Spark Rising (15 page)

She stood for a moment. What could she do? Scream? Shout? Sit down and refuse to move? Knock them all out—the entire building—and race around trying to figure out how to get back? She couldn’t even figure out how to make the elevator work, never mind that using that much Spark would kill her. She hadn’t had a chance to ground since she’d brought down the side of the Council building. And get back? To Azcon, where they were hunting her? To the middle of nowhere, to hide again? What then?

No. She needed this. She needed their resources to get access to the Council. She’d gather her thoughts. Cooperate. And figure out what needed to happen to use them and then lose them. But she wouldn’t pretend she wasn’t furious at the deception. They’d know anyhow. She wasn’t Reyes.

She did as he instructed. Used the institutional restroom he indicated then moved through the cafeteria line behind him, accepting the food he put before her. She kept her head down and refused to make eye contact with anyone, although she could hear the whispers and feel stares following her. The male energy, heavy and curious, pushed at her from every direction.

Lena followed him to a table on the far side of the cafeteria. She sat where he indicated and began eating. She tasted nothing except the bread. She savored every chewy, yeasty bite of the bread.

When she finished, she glanced up and wasn’t surprised to see that Reyes had already finished and leaned back in his chair to watch her. Beneath the mask of calm, his glare roved over her face. She caught the stare with her own and held it defiantly.

His lips thinned, and he nodded, a curt movement indicating his impatience.

He stood, gathered their trays, and walked away. He set everything on an open ledge in the wall and walked to the archway to wait for her to join him. Then he moved off again.

She followed, glowering at the back of his head as they continued down the halls, sometimes skirting groups of boys. The boys always stared. She stared back, her animosity growing. They made several turns and wound their way deeper into the school.

He acted like this was all her fault. Had she asked them to come to her home and force her away? Had she asked to be lied to, tricked into going into the city? Had she asked to be tortured? Made to watch her mother be killed in front of her? A dry sob of rage and grief hiccupped in her throat before she forced it back down.

Reyes’s head moved at the sound, almost a concerned response. He stopped before a door to palm the security box. He turned the handle and moved inside slightly, stepping to the side for her.

Reyes tilted his head, trying to catch her eye.

She entered, brushing past him to stand in the middle of the room, trying to pretend he wasn’t behind her. She didn’t see the spare furniture in the front, the table, pair of chairs, book shelves. She hugged herself. Items spread symmetrically on a low table near the bed tucked at the rear caught her attention. Small earthenware pots had been placed carefully in a line with tiny twig brushes fanned out before them. She stalked over. They were
her
earthenware pots, her powders and dyes. She turned to step up on the bed and walk over it to a low wooden chest on the other side. She flipped back the top. Her clothes. Her hand-knit curtains. She drew in a deep breath.
This
was his surprise?

Clearly it was meant to make her happy. Slip back in, beneath the watch of other Council agents, no doubt, and bring her some of the bits and pieces that made up her home. It was a sudden, glaring reminder of all she had lost—no, of all they had taken from her. What they had done, what
he
had done, was no less than tear her away from the life she had built for herself, and because of it, she’d lost more than just things. She’d lost her mother.

She turned toward him, head down, gaze lowered. She spoke, voice low and tight. “Is this supposed to appease me?”

He pushed away from the door and moved to the middle of the room. “Please you? Yeah, I guess. I wasn’t really—”

“No! Not please me!” Her voice snapped out across at him like a whip. “Appease me. Is this supposed to
appease me
?”

Wisely, he chose not to answer this time.

“You brought my
stuff
. Great. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for stealing back all this stuff. Never mind that I can never go back. Never mind the fact that you destroyed
my life
!”

“I destroyed your life? Because you lost access to a building?” A bare second later, he must have remembered she had lost much more. His mouth snapped shut.

“It wasn’t a building! It was my home! She was my mother!” She stared at him.

He honestly believed he’d done a good thing for her. He expected her to be grateful. Happy, even. Her home was gone. She couldn’t go back. Her mother was dead. This man had no capacity to understand either loss. How could he when he’d been made a Ward at five?

Just like that, her rage snuffed out. She deflated.

“Of course you don’t understand what I’ve lost,” she told him quietly, “because you’ve never had a home or a family. You’ve never built anything good. You’ve only been used to destroy. You’re not a person. You’re a tool.”

And haven’t you come here to be made into the same thing?

In spite of the mask, she could see the pain that flared in his eyes, quicksilver and then gone.
Good. I hope it hurts.

Reyes opened his mouth to respond, but Lena held up her hand.

“Don’t. Just leave me alone.” She shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do or say to please me or appease me. So, please…go.”

He went.

A long time after he left, closing the door behind himself with quiet control, she sat on the edge of the bed and stared at nothing. She clasped her shaking hands together. When that didn’t stop the violent trembling, she tucked them between her knees. She wished she could cry. But she had nothing left, not even tears.

Chapter 12

Alex didn’t wait for Thom’s assistant to announce him.

“Is he alone?” He bit the words out as he strode through the outer area. At the startled assent, he snapped a nod back, and went in, closing out the office behind himself. He leaned his head against the door for a millisecond and then stalked over to stand in front of the desk, hands fisted in his pockets.

“That is not a happy face.” Thomas’s voice was guarded. He wouldn’t want to be disappointed. Not about this. He tossed the thin sheet he’d been reading back down onto the surface of his desk. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing.” Alex answered. “She’s here, safe, and installed in her quarters.”

“Then why are you so pissed?”

His brows dipped into a brief frown. “I’m not.”

Sure you’re not.

Thomas made a small, doubting noise and cocked his head to the side as he waited.

Alex grimaced. “She can be difficult. You’ll see.” He let the promise hang between them. Her last salvo had been right on target, using what he’d shared with her.
So, you’re the damn fool who let her get under your skin.

“Soon, I hope. When do you think she’ll be ready to be interviewed?”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t try interrogating her yet, Thom. She’s not happy.”

“I don’t plan to
interrogate
her, Alex.” Irritation tinged his voice.

“I know you don’t. But that’s not how she’s going to see it right now.” Alex ran his hands through his hair and turned to yank a chair forward. He sat back. “We knew she spent her childhood locked up because her father wanted to hide her from the bad people. We just didn’t know it was us.”

Thomas frowned at him. “Us? What did we ever do to the man?”

Alex nodded. “Good question. The answer? Nothing. Yet, we got here, and she saw the Ward School crest and froze. Demanded to leave. And when it didn’t happen, she decided I am now her despised jailer.” It bothered him a lot. It bothered him more than he’d ever admit to Thomas.

He’d gotten rid of the last woman who’d become this distracting. She’d been an agent. Only rarely did a mid-range manage to work their way out of mere Zone Security and into the Council Defense Agency and go toe-to-toe with the best of the Ward School. It was rarer still for a woman to do it. She had been exceptional. Alex had vetted and recruited her to join their movement himself. And as soon as he’d realized that she’d become more than a partner with benefits, he’d staged a crisis and had her reassigned to another zone. Erika had been the one who’d left that book of poetry in the safe house, the lines she’d underlined in the poem her way of telling him she wasn’t fooled. Lena was very like Erika, but more. More strength. More independence. More power.

More trouble.

The sound of Thomas’s fingers drumming a staccato beat on the surface of his desk brought Alex out of his head. After several long moments, Alex added, “This on top of the trauma of the last forty-eight hours does not bode well for her wanting to cooperate with me ever again.”

Thomas’s blue eyes sharpened. “Trauma?”

“Yeah. I was getting there.” He sighed so deep his shoulders lifted. He spent the next twenty minutes outlining everything—Lucas’s interference, Alex’s own role in bringing Lena down in an attempt to control the situation, and how her inquisition had resulted in the death of her mother and the subsequent destruction of the side of the Council building in Azcon.

Thomas leaned forward and cupped his chin with the palms of both hands. “She did what?”

“She brought it down. Sent out some kind of energy shockwave that mangled the room and fried the circuits in the entire building, locks, lights, the works. Did it again a few minutes later after I woke up and got her pointed at the wall. I had her take out the wall to escape. Three’s security director was killed in the collapse.”

The other man grimaced, the expression pinching his already narrow face. “Good riddance.”

Alex nodded his agreement. “I chased her down. We met up at her friend Ace’s place. I sent her to a safe house to cool while I put out fires.” He took a breath and pursed his lips, swerving his mind away from the safe house and the memory of how she’d moved the Dust within him when she touched him. Both times.
Focus.
“A few of those fires will require more long-term attention. Lucas is Four’s grandson.”

Thomas clearly hadn’t known. He wasn’t happy. “That explains a lot.”

“It does,” he agreed. “But it begs the question, why didn’t we know about it already? We should have known. He came in as my partner. Was it deliberate or an unhappy coincidence? Who in Dust do we have up in Zone Four anyway?”

“No one, anymore,” Thomas said. “There have been several incidents with the younger agents we’ve sent. Four is a cagey bastard, and he’s always been paranoid with that damned Reintegration Program for Spark agents, but this is new. There’s something else going on up there now.”

“Damn straight there is. While they were interrogating her, Lucas let something slip about some ‘they’ who always got what they need out of people like Lena to test the limits of their abilities, and it was his turn.”

“He could’ve been talking about accelerating the experiments on the prisoners up there.” Thomas referred to the secret Council prison in Zone Four operating on the border of Council territory and the LDS Zone. They sent the strongest criminal Sparks there instead of to Madisonville. As far as the public knew, these most dangerous men were put to death. Thomas, as Councilor Five, received occasional briefs on the activities there that told him otherwise. The public didn’t want men running around who could start fires and blackout fragile relo-city power systems, but the Council wasn’t willing to give up the opportunity to figure out how and why Sparks worked.

“That’s what I thought. The thing is….” Alex paused. “I had the feeling all of the advances they were talking about, all of the interrogations Lucas referenced that I wasn’t supposed to hear about, they weren’t on prisoners we know about. Thom, I think they’ve got the girls they’ve been taking up there.”

They both had long since learned to pay attention to Alex’s feelings on investigations.

Thomas’s blue eyes narrowed now as he focused. “What gave you that impression?”

Alex cocked his head, thinking back. “Nothing concrete. Nothing overtly said.”

“When you look at it sideways and take into account our lost agents up in Zone Four, it adds up,” Thomas said. “Four is up to something.”

“In response to us?”

“I wouldn’t think so.” His friend growled in frustration. “Our support shipments are still coming in, testing safe. And Four sent his Wards last summer, same as every year.”

Alex could see Thomas’s frustration at not having the answers. He felt the same. They had too much coming together now for it all to fall apart.

“I’ll make certain we know more shortly. I’ve been considering sending an agent I think could slip under their radar. It’s time to move on it.” Thomas shook it off, shifting his shoulders. “We’ll return to that later. Finish with the girl—”

“Lena.”

“Yes, Lena. Anything else?”

Alex fell quiet. “There is, in fact.” His hand reached across his chest to rub at his ribs where her small hands had spread warmth easing out through his body, healing. And doing other things. “My ribs were broken in the collapse. She fixed them. And—”

“She healed you?” Thomas tried hard not to sound incredulous. At Alex’s slow nod, he said, “And there’s an ‘and’?”

He frowned, remembering, and continued the slow nod as Thomas’s expression urged him to answer. “And it did something to her. She started…glowing.”

“We all glow.”

“No, Thom.” Alex shook his head. “She was
glowing
. Casting shadows in the room because her skin or the Dust in her skin was a shining beacon of light,
glowing
.” He swallowed and finished quietly. “It was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. She said it had never happened before. She didn’t know what caused it.” He shrugged. “It didn’t hurt her that we know of, and it faded over the next two hours, while we were in the tunnels under the city. We got out. Came here. And now she’s pissed. Welcome to Fort Nevada.”

Thomas digested the information in silence, as he usually did. It unnerved most of the people who had occasion to report directly to Councilor Five. But Alex had gotten used to it long ago. He sat back and waited.

After several moments of silence, Thomas spoke, and as Alex had expected, he had moved on. “I have a plan B. I didn’t know this would turn into such a production, but I figured you’d be due back in Azcon fairly quickly. So I’ve made other arrangements for her. Come with me.” Thomas stood and came around the desk. “You can meet him.”

“Him?”

Thomas nodded and strode from the room, his slight build somewhat incongruous when paired with his athletic grace. Alex followed him out of the administration wing and down two levels of stairs to the upper-level classroom wing. Thomas turned in to the Peer Assistance Center, where students who were struggling with their work could turn for help from carefully vetted Senior Wards.

The Senior Ward on duty jumped up when they entered.

Thomas pointed out a young man who looked familiar to Alex. The kid sat at a work station with his head bent down as he helped a boy of about twelve. “I require Senior Ward First Class Lee.”

When Thomas said the name, Alex had it. Lee was the kid he’d talked to in the cafeteria two nights ago. He must’ve done well on his out routes. The kid likely didn’t know yet, but Thomas would.

The Senior Ward nodded and hurried over to Lee and the boy. As soon as Lee looked up and saw them waiting, he nodded to the other Ward, rising and walking to them. Lee tugged on the bottom fold of his shirt to pull any wrinkles out. His face moved from nervous to become a study in cool indifference. The kid had potential.

“Councilor Five,” Lee greeted Thomas with a salute then turned to Alex with the typical confusion from students when having to greet him, “And, uh, Sir? Reyes?” Alex had refused both a title in the Zone and a rank in the Ward School. Everyone who mattered knew his importance, both to the Zone, to Thomas, and to the overall plan to elevate the Sparks. He was perfectly content to allow anyone else to think he was a Senior Agent like any other. He had what he needed, and prestige wasn’t part of it.

He chuckled. “I’m not a knight. Alex or Agent Reyes will do fine.”

“Yes, sir.” Lee answered gravely.

“Are you ready, Ward Lee?” Thomas was all business, his voice crisp and dry. “Your assignment has arrived. Time for you to meet her.”

Lee’s assignment? Alex raised his brows at Thomas. He understood now. Thom intended the kid to be a companion with hopes he could become a confidante. Alex appraised the young man. Young, good-looking as young men went, soft spoken and earnest. Perhaps Thomas even intended for more to develop. He wouldn’t put it past his friend—he did consider her their “Eve,” after all, and Alex could see the wide Spark aura around Lee hinting at his strength.

It’ll never happen.
He shook his head to himself as the three of them set off through the halls. The kid had potential and might be an excellent student and future agent, but he wasn’t the same caliber as Lena. He made a mental note to talk to Thomas about the details of his Plan B. He told himself he didn’t have any real opinion either way. He didn’t have to have one. She would eat Lee alive.

If they wanted her, and any children she might have, to be stable, she needed a stronger and more experienced partner. It wasn’t personal. It was just the smartest decision.

He took the lead as they neared her room. He keyed the lock just before he knocked, and waited several moments after it had popped open. She never called out, so he took a breath and slipped inside, waving his hand at the other two men to wait. Leaving the door ajar, he entered a few feet.

Lena sat on the edge of the bed facing him, watching warily.

Alex stopped and lifted his hands to his hips. “Any better?”

She sighed. “Not particularly, but I suppose I owe you an apology anyway.”

“An apology?”

“For overreacting?”

He snorted. “That would be great. But I wasn’t really expecting it from you.” Alex winced internally. He’d tried for humor, and it had come out all wrong. She reacted about as expected.

He met a suddenly icy stare.

“About as much as I’d expect you to wait for me to actually let you in, I imagine.” Her sarcastic voice was as hostile as her expression.

And here we go again.

“I did warn you that I was coming in. I did knock first.”

“And what if I had been undressed?”

He sighed. “Then I would have seen you naked twice, I suppose.”

She crossed her arms, eyes narrowed and fists clenched. “You know what? I take it back.”

“You take what back?”

“My apology. I didn’t overreact. You’re just a jerk.”

“You’re taking back your theoretical apology?”