Resistance (The Variant Series #2) (37 page)

“You so rarely do.” She snorted in amusement. “I’m talking about the
future
, Nathaniel. I’m talking about what we now know will happen in six days time.”

Nate closed his eyes.

“Not to fret,” she said. “We want it to happen almost as badly as
you
do. We just wanted to ensure we’d be in the position to take the utmost advantage of what will come later. And we have all we need now, thanks to you and your dear
friend
, Alex.”

The Agency had known from the beginning what was coming—all they’d lacked so far, was an exact date for the event, and a few all-important details.

After Alex arrived on the scene two months earlier and rose immediately to the Agency’s attention, the Director had been able to start piecing things together.

And those niggling details? The who’s, the when’s, and the
how’s
?

They’d deciphered them all.

Suddenly, Nate understood why the Agency had taken Aaron into custody—and it sure as hell wasn’t to keep the guy safe.

They’d uncovered the
real
secret of Aaron’s ability and they planned to exploit him.

Alex would be next on their list. They would stop at
nothing
to get their hands on her, knowing what she was capable of—even if it meant sparking a Variant civil war in the process.

There was no way Alex would be getting a fair trial during her test Sunday night.

He needed to get out of here. He needed to warn Alex and the others.

Nate tugged futilely at his restraints and Dimitri’s hand come down hard on his shoulder to still him.

Now that the Director no longer needed Nathaniel’s services as a spy, he’d just lost his usefulness.

If he couldn’t find some new form of leverage, and
fast
, his deal with the Director would completely fall apart.

And if that happened, his brother was as good as dead.

* * *

Bored with pacing the short length of the cell, Aaron lay back on one of the cots, folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the glossy black ceiling.

His sense of time was starting to slip.

It might have been four hours since they’d tossed him in here. It might have been ten.

It couldn’t have been more than a day.

At least, he didn’t think so. They’d yet to bring him a meal. He was beginning to wonder if they’d forgotten he was even in here.

Beating angrily against the bars and calling out had no effect—no one ever came.

Aaron sighed.

Nate was right, he should have run when he’d had the chance.

He’d been so desperate to live down the legacy of his father’s cowardice, that his attempt to make good his family name had failed before he even had a chance to
do
anything.

Some help he was turning out to be.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway and Aaron scrambled to his feet.

The ensuing shock, however, caused him to sit right down again.

“Hello, Aaron,” said the man in the starched white lab coat.

Aaron stared back at him in stunned silence.

The man accepted the cell’s key from his companion and said, “Thank you, Diego. I’ll take it from here.”

Diego, an Agency guard dressed in black fatigues with a Glock 9mm holstered at his hip, didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Dr. Li, but protocol states—”

“Honestly, Diego,” he said. “
Where is he going to go
? And besides that, I’m more than capable of defending myself. Go. Take that break you mentioned on the way down here. I’ll bring the keys back up to your station as soon as I’m done. If anything happens, I’ll shoulder the blame for it.”

“But, sir…”

The two men locked eyes in a staring match. Eventually, the guard blinked and looked away, clearing his throat.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll be in the surveillance room if you need anything, Dr. Li.”

“Thank you, Diego.”

Li was carrying a small gray container filled with assorted medical implements that Aaron eyed nervously. The empty tubes and plastic wrapped needles suggested Li was there to draw a sample of his blood.

Aaron waited for the guard’s footsteps to fade before attempting to speak.

“What are you doing h—”

Li held up a hand to silence him. “Just a moment,” he said.

Turning, Li’s gaze zeroed in on a red blinking light Aaron hadn’t noticed before.

A camera?

The obsidian wall concealed whatever the light was attached to, so the small red dot was the only indication anything was even there.

The light blinked out.

“We don’t have much time,” said Li, turning back to Aaron. “Diego will notice the feed’s gone dark as soon as he makes it back to his station.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Aaron. “Do you
work
for the Agency?”

“The situation is far more complicated than you might think, Aaron, and I hardly have time to explain it all to you right now.” He tugged on a pair of blue gloves. “For the moment, I must simply ask that you
trust me
. All will be revealed soon enough.”

Aaron scowled. Trust him? He was kidding, right?

Li met his eye. “Do you want to help Alex Parker?”

“Yes, but what—”

“If you want to help her, then this is
exactly
where you need to be. Hard as it might be to understand right now, your having been taken by the Agency will eventually work out in her favor. You’ll be here to help her when she needs you most.”

Li pulled a long rubber tube from the bucket and set about tying a tourniquet on Aaron’s upper arm. Aaron was too stunned to pull away.

“I volunteered to take the blood samples the Director ordered so that I could come down here and speak with you in person.” As Li unwrapped the sterile needle and set about pairing it with the collection tube, he stole a glance at the camera light. Still dark. “But we only have a moment.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t expect you to.” Li sighed, then swabbed Aaron’s inner-arm with an alcohol wipe. “Do you remember my promise to you? That I would never ask you to do anything that went against your own moral code?”

Aaron nodded, flinching slightly as the needle pierced his skin.

“I’m begging you to trust me, Aaron,” he said. “I came to you because you’re the only one who
can
help Alex Parker with what’s coming. And this is exactly how you’re going to do it—by staying right here in this cell until you’re needed. You’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

The thud of running boots echoed through the hall.

“Are you with me, Aaron?” asked Li, withdrawing the needle and placing a cotton swab in its place, folding his arm at the elbow to apply pressure.

Unsure of what else he
could
do or say in this situation, Aaron nodded his compliance.

A guard appeared outside Aaron’s cell, short of breath.

“Is everything alright, Diego?” asked Li. “You seem winded.”

“I was worried something might have happened.” Diego stood watching them with narrowed eyes. “The camera cut out.”

“Did it?” Li stood, gathering his gray container and newly acquired samples. “The light’s still on. Are you certain it wasn’t just a bit of interference with the feed?”

Sure enough, the camera’s red light was blinking once more.

Diego stood up a little straighter. “I think it’s time you exited the cell, Dr. Li. For your own safety.”

“As you wish,” said Li, approaching the cell door. “I’ve gotten what I came for.”

Li and Diego vanished down the corridor, leaving Aaron alone, and more confused than he’d ever been.

— 29 —

A
lex glanced up from the paperback in her hands. The red numbers of the clock on her bedside table read 11:37
A.M
.

Still twenty minutes until her test.

Good. She should have just enough time to make it through the last few pages of her novel before they had to leave. It was the last book in a series she’d been reading for more than five years now, and she was dying to get to the much anticipated ending.

Maybe it was negative thinking on her part, but she was afraid to leave for the test tonight with the book still unfinished. If something went wrong, Alex might never have another chance to find out how things turned out for her beloved characters.

Happy ending or sad, she’d feel better with a resolution.

Someone knocked at her bedroom door.

“It’s open!” she called, flipping to the next page.

Alex expected her aunt to step through the doorway and was surprised when it turned out to be Aiden, instead.

“Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

“Hey, Alex.” He stood awkwardly beside her desk, looking her over with a furrowed brow.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Is that what you’re going to wear tonight?”

Bemused, Alex glanced down at the black tank top and her favorite pair of faded straight leg jeans. They were her go-to comfort clothes when she wanted freedom of movement, but still had to be seen in public. The jeans were rolled twice at the ankles to keep her from tripping on the too-long fabric.

“Yes?” she said, suddenly doubting her choices. “I was going to grab a light jacket, but basically… Is something wrong with it?”

“
No
,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it. “No it’s fine, it just… it caught me off guard, is all.”

Alex gave him an odd look before deciding to change the subject. “Any word yet?”

Nathaniel had been missing for going on two days now. The Charger was gone, too, so at first everyone just assumed he’d gone out on Friday night and that he would make it back home again at some point on Saturday.

When Sunday morning rolled around and there was still no sign of him, Alex had started to worry.

Aiden frowned. “No. Nothing yet. God knows why—maybe he’s just too distracted with everything else—but Grayson’s not worried. Seems to think he’ll turn up on his own.”

Concerned, Alex closed her book and set it aside, folding her legs beneath her on the comforter. “But you don’t think he will.”

Aiden shrugged, rubbed at the back of his neck. “Nate knows how important tonight is. He won’t miss it without a damn good reason.”

Alex nodded.

“But just in case…” Aiden withdrew his wallet from his back pocket. He pulled something from within its folds and offered it to Alex. “He would want me to give you this.”

She accepted the photograph, which had been folded carefully down the middle, and opened it up.

It was a group picture; a glossy snapshot of Grayson’s original team, posing happily for the camera on a sunny fall day. The group was standing in a patch of short grass beneath an aged red maple tree, with a slowly flowing river stretching out behind them.

Alex immediately picked out her parents and Grayson. And if she was right about the others, then Nathaniel had inherited his mother’s dark brown eyes, and Declan was nearly a carbon copy of his father, but with a single exception—now Alex knew where Kenzie had gotten her red hair.

Alex dragged her fingertips over the maple tree that she’d seen so many times in her dreams—the same one that stood in the backyard of her former home—and then over the laughing faces of her parents.

The photo had been snapped while everyone was still trying to get into position for the group shot, resulting in a fantastic candid. At the very edge of the group stood Cil and Carson Brandt, the fire-wielder’s arm draped casually around her aunt’s shoulders.

Cil was glaring daggers at Brandt and had her mouth open. Judging from Brandt’s exaggerated eye roll, the photo was snapped mid-insult.

Alex’s favorite aspect of the picture, however, wasn’t the laughing expressions of her parents or the general sense of joy the image evoked—it was the small collection of children gathered at the very front of the group.

She recognized Declan and Kenzie immediately, standing at the center of the small band of kids. The towheaded boy was tugging roughly at Kenzie’s bright red pony-tail. She was retaliating with a stomp to Declan’s foot that—judging from the boy’s pained expression—had only just been inflicted.

On Declan’s left stood a young girl Alex couldn’t place, with pretty blond hair and bright blue eyes, and a boy she thought might be a five-year-old Aaron Gale.

Identifying the two kids standing at Declan’s right, however, elicited her biggest smile yet.

Four-year-old Alex, her long dark curls framing her chubby cheeks, was giggling up at the camera. Standing just behind her was a seven-year-old Nathaniel, his thin arms wrapped around her tiny shoulders in a hug, his chin resting atop her head, and a small smile on his face.

“This… This is
amazing
, Aiden,” she said. “Where did you find it?”

Aiden smiled. “It’s Nate’s, actually,” he said. “But he… um, well he mentioned he wanted to give it to you before your test tonight. Since he wasn’t here to give it to you himself, figured I’d give it to you instead.”

“I appreciate it. If he’s not back before…” she hesitated. “I mean, if I don’t see him…”

“I’ll tell him, Alex,” said Aiden softly. “But don’t worry. You’ll see him again, no matter what happens tonight. I’m sure of it.”

Alex nodded.

Aunt Cil stepped into the room behind Aiden. She was trying to keep her expression neutral and calm, but the way she kept wringing her hands gave her away.

She was as nervous as Alex.

“They sent us a location,” she said. Forcing a reassuring smile for Alex’s benefit, Cil held out a hand to her niece. “It’s time, Lee-Lee.”

With one final, longing glance back at her unfinished novel, Alex stood, carefully refolded the photograph, and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans.

Retrieving her light gray jacket from the back of her desk chair, she slipped it on and crossed the room to join her aunt.

She glimpsed the old oak through her bay window and closed her eyes.

Last looks
were for people who weren’t coming back.