Forget Me Not (23 page)

Lilly holds out her arm, turns it over and around, examining it. She looks up with a wide grin. “Cooler than expected.”

Will’s suit hangs across his hand like a dead fish. I shoot him a questioning look, and he gestures to Jax with an upward tilt of his chin. “Where’s his?”

“There’s only three,” I tell Will.

“You wear it.” Will throws the protect-it at Jax.

“Always the do-gooder.” Jax smirks. “Put it on, Dudley. Your bravery won’t impress anyone when you cop a bullet to the heart.” He tosses it back to Will. “Except maybe the coroner.”

Jax pushes something into his ear. A black and shiny bud sits in the opening, held in place by a thin piece curling up, over, and behind his ear like a security guard earpiece, only smaller.

A small, muffled noise spins me around. Lilly’s dancing eyes meet mine, her hand covering her mouth to stifle a giggle. Her other hand, cupped in front of her, is full of small pebbles. She pegs one right at my chest. It bounces off.

“Hey!”

“Cool.” She does it again.

The realization hits me like cold water thrown in my face—we’re using tech. My stomach reels. “Stop it, Lilly. We can’t use tech. Their agents will come.”

“Not here,” Jax says. “We’re in their territory. That will be dismissed as their own.”

Will scowls and pulls the suit on over his clothes. Jax must have won out. A shimmery film connects each of the raised spheres right before the silky threads change color. The fishnet blends into the background like a fading photo. The connecting film blends too.

Lilly gives an impish grin and tosses a volley of pebbles at Will.

Jax ignores all of us, fiddling with more earpieces. “There’re four of these.” He passes me a piece identical to the one curled around his left ear. I push it in mine. Lilly and Will do the same.

“Testing. Can you hear me?”
Jax’s voice echoes through my head like it’s one of my thoughts.

I jump and peer around, shaking my head to free his voice from bouncing around inside. I expected it to be like the bike helmet’s Bluetooth, and the ear piece would be a speaker. This is just plain unnerving.

“Yes,” I say at the same time as Will. Lilly doesn’t answer.

“Use your thoughts,”
Jax says in my mind.
“It’s a telcom. You don’t need to speak out loud.”
He bends down and readjusts the blade strapped on his leg. His hair falls into his eyes and, despite our earlier argument, I want to reach out and push it back. If I do, though, will I be able to stop at just one touch?

“I know I’m hot, but really, you want to share those thoughts with everyone?” The infuriating smirk twists his mouth as he straightens up.

Lilly stifles a chuckle.

My eyes forget to blink. There’s no way. He can’t know what I was thinking.

“Heard that too, cupcake. You need to be more careful what you project,” he says out loud.

He can hear my thoughts. I turn my back, trying to hide the heat rising from my neck, to my cheeks, all the way to my ears.

“Don’t be an ass.” Lilly hurls the rest of her pebbles at him, but he just laughs.

“Tele stands for telepathic, as in passing thoughts from one mind to another. If you think of projecting the thought to someone, they will hear your voice in their mind.”
She straightens the telcom in her ear.
“Like this.”
Her voice bounces through my mind, an echo which sounds just like her.

“Lilly, can you hear me?”
I think.

She nods. Must have worked. “You can choose to speak to as many or as few people as you like, provided they are wearing a telcom.”

“What did you think? I’ll make him apologize,”
Will says inside my head
.

“Forget it.”

I stuff my jacket into the backpack, and Lilly slings it over her shoulder.

“We’ll go in through the front door,” Jax says.

Will’s hand darts to the mace at his belt, grabbing it with a white-knuckled clutch. “It’s the middle of the day. Won’t there be Collective agents inside?”

Lilly peeks between the bushes into the park. “If we wait a little while the lunch rush will be over.”

“Fine.” Jax slides onto the ground, his back against the rock.

After what must be at least half an hour of silence and Lilly drawing patterns in the dirt, Jax rises to his feet and says, “Follow my lead.”

We follow him out of the small clearing, out of the trees, out of the park.

Heaviness hangs in my gut as I stand before the cement-rendered building, which oozes abandonment. I glance at my friends, but no one seems to notice, so I ignore the ominous feeling prickling the tips of my shoulders. Instead, I follow Jax up the steps
, which extend all the way across the front of the building. Two massive wooden doors rise up above us, forming the shape of an arch.

Jax stops still, stares at the door, and moves backward down the
steps.
“It doesn’t feel right.”

Will stumbles into me in his mirrored retreat.
“It feels like… trouble.”

“Thank God, it’s not just me being paranoid.”
I sidestep out of Will’s path.

We all back away, casting suspicious glances at the doors. Jax disappears down the side of the building and into a narrow alley. Shadows envelope us as we move into it, cast by a neighboring building. The long, straight wall is broken by a dark metal door on the side of the Council building. It stands at the top of a few steps like an emergency exit. Relief spreads through me. It doesn’t have the same creepy sensation as the front of the building. At least, not that I can tell.

Jax strides up the narrow steps and reaches for the handle, turns it, and the door opens. He pokes his head inside before vanishing into the building.
“It’s clear. Looks like a storage room.”

My gaze flits over the alley, confirming no one can see us. Walking up the steps two at a time, I reach for the door, but my hand won’t close around the bolt. Strange. I reach out again and come up against some kind of soft and squishy barrier that my hand sinks into. The ominous feeling returns with a sharp clarity. No matter how hard I try, the door can’t be reached.

“What’s wrong?”
Will asks.

“I can’t get in.”
I project the thought to all of them.

“Walk through the door.”
Jax’s voice carries his usual flair, like he’s laughing at me.

“There’s some kind of barrier.”
I step away.

Jax appears, holding the door open.
“Try it now.”

Will pushes past me, walks up to the door, lifts his right leg to step over the threshold, but it hits the barrier and hangs in midair like a half-dead helium balloon. If he’s stuck too, it must be a Collective defense. Snorts and giggles erupt from Lilly behind me, and I find myself giggling too. It looks funny, his leg just hanging there at an odd angle.

“Nice dance move.”
Jax graces Will with a wink.

Will extracts the limb with a suctioning slurp. He bounds down the stairs, turns, and runs past me right at the opened door, hitting the barrier with force. For a mere second it envelopes him whole.

Damn. Rushing at the door, why didn’t I think of that? I’m not sure how to help him out, though. Hopefulness steals the wind from my lungs. He has to be able to breathe. He’s thrown into the air and over the side of the steps and lands on the dirty concrete with a thud.

“Huh, that’s odd.”
Jax walks back and forth through the doorway.

Will rises, brushing hands over his jeans, shirt, and jacket.

“Let me try.”
Lilly strides toward the door. She pushes her hand toward the door handle, leans in, and strains with effort, but it’s no use. It’s the same. She’s elbow deep in the barrier when she gives up, pulling her arm out with a soft squish.

“Must be the protect-its.”
Jax disappears into the building again.

Will and I exchange a troubled look. He rubs the back of his neck and meets my gaze.
“What the heck is he doing?”

I shrug. Jax seemed certain this is where Dad would be. A rush of excitement spreads through my veins
—he’s so close. Soon we’ll have him. But it’s dulled by a growing knot of dread in the pit of my stomach. God knows what state he’ll he be in when we find him and he might still think I’m dead. That should be easy enough to fix when he sees me, though. It’ll be clear I’m here, clear their mind tricks aren’t true. Hopefully he’ll be himself, and it won’t matter.

“Got it.”
Jax appears in the doorway, his shoulder resting against the frame and a grin radiating smugness on his face.
“Try it again.”

He must have turned it off somehow. Okay, we’re ready to go. Before I can move, Will’s already at the door and disappears through. I dip my foot into the entrance to test it. Nothing happens. A tentative step into the doorway with a held breath, and
—nothing. So I walk through and into a small room which smells of bleach and dust. My vision shadows with spots, taking a moment to adjust to the darkness. Brooms and mops lean stacked up against a wall next to piles of boxes and a big plastic container. Will’s arm presses against mine, squishing me in at the other side against Lilly. The small room was not designed to hold four people, I guess.

“Hey, Jax,”
Lilly says. “
How’d you fix it so we could get in? I mean, the barrier must be against tech, right?”
Lilly’s voice carries no depth, like she’s not so sure.

“Yep, I think so.”
Jax stands near a door opposite me, shuffles against the rest of us to turn around and opens it to peer out.

My glance meets Lilly’s. He didn’t answer the first question. I repeat it.
“So how come we’re in now?”

“I tripped it. Let’s go.”
Jax creeps through the door.

The others make no sign of moving, so I jostle my way past them and emerge into a wide corridor. It takes several blinks to adjust my eyes to the bright light of afternoon sun glinting off every surface. My head cringes away from the glare, turning into my shoulder. Marble pillars run from the floor all the way to the high ceiling lining both sides of the hall. It’s more beautiful than any building I’ve ever seen before, but there’s not time to admire the architecture. We have to find Dad, and fast.

“Quick. Hide behind the columns.”
Jax scurries to the closest one.

I rush out to join him, bent over for speed and stealth, but he runs to the next pillar just as I get there. Lilly crowds in behind me, followed by Will. My feet glide across the slippery floor like I’m on ice skates as I scurry along. After darting between at least a dozen columns, Jax and I reach the last one from the end of the hall, which seems to turn at a right angle and continue on. The steady sound of voices wafting down the sun-filled hallway makes my heart beat double time. Their words are barely audible through the pounding in my ears.

“This president isn’t working out,” a male voice says.

“I know. He’s not open to our persuasion,” says a second man.

The closer they move toward us, the louder they become. “It’s not from lack of effort on Theras’s behalf, though. The man is completely closed off to the usual forms of political influence.”

“Then it’s time to replace him.” The second man sounds like he’s talking about something mundane.

They come into view. Jax pulls me toward him. We hold as still as we can, jammed behind the tall pillar. Dark shadows hang under his dull eyes. He’s still so tired. The desire to get a glimpse of the Councilors who have caused me so much heartache nearly makes me burst, but I dare not move a muscle. Finally, the footsteps fade. Jax lets out a long breath which tickles my neck and sends a shiver vibrating through me.

“They’ve gone around the other corner,”
Will says through the telcom.

Jax holds me for a few seconds after they’ve passed. I don’t want him to let go, and the look in his
eyes tells me he feels the same too. His arms drop to his sides, releasing me a little later than necessary. He peeks around the corner then darts out and disappears into the turn of the hall.
“It’s just a little farther.”

I dash out after him, but follow a pillar behind in case there are more people. This hall’s identical to the last; tall marble pillars line both sides. Stone carvings of people from their shoulders up stand proudly between each pillar. We scoot past a double wooden door on the inside wall halfway down. At the end a third hall runs off to the left. The entire hallway must create a huge outer rectangle.

“Mae,”
Jax echoes through my head.

I swivel away from the new corridor, and he stands in a dark arched entrance. Will and Lilly are nowhere to be seen, so they must have already slipped through the stair descending behind him. Idiot. I give myself a quick scolding. This is definitely not the place to daydream. Jax’s hand brushes my back as I creep past him into the cool, stone stairwell. Dim lights high up on the wall cast eerie shadows on the walls. They look like torches from an ancient castle, but the light is a dull, pure white like electric lighting.