After Flux (The Flux Series Book 2) Read online

  Zane squashed into the back of the car, with me and Dixie sitting on either side of him. He kept glancing between us, probably wondering what the hell he was doing. I noticed how he kept his shoulders rounded in, his knees pressed together, as though deliberately avoiding making contact with me. I was sure he’d felt whatever had connected us, too.

  “I’m Arianna,” I told him, realizing we still hadn’t told him our names, “but everyone calls me Ari. This is Dixie.” I nodded over to my friend on the other side of him. “The guy in the passenger seat is Hunter,” Hunter twisted in his seat to give him a nod, “and our driver is also our fearless leader, Kit.” Kit lifted a hand in a backward wave, but didn’t take his eyes off the road.

  “I’d tell you my name,” he said, “but it seems you already know it.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” said Dixie. “I have a bad habit of picking things out of people’s heads.”

  He clearly had no idea what to say to that.

  Kit drove across the bridge then left it to take the narrow road down the cliff face to the small parking lot. We climbed out of the car, making sure no one was following us.

  “Where are we going?” the new guy asked, looking around the barren area.

  Hunter grinned. “You’ll see.”

  I was tempted to tell Zane he should think himself lucky he wasn’t being made to jump off the side of the bridge, but managed to keep my mouth shut. After being caught up in a bombing, he’d already been through enough.

  Hunter led the way down the side of the cliff face, the small steps cut into the rock barely giving any foothold. Hunter made it look easy, however, leaping from point to point, down onto the rocky cove beneath. Kit followed him, and then Dixie, so it was just me and Zane left standing above them. In the distance, I could still see black smoke rising into the air, could smell it, too, though I wasn’t sure if it was in the air, or if I was catching the scent from Zane’s clothing.

  “Your turn,” I told him.

  He lifted his eyebrows, a shade darker than the hair on his head. “Seriously?”

  “You’ll be fine. I’m right behind you.”

  The small cove beneath the cliff was narrow, the ocean lapping at the edges only a few feet away. The water grew deep close to shore, dark gray and tumultuous. It looked like you could stumble in and be dragged beneath the surface and never seen again.

  I could see Zane was torn, not wanting to run down a cliff face, but also not wanting to appear weak in front of the men waiting below, or perhaps even me.

  “Trust me,” I said. “You don’t want to have to do the other option for getting down there.”

  He shot me a glance and then went for it, moving more slowly than the others had, cautious at first, but then picking up momentum. When he was still ten feet above the ground, he jumped, hitting the pebbled beach below in a roll and then jumping back to his feet. It was kind of impressive. Or at least Dixie looked impressed. The other two just looked pissed.

  I followed him down, not doing the jumpy-rolling part, but hopping down at my own speed. I was far more graceful than the first time I’d attempted it, when I’d fallen half of the way. I remembered Kit telling me then that I might not be able to get hurt. It still wasn’t a theory I’d put into practice.

  “Now what?” asked Zane, looking around. As far as he could see, we were on a tiny cove underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “This way,” said Kit, striding on ahead, toward the hidden tunnel. “Now we show you the Cavern.”

  Chapter Four

  Zane appeared curious about what we were heading into, but he didn’t ask any more questions. We walked in single file through the tunnel, and even when Kit burst the candle wicks into flame via thought alone, Zane didn’t question what had happened. I guessed he thought it was some kind of trick.

  We stepped out into the Cavern, and his cool composure fell from his face. His mouth dropped, and he turned in a circle, taking in the sight of the glass-walled rooms with all of their equipment.

  “Welcome to the Cavern,” I said.

  “What the hell is this place?”

  “It’s the place where we—the Kin—live and train our skills.”

  Word quickly got around that we were back, and had the new guy with us. People gathered, and I recognized their curiosity as similar to when I’d first arrived.

  A familiar figure rushed out. “Ari, thank God you’re back.” Bryce hurried up to me and gave me a brief but hard hug, squeezing the breath from me. “I’ve been worried sick. There’s been another bombing.”

  “I know, Dad. It’s okay,” I said, squeezing him back and then releasing him. “I’m fine.”

  “It’s not okay, though, is it? They think there are at least thirteen dead, more injured. More innocent people like Karina.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s all over the internet.”

  I wondered what was being reported. If anyone had owned up to this bombing. No one had claimed the one Karina had been killed in, and the public would start baying for blood if the finger wasn’t pointed soon. The government would need to come up with a scapegoat. People needed somewhere to focus the blame, if only to feel like there was a way to fight back. No one liked to be helpless and in the dark.

  I remembered Zane still standing there, looking awkward. I hoped the presence of my father would help him feel more comfortable somehow. My dad tended to have that effect on people.

  “Dad, this is Zane. He’s new here. Zane, this is my dad, Bryce. I guess he’s new here, too.”

  The two men shook hands. “So, you can do what the others can,” Bryce said. “The moving stuff around with your thoughts thing?”

  “Err, no. Not that I’m aware of,” Zane replied, shooting me a confused look that made me think he wondered if my dad was all there.

  “We haven’t explained everything to him yet, Dad,” I said, taking him by the elbow and ushering him away.

  “Oh, right. I’m glad to see you home safe, Ari, even if the city is dealing with another terrible tragedy.”

  He was right. It was unbelievably awful. Those lives lost, way before their time, snatched away by some selfish son of a bitch with an agenda. What kind of evil did such a thing? We couldn’t let it happen again. I felt sure it was attached to the Kin somehow. We had to do everything in our power to prevent any more.

  I turned to our leader. “Would your father know who was responsible for the bombings, Kit?”

  Kit shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. You’ve spoken to him more than I have in the last few years.”

  “But he must know if someone else knows about us, someone who’s trying to drive us out into the open.”

  “They didn’t do too well today,” Dixie pointed out. “We were standing right in front of them, and they didn’t catch us.”

  “Maybe they didn’t expect us to be there. They might not have any idea that we’re able to sense when another one of us has been woken up.”

  Zane lifted both hands. “Okay, hold on. Wind it back a bit. I have no idea what you people are going on about, or what kind of setup you’ve got going on down here. What do you mean by woken up?”

  Kit stepped forward, and I felt Hunter watching me intently from behind his right shoulder. “Why don’t you show him, Ari?”

  “Me?” Nerves in my voice.

  I was scared to use my powers to show him what we could do. I didn’t trust myself enough to know I could do something simple and stop at that. Things had a way of running off by themselves.

  “Sure. You can do it.”

  “Kit?” Hunter said, his voice full of warning.

  Kit turned to him. “She can do it, Hunter. You need to have a little more faith in her.”

  Hunter locked eyes with me. “I have plenty of faith in you, Ari.”

  I wondered why he’d been trying to get Kit to not let me do it, then. Like anything in this world, once I was told I couldn’t do something, it only made me all the more determine
d.

  “Okay, come with me, Zane.”

  He didn’t have much choice. He was most definitely outnumbered. He followed me into one of the adjoining training rooms—not the one which I’d broken the glass in a couple of weeks earlier. He looked around at the machinery. “What’s all this for?”

  “Don’t worry about that for now. It’s just what Kit uses to try to learn more about what we are.”

  “What we are?”

  I nodded. “We each have an ability that was given to us before we were born. We’re unaware of our abilities until we suffer a traumatic event, and it dislodges something in our brains. For me, it was the bombing down on the pier. Before that happened, I was just like any regular girl. Everything changed after that.”

  “And you think something has changed in me now, since I got caught up in the bombing of the cable car.”

  “It has changed,” I confirmed. “Both Dixie and I sensed it. I felt the moment the bomb happened. I felt the injury to your head, I heard the explosion, and I passed out. When I woke up, I knew I had to find you.”

  One of his eyebrows cocked. “You must know how crazy this all sounds.”

  “Believe me, I do. That isn’t the craziest part, though.”

  He looked at me doubtfully. “It isn’t?”

  “Nope.”

  In front of us were a number of activities—most of which were game based. A glass encased maze with a metal ball which we had to mentally maneuver to find our way through the center. A large metal wire with a voltage running through it, attached to a light bulb and a buzzer. There was a second metal loop that had to be moved along the wire, without making the buzzer sound or the light illuminate. It was a simple tabletop game but in much larger form. In the far corner was a basketball hoop, a bucket of balls beneath it.

  I focused. I knew I only needed the tiniest fraction of what I was capable of to make this work. While some others would need weeks or months of training to be strong enough to create the precision needed, I had to hold back on my abilities. I remembered only too well what had happened the first time I’d been taken into one of these rooms.

  I focused on the bucket, and one of the balls lifted into the air, seemingly from nowhere.

  Zane gasped and stumbled back. “What the hell?”

  I lifted the second one, so it hovered beside the first.

  “Is this a trick?”

  “No trick,” I said, while keeping my attention focused. I was aware of the others outside, watching through the glass, but also keeping their distance—perhaps the memory of the previous time was also fresh in their minds, too. Or maybe they genuinely wanted to give us some space.

  I lifted the third, so all three balls hovered side by side in the air, then I threw them forward, one by one, so they hit the net, dropping through the basket with perfect precision each time. I couldn’t help smiling as the balls each hit the floor and bounced. They started to roll away, but I focused on them again and they abruptly changed direction and rolled back to come to a halt in a perfect line.

  I risked a glance at Zane, his mouth was hanging open.

  “You can try it, if you want.”

  He lifted both hands, shaking his head. “No, I don’t know anything about what you just did, and there’s no way I can do the same thing.”

  I wasn’t going to force him. “Okay. I know you’ve already been through a lot. But if things start happening around you, things you can’t explain, come and talk to me, okay? You have the ability to do what I just did, and so much more. But it can be frightening, and overwhelming. I get it, really, I do.”

  He was looking nervous, and I felt bad for him.

  “So,” he said, “can I go now?”

  “Go?”

  “Yeah, out of here. I’ve seen it, and now I’d like to go.”

  “It’s not that easy. There are people out there who are searching for people like us.”

  “You keep saying like us, but I can’t do anything. I’m just a guy. Maybe you got the wrong one?”

  “No, we didn’t.” If it had just been me who’d sensed him, I might have doubted myself, but Dixie had, too, and she’d been doing this far longer than I had. She wouldn’t have made a mistake.

  He stopped and folded his arms across his chest, a frown pinching his face. “Are you saying I can’t leave, even if I want to?”

  “You can, but I hope you don’t.”

  We locked eyes. Did we still have a psychic connection of sorts? Don’t leave, I willed him. Stay and learn about us. His blue-green eyes narrowed in contemplation, and he bit his lower lip as he thought.

  “Okay,” he relented. “I guess I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  “Do you have family? People you need to know you’re safe?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. I’ve bounced around between foster families my whole life. My mom died when I was three. Never knew who my dad was.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “All of us lost our moms. It’s one of the things that connects us.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Not sure a great thing to have in common, right?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Let me show you around the rest of the Cavern. We have living quarters as well. You’ll be given a bed in one of the guy’s rooms.”

  I looked at his bloodied forehead, and gestured to the bandage. “You might want to get that checked out as well, and if you want to get washed up, I’m sure one of the boys will have some things you can borrow.”

  He was covered in blood, and dust from the explosion. He lifted his backpack. “It’s okay. I have some stuff in here.”

  “Oh,” I was surprised. “You always carry around a change of clothes with you?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, I was kind of between places. Just bouncing around. I like to keep my belongings on me.”

  Was he homeless? Was that what he was telling me? I held back on asking more questions, feeling like I was sticking my nose where it wouldn’t be wanted.

  People were gathered outside the training room as we made our way out. I knew how self-conscious Zane would be feeling right now, everyone watching him. I caught sight of Hunter and Kit, too, standing side by side, watching me as I guided Zane through the Cavern. Other members of the Kin said hi to him as we passed through, and I pointed out different people and told him their names.

  “That’s Sledge, he’s Dixie’s boyfriend,” I said, pointing to the big man with the afro. Sledge grinned, revealing white teeth, and lifted his hand in a wave. “And that’s Caro,” I said, pointing out the red-haired girl. “She’s great with electricity. The tall girl with the ponytail is Natasha, and she can manipulate temperatures, but don’t get excited, ’cause you’re not her type.” He looked baffled at my comment. I guessed he was used to being most women’s type, but I wasn’t going to explain any further. “The tall guy at the back is Franklin, and he’s good with electricity, too.”

  “Hey,” said Franklin, giving Zane a nod.

  “I hope I’m not expected to remember everyone,” said Zane.

  I laughed. “No, you’ll get to know everyone in time.”

  “And everyone can do these... things.”

  “Yes, we each have a different variation on what we can do, but we all have abilities.”

  “And what’s your variation?”

  How could I say, ‘I can do everything, but not without messing everything up’ without looking like both a big head and a loser? “I’m still finding my way,” I said instead. “I haven’t been here for long either.”

  He seemed to accept that.

  My fingers brushed the back of his hand, and I felt the same tingling up through my fingertips as I’d experienced when I’d touching him at the site of the bombing.

  Zane jerked his hand away. “What is that?”

  I looked at him, curious. “You felt it, too?”

  “Yeah, like every time your skin makes contact with mine, we get this shock of static electricity.”
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  “Honestly, I don’t know what it is. I’ve never had it before. Maybe it’s because of the connection I got with you when the bombing happened. I’m sure it’ll wear off.” I made a mental note to ask Dixie if she’d ever experienced anything like this from someone she picked mental stuff up from. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, a tingling up through my fingertips and arms, before it faded away, but it felt weird getting this feeling from a complete stranger.

  I showed him around the common room and the kitchen. “I guess one of the guys will have to sort out where you’re sleeping.”

  He gave me a sideways glance. “You run a dorm set-up here? Boys separated from girls.”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “But you said a couple of people were couples. What happens then?”

  My cheeks flashed hot. “There’s enough privacy. We make do.”

  He lifted his chin in a slow nod. “Right.”

  “Let’s get you back to the others,” I said, suddenly not liking being alone with him. The moment had gotten a little too intense.

  Franklin’s face appeared in the doorway, making me jump. “Hey, Ari. You done? Kit’s waiting for you in the Cavern. He wants to go over what happened today.”

  I nodded. “Sure. I’ll be right there.” I glanced at Zane. “Can you take Zane back to the common room for me, introduce him to some of the others, show him a few of the ropes?”

  “Of course. You might want to hurry. Kit has one of his faces on.”

  “No problem.”

  In all honesty, I was grateful for the interruption. I wasn’t sure what I thought of the new arrival yet, but being alone with him had certainly set me on edge.

  Chapter Five

  I left Zane and Franklin, and went back to the Cavern where Kit was waiting. He was leaning with his back up against the central console, his arms resting on the unit, so his t-shirt stretched across the muscles of his bulky torso and his biceps bulged. He’d let the stubble on his jaw grow out a little, and I could see a hint of red in the hair.