Tempest

Thirteen

The Warren




The next morning began with two bits of good news. The first bit was that Andrew was stable and being moved out of ICU. That intense moment of relief almost made up for the serious case of nerves I had about facing the Warren residents today.

Which leads to the second bit of good news: we were allowed back over to the island, but we were to remain within the perimeter set up around the Warren. Teresa was smart enough to secure documentation that we four, plus Aaron, would be allowed to return to the observation tower at day’s end.

Not that we didn’t trust the warden, or anything.

We got no other information out of Hudson before we departed. “You’re need-to-know status, and I’ll tell you when I think you need to know something.”

On the copter ride over, Teresa and Marco sat on opposite sides, peering intently out the windows. I could easily imagine what they were thinking as they watched the green expanse of Central Park grow larger with each passing second. I’d felt it myself just a few days ago—the anxiety, the fear, the crush of memories. The disbelief that so much beauty existed on a field of such devastating violence. Visitors to other historic battlefields must feel the same way—except that no one would ever make a national park commemorating the battles fought during the Meta War.

I’d wanted to bring something for the Warren kids, a food treat of some sort, but the warden denied my request. Nothing could chase away the fear from yesterday’s explosion, I knew that. I’d wanted to try, though. More than anything else today, I wanted to see Muriel smile.

The copter landed in the same clearing in the park and was met by a uniformed guard. Simon and I climbed out first, then moved aside to give Teresa and Marco a moment. That first step back onto ground tainted with the blood of your family and friends—there’s nothing quite like it. They paused briefly to look around, then joined us so the copter could take off. I held the whipping air at bay, creating a bubble of calm as they took it all in.

“I’ve seen it from the observation tower so many times,” Teresa said, “but being here . . .”

“It’s not the same,” I said.

She turned toward the north, staring ahead through the trees, as though she could see events of the past playing out in the shadows. Marco shuffled closer, put a hand on her shoulder and whispered something. I couldn’t hear, but he snapped her out of it. Marco hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words since his arrival last night. Whenever he did choose to speak nowadays, he used his words effectively.

The single guard followed us halfway, then stayed at what I assumed was his assigned post. To the east, about fifty feet away, stood another guard. They were probably placed all the way down to the garden. The idea of armed guards watching over the playground sent cold chills down my spine.

We emerged onto Fifty-Ninth Street a few minutes later and found it eerily silent. No sounds from the playground, no one standing on the sidewalk. I spotted a few guards here and there around Columbus Circle, but saw none of the Warren residents. We quickened our pace as we crossed the street.

The door to the Warren opened. Aaron-in-Scott’s-face emerged first, with Derek Thatcher right behind him. Aaron scanned the group until our eyes met, and then he smiled. A broad, relieved smile, and my stomach flipped. “Scott” sported a slightly blackened right eye. Was that a real wound, or something he affected for his disguise? I wouldn’t know for sure until we were alone again and I could see his real face.

“How are the wounded doing?” Simon asked, once everyone who didn’t know one another was quickly introduced.

“Well, considering everything,” Aaron replied. “So far, no complications or infections.”

“Small miracle,” Thatcher said, his tone as dark as his expression. “Minimal field care for people who should be attended to in a real hospital. Speaking of which, how’s—?”

Before he could finish, the door banged open and Jinx stormed out. Dark bruises covered his bare forearms and his lower lip was puffy and split—two things I hadn’t noticed the day before. He hesitated briefly when he saw Teresa and Marco, then gave me his full attention. “How’s my son?” he asked.

“Stable,” I replied, ignoring the unintentional double meaning in his question. “Andrew was moved out of ICU this morning, and the doctors are optimistic that he’ll pull through.”

Some of Jinx’s furious energy diminished. “Thank you for saving him.”

“I just flew him out of here. The doctors saved him.”

“Even so, it’s a debt I won’t forget, Tempest.”

“Tell you what. You can repay me by helping to keep the peace around here until this lockdown is over.”

Jinx’s expression clouded, but the pointed look Thatcher gave him confirmed my suspicions that Jinx had already made his dislike of the lockdown known. And it made me wonder if the split lip happened after I took Andrew away.

“This is an extremely volatile situation,” Teresa said, taking point in the conversation. “I think we can all agree on that. I think we can also agree that overpowering the guards and breaking out is something we can easily do, if we put our minds to it. You’ve stayed here these last eight months for a variety of reasons, including the work Simon and I are doing to secure your freedom. We do not want to let yesterday’s violence destroy the progress we’ve made.”

“We don’t?” Jinx snarled. “People I care about died yesterday, Trance. My son almost died. Violence is about all I can think of right now.”

“Everyone is restless and afraid,” Thatcher said, as much to us as to Jinx. “We feel like targets, waiting to be shot at. Our small group stayed on the move for just that reason.”

“I understand that more than you think,” Teresa said. “I have people back in Los Angeles in a known location. I worry for their safety every single minute. But living in fear means those who attacked us win. It’s what they want.”

“What would you have us do? Pretend things are normal? Allow the children to play outside where another copter could be dropped on them?”

Teresa stiffened. “Hardly. But reacting out of fear is never the best move. The warden is investigating the crash—”

“He’ll find what he wants to find.”

“I think he’ll surprise you.”

Thatcher grunted.

The Warren door opened a third time. Muriel’s mother Alexia came out with a man I’d seen in the dining room several times—Gilbert Reynolds, low-level heat manipulator. Our group lengthened out to create a circle of conversation. Alexia stood on my right, while I stayed close to Teresa, keeping Jinx opposite me at all times.

“I’m so sorry about Keene,” I said quietly to Alexia. “I know what he meant to the kids.”

She nodded, her red-rimmed eyes puffy from crying. “Thank you. I hope you don’t mind, but as Muriel’s parents, this conversation seems like one that directly concerns us.”

“This conversation concerns everyone who lives here.”

Jinx made a derisive snort. “ ‘Lives here’?” he repeated. “You say that as though we have a choice in our residence in this godforsaken place. As large as it is, it’s still a prison with guards and walls that compel us to stay.”

“And some of us are trying to change that,” I snapped back. “We want to bring the walls down so that staying here is a choice.”

“Some choice that will be, when no place else in the world will have us.”

“It’s familiar ground. It’s defensible, especially with our powers.”

“Would you want to live here?”

The question shut me up faster than a punch in the mouth. My home was in Los Angeles, with my teammates and friends. New York never had been and never would be my home—not without a big damn reason. Every pair of eyeballs in the circle was fixed on me, but the only set I met belonged to Aaron. His comment about finding a home here came back to me very clearly. He watched me with open curiosity, and more than any other time, I wanted to see the real him. To know what Aaron, and not “Scott,” was thinking.

And I had no idea why that was so important.

“My family is in Los Angeles,” I said to Jinx. “I go with them.”

Aaron looked at the ground.

Jinx glared. “Until the government tells all of you to pack it up and head east.”

“That’s one of a hundred possible worst-case scenarios,” I said.

“Oh no, worst case has them gathering up every Meta you’ve helped them register, stashing us here, and then bombing this entire island into the next century.”

“We’d never let that happen,” Teresa said. “My powers alone could stop a missile before it hits.”

“But could you stop twenty at once?”

“This discussion is pointless, isn’t it?” Aaron asked. He’d lost his accent, and I couldn’t tell if he’d noticed—or if anyone else noticed. “Humankind hasn’t claimed the copter crash, but everyone knows it was them. Between that bit of terrorism and the murder of Mark Sanderson, no one is going to step forward and admit to being Meta.”

“That’s exactly what we need to prevent,” Teresa said. “We are almost the entirety of the adult Meta population. Are there others hiding out there who were never involved in the War? Probably, but I don’t see them coming out now. Biggest concern is for the younger Metas. The twenty-year-olds and teenagers who are just discovering the incredible and scary things they can do. All of the other Mark Sandersons out there who need protection.”

“And you’re going to protect them?” Jinx asked.

“Someone has to try. Rangers HQ used to be a safe place for Metas. Maybe the Warren can be that now.” She pointed past us, at Central Park. “Maybe something good can come out of this mass graveyard after all.”

A safe place for them. Such a thing seemed impossible, given the obstacles piling up against us. I’d grown up around Metas, knowing I’d one day be a member of the Ranger Corps, and I’d always understood the responsibility of having superpowers. And then at thirteen I’d lost that support and been thrown into a waking nightmare. A nightmare with no refuge for an abandoned, traumatized teenager who still hadn’t gone through the hell of coming out of the closet.

After coming to Manhattan and meeting Muriel and Andrew, after seeing the young futures still at stake, I finally understood Teresa’s vision. I understood why people like Kate and Denny needed our unconditional support. We couldn’t hang on to labels like Rangers and Banes. Like it or not, we needed each other.

“Listen with your heart, Ethan.”

I finally understood what my heart was telling me.

Thatcher, Alexia, and Reynolds were staring at Teresa with open interest, Simon with respect. Marco hadn’t moved from his position flanking her, and he hadn’t offered anything to the conversation except flat stares. Aaron had withdrawn; he seemed to be contemplating something, and I couldn’t guess what.

Only Jinx still looked ready to do battle. “What good will it do any of these kids to come out and say they’re Meta?” Jinx asked.

Marco growled deep and low, and then said, “Not all of us can hide what we are. Some wear our differences on our skin.” Between the brown and black splotches of fur and his glowing green eyes, his point was perfectly made.

“And some don’t realize there are other options than using their powers to rob a bank,” I said, thinking of the Green we’d arrested earlier in the week. Maybe if we’d been more aggressive this last half year in locating young Metas, we’d have been able to prevent her from doing something so stupid. “Everyone who’s old enough to remember the War is afraid of us. How do you think those people are going to react when their sixteen-year-old honor roll student suddenly starts lighting fires with their mind?”

“Hill House is only so big,” Teresa said. “The Warren could be the start of a larger community, a place where no Meta has to feel alone.” She looked at me, and I held her gaze. “Best-case scenario.”

“You have an amazing ability to see the best in people,” Jinx said to Teresa. “Amazing and naïve.”

She bristled and a dark flush heated her cheeks—uh-oh. “Naïve? Any naïveté I had died the day Specter’s followers killed my father, somewhere not very far from here. My innocence died the day I watched kids not much older than me be murdered by people who are probably in that building over there.” She took a menacing step closer to Jinx, the air around her snapping with energy.

“Don’t ever think I’m doing this for you, Mr. McTaggert. I’m doing this for Caleb and Muriel and Andrew, and for all the other kids here, so they never have to see the horrors I saw. I’m doing this for the dozens, if not hundreds, of teenagers out there who are realizing just how different they are, so that they never have to feel as alone and abandoned as my friends and I did, growing up. So condescend to me again, I f*cking dare you.”

What’s that old saying? You could hear a pin drop?

No one spoke. Hell, no one seemed to breathe for several seconds following Teresa’s verbal smackdown. Even Jinx shut the hell up.

“Do you really think they’ll come?” Thatcher asked. “Either to you, or here to us?”

“They’ll come,” Aaron said before Teresa could reply. “They might not come out to their families first. They might be too scared of being shut out or kicked out because of what they are to tell the people they love. But we’ll give them a solid place to land, so they don’t end up on the streets. Or worse.”

Even though he still wore Scott Torres’s face, Aaron’s voice was his own, and the emotions were genuine. The intent, confident delivery was born of experience and the understanding of someone who’d lived through it. But who was saying these things? Aaron Scott? One of the many other people King the Changeling had absorbed two months ago?

I stared at him, silently asking for clarification, but he wouldn’t look at me.

“Scott’s right, and nothing more can be done until the warden completes his investigation,” Teresa said when Thatcher made no further comment. “Hopefully we’ll have some information soon.”

Thatcher tugged Jinx away, and the two moved down the sidewalk.

“I’d offer to show you around,” Simon said to Teresa, “but I’d really like to check on Mai Lynn.”

“I can show you around,” Alexia said. “You and your friend.”

Teresa glanced at Marco, then nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

I declined to join them, and the rest of our group broke up. I turned around, surprised that the one person I wanted to speak with was no longer there.

Aaron was gone.

• • •

After a bit of searching, I found him on the playground. I climbed the ladder to the wooden castle structure that housed the highest of the two slides, my stomach a strange tangle of nerves. In the two months we’d known each other, I’d never been nervous about talking to Aaron, not about anything. Not that we’d actually talked much prior to this trip. But something had changed this week and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

He’d dropped Scott’s appearance. The black eye was still there, along with a few angry scratches on his throat that I hadn’t noticed yesterday. He sat with his back against the sanded wooden slats, legs pulled up to his chest, fiddling with something in his lap. I sat down across from him. The platform wasn’t very large—it certainly wasn’t made for two grown men to have a private powwow—and seemed even smaller until he broke the pressing silence.

“Somebody left this,” Aaron said. He held up a small toy car, the thick plastic kind you gave to a toddler.

“They probably don’t have a very high theft rate around here.” The joke fell flat. I scrubbed both hands through my hair, clueless as to exactly what I wanted to say. No, that wasn’t entirely true. “I never said thank you.”

Aaron’s eyebrows lifted. “For what?”

“Saving my life yesterday.”

“You’re welcome. But maybe don’t jump in front of crashing helicopters anymore, okay? You scared the hell out of me.”

My pulse jumped. The truth of his statement shined through in his eyes. Green eyes. Aaron’s eyes.

Stop that!

“Well, I didn’t intend to get blown up and half-drowned, you know,” I said, trying to find some levity.

“Just like you didn’t intend to get blown through a window by Deuce back in June?”

Definitely not. That had hurt like hell, and I still had scars on my feet from the earth explosion that had propelled me up and out like a rocket—right through a plate-glass window. “I do seem to attract unwanted explosions. It’s all part of this superhero gig, I guess.”

“Risking your life for other people.” Not a question, just a resigned statement of fact.

“Sometimes.”

“I don’t understand that.” Aaron shook his head hard, a strange misery creasing his face. “I mean, I’d die willingly to save my father or brother, without hesitation. I just don’t understand dying for a stranger. How can you measure their life as more important than yours?”

An excellent question, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. Both Aaron and King had grown up in very different environments from mine, with different values and beliefs. My mother had died saving the life of another. While I possessed no specific death wish, going out in the same way didn’t scare me as much as it probably should. It seemed like the only way to make her proud.

“It’s not about whose life has more value,” I said. “Rangers were no different from police officers or firemen. Our job is to help others, and sometimes that comes at a cost. What I do is no different from what Jimmy did for you.”

Aaron’s face twisted into something angry and grief-stricken. “Jimmy died because our sisters were psychotic.”

“Partly, yes. King was there. You know Jimmy and Noah would have done anything to get Aaron back safely, including die for him. It’s what family does.”

He didn’t respond, just pinched the bridge of his nose.

“My mother was killed the same way when I was twelve,” I said, hoping to get this point across. Aaron dropped his hand and stared at me, surprised. “She was fighting with a new Ranger, against some Banes, and one of them turned her own powers against her. She saved the other Ranger’s life, a woman who was practically a stranger to me, but my mother still died.”

“The Bane turned her own powers against her?” Aaron’s quizzical expression smoothed out into shock. I hadn’t intended to let so many details slip, but he knew the island residents and their powers just as well as I did. “F*ck, Ethan, did McTaggert kill your mother?”

My insides quaked for the intimate detail I was about to share with someone who, less than four days ago, had barely been a friend. “Yes, he did.” One more level of weight came off my shoulders with that confession. “Just like someone over there killed Teresa’s father, and probably Gage’s brother, too.”

Aaron stared at me with open surprise. “Yesterday, how did you look him in the face and not want to kill him?”

“Trust me, I wanted to kill him. He was part of the reason I volunteered to come out for this job. I’d created this monster in my head, someone I’d have no trouble killing. And then I met the man and he had a son, and he wasn’t the bogeyman anymore. Whatever McTaggert did in the past, I won’t be responsible for taking Andrew’s father away from him.”

“It’s never easy to lose a parent.” His eyes unfocused. “The Scotts died a few years ago, but it was one of the hardest times of my—of Aaron’s—life. When King almost lost Dr. Kinsey . . . losing two fathers . . .”

I got it. This wasn’t the conversation I’d intended to have when I sought Aaron out, but we were starting to understand each other, and I was glad.

“Can I ask you something?” Aaron said.

“Sure.”

“Did you ever know your father?”

Loaded question incoming in three, two, one . . .

I sorted through a dozen ways to answer him without lying, because I was really exhausted by it. Tired of hiding the darker parts of myself from everyone, because I was afraid of how my friends would react. Telling Aaron first seemed both perfectly natural and unreasonably wrong. Didn’t Teresa or Dahlia or Marco deserve to know these secrets first?

“I didn’t know who he was until just before my mother died,” I replied. “She finally told me, but then the War got worse, our powers were taken, and I never got the chance to seek him out.”

“Is he still alive?”

He was alive fifteen minutes ago, so— “As far as I know.”

“And you haven’t tried—”

“Can we not? Please?” Talking about this was going to lead to more lies, and I just didn’t have the stomach for it. “I’m going to be twenty-nine years old next month. I think I’ve grown past the point of needing my father’s approval, even if I thought he’d give it.”

“Fair enough.”

Desperate to shine the conversational spotlight away from me, I said, “Can I ask you something now?”

Aaron unfolded his legs and stretched them out across the floor of the fort, his feet coming to rest a few inches from my hip. He lifted both shoulders in an exaggerated shrug made less effective by the worried slant of his eyebrows. “Ask away,” he said.

“Earlier, when you were talking to Ji— McTaggert about teenagers who left home, sometimes without telling their family about their secrets . . . was that as personal as it sounded?”

He didn’t seem surprised by my question, but still hesitated before answering. “Yes, it was, but probably not for the reason you think.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what I think. That’s why I asked.”

“I’m amazed Dahlia didn’t tell you.”

Dahlia knows? Which makes sense, you idiot, she shares his brother’s body and thoughts.

“You may have missed it,” I said, “but Dahlia and I haven’t been very close since she joined with Noah. It’s hard to have a private conversation when someone else is listening.”

“Good point.”

“So?”

“So I flaked out on my family when I was nineteen. I ran off. Even after my parents died, I was too much of a selfish prick to go back and help Noah run the shop and take care of Jimmy. I was living the worst possible stereotype of a life I could.”

“Doing drugs and partying?”

Aaron studied me a moment. “You’re not playing dumb, are you.” It was not a question. “No, you aren’t. I suppose Dahlia is better at keeping secrets than I thought. Not that I ever asked her to.”

All the double-talk was getting on my nerves. “Can you fill me in, please?”

“Ethan, I’m gay.”

Time came to a standstill for a beat while that sank in. Of all the things I’d expected to come tumbling out of his mouth, those three words were not it. Not by a long shot. And yet, it was somehow the only explanation that made any sense as our previous conversations clicked into place in vivid color. How had I not guessed? Or had I guessed and simply ignored it, like I ignored myself? Pretended it wasn’t there, because that made things simpler?

At least, it used to.

My shocked silence went on too long while I grasped for words, because Aaron frowned and said, “Is that a problem?”

“No. I just didn’t expect you to say that.”

“Obviously.”

An opportunity teased me from the other side of a canyon—an enormous crack in myself I’d yet to conquer and heal. An opportunity to begin trusting others with a secret I’d hidden for so long. I wanted to have the confidence to say it as plainly as Aaron just had, and to face the fallout with my friends and family.

But I despised going into basements for a reason.

“And before you ask,” Aaron said, “King knew going into the joining. It’s who Aaron was, and it’s who we are. Who I am.” He smiled. “Granted, the whole thing is a little jumbled sometimes. I mean, Aaron has all the sexual experience, while King has none.” Off my surprised look, he added, “The Changelings grew up in a lab, Ethan. They can’t reproduce, so they were never taught about sex or exposed to it.”

Sometimes trying to wrap my head around the motley crew of personalities in his head made me feel a little crazy. I couldn’t imagine being in his shoes—half of me a lab-rat virgin, the other a recovering party animal—the whole shebang stuck in a house for two months, unable to go out and explore. Experience life. Figure out what I wanted.

No wonder Aaron had jumped at the chance to come to New York.

“That’s . . .” I couldn’t find a word that summed it up.

“Crazy?” Aaron said, still smiling.

“Kind of, yeah.”

“Try being in my head sometime.”

I laughed. “No thanks. It sounds pretty crowded already.”

“That it is, but I’m grateful for the noise. It gave me a second chance at the life Aaron Scott had thrown away.” He ducked his head, fascinated by the toy truck once again. “I don’t like the methods we had to use, and I have to live with knowing I’ve destroyed lives to get here.”

Killed people, you mean. But the more time I spent with Aaron, the grayer that definition became. I’d seen hints of Miguel Ortega come out in his persona of Scott Torres. I didn’t pretend to know what happened after death, or how that figured into where Ortega and the others were now. Restless? At peace?

So much gray.

“Why did you run away from your family?” I asked. “Didn’t they take your coming out well?”

“They took it really well, actually. My brothers, too. It was a little weird at first, obviously, but they never looked at me like I was diseased. I never felt like they loved me less.”

Envy seized my heart and refused to let go—and hot on its heels was utter disbelief. “So why did you leave?”

Aaron let out a deep, harsh breath. “It’s hard to explain. I struggled with being gay for years before I told my parents, partly because I was afraid of how they’d react. And partly, too, because I just did not want to be gay. I thought if I denied it, it would go away.” He rubbed his nose and looked a little nauseated. “I told them because I hoped they’d confirm it was wrong, that they’d help me change it. When they didn’t, I gave myself permission to self-destruct.

“I nearly OD’ed the night Queen kidnapped me. So I suppose that crazy bitch actually saved my life.”

“I’m glad.” Well, hell, that slipped out without permission.

Aaron’s eyebrows lifted a bit. “Thank you. So am I.”

We held each other’s gaze for a beat—until my walkie beeped. I yanked it out of my belt, both annoyed and relieved by the interruption.

“Swift,” I said.

“West,” Teresa said. “I finally got us permission to view the crash site. Meet me in front of the Warren in five minutes.”