Resistance (The Variant Series #2) (20 page)

She rubbed her eyes, blinked the classroom back into focus… and then rubbed them once more, certain that what she was seeing couldn’t be real.

The world around her had gone absolutely still. Silent.

Every person sitting in the classroom had been frozen in place.

— 16 —

A
lex knelt beside Annabeth Johansen and waved her hand slowly in front of the girl’s contorted face.

Annabeth had been paralyzed pre-sneeze, the lines of her face twisted as she drew in a quick breath. Seated at the workstation beside her, Terrance Wilkins was still smirking derisively, staring at the place Alex had been standing moments before the world stopped turning and everything ground to a halt.

“What… the… crap…” Alex breathed.

What had she done?

And how had she done it? It was as though she’d…

Alex bit her lower lip, suddenly panicked.

It was as though she’d frozen time
.

Before, when the red lightning dragged her thirty minutes back in time and deposited Alex on the school’s roof, it had been the result of a jump. This time, no teleportation had been necessary. A single flash of red lightning in the sky outside the classroom window was all it took to halt the normal flow of time.

She eyed the clock bolted to the wall above the whiteboard and found her sinking suspicions confirmed. It had stopped. The second hand was still.

Alex got back to her feet.

“Crap,” she mumbled. “Okay, Alex. You’ve successfully frozen your jerkwad classmates. Congratulations. Now what?”

Hearing her voice echo in the unnatural stillness didn’t help. Silence had settled over the room like a blanket, albeit one that offered her little protection from the sudden drop in temperature.

The voices in her head hadn’t vanished, but lowering her defenses to listen to the thoughts of the frozen students surrounding her resulted in nothing more than a steady hum—loud and constant.

Alex walked to where Declan sat on his barstool, leaned forward with his forearms resting against the top of their workstation. His eyes were closed, as though he’d been paralyzed mid-blink. Judging from the set of his jaw and the angle of his chin, he’d been glowering at someone across the room.

Tentatively, she reached forward and touched Declan’s curled fist. His skin was still warm, a living statue, cast in flesh and sculpted without breath.

It was the first time she’d touched his bare skin and not felt a current.

Alex shivered and released his hand. The temperature in the room was still dropping.

Variants can’t time travel, Declan?
Alex mused.
Well, I beg to freaking differ.

She went over the variables leading up to her
previous
jump through time.

The only ability she’d absorbed beforehand was Declan’s, so Kenzie’s telepathy had nothing to do with it.

But if it was only the jumping ability that she needed to time travel, then why hadn’t she been able to do it before last week?

Wait a minute.

Aaron!

Just before both incidents, Aaron had touched her arms.

Being from North Carolina, he was obviously a transfer student. Was he so new that he hadn’t been in the system when Ozzie searched it?

That had to be it.

Aaron was a time traveling Variant!

Which was fascinating, of course, but it in no way helped her out of her current predicament.

Sighing, Alex returned to the front of the room, placing herself back in the exact spot she’d been standing before everything had stopped moving… and waited.

Nothing happened.

She tried waving her hands around like a magician’s flourish at the end of a trick.

Still nothing.

Alex’s heart began to race.

Okay. It’s okay. No need to panic. This can’t be permanent. There’s got to be some trick to getting things going again.

If she made it out of this, she was going to hunt that mysterious probably-not-a-senior down like the dog he was.

He had to have done this on purpose.

Whoever Aaron was, he couldn’t have been Masterson masquerading as someone else—otherwise she would have absorbed
all
of his powers, and not just this unusual ability to manipulate time.

And if the transfer had been intentional, then that would mean Aaron not only knew who she was, he also knew
what
she was.

Alex chewed on her lower lip and rubbed her arms to stave off the chill.

She’d worry about all that later—after she’d fixed this mess and jumpstarted the world again.

Now how, exactly, had she stopped time to begin with?

Alex went over what she’d been feeling at the time. How she’d wanted to run, to hide… to make it all
stop
.

Certain that this thought was the one that had caused the trouble, Alex considered the consequences of
not
restarting time. The continued silence, the dropping temperatures, the isolation…

A fear that completely eclipsed the nervous tension she’d felt during her presentation overtook her.

Bring them back
, she thought desperately.
Bring it all back!

A crash echoed in Alex’s ears, louder than a gunshot, shaking the entire building as the world jolted back to life.

Annabeth sneezed.

“
Shit
,” said Terrance. He turned his head to watch the winds from the storm now raging outside the windows. “That must have been a close one.”

Alex’s laugh sounded hysterical even to her own ears.

It worked!

“Watch your language, Mr. Wilkins,” Coach Roberts chided, although she, too, was now eyeing the storm outside warily. “Please continue, Alex. What else do you have to show us?”

Alex, what’s going on?
Declan’s worried voice echoed in her head.
It feels like a walk-in freezer in here. And there is
nothing
normal about that storm outside.

“Um.” Alex chose to ignore Declan. “Just the last two projects…”

She was two sentences into describing the first of them when Kenzie’s mental shout resounded inside Alex’s head.

What the CRAP just happened, Alex? Everyone’s minds just skipped like a broken record. What did you do?

“I…” Alex stuttered, her train of thought suddenly derailed.

Declan stared at her with narrowed eyes.

“
Freak
,” Marcie coughed again.

“I…” Alex repeated.

Alex set down the brightly painted mug in her hand and picked up the ceramic mask instead, painted a uniform black after her intricate details had been lost beneath a sea of glaze.

“My last project was this Venetian mask,” she said hurriedly. “I plan to give it as a gift to my Aunt Cil. It was my final project. I’m sorry, but may I please be excused?”

Not waiting for a reply, Alex placed the mask back onto the pile with the others, picked up her work tray and walked as quickly as she could back to her workstation, dropping it onto the polished wood.

“Look out, guys,” said Marcie with a laugh. “I think little Lexie’s about to spew.”

Ignoring their muffled laughter and studiously refusing to meet Declan’s eye, Alex snagged the strap of her messenger bag and fled from the room.

* * *

Connor
.

“Yeah?” Connor turned in his seat to face Zoe Tompkins in the desk behind him.

Zoe looked up from her hastily scribbled in-class writing assignment, puzzled. “What?”

The classroom around them buzzed with the conversations of students who’d already finished their essays.

“Did you call my—”

Connor! Over here
, said the voice again.
By the door.

Across the aisle, Jeff Adler had taken notice of his friend’s confusion and followed Connor’s gaze toward the classroom door.

Jeff snorted derisively. “Nice.”

“Shut up, Jeff,” said Connor preemptively.

His friend didn’t take the hint.

“Whatever, man,” said Jeff, shaking his head. “But that’s one piece of tail that just ain’t worth it. The psycho thing totally outweighs the
hot
in that equation.”

“I said shut the hell
up
, dick,” said Connor, still staring at Alex through the rectangular window in the classroom door.

Alex gestured for him to join her in the hallway.

Something was wrong.

Something was
way
wrong, if she’d sought ought Connor instead of that asshole bodyguard of hers.

He eyed his English teacher where he sat at his desk, typing industriously on a laptop.

Connor stood, moving silently toward the door.

Even if Mr. Pierce—the football team’s head coach—noticed Connor’s trajectory, he probably wouldn’t say anything. There were more than a few perks that went along with being Bay View High’s MVP, even
after
football season ended.

Slipping quietly into the hallway, Connor shut the door behind him.

“What happened?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

Alex winced, but didn’t answer. 

“Just a heads up,” she whispered. “This is really going to suck—and I’m sorry.”

Before Connor could ask what she meant by that, Alex reached out and took hold of his upper-arms.

The month since his last jump hadn’t changed anything. As a mode of transportation, teleportation still sucked ass.

They reappeared in a poorly lit—and rarely used—section of Bay View High’s library. He
knew
it was rarely used, because he and Lexie had disappeared to this exact corner of the stacks on more than one occasion, back when they’d still been dating.

Connor sucked in a breath, then began to cough.

“You ok?” Alex released his arms and stepped back to give him some room. She looked him over nervously in the dim light, as though worried he’d be angry about his sudden abduction.

Connor shook his head to clear it, then stepped closer to Alex, reached down, and took her face in his hands.

“Are
you
okay, Lexie?” he countered.

The contact of his palms against her bare skin elicited a jolt of surprise from Alex. As if on cue, she immediately began to pull away—and then stopped.

She stared back at him, her eyes wide, and reached a shaking hand up to cover his where it cupped her cheek.

Something in Alex’s pale gray eyes seemed to shatter. She closed them quickly, obviously hoping the action would mask the turmoil raging inside her thoughts.

It didn’t.

“
Hey
,” he said softly. “C’mere. It’s alright.”

Connor pulled Alex closer, gripping her tightly against him. For once, she didn’t resist

For a few moments they simply stood there, Alex’s face buried in his shoulder as Connor whispered soothing words and she allowed herself to be embraced.

She didn’t cry, didn’t speak, just kept very still as he held her close.

Whatever was bothering her, she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. At least, not with him.

Rain fell steadily against the roof of the library, its low roar nearly drowning out the hum of the building’s air conditioner.

Connor kept his arms wrapped tightly around her, not wanting to let her go.

He’d been such a freaking idiot.

Asshole
, he corrected himself.
You weren’t just an idiot. You were a bona fide asshole
.

Connor’s eyes closed as he flashed back to that chilly winter day, six long months and a lifetime ago.

It was just after five
P.M
. and Connor was on his way to surprise Lexie in the computer lab.

She and Cassie had been working all afternoon on a computer science project that was taking longer than anticipated, and she’d just called him to apologize—she wasn’t going to be able to meet him for dinner, like they’d planned.

That night marked their one-year anniversary as a couple.

With the arrival of midterms, Lexie was so preoccupied with her studies she forgot.

But Connor remembered.

Before Lexie came along, Connor didn’t
do
anniversaries.  He rarely found himself in a relationship that lasted long enough to actually celebrate an anniversary in the first place—even those of the one-month variety.

Then again, Lexie wasn’t like most girls. And that was probably why he’d hit that one-year mark without a hint of hesitation or regret.

Lexie made him happy. He didn’t
want
anyone else.

So when Jessica Huffman stopped him in the hallway just outside the computer lab to ask him about his plans for the upcoming weekend, he didn’t think much of it.

But then, halfway into their idle conversation, Jessica took a serious left turn.

“Kiss me,” she’d said suddenly.

Connor stared down at her, confused.

Kiss her?

Jessica was gorgeous in that cover girl sort of way a lot of girls out there would kill for. And while Connor
was
in a committed relationship, he was also far from blind.

But he couldn’t do that to Lexie… It was…

It was wrong.

Wasn’t it?

A funny haze began to spread through Connor’s thoughts, clouding his judgment and making it difficult to think straight.

“You
want
to kiss me,” she repeated.

The fog in Connor’s mind began to eclipse everything—and every
one—
else.

There
was
no one else. There was only Jessica.

And, God, did he want her.

The long-stemmed rose he’d been holding in his hand fell to the linoleum floor, forgotten.

The next thing Connor knew, he and Jessica were standing in the computer lab and Lexie was staring back at him in shock, while Cassie set about ripping him a new one.

Everything just sort of… fell apart, after that.

He’d been too ashamed of what he’d done to even try and attempt to put things back together. In the weeks that followed, he’d allowed Lexie to move on without a fight and had started up a tumultuous relationship with Jessica, instead.