He was reaching for my hair, and my mind was spinning fast with thoughts of him and where we were, and as his warm palm touched my cheek I wanted to kiss him and I wondered how he knew no one would find us here.
It must have been my seventh sense again, because as soon as I thought it, Nick jerked back. He snatched me up and pulled me over to the wall, and the stairwell door flew open, and a swarm of people in black jumpsuits poured into the hall.
Nick shut his eyes, and I could have sworn I saw him flicker…à la hologram. I felt light and…fizzy, like a soda. And then I heard one of them say my name, and the fizzy feeling left. Someone gave a war-like shout, and they were on us, guns raised, crosshairs beaming.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t move.”
A few people parted, and Diego grinned at me.
*
I could tell by the way the people around him moved that Diego was in charge, and I realized with a shock that maybe I’d been wrong about the pecking order here. Sid had seemed more…forceful, and he’d questioned me and peeped in on my MRI, and he’d appeared (to me) to be in charge of Diego when I’d seen them at my house. But Diego was the one who’d moved in and out of my room with seemingly no schedule; he’d acted confident and cocky the whole time, flirting shamelessly with Ariel and Ursula, always giving me the feeling that he knew something I didn’t. And while I’d taken Sid out without much fuss in that room beside Nick’s, I’d only managed to get Diego because he’d been zipping up his pants…
His smile widened, like he was having the time of his life, a cowboy in a real Western. In one hand, he held something that looked like a cross between a sawed-off shotgun and a futuristic stun-gun; I followed its green sight to Nick’s heart.
He winked at me, nodded at Nick. “Well hello again, Gabriel. I heard you took out a couple of my agents.”
Took out…? Did that mean…
Diego took a step toward us, waving the gun, his hazel eyes on Nick. “Why don’t you two come in here with us.” He nodded at a door several feet away; it was wider than the others, metal painted brown, and as he nodded at it, the people around him got all up on Nick and I, and they guided us—at gunpoint—into what appeared to be a gym.
Nick tried to keep himself in front of me. I noticed his left eyelid twitching and worried he was too tired to fight. What if he couldn’t get us out of this? I could try, but I didn’t even have a weapon.
I looked around the room—gym. It was filled with equipment that I’d seen before on the Golden Prep football practice field, plus some more stuff that looked like it came from a work-out center, and little stations that looked like mini obstacle courses.
Diego leaned against some kind of balance beam, his gun once again pointed toward Nick. This time, he looked at me. “What were you thinking, Milo?” I detected a trace of Southern accent, an odd reminder of my dad. “Did you think we’d just let you walk out of here with that?” The word was crisp and damning. His eyes on Nick were hot enough to scald.
“Your boyfriend’s property of the US of A. We’ve got exciting plans for him.” He smiled, and, scanning the group, I spotted another smile I knew: Ursula. “Our plans for you were more…mild, but I’m not sure we can roll with them now. You’re on the wrong team, you know that?”
I glanced at Nick; he glanced at me, his eyes on mine just a second too long—long enough for me to see how tired he really was. I reached into the coat’s pockets. I wanted to disappear. I wanted both of us to disappear. I balled my hand into a fist, and something brushed my knuckle. Right away, Nick’s head whipped around, his gaze going to the pocket, like the whistle called to him. His eyes narrowed, only for an instant. Then he dipped his head toward me and mouthed, “Blow it.”
Had someone else noticed his instructions? Had I been unsmooth pulling the thing out of my pocket? I would never know. A shot rang out, and I saw a burst of green over Nick’s chest. His hand flew to his heart, and I blew the whistle.
35
When I opened my eyes, I had the feeling some time had passed. I felt disoriented, wobbly. I blinked once, then twice, before I realized…everyone was frozen. Diego’s lips were mashed together, his arm raised, his gun’s nozzle pointed slightly up, as if a shot had just been fired. Everyone around him was halted in mid-motion. Not halted…they were moving very, very slowly.
I whirled to Nick, feeling ill at what I thought I’d see, but he was reaching out for me. Behind him, I saw a dark, round shadow I soon realized was some kind of bubble.
He grinned. “Their time is suspended, but we’re in another universe.” He waved his hand up and over, and I followed it, shocked to see we really were inside a big, egg-shaped shadow thing. I followed the line of it, trying and failing to discern its texture. I followed it around and down, until my gaze bumped into someone new. She scowled and crossed her arms, and Nick said, “Mil, my partner… Vera?”
Nick squinted, and I followed his gaze back to “Vera,” who I quickly noticed was wearing Vera Wang. Her getup was a bright red dress that touched the floor and hung behind her, rippling along the sides like teased ribbon. The front cupped small boobs and led up to her milky throat, where a fluffy, toile strap wound around her neck.
I realized suddenly that she was Asian. Japanese, I thought. He’d said that. My partner was going to Tokyo.
I was still lost in thought when Vera opened her mouth and fast, soft Japanese bubbled out like water in a brook.
“… .. .. ….. .. .. .. ..! .. … ….. .. … .. . …!”
I had no idea what she was saying. It sounded Japanese, but maybe it was alien.
I watched Nick open his mouth and reply in Japanese so fluent he sounded like a native. He sounded angry. “….. .. ..! .. … .. … .. . …! .. ..!”
Vera scowled, her slender eyebrows drawing together under a line of stylish bangs. “… .. . …!”
I stomped. “In English!”
Vera turned to me, her eyes like daggers. “We have to go.” The bubble stretched toward the door, and we set out into the hall.
*
Vera’s look was not one I saw often, so she didn’t fit my standard definition of beauty, but beautiful she definitely was. She had shoulder-length black hair that hung in layers around her heart-shaped face, and her soft bangs defied everything I’d ever thought about hairstyle coolness. She reminded me a little of Rinoa, one of the characters in Final Fantasy back in the day when S.K. and I had been obsessed with it.
She was dainty and very graceful, but she was also aggressive and impatient, stalking out in front of Nick and I the second we got into the bright hallway.
The hall was still buzzing with people: men and women in dark-colored clothes, many clutching guns and speaking into ear-pieces. It was creepy watching their wide eyes move ghostly slow around the hall, knowing they were looking for us…and there we were, invisible right in front of them. Vera led the way to the nearest stairwell and started marching up. I wondered, as we walked, how she had made the bubble. Or had she done it? Maybe it was Nick and her being in the same place. I didn’t think so, though.
Nick and Vera talked more as we moved; Nick’s hand stayed hovering behind my back, and when I slowed, he slowed with me. Vera would protest, and Nick would say something else to her in Japanese. My head spun: slightly jealous of the beautiful Vera who understood everything about Nick, still terrified we wouldn’t make it out, worried about what would happen if we did. I felt out of place as well, a fish out of water, the only Earthling…
Nick seemed to sense my unease. His fingers tickled my back, and at some point on the stairs he took my hand again, even though holding hands made it harder to keep up with Vera. The higher we got, the more people we started seeing in the stairwell. These were dressed in suits and clutching papers, briefcases, Blackberries. I wondered what time it was. I had lost all sense of…everything.
I started noticing that the people we passed were moving more quickly. Vera moved more quickly, too. Her dress flounced around her pale,
toned legs. My legs started feeling like rubber.
“You all right?” Nick murmured.
I nodded, lying.
I felt completely overwhelmed. A man passed by close enough for me to touch; his arm swung beside him, almost at “real” speed. A woman, maybe in her mid-20s, scampered by; she didn’t even seem slow.
Vera led us onto a floor, where people stood around dry erase boards, pointing and talking and dialing numbers into phones. Nick explained that we were going to the elevator.
“How do you know?” I asked.
He arched his brow and tapped his forehead, and my stomach clenched. We got into an elevator with a big-boned man who was looking at his watch. He scratched his face, picked at his ear, shuffled his feet.
The elevator opened into a room with windows. I saw cars and pavement, and then sound returned to the world. Suddenly dozens of eyes snapped to us, and Nick said, “Run!”
We didn’t stop until we were standing in a cluster of firs on the side of a mountain. I couldn’t tell what state we were in. Colorado? Wyoming?
Nicks’ arm went around my back, holding me close. We were all breathing hard.
Vera looked at Nick. “Can we go?”
“What?” I said, shaken.
She didn’t even look at me. “Clearly they have not passed the test. They could not survive without technology.” She rolled her eyes. “The planet is good for mining gold.” I grabbed Nick’s hand, suddenly shaking again.
Vera laughed. “Oh no, did you make friends with one?”
Nick glowered. “Vera, we need to talk about this.”
She balked. “What?”
“I think you may be wrong.”
“I am never wrong.”
“I disagree.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “I’m not going to save this planet just because you have some sick thing with a lower life form.”
“I’m not a lower life form!”
“And she speaks. So discordantly.” Vera reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a red whistle. My head felt hot. “It’s time to blow these, Nick. Go home.”
Nick was holding his, cradling it in his palm like so much possibility. Vera brought hers to her mouth. Nick’s fist closed, as if he wanted to crush his. When he couldn’t, he gave Vera a meaningful look, dropped it on the ground, and stomped until it cracked. Vera crossed her arms and glared. Then she knelt to grab it, held it up, and blew across it. The whistle reassembled, and she brought it to her lips.
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Ella James, Here
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