The Butterfly Code (22 page)

As I start to fall asleep, my thoughts go to Gage and Dad and Sammy. All evening, anxiety has made it impossible for me to fully relax. Now that I’m alone, my worry roars into the fore.

Please, dear God, let them be all right.

I
wake
the next morning to an empty room. For one panicked moment, I have no idea where I am. Sounds come from the airplane hangar. Then it rushes back.

It’s Hunter. He’s humming.

I carefully make the bed so it looks like it did before—with crisp military corners.

After how last night ended, I badly want to keep my guard up. There’s a fresh shirt and pants laid out. They’re soft and smell of his laundry soap. It would be a lot easier if he wasn’t so thoughtful. Yesterday he told me he wanted to know all about me. Despite everything, the more time we spend together, the more I care about him. He has some dark secret, though—that’s clear. I’m afraid of the troubled shadow that torments him.

Part of me longs to be able to free him from whatever it is. Another part knows it’s too big for that. Weeks ago, outside the barn, he warned me away. Is that why he was so abrupt last night? Because I’m getting too close for comfort?

In the bathroom, I take the red pills and dress quickly. My worry for Dad, Sammy, and Gage, fear about my modification, and confusion about Hunter show in the blue shadows beneath my eyes.

Hunter continues to bang away in the airplane hangar.

There’s no point delaying this. Bracing myself, I pad out the door into the big, arched space. The plane looks large and impressive, enclosed in this personal room. The Porsche Cayenne SUV is there, too, shiny and new and mobile.

Hunter appears, sauntering around the tail of the plane. He’s got a bucket in one hand, a large soapy sponge in the other. He’s wearing a pair of low-slung, faded jeans, rolled up to just below his knees. And that’s it. His feet are bare. A dusting of hair runs the length of his arms, looking like it would be soft to run your fingers over. His chest spans at least five, maybe six of my hands, tapering downward into a well-sculpted six-pack. The masculine curve of his hip bones draws my eyes even farther downward, toward that low waistband and . . .

This is ridiculous!
I’m ogling him. How does he do this to me? I’m staring at him and feeling the most outrageous erotic sensations rippling down my belly.

Pull it together! After last night, you need to be distancing yourself!

I tear my gaze upward. His devilish eyes are fastened on mine, and his mouth turns up into a half grin.

"Good morning," he says.

"Yes, hi."

"There’s not much for breakfast, I’m afraid. Half a loaf of bread in the freezer, peanut butter and jam if you want toast."

"I’m fine. How’s the plane?"

"Sturdier than she looks." He motions with his sponge at the bucket. "Just washing off the salt water. I made a few repairs. Have to get parts in at some point."

Silence follows. We’ve run out of things to say. I shuffle my feet, tongue-tied.

"Guess I’ll go empty this," Hunter says.

He disappears and I see one of the giant doors crack open a few feet. Wan sunlight pours inside. There’s a splash of water being tossed and then he returns.

"I’ll just rinse off and we can go," he tells me.

"Go? Where?"

"Victoria told me you have a work interview in Hartford."

"I forgot about that," I say, stunned at how far away Dad’s house and that world seems. "But it’s not for another two weeks. You think I need to hide out for that long?"

"I’m not sure. But we need to stay somewhere. I have a relative in New Haven. It’s forty minutes from Hartford. We can hole up there while we’re waiting."

"I guess you don’t want to stay here." Obvious. Maybe I don’t, either.

"Can’t. That was my last packet of spaghetti."

"Won’t the interview be too dangerous?"

"Can’t imagine it’ll take more than an hour."

I knot my fingers. "I’m going to be able to stop running, right? Because otherwise, what’s the point?"

He sets down the bucket. "Yes. As soon as you’re clear, I’ll make sure King knows. Even if that means meeting face-to-face."

"Maybe I’m already better?"

"Maybe. But I don’t think so. I have a blood kit. Let me get cleaned up and we’ll see."

I follow him back inside. "Why am I so important? Why doesn’t King go after you?"

"He’s tried. You’re an easier mark. If he comes after us, he knows he’ll lose. Like always."

Maybe. Or maybe someday Hunter and the others will mess up.

"I just want you better, Aeris. I hate that you’re feeling threatened. I hate that I put you on the run."

"You know what? I don’t care. It’s a lot better than being dead."

H
e emerges
from the bathroom in jeans and a fitted heather-gray T-shirt. His brushed steel watchband makes his already thick wrist look even more muscular. He opens a cupboard and takes down a small, hard plastic suitcase. Inside are various needles, alcohol swab packets, some glass petri dishes, and a few bottles of liquid.

"Here, rest your arm on the table."

I do as he says, aware of his intoxicating nearness. The brush of his fingers electrifies my forearm. His face is unreadable, yet the faint color in his cheeks tells me he feels something, too.

He’s competent, and I barely feel the prick of the needle.

"Hold that." He nods at the cotton ball pressed into the crook of my arm.

I press on it as he withdraws the syringe.

"Now we’ll see." From the case, he takes a petri dish and squirts my blood onto it. Next he adds drops of various fluids. My blood changes color, turning darker until it’s a deep shade of blue. Blue as a starry sky. Blue as ink, and now rapidly turning black. He grimaces and carefully washes the contents down the kitchen drain.

A pulse, dark and stormy, seems to shoot from his back, straight into my heart. It’s brief, disappearing almost as quickly as it began. Whatever the results are, I know they’re bad.

"How is it?" I ask.

"Better."

"But not good enough."

"Not as good as I’d hoped."

He’s obviously disappointed, and I wonder how long we’re going to be trapped together, running from King. He must be wondering the same thing. My stomach aches.

He joins me at the table. "There’s something I need to say. Last night I was rude. I apologize. No—" He holds up one hand to keep me from replying. "Don’t say anything yet. Just listen. The drugs aren’t working as quickly as I’d hoped. And I can’t in good conscience keep hiding this."

I wait, staring, wondering what it could be.

"After last night, you deserve the truth."

"What truth?" I say, although somehow I already sense the answer before he tells me.

He doesn’t speak. Instead, it comes across from him like a release. Like a dam slowly inching open until a few drops trickle into me. It’s a feeling, an emotion, a sensation. Totally masculine. Totally his. And if there were words attached to the emotion, they’d be saying something like,
You already know. You know without me telling you. Aeris, you know.

My eyes snap up to his, and he nods.

So it’s true. I’m not crazy. I feel a lump in my throat. Half relief, half disbelief. I’m not crazy. I can sense him. And he knows it. One hundred percent knows it. And now I’m angry.

Because he can sense me, too.

He didn’t tell me. I thought I was going mad, and he didn’t tell me?

My mouth opens to speak, yet all I can do is stare into his eyes. Sensations come flooding in. A whole river. An ocean. Bursting into my mind.

All of it, everything. The knowledge of how he’s feeling as I look at him, or as he looks at me. Both, reflections yet different. Mine. His. Confusing and hard to pull apart, like mirrors facing each other and replicating unto infinity. Other sensations, ones I can’t put names to because I don’t know what thoughts are behind them. Concern, perhaps. Caution. Watchfulness. I never realized how much free-floating emotion exists in a person’s body, a person’s mind, until mine starts blending with his.

It’s too much.

The flow is too strong. Way too strong. I frown, twisting and struggling under the weight of so much information. My synapses are firing out of control. The room fades out of my vision. Desperately, I try to focus on my surroundings. On the table. On my hands that are gripping the chair so hard I fear my fingers might break. I throw them up and clap them to my ears.

"Stop! Make it stop!"

It does. He does.

I go limp, sagging onto the tabletop, burying my face in my arms.

"So it wasn’t just me," I whisper. "How could you not tell me? You knew what I was feeling."

Hunter rubs his face.

"You had to know everything I was going through," I say through gritted teeth.

"I thought if you experienced some minor emotional link, you’d believe it was nothing. A fluke."

"Minor? It wasn’t minor. That’s pretty damn obvious. How could you not tell me?"

"It’s more than you and me that’s at stake here. I broke our number one rule by saving your life. A consensus was reached. I voted to tell you, but the others wanted you kept in the dark. In their opinion, it was the only way to protect you and themselves at the same time. Humans want what they can’t have, and empathic abilities would fascinate a lot of people. The human psyche is not ready for them, I can tell you that much. It never will be. They’re a curse. I had to stick by their decision. But do you see on some level why we’d want the truth hidden?"

I stand, overwhelmed. It’s all too alien to seem real.

I need to do something. I want to feel normal, safe. I go to the kitchen. There’s a box of tea. I’ll make tea. That’s normal. I grab the kettle, fill it with water, and plug it in.

How could he keep this from me? I had every right to know!

The water begins to boil, and so does my indignation.

I glance over my shoulder and his eyes snap to mine. I realize then that although he’s locking himself in, part of him can sense my swelling emotions. Does the connection always go both directions, or can he sense me even though I can’t sense him? If so, it’s just one more way he has control over me. From the hospital to this forsaken place, even into my mind.

I have no secrets from him. No private feelings. No silent dignity.

The kettle whistle blows high and loud. I yank the cord from the wall and dump the scalding water into a cup. It splashes onto the counter.

"All that time you knew I was sensing people, you said nothing. I could have lost my mind!"

"You didn’t. And if we had sensed that, we would have told you the truth."

"We? So Ian, Victoria, all of them can read me?" I glare at him. "And so that’s why you’re telling me now? You think I’m losing it?"

He’s a powerful, solitary figure, alone at the kitchen table. His rugged face seems so steadfast and honorable and true. I want to trust him. I so badly want to trust him. What is he really, though?

He grunts. "I’m telling you because from when I picked you up on that road, it’s been a losing battle keeping you out. Obviously last night I couldn’t. That’s why I was angry. Not with you, with myself."

The tea leaches dark orange ribbons into the hot water. Both my hands are braced against the counter. They’re shaking. This isn’t how human beings are supposed to work. Tampering with the mind to open up connections between people is disturbing, impossible. Unthinkable. "I don’t get it. This is what you’ve been researching? Linking yourselves up this way? Why?"

"It’s not like that."

"Then what is it?"

Hunter remains silent for a long moment. I can still feel the threads faintly between us.

"It’s a side effect. A horrible side effect of the genetic modification."

"I didn’t feel it between me and my dad. Or my friends, Ella and Gage."

"Because they’re not like us."

Us. Me and him. Because I’m no longer normal. No longer a safe, sound human being. I’m something different.

"Who is ‘us’?"

"You and me," he says. "Victoria, Ian, Edward."

"And Lucy, too?"

He pushes back his chair. "There are others. Thirteen of us."

I let go of the counter and straighten up. He’s right. On some level, I can sense them all. It’s like low-level chatter. Perhaps because Hunter’s physically closest, he’s the loudest. There are others in the near distance like the wind in treetops. If I focus really hard, I realize I can sense Victoria’s emotional signature.
She’s worried
. From farther away comes the faintest murmur like the burble of a tiny stream—the people across the ocean in Switzerland, perhaps.

"And they’re all struggling to shut me out?"

"Yes."

I think of Ian, who wanted this the least. No wonder he was so cold. So angry.

"Is that why you left, then?" I ask.

"Partly." He’s holding back. "I wanted to stay, Aeris. It’s different for me. Harder."

"Why?" I ask, more deeply hurt than I could ever imagine. "Why is it different for you? You act like you care for me, and you’re the one who turned me into what you are! I heard them try to stop you from doing it, from saving me. And then you leave them to take care of me while you disappear? You made me one of you. You could have at least told me the truth. I never asked for this. I never told you to inject me on that operating table. Yes, I wanted to live. But I never told you to use some experimental drug to restart my heart."

"Stop." His palms are facedown on the table, muscles twitching in his wrists.

I’m breathing hard, my chest rising and falling under the oversize shirt.

"It’s different for me because I injected you with my own blood."

Hunter’s words hover ghostlike between us.

His blood.

"I thought you gave me a drug."

"There is no drug. Not anymore. It’s gone. It’s been gone for a long time. I didn’t even know if infusing you with my blood would save you. I certainly didn’t realize it would work almost instantly. We were shocked. There you were, eyes open and speaking." He shakes his head. "We’ve been keeping up walls between us for so long that when you came into your awareness on that table, we were caught off guard. I had to send Victoria out, to pull herself together."

I remember that. I remember him ordering her from the room.