Rebels Rising (Dark Rebels, #1) (9 page)

She was really going to have to learn to not let others in her head, and quick.

“Yes, it was the test. We have to know what you can do. Not that we think this is going to show us all of it. Maybe you don’t even know yet what you can do.”

“And maybe, if we are lucky, DARK does not know either.”

“You think they would recapture me for that?”

“I think it goes a lot deeper,” Connor said, and sighed. “Come on, this place is bringing up some stuff that I don’t want to deal with right now.”

Tawny kicked a dirt-encrusted vial. It broke with a musical jangle. “Let’s go to the diner.”

“We don’t have any money,” Krista pointed out, “and we can’t use our Powers.”

“If DARK missed the fireworks coming out of here, no way are they going to see you getting us all a square meal,” Blake said, “and right now, I don’t really care if they all show up. I’m starved.”

“Hungry like the wolf,” Tawny added.

“Dying,” Connor put in. “And that was a Duran Duran title.”

“Yeah, I’m famished too,” Krista said. “You think they got meatloaf at that diner? And who is Duran Duran?”

“Now that is a question you don’t really want to know the answer to,” Connor joked.

T
hey had managed to get into the diner’s bathrooms before anyone saw them. Blake and Connor were exerting all their talent to keep their wings hidden, but all of them were so dirty and exhausted that they would have attracted attention anyway.

They managed to get themselves looking presentable and in a booth, and the waitress came over and asked, in a voice as tired as her limp pink and white uniform, “What are you having?”

“Coffee with a lot of cream,” Krista said, “as hot and strong as possible, please.”

She got a dirty look in response.

The others ordered their drinks and perused the menus. Krista was so hungry she was shaking. The coffee, liberally laced with cream and sugar, helped a bit. She ordered a double portion of country fried steak, three eggs, toast, home fried potatoes, and a salad with extra ranch. The waitress gave her a weird look but said nothing. The others all ordered plates just as large as Krista’s.

The waitress tapped the pad with her pen. Her eyes were shrewd when she looked them over, and Krista—to her surprise—could read her thoughts, or something like it.
These kids don’t have a penny to their names, I bet. This is going to be a dine and dash table right here, better let Moe know and find out what he wants me to do before I even bring them any food.”

She looked at Tawny, who was frowning hard, and that was when she understood. It was Tawny who could read that woman’s thoughts, and she was amplifying them so Krista could hear them. 
Do something,
Tawny flashed at her.

Krista smiled and picked up her napkin. She dared not look down at it as she asked, “Gee, do you guys think I have enough for this?” The napkin still felt like a napkin, but the woman’s eyes fluttered down to it and then cleared. She walked away, calling out their order, and Krista peeked down at the napkin, which was fading from a hundred dollar bill to blank whiteness again.

“Nice,” Tawny said, and fist-bumped her.

Krista had other things on her mind, like wondering if Tawny knew what she had been thinking back at the lab, and if she would tell if she did.

None of them felt much like talking. Krista wondered if they had baited her at the lab, or if they really knew something about her past, about who she was. Steven had said she was a Natural, but Tawny had said she was not. If she wasn’t, what was she?

“Am I a Prime?”

The terse question caused Connor to look up from his own coffee cup. “No. And you are not a Beta, either.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of their food. For a few minutes, hunger trumped her need to ask those questions. The steak was wooly and overdone, the gravy lumpy, and the eggs runny, while the toast was dry and almost burned, yet cold. It was the best food she could remember eating.

To finish, they ordered giant slabs of apple pie a la mode. Finally, they all sat back, breathed giant sighs of relief, and finished their coffee, but the peace that had settled over them was about to be broken by the men clambering out of the tall, silver truck parked in front of the diner.

“Look, Collectors.” Blake hissed.

“Shit,” Tawny said. “We could go out the back.”

“Five bucks says they had a third in the truck and now he is out there waiting for us to pull that very stunt.”

“We can’t fly in front of all these people,” Connor whispered. “They all have guns hanging in the backs of their pickup trucks. They hunt for fun; show them a winged man, and they will want to mount him on the wall.” 

“What is a Collector?”

“Why do you always ask such stupid questions?” Blake retorted. “Isn’t the name self-explanatory?”

“Yes, it kind of is. So what’s the plan, hotshot?”

“You’re the one with uber-super mutant powers. Get us out of here!”

The two men entered, sat at the counter, and asked for coffee. They never looked over at the table the group sat at, and Krista asked, “Are you sure?”

“We’ve been on the run for a long time; we know Collectors when we see them,” Tawny snarled. Her eyes began to change, and Blake grabbed her arm in warning.

“Well, I have a plan,” Krista announced.

“What is it?” Connor asked.

“Run like hell,” Krista said.

She was strong and fast. She made the door in a matter of seconds, and the others were right behind her. “Where are we going?” Tawny yelled.

Krista grabbed the door of the truck and it opened under her hand. “Are you nuts?” Tawny screamed.

“Get in!”

The truck kicked into life, and Krista backed away. “I did not do that!”

“No, I did.” Connor shoved her into the truck, and Tawny leaped in behind them, scrambling across the seat while Blake hurdled across the bed and hunkered low back there. The truck careened out of the lot, tires spinning and people chasing it, and not just the Collectors. Apparently, the people in the diner thought they were a bunch of joyriding kids who needed a lesson taught to them, because a few cars even joined in the pursuit.

The road was rough and pitted, the truck slewed across the lanes and onto the shoulder. “Turn on the headlights!” Krista yelled.

“I don’t know how!”

“Watch where you are driving!”

“I never learned how to drive either!”

“What?” Krista bellowed. “Are you serious?”

“Just kidding,” he said with a huge grin. “Tawny, out you go.”

“See ya!” She jumped as he opened his door, her body flashing into the shape of a giant hawk.

From the truck’s bed came a flapping of wings, and Blake’s body rose up into the darkness.

The truck cut across a field, spinning and bouncing as they hit another road and turned around. “What are you doing?”

“Giving them a chance to get away.”

The truck slid back onto a shoulder, then went down into a copse of woods. Connor did not kill the engine; instead, he turned the lights on. “Now would be the part where we run.” He had his door open, and his wings were snapping before the words had left his mouth.

“This better not be another test,” Krista muttered and jumped out. Her feet slipped and her right ankle twisted as she dodged behind the truck, heading for a field to the left. Corn rustled and moaned in the wind, and a bright searchlight picked out the ears on those stalks.

Swearing, wondering where the others had gone, Krista went in the opposite direction, desperately searching for shelter. There was none. All the rocks were too small to hide under or behind, the grass was too short, and the corn was being pierced by a high beam light.

Tawny could shape shift and Blake and Connor could fly above the helicopter’s light. It was unfair! Or was it? She took a deep breath and imagined her bones getting lighter, thinner. Her feet lifted off the earth, and a wild whoop rose in her throat, but she squelched it, and her feet went back down.

“Damn!”

The helicopter was getting closer. There was still no sign of the others. Fear erupted, turning the food she had eaten to acid that burned her throat and stomach. Her nose was even filled with the corrosive stuff.

Her feet flew over the uneven terrain. She landed face down in a patch of boggy ground just as the light went past her head. She ducked lower, praying that the people in the chopper had not seen her. Mud swirled up and choked her; she gagged on its foul flavor.

She got back to her feet. Her eyes scanned the sky, and her unusual acuity of vision kicked in. Tawny was hiding in plain sight: a hawk circled the sky, dipping low. Not far away, in a tree, perched a large bird, its head tucked beneath its snowy wings, while on the ground a hundred yards away a pile of dirt humped up higher than the earth around it. Blake!

She spotted a thin tree, its branches laid skeletally bare by the winter. Its limbs clicked together, making a rattle that reminded her of bones. She skipped to it, folding her arms and legs into the same shape as the tree. Her hair whipped around her, and she grabbed it and pulled it into one fist.

The helicopter ran back over the field, and there were shouts from the direction where the truck sat— they had found it, then. There seemed to be no way out, unless she could take them to that other place again. Could she?

The shouts grew louder. They were coming across the field and road. They would not stand a chance if anyone got close enough to see what was right in front of them. A low whistle split the air, and she heard it for what it was: a signal.

She crept closer to the tree that Blake and Tawny were in and near. Blake rolled slightly, getting closer too. They all met and Krista whispered, “Could I get us into the wind tunnel place again?”

“We cannot use that much Power out here.” Blake said.

“Why?”

“There are Regulars out here.” Blake replied.

“Regulars?”

“Humans without Powers. If they see it, they will be killed. We don’t do that.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“There is a sewer grate not far from here. If we get there, we can hide from them.”

“How do you know that?”

Tawny said, “It’s where we hid when we escaped the lab.”

There it was again. They had escaped that awful and terrifying place, and they had done it all together. How? When? She was dying to know, but she was smart enough to know that now was not the time.

“Sewer, huh? Why is it my ideas of glam superheroing keep getting tossed down a drain?”

Connor laughed at that little jest. “Being a superhero is a shitty job, but someone has to do it.”

Getting to the sewer grate was scary, but going into the grate was the hardest thing Krista had done in a while. The smell was disgusting: thick and fetid. Rats ran about in the water, and suspicious-looking dark blots bobbed about in it as well.

“I am going to hurl,” Krista muttered.

“No, you won’t.” Connor put a hand over her face, and suddenly the smell of lilacs and honeysuckle filled her nostrils. She closed her eyes, drifting away on that scent, relaxing into it. Behind her eyelids flowers bloomed, fields swam in green grass, and the sky was a perfect, unfaded blue above her head.

Time passed, but it didn’t. When Connor finally moved his hand, there were thin bands of sunlight peeking through the top of the grate, and the sound of birds singing was clear and loud.

Krista’s legs and ankles hurt from standing so long, and her eyes drooped with exhaustion, but otherwise she felt better than she had in a long time. “What did you do?” she asked, still half-caught up in the dream.

“Enthralled you. We learned how from the Machine. I’m sure the Creators never meant for that to happen.”

The Creators, they were the original doctors, the scientists who had begun the project known as Adam’s Rib. How did she know that? She reeled along behind them, crawling out of the malodorous hole and out into the sunlight.

“Well, now what?” she asked.

“Now we find your parents,” Connor said.

Krista tripped over her own feet. “What?”

“Your parents. They are our only chance at getting into Luke and getting close to the Machine.”

Her body was taut, arched like a bow ready to loose. Her mouth rounded into a perfectly shaped ‘O’, and the white rings around her eyes showed just how shocked she was, just how deep his words had cut her.

“You know who my parents are!”

“Of course I do. Everyone does.”

“I don’t.” The words came out on a breathless gasp.

“You don’t want to, either, but there is no help for it now.”

Krista’s stomach heaved in and out. Her eyes closed, and she fell, right down a rabbit hole...

She was being shaken awake and she moaned, wanting to ignore the hands on her shoulders and the voice speaking urgently into her ear. She tried to say ‘five more minutes,’ but there was a hand across her mouth, pressing down, and she sat up, fear kicking in along with an instinct she had no idea she knew.

Run! Her mind screamed, and the woman staring down at her let out a small sibilant sound, one that meant ‘hush.’ She knew that sound just as well as she knew the shape and scent and taste of the palm that lay across her mouth. She poked her tongue out, testing the heat and flavor of that skin. It was something she had learned to do early in life because...

Because they can never quite perfect that. Second Adams have no smell other than the smell of what they wear or use, and Primes have a scent all their own. Primes have a smell that is as unique to each of them as a fingerprint.

Her mother took her hand away and made a gesture, one that meant to hurry and be silent.

Krista’s feet hit the floor, and she was wide awake, her every sense tightened and her eyes already darting through the room, scanning the shadows for anything that might be a shape hidden within the darkness. They were tricky, and masters at hiding themselves in the dark, which was fitting, since dark was exactly what and who they were. Her parents said that, a lot. It was an irony and pun she did not yet understand; she was too young for those kinds of nuances.