Six
Common Ground
From the moment the copter touched down and ejected us sixteen kids, we ran. We’d been told to keep ahead of the fighting, that we were the last line of defense if the final Ranger Units fell. Except that not all of the Banes were behind us, and Mayhem wasn’t the first we encountered in Central Park.
One hit us near a stone fountain of an angel that overlooked a lake. No one saw him hiding there, not until he shot something at us the size of golf balls. A couple of them hit a girl named Rebecca right in the chest; she was the first of us to fall that day. Twelve years old. The Bane, Shard, had the power to shoot ice balls like bullets. Janel Murphy was our group’s ice manipulator, and despite being less than half his age, she kicked his ass in record speed—right into the lake behind the fountain. Then she froze it over.
I’d been surprised to discover later that Peter “Shard” Keene had survived being turned into a Banesicle.
And I was stunned stupid to find myself looking him in the face again.
Something in my expression must have warned him off, because Keene stopped walking while he was still a good six feet away from our group. He looked at Mai Lynn, less confident now, like he couldn’t remember why he’d walked over in the first place. I wrangled in my temper before I sent him back over to the swing set on a sharp gust of air. Maybe all the way back to the lake, if I put enough effort into it.
“You two have met?” Aaron asked.
Hooray for Captain Obvious. I tossed Aaron a nasty look, and he started studying his fingernails.
“Maybe this is the wrong time,” Keene said.
“Ethan is here in a professional capacity,” Simon said. “I don’t think he’ll take a swing at you, if you speak your mind.”
This time Simon got the nasty look. He wasn’t wrong, though, and he’d just done an artful job of reminding me why I wouldn’t take my anger out on Keene. I was here as a representative of our group of ex-Rangers. I was here representing Teresa West, our leader and the woman fighting hardest for the people in this prison to receive full pardons for past crimes. Maybe I came with a hidden agenda, but I wouldn’t do anything to embarrass Teresa or jeopardize her initiatives.
Keene took a few more steps in my direction. While he had a good six inches of height on me, he seemed to stoop his body in such a way that put us at eye level. I watched him, unable to get my voice to work and ask him what the hell he wanted.
“I don’t remember you, but I know who you are,” Keene said. “I know you were one of those kids that day.”
Something squeezed my throat and made it hard to breathe. Those kids? That day? A whole cyclone of negative emotions kept me from doing anything except glare at him, while I worked to make sure I didn’t accidentally send a real cyclone swirling across the playground. I would not scare those kids.
“It don’t mean much now,” Keene continued, “but I’m sorry. Sorry for everything I did back then. Maybe it was war, but that’s no excuse to attack kids. Not ever. We were wrong.”
Well, knock me over with a feather . . .
My internal whirlwind settled a bit, and that loosened its hold on my vocal chords. I surprised myself by practically whispering words I had every right to scream: “She was only twelve.”
Keene didn’t ask whom I meant; he knew I was talking about Rebecca, the little girl he’d killed in a time of war. He blinked rapidly, and I felt oddly ashamed for bringing a grown man this close to tears. “I know,” he said. “And I’ll see her face every day until I die.”
He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. “Anyhow, I ain’t asking for forgiveness, because I don’t deserve it. But I had words I needed to say.”
I was glad he didn’t ask for forgiveness. Forgiving him was not my job, nor was it something I felt capable of doing—not even lying about it to make him feel better. I knew how heavy guilt could get when you carried it around, unable to talk about it with the people who needed to know the truth. I also knew fake forgiveness didn’t help anyone, much less the person asking for it.
Still, Keene had made an effort. I could man up and do the same, damn it. “Thank you for saying that.”
“Lots of folks here feel the same way,” Keene said. “Most of us were doing what we were told by the guy with the biggest balls.”
Simon had said something similar once, that many of the Banes followed Specter in those final years because he was the strongest. His ability to control your mind remotely made his physical body difficult to locate and him impossible to defeat. He ruled through fear. Not for the first time, I wondered if anyone in Manhattan shed tears when the bastard finally died.
“I get that.” And I did, except . . . “Can I ask you a question?”
Keene gave a slow nod. “Sure.”
I glanced at Simon and Mai Lynn, so they understood they were included in this one. “If you feared and disliked Specter so much, why the deception with his tracking collar? Why pretend he was here all these years and keep an innocent man imprisoned in his place?”
Keene’s eyes went wide, then furrowed in confusion.
“Ethan,” Mai Lynn said sharply, and I gave her my undivided attention. “No one in the Warren was involved in that, I promise you. The people you’re looking for? They’ll have those answers.”
Something in her eyes made me believe her. She’d been incredibly candid so far and hadn’t given me any reason to distrust her. “Fair enough,” I said.
“I’ll let you be, then,” Keene said. His right hand twitched, like he was going to offer to shake and changed his mind. I wasn’t ready to go that far into the realm of friendliness yet, though, so I stuck my hands in my pockets and gave him a polite nod instead. Keene nodded back, then returned to his tire swing.
“The playground was his idea,” Mai Lynn said after he’d gone. “I think he finds some peace in the kids, especially when they play.”
Peace—if only it was as simple as finding it in a child’s laughter. Most of us wouldn’t truly know peace until all our secrets were out in the open, all past sins revealed. But that kind of peace always came at a personal cost.
Some things just weren’t worth it.
• • •
The garden was better than I’d imagined from the description. It covered a large swath of land northeast of the playground, and this late in the summer, it had stalks and branches and bushes ripe with vegetables and fruit of all sorts. Rows of corn, tomatoes, string beans, cabbage, peppers, even squash and eggplant. Heads bobbed around in the different rows, hoeing and harvesting and occasionally tasting. The volume of food they’d produced in a single year astounded me.
“It wasn’t always like this, unfortunately,” Mai Lynn said as she led us past a couple of blackberry bushes. “This was a city park, after all, and not exactly fertile ground for planting. It took several years to turn the soil properly and get it ready to grow anything. That first tomato was a very big deal for us. We were slowly able to expand and add other crops.”
She swept her hand out, indicating the entire garden. “This, though, is one of the ways our powers have made our lives better. Water for the garden was always an issue, but no longer. Old seeds thrive. Our children finally have all the food they could ever want.” She glanced at Simon, a sad, regretful look.
When Caleb first left Manhattan, he’d been scrawny and underfed. He hadn’t had the sun-kissed health that those four children on the playground possessed. In some ways he still didn’t reflect the same level of health, since he spent a good deal of time inside, hiding from the outside world that hated him for being Meta.
The four children I’d seen today seemed as normal as any kids in any city park. They were thriving here. This man-made island prison was the only life they’d ever known, and it had actually been improved by the reappearance of our superpowers. They’d never known traffic jams or television or computers. They’d never known war. Would their lives be improved if they left this place?
Or would the opposite happen?
“We’ve done this without fertilizers and chemicals,” Mai Lynn said. “That cannot be said for the majority of produce consumed in the outside world.”
True. The affects of the War on certain parts of the country (not to mention the environment) meant nearly fifty percent of fresh fruit and vegetables were grown in hothouses, using bioengineering methods most people didn’t want to hear about as long as they got flawless (and cheap) tomatoes at the supermarket tomorrow.
“Our powers could improve situations in a lot of places,” I said out loud before I could stop myself. One of Teresa’s favorite topics to wax poetic about was our potential roles as instruments of change, rather than simply putting out fires (real and metaphorical). Unfortunately, even in the places where we’d do the most good, people were still too suspicious of us to allow us to help—even with something as simple as food production in a drought-ravaged state.
“Or make situations infinitely worse,” Aaron said.
“Obviously, we still rely on the government for certain things,” Mai Lynn said, as though neither of us had spoken. “We don’t have the facilities or raw ingredients for producing bread or meat or dairy, and what we receive in the monthly drops is rationed as best we can. We also rely on them for medicine and other supplies, but as you can see, we are not wholly dependent on government charity.”
“No, you’re not,” I said. And, depending on what happened after November’s election, it was probably a very good thing. Meanwhile, I had no idea how I’d describe all of this to Teresa later.
• • •
Dinner at Simon’s house was a subdued affair, with Caleb doing the bulk of the talking. He chattered on about the book Luisa had helped him read—and I figured out she wasn’t just a nanny but also his tutor, and the kid (six years old next month) was already at a third-grade reading level. The midget continued to impress the hell out of me. After Caleb’s oral thesis on the lessons one can learn in Bridge to Terabithia (I’d never read it, but it didn’t surprise me that Caleb had connected to what was apparently a pretty tragic book), I excused myself to go to the apartment across the hall.
Teresa didn’t let her phone get through its first ring before she answered, sounding a little out of breath. “Ethan?”
“It’s me,” I said, then mentally subtracted three hours from the time. What was she in the middle of? “Should I call back?”
“What? No.” Some sort of thumping noise cut off into silence. “Okay, I’m inside now. Sorry.”
“Did I interrupt?”
“Just a little training exercise with Kate and Denny.”
I settled into one of the old beach chairs and winced when the fabric groaned a warning at me. “How’s it going with the new kids?”
“Throwing attitude, but I think they’re figuring out we’re on their side. Kate’s still pretty prickly, though. It’ll take time to smooth out her rough edges.”
“So sorry I’m missing it.”
“I bet.” I could see her rolling her eyes, despite three thousand miles between us. Teresa was just that predictable when it came to my sarcasm. “So what’s happening in New York?”
I picked at a frayed edge of the chair as I sorted through my words. “It’s been . . . eye-opening, to say the least.”
“Tell me.”
Reports and satellite images communicated only so much to the person viewing them, so I filled in all of the missing cracks and crevices for Teresa. Told her about the Warren, the community they’d built, and the rules they’d established. She made a funny noise when I described the children at the playground—something like surprise, with a heaping helping of sadness. The garden got a similar sound, only this time more surprised than sad. I could imagine exactly what her face looked like, too—eyebrows up, mouth half open.
“They’ve done a hell of a lot over there in the last eight months,” I said. “A hell of a lot more than I expected.”
“Sounds like.”
“They don’t want to leave, but they don’t want to be prisoners anymore.”
“I know. What do you think of that?”
Two days ago, that had been an easy question to answer. Not so much now. I tapped my fingers against my thigh. “I’m not sure. Mai Lynn is pretty sincere, and the few other people I’ve spoken with have all been the same.”
“But?”
“No buts. It isn’t the people in the Warren who worry me, it’s the nine people we haven’t found yet. They’re the ones who kept the Specter doppelganger prisoner for all those years.”
Teresa sucked in a sharp breath that whistled over the phone. After a moment, she said, “In a way, that’s good to know. It certainly helps Simon’s case for the Warren.”
“Yeah.”
The apartment door opened and Aaron stepped inside with two small plates. Something fluffy and vaguely dessert-like was piled on each. The moment he closed the door behind him, he dropped “Scott” completely in favor of his own face. He held up one plate. I nodded, then pointed at the floor. He put a plate down next to my chair, and I got a whiff of sweetness and berries. It looked like some kind of pudding or pie or something. Aaron sank into the other chair and scooped up a big mouthful from his own plate.
“So how’s Aaron? Behaving?” Teresa asked.
I caught my laugh and it turned into an abbreviated snort. Speak of the devil, he’s already appeared. “So far,” I said. “The only person who questioned his disguise was Caleb.”
Teresa laughed softly. Aaron flashed me a curious look over a mouthful of dessert, and I chose not to tell him he had whipped cream on his nose.
“Leave it to Caleb,” she said. “How’s he?”
“Something gives me the impression that he’ll be the leader of us all in twenty years. That kid’s too smart for his own good.”
“Leader of all Metas?”
“I was thinking the country.”
“Interesting premonition. Where’d this psychic streak come from?”
“Maybe Simon’s rubbing off on me.”
Aaron choked on his food, and I shot him a dirty look.
“What was that?” Teresa asked.
“Someone who needs to learn to chew properly,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” Her voice changed when she asked, “Tell me the truth, Ethan?”
“About what?”
“How are you? After going back to Central Park?”
A flood of emotion filled my chest and I pressed a hand over my heart, like that could stop it. Blood roared in my ears. I didn’t want to relive everything I’d felt stepping off the copter for the first time. Looking Keene in the eyes and knowing what he’d done. Finding a small piece of paradise in a ruined, rotting city.
Aaron, the nosy bastard, had stopped eating and was staring at me like I might spontaneously combust. I waved him off, then stood. Crossed to the apartment’s barred window and looked out over a silent street.
“Ethan?” Teresa asked.
“Can I get back to you on that?” I said.
“Yeah, sorry. I’d be there in your place if I could.”
“I know. Thanks.”
Someone on her end spoke. The conversation was muffled as Teresa answered, probably with her hand over the phone. “Ethan, Noah wants to talk to his brother,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Do you have anything else?”
“Not at the moment. I’ll keep you apprised.”
“Thanks.”
I handed the phone off to Aaron, who took it with a suspicious look. “Noah,” I said.
Aaron smiled his first genuine smile all day. “You left before Caleb broke out this fruit and cream thing he made with Luisa,” he said, pointing down at the plate he’d brought over for me.
“Thanks,” I said.
He took the phone into the empty bedroom and closed the door, so I sat back down and ate. The instant sugar rush nearly sent me bouncing around the room. I didn’t know what was worse—the cookie crust underneath, the syrup drenching the fruit, or the sugar in the whipped cream. I ate it, though, and made a mental note to compliment Caleb on it the next time our paths crossed. He was brilliant with books, but his sweet tooth needed a little toning down.
Aaron and Noah’s conversation didn’t last long. Aaron came back out before I’d finished choking down dessert, and he handed me back the phone. He looked troubled, almost worried, and I found myself asking, “Is Noah all right?”—aka, is Dahlia all right?
“Same as always.” Nice non-answer.
“Right.”
“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Aaron said as he sank into his chair.
“I’m not a huge sweets person.” I stabbed at the dessert. Half of my opponent still remained, but I was determined not to send any back to the pint-size chef.
“Really?”
“I prefer salty stuff.” I wouldn’t have minded a huge chunk of rock salt to suck on after this.
“I’ll finish it, if you don’t want it.”
I shoved the plate at him. “As long as I don’t have to scrape you off the ceiling later.”
“You won’t,” he said with a soft chuckle. “It might be a Recombinant thing, but stuff like sugar and caffeine don’t really affect me.”
Fascinating. “What about alcohol?”
Aaron’s fork scraped sharply across his plate, and he frowned. “Our father never allowed alcohol in the lab at Weatherfield. Since joining with Aaron, I’ve avoided the stuff for obvious reasons.”
F*ck me, I’m an idiot. Of course he hadn’t tested the alcohol theory. Aaron Scott was a former drug addict and recreational drunk. Just like Noah’s joining with the Changeling called Ace had cured him of leukemia, Aaron’s joining with King had healed the ravages caused by his addictions. But it may not have dismissed the cravings or susceptibility to temptation that came with addiction.
“That was a stupid question,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Not stupid. Maybe a little insensitive, but not stupid.”
I started to reply, but the sharp quirk of his eyebrow clued me in—he was teasing me, the jerk. I rolled my eyes. He stuffed another big bite of Sugar Shock into his mouth.
“We do have pretty high metabolisms, though,” Aaron said after he’d cleaned the plate. “So my guess is that I’d have to consume vast quantities of alcohol in order to even get buzzed. Same for drugs.”
“Then let’s hope you never need surgery, because anesthesia would be a bitch.”
He laughed. “Good point.”
Aaron collected the plates and left. I stared up at the ceiling, trying to gather my thoughts and failing miserably. Tomorrow we’d go into Manhattan and search for the nine missing Banes—and considering they were tangentially involved in Specter’s attack on us back in January, I had no qualms about still calling them Banes. But Mai Lynn? Keene? Muriel? What were they now?
Aaron returned with two bottles of water. I thanked him, then gulped down half of mine, eager to wash away some of the sticky sweetness left behind by that dessert. He settled back into his chair and stared at me until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“What?” I asked.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Ask away.”
“What are you looking for out there?”
“Out where?”
“Don’t be an a*shole, Ethan.” The sharpness in his tone made me bristle. “In Manhattan.”
“What am I looking for in Manhattan?” I repeated. “None of your f*cking business, Aaron.”
“Really? None of my f*cking business?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, green eyes flashing angrily. “I watched you today, you know. I saw your face when we landed, when we first saw the Warren. When we were talking to Keene at the playground. Every single time, you looked like you’d rather stick your hand in a meat grinder than be here, so why are you?”
An unexpected rage washed over me, and I clutched the arms of my chair, keenly aware of the swirling air. None of my standard lines—someone needed to represent our group, it’s not personal, bite me—seemed right. I wasn’t about to tell Aaron the truth, though, not when I’d denied the truth to people I actually cared about.
I didn’t answer him. Just glared at the opposite wall where a refrigerator had once stood, had once been part of a functional kitchen. Now just a gaping hole, unfinished. Empty.
“Fine,” Aaron said after several minutes of silence. “Whatever your real reason is for being here? Make sure it doesn’t get someone else killed, okay?”
That low blow hit me like a cold slap to the face, and my rage evaporated in an instant. The last thing on earth I wanted to do was be the cause of more deaths—I was already responsible for so many. Deaths of friends.
Almost three years ago, I’d hit a wall in my life and been desperate for a connection to someone. Someone who shared my past, my fears, and my sense of alienation from other people—and not because I was gay. Because I was a former Meta. I missed the friends I’d grown up with, so I started looking for them. It wasn’t easy, not by a long shot. Our foster records had been sealed, and some of our names had been changed through adoptions.
I’d found so many—Renee, William, Teresa, Janel, Angela, Joshua, Adam. Some struggling, some surviving, a few actually thriving in their new lives. But I couldn’t make myself approach any of them. And then last summer, an ATF agent showed up at my apartment and demanded every scrap of information I’d collected on my old friends. The agent had used the name Garth Anders, shown me a badge, and I’d given him what I had—only to find out later that Anders had been dead nearly two years at that point.
Because of my research, someone posing as a dead ATF agent had known where to find nine of the twelve of us still alive. Six months later, seven of us were dead at Specter’s hand. Specter, whose powers were being controlled by a former ATF employee who had once worked with the real Garth Anders.
Maybe I had no real proof my information led to their deaths, but I didn’t have proof otherwise. I hadn’t been able to save Angela the day we fought Specter in the Arizona desert. I couldn’t save Janel the day we fought her, possessed by Specter, in the Medical Center corridor. The heavy weight of guilt I carried over those deaths—my fault, not my fault, it didn’t seem to matter anymore—hung like a fifty-pound stone around my neck.
Make sure it doesn’t get someone else killed, okay?
“Ethan?”
A hand closed over my forearm, and I jerked back, heart pounding, momentarily disoriented. I blinked Aaron into focus, his hands up and expression startled, and felt like the a*shole he’d accused me of being. “Sorry,” I said.
“No problem.” He dropped his hands, but his face remained wary, even suspicious. “You okay?”
“If I say yes, will you believe me?”
“No.”
“Question answered, then.”
He grunted. “Whatever. So, to intentionally change the subject, what do you think of the Warren?”
I willed myself to relax and let go of the negative emotions churning around inside me. How Aaron managed to stir them up so easily, and with record speed, was beyond me. “I was genuinely impressed by everything they’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time,” I replied.
“They’re working together, despite their differences, to create a home and a life for themselves. A safe place for their kids.”
“According to Simon and Mai Lynn, that’s what they want. A place away from regular people, where they can be themselves.”
“I guess we both know what wanting that is like.” Something in Aaron’s tone got my full attention. He was staring past me, face soft, lost in his own thoughts. And it hit me like an anvil before he said it. “I wouldn’t mind a place where I could just be Aaron, without hiding behind Scott’s or anyone else’s face.”
I had no idea what to say to that. In the two months I’d known him, Aaron had basically been a prisoner in Hill House, unable to leave the grounds for fear of being recognized by the police. He’d said over and over that he intended to remain Aaron for the rest of his life, which precluded the possibility of ever being someone else. Today he’d interacted with more people in three hours than he had in months. He’d walked around in the sunshine and spoken to strangers—all while borrowing someone else’s face, since his own was wanted for several murders.
I understood the appeal of a community like the Warren—not just to Aaron, but also to the Metas hiding elsewhere around the world, afraid to come forward and admit what they were. We’d tried to create a safe haven for Metas at Hill House, but our space was limited.
Aaron was a Recombinant, though, not a Meta. He’d been created in a test tube as a replacement for Metas and their powers. Would the residents of the Warren welcome him if they knew the truth? Had Aaron even asked himself that question?
“You’d want to live here?” I asked. “If the government pardoned the residents, shut down the prison, and allowed them to stay?”
“Maybe.” Aaron sank deeper into his chair. “I don’t really belong anywhere, Ethan. Maybe here I wouldn’t have to hide. And I’m sure they could use a doctor.”
“A doctor?” But Aaron wasn’t— “Oh.” Shit. He’d ask Dr. Kinsey to come along to New York. And if Dr. Kinsey left Los Angeles, then Double Trouble wouldn’t be far behind. We could lose our house doctor, as well as Dahlia. The idea of losing someone else I cared about, even to something as innocuous as a cross-country move, made my stomach clench.
“I go where my family goes,” Aaron said. “But it’s a thought worth considering.”
“Right.”
“Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Live in the Warren, if it’s no longer a prison?”
That I didn’t say no right away surprised the hell out of me. I didn’t say yes, either. “Tearing down walls and removing the armed guards doesn’t make it any less of a prison, if you’re afraid to ever leave.”
Aaron didn’t answer.