Steel Lily ARC (16 page)

“Mr. Riggs, what do we owe this honor?”

It was my mother.

“Mrs. Pike, I was wanting to make sure you were doing all right in your new quarters?”

“Oh,” my mom’s voice said, audibly strained. I wondered what her new quarters were like. “They’re wonderful. Thank you for checking on us.”

“No problem, ma’am. I have a surprise for you as well. I’ll bring it in a few days.”

“That’s very gracious of you, Sir.”

Mr. Riggs looked directly at me as he spoke, his face full of—what was that? Sincerity? “I am nothing if not concerned for the people in my charge.”

“That you are, Mr. Riggs.”

Without another word he hung up, his eyes never leaving mine. “Is that enough incentive for you?”

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say no. He’d called my mother, and not even offered for me to speak to her. Her voice—so gentle, just like I remembered it, yet so foreign—echoed in the recesses of my mind like an old song that I remembered every lyric to once the music began. I wanted to hear her again, wanted to speak to her and tell her everything that had happened these past years. Tell her about Legs and Jaxon and Alice and
everything
.

Riggs broke into my moment by clearing his throat.

I hadn’t realized my head was in my hands; that I was crying, until I had to look up to him.

His eyes were eerily familiar.

Then I realized they were Jaxon’s.

“Do you believe me now?”

“I do.”

He broke his magnetic gaze and returned to the papers on his desk. “Good.”

I took that as my cue to go and backed out of the library.

With a smile as dangerously kind as his, it would be suicide to turn away.

My heel touched the door and I turned to leave, but Riggs’s voice called from across the room. “And Avery, next time you look for cameras, be more inconspicuous. It’s a rookie mistake.”

So he’d known there was a camera. Of course he did.

I straightened my shoulders and stood tall as I opened the door. “I’ll be sure not be a rookie for long.”

Riggs chuckled. “With the friends you’re making, I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

My thoughts raced as I walked through the empty atrium. Riggs talked about other students, but I never saw anyone else today. What did he do with them? Lock them away in cages? If he really was crazy, it didn’t bode well for the others’ well being.

Down the dormitory hall I heard laughter, as if attempting to prove me wrong. To prove that
I
was the crazy one, that
I
was the one not appreciating everything Dome Three provided. Riggs wasn’t abusing my parents, wherever they were…right?

The thought made my stomach hurt. What if it was all a ruse? Was that really my mother? Maybe I wanted them so bad that I was willing to trick myself into believing something that wasn’t real.

Maybe they were a hologram, just like outside the walls of the Academy.

My hand rustled through my pocket and found the thin plastic key card. With a swipe, the scanner beeped and beckoned me into the room.

Alice, Sari, and two boys I hadn’t seen before sat in the living room. Alice waved me over to them. “Took you long enough to get here! We’ve got company.”

The first boy had buzzed black hair and eyes so dark they were almost black, too. He wore a sleeveless blue shirt that showed off his sunburned, muscular arms. He rested his hands behind his head and the muscles in his arms rippled in effect. Alice couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“This is Will,” she said, then pointed to the other boy, “and that’s Chase.”

Chase was Will’s opposite. His platinum blonde hair was long and almost white. It was pulled back into a low ponytail at the base of his head, and I was jealous of how smooth it was. My frizzy hair would never lay flat. His eyes were green and his slender face was cheery.

“Hi there,” he said, with a hint of an accent. “We came to see the newcomers. Some day, huh?”

“Yeah, some day,” I waved half-heartedly. “Look, Alice, I need to turn in.”

Alice nodded. “No problem, we’ll keep these guys entertained, won’t we Sari?”

Sari smiled and stood. “We can do that,” She walked my way and turned to Alice. “We need you for a second, though. Do you mind, guys? Call of nature and what not.”

Will laughed. “Why do girls always go to the bathroom in packs? It’s not like anything is going to attack you in there.”

“But you never know when you might have toilet paper stuck to your shoe,” Alice said reasonably, “or worse, tucked in the back of your pants. Or what if it’s that time of the month and—”

Will waved his hand. “Stop. Stop right there. No more information needed.”

Sari and I laughed, and Alice seemed proud of herself. Alice shut the door behind her as we filed into the cavernous bathroom. “I hope you two have a really good reason for me to ruin my chances with Will. Female talk always makes guys stop the conversation, and it’ll be a miracle if I can get it back on track.”

“Will’s forgiving; he’ll put the conversation back on track for you,” Sari said. “And it’ll be a fast track, if you get where I’m going.”

Alice blushed.

Sari walked quickly over to the shower. She turned both showerheads on full blast and immediately the room began to fog. “You can never be too careful,” she said, “Cameras are everywhere, so we make it as hard as possible for Riggs to know what we’re talking about. Now tell me what happened.”

Riggs’s words echoed in my mind. “Riggs told me I’d made a rookie mistake by looking at the cameras.”

Sari’s eyes widened. “Did he see us?”

“No, I looked at them later. I didn’t think he noticed, but he called me on it as I left.”

Alice sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and put her hands on her chin. It reminded me of all the times she’d asked me for gossip in Dome Four. “Tell us everything.”

As I filled them in, their eyes widened and narrowed, brightened and darkened according to where I was in the story. They were a loyal, captive audience. When I finished, Sari let out a low growl. “Riggs has your parents here? Where was I on that one? I’m losing my touch.”

I looked at her, stupefied. She smiled and hugged me tightly. “I got recruited to be part of this merry band of miscreants because I got myself into trouble in my dome for knowing too much.”

“What’d you do?”

“I got information. Lots of it. On people who would rather not have their information out there.” She smiled mischievously. “I’m good with computers. Too good. When I started blackmailing people in Dome Nine, my parents had had enough. They called a juvenile detention center. I got kicked out of there when someone let me get a hold of a computer, and I pulled every skeleton out of the closet that I could find on that place. Suddenly they didn’t want me around.” Her laugh was light, as though she was remembering a fond memory.

“So you’re a spy? And where’s Dome Nine?”

“Sort of, but not the kind that sneaks around. I’m a hacker. I can find anyone, anywhere, at any time. I’m the eyes and ears of this place. I dig around in people’s lives to find out what they’re hiding, and Riggs uses it against other domes. That’s how he keeps them from bombing this place with everything they’ve got. And Dome Nine, by the way, is in what’s left of Florida. Have you heard of it? I can show you a map.” She put her hand on my knee, concern etched in the words she spoke. “What happened with your family, anyway? Why are you here? You don’t seem to be the type to be overly delinquent.”

“I wasn’t. I stood out and Riggs noticed.”

“So what’s your gift? Mind reading? Shooting lasers out of your fingers?”

“She was the most powerful steam Elementalist in Dome Four.” Alice chirped, excited to put her two cents into the conversation.

I sighed. “Riggs thinks I can do more than that. He thinks I can create elements.”

Sari eyed me carefully. “Can you?”

“I’d never tried before today.”

“And it didn’t go well?”

The hard pounding behind my ears reminded me of how it went. “Not at all. I ended up giving myself a migraine.”

Sari scrunched her face. “Seems odd he’d assume you could do that.” She pointed to three fat candles sitting on the stairs by the whirlpool. “Can you make those light up?”

“Maybe. I couldn’t earlier today.”

“Have you ever done anything elemental like that? Ever?”

My thoughts trailed back to two days ago in class when I’d made my blob of a teapot cool. “Actually, yeah, the day Riggs came to the dome.”

Sari’s eyes widened. “What’d you do?”

“Cooled a blob of steel. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. Creating, I mean.”

Sari laughed. “Well, do whatever it was you did then, I guess. It can’t hurt to try.”

I focused on the candles and thought of the warm fire in the library. The way the flames danced. The way the fire consumed everything in its path.

All of a sudden it felt like my body was on fire.

I crumpled to the floor in pain. It was like a fire was lit in my stomach, then coursed through my limbs. My head felt like it was about to explode. I bit down on my bottom lip to stop from screaming.

Sari and Alice were at my side in an instant. Alice grabbed my hand. “Avery! Oh my God, Avery! Stop!”

“I — I don’t know how! It feels like I’m on fire!”

“Then think of water!”

As if on cue, the flames that licked my insides were gone the moment I thought of water. I uncurled my limbs and laid flat on my back. A small sheen of sweat covered my brow, and I felt clammy.

Sari was as pale as a ghost. “Oh my God, Avery. I’m so sorry. What happened?”

I willed myself to bring the world around me back into focus. “I don’t know.”

“Never do that again,” Alice said fervently. “Promise me you’ll never try that again.”

“I have to,” I said as I pulled myself into a sitting position. “That’s how I’ll see my parents.”

Sari’s brow furrowed in concern. “It’s a bad idea to trust anyone here, Avery. Especially anything that Riggs has promised you. What I found out today…”

I grasped the opportunity to turn the conversation in a different direction. “What’d you find out?”

She sat down by the candles I tried to light and twisted the wicks between her fingers. “You were gone and Alice was flirting with the guys, so I poked around with some encrypted files I haven’t been able to crack. I managed to get into one.”

I laughed. Sari seemed to have an affinity for finding trouble. She smiled at me as though she knew what I was thinking. “Yeah, I know, you think I’d learn. I enjoy a challenge. Anyway, Riggs was on the Alliance’s side at first. His oldest son was a soldier for the Alliance, even. Then all of a sudden he flipped sides and went Resistance. I can’t figure out why, but I’m sure there’s information in the files that I can’t get into…yet. Alice is going to do some digging in the library while we’re in our courses tomorrow.”

“So what are you saying? That this Academy is like a military boarding school for the Resistance? The war is over, Sari.”

Her face was somber. “Do you really think the war is over after today? Don’t be that naïve, Avery. The war’s never been over. This place…I bet it’s ground zero for the Resistance. They want us to be their army. They still want to have one government.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

“All the information makes me think it’s true,” she argued. “You tell me why Riggs would be combing the domes for people with abilities and bringing them back here. Building up defenses to keep people out. Having cameras all over the place to keep tabs on us.”

“I don’t get it,” Alice said, shaking her head. “Mr. Riggs seems nice to me.”

Sari sighed. “There are times that Riggs is nice, but he comes off like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to me. Some days he treats us like family, and others he acts like we’re dogs. I can’t figure out what changes his moods. I need to find the cause.”

“And since I’m Traditional,” Alice piped, “it means I have plenty of time to poke around in places I shouldn’t be.” She smiled brightly. “It’ll be like being home again!”

I shook my head at the thought of Alice’s gossip hounding. “He seemed perfectly fine this evening, except for the whole perform-for-parental-information bit he pulled. I wonder if he’s crazy?”

“No one could be
that
crazy and run an Academy like this. The weapons he has in place to keep people out…” Sari shuddered.

“Are they his weapons? Do you know he made them?”

“He had me program them.”

I nodded. No matter what Riggs had been in the past, his allegiances laid firmly on the side of the Resistance now.

“Avery, you need your rest. Go get some sleep. Alice, go fix your transgressions with Will.” Sari said with a smile as she stood and turned off the showers. In the time we’d been in here, fog had covered the mirrors and filled the room. The boys probably wondered if we had disappeared.

Alice groaned. “I don’t know if I want the track to be fixed if Will’s
that
kind of guy.”

“You were all for flirting with him,” Sari said dubiously. “What, all talk and no action?”

I laughed. “Alice enjoys the chase. You’ve ruined her plans.”

“Witchy woman,” Sari teased.

Alice turned and raised clawed fingers with a smile. “And don’t you forget it!”

Sari went into maternal mode and led me to my room. She fixed the duvet on my bed, turned down the sheets, and went to fluff the pillow as she winked at me. “It’s been forever since someone showed up I actually liked talking to. Thanks for not being weird.”

I laughed. “That’s my goal every morning. Make it through the day without being too weird.”

She returned to her work and let out a little gasp of surprise. When she pulled her hand out from under the pillow, a necklace was in her hand, accompanied by a folded note. “Did you put this here?”

“No, I haven’t been in here since this morning.”

“Huh,” was all she said. She passed me the note but examined the necklace. “This is gorgeous, Avery.”

I turned the parchment over in my hands. It ancient feeling, almost like papyrus. I unfolded the note to find an elegant script and a simple, one-sentence message.