The Awakening (11 page)

Before I can ask, Luka quickly shifts his body so he’s standing between me and whatever is to the left. I peek around him and notice that someone else has entered the room—an impossibly familiar girl. “Claire?”

She stops.

Further proof that I am right. Our third file in the flesh, only six years older, with a white-blonde braid hanging loosely down her back. She is tall and thin with wiry muscles and heart-shaped lips. While the paleness of everyone else’s skin gives them a ghostly glow, this girl wears it like royalty. Even with zero makeup, she possesses a beauty I could never pull off. Her attention strays from me to Luka, and the open interest that settles in her eyes has me feeling possessive. I want to take his hand and claim him as mine. Too bad my bout of unfiltered boldness does not extend to the boy beside me.

“Come on over,” Cap says to the girl. “You have some new friends.”

Claire approaches warily. “I’ve never met them in my life.”

“It is curious, isn’t it?” he asks, peering up at us from his chair.

“Dr. Roth left us files,” I explain, eager to dispel the distrust growing in all of their expressions. “Three of them were yours.”

“That’s what led us to Dr. Carlyle,” Luka says.

“And then you,” I add.

“Why would Dr. Roth give you files?” Cap asks.

“He was murdered. We think he left the files behind for us to find.”

Silence descends in the wake of Luka’s news. Dr. Roth’s three former clients—Cap and Gabe and Claire—all exchange narrow-eyed glances. I never would have guessed that when Dr. Carlyle handed over his directions, he was leading us to an underground headquarters for the dead, the missing, and the highly deranged. It’s all too much to process.

“Rosie,” Cap finally says, “why don’t you give our new guests a tour?”

*

Rosie takes up her role with a sense of authority too big for her small body. I look back at the adults in the room—the captain, Gabe, Sticks, and Non—conferring near the door in hushed tones. As curious as I am to see the operation they have here, I don’t want a tour nearly as much as I want to stay behind and ask my questions. But Luka puts his warm hand on the small of my back and ushers me after our Arabian-looking tour guide.

“This is the common area,” she says. “It’s where most of the students hang out after classes and training and stuff.”

“Wait—
most
of the students? How many people are here?” And they go to school?

“There’s sixteen of us altogether. Anyone under age goes to class in the morning.” Rosie rolls her eyes, as if she’d rather do anything but go to class, and heads down the dank corridor from where Claire came. It smells like must and cement.

“What kind of classes?”

“All the regular stuff—English, Math, Current Events. Non’s
obsessed
with history. Timelines make her giddy. Sticks, on the other hand, is a big fan of independent research projects.” Rosie scrunches her nose. “All I care about is The Gifting.”

There. Those words again. It sounds so strange to hear them roll so easily off this stranger of a girl’s tongue. I want to ask about The Gifting. I’m still not sure what it even means, but I don’t know how or where to start. And I don’t want to sound dumb. I look at Luka. I can tell by the stiff set of his shoulders and the quick movement of his eyes that he doesn’t care much about Rosie’s commentary. Unlike me, he seems unconvinced that we have reached the safety of base. “How long have you guys been down here?”

“A while.” Rosie stops in front of the first opened door. The room is filled with several laptops, a large supercomputer of sorts, a police scanner, and a host of other gadgets—all wired and blinking with life. “This is the computer lab. Everything is password protected. Anybody who wants to use a computer has to go through Link first. He’s the unofficial tech-head of the hub. He can hack into anything.”

“What does he hack into?”

“Lots of stuff.” Rosie continues down the hall, stopping at two school-like rooms as we go. There are no individual desks, but a few longer tables with old chairs and makeshift chalkboards. Maps and a globe. A collection of outdated books. There are, of course, no windows, seeing as we are so far underground.

“Do you ever get to go outside?” I ask.

“
I
do.”

“Only you?”

“Me and Bass. We’re the hubs’ official runners.”

“What’s a runner?”

“We get to go out into the world. Gather supplies and deliver messages. We always go alone, so we don’t draw attention to ourselves.”

“You mean you wander around the streets of Detroit by yourself?” Surely the captain realizes how much danger he’s putting Rosie in by sending her out into the city without the protection of a stronger, older adult. It makes me question his judgment.

“There are advantages to being small. And I’m tougher than I look.” She flashes an impish grin, then leads us into a smaller room filled with books—shelves and shelves of them, their spines worn and faded. I spot some of my favorites. They are like a bowlful of buttery mashed potatoes, the best kind of comfort food. The next room is filled with weight machines and several treadmills. Across the hall, there’s a mat room that smells like Clorox and sweaty feet. It reminds me of the dojo Mom and I went to in Thornsdale. One door down, Rosie shows us a room that is locked. Luka and I peer through the window. Except for a few chairs that resemble the chairs you would find in a dentist’s office, the space is mostly empty.

“This is the training center. Nobody gets in without Cap’s permission.”

Luka quirks his eyebrow.

He seems to be as baffled as I am. I mean, if any room were to be a training room, you’d think it’d be the one with the weights or the mats. “Training for what?”

“You’ll see.” Rosie’s impish smile turns more impish as she beckons us ahead and turns off the main corridor, into an antechamber of sorts. I hear murmuring—signs of life. She points out the restrooms—male and female, complete with showers. “This is the boy’s hall,” she says, nodding in the direction of the narrow hallway that leads left. “And that is the girl’s hall.” She points to the narrow hallway to the right. “Cap doesn’t like any purpling.”

My brow furrows. “What is purpling?”

“Boys are blue. Girls are red.” She threads her fingers together, so that her hands are linked as one and scrunches her nose again, like purpling is the last thing she’d ever want to do. “After lights-out, there’s no boy-girl mingling. Claire thinks Cap’s too old fashioned. She tried sneaking into Link’s room once, but she got into big trouble.”

I glance at Luka. He’s turned into Gabe—expressionless yet attentive. Rosie said sixteen people live down here. Judging by the number of doors down each corridor, there is plenty of room to grow. She turns us around and points out yet another hallway. “This is where the adults stay, including the Cloaks. You know what a Cloak is, right?”

Luka and I shake our heads.

“They hide our location from the other side. We only have two of them and since the hub’s pretty big, it’s a lot of work. They keep to their rooms mostly.”

My mind pops with questions. The other side? Does this mean Scarface can’t find me down here? Is Luka a Cloak? Am I?
Pop, pop, pop
, until I’m standing in front of another room, not quite as large as the common area and humming with life. We have found the rest of the hub’s population. Students mill about tables of varying shapes and sizes. The noise slowly fizzles into silence as one by one each person nudges the person beside them, nodding toward me and Luka and Rosie standing in the doorway.

“This is where we eat,” Rosie says. “There’s a kitchen off to the side there. We take turns with meal prep and clean-up.” She points toward a makeshift counter in front of an opened door, which leads, I assume, into the kitchen. “Dinner’s in twenty. There’re some other rooms I haven’t shown you yet, but we should probably get back to Cap.”

We make our way through the underground labyrinth until we’re back in the common area. Cap and Gabe are where we left them. Everyone else, however, has dispersed. There must be more than one way to the cafeteria, since we never passed Sticks or Non or Claire or Link.

Cap wheels toward us. “What do you think of the place?”

“I think we’d like to stay, if you have room for two more.” This is the first time Luka has spoken since our tour began. His voice rings with a certainty I rarely ever feel. It’s one of the things that makes him so appealing, I think. He possesses a confidence that can’t help but instill confidence in those around him.

“Where were you staying before you came?” Cap asks.

“Hotel Magnum, next to the Greyhound station.”

“You need to go back. Clear out your stuff and check out. We can’t have the hotel manager reporting you missing. Don’t leave behind a trace that you were there.”

My pulse quickens. I’ve never been in a hurry to leave base. As a kid, Pete and his buddies used to kick me out of the game for staying on too long. I’m no different now.

“When you come back, make sure nobody follows you.”

Luka nods grimly. Some strange look of understanding passes between him and the captain. For whatever reason, it makes me uneasy. Luka slips his arm around my waist and kisses my forehead. His touch has been so sparse that the generosity of it now chases away all my thoughts. I close my eyes and melt against him, relishing the firmness of his body, the softness of his lips, the strength of his broad palm against my waist. And then he whispers something in my ear so softly the words are barely more than a breath. “Don’t reveal too much.”

I process the cryptic warning like a hiccup.

Luka lets go of my waist and strides to the door.

Clarity comes like a glass of ice water to the face. He means to go without me. He’s going to leave me behind. I take a step toward him, but Cap grabs my arm.

Gabe unlocks the bolt.

The splash of metaphorical water morphs into a wave, or maybe a tsunami. He can’t go out there alone, unprotected. “Luka!”

He turns around, his eyes full of apology. “You’re safer here.”

I attempt to yank my arm free, but Cap’s grip is unnaturally strong. “Luka, don’t leave!” Splitting up is a horrible idea. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. I have this sudden, sinking dread that he won’t return. That we will never see each other again. “Luka, please!”

He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t seem to hear me at all.

Rarities

C
ap hands me off to Gabe. No matter how much I twist and pull, I am not strong enough to escape his unyielding grip on my arm. He drags me behind Cap’s wheelchair and doesn’t let go until we reach the small cafeteria. And even then, he lets go very slowly, as if gauging to see whether or not I will turn around and bolt toward the exit. I’d try if I wasn’t positive he would catch me and drag me back again.

After a subtle nod from Cap, Gabe pivots around and returns from where we came. A sense of hopelessness sinks like an anchor through my chest. Base, it turns out, is no longer base at all, but a prison. One with no sunlight and no Luka. What if he never returns? What if he’s caught by the police or killed by a criminal? What if he finally comes to his senses, and now that I’m safe, decides to return to Thornsdale and live the normal life I’ve been urging him to live? That last option should make me rejoice, but I am a selfish creature. The thought of never seeing him again turns breathing into an impossible task.

I’m so lost in my frantic storm of what-ifs that it takes several beats before I realize the cafeteria has fallen into silence. I am the new girl all over again. Everyone stares at me, sandwiched between Cap and little Rosie. The thick scent of garlic hangs in the air. I haven’t eaten anything since continental breakfast early this morning. I should be past the point of hungry. But I can’t drum up even a hint of appetite.

Cap rolls ahead, nodding for me to follow. When we reach the makeshift counter, he hands me a tray. The person behind the counter serves us each a tong-full of noodles, a ladle of marinara sauce, a slice of garlic bread, and an empty plastic cup. Rosie and I follow Cap as he wheels to a faucet that looks more like an outdoor hose spigot. He fills his cup, then wheels away to sit with Sticks and Non without a single word of comfort or explanation. I eye the door, wondering if now’s the time to make my escape. Maybe I can slip out unnoticed and find a way to get past Gabe.

Rosie fills up my cup, then hers, and snags my attention with a nudge. I follow her to the largest of all the tables, where the boy named Link leans back in his chair, the front two legs tipped off the floor. Claire sits beside him, looking regal with her long straight nose and her white-blonde braid. Rosie takes a seat between a large, swarthy boy with a unibrow and a girl with a nose as large and pointy as a rat’s. I take the open spot beside Link, which has Claire eying me like vermin just sat down at the table. It’s hard to care when I’m so preoccupied with my own turmoil. Since Luka broke me out of the Edward Brooks Facility a week ago, we’ve only been apart once, and that was for a frantic five-minute span when I tried running away. Being without him now, his warning still fresh in my ear, has me questioning which way is up.