After sharing a reluctant look with Layla and then Griffin, we followed Brady, the three teachers, and Hunt, along with Bobo, into the space we’d built as children. When we’d still believed in the easy joys of our companionship.
Before the world had revealed itself to be a vengeful bitch, out to get us.
25
Mess with Me and You’ll Die
Our teachers’ assessment that day was just as brutal as it had been at the institute’s training center. With keen stares, they’d studied the five of us as we’d cycled through striking and kicking every dummy, bag, and board we owned. They’d had us do pushups, burpees, sit-ups, and every other exercise I’d ever heard of that used our bodies as resistance. They’d noted how much weight we each could lift, what weapons we thought we were proficient at—while making it plain their opinions of our skills weren’t nearly as high as our own.
Iof courseunderstood we weren’t actual ninjas. I wasn’t an idiot. Compared to the levels of mastery of, say, a Shaolin monk we were probably more like baby ninjas just learning to walk.
At that point, we hadn’t yet seen our instructors in action. It was easy enough to guess they were royal badasses. Not only did their sculpted physiques suggest it, but there was something about their postures, ready for anything at any time, a vibe they put off that said,Mess with me and you’ll die.Goals, right there.
I only truly began to comprehend a bit of why they seemed so utterly unimpressed with us when, after they lamented that the treehouse didn’t boast climbing ropes like the institute’s training center, they asked us to climb trees instead. As children who’d spent more time in the forest than indoors, we’d spent our fair share of time climbing trees. Hunt was a freaking monkey, and Griffin was nearly as agile, swinging from branch to branch.
But after we’d all taken turns going up and down a few trees, first untimed, then competing against our previous records, Armando had shucked off his shirt and shown us how it was motherfuckingdone.
I’d never again think of Hunt as a monkey, not after Armando’s performance. The man was Tarzan, so fluid and swift I had no trouble accepting that he’d grown up in Brazil’s Amazonian jungles and later become a master teacher of capoeira, among other martial arts.
That night, the five of us collapsed into our beds. I was grateful I was so exhausted that my mind quieted, putting the gazillion worries on hold until the next day.
When they’d attack with renewed vigor.
Several days eked by like this, and we settled into a pattern. In the mornings, we exited our houses as quickly as possible to diminish our time with our traitorous not-parents. During school, we largely kept to ourselves, which was pretty much our norm anyway, and occupied our time during classes searching for a way out that didn’t involve us murdering Magnum. The more we discussed, the more convinced we became that it truly was the only way to secure our freedom.
After school, we trained with the badass trio until we sweated our guts out and every muscle felt like it was dying a torturous death. Then we did a little homework while we hung out together before finally stumbling to our beds.
Every day like this contributed to lulling me into a growing sense of complacency—like maybe this time no one would try to kill us, maybe they’d let us live our merry lives and forget about us and whatever powers we had.
But then I would observe the five scars on my chest and be reminded how very close to death my friends and I were in all moments. The hypnosis had explained away the continually shrinking scars as hornet stings, but I couldn’t see them without remembering in too vivid detail what it had been like to watch Layla and Hunt gunned down in front of me. To witness Griffin’s anguish when he’d thought he might be about to lose me forever. To hear Brady’s heart shattering as he screamed and attacked the soldiers.
I’d never forget what it felt like to stare down the barrel of Jaggar’s gun, knowing it might be the last sight I ever saw.
No, the feeling of growing complacency only made me all the twitchier. Like really bad shit was just on the horizon.
Griffin said into my thoughts one afternoon in Ms. Tott’s British Lit class, in that gentle tone I’d only ever known him to use with me, though our other friends would hear it too.
Despite how much we’d practiced our telepathic communication since we’d returned home, the channel continued to broadcast to all of us no matter our intentions. We’d also discovered we could only speak like this so long as we remained somewhere in the range of a couple hundred feet of each other. Across the length of a football field, yes. From the newly constructed gym to the cafeteria, also yes. But from the gym to the classrooms on the other end of the school campus, no. And we couldn’t reach each other when we were in our separate houses either. Whenever Layla and Brady were in their house together, they could speak to each other without us hearing since the rest of us were out of range.
After a final rub of my chest, I leaned back and dropped my hand to my desk, absently looking at Ms. Tott. Our British Lit teacher seemed trapped in the wrong decade, more at home as a flower child of the ’60s. Today she wore one of her usual long, airy, ruffled skirts and a fitted shirt that revealed much of her ample bosom. She spun expertly on velvet-lined platform heels, her long hair swinging behind her as she lectured about … Jane Austen, I realized. I hadn’t heard a thing she’d said in quite a while.
Hunt asked from my left. Griffin sat on my right.
I blinked a few times, bringing myself back to the present.
I glanced at the clock at the front of the classroom.
Brady said.
Layla said. The twins sat beside Hunt.
Brady sighed so dreamily that a couple of students around us glanced his way, but he didn’t care.
