Tempest

Twelve

Wounds




Two hours later, I was back on the top floor of the observation tower, as steaming mad as I’d ever been in my life, following Warden Hudson’s delivery of two pieces of bad news.

Bad news the first: Simon and I were not allowed to return to Manhattan for any reason whatsoever. Not to check on our friends, not to inspect the crash site. Nothing. We were temporarily banned, and I was even told point-blank I’d be shot down if I tried to fly over the walls.

Bad news the second: No one except prison investigators and medical personnel were allowed to leave the island until further notice. This meant Aaron was stuck over there with no way to reach us—except that single, dedicated phone, and it would only help if the communications officer told us he called.

Simon was standing in front of his desk, while I stood behind it, needing the buffer between me and Hudson. In the back of my mind, I understood why he was treating this as some sort of quarantine—he needed to control the situation and the information flow. The front of my mind didn’t give two shits. I was worried about the people over there—Aaron and Mai Lynn and Muriel and all the others.

I didn’t even know for sure if Jinx had been told that Andrew was out of surgery, in intensive care, and holding on like a champ. A tiny, wounded champ watched over by two armed guards who looked about as compassionate as prickly pears. I’d asked to see him before we left the hospital, and I’d been denied that, too.

“Until I know who was in that helicopter and why they crossed into our airspace, I need this situation as contained as possible,” Hudson said.

“I get that,” I replied, “but Scott Torres is here as a visitor, and you cannot keep him incarcerated like one of your prisoners.”

“Current federal prison law gives me the right to do just that when we are in a lockdown situation.”

“But—”

“Tempest,” Simon said. My name, but he really said Shut the hell up.

“Your man will be fine,” Hudson continued. “We have guards on the ground keeping an eye on the Warren, and they’ll remain there even after our medical personnel pull out. Those people won’t be able to sneeze without my men knowing it.”

Simon bristled like a spooked cat. “Those people are trauma survivors, Warden.”

As much as I joined in Simon’s hatred of the term those people, I’d zeroed in on a different part of Hudson’s statement. “Wait, around the Warren?” I said. “You’re keeping everyone confined to the Warren?”

Hudson’s already stoic face went stonier. “As I said, we are in a lockdown situation. Containment is necessary.”

I turned away and stalked to the large windows looking out at Manhattan. One more second looking at Hudson would have ended with me planting a fist in something—probably his mouth—which would have landed me right back on the island, and not in the way I wanted to be there. It was after 8:00 p.m., and except for the occasional searchlights from the guard towers, the island was dark, cast in shadows by the setting sun.

Muriel and those other kids would wake up to a vastly different world tomorrow.

The air shifted behind me. Simon appeared on my left and glared out the same window. “You should sit down,” he said. “You look like hell.”

“Good, because I feel like hell,” I said. “It happens when you get blown up and nearly drown.”

“So relax for a minute. Teresa won’t be here for a while yet. There’s a small cafeteria downstairs—”

“I’m fine.” I didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to sit, didn’t want to go eat. Okay, that wasn’t true—I desperately wanted to do all three of those things, but I couldn’t. Too many other things were out of my control right now. I could control these small weaknesses.

“Teresa will blame me if you pass out.”

“No, she will definitely blame me. She knows me too well.”

“Then I’m glad she’s on her way.”

Me too, Simon. You have no idea.

Almost an hour passed without news, and halfway through, I finally succumbed to the siren call of the cheaply upholstered chair behind Simon’s desk. I very nearly fell asleep again (trying to not think about things was incredibly exhausting), but jerked back to full awareness when two familiar figures arrived on the fourth floor.

Even though we’d come representing our group in Los Angeles, Aaron and I hadn’t worn uniforms. We’d chosen street clothes in an effort to both be comfortable and . . . well, blend in wasn’t quite right. Not stand out, I guess.

Teresa and Marco let their uniforms set a tone right from the start. The style we came up with was fitted black cargo pants and a black jacket over an armored tank top in our “trademark” color. Teresa’s was silver, and when I chose to wear mine, it was green. Marco’s unique uniform was a shimmery black material created just for his power, and it allowed him to shift from human to animal form and back again without ending up naked. Mai Lynn would probably love one of those.

The officers on duty glanced their way, then went back to work. They knew Teresa “Trance” West. She’d been here several times over the last eight months, working with Simon to gain pardons for the prisoners. They also knew how powerful Teresa was, and that she could singlehandedly demolish this entire building with her energy orbs.

She stalked straight over to Simon’s desk—he was noticeably absent—and stopped in front of me just as I stood up. Marco trailed behind, taking in the sights. Teresa’s sharp gaze studied my face, her expression fierce.

“Have you been examined yet?” she asked.

“Nice to see you, too,” I replied.

“I’m serious.”

“So was I, and no, I was not examined, because I’m fine. Bumps and bruises, like I said on the phone.”

“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror? You look like you went three rounds in a boxing ring.”

“Really?” The left side of my face was tender, but I hadn’t realized it had bruised that badly. “Damn.”

“Just bumps and bruises?”

“Yes.”

She nailed me with those lavender eyes that let nothing slide by unnoticed. “If I ask Scott, will he tell me something different?”

Damn it. “He might also add that he had to do CPR because I drank a little too much pond water and kinda stopped breathing.”

A muscle twitched under her right eye, and the air around us crackled with kinetic energy. She was getting well and truly pissed, and I truly had not meant to do that.

“I’m sorry, Trance,” I said. “I am not making light of the fact that I had a near-fatal swim this afternoon, but I’m fine. Really, physically fine, just exhausted and sore and worried.”

“I’m worried, too. I’m worried about you and Simon and everyone still over on that island, and I’m worried someone’s going to fly a copter into Hill House next.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Good. Where’s Simon?”

“I’m not sure. He was just here.”

Marco stood by the windows, staring out at the black ocean of nothing that was Manhattan. I had friends out there, beyond my ability to help, and I hated it.

“Have you spoken to Warden Hudson yet?” I asked.

“Briefly, in the lobby,” Teresa replied. “We made an appointment to speak tomorrow morning at eight.”

My mouth fell open. Marco snickered.

“He’s a piece of work,” I said.

“He’s doing his job in a very intense, very volatile situation.”

“What he’s doing is keeping a father away from his child.”

She frowned, then understanding dawned. “Simon mentioned you flew a wounded boy to the hospital in Hackensack.”

“Yeah, Andrew. He’s not much older than Caleb, and he’s in critical condition.” My temper rose again, as it seemed to do a lot when Andrew and Jinx were concerned. “Hudson won’t let Andrew’s father out to see him.”

“Who’s his father?”

The name stuck in my throat like a guilty secret, and I had to force it out. “Freddy McTaggert.”

Her eyebrows arched. “And it surprises you Hudson said no?”

“Not really, but despite how I may feel about Jinx, Andrew isn’t . . . he’s a kid. No child should ever feel abandoned by their parent.”

The words slipped out almost too quietly, with a lot more emotion than I intended. So many of my own feelings were rolled up into this situation, and I had to separate myself from it, or I’d go crazy. It couldn’t matter that I’d spent nearly five years living with the Bacons and their abuse, well aware that I had a father out there somewhere, and that he’d never come for me. It couldn’t matter that my father was a murdering bastard who didn’t deserve an ounce of my sympathy.

It could not matter.

“Maybe the warden will feel differently in the morning,” Teresa said. “Let’s find Simon and get out of here. There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”

Even though leaving felt like some backward betrayal, she was right. Tonight, everything else was out of my hands.

• • •

Over a late supper of ham sandwiches and chips, Teresa tried to entertain us with stories about training Kate and Denny. I listened with half an ear until I’d eaten what I could handle, then excused myself to the other apartment for a shower. I was sick of smelling myself—tepid pond water and smoke were not compatible odors—and needed to do a bruise check.

My face was, indeed, purple on the left side from my forehead down to my jaw. I’d either been hit with debris, or that’s where I hit the water. More bruises dotted my shoulders and upper back. A bluish smudge lingered over my heart, thanks to Aaron. He’d saved my life, and I still hadn’t thanked him for that, damn it.

Tomorrow.

Despite my various aches and pains, nothing else was discolored.

True to her nature, Teresa was sitting in my lawn chair when I came out of the bathroom. She offered me a bottle of water. I took it as I sank down into what I’d started thinking of as Aaron’s chair. His absence stirred a dull emptiness in my stomach, despite being full of food.

“Of everyone, Ethan, you worry me the most,” she said.

“What?” I squeezed the water too tight and the plastic crinkled in my hands. “Why?”

“Because you bottle everything up. You hold on to things all by yourself instead of sharing them with your friends. You always have.”

“Some things are impossible to talk about.”

She’d angled her chair to face mine, so I dropped my gaze to her feet instead of her face. My heart was beating too fast, adrenaline kicking in. We were having one of those conversations, and I wasn’t in the mood.

“I get that,” she said. “More than you might think. I just hope one day it doesn’t become too much for you. No one likes dredging up the past, or airing old hurts, but some things also need to be said before they tear you up beyond repair.”

A host of old demons came screaming into my head, begging for attention. Demanding I let them loose, share their burden with someone else who might understand. I wanted to—to be able to show weakness to someone else and not fear the consequences; not let it make me feel like a coward. Useless.

Worthless.

“You’re not worth the food we give you, and you never will be.”

Like a well-placed kidney punch, my foster father’s poisonous words hit precisely right to cause the maximum amount of pain, even a decade later.

“Did you like your foster parents?” I asked. I meant for the question to stay in my head, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t come spilling out of my traitorous mouth. And now that I’d said it, I really wanted to know.

“Mostly,” she replied. “I was with my first family the longest, almost two years. I even took their name. But I was moved around a few times.”

“Why?”

“I guess it would get too hard on the parents. They always knew my history, of course. But when other people figured out who I was, my foster siblings or my schoolmates, they’d make my life hell. No matter what, someone always found out.”

“I was with the same family for nearly five years.”

“I know.”

That surprised me for a few seconds, until I remembered that she’d tracked me down at Alicia Monroe’s apartment back in January. I’d been convinced Specter would invade my body and use me to kill my friends, so I’d fled to my friend Alicia’s place in Burbank. It was a stupid, cowardly move on my part, and my friends found me in less than a day. The only way Teresa could have gotten Alicia’s name was by pulling my MetaHuman Control Group file. She knew the glossy version of my past, but not the rusty, dented details.

“Do you know I tried running away several times?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She stretched her legs out and crossed them at the ankles, perfectly mirroring Aaron’s pose from last night.

Has it really only been twenty-four hours?

“The cops always found me and took me back to the Bacons’ house. Everyone in Kingman liked them. Hell, even the other foster kids who came and went liked them. Problem children started doing well in school. Delinquents ended up with college scholarships. And then there was me.”

“They knew who you were?”

“Oh, they knew, and they didn’t hide the fact from the other kids in the house. Not that they could, because I was recovering from a gunshot.” I found myself rubbing my shoulder over the scar, still able to feel the sizzling pain of the wound all these years later. “The agent who handed me over told them to expect symptoms of PTSD. I remember Mrs. Bacon looking right at the agent and saying, ‘We’ve dealt with all kinds of traumatized children. He’ll be in good hands.’ ”

I studied the soles of Teresa’s boots. She didn’t comment, didn’t ask me to continue. I appreciated her ability to coax a story out without using words. She somehow made it okay to talk about this stuff. To finally tell someone. Share a little piece of my own personal hell.

“My first night in that house, I had a nightmare about Central Park.” My stomach rolled and churned, and I put the water bottle down before I crushed it. “I don’t remember the nightmare itself, just waking up sweating and scared. And so f*cking ashamed when I realized I’d wet the bed. I mean, I was thirteen. I’d been in a war. Doing something so childish just made me want to . . .” The words stuck. I swallowed hard against something thick in my throat, that wanted to rise up and turn to tears. Crying was so not happening.

“I tried to change the bed myself, but I was one-armed and on medication and I ended up waking the other boy in the room. He went and told the Bacons. They told me that the middle of the night was no time for doing laundry, made me fix the bed, and then sleep the rest of the night in wet sheets and pajamas.”

Teresa made a harsh noise. She uncrossed her ankles and sat up straighter.

I focused on a smudge on the old wood floor. “That first four months or so, I had a lot of nightmares and spent a couple more nights in a wet bed. No one talked about it. No one considered counseling. Not that I would have gone. I was so angry, and I missed you guys so much. And I missed my powers, being able to fly free, to feel the wind inside of me instead of just around me. I was such a mess.”

“Why did you run away the first time?” Teresa asked after a few minutes of silence.

“To see if anyone would notice. Unless I messed up, I was invisible in that house. Mr. Bacon looked me in the face once, a few months into my sentence, and told me I should have been left in Manhattan with the Banes. Left to starve and die because Metas didn’t deserve any better.”

Teresa let out a soft slew of expletives.

“After the police dragged me back, Child Protective Services did a brief”—I made air quotes—“follow-up on my statements about the Bacons. Obviously they found nothing, and the other kids didn’t say a word about the wet sheets. The Bacons used my PTSD as an excuse for irrational behavior and promised to keep a closer eye on me. Case closed.

“I ran away a few more times over the years, pled with CPS to change my placement, but nothing happened. Sometimes I wished they’d hit me or yell at me, because at least it was an acknowledgment that I existed, you know? We were all homeschooled, so I didn’t socialize with anyone outside the house. They treated me like a ghost, something that existed but wasn’t to be acknowledged, especially after—” Shit, I was not going there.

“Especially after what?” Teresa asked.

Especially after I turned sixteen, when they figured out I was gay and made me sleep in the basement so I wouldn’t be tempted by the other boys in the house.

I shivered. That final year and a half had been hell. It was bad enough being the power-less son of a Ranger and a Bane, but according to my foster parents, I was also a sexual deviant who couldn’t be trusted to control myself.

“I’m sorry,” Teresa said. “I didn’t mean to push you.”

“Huh?” I finally looked up and met her simmering, tear-filled eyes. Saw sympathy and understanding, maybe a little lingering rage, but not a trace of pity.

“The look on your face just now?” she said. “It was a little bit murderous. I didn’t mean to push you into talking about things.”

“You didn’t. Honestly, you’re now one of two people who know that much about my past. Even when Dahlia and I were close, I didn’t talk about that stuff.” We might have discussed it at some point during these last few months, if Noah hadn’t been in the way. I’d already opened up to Dahlia about being gay and my reasons for not telling the others. She’d been great and incredibly reasonable when picking apart those reasons. I’d considered telling her more, about my experiences with the Bacons, just as I’d told Teresa tonight—and then that first empty skin showed up on Sunset Boulevard, and the Changelings walked into our lives.

Maybe part of me was waiting, desperately hoping Simon would find a way to separate Noah and Dahlia so that I could have my friend back. And maybe I was fooling myself into believing that would ever happen. I didn’t know. Alicia Monroe was the only person to whom I’d ever confided the whole story of my past. Of all the foster kids I’d met during my sentence with the Bacons, Alicia was the only one who’d stuck. The only one I still talked to—who knew all of my secrets.

Six years younger than me, she was only twelve when she was placed with the Bacons. We lived together for five months before I turned eighteen and moved out—all the way to Florida, matter of fact—but we bonded in that short time.

Despite our friendship, I’d had no intention of keeping in touch with her after I left for Florida. But I did. We exchanged emails for years, while I worked my way from job to job (and from anonymous guy to anonymous guy), never staying in one place (or at one beach) too long. When she graduated high school, I gave up my (not so) glamorous life as a professional beach bum and we moved to Phoenix together. We both worked while she took business classes. I enjoyed playing the big-brother role, intimidating her dates and scrutinizing her wardrobe choices. I didn’t actually come out to her until her twenty-first birthday, after a few too many tequila shots led to some fumbled groping and misunderstood feelings. When she sobered up and figured it out, she was just mad I hadn’t told her sooner.

A year after she graduated, she moved to California, and we went back to email communication only. Until January, when I’d blown back into her life for a short time.

Teresa stretched out her foot and tapped my ankle. “I’m glad you could tell me some of it.”

“Me too.”

Only a fraction of the guilt I carried had been lifted by this conversation, but I did feel a tiny bit lighter. Confiding in my friends about certain things wasn’t weak, after all. Other things, though, like my real father? Not so much. Maybe the revelation would happen without my permission, but I saw no advantage in being the one to say it first.

“So tell me more about the meeting yesterday,” she said, effectively taking the topic away from my sordid past. “Before the copter crash.”

This I could talk about. I told her everything, from St. Catherine’s Park and the first meeting with Thatcher at Bloomingdale’s, to confronting the missing Banes at the castle. I filled in what I could remember of the conversation about the Warren and finding a safe place for their children.

“They really do want the same thing,” I said. “Mai Lynn and McTaggert. They want their kids to be safe from violence. They just don’t agree on the best way to achieve that. McTaggert’s convinced that going along with this registration is the first step toward living in a Meta Concentration Camp.”

“I hate to admit it,” Teresa said, “but that’s not an unfounded fear. There’s no telling what will happen if Winstead is elected president in November.”

“I know. And what will do we do if that is our future? We’ve been given some leeway so far, because of who our parents were, but what if one day that’s no longer a valid Get Out of Jail Free card?”

“That’s why we do everything we can now, to prevent that from happening. We need the world to see our value, Ethan. Not just as aggressors against violence, but as protectors of the earth. Some of us are elementals, and our powers can change people’s lives for the better. We need the public to remember that more than the violence in our past.”

“Easier said than done.”

“No kidding.”

There was one other tidbit I needed to confess. “I probably shouldn’t have, Teresa, but I did tell McTaggert and company about the Recombinants.”

She startled, then furrowed her eyebrows. “Why?”

“To get McTaggert to understand that we Metas were in this together, and that we had a common enemy. I don’t know if it worked or not, but it seemed like the best plan at the time.”

“That’s what leadership decisions are about.”

I stared at her. “You’re not mad?”

“No. I’ve made plenty of decisions in my life that I knew other people might not support, but that felt absolutely right at the time. And you are nowhere near as hotheaded as I am, so I trust your instinct with this. Hopefully the information will help McTaggert and the others make a decision.”

“Even if it’s not to register and work toward pardons?”

“Even if. Ethan, you and I can’t predict the future, but we also can’t fear it. Not anymore. We have to listen to ourselves, know what we believe, and make our choices. We have to stand by those choices, no matter what obstacles we face down the road.”

“Listen with your heart, Ethan. Even when your mind is confused, your heart will never steer you wrong.” My mother’s dying words, echoed again in Teresa’s.

Easier said than done.