The Arrival (13 page)

Slowly, I inched my way toward the
bathroom, reaching one hand in front of the other.

Water.

I needed water.

I dragged myself, determined to get
there. I wanted to drown myself in a tub of ice-cold water and put out the
fiery blaze sizzling my veins, but I couldn’t move.

And then I felt it.

The tenderness. The strong but gentle
caress cooled my skin on contact. It encased me, lifting me into the air, and
carrying me to bed. But I didn’t want to lie on the bed. I wanted to lie in a
tub filled with ice cubes.

The now all-too-familiar presence, which
had once left me on edge and confused the hell out of me, was now my saving
grace. The connection that had threatened me instead eased my suffering. As
always, though no words were verbally spoken, I knew Dimas was with me.

Restoring me.

Healing me.

“Why are you helping me?” I managed to
whisper.

Focus on our connection. I will take
away your pain.

Swallowing hard, I obeyed out of sheer
desperation.

In my mind, I searched for him.  And
there he was, strong and reassuring. Boldly, I clutched his presence and held
on for dear life. In an instant, our minds connected and it shook me to my
core. The unbelievable ability both excited and frightened me, and what I felt
for Bryce couldn’t compare to what I experienced with Dimas in that moment.

Smothering the fire, he brought me back
to life. I touched my face, and then my lips, as Dimas enfolded me in a
comforting embrace.

Why are you helping me?

Because I care about you, Miranda.

As I relaxed, and my heartbeat calmed, I
sensed his retreat.  In a panic, I clung to his presence.

Don’t leave me.

I won’t.

You promise?

Yes, I promise  I will remain with you
until your pain eases.

Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply and
surrendered to our connection.  Waves of pleasure cascaded over me, like
nothing I had ever felt before.  The pain seemed to evaporate, and in its place
there was only unimaginable heaven on earth. With a sigh, I plummeted into the
bliss.

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Rrriiinnnggg.

From a distance, the shrill tone of my cell
phone echoed in my ears.  After a few seconds, I blinked and then opened my
eyes.

“Hello?” I struggled to speak. My throat
was dry as desert sand.

“What the hell? Why didn’t you answer
your phone last night?”

“Kate?”

“Uh, yeah, who else would it be?” She
let out a huff.

“What time is it?” I glanced at my alarm
clock and tried to focus on the display.

“It’s almost eleven.” Kate stressed each
word.

I grabbed my head. The incessant
throbbing wouldn’t stop, and Kate’s whining voice wasn’t helping. “What
happened?”

“Are you kidding me? Did you inject the
serum or not? Please tell me you did it, because if I did this for nothing, I’m
going to—”

“Yeah—Yes, I did it.” It took a minute
before it all came back to me.

The agony.

The fire.

I cringed and curled into a tight ball,
recalling the debilitating misery that burned through my veins. The heat that
invaded my body to the point I thought an inferno raged inside me. I checked my
arms, searching for any sign of burns. But my skin appeared normal, as though
nothing had occurred. That’s when I noticed I had on my pajamas.

When did I change?

“Thanks for bailing on me.”

“Oh, Kate. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t
there for you.” I hated breaking my promise to her. If she’d suffered as much
as I had, she’d never forgive me. “I don’t know what happened. I think I passed
out.”

“Passed out?” Kate sounded beyond
irritated.

“Yeah.”  I sat upright in bed and
untangled myself from the sheets. “I must have fainted from the pain.”

“You were in pain?” Her voice softened.

“That’s an understatement.” I grimaced.
“I thought I was gonna self-combust.” I hesitated to ask but did anyway. “What
about you? Were you in pain?”

“No. I had a freakin’ panic attack. You
didn’t tell me about that.”

“I didn’t know what to expect. Dr. Ridus
didn’t say anything about hallucinating or feeling like I was going up in
smoke.”

“Well, that damn serum made me see some
crazy shit. I thought I’d taken ecstasy or something. I mean, not that I know
how you react on it, but I’ve heard plenty of stories from my brother. My
freakin’ cat grew three times its size. It kept licking me, and I thought it
was going to eat me! I knew she had to be getting me back for injecting her
with those nanobots.”

I stifled a laugh. It wasn’t funny, but
Kate always made everything sound so dramatic, and I couldn’t get the picture
out of my head of her cat’s jumbo tongue licking her face. “Oh, Kate, I’m sorry
you had to go through that alone. It sucks.”

“Tell me about it. Thank God, my parents
are nearly deaf, and my brother had his music on full blast. Had my little
sister been here, my screaming would have scared her. At least I think I was
screaming. So, you thought you were on fire?”

“Yes. That serum blistered my veins. I
swore the flames were cooking my blood.”

“OMG!”  Kate shrieked. “That’s horrible,
Miranda. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. How long did it last, and how did
you get over it?”

“Well… um.” I paused for a moment,
contemplating what to tell her. But I dared not tell her about Dimas. I
couldn’t tell her. Besides she wouldn’t believe it. Hell, I didn’t even believe
it myself.

Did Dimas really help me?

“It finally stopped. Suddenly. And I
must have just blanked out because of it.”

“Gee. That sounds worse than what I went
through,” Kate whispered.

“I thought I was dying.” I hugged my
legs for comfort, but it wasn’t the same. I felt empty. Lonely. Last night I
experienced something totally different. A warmth that only one person could
give me. And I hated the fact that I enjoyed it. That I craved it.

“Do you think it worked?” Hesitation
lingered in each of her syllables.

“I don’t know. It better have worked,
after all we’ve been through.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’ll walk over to your house, and we
can test our blood.” I reached for the glass of water on my nightstand. “I need
to take something for this mind-splitting headache.”

“How about I come over there? Less
distractions. My little sister will be back from spending the night at her
friend’s house.”

“Okay. See you later.”

“Bye.”

I hung up and tossed the phone on my
bed. As I raised the glass to my mouth, I stopped and gasped in shock. Mom had
plastic cups for everyday use, and I couldn’t remember the last time we used
the fine family crystal. The glass I held was the same exact tall and slender
style I’d seen before. My hand trembled as I studied each cut and curve that
decorated the base. It was just like the one from Dimas’ quarters.

He had come to me.

***

Later that night, Kate and I sat on the
edge of my bed and stared at the tracker. In the time that had passed, Kate
discovered her uncle would be in Columbia until Monday night. If the device
didn’t trace our whereabouts, then we were ready to head out the next morning.

 “Here goes nothing.”

“Wait a minute.”  Kat grabbed my wrist.
“Will it broadcast its location?”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “I deactivated
the identification signal.”  Using my thumb, I pushed the data chip into the
empty slot and powered up the device. The screen illuminated and the words,
‘Ready
to Intercept,’
flashed in neon blue.

“What do you have to do next?” Kate
inched closer.

“It’s pretty simple. All I do is type in
a name and hit search. The information about you, which is basically
everything, from your retinal scans, to your blood type, to the serial marking
of the nanobots they put in you, is uploaded into the mainframe at Nidus. The
tricky part is making sure that the info I changed in the database got saved.”

She arched a brow and shifted her
weight. “What exactly did you change?”

“I switched our profiles with girls who
were deemed a
‘non-donor’.
”

With a perplexed expression, she
frowned. “Well if you did that, then why did we have to inject ourselves with
the serum? If the Eslites searched for us, shouldn’t they pick up the other
girls and not us?”

“It’s not that easy.” I pursed my lips,
thinking of an easier way to explain it to her. “Non-donors don’t have nanobots
in their blood, so the Eslites don’t track them. They only keep a record of
non-donors, which are identified through retinal scans.”

Wide-eyed, she inclined her head, and
her mouth fell agape.

I searched for an analogy she could
understand. “Basically, I gave us their hair color. So if the Eslites scan us,
they only see the girl’s color and not ours. If they look for our hair color,
they find it at our homes, while the real color is undetectable.”

“Oh, I get it now.” She chewed her
fingernail. “So if they scan our retinas, they’ll get those girls’ information
instead of ours.”

“You got it.” I patted her on the leg.
“See Kate, technology is not that hard.”

“Yeah, right.” She narrowed her gaze.
“What if they scan us with one of their tracking devices? Will a warning sound
when they can’t find us? And what if they discover we’ve fallen off the grid? 
Will they search for us?”

“Nope.” I gave her a big smile. “That’s
why I injected your cat and my dad’s dog with our nanobots.” Right before I
tested the trackers at the Tech Lab, I took two containers of the pesky
creatures and programmed them with our tracking numbers. Dimas had slipped
right past the narrow tubes in my pocket.  Or had he?

“Oh.” She threw up her hands. “Now
everything makes sense. Let’s hope we never have to do that again. I’ve still
got claw marks from holding down my cat so you could sedate her.” She showed me
her forearms. “I think that’s why I kept hallucinating about her coming after
me. I hope it’s not hurting them.”

“It’s not. Trust me.” I glanced at my
dad’s German shepherd, which was sound asleep in the corner of my room.

“I guess.” She knelt beside the dog and
stroked his fur. “I just feel bad for doing that to them.”

“I know, but we didn’t have much choice.
I’m more concerned about your dad noticing the missing vials out of his
cabinet.” Being a veterinarian, her dad kept supplies on hand. If it weren’t
for his manuals I don’t think we would have figured out how to get the IV in
their veins so we could inject them with the nanobots.

“I doubt he will. And if he does, he’ll
probably blame my brother or something.” She stood and dusted the dog hair off
her shorts. “He’s been known to help out his friends who have pets.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Before I forget, I just want to say
thanks for everything.” She leaned over and hugged me tight.  

“Well, I should be thanking you.”  I
returned her embrace, though I was confused by her awkward expression of
gratitude. “I mean, you didn’t have to agree to do all of this.”

“Everyone’s expecting for us to do
something.” She shrugged. “But if you hadn’t taken me under your wing, I don’t
think I would’ve survived at Nidus.”

“Sure you would.” I chucked her chin. “You’re
tougher than you know.”

“I don’t know about that.” She sat
beside me. “Do you remember the day we boarded the hovercraft at the Market
Square?”

I stared at the floor. I didn’t want to
recall that day, because it held so many hurtful memories. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I sat beside you, and you put your arm
around me and promised we would get through this, together. And that’s exactly
what we’ve done. You’ve stuck by me, through thick and thin. Miranda, you are
my hero.”

“Gee, Kate.” I nudged her, as my heavy
heart eased a bit. “Don’t make me cry. I did enough of that last night.”

“Sorry.” Her eyes watered, and she
sniffed. “I just had to let you know how grateful I am. You really are a great
friend. A true friend. Unlike Leslie and Trish.”

“And you’re a good friend, too.” I
tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. “So they haven’t responded to your calls
or text?”

“No.”  She shook her head. “I can’t
believe some people are afraid of us.”

“I know. Carlie didn’t even bother to
tell me she wasn’t coming to my birthday party.”

“That really sucks.” She squeezed my
hand. “And I’m sorry only a few people showed up.”

“It’s okay.” I clutched her fingers. “We
know our true friends.”

She smiled. “I think you’re right.”

I straightened and returned my attention
to the device. “Let’s see how close we are to freedom.”

Kate crossed her fingers, legs, and
arms, positioning herself like a pretzel. “We need all the luck we can get.”

“You got that right.” It was the moment
that determined whether or not we could fight, much less wage a war against,
the Eslites. On that note, I hit the search feature and held my breath. The
tracker emitted a low tone, and the mapper zipped from our previous location of
Nidus to Myrtle Beach, before homing on Kate’s address on Rockwater Circle. 

“Does it see me?” She peered at the
screen.

I hit the zoom-in feature, and a single
icon blinked at her residence. “It worked.” I pumped a fist in the air. “Kate,
it worked!”

She steepled her hands and pressed them
to her mouth. “Thank God.”

Immediately, I typed in my name and hit
the search key. The device zeroed on my house, and a lone dot flashed.

“Is that one marker or two?” Kate bit
her lip.

Again, I zoomed in and verified the
flashing marker. “There’s only one. It’s Zeus.” I clutched the tracker to my
chest. “Kate, the serum worked. We’re free!”

The serum had killed the nanobots. The
pain, the agony, the fire that had burned through my veins was worth it. My
body was finally cleansed of the electronic bits that infected my blood and
stole my privacy, as well as my life.

We embraced each other, and then leaped
to our feet and jumped up and down.

“We’re free! We’re free,” we sang in
victory.

Happy tears streamed down our checks,
and our euphoria filled the air. We cheered as we had been given the keys to
our prison cells. We danced around my room, celebrating as if we had just won a
million dollars. Nothing would stop us. The Eslites would no longer command us.

We would free the girls at Nidus.

We would have our freedom.

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