Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy (62 page)

“Sorry,” I dropped my head down.

The server came back to our table with our food and started sliding the plates across to each of us. I didn’t say anything to the others, but our server was infected, too. Not just a sleeper, but one of those with the corrupted darkness inside. I shook it off and returned my attention to my plate. French toast and scrambled eggs with a sprinkle of cheddar cheese on top. Normally I’d hold the cheese. And the eggs. And the French part of the toast, for that matter. But I was freaking hungry and I had a killer craving for fat, sugar, and salt.

“Wow.” Alice gawked at me. “Are you eating for two over there?”

I dropped my fork on the table. “Ex-
cuse
me?”

“You’re not going to keep your figure if you stuff your face with all of that,” she continued.

My jaw had dropped so far open, I probably looked like
a gargoyle water spout. “What in the hell are you talking about, Alice? Worry about your damn self, okay?” My stomach
was tangling up already. I wanted to eat in peace.

What the hell, Alice!?

“
Sorry. Just saying.” She shrugged and
went back to moving a pile of hash browns around on her plate with a fork.

I looked at Brian and shook my head. He shrugged, too, and then reached for the syrup to pour on his pancakes.

Alice’s comments had me ruffled, but I needed to eat so I forced the uncomfortable feelings aside and took a bite of my food. The French toast was amazing. Perfectly cooked with just the right amount of sweetness and the perfect texture. I cut another square off the slice with my knife and fork and shoved it into my mouth. A sip of tea. A bite of the deliciously cheesy scrambled eggs.

Why don’t I eat real food more often? Dieting sucks.

“I’m going to take the rest to go,” Alice said, standing up and ushering Brian out of his seat so she could scoot past.

I looked at her food, which had been nearly untouched, and tipped my head to the side. “Alice? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I just don’t have an appetite right now,” she replied, carrying her plate over to the front counter.

“She knows they’ll
bring
her the box, right?” I watched her march over to the bakery case and wave down a server.

“Let her go,” Brian said. “She’s in a bad mood today.”

“I can tell.”

Alice took the to-go box from the waitress and came back over
to us.

“I’m going back to our room to watch something. I’m
tired anyway,” she said, then turned and left the café.

I could hardly believe Brian didn’t bolt out of his seat to go after her. Things between them must have gotten
really
bad while I was away.

“Wow, and I thought I was the hormonal bitch in this party,” I said, chuckling, trying to get Brian to perk up. He didn’t, and I quickly cleared my throat and straightened my smile. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. She’s just… I don’t even know anymore.” He sighed and then picked up his fork and knife and went back to eating his pancakes.

“Brian?”

“Yeah?” He looked up from his food. “What is it?”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

He set his fork down beside his plate and I leaned over mine.

“Our server,” I whispered, “is infected with the same stuff as that guy we saw at the other diner. The stuff that’s,” I lowered my voice so it was hardly audible, “killing them,” I finished.

“Really?”

“Yes.” I ate another fork-full of scrambled eggs. “There
are a lot more of them now than there were before. It’s ridiculous.”

“Hmm.” He looked for our waitress and flagged her down
as she came out of the kitchen. She walked over to us with a friendly smile on her face and asked if we needed anything.

“We don’t need anything,” Brian said with a slightly exaggerated smile. “I just wanted to say that we’re new here in town and we really appreciate your hospitality. People like
you make this kind of town a great place to visit.” He reached
a hand out to her.

“Oh, you’re welcome, dear,” she said, just about blushing,
offering her hand to him.

He took it and cupped it between his hands. “Thank you.” He glanced quickly at her nametag. “Rachel.”

I gasped, just about choking on my scrambled eggs.

“Brian!” I stood up from my seat and pointed. The
corrupted ball of fading white light inside her had cleared and brightened.

“Yes, Kareena?” he
turned his head toward me while simultaneously releasing Rachel’s hand. She walked off without saying a word.

“What the hell is going on here!? Does Alice know about this?”

“We don’t need Alice, do we?” he said with a smirk. “You
and I make a much better team.”

He stretched out his arm toward me, blue light sparking from his fingertips as if it were leaking out of him like liquid electricity. I’d never seen it do that before.
Ever
. Not even David could manifest external bolts of fluorescence.

“Brian? What’s happening to you?” I tried to back away but felt my body grow heavier, causing me to thump right back down into my seat.

“Don’t worry about it, Kareena,” he replied. “Just rest.
You’ll feel better in the morning.” Tiny crackling lines
of fluorescence skittered across the table toward me, and a pulse of hot energy blasted into my chest, knocking me back.

The room blurred and my head hit the table.

. . .

I awoke in a musty room. The blinds had been drawn.

I glanced at the clock. Noon.

No. Not again.

“Nice to have you back,” a voice said from the hall near the bathroom. I turned my head and huffed with disgust.

“Taylor! How did you find me!?”

“I didn’t find you just now,” he replied, grinning from ear to ear. “I’ve been with you for a while; manipulating your
thoughts so you’d believe you were
still with the others.”

“What? How? How long have I been here? Where are the others?”

“Does it matter? They can’t get to you now. Not while I’m with you. Why are you so worried about them?” He sat on the edge of my bed and inched closer to me. I squirmed to get away, but he reached out and grabbed my arm. “You have me now. Aren’t I enough?”

“No, Taylor! You have to stop this sick game of yours. I’m not yours to do whatever you want with!” I fought to get
my hand free of his, but his grip tightened and his fluorescence
started to burn my wrist.

“That’s not what the Saviors told me,” he said, almost breathing on me now.

“You’re full of crap and delusional.”

“No. I clearly recall them telling me I could do whatever I wanted with the Seeker as long as I did what they asked of me.”

“And you think you can use me because of that?”

“At first, I thought that was pretty messed up, but then I met you and I saw how important you were to your friends, not to mention how incredibly powerful your fluorescence is.” He sucked his lip. “It’s already been too long. I need you.” Violet light started glowing and flickering through his skin, creeping its way across mine. A hundred tiny shocks of electricity stung my body and I winced.

“Taylor, please. No.” I pushed away from him but
trapped myself against the headboard of the bed.

His eyes glinted with pink light and I clenched my teeth as he siphoned more and more fluorescence from me.

“No!” I pushed him with my aching arms, but he didn’t budge. Then the air suddenly became thin and even he flinched as we both realized what was about to happen.

A blast of white light filled the room, the floor disappeared, and we fell into nothingness.

I looked up and met the translator’s stern gaze. There was a small number of other Saviors behind him. Five. No. Seven. The number was much smaller than it had been in the past. We usually had quite an audience. I struggled to come to my feet, but the feeling of being sedated stopped me.

The translator turned to address Taylor. “What are you doing with her?” he asked him.

“What do you mean?” Taylor replied, cocking an eyebrow
as if he were so innocent and he couldn’t understand the
translator’s intention. “Nothing. I’m not doing anything with
her. I’m doing what you asked me to.”

“We never instructed you to deliberately exploit the Seeker.”

“No.” He scoffed. “But you said I could use her power if I needed to. That’s what I’m doing.”

“She has offered to comply, has she not?” He looked at
me and I nodded in confirmation. Then he focused on Taylor
again. “Why do you continue to take unnecessary action?”

Taylor lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes at the translator. “It makes me stronger, okay? And that makes it easier for me to take care of everything you asked me to. I don’t need her help to do this.”

“But you
do
need her abilities. Yet you choose to take them from her forcefully?”

“Yes,” he replied nonchalantly.

My jaw tightened. I couldn’t just stand there and let him talk shit.

“I don’t want him to,” I interjected, taking a step closer to the Savior. “I’ll help you if you make him stop draining me. Please.”

The translator tilted his head to the side. “We will consider it;
however, there is another concern we must discuss with you, Seeker.”

I swallowed hard, already knowing what he was about to ask.

“Who is responsible for the portal that sent you back to the others?”

Wait. They didn’t know?

“I-I don’t know,” I lied. “It just appeared and I thought I heard the others calling for me, so I went through it. I don’t know who created it. I thought it was you.”

“We had nothing to do with it. If you should see one again, you must choose to ignore it. It is dangerous.”

“Dangerous? How?” I was finally able to come to my feet. “It took me back to Brian and Alice. Ever since I left them, Taylor’s been doing nothing but hurting me. I’m not strong enough to deal with this every day. If you want my help, you need to protect me. You need to help me!”

“What is it you want us to do?” the translator asked.

“I want to be safe.” I shot a quick glance at Taylor, who was fuming. “From
him
. I don’t want him taking my powers anymore. I don’t want to black out. I’m sick of waking up places and not remembering what the hell happened before I fell asleep. Help me, please!”

The Savior considered my words momentarily before speaking again. “Will you continue to resist our instruction? Because of the
disobedience of you and the other three Fluorescent Ones, we were forced to resort to another option—a Variant.” He gestured
toward Taylor. “The fluorescence inside him differs greatly from your own. It was of our own
creation. Without viable offspring from the Healer and Starter,
we had to find another way.”

I curled a hand into a fist and my nails pricked my skin. “Can’t you see this isn’t working!?”

“To judge what is or is not working is not your job,” the translator snidely replied.

“People are dying! You’re going to kill us if you keep doing this. Is that what you want?”

“We
will
find a cure,” he answered sternly, “at any cost.” The tone of his voice was more unaffected than ever.

My jaw dropped and then I closed my mouth and swallowed hard. They didn’t give a damn. They didn’t care if they took the whole damn world down with them.

The Prism were right.

We were screwed.

Chapter
21

“
H
ow dare you lie to the Saviors about me,” Taylor
hissed, the bitterness on his face sending my heart into panic
mode. “Why did you do that?”

“You’re being an ass. And I didn’t lie, either! They said it themselves; you don’t have to keep hurting me if I’m willing to help you!”

“But you’re not!” he snarled through bared teeth, his sloping eyebrows accentuating his vile expression. “You say you are, but you’re not.”

“Taylor, why are you so obsessed with starting people? Why can’t you admit that what you’re doing is wrong? That—”

“You don’t get it, do you, Kareena?” he continued in a raspier voice. “This is about more than what the Saviors want.
When they first put fluorescence inside me, I thought I was in trouble. I thought what they did to me was outrageous and it made me furious. But as time went on, I started to realize that my ability to start people was a gift.
When I absorb someone’s energy, it does something to me. It makes me feel alive. Then I learned that there’s energy in everything. Whether I take it from you or not, I’ll thrive. It’s around us constantly. In the air. In the ground. We breathe it in. We consume it. We are made of it.” Subtle bursts of neon purple light emanated from his fingertips. Witnessing the external manifestation of his power sent chills up my spine. I took a step back.

“If you can feel all of that energy,” I started, “then why do you keep wanting to take mine, too?”

“That pretty pink light flowing through your veins is more potent than any of the rest,” he said, making a fist. The light danced across his knuckles, encircling his hand. “Starting people is a quick fix, but pure fluorescence is the real deal.”

“What!?” I scowled in disgust. “So you’re getting high on fluorescence? Is that it? You’re using me like a drug to foster this sick craving of yours?”

He put his open hands out to the sides and a ripple of purple light bubbled up through the floorboards, arcing and darting toward his palms as if he were channeling it like a receptor.

The lights in the room shuttered on and off until Taylor made closed fists again and the bolts of light faded into his skin.

“The Saviors gave me a gift they don’t have,” he said, raising his hands toward his chest. “One you don’t have,
either. I can move energy—bend it to my will.” Purple sparks crackled between his hands and flickering color coursed
through his entire body, no longer isolated to his right arm. “The Saviors can’t do that, but I can because I’m… different. And you, Kareena, you’re filled with the very basic form of this energy.”