Supernormal (27 page)

“He
hurt
you.”

“Yes.”

She turned on Cam savagely.  “He won’t stop.  I’ll kill him.  I’ll kill him for what he did to you.  Please, tell me it’s okay, and I’ll kill him.”

“I
can’t
—” Cam told her, and his voice was almost a sob.  “It’s not.  It’s not okay.  You don’t need me to tell you it’s not okay.”

Ashley squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers clawing into his shirt.  “He doesn’t deserve to live.”

Cam pulled her closer, and she leaned into him.  “Please. Please, don’t you be the one to kill him.”

She looked at Brody.  She knew that expression.  He was leaving it up to her.  Ashley let out a hard breath, and forced herself to turn her back on Proom.

Liz said, “Ashley.”

Ashley shook her head.

“What are you doing?”  It was one of the new boys, his voice reverberating with shock.  “Why did you stop, why didn’t you kill him?”

“I’m not going to kill him,” Ashley said.

“I’ll do it.  I’ll do it if you’re too scared,” another one said, jabbing an angry finger at her.

“We are not going to kill him,” Ashley said.

“Do you know what they did to us?” he shot at her.

Ashley looked him over.  His face was raw and ragged, and a railwork of fresh scars stood out on skin that looked like it was pulled too tight.  He looked like he was more bones than boy.

“Yes,” Ashley said.

She felt Brody’s hand settle on her shoulder, heard the murmur of, “That’s my girl.”

“I’m still going to need a match,” she said.

Brody tossed her a book.

Ashley looked down at her hands, wound with Cam’s, his fingers clenched so tight the skin on the knuckles had begun to crack and bleed.  “We won’t be long.”

It was strange, walking through main entrance, into the shadowed reception area, and remembering the lights, bright and light and glaring.  Strange to hear only their footsteps, when there had always been the quiet hum of machines in the background.  Proom cared too much for this place, and his machines, to let the rooms go stale and dusty, but they hadn’t been used for a while.

“You all right?” she asked Cam.

He nodded, once, forcefully, the muscles standing out on his neck.  Ashley combed a hand through his hair before she could stop herself, but it made his shoulders relax.  “Closet,” he said.

Ashley looked over, saw it tucked into a corner.  The door was locked, but it came off its hinges easily enough.  There were neatly stacked rows of cleaning supplies; far too many of the bottles were marked
organic
and
non-flammable
, but she found enough with the little flame warning symbol.  She loaded a number into Cam’s arms, and took the rest herself.  They went from one end of the floor to the other, unscrewing the caps off the bottles one at a time, glugging the chemicals out along the tiles.  The smell was painful and almost overpowering; Ashley decided she liked it.

It took a few tries for a match to catch.  When it did, she touched the match to the box so that the whole thing flared up in her hand, then dropped it.  The flame crawled along the small trail of accelerant she’d left; Ashley took Cam’s hand and turned her back.  They left as it slipped further inside the building, and joined the others who were standing in the snow a safe distance away, watching, and waiting.

“Feel better?” Brody asked when they returned.

“No,” Ashley said.  “But it’s a start.”  She eyed the facility.  Several of the windows were broken, and one or two were leaking smoke, but mostly it just dark and quiet.  “Ian.  I don’t suppose—”  She glanced at the trees around them, judging distance.  “You could give me a moat?”

“For you, Ash?”  He scooped her up and smacked an enthusiastic kiss on her cheek.  “Anything.”

“Can you do a moat?” Danny asked.

“One way to find out.”  Ian cracked his knuckles.

It built slow.  There was a rumble, or rather the sense of one, a feeling more than a sound.  The earth rocked gently underfoot, like the swell of a wave.  The pavement around the facility trembled, vibrated.  Blurred. 

Then cracked.  Separated.  A broken seam arced a jagged circle around the facility, the edges pushing up, chunks of broken concrete piling up under each other, blocking off the building.

The vibrations died away, and Ian leaned over, hands on his knees, breathing deep.  “How’s that?” he asked.  He was sweating and his breathing was labored.

“That’s cool,” Danny said.  “And new.”

“Yeah,” Ian agreed, and for once he didn’t sound like he was having fun.  “One sec, I think I’m going to puke.”

For several long minutes it was quiet.  And then there were crackles, and smoke, and flickers crawling up the windows, floor by floor—and then suddenly the flames were everywhere.  Ashley could feel their warmth.

She saw Liz take Danny’s hand, and several of the other kids gather close, together, to watch.  One girl was sobbing openly.

Then Ian cheered.  There were tears streaking down his face, but he punched his arms in the air and cheered and picked up Danny and Liz and spun them around and around until they were all laughing.  Then he set them down and, still cheering, wove his way through the crowd, slapping high-fives and threw his arms around Brody, hefting him up off the ground in a bear hug.  “I love you guys!  Brody?  I fucking love you, Brody—”  Ian staggered and dropped hard on his ass into the snow.  His breathing was raspy, and he had to take a moment to swallow a couple times.  “Give me your phone,” he gasped, grinning.  “I got to call the girls!”

Brody tossed Ian his phone.  Then he glanced at Proom, who was slumped off to the side, hands and legs tied, still unconscious.  “Want to wake him up for this?” Brody asked.

Ashley shook her head.  “This isn’t for him.”

She looked around, at the trees, and the stretch of ground, dulled with frost.  She remembered exactly how hard it was, and the crunch of old snow underfoot, and the way the cold bit into her bare feet.  She looked up, and she could see now the arctic grey clouds of the sky and, farther in the distance, looming up past them, the mountains.

Cam wrapped an arm around her shoulders as they watched the building burn.

Ch. 30

A dream.  That’s what it felt like, the world soft and white, and Cam floated numbly along.

Step up
someone told him, and he stepped, and knew it wasn’t a dream when he felt the cold bar under his bare feet.  It was never cold in dreams, not like this, and his feet, which needed concentration to use, slipped.  But there were hands under his arms, lifting him, helping, and then straps.  Cam felt them click into place and tried to fight against them, panic rising fast and bitter in the back of his throat, but Ashley was there.  Ashley.  He pulled the blindfold off, ignoring the vertigo and the nausea, so he could look at her.  Clothes torn and bloody, but she smiled down at him, and she was calm, and so was he.  He heard the thrumming, the sound driving through the air.  It beat the air into the cabin, icy flurried rivers of it.  The floor shook and the forest stretched out beneath them.  He saw Brody, glancing back at him, sunlight glaring off his sunglasses, red blood on his tan face.  He saw the ocean, the sun rising up over the water, fresh and new, pouring into the cabin, pouring over Ashley, through her hair, the gold of it, as the wind whipped it around her face.  He felt her hand in his, the only still, sure thing in a world spiraling with possibilities and blurred with pain.

The pain was new, and sharp, but he watched the sun, and Ashley, and he could ignore it.

The world dipped, and the sound faded. 
Step down
, they told him, and had to help him again.  He was pressed back against a gurney, and fought again, but they were stronger, and pushed him along.  Ashley’s hand slipped out of his.

On the third day, Brody had brought in Proom’s colleagues, the two who had survived.  The normal doctors kept going into rooms, and leaving visibly confused and scribbling in their files.  So Brody left alone and early and, even with his one arm stitched and in a sling, returned with company.  Ashley wasn’t sure how he had convinced them to help—though pulling them out of a room full of poisoned gas and making sure they didn’t die probably helped—but she did care that they went right to work on Cam.  And the others, though they were holding up surprisingly well.  Even Liz.  Ashley knew they’d done some work on Liz, but not, Ashley hoped, a lot.  They hadn’t had time to do a lot.

They hadn’t had a lot of time to work on Cam, either.

“You trust them?” Meg asked in a low voice.  She was sitting next to Ashley, and she had a hand on Ashley’s arm.  It was the only thing keeping Ashley seated and mostly still.

“I trust them to want to make me happy,” Brody said.  He didn’t bother to lower his voice.  “Isn’t that right, George?”

“The Phoenix Program aims to please,” the doctor replied, his voice raspy.  He had a plastic cannula hooked up to an oxygen tank, and he paused to breathe in deep before swabbing Cam’s arm to draw blood.

Sunshine glowing gold and mellow through her hair as she leaned over him.  Sand spilling around them, under his nails, clinging to his skin as the fabric of her shirt bunched under his fingers.  Ashley, her thumb brushing his cheek, tilting her head as she leaned closer until he could taste her smile…

The world was quiet.

Cam realized he was awake.  He wasn’t sure how long he had been awake; he had the sense of this just being the next waking in a series of many.  His head ached, dimly, distantly, but he could…think.

The sun was shining through the windows.  Meg was asleep in a chair by the door, her long legs folded awkwardly against the arms.  And stretched out in the hospital bed with him—

Ashley.

It hadn’t been a dream.  Not completely, though he had dreamed things like it many times.  It had been…could be real, except he had never seen himself before.  That had always been the boundary, and he had never been able to cross it.  Before.

She was asleep.  Even asleep, she looked exhausted.  And uncomfortable.  The bed really wasn’t made for two people, and even tucked in close she was almost over the edge.  And there was blood on her clothes.  And she looked—she—Cam—he was grateful he hadn’t clawed his eyes out.

He didn’t move.  He didn’t want to wake her.  But she woke anyway, her eyes flicking open and immediately finding his.  She smiled.  She didn’t smile very often, he knew, but this one was simple and easy, and he saw…  He did move then, he knew he did, because the space between them ebbed away, and he was so close he could hear her heart beat, feel it through the warmth of her skin.

“Safe?” he asked.  His voice wasn’t more than a rasp, but she nodded.  “Danny.  Liz—”

“Everyone,” she said.  “I promise.”

Cam felt something inside him relax.  “You?” he asked.

“Yes,” she told him, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“You came for me,” he said.  She nodded, and he felt himself smile.  “I knew you would come for me.”

“Always,” she said.

The night before Danny and Ian left, Tyler snuck into the hospital with a Playstation and pizza.  They were slated to leave the next day; the program’s doctors had observed them for forty-eight hours and declared them physically sound and ready to go home whenever they wanted.  Liz and Cam, however, were staying, at least for the time being.  All the doctors would say was that they wanted to be absolutely certain they were recovering.

They were.  Or, at least, Cam was.  He thought.  The doctors had helped.  He could think now; his head was clearer and it didn’t hurt all the time.  They prescribed Motrin for the headaches, “Though they’ll no doubt fade away in time,” one doctor assured him.  “Miss Garrett got to you relatively quickly.  I doubt there was time to make any lasting changes.  Unlike your friend, Mr. Reese,” he added, as he marked something on his tablet.

“Is he sick?”  He remembered what Ashley had told him, about the kids she had gone through the program with.  About what happened to them if they got sick.

The doctor smiled.  “No.  He is better.”

Ashley helped Cam down the hall to Danny’s room, which was bright and full and noisy.  Ian was there, with Allison, with Dr. MacNamara making her way to the door, slowly, and under apparent duress.  The duress was being applied by Meg, who had a hand on Dr. Mac’s arm and, as she was both bigger and stronger, was winning.

“Ten,” Dr. Mac was saying.  “At the latest.”

“She’s not coming back tonight,” Meg corrected.  “I’ll see her home, don’t worry.”

“I am coming back,” Dr. Mac began, but Cam asked, “You’re going out?”

“I’m taking her out for a decent meal and, god willing, enough wine that the good doctor won’t be able to remember her own name by the time I have to haul her home,” Meg said, dropping a kiss on Cam’s forehead.  “Don’t go too crazy now, all right?”

“It’s a Pixar night,” Danny informed her.

“Come on, doc.”  Meg eased Dr. MacNamara out of the room.

It was fun.  Part of Cam was surprised.  He wasn’t sure fun would’ve been an option, not after what they’d been through, but Danny and Tyler rose to the occasion.  Bickering over the pizza.  Adding audience participation to
Finding Nemo
.  Trying, Cam knew, to make everyone laugh.  To make them be here, now, and not back there.  It worked.  For the most part.

“I’ve been thinking,” Danny spoke up as they switched
Nemo
for
The Incredibles
.  “We need a name.”

Tyler groaned, leaning his head back against his chair.  “Not this again.”

“What do you mean?” Ian asked.

“We’re a multicultural group of individuals with special powers.  We’ve already escaped from a secret lab,” Danny explained.

“That was mostly Ashley and Ian,” Liz said, picking at the popcorn.

“We helped,” Danny told her.

“Danny, you’re Aquaman.  Actually, not even.  Your special superpower is
breathing
,” Tyler said.  “How exactly did your breathing help in the daring escape?”

For a second, Danny’s smile faltered, but he said easily enough, “I think it’s safe to say my escape wouldn’t have been possible without it.”  Then he sat up straight and held out his hands.  “I got it!  We call ourselves the S-X-Men.”  He grinned at them.  “Get it?”

For a moment, nobody said anything.  Then—“The Sex Men?” Liz asked.

Tyler started sniggering.

Danny ignored him.  “No, no, no.  The
S
-X-Men.  Like, the Sugar Beach X-Men.”

“Sounds like Sex Men,” Ian said.

Danny huffed and crossed his arms.  “You guys are no fun at all.  I don’t see any of you trying to think up cool names for us.  What happens if we get pulled into another exciting adventure and have to save the day again?  And then everyone will be all, ‘Who was that heroic and remarkably attractive group of multicultural people who saved us?’ and we won’t have a name, and you guys are all going to regret this moment.”

“We’re not actually that multicultural,” Tyler said.

“No worries,” Ian said.  “We’ll think of something.”

It was late when Meg cracked Cam’s door.  “Still awake, honey?”

“Yes.”  He made himself smile at her.  “I guess I’m a little wired.  We partied very hard.”  And his head was killing him.

Meg tiptoed in, easing the door shut, and took a seat on the edge of Cam’s bed.  “Ashley?”

“Brody came by to drag her off about an hour ago.  He said she needed to sleep.”

“She does, poor girl.  I don’t think she let herself nod off for more than two minutes together after you…were taken.”  Meg dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.  “I like her.”

“Me, too,” Cam said.

“And she’s a cutie.”

“Yes.”

“And she
likes
you.”  Meg winked.  “Maybe next time you’re all cuddled up, you should think about planting one on her.”

He gave her a level look.  “I did.”

“Maybe next time you shouldn’t just think about it.  I’m just saying, a body can only pretend to be asleep for so long.”

“Aunt Meg—”

She waved a hand.  “Okay, okay.  You have a fun night?”

Cam nodded.  “You?”

“A very successful one, I’m glad to say.  According to her, it’s technically an ethics violation for a therapist to go out drinking with the parent and/or guardian of one of their patients, but after the third martini, I don’t think she worried too much about that.  I poured the good doctor onto her couch about an hour ago.  She’s going to have a bad head in the morning, but I’m going to say it was worth it.  That lady needed a night off.”

“You could’ve taken the night off.  You’ve been here a lot and I know you must be tired.  And I’m fine.  I’m getting better.”  Cam said it partly for himself.

Meg shook her head.  “‘Course you are, sugar. I am tired, it’s just…well, I have something to tell you and I’m trying to work up to it.”

Cam knew that Meg was still staying at Brody’s.  “Am I getting a new daddy?”

“No, smart mouth, you are not.  You should know, baby…”  Meg smoothed the blanket around him.  “I spoke to Naomi.”

“Oh.”  Cam couldn’t think of anything else to say.  He realized he was tired.

“I called for Aaron and Mary.  When you were—” She cleared her throat.  “I thought it was only right to let them know.  Naomi picked up, and I just, I got so mad.  I was scared for you, and I was mad at them, and then she picked up the phone for me when I know she wouldn’t for you.  I sort of snapped.”  Meg arched an eyebrow at him, defiantly.  “I really let her have it.”

“Oh.”  He should think of something else to say.

“And I am not sorry.”

He managed, “Aunt Meg—”

“Don’t you ‘Aunt Meg’ me.  I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.  I am a very truthful person,” she said.  Meg fiddled with the blanket again.  “I’m ashamed of her, Cam.  And I told her that I was.”

Cam shifted in bed.  “She’s sixteen.”

“That is no excuse,” Meg said.  “I was sixteen once, too, and I was old enough to know right from wrong.  She can’t pick them and turn her back on you and expect people to stand for it.”

Cam couldn’t look at Meg for a moment.  He was tired, and it hurt too much.  They’d talked about his parents before, but rarely Naomi.  He wished she hadn’t said that.  He wished it weren’t true.  He wished—

Cam sank back into the pillows, the energy draining out of him.  He wished Naomi were here.

“I wasn’t going to tell you—well, not quite yet,” Meg went on.  “I wanted you to focus on getting better and getting home.  But I went back to the house, to my house, tonight to pick up some things.  I noticed I had a couple voicemails.  Your phone was lost, you know, so she tried me.  Asked for you to give her a call.”

Cam swallowed hard.  It was silly, how tight his throat felt.  “What…should I do?”

“I can’t say that.  Even if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be my place.  One way or another, it’s your call.  And, well, one way or another,” she added, “I’d understand.”

“I know,” he said.  Then, quietly, “I miss my sister.”

Meg took his hand and gave him a small smile.  “I know, sugar.  I miss mine, too.”