“Brilliant deduction,” I said. “Thing is, you’re between me and the door.” I let magic flow towards me, as a warning. I didn’t want to hit them. They acted like little kids, though I suspected they were about Alber’s age. Not that I was usually averse to violence, but if it was what Delta and his family wanted, they could go to hell.

“Ooh, she’s ready.”

“Well, so are we.” Magic crackled, sending red lightning streaks through the air. I gathered a palm full and threw it at them. First level, enough to knock them off their feet.

But they were quicker. Hands pinned my arms to my sides, and the shot I’d fired bounced harmlessly off the wall. But the backlash caught all three of us. My back slammed into the floor, and the girl laughed delightedly from a few feet away. “Do it again!”

“Shut up,” I hissed through my teeth, climbing to my feet. I gathered magic again and fired it at the floor, angled so the backblast would strike the door. The boy leaped in the way, and the impact sent him sprawling.

“Come on, you can do better than this.”

The girl appeared behind me and kicked me viciously in the knee. I was too slow to react, and pain shot through my leg. Swaying on my feet, I aimed a punch at her, but she’d already moved, and the boy caught my arm. He twisted my wrist, hard.

“Delta didn’t specify what he wanted us to do,” he said. “But you know, being locked up for so long is kind of boring. Delta said your guardian taught you to fight, not to question. Right?”

No. That wasn’t it, at all.

“He hit me, sometimes,” said the girl, and while I gaped at her, eyes streaming from the pain in my leg, she hit
me.
Agony exploded in my jaw.

I knew how to defend myself in almost every situation—but there was a world of difference between Nell’s lessons and
this.
They were kids who thought violence was fun, and the shock of it made my attacks clumsy, weak.

The boy kicked my legs out from under me, and I hit the ground again. My head struck metal and I tasted blood at the back of my mouth. Groaning, I tried to sit up, but the boy pressed the heel of his shoe into my stomach. I whimpered.

“Fight back,” the girl hissed, crouching beside me and whispering in my ear. “You’re angry. Fight back.”

The magic responded, crackling around her, reflecting in her pitch-black eyes. It was in the eyes, I thought. Whatever the experiment did had given them that unnatural spark, like my own eyes reflected my Royal status. Like gleaming purple meant mageblood.

And with a thrill of horror, I knew where I’d seen that colour before.

Kay. His eyes were the same unnatural gleaming dark shade as the twins’. There was no mistaking it. I’d spent my life looking out for these “tells”, as Nell called them. Signs that someone was different.

No. It couldn’t be true.

Walker…

Who
had orchestrated the experiments? Had he even volunteered his own son?

The girl smiled at me. “Bye, Ada.”

Boy and girl moved in unison, mirrors of one another, twin fists coming at my face. Something snapped inside. I pulled down on the magic, and it came in a swirling mass, unlike it had ever done before. The boy went flying, over to the other side of the room, and hit the wall with a
crack
. The girl, too, went head over heels. And then came the backlash. I screamed aloud as it flooded my body, expecting it to burn me to cinders.

But it didn’t. It fizzled out, becoming mere sparks, which danced over the floor, over me.

“That’s more like it!” The girl bounded to her feet, clapping. “You just needed an incentive. You have to really
want
to use it for it to work. I’m surprised you didn’t experiment more.”

So was I. But Nell’s warnings had stayed me, kept me sane. Whether she knew about this or not, she’d done a good job of warning me of the dangers. And I’d done a bloody awful job of repaying her.

“Oh hey, Eddie,” said the girl, calling to her brother. “Rise and shine!”

He didn’t move.

Shit. Shit.

“Eddie!” She threw a blast of magic at him, almost playfully. The magic turned him over, but he didn’t get up.

I wanted to throw up. But everything seemed to be stuck in place, including me. My chest felt like it was caving in. I wanted to scream and sob uncontrollably. But no tears came. Nothing, nothing, like the boy’s, like Eddie’s silence.

Dead silence.

“Eddie?”

The shrill pitch of her voice coaxed my limbs into motion again. I stood, no longer caring if movement got me hit, and grabbed the door, shoving at it. I pulled on magic and used its force to drive me, and the wrenching motion sent me flying backwards.

But the door slid open.

“Eddie!”

I ran, jerkily. Not looking where I was going. Anywhere. There were several other warehouses nearby. And offices beyond that. The city. An alien city. One I’d wanted to visit as long as I’d known Delta.

Keep moving,
whispered a Nell-like voice in my ear.
Don’t think.

Time passed in stop-start motions. Suddenly, I was in an alley between two warehouses with no recollection how I got there. Two bodies lay prone at the end, one surrounded by a halo of blood.
Hell. I didn’t do that, did I?

I didn’t trust my own memory. I didn’t trust myself. Not anymore.

Run. Ada. Run.

And I did. I circled the block and found myself heading east, away from the warehouses, towards the sound of traffic. This was a secure area, I guessed. Important. Delta’s family were important.

Delta’s family had turned me into a murderer.

I stopped running. My heart beat fast, too fast.
Don’t pass out. Not now.
One foot in front of the other.

“Ada.”

I had to be hallucinating. Kay was approaching me, utter shock stark on his face. The ground swayed under my feet, and it took everything I had to stay in the here and now, not give in to the scream fighting to burst from my chest. I couldn’t say a word.
I killed him.

Kay looked papery-white, eyes deep and staring. I must look worse. I steadied myself against a nearby streetlamp before he reached me, hands out like he’d intended to catch me.

“Ada. Come on.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Come on.” Hysterical laughter rose in my throat, and with a wrenching sensation, I shoved it behind a barrier. “Gotta—find the Passages.”

“This way,” he said, indicating a locomotive track over the other side of the bridge. “There’s a ground-level one. We’re going to have to sneak onto a train.”

After everything I’d been through already, I didn’t question it. Kay looked at me with what might have been concern. I walked fast, not speaking, thinking only of the next step. And the next. Ad infinitum.

Kay was speaking again. “We’ll have to jump on here.” We stood on some kind of platform. I had no recollection of climbing up, but I must have done it. And there was a locomotive zooming towards us. Hovering over the gleaming tracks, like everything in this world. A hover train. I giggled, and Kay’s concerned expression deepened.

“Ada, don’t zone out on me now. Jump when I say. Okay?”

“Oh… Kay.” I pressed my hand to my mouth to muffle another giggle. I was losing it, all right.

But I managed to hold myself together. When the train whipped past, the wind buffeting us, Kay shouted, “Jump!” And I did. He’d timed it perfectly. Trains here were windowless and we landed in the middle of a packed carriage. Several people gasped, and most backed away from us. I sprawled on a seat, half-upside down. I righted myself and fell into Kay as the train picked up speed. His arm wrapped around my shoulder, and he steered us into a newly vacated pair of seats.

I closed my eyes, willing the world to disappear. To fade out.

“Breathe, Ada. Concentrate on your breathing.”

Wait, I wasn’t breathing? So that’s why I felt lightheaded. Seemed good advice to me, so I did as Kay said.

“You’re all right. It’s going be all right.” In my half-dazed state, I thought he was talking to himself as much as me.

Breathe.

We were getting out of here, we were free.

KAY

Ada’s breathing steadied. What the hell had they done to her? I couldn’t ask, not with all these people around. They probably assumed we were—I cut off the thought before it got to the words
criminals
and
murderers.

“Where are we going?” Ada looked up at me. She’d lost some of the dazedness in her eyes, though I could still feel her trembling against me.

“There’s a Passage entrance in the north of the city,” I said. “Easy to get out, nightmare to get back in, unless you live here. It shouldn’t be a problem for us. I have my Alliance ID, and by now the word ought to be out that the council’s under threat.”