Ultraxenopia (Project W. A. R. Book 1) (14 page)

Screams rip from my lungs
as the vision overtakes me. The images stab my brain, and a horrible burning
stretches across the recent incision on my wrist. I collapse to my knees as I’m
brought back to the alley at the border of Zone 7. I see a crowd of Enforcers,
as well as a handful of people wearing familiar white coats.

I recognize the coats, just
as I recognize Dr. Richter before I even see his face. He turns toward me at
the same instant his name rushes through my head, and for a brief moment, I’m
almost certain he can actually see me.

His lips are pursed as he
glares down at his hand. A feeling of reluctance twists my stomach, but I
follow his gaze, immediately recognizing the bloodied glint of gold. I don’t
need confirmation to know what he’s looking at. His expression would be enough
to tell me if I
did
have any doubts. The corners of his mouth pull up
into a sneer, and his fingers clench around the chip, the knuckles turning
white as he encloses it in his fist.

“Clever girl,” he purrs.

A shudder runs up my spine,
and all at once, I’m back in the compound. My vision is obscured. I can feel
myself twitching across the floor, but I can’t do anything to control my
movements.

I vaguely realize that
people are beginning to swarm around me, but I don’t have the energy to care.
I’m in too much pain, too exhausted, and above all, I’m frightened.

“Wynter!”

I hear Rai call to me, but
I can’t answer her. I can’t speak.

“Wynter! What the hell’s
happening?” Jenner’s voice enters my ears, so full of confusion and concern.

An excruciating agony seems
to attack my every cell, forcing my body into a near state of unconsciousness.
The shadow rises from beneath me, ready to bring me down into the darkness of a
physical state far different from sleep. I don’t fight against it. If anything,
I give into it—desperate to escape this torment.

Jenner and Rai continue to
huddle over me, and I can just barely make out their faces as the blackness
takes hold. But they aren’t what I’m focusing on.

They aren’t what I’m
seeing.

Ezra still stares at me
from between the faces in the crowd. However, his expression is no longer cold
and hard. Not at all like it was before.

Now, when the darkness
finally arrives to pull me under, he looks at me differently—his eyes saying
one thing and one thing only.

He’s afraid.

I STRUGGLE TO OPEN MY eyes. The pain
running through my head is unrelenting, and the bright light above seems intent
on blinding me.

I raise my hand to block
out the glare. The tiny storeroom smells of dust and mold, adding to the thick
layer of tension overcrowding the already cramped room. Ezra, Rai, and Jenner
occupy the limited empty space, but it doesn’t escape my notice that they’re
keeping their distance from me—and for good reason. They’ve seen the very thing
that I was hesitant to tell them about. The
one
thing I told them they’d
have to see to believe. Well, now they’ve seen it, and here I am, back in my
little prison.

So, what does this mean?
Are we back to square one with them not trusting me again, or are they simply
frightened and confused by what they saw? Their expressions alone seem to
support the latter. Either way, I know I wouldn’t be back here if there wasn’t
a reason for it.

My entire body aches as I
move to sit up. I press the heel of my hand against my throbbing forehead,
hoping the pressure will be enough to counterbalance the pain. When this
doesn’t work, I drag in multiple deep breaths, trying not to focus on the
feeling of dread twisting my stomach. It burrows deep, ravaging my insides.

My visions are getting
worse. I can tell by how my body is reacting. What will happen when the pain
becomes too much? When a single episode cripples me to the point of no return?

What will happen when I
stop waking up?

The fear of death hovers at
the front of my mind. I push it away, concentrating instead on the potentially
bigger threat standing before me.

“It’s time you tell us what
the hell is going on.”

Ezra’s eyes seem to burn
into my skin, making me squirm. I try not to look at him, and for a long
moment, I find it difficult to speak. I swallow, forcing out the words between
raspy breaths. “I told you it was something you had to see to believe.”

His eyes narrow. “What
happened back there?” he presses me. “What
was
that?”

I hesitate, unsure what to
say. One way or another, I’ll have to tell them the truth. I know that. But
how? What possible explanation will make them believe me?

“The condition I have . . .
it allows me to see things,” I finally answer.

“What kind of things?” Rai
cuts in.

She stumbles toward me, and
I can see her body trembling, despite how hard she’s trying to hide it. Her
eyes are wide, filled with both fear and anticipation—the same expectant look I
notice on each of their faces. I waver. All too aware this is the moment of
truth.

If I’m going to tell them,
now is the time to do it.

“Things that haven’t
happened yet,” I breathe.

The silence that ensues is
unbearable, maddening even, and the tension clouding the room seems to have
reached its breaking point. I glance between Ezra and Rai, but neither of them
say anything.

Suddenly, Jenner begins to
laugh. The sound is somewhat unsettling in the otherwise eerie hush, and we all
look at him at the same instant, startled by his outburst.

“That’s impossible,” he
says with a wave of his hand.

Rai casts an uncertain
glance at Ezra. His face is ghostly pale, the skin colorless to the point his
expression is like stone. His reaction is bewildering.

I stare at him, trying to
make sense of the unspoken emotion in his gaze. He keeps his eyes fixed on the
floor, refusing to look at me.

A sinking feeling weighs in
my gut. I swallow again, trying to suppress the apprehension climbing up my
throat. The seconds seem to tick by at a snail’s pace, and it’s as if
everyone’s waiting for Ezra to say something.

“What did you see?” he
finally asks me.

I vaguely realize that he’s
repeated himself twice now, but I find it hard to concentrate on anything
except his eyes.

Those familiar, penetrating
eyes.

“That doctor I told you
about. Richter—” I waver, held back by the fear that they might not believe me.
I take a deep breath before continuing. “He was with a group of Enforcers in
the alley where I left my chip. They found it,” I whisper, enunciating each
syllable to express the gravity of the situation. “They know I don’t have it
anymore.”

“It’s not possible!” Jenner
says again, shouting this time.

We all glance back at him,
and I’m surprised to find that he seems almost angry. But oddly enough, he’s
not looking at me.

He’s looking only at Ezra.

“Come on, man, seeing into
the future?” he scoffs. “I think our little captive here must’ve hit her head.
There’s no way you can actually believe what she’s saying.”

Rai shifts closer to him
and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Jenner—” she mutters calmly.

“No!” he shouts, ripping
his arm away from her. “It’s just not possible!”

The room goes quiet, the
silence so thick I could cut it with a knife. I watch Jenner carefully, aware
that, in spite of the kindness he’s shown me over the past few days, we’ve now
become separated by this single moment. My heart drops when I think about it.

Once again, the seconds
tick by at a snail's pace. A shudder runs up my spine as goosebumps rise along
my skin, the fear wrapping its invisible hand around my throat. I can feel it
choking me, can feel it in every beat of my quickening pulse.

I’m distracted by the sound
of Ezra’s voice. It enters my ears, encircling my brain in a fog of confusion.

“Yes, it is.”

My eyes widen as I gape at
him in shock.

“How do you know?” Jenner
asks him. “How could you
possibly
know that?”

“Because I’ve seen it before,”
he breathes.

What? How?
I try to speak, but the
words fail to escape my lips.

“Ezra . . .” Rai whimpers.

I glance at her when I hear
the cautious tone of her voice. The way she looks at him seems to suggest that
she was already in the know about all of this. In fact, the way she said his
name almost sounded like a warning—a question of whether he actually wants to
divulge whatever it is that gives him knowledge of my condition. Either way, I
know whatever Ezra’s been through, whatever he’s seen, Rai knows about it.

I stand completely
immobile, finding this all quite difficult to grasp. Jenner, on the other hand,
maintains his previous belief that what I’ve told them simply can’t be true. He
shakes his head in continued denial.

“It’s not—” he begins to
protest.

Ezra’s voice thunders
through the room in response, silencing all of us. Especially Jenner.

“It’s what killed my
mother,” he reveals.

For some reason, his words
seem to be directed more at me than at anyone else. Maybe because, for the
first time since arriving here, there seems to be something connecting us on a
deeper level.

Something that finally
proves to him that I’m not the enemy—that I’m not
his
enemy.

Taking a deep breath, he
slumps back against the concrete wall as if all of the energy has left his
body. “She kept saying these . . .
things
,” he whispers. “Everyone
thought she was crazy, even my father. He had her institutionalized. I guess he
figured she wouldn’t get better. At least not without help. I can’t really
remember how long she was in there, since we were never allowed to visit. All I
know is that, after a while, whatever it was took its toll on her body.” He
pauses for a few seconds before clearing his throat. “The official diagnosis
was that she died of a brain aneurysm.”

I think back to my first
proper meeting with Dr. Richter. He had asked me all of those questions and
explained things to me that I still have difficulty wrapping my head around.
But he also showed me the files of the other known individuals who suffered
from this disease. From Ultraxenopia. Looking back, I wish I had thought to
memorize their names. Maybe then, I would know if Ezra’s mother had been in
that pile.

“It was the unusual
circumstances of my mother’s death that contributed to the selection of my
brother’s career,” Ezra continues. “I guess now I know that he’s finally gained
some insight into her condition after all these years.”

I notice a strange emotion
burning in his eyes when he says this.

“What do you mean?” I ask.
As the words breach my lips, I have a feeling that I already know the answer.
It can’t be a coincidence, surely. Between Ezra and Rai’s reaction when I
mentioned him before, and the way he responded to my vision back at the DSD . .
.

“That doctor you mentioned.
His name is Austin.”

My heart catches in my
chest. Now that I look at him, I can see the resemblance, and in a strange way,
it all makes sense. My abduction. The visions. The string of events that have
happened since my exam.

Still, I find the
connection between them alarming, and I can’t stop myself from saying so. From
hoping it isn’t true.

“Are you sure?” I breathe.

Ezra nods, but I can see a
trace of doubt in his hazel eyes. Rai, who has been relatively silent up to
this point, extinguishes that doubt with one simple breath.

“We knew which sector he
was projected to enter.”

The suspenseful hush that I
expect to follow this moment is quickly broken by the sound of Jenner’s voice.
It echoes through the tiny room, overshadowing all of us.

“Wait a minute, one of
those DSD scumbags is your
brother
?” His blatant horror and disgust are
obvious in each strained word.

His hands clench into
fists, almost as if he’s holding some stronger emotion at bay, and his lips are
pursed, hiding the teeth grinding in anger behind them.

I glance warily at Ezra,
but Jenner doesn’t wait for him to answer his question. Instead, he lunges
forward, closing the distance between them in one hurried movement.

“Jenner!” Rai screams. She
throws herself in front of him and holds out her hands, trying to reason with
him—to convince him to calm down.

He’s not thinking clearly,
even
I
can see that. But at the same time, I can understand where he’s
coming from. Based on the glint in his eye, I get the distinct impression that
he feels betrayed by the very people he once believed to be his closest
friends. It’s a hard feeling to overcome in a world where you never know who
you can actually trust.

“I haven’t seen or spoken
to my brother in ten years!” Ezra snaps. “We became estranged shortly following
my mother’s death, after which, he took on her maiden name. Probably out of
resentment toward my father for locking her away in the first place. When I
left home to join PHOENIX, we lost contact. He wanted nothing to do with me,
and I never bothered to find out what he was up to.”

Ezra glares at Jenner, who
reciprocates that look with a matching level of intensity. However, they aren’t
the ones that I’m looking at right now. Instead, I’m transfixed only by the
unbearable sadness in Rai’s eyes. She doesn’t mask her emotions well, even when
she tries to.

I’m once again left
wondering about her connection to Richter.

“You should’ve said
something,” Jenner growls. “That’s a messed up thing to keep from us,
especially since you knew.” He makes a clicking noise with his tongue, reiterating
his disapproval before muttering under his breath, “Shit like
that
makes
you no better than the State.”

Silence once again floods
the room, and I can’t help but feel like an intruder in this conversation.

It might have started with
me, but it sure as hell hasn’t ended with me.

“Jenner . . . let’s go for
a walk,” Rai pleads.

I watch as he casts a
begrudging look over his shoulder before releasing an irritable grunt and
storming out the door. Rai peers back at me, her lips pulling up into a small
apologetic smile. She then makes to follow Jenner, but stops beside Ezra for a
brief moment first, brushing her hand against his upper arm.