Keystone (42 page)

Chad flicks open the paper with a snap of his wrist and the letters explode off the page like fireworks thrown at my face. POP POP POP, the letters burst so fast that they don’t make sense.

R-pop-E-pop-S-pop-E-pop-T-pop.

I say it the wrong way in my head and then the right way. Reset. Reset.
Reset what
?

“See what I mean?” Chad says, getting to his feet. “The code’s unreadable. Time to find out from the Tralate. You think I should use candy? Little kids will do anything for candy, right?” He giggles. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. Little kids will do anything not to have another fingers broken, too.”

He shrugs and gets to his feet. I grab for Chad’s ankle and his field erupts like a burst of smog. He just shakes me off and I watch his dusty shoes walk across the room and open the door to Iris’s bedroom.

Please,
I close my eyes in prayer. I don’t even know if the universe can hear me anymore.
Please help me to stop him from hurting her. Please.

What that comes roaring toward me is not God.

Chapter 19

I RECOGNIZE HIM IMMEDIATELY, BY the darkness and the feeling of sludge that gushes through me.

Accept me, Nalena,
Roger’s voice is desperate in my head.
Let me help.

No.
Get out of here.
I say.
If you want to help, let my mother come.

She’s with your grandfather. He’s paralyzed from the movement of his Memory. It’s opened, and he is waiting for it to be blessed.

Why are you here?

They don’t need me anymore. They wanted the Memory and it’s been found. But I can help you. When I traded the Memory, I asked Chad to help me reunite with my family. I also asked for him to reveal his weakest Cavis to me. He told me, only because I was Alo and he knew he could kill me before I could ever reach his Cavis. But you can. Please, Nalena. Let me help you. Accept me as your Connection.

I don’t trust you. I’ll do it on my own,
I tell him. I open my eyes and see Iris’s open door. I try to push myself to my feet and collapse. I shut my eyes again.

Please,
Roger begs.
I’ll separate from you afterward. I’ll be written, I swear it. You can know everything. You can hate me. But let me help you now.

Why would I trust you to help?

Because he will kill you after he kills her.
His voice breaks in my head.
And you are my daughter.

I open my eyes, my tears making everything blurry, and I hear the scream. It’s Iris’s little voice, no words, just the sound of her terror. I no longer have the option of debating whether or not I can trust him. I shut my eyes again.

Help me,
I say.

Roger’s field immediately erupts inside mine. The two come together like the clash of steel. They weld to one another, the inside of my field grinding and Roger’s falling into place, until finally, our fields merge into a solid silver orb, strong as Titanium. The minute the bond is complete, my body rises inside my field.

Our Connection will exhaust you when your field disappears,
Roger says. He’s a ghostly film inside my field.
Go now. Follow your instincts and don’t break your field.

I’m at the door within seconds. Someone else is screaming. It’s Zaneen, howling like an animal, as she beats Chad’s back. He’s holding Iris against the wall, with one hand on her throat, and dangling the Memory in front of her with the other.

“Read!” he shouts at her. Iris cries and he grips her throat tighter, until she stops making noise. Zaneen moves around to yank his arms and while his back is still to me, I throw myself on him. I land on his back and wrap my legs around him.

The blind eye,
Roger’s voice instructs me, solid and sure.

The blind eye. I reach around and jab at Chad’s face, but I don’t know which eye Roger means and I can’t see what I’m doing. Chad lets go of Iris and she drops, coughing, to the floor. He reels back, reaching for me and gets my hair. He pulls hard, trying to yank me over the top of him, but I dig in my heels. Zaneen leaps at him, her mouth open and Chad lets go of me. Instead, he backhands Zaneen so hard that her feet leave the floor.

Iris screams and Chad grabs her again. I can’t do anything on his back. I jump off him and as he swings to face me, I remember Rule One. I move my Cavis, because even though he knows where it is, he can’t kill me if it’s not aligned. My body drops into its crouch.

Let yourself do this,
Roger instructs.
You can do this if you trust your instincts. The blind eye is on the forehead. Between his eyebrows.

My body fires itself at Chad again. Chad lets go of Zaneen and pivots before I can touch him, slamming me down to the ground with one backhand.

“Leave her alone!” Iris screams.

“Read it!” Chad shouts at her.

“I can’t read!” She howls back.

I roll away from him. Chad groans as I jump to my feet again.

“You need to die now?” he says to me. “Is that it? If you pretend to be Contego, expect that I will treat you like one.”

His field orbs around him like a storm cloud. Chad stuffs the Memory into his pocket and motions to me with his other hand, inviting me to fight him.

My body settles back into a crouch again. I pull my Cavis into the palm of my right hand and level my eyes on Chad. Iris scurries over to Zaneen, huddling down beside her, trying to wake her up.

“I am Contego,” I growl. “And I am your Tralate.”

Chad stares for a moment, disbelieving or just putting it all together—I can’t tell. Then he smiles.

“Let’s go then,” he says. “Prove yourself.”

He forms his first three fingers into a spike aimed for the soft spot in the center of my collar bone. I drop out of the way and swing up with the heel of my hand, aiming for his nose. Even with my body on autopilot, I miss.

He scoops across my hand with a massive stroke and my Cavis bobs up my arm and onto my shoulder blade. I push it down my side and into my leg.

But I can’t see any Cavis hovering over Chad’s forehead or anywhere in his dark field. He strikes and strikes, and even though I block each one, it also stops me from relocating my Cavis. It toddles closer to my heart. I push it away, to the opposite side of my chest and under my arm. Chad strikes again and my rib cracks, sending the explosion of pain straight through me. I hit the floor face-first and the feeling is like a glass bulb exploding in my nose.

I get up.

He swipes hard at my Cavis and just as I shoot out of his way, a tiny, dirty patch drifts to the surface of his field. It jiggles in the muck around him. The gray blob wiggles toward the center of his forehead, but Chad swishes it away.

There! See it?
Roger shouts in my head.

His brain. That’s the blind eye. Right in the very front.

Iris jumps at him and it throws Chad off balance. He stumbles away from me, grabbing Iris and jerking her up to his face.

“Tell me what it says!” he barks, the veins rising in his neck. Iris screams and I hurl myself at him. I drive my fingers into the space between his eyebrows. My fingertips sink into his muddy Cavis, hard enough that his grip becomes putty. Iris slips away. I push hard enough that his eyes roll up and his head hits the floor with a sickening thump.

Make sure he’s dead,
Roger bleats in the back of my head. His voice is not savage, it’s frightened.
Kill him, Nalena, it’s the only way. He’ll escape somehow. Or he’ll take his second chance in the rings and come back worse. Trust me, please. I know you don’t have a reason to…but please…

Chad’s eyes are wide open. His chest doesn’t rise or fall. Iris struggles up to her feet, wailing. Zaneen is still unconscious on the floor. I take my grandfather’s Memory and put it in my pocket.

I will not make my father’s mistakes. I will never be a murderer.

But I will protect my family.

And I strike, one last time, to be sure that Chad is dead.

Chapter 20

I’M TAPPING ZANEEN’S CHEEKS, CONCENTRATING on keeping my field up, as Mark busts through the bedroom door and Brandon barrels in right behind him. The two of them skid to a halt, almost falling on Chad’s body. I’m relieved to see them, but I can’t imagine how they got here.

Garrett would have left Sean and the Addo with them and come back for me himself. My heart goes cold. Unless something happened to Garrett. Or one of our Addos.

“Where’d you come from?” I ask. It’s weird to see them actually ready to fight, instead of just having their fields scared-up by their brother. They look vicious and threatening and maybe that’s why Iris is still clinging to me.

“We came through Nok’s tunnel,” Brandon says. The moment he speaks, he softens back to the Brandon I know. “We’ve spied on Nok during perimeter watch, to figure out where he was coming out.”

“He popped up right where we were hunting for earth worms,” Mark says, pushing Chad’s arm with the toe of his sneaker. “But it still took us three days to find the entrance. Hey, is he dead?”

“Yes. It’s Addo Chad,” I say. Neither boy seems phased.

“I don’t care if he’s the President,” Brandon says. “We’ve got to get out of here. The Fury are all over the tunnels.”

“Did you see Nok?”

“Oh crap!” Mark says. “Nok’s in there? Which one did he go through?”

“We came through the bathroom sink,” Brandon says. “And we can’t go back out that way. There’s too many Fury down there to chance it.”

“Chad said Nok went through a laundry chute,” I say.

“We’ll figure it out, but we can’t just stand around and talk about it.” Mark glances at the bathroom door.

“Okay, but I’ve got to get Zaneen conscious…I’m not leaving without her.” I say.

“Neeny’s down here?” Marks asks. I point to the other wall, where Zaneen’s body is still crumpled on the floor.

Mark goes out the bedroom door and returns with Sean’s abandoned cup of tea. He walks right over to Zaneen and dumps it on her face. It’s hard to tell if it’s my hollering at him or the tea in her face that brings Zaneen to, but her eyes pop open as she sputters and coughs.

“Garrett locked the door at the top of the stairs when he got the Addo and Sean out,” I say. “So we can’t get out that way.”

“Sure you can,” Brandon says. “Put in the Addo’s code and it’ll open right up.”

“I don’t know it,” I say.

“Oh great,” Mark throws up his hands.

I send a thought to the Addo:
Addo, are you there? I need your code to open the door.

Nothing.

I think to Roger,
Can you help? I need to get the upstairs door open.

My hands are tied,
Roger says.
As a Connection, I can only give you the information I have. I don’t know any of the codes or how those locks work.

What about my Vision?

Try it,
Roger answers.
Try everything you’ve got, Nalena.

There’s rustling from the living room and we all go silent. Brandon and Mark skirt to the door and peer around. They dive out and there’s one clipped shout before there’s silence again. Brandon appears in the doorway.

“You got to get up those stairs and figure out that code,” he says. “Me and Mark have to go back and try to find Nok. We’ll collapse all the tunnels we can find that lead here.”

“You can’t go back down there!” I say. “Just come up with us. I think I can get the door open!”

“Did you really just do that?” Mark says, crossing his arms over his chest with a smug grin.

“What?” I ask.

“Bring fear,” he says.

“Just shut up and get out of here,” Zaneen snaps, getting to her feet. Her voice is hoarse and she totters when she’s all the way up, but her glare is all business.

“Don’t boss us,” Mark says, but Zaneen jumps toward them and they both jump away from her like frightened cats.

“Get out of here and do what you’re supposed to do already,” she says. Iris finally lets go of my leg and transfers to Zaneen’s. The boys stick out their tongues at her. It all seems just like their usual squabbles that it’s almost okay to see the boys scurry out the bedroom door…but not really.

No, not at all.