Then there was nothing.
I woke up drenched in a cold sweat and gasping for air. I’d barely caught my breath when a loud knock came from the other side of my door. Dad’s voice, cold and sharp, called, “We leave in twenty minutes.”
§
“Tell me about your gift,” the bulky man asked as he entered the room. No hello-how-are-you. No, hi-my-name-is. These people were obsessed.
“What do you want to know about it?” I asked, leaning back against the far wall. The first thing I’d done when I walked in the room was check out the floor. No metal wires.
“You can start by telling me what it is.”
“I, uh, can change things.”
“Define change things.”
“I can mimic things. Change one thing to another, as long as the size is relatively the same and I’m touching both objects.”
The man looked around for a moment, before digging into his pocket. He handed me a pencil and a ballpoint pen. “Demonstrate.”
I took them from him. Yet another reason I’d never told anyone. Being asked to perform on command like a monkey dancing for change on the corner pissed me off. Squeezing both writing utensils between my fingers, I closed my eyes. The pain was instant and fierce, sending stabbing prickles down my neck and into my shoulders. When I opened my eyes, I had two pens—and a slowly fading headache. He took them from me, scribbling a line on the back of his hand with each one. “It’s solid. It actually writes.”
I shrugged. “Of course it writes.”
“So if you were to say, change a plum to a nectarine, it would taste like a nectarine?”
I nodded.
He seemed fascinated. “We have a shifter who works for us, but her shifts are nothing more than illusions. Tricks to fool the mind. And she can only change herself. Nothing foreign.” He set the pens. down “What about people?”
“People?”
“Can you change into another person?”
I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Suddenly, the room got a whole hell of a lot smaller. I couldn’t even imagine what a mimic like that would do to my body. Fry my brain? Liquefy my internal organs? “I’ve never tried it.” Despite my best efforts, my voice shook because I knew what was coming next.
Folding his arms impatiently across his chest, the man said, “Well, no time like the present.”
“I really don’t think—”
He tapped his watch. “I’m not getting any younger. Let’s go.”
Crap. Shaking slightly, I took his hand. It was clammy and I had to resist the urge to gag. Closing my eyes, I focused on his bulbous nose and chubby cheeks. The pain came fast. Shooting needles up and down my spine. I tried to swallow, but it felt like my throat was swollen. Trying to take a deep breath, I panicked when I realized I couldn’t feel my ribs. After an agonizing few moments, I collapsed, gasping for air. “I can’t.”
Squeezing my hand harder, he hissed, “Try again.”
Talk about performance anxiety. I closed my eyes and tried to focus. In the pit of my stomach, something snapped. A few seconds passed. The hair on the back of my neck tingled. Something wasn’t right. I tried to take a step away from him, but my feet felt weird. Heavy and too big. When I managed a glance down at my hands, I gasped. So did the man. Sausage-like fingers attached to wrinkled, mocha-skinned hands instead of the pale, long fingers I was so used to.
He released me and I sank to the ground. Coughing, I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. When I brought it away, it was streaked with red. Don’t let him see you panic! I rubbed my hand over the soft material of my tank to hide the evidence.
He was eyeing me like a hungry lion would an elk. In order to unmimic something, I had to be touching both items. Technically there wasn’t a me to touch anymore—something I should have thought of before I’d tried this. Would it even work? The thought of being stuck in this guy’s body made me sicker than the actual mimic. And that was saying a lot. I closed my eyes and prayed to God that my insides—which technically I was touching cause they were inside—were still my own.
The edges of the room began to water. Ears popping, I had to force the air painfully in and out of my lungs to keep from passing out. The pain, if possible, was worse than before. On a scale of one to ten, it was peaking at about fifty. When my vision cleared, I saw the edges of my small, pale hands braced against the cool tile floor. Had I done internal damage? What if I’d broken something? Poked a hole in a vital organ or caused a hemorrhage in my brain? Oh, God. What if I hadn’t been able to change completely back? External things that used to be his could now be mine… Extra appendages… I squeezed my legs together and let out a sigh of relief. No leftover man-bits.
“Hmmm,” the man said, circling. “Side effects?” He leaned in a bit closer, studying me. His breath smelled like Cheetos.
“I’m tired, and a little hungry,” I said casually. No way was I going to tell him I felt like I’d been dropkicked from a plane then rolled through a pile of searing glass. Two days here and I could already see how things worked. Kale was right. They dug deep in your brain, looking for the soft spots.
“We’ll have to run more tests,” he said, but not to me. He was flitting through the room, opening cabinets and talking to himself. I didn’t like how excited he sounded.
“Tests? What kind of tests?”
He started as though he’d forgotten about me. “Physical tests. Reaction times, stimulus responses, things like that. We’ll also need to see what your limits are. I’d like to do that on a day you haven’t—mimicked, is it?—something large.”
He was being vague and that scared me, but I didn’t question it. Over the next several hours, the man, who finally introduced himself as Rick, assaulted me with a million and ten questions. With each answer, he grew more and more excited.
By four o’clock I was haggard and ready to fall over. The effects from mimicking my entire body hadn’t gone away. The headache was finally bearable, but the dull, aching pain in my muscles and joints was making me want to puke.
Rick, mercifully out of questions, smiled. “I just want to get your blood pressure. Then I’ll hand you over to your father.”
“Perfect timing, Rick.” Dad was leaning against the wall, arms folded, watching. It reminded me a little of when I was a kid and used to ride the carousel at the county fair. With each round, I’d look to see him watching with a wide smile on his face. Exactly like he was now. Only the smile was different. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I’d seen what I wanted.
“I heard you did very well today, Deznee,” Dad said as Rick slapped the cuff on my upper arm.
“Piece of cake,” I forced a smile. “So, what’s the deal? I still don’t know what I’ll be doing here. Want to give me a hint?”
Dad’s grin got impossibly larger. Loaded with dark, unspoken promises. “All in good time.”
“Amazing,” Rick breathed from across the room. “One twenty over eighty. Perfection!” He unwrapped the cuff and beamed at me. “You are a find, my dear.”
He turned away to jot down some notes and Dad stepped forward. “I have a reward for you.”
The way he said it was patronizing and insulting, and I wanted to deck him, but curiosity won. “Reward?”
“I expected you to give Rick a hard time, making this an unpleasant day for all involved, but you behaved exceptionally.”
“Maybe before we head home you could let me crash on the couch in your office and we’ll call it even?” I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open.
“If you’d rather rest than take a tour of the holding cells, that’s fine too…”
He had my attention and he knew it. “The holding cells?”
“I thought it would be a nice treat to take you up and show you that boy behind bars. Locked up where he can’t hurt you.” He
put his arm across my shoulders, leading me out of the room. “Maybe this will give you some peace of mind.”
Seeing Kale in his old element—locked up like an animal—would only make the nightmares worse.
19
When we stepped off the elevator and onto floor nine—the furthest I’d been—I felt it right away. The air was different. You couldn’t classify the other floors as laid back, but compared to the atmosphere on number nine, the rest were a damn party. In the middle of the room sat the same round desk as the lower floors, this one manned by an unhappy-looking man in a white coat and matching gloves. He ignored our entrance, speaking to a man at a desk on the far side of the room. I only caught bits and pieces of their conversation, but words like incineration, disposal, and cleanup were the gist of it. After that, I tuned them out.
As we made our way across the room, my footsteps clapped loudly against the floor. I looked down and saw it was concrete, with brownish stains scattered everywhere.
“It’s easier to clean,” Dad said when he caught me looking. “It gets a little messy up here at times.”
Messy? I swallowed the bile rising in my throat as I followed him through the remainder of the room, picturing someone hosing it down to wash away blood and bits from the latest termination. By the time we made it to the other side and out another door, I was ready to puke.
“The ninth floor is sort of our problem-solving department. When Sixes get out of control, they come here while we determine the best course of action.”
“Best course of action?”
“This job isn’t glamorous, Deznee. And it’s not always pretty. I have to make some tough choices from time to time. Some of those include deciding if a Six is salvageable or needs to be put down.”
Put down.
Like an animal.
I bit my tongue and tried not to scream. A foul, coppery taste flooded my mouth as Dad continued talking.
“I know it may sound harsh to you, but what we do here is for the good of the community. Communities everywhere.”
We kept walking. Dad pulled out his security card and swiped it, allowing us access to a small white room with a simple desk and a single red door on the far side.
“Afternoon, Yancy. I’m taking Deznee here on a tour of the cells. We won’t be long.”
Yancy nodded and unlocked the door. I could feel his eyes on me as we passed. When I looked back, he caught my eye for a second and then looked away. Maybe not everyone at Denazen took as much pride in their work as Dad.
We entered the room—though it wasn’t actually a room, more like a wide, unbelievably long hallway. Lining both sides were glass enclosures.
Cages, actually.
We started down the row, stopping at the first occupied one. “This is 101,” he said, knocking the glass twice. It reminded me of the casual way he used to tap the fish bowl in the living room.
The girl inside was younger than me—thirteen maybe. Fourteen tops. Large green eyes, glazed and lifeless, stared ahead. Her thin lips parted slightly, and at the right-hand corner, a small trail of pinkish liquid leaked down her chin. She sat on a cot in the corner with her hands folded neatly in her lap. On the floor by her feet was a weathered looking blanket and headless blue teddy bear. She wore a pair of ratty, stained sweat pants and a nondescript, oversized white T-shirt.
“Why is she up here?” It took all my focus, but I managed to control the rage in my voice. Kale had been here his entire life. Was this his life at that age?
“101 has been with us for a few years. Her mother was killed in an accident, leaving her alone and penniless. We found her and took her in. About a week ago, she snapped and attacked a doctor here.”
“How did that little thing attack anyone?” Unless the kid was sporting a mouthful of needle-like teeth and poisonous spit, I didn’t see it. She couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds soaking wet with two bricks in her hand.
“101 has the ability to stop your heart. That little thing killed three people before we were able to sedate her.” He pulled down the chart hanging next to the door.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did she do it? She must’ve had a reason.” I knew I was hopping on thin ice, but couldn’t help it. Something had to make that poor girl snap. Maybe she’d spent an hour with Mercy…
“Nothing made her do it. Sixes snap sometimes. It happens.”
I should’ve kept my mouth closed, but couldn’t. “Do they? Is that what’s gonna happen to me? Am I going to end up in one of these cages with a number instead of a name, Dad? The next time I flip you off or come home buzzed from a party?”
He turned away from 101—I wondered what her name had been—and shot me a superior grin. “As long as you keep yourself out of trouble, you have nothing to worry about.” He held my gaze for a minute—which felt like an hour—before moving on.
At the next cage he said, “Here we have 119. He’s what we call a charmer.”
I guessed he didn’t mean ladies man. “Charmer?”
“There are many different variations of his ability on record, dating back as far as the early eighteen hundreds.” There was a hint of fascination in Dad’s voice. “His caress can make a victim fall under his control. We believe his kind are the inspiration behind stories of Incubi.”
I watched him through the dirty glass. The man on the other side had a handsome face with an expression similar to 101’s. He wore a pair of the same light gray sweat pants and simple white shirt. His brown eyes, though not quite as vacant as the young girl’s, stared straight ahead, unseeing. “So why’s he up here?”
“119’s situation is a bit different from 101’s. He’s only been with us several weeks, all of which have been spent here, on level nine. We brought him in after the local police three towns over picked him up. They found him running a brothel.”
“So he was a pimp? That’s a big deal to Denazen?”
“It is when your girls are virtual zombies. They suspected him of kidnapping and drugging the girls.”
“But it wasn’t drugs, it was his gift.”
“Correct.”
We moved past several empty cages and came to the next occupant.
“We picked 121 up about a week ago. I believe she went to your school?”
I looked through the glass, horrified to see my fellow senior-to-be classmate and sometimes rival, Kat Hans, wearing the same dead stare as the others—broken and blank. Her auburn hair, normally kept so meticulously styled, hung limp, and her previously perfect complexion was dull and gray. We’d had our differences, but seeing her like that made me furious. Since third grade Kat had talked of becoming a vet. I was betting that dream died the moment Denazen laid eyes on her.
“That’s Kat Hans! She went missing last week.”
“She’s been here with us.” He turned away from Kat, disgusted. “Kat has been working with us for quite some time. Her father, Dean Hans, is one of our record keepers on level five.” Dad tapped the side of his head. “He has a photographic memory.” Dad glanced back at Kat. “His daughter’s gift is a bit like 119’s, only less dangerous and highly controllable. She can temporarily paralyze you with the touch of her fingers if she chooses.”
“And lemme guess, she tried to paralyze someone she shouldn’t have?”
Dad shook his head. “Not quite. You see, we allowed 121 to work with us because of her age and connections. As you know, Dax Fleet, the man who ransomed you, is among those trying to hamper Denazen and ruin all the good we do. We thought to use 121 to infiltrate and tear them down from the inside out. However, as it turned out, she was a spy for them—not us.”
My throat went dry. “A spy? How does something like that even get past you?”
Dad laughed. The sound sent icy needles of panic poking up and down my spine. “I
t doesn’t. We knew from the start but thought we could still use her to our advantage. When it became obvious nothing substantial would come of it, we brought her here.”
“Wow.”
“And that’s where you come in.”
I’m sure my face must have paled at that point. “Me?” I choked. “You can’t possibly think—”
He laughed again. “That you’re a spy? Of course not. You’re smarter than that, Deznee. You’re a survivor. I think you know how badly that would end, am I correct?”
I couldn’t help the shiver that shot down my back. His eyes gleamed with a mix of amusement and something else—anger? I couldn’t tell. But worse than the look in his eyes was his voice. Icy and sharp, it held the hint of a challenge. Did he know? Could that be the reason he brought me up here? To show me what would happen? I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Nothing says guilty like a shaky voice.
“I’d like to get you up to speed so you can take over the task we set 121 with. I want you to infiltrate the rogue Sixes. There is a woman, Ginger Midlen. She’s resourceful and has been impossible to find. She’s organizing these people. Getting them riled up. We need to take care of her before the problem escalates.”
This had to be a joke. Somewhere in the background, Ashton Kutcher would jump out and I’d realize I was being punk’d. Or maybe that other old guy, what was his name—Jamie Kennedy?
“And moving on, we saved the best for last,” Dad said. He moved past several cages, stopping at the very last one. “You see? He’s locked up tight.”
On the other side of the glass, Kale sat on the floor against the far wall. His knees pulled up against his chest, he kept his head down. Like the others, he wore the regulation sweat pants and white T-shirt. It took a moment, but I realized it was the same clothing he wore the night we’d met.