Chapter 2
2
I’m considering peeing my pants.
I’ve spent all my time in this box calming my fears to prevent that tingling in my hands, which seems to trigger the gloves to burn me, but now my anxieties have been reduced to one thought:
Hold in the pee.
But who knows how much longer I’ll be in here?
Izzy had said she had a bad feeling about this trip, and now I wish I’d taken her more seriously.
Maybe I should just…
Is this really what it’s come to? I finally get to become part of my family’s historic order. I finally get the chance to do something meaningful with my life. And I fumble it all so bad that it ends with me peeing my pants? Am I actually doing this?
Cons of just doing it:
1) My clothes will be wet.
2) I’ll be stuck in a box that smells like pee.
3) I will have peed my pants.
Pros of just doing it:
1) The glorious lack of pee in my bladder.
Yup, I’m doing it.
But before I relax the necessary muscles, I hear movement outside the box. There’s no way I’m facing my captors covered in pee.
My bladder is a steel fortress. It will not yield.
The walls of the box are creaking and shaking. Someone is finally opening this thing. My fear returns, and with it, the painful burn of the gloves. I’m still acutely aware of the pressure down below, but with the knowledge that I’m about to be out of here, and possibly on to some new kind of horror, letting it flow no longer feels like an option.
My bladder is a concrete dam. The floodgates will not fail.
There’s a lot of bumbling and fumbling. These guys don’t sound particularly well orchestrated.
Not guys plural, only one guy. Or so I see after my eyes recover from the light that streams in once he manages to pry open the crate. The face that greets me is the same one that’s been on my mind most of my intolerably long imprisonment. Disappointment mingles with my fear; I had really hoped he wasn’t involved.
Michael helps me up, and I immediately stumble and end up flat on my butt on the floor of what looks to be a conspicuously empty garage. I have no sense of balance with my arms still restrained and my legs cramped. Michael helps me back up again. There’s a large gash on his forehead with blood crusting over a blossoming bruise.
He gives me a tired smile.
I trusted that smile. It makes me so angry that I forget to be afraid. So angry that despite the risk of accidentally losing control of my bladder, I knee him squarely in the groin.
His eyes go wide as he folds over clutching himself. Lucky for him, my legs are still pretty noodley, and there wasn’t as much force behind my strike as I would have liked.
“What was that for?” he chokes out.
“You put me in a box!”
“Of course I didn’t!” He’s recovered somewhat, though he’s hopping around awkwardly. “I’m here to rescue you!” His hands remain protectively over his crotch. “I knew you might be in danger, so when I saw two guys loading a girl-size crate into a truck and then saw your phone on the bathroom floor, I went after them. I actually stole a kid’s bike to tail them. Stole a bike. From a child!” He finally drops his hands, then sighs. “I’ve been waiting for hours for a chance to sneak in without being seen. Now here I am”—he levels an accusing glare at my knee—“the lucky recipient of your gratitude.”
The gash on his forehead is seeping fresh blood, and it looks pretty bad.
“What happened to your face?” I ask.
He looks away and mumbles something about not having a lot of experience riding bicycles.
Ouch. “Well, what do you mean, you thought I was in danger?”
“Once I realized that you’re a Sire,” he responds.
“A what?”
“A Sire. It was obvious once I saw you revive the plant.”
My mostly-a-mystery-to-me abilities have a name, and this can’t-tell-if-he’s-safe-or-not stranger knows what it is. Which only strengthens my suspicions about who he must be.
“I’ll explain more once we get you out of here,” he says.
“No. Why does me being a, um, Sire mean I’m in danger?”
“There’s been a slew of Sire abductions recently. Which is why my school has been recruiting Sires—to bring them somewhere safer.”
Abductions. I wasn’t prepared for any of this.
Granted, this whole trip came together very quickly.
Despite my family’s generations-long participation in a historic order, I was never able to be a part of it. I’d grown up with all the stories, heard so many of their wild, secret theories, and I couldn’t wait to be trained to take part in their important work. Kor and Izzy were both initiated into the order on their thirteenth birthdays, but then my own birthday came and went with nothing. My mother said I probably just needed to wait until they considered me ready. I worked so hard the next few years, hoping to impress whoever needed to be impressed, but nothing I did ever seemed to be good enough. Eventually, I stopped trying.
Until last month, when the Families discovered the condition I’d been hiding for so long. And it turned out they needed someone exactly like me for this job. I was given an itinerary, basic explanations of what to look out for, and that was it. I knew there were some risks, but no one had said anything about any abductions .
I feel my panic rising, but I’m still wearing the gloves and am not in the mood to have my hands cooked again. At least I’m out of the box.
I was in a box .
The reality of what I’ve just been through floods through me. I’ve been damming up my emotions as much as my need to pee, but now they’re breaking through.
“I was trapped for hours .” I choke on a sob. “Why didn’t you call the police or something?”
Michael is immediately at my side, laying a comforting hand on my arm. “Ada, I’m sorry, but these are not people that the police can protect you from. Hopefully I can. I promise that I’m here to help you, but we need to move quickly. The guards are gone for now, but I don’t want to take any chances. We’ve been incredibly lucky so far.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat and try to regain as much control as I can. “Well, if you’re here to help, can you get these off.” I shake my hands behind my back, the metal clanking loudly. “They really hurt.”
“They’re causing you pain?” He looks confused by this.
“A lot of pain,” I say through gritted teeth.
Michael circles me and crouches to inspect the gloves. He winces as he bends, and I feel a twinge of guilt for my testicular assault. He prods the gloves, then sniffs them. “By the Conductor,” he whispers in awe.
Who the hell is the Conductor?
I crane my neck to watch what he’s doing. He flips through the different functions of his multi-tool and uses one to tinker with the locking mechanism. “Are you still able to conduct?” he asks me.
“What?”
“Sorry, I mean like you did with the plant. Can you push energy through your hands?”
I stare at him blankly, but my mind is the opposite of blank. Push energy through my hands? Is that what I have been doing all my life?
“Never mind,” Michael says in response to my clear confusion. “Are the gloves still hurting you? Right now?”
They’re not, actually. My current discomfort is from the preexisting burns. I shake my head.
He bites his lips and continues to work at the lock, now with more urgency. He swipes at his brow, irritating the messy wound, which starts to bleed again. Seeing his panic causes my own to rise, and with it, my hands begin to sting against the metal.
“Ouch!” I gasp, jerking my hands away from him.
“Good,” he says with relief. “If they’re burning you, then it means you’re still conducting, and the compound probably hasn’t done any permanent damage to your abilities.”
Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
He finally gets the lock open, and the gloves fall away, hitting the floor with a metallic clack. Still crouched behind me, Michael gently inspects my hands. His rough callouses ghost over my sensitive burns. My palms flare with that familiar tingle of warmth, but this time, instead of pain, most of the lingering soreness fades completely.
Michael lets go of me and rises. “Looks like your abilities are functioning.”
I stretch my arms up, working out the stiffness before I finally look down at my hands. They’re not the blistered mess I expected. In fact, they look almost normal, except that each of my palms has a scar along the slope connecting my thumb and pointer. Twin half-moons of pink, new flesh. I’ve never had a scar before. What did the gloves do to me?
I think about the healing warmth I just felt. I’ve always healed quickly but never instantaneously.
What did I do to myself?
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” Michael says. He uses the hem of his T-shirt to wipe his bloody forehead, exposing quite a bit of too-old-for-me abdomen.
My gut says I shouldn’t go anywhere with him, but the sound of a door slamming followed by threatening footfalls has my gut changing its mind in favor of any option that will get me out of here fast.
“Quickly,” Michael urges, tugging me by the arm, and I follow, every cell in my body wanting to flee from the people on the other side of that door. The ones who knocked me out and put me in a crate.
The interior doorknob rattles with the sound of a key as Michael lifts the garage door—the lock has already been busted open—just high enough for us to scuttle through into the cool night. He pulls the door down with a bang and then takes my hand and starts to run.
“I’ll bring you somewhere safe,” he says over his shoulder. “I’ll explain everything once we’re there.”
His long strides are too fast for me to keep up, but the mechanical sound of the garage door rising behind us convinces me I really don’t have a choice. I clutch tightly to his hand and run until my chest is heaving, my thighs are burning, and my bladder feels like an overfilled water balloon.
This safe place better have a bathroom.