Imagine Me
“Yes, sir,” Juliette says.
Anderson coughs. Fresh blood seeps from his wounds.
J gets to her feet and turns around, scanning the room for us, but I’m already rushing over to Warner, throwing my invisibility over us both. Warner seems a little stunned, but he’s miraculously uninjured.
I try to help him to his feet, and for the first time, he doesn’t push away my arm. I hear him inhale. Exhale.
Never mind, he’s a little injured.
I wait for him to do something, say something, but he just stands there, staring at J. And then—
He pulls back his invisibility.
I nearly scream.
J pivots when she spots him, and immediately runs forward. She picks up a table, throws it at us.
We dive out of the way so hard I nearly break my nose against the ground. I can still hear things shattering around us when I say,
“What the hell were you thinking? You just blew our chance to get out of here!”
Warner shifts, glass crunching beneath him. He’s breathing hard.
“I was serious about what I said, Kishimoto. You should go. Find Nazeera. But this is where I need to be.”
“You mean you need to be getting killed right now? That’s where you need to be? Do you even hear yourself ?”
“Something is wrong,” Warner says, dragging himself to his feet. “Her mind is trapped, trapped inside of something. A program. A virus. Whatever it is, she needs help.”
J screams, sending another earthquake through the room. I slam into a table and stumble backward. A sharp pain shoots through my gut and I suck in my breath. Swear.
Warner has one arm out against the wall, steadying himself. I can tell he’s about to step forward, directly into the fight, and I grab his arm, pull him back.
“I’m not saying we give up on her, okay? I’m saying that there has to be another way. We need to get out of here, regroup. Come up with a better plan.”
“No.”
“Bro, I don’t think you understand.” I glance at J, who’s stalking forward, eyes burning, the ground fissuring before her. “She’s really going to kill you.”
“Then I will die.”
That’s it.
Warner’s last words before he leaves.
He meets J in the middle of the room and she doesn’t hesitate before taking a violent swing at his face.
He blocks.
She swings again. He blocks. She kicks. He ducks.
He’s not fighting her.
He only matches her, move for move, meeting her blows, anticipating her mind. It reminds me of his fight with Anderson back at the Sanctuary—how he never struck his father, only defended himself. It was obvious then that he was just trying to enrage his father.
But this—
This is different. It’s clear that he’s not enjoying this. He’s not trying to enrage her, and he’s not trying to defend himself. He’s fighting her for her. To protect her.
To save her, somehow.
And I have no idea if this is going to work.
J clenches her fists and screams. The walls shake, the floor continues to crack open. I stumble, catch myself against a table.
And I’m just standing here like an idiot, racking my brain for a clue, trying to figure out what to do, how to help—
“Holy shit,” Nazeera says. “What the hell is going on?”
Relief floods through me fast and hot. I have to resist the impulse to pull her invisible body into my arms. To tuck her close to my chest and keep her from leaving again.
Instead, I pretend to be cool.
“How’d you get here?” I ask. “How’d you find us?”
“I was hacking the systems, remember? I saw you on the cameras. You guys aren’t exactly being quiet up here.”
“Right. Good point.”
“Hey, I have news, by the way, I foun—” She cuts herself off abruptly, her words fading to nothing. And then, after a beat, she says quietly:
“Who killed my dad?”
My stomach turns to stone.
I take a sharp breath before I say, “Warner did that.”
“Oh.”
“You okay?”
I hear her exhale. “I don’t know.”
J screams again and I look up.
She’s furious.
I can tell, even from here, that she’s frustrated. She can’t use her powers on Warner directly, and he’s too good a fighter to be beat without an edge. She’s resorted to throwing very large, very heavy objects at him. Whatever she can find. Random medical equipment. Pieces of the wall.
This is not good.
“He wouldn’t leave,” I tell Nazeera. “He wanted to stay. He thinks he can help her.”
She sighs. “We should let him try. In the interim, I could use your help.”
I turn, reflexively, to face her, forgetting for a moment that she’s invisible. “Help with what?” I ask.
“I found the other kids,” she says. “That’s why I was gone for so long. Getting that security clearance for you guys was way easier than I thought it’d be. So I stuck around to do some deep-level hacking into the cameras—and I found out where they’re hiding the other supreme kids. But it’s not pretty. And I could use a hand.”
I look up to catch one last glimpse of Warner.
Of J.
But they’re gone.
ELLA
JULIETTE
Run, Juliette
run
faster, run until your bones break and your shins split and your muscles atrophy
Run run run
until you can’t hear their feet behind you
Run until you drop dead.
Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you.
Run, I said.
The words appear, unbidden, in my mind. I don’t know where they come from and I don’t know why I know them, but I say them to myself as I go, my boots pounding the ground, my head a strangled mess of chaos. I don’t understand what just happened. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I don’t understand anything anymore.
The boy is close.
He moves more swiftly than I anticipated, and I’m surprised. I didn’t expect him to be able to meet my blows. I didn’t expect him to face me so easily. Mostly, I’m stunned he’s somehow immune to my power. I didn’t even know that was possible.
I don’t understand.
I’m racking my brain, trying desperately to comprehend how such a thing might’ve happened—and whether I might’ve been responsible for the anomaly—but nothing makes sense. Not his presence. Not his attitude. Not even the way he fights.
Which is to say: he doesn’t.
He doesn’t even want to fight. He seems to have no interest in beating me, despite the ample evidence that we are well matched. He only fends me off, making only the most basic effort to protect himself, and still I haven’t killed him.
There’s something strange about him. Something about him that’s getting under my skin. Unsettling me.
But he dashed out of sight when I threw another table at him, and he’s been running ever since.
It feels like a trap.
I know it, and yet, I feel compelled to find him. Face him. Destroy him.
I spot him, suddenly, at the far end of the laboratory, and he meets my eyes with an insouciance that enrages me. I charge forward but he moves swiftly, disappearing through an adjoining door.