I should have let her ruin me.
Instead, I take her wrist and tug her gently away, placing myself at an angle between them and echo words she had said not so long ago. “Kaye isn’t a hugger.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you though,” Kaye says. Her eyes are a hot iron on my skin.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“Can I have a moment?” I lean toward the taller man, pulling his attention away from her. His dark eyes meet mine and I see only goodness inside, and yet this new…thinginside me insists that I could take him.
Stop it.
“Privately,” I finish. I try not to look at Kaye. I don’t want her to think this is yet another thing I’m deliberately keeping from her, even if that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Yet, she doesn’t seem fazed. Her mask hides most of her face, but her stance is open, relaxed. She notices me watching her, and she tips her head at me, those delicious lips curving into a slight smirk. God, if she only knew what that does to me. Then Fulton snags her attention again, Jaspar joining in to tease her.
“Come on.” Milo tugs at my arm. “We only have a few minutes and she’s in good hands.”
Her laughter rings out like a siren’s song behind us. Is it possible to be jealous of an entire group of people? People who have no trace of the toxic feud we share, who can ease her troubles with something as simple as a joke.
I follow Milo through the crowd to a kind of tent made from some off-white material folded over a cord strung close to the ceiling. The enclosure provides a small amount of privacy but does nothing to veil the noises of life around us. It’s a kind of makeshift bedroom, I realize, with a thin cot lining one wall and a few possessions and a change of clothes laid out on the other.
“When’s the last time you got some fresh air? Or spent a night in your own bed?” I ask.
Milo waves my concerns away.
“Not another person trying to save me from my hero complex.” He takes a swig of water from a tall jug sitting on the floor. “I’m fine. Better than fine! I can’t believe I met Checkmate today.”
I ignore the tightness in my chest and focus on my friend. Not even the harshness of the artificial bulbs above us can dampen the golden glow emanating from Milo’s dark skin. There’s something heavenly about it, the kind of warmth you notice without really thinking about it in a conscious way. Maybe it’s a side effect of his healing abilities or maybe he’s just genetically blessed. He’s beautiful in an unconventional way. It makes him way more interesting to look at than most models I’ve seen. I wonder where he’d be if things were different. Milan?New York? And yet, when he looks at the people reaching out to him from their cots or stopping him to speak, I can tell there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than here.
“So are you finally going to show me what you’re hiding?” he asks.
“Why do you think I’m hiding anything?”
“When are you not?” He returns, but the threads of humor are nowhere to be found in his tone or on his face. His lips are a grim line, his eyes are deep wells of concern. He lays a hand over my shoulder, the fabric of my suit a barrier between us, but the warmth is already soothing. His fingers seek out the wounded flesh as though they can sense it. And even though he’s never said it, the power humming between us makes me think he can.
Touch-based powers are varied as wildflowers and just as numerous. I’d love to do a study of them and find out why so many of New Malcolm’s extra-gifted community have abilities rooted in touch. It would be impossible, of course. Too dangerous for any involved. Maybe the simple truth is that humans are beings who crave touch. Need it. Place value on it. Wouldn’t it make sense then that as powers evolved within us, they attached to those places that benefitted us most?
I’d love to know, but I never will. I’ll never be a scholar or scientist again. If I live past tomorrow, or a week, or a year, that is all the miracle I can ask. People like Kaye and I—even Milo and the other members of Angelis—we fight for normal, but we’ll never truly see it.
The membrane of fabric sticks as he peels it back, and I wince despite myself. The wound is mottled and purple around the edges, the core of it turning an angry crimson, though no blood comes from it yet. Just this morning it was nothing more than a pale knitted scar.
“When were you shot?”
I guess I should have expected that question.
“A few years ago,” I answer. “I know how it looks.”
It was a gamble experimenting on myself like a human guinea pig. I couldn’t go to the hospital. C knew who I was, knew there were still people I loved in New Malcolm. I couldn’t put their lives at risk for something I had decided to do.
I was dead. So why not leave myself that way?
I took what I knew of the formula we created and tweaked it. Every second that passed brought weakness and infection. Days were all I had, if I didn’t bleed out first. I didn’t have time for tests and safety.
My body reacted with every injection. Changed. My blood became acidic in my veins. But this was what I was good at. Observation. Notation. Hypothesis. Alter. Test again.
Until I was… this.
“I can’t fix this.” He doesn’t look at me. His touch almost tingles now. Minty and medicinal, like menthol. “I don’t know what’s in that concoction of yours, but my power’s having no effect.”
