His hair looks ridiculous, but it doesn’t detract from his other features. He stands tall and confident even under the glares of the other humans. I’ve seen him scared and he doesn’t look like he’s worried, but I feel just the slightest edge of unease rolling off him and curling in my stomach. The familiar heat of anger is buzzing in my body too, but it’s not mine. It’s more of a slow burn than the sudden, intense flare that signals my own emotions. What is happening to me?
My breath stutters in my chest. This has happened before. Someone else’s emotions, someone else’s thoughts burrowing into my head. Unwelcome. Hurting. Knife. Blood. Hands. Hands on hair. Hands on neck. Hands on…Nonononono.
A screech. Palms pressed to temples, I fall to my knees. Get them out. Out. Out. Out. Banging hands on head. I forgot to breathe again. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly my breaths even out, oxygen bringing reality back into focus, bringing Flint’s gun back into focus, the gun that’s pointed at Lir.
“Get out of her head.” Flint’s words are a hiss beside my ear.
“I’m not… I didn’t…Blazes, do you really think I would do that to her?”
With one shaky hand, I push the barrel of Flint’s gun away. “Stop. Not his fault.” My tongue loosens with each word I manage to push out. “A flashback. A panic attack. Old news now, right?”
“Jesus, Jax.” Flint puts his arms around me and pulls me back into his chest. “Since when do you have them when you’re awake and no one else is anywhere near you?”
“Since today?” Breathing is still work right now. “At least one that bad. It’s been a rough couple weeks.” I clutch his arms folded in front of me and close my eyes as my heartbeat stops racing.
The gray sludge of sadness laps at me from across the driveway. Lir. I wasn’t imagining it then. I open my eyes and meet his. There are so many emotions there I almost drown. Sorrow. Anger. Regret. And even something else that I don’t want to face. I see a realization cross his face and the flow of emotions from him slams shut, leaving me strangely empty.
* * * * * * *
I spend about twenty minutes getting my bearings back before following Flint to the other side of the house and walking into the woods. He glances back behind us as he walks until the house cannot be seen through the trees.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He places a hand on my shoulder and comes to a stop.
Still a little shaky, I almost dodge his touch but I pull myself together before he notices. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” Squinting at him, I tilt my head to the side. “Why did you assume Lir was doing something back there? What did you mean by get out of my head?”
Flint blows a loud breath out through his lips and paces a few steps with his hands clasped together behind his back. He pauses and looks up at me from under his brow before taking a few more steps. “They have some sort of mind connection thing…Jace can…He does it too. That’s how he’s always able to calm you. He can push emotions at you or something.” He shrugs and shakes his head. “I don’t really know how it all works, but I figured you were looking at…him… when it happened. He all but admitted to being in your head, you realize that right?”
“Yes,” I say. Up to this point, I’d been handling the whole half alien thing rather well. I don’t feel any different, but the idea that Jace had been in my head outside of whatever twin connection we shared sends my mind reeling. How different are we? Am I? What other strange abilities will manifest? How much did Jace keep from me? How long has he been manipulating my emotions? And has Lir been doing the same?
“Though, as much as I don’t want to admit it, I don’t think he was trying to hurt you,” Flint says, breaking me out of the escalating cycle of worry spinning in my brain. He rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “He seemed genuinely upset to see you in that much stress.” I raise my eyebrows and he frowns. “Doesn’t mean I trust him. There’s a lot more to the situation with Jace and the aliens, a lot of things you don’t know…”
“You’d be surprised about how much I do know. I know about Jace. What he’s done.”
He flinches and purses his lips together. “He didn’t want to do any of that. That’s not him.”
“I know that.” I fold my arms over my chest. “As much as he’s obviously hidden from me, Jace is not a bad person.”
His mouth turns up into a small, sad smile. “When did you find out?”
“A few days ago.”
A wrinkle forms on his brow. “But… you’ve been gone for weeks? How’d you find out about it?”
“Lir told me.”
Flint stops pacing altogether and gapes at me. “He knows. He knows who he’s helping and he’s still doing it?”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
His eyes roam back toward the house and he shakes his head softly. “That’s interesting.” Another noisy exhalation. “How much do you trust him?”
Good question. I trust Lir with my life, but with Jace’s? I’m still not so sure about that. “Why?” I ask
“Jace was assisting my father with an attack plan.”
“A plan to attack what?”
“The city. The aliens.”
I scoff. “Impossible. There’s no way he could get through the barrier.”
“The alien ships get in and out,” says Flint. “How do you think they do that?” When I don’t respond, he continues. “He hasn’t told you much then. There’s a small device installed on each ship that lets them pass. That’s what Jace stole off the last downed ship. That’s what got them all worried and trigger happy. They know we can get in now.”
“Why hasn’t Dane already attacked? What’s he waiting for?”
Flint laughs nervously and rubs his hand over his head. “That’s a funny thing. Seems the device disappeared the same night you did.”
The little metal object I took from the locked desk drawer. Has to be. “So his plan was what? Send you out to drag me back?”
“Uh, not exactly. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Well, I was planning on rescuing you from the erk,” he says dryly. I open my mouth to respond, but he holds up a hand to stop me. “Obviously, that’s unnecessary. But …I’d like you to give me the device.”
“So you can take it back to Bridgelake and hand it over to your father?”
He shakes his head. “No. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not stupid. The second he’s got that thing back, he’ll attack and he won’t be selective about targets.” He pauses and swallows. When he looks at me again, his eyes are shiny with the start of tears. “Jace is in there and…for now…he’s at least alive. If there’s any chance… I can’t lose him.” He bites his lip. “I promised him I’d protect you, but instead I’m begging you to go in and get him. I’ll hold on to the device only as a backup plan, just in case…I need to come in after you, in case you can’t get out on your own.”
“Lir won’t let anything bad happen to me.”
“You don’t know that. I know you think he’s being up front with you, but what if he’s not? You have no idea what you’re getting into in that city. They might look like us, but they’re still aliens. They came here and never offered to help us, never suggested integration, nothing. Just holed up in the city and ignored us. But it turns out they’ve been here a while, you and Jace are proof of that. What if they’ve been here even longer than that? What if they caused the Collapse and now they’re just biding their time while the rest of us die off?”
The implications of that make my head spin. What if…?
He must take my silence as understanding. “As crude as it is, there’s a reason for the breeder camps. Fewer children are being born and those that are, they’re sickly. Every child born in the last ten years.” I fill in the rest of that thought on my own. Every child born since the aliens moved into the city…