Ignite Me (8 page)

And even though this is a terrible moment to dwell on these things, I can’t help but allow myself to panic. That Warner can so easily project his powers. With no training. No practice.

He can tap into my abilities and use them as he pleases.

This can’t possibly be good.

Warner’s hands squeeze my shoulders.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

“I’m trying to see if I can pass the power on to you—if I can retransfer it and make us both invisible—but it seems I’m unable. Once I’ve taken the energy from someone else, I can
use
it, but I can’t seem to share it. After I release the energy, it can only be returned to the owner.”

“How do you know so much already?” I ask, astonished. “You just learned about this a few days ago.”

“I’ve been practicing,” he says.

“But how? With who?” I pause. “
Oh
.”

“Yes,” he says. “It’s been rather incredible having you stay with me. For so many reasons.” His hands fall from my shoulders. “I was worried I might be able to hurt you
with your own power. I wasn’t sure I could absorb it without accidentally using it against you. But we seem to cancel each other out,” he says. “Once I take it from you, I can only ever give it back.”

I’m not breathing.

“Let’s go,” Warner says. “Kenji is moving out of range and I won’t be able to hold on to his energy for much longer. We have to get out of here.”

“I can’t leave,” I tell him. “I can’t just abandon Kenji, not like this—”

“He’s going to try and kill me, love. And while I know I’ve proved otherwise in your case, I can assure you I’m generally incapable of standing by as someone makes an attempt on my life. So unless you want to watch me shoot him first, I suggest we get out of here as soon as possible. I can feel him circling back.”

“No. You can go. You
should
go. But I’m going to stay here.”

Warner stills behind me. “What?”

“Go,” I tell him. “You have to go to the compounds—you have things to take care of. You should go. But I need to be here. I have to know what’s happened to everyone else, and I have to move forward from there.”

“You’re asking me to leave you here,” he says, not bothering to hide his shock. “Indefinitely.”

“Yes,” I say to him. “I’m not leaving until I get some answers. And you’re right. Kenji will definitely shoot first and ask questions later, so it’s best that you leave. I’ll talk
to him, try to tell him what’s happened. Maybe we could all work together—”

“
What?
”

“It doesn’t just have to be me and you,” I tell him. “You said you wanted to help me kill your father and take down The Reestablishment, right?”

Warner nods slowly against the back of my head.

“Okay. So.” I take a deep breath. “I accept your offer.”

Warner goes rigid. “You accept my offer.”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand what you’re saying?”

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do this without you.”

I feel the breath rush out of him, his heart beating hard against my back.

“But I need to know who else is still alive,” I insist. “And the group of us can work together. We’ll be stronger that way, and we’ll all be fighting toward the same goal—”

“No.”

“It’s the only way—”

“I have to go,” he says, spinning me around. “Kenji is almost here.” He shoves a hard plastic object into my hand. “Activate this pager,” he says, “whenever you’re ready. Keep it with you and I’ll know where to find you.”

“But—”

“You have four hours,” he says. “If I don’t hear from you before then, I’ll assume you are in some kind of danger, and I will come find you myself.” He’s still holding my hand, the
pager still pressed against my palm. It’s the craziest feeling, to be touched by someone you can’t see. “Do you understand?”

I nod, once. I have no idea where to look.

And then I freeze, every inch of me hot and cold all at once because he presses his lips to the back of my fingers in one soft, tender moment and when he pulls away I’m reeling, heady, unsteady.

Just as I’m regaining my footing, I hear the familiar sound of an electric thrum, and realize Warner has already begun to drive away.

And I’m left to wonder what on earth I’ve just agreed to.

FIFTEEN

Kenji is stomping toward me, his eyes blazing.

“Where the hell did he go? Did you see where he went?”

I shake my head as I reach forward, grabbing his arms in an attempt to focus his eyes. “Talk to me, Kenji. Tell me what happened—where is everyone—?”

“There is no
everyone
!” he snaps, breaking away. “Omega Point is gone—everything gone—
everything
—” He drops to his knees, heaving as he falls forward, his forehead digging into the snow. “I thought you were dead, too—I thought—”

“No,” I gasp. “No, Kenji—they can’t all have died—not everyone—”

Not Adam.

Not Adam.

Please please please not
Adam

I’d been too optimistic about today.

I’d been lying to myself.

I didn’t really believe Warner. I didn’t believe it could be this bad. But now, to see the truth, and to hear Kenji’s agony—the reality of all that happened is hitting me so hard I feel like I’m falling backward into my own grave.

My knees have hit the ground.

“Please,” I’m saying, “please tell me there are others—Adam has to be alive—”

“I grew up here,” Kenji is saying. He’s not listening to me and I don’t recognize his raw, aching voice. I want the old Kenji, the one who knew how to take charge, to take control. And this isn’t him.

This Kenji is terrifying me.

“This was my whole life,” he says, looking toward the crater that used to be Omega Point. “The only place—all those people—” He chokes. “They were my
family
. My only family—”

“Kenji, please . . .” I try to shake him. I need him to snap out of his grief before I succumb to it, too. We need to move out of plain sight and I’m only now beginning to realize that Kenji doesn’t care. He
wants
to put himself in danger. He
wants
to fight. He wants to
die
.

I can’t let that happen.

Someone needs to take control of this situation right now and right now I might be the only one capable.

“Get up,” I snap, my voice harsher than I intended. “You need to get up, and you need to stop acting reckless. You know we’re not safe out here, and we have to move. Where are you staying?” I grab his arm and pull, but he won’t budge. “Get up!” I shout again. “Get—”

And then, just like that, I remember I’m a whole hell of a lot stronger than Kenji will ever be. It almost makes me smile.

I close my eyes and focus, trying to remember everything
Kenji taught me, everything I’ve learned about how to control my strength, how to tap into it when I need to. I spent so many years bottling everything up and locking it away that it still takes some time to remember it’s there, waiting for me to harness it. But the moment I welcome it, I feel it rush into me. It’s a raw power so potent it makes me feel invincible.

And then, just like that, I yank Kenji up off the ground and toss him over my shoulder.

Me
.

I do that.

Kenji, of course, unleashes a string of the foulest expletives I’ve ever heard. He’s kicking at me but I can hardly feel it; my arms are wrapped loosely around him, my strength carefully reined in so as not to crush him. He’s angry, but at least he’s swearing again. This is something I recognize.

I cut him off midexpletive. “Tell me where you’re staying,” I say to him, “and pull yourself together. You can’t fall apart on me now.”

Kenji is silent a moment.

“Hey, um, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for a friend of mine,” he says. “Have you seen her? She’s a tiny little thing, cries a lot, spends too much time with her feelings—”

“Shut up, Kenji.”

“Oh wait!” he says. “It
is
you.”

“Where are we going?”

“When are you going to put me down?” he counters, no
longer amused. “I mean, I’ve got an excellent view of your ass from here, but if you don’t mind me staring—”

I drop him without thinking.

“God
dammit
, Juliette—what the
hell
—”

“How’s the view from down there?” I stand over his splayed body, arms crossed over my chest.

“I hate you.”

“Get up, please.”

“When did you learn to do that?” he grumbles, stumbling to his feet and rubbing his back.

I roll my eyes. Squint into the distance. Nothing and no one in sight, so far. “I didn’t.”

“Oh, right,” he says. “Because that makes sense. Because tossing a grown-ass man over your shoulders is just so freaking easy. That shit just comes naturally to you.”

I shrug.

Kenji lets out a low whistle. “Cocky as hell, too.”

“Yeah.” I shade my eyes against the cold sunlight. “I think spending all that time with you really screwed me up.”

“Ohhh-ho,” he says, clapping his hands together, unamused. “Stand up, princess. You’re a comedian.”

“I’m already standing up.”

“It’s called a joke, smart-ass.”

“Where are we going?” I ask him again. I start walking in no particular direction. “I really need to know where we’re headed.”

“Unregulated turf.” He falls into step with me, taking my hand to lead the way. We go invisible immediately. “It
was the only place we could think of.”

“
We?
”

“Yeah. It’s Adam’s old place, remember? It’s where I first—”

I stop walking, chest heaving. I’m crushing Kenji’s hand in mine and he yanks it free, unleashing expletives as he does, making us visible again. “Adam is still alive?” I ask, searching his eyes.

“Of course he’s still alive.” Kenji shoots me a dirty look as he rubs at his hand. “Have you heard nothing I’ve been saying to you?”

“But you said everyone was dead,” I gasp. “You said—”

“Everyone
is
dead,” Kenji says, his features darkening again. “There were over a hundred of us at Omega Point. There are only nine of us left.”

SIXTEEN

“Who?” I ask, my heart constricting. “Who survived? How?”

Kenji lets out a long breath, running both hands through his hair as he focuses on a point behind me. “You just want a list?” he asks. “Or do you want to know how it all happened?”

“I want to know everything.”

He nods. Looks down, stomps on a clump of snow. He takes my hand again, and we start walking, two invisible kids in the middle of nowhere.

“I guess,” Kenji finally says, “that on some level we have you to thank for us still being alive. Because if we’d never gone to find you, we probably would’ve died on the battlefield with everyone else.”

He hesitates.

“Adam and I noticed you were missing pretty quickly, but by the time we fought our way back to the front, we were too late. We were still maybe twenty feet out, and could only see them hauling you into the tank.” He shakes his head. “We couldn’t just run after you,” he says. “We were trying not to get shot at.”

His voice gets deeper, more somber as he tells the story.

“So we decided we’d go an alternate route—avoiding all
the main roads—to try and follow you back to base, because that’s where we thought you were headed. But just as we got there, we ran into Castle, Lily, Ian, and Alia, who were on their way out. They’d managed to complete their own mission successfully; they broke into Sector 45 and stole Winston and Brendan back. Those two were half dead when Castle found them,” Kenji says quietly.

He takes a sharp breath.

“And then Castle told us what they’d heard while they were on base—that the troops were mobilizing for an air assault on Omega Point. They were going to drop bombs on the entire area, hoping that if they hit it with enough firepower, everything underground would just collapse in on itself. There’d be no escape for anyone inside, and everything we’d built would be destroyed.”

I feel him tense beside me.

We stop moving for just a moment before I feel Kenji tug on my hand. I duck into the cold and wind, steeling myself against the weather and his words.

“Apparently they’d tortured the location out of our people on the battlefield,” he says. “Just before killing them.” He shakes his head. “We knew we didn’t have much time, but we were still close enough to base that I managed to commandeer one of the army tanks. We loaded up and headed straight for Point, hoping to get everyone out in time. But I think, deep down,” he says, “we knew it wasn’t going to work. The planes were overhead. Already on their way.”

He laughs, suddenly, but the action seems to cause him pain.

“And by some freak miracle of insanity, we intercepted James almost a mile out. He’d managed to sneak out, and was on his way toward the battlefield. The poor kid had pissed the whole front of his pants he was so scared, but he said he was tired of being left behind. Said he wanted to fight with his brother.” Kenji’s voice is strained.

“And the craziest shit,” he says, “is that if James had stayed at Point like we told him to, where we thought he’d be safe, he would’ve died with everyone else.” Kenji laughs a little. “And that was it. There was nothing we could do. We just had to stand there, watching as they dropped bombs on thirty years of work, killed everyone too young or too old to fight back, and then massacred the rest of our team on the field.” He clenches his hand around mine. “I come back here every day,” he says. “Hoping someone will show up. Hoping to find something to take back.” He stops then, voice tight with emotion. “And here you are. This shit doesn’t even seem real.”

I squeeze his fingers—gently, this time—and huddle closer to him. “We’re going to be okay, Kenji. I promise. We’ll stick together. We’ll get through this.”

Kenji tugs his hand out of mine only to slip it around my shoulder, pulling me tight against his side. His voice is soft when he speaks. “What happened to you, princess? You seem different.”

“Bad different?”