I automatically took a step after them and did what I would have done under any other circumstances—tried to hear what they were thinking. My ability was erratic, at best. I lived in a world of constant noise, usually a dull static at the back of my mind that I worked to ignore, but occasionally, when I focused—or when someone was a particularly loud thinker—I’d get something useful.
This time, though, I got nothing. Literally nothing. No static, no indistinct mumbles.
I frowned. It had to be a fluke, a momentary gap. They were well within my range.
I listened harder, focusing specifically on them as they walked away.
But no, nothing. And the texture of silence surrounding them was different; it wasn’t a temporary quiet, a lull in mental acrobatics, but a complete absence of sound.
In an overpopulated hall, teeming with the emotions and thoughts of the humans surrounding us, they were a blessed blank space on an ink-blackened page. A void of peaceful silence amid all the screaming.
The quiet curled up in my ears and lured me forward, like the pie aroma in one of the old cartoons I’d watched in the lab. I wanted to follow. I wanted to plunge inside that bubble of emptiness and roll around in the delicious lack of sound. It felt right in a way that I’d never experienced before.
I moved on reflex, chasing that sensation of quiet. But after a step or two, someone moved in front of me to block my path, barring me with his body.
Get rid of him, instinct ordered.
Annoyed, I prepared to shove at this obstacle that tried to stand in the way of—
“Ariane, stop! Please!” Zane’s urgent whisper broke through, his hand tight on my arm.
I started at the sound of his voice, blinking rapidly, and looked up to find him staring at me, fear and frustration etched on his features.
His mouth tightened, the corners turned down, creating harsh lines on his face. I’d done that. I’d made him look so frightened and severe. “The guards.” He jerked his head in the direction the hybrids had taken.
I leaned out cautiously to peer around him. Sure enough, two large men in dark suits were trailing Laughlin’s hybrids at a discreet distance. Likely the same men we’d seen following them into the school. Obviously, whatever cover story Laughlin had provided for them allowed for guards to be an expected presence. Maybe they were supposed to be the children of a high-profile exec or something. That would make sense with what the teacher had said to me about “my father” when he thought I was Ford. No doubt the guards reported to Laughlin on a regular basis, keeping tabs on the hybrids and their exploits.
And I hadn’t even noticed them. I’d come this close to exposing us to more danger. I might have been able to talk Ford and the others into an alliance, but Laughlin’s paid security detail—goons was the colloquial term, I believe—wasn’t likely to be as amenable.
My heart beating in a panic, I retreated behind Zane again, just on the off chance that one of them would turn around. Zane might be mistaken for a normal human Linwood student. I would not, especially given the look of their charges.
“Are you okay?” Zane asked, his breathing uneven and too quick. I’d really scared him. Scared myself, too.
Folding my shaking arms over myself, I nodded rapidly, trying to clear my head. “Yeah, yes.”
“What happened?” he asked.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I couldn’t hear them.”
He frowned, not understanding. “What?”
Of course not. He’d have no idea what it was like to live with an incessant rolling murmur in the back of his mind, an ocean of voices swelling to drown out your own thoughts.
“You know I can hear thoughts.”
He nodded.
“Some people I can hear better than others, but I can get something from everyone.” I shook my head. “It’s a constant noise.” I paused, trying to think of how to explain it in a relatable way. “My father once threw a television away.” Actually, he’d smashed it to the floor first in a rare fit of anger. “He’d tried to fix it, but something in it was just broken. It emitted a high-pitched buzz whenever text appeared on the screen.” Which, given his news-watching tendencies, was pretty often. “It drove him crazy.” I gave a tight shrug. “It’s like that. All the time.”
Zane winced.
“I’ve learned to live with it, but I never imagined…” I heard the wonder in my voice and hated it, the weakness.
The smooth tone that indicated a class change sounded overhead, startling me. The students remaining in the hall scrambled in all directions.
Zane took my hand, his palm warm and reassuring against mine. “We need to get out of here,” he said grimly, and started down the hall, back toward the main entrance, pulling me along with him.
It took me a second to shake off the last vestiges of shock and twist free. “No, we can’t.”
He stiffened. “Look, I don’t know if you’re aware of what almost happened…”
I flinched at the censure in his voice but forced myself to ignore the emotion and focus on the salient strategic point. “Nothing has changed. Gaining their cooperation is still our best option.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “They completely ignored us. I think we should take that as the first bit of luck we’ve had in forever and get the hell out of here.”
“And do what? Go where?” I argued. “Besides, we’re here. They know we’re here. Retreating would send the wrong message.”
“And what message is that?” he asked, his mouth tight. “That we’re smart enough to leave while the leaving is good?”
I shook my head. “That we’re vulnerable, weak. Open to attack. It’s a basic principle of predator and prey. Running only confirms that you don’t believe you have the strength to win.”
“How about the ‘sitting duck principle’?” he hissed, tipping his head at a point behind me in the hall. I glanced over my shoulder and found a pair of teachers watching us with suspicion.
Zane was right; we couldn’t stand here, obvious targets, in the hallway. We’d be caught by the humans for sure. We needed a chance to regroup, rethink. Some place out of sight where no one would notice that we weren’t quite up to snuff as Linwood Academy students or that there seemed to be two Fords running around today.
“Come on.” I caught at his hand and tugged him deeper into school, away from the teachers.
He came along with me, not quite dragging his feet but making it clear that he was going against his better judgment.
I concentrated on the rooms beyond the hall, hidden behind heavy and polished wooden doors, listening to try to find an empty one. But with so many minds nearby, it was easier said than done.
“Here.” Across from a glass-enclosed courtyard filled with more of the brightly colored flowers and grass that appeared too green to be real, I found a “quiet” room and shoved the heavy wooden door open.
I stopped dead on the threshold, Zane bumping into my back and grabbing carefully at my arms to keep me from stumbling forward.
The room wasn’t like anything I’d seen at our school. First, the entire left wall was mirrored. Second, the space was virtually empty. Unlike almost every square inch of Ashe High, which had been occupied to beyond capacity, this room held only a few rows of chairs and a baby grand piano.
And a startled kid—young, swimming in his school-required blazer—seated on the piano bench.
So much for empty. But it was probably the best we were going to get.
I stepped inside and Zane followed, letting the door swing shut behind.
The kid at the piano saw us in the mirror. He froze, and then spun around to stare at us, his face pale and his throat working, as if he were trying to find words.
“Do you mind—” I began.
He nodded hastily, as if his head was loose, and gathered up his music, spilling half of it on the floor as he bolted out the door. I was beginning to think that Ford might have a reputation equal to or greater than that of Rachel Jacobs when it came to evoking fear and dislike among the populace.