I have no idea if Kenji is dead.
FIFTY-SEVEN
I’m definitely screaming.
Arms are pulling me up off the floor and I hear voices and sounds I don’t care to recognize because all I know is that this can’t happen, not to Kenji, not to my funny, complicated friend who keeps secrets behind his smiles and I’m ripping away from the hands holding me back and I’m blind, I’m bolting into the dining hall and a hundred blurry faces blend into the background because the only one I want to see is wearing a navy-blue blazer and headful of dreads tied into a ponytail.
“Castle!” I’m screaming. I’m still screaming. I may have fallen to the floor, I’m not sure, but I can tell my kneecaps are starting to hurt and I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care—“Castle! It’s Kenji—he’s—please—”
I’ve never seen Castle run before.
He charges through the room at an inhuman speed, past me and into the hall. Everyone in the room is up, frantic, some shouting, panicked, and I’m chasing Castle back into the tunnel and Kenji is still there. Still limp. Still.
Too still.
“Where are the girls?” Castle is shouting. “Someone—get the girls!” He’s cradling Kenji’s head, trying to pull Kenji’s heavy body into his arms and I’ve never heard him like this before, not even when he talked about our hostages, not even when he talked about what Anderson has done to the civilians. I look around and see the members of Omega Point standing all around us, pain carved into their features and so many of them have already started crying, clutching at each other and I realize I never fully recognized Kenji. I didn’t understand the reach of his authority. I’d never really seen just how much he means to the people in this room.
How much they love him.
I blink and Adam is one of 50 different people trying to help carry Kenji and now they’re running, they’re hoping against hope and someone is saying, “They’ve gone to the medical wing! They’re preparing a bed for him!” And it’s like a stampede, everyone rushing after them, trying to find out what’s wrong and no one will look at me, no one will meet my eyes and I pull myself away, out of sight, around the corner, into the darkness. I taste the tears as they fall into my mouth, I count each salty drop because I can’t understand what happened, how it happened, how this is even possible because I wasn’t touching him, I couldn’t have been touching him please please please I couldn’t have touched him but then I freeze. Icicles form along my arms as I realize:
I’m not wearing my gloves.
I forgot my gloves. I was in such a rush to get here tonight that I just jumped out of the shower and left my gloves in my room and it doesn’t seem real, it doesn’t seem possible that I could’ve done this, that I could’ve forgotten, that I could be responsible for yet another life lost and I just I just I just
I fall to the floor.
“Juliette.”
I look up. I jump up.
I say, “Stay away from me” and I’m shaking, I’m trying to push the tears back but I’m shrinking into nothingness because I’m thinking this must be it. This must be my ultimate punishment. I deserve this pain, I deserve to have killed one of my only friends in the world and I want to shrivel up and disappear forever. “Go away—”
“Juliette, please,” Warner says, coming closer. His face is cast in shadow. This tunnel is only half lit and I don’t know where it leads. All I know is that I do not want to be alone with Warner.
Not now. Not ever again.
“I said stay away from me.” My voice is trembling. “I don’t want to talk to you. Please—just leave me alone!”
“I can’t abandon you like this!” he says. “Not when you’re crying!”
“Maybe you wouldn’t understand that emotion,” I snap at him. “Maybe you wouldn’t care because killing people means nothing to you!”
He’s breathing hard. Too fast. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Kenji!” I explode. “I did that! It’s my fault! It’s my fault you and Adam were fighting and it’s my fault Kenji came out to stop you and it’s my fault—” My voice breaks once, twice. “It’s my fault he’s dead!”
Warner’s eyes go wide. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “He’s not dead.”
I’m agony.
I’m sobbing about what I’ve done and how of course he’s dead, didn’t you see him, he wasn’t even moving and I killed him and Warner remains utterly silent. He doesn’t say a single thing as I hurl awful, horrible insults at him and accuse him of being too coldhearted to understand what it’s like to grieve. I don’t even realize he’s pulled me into his arms until I’m nestled against his chest and I don’t fight it. I don’t fight it at all. I cling to him because I need this warmth, I miss feeling strong arms around me and I’m only just beginning to realize how quickly I came to rely on the healing properties of an excellent hug.
How desperately I’ve missed this.
And he just holds me. He smooths back my hair, he runs a gentle hand down my back, and I hear his heart beat a strange, crazy beat that sounds far too fast to be human.
His arms are wrapped entirely around me when he says, “You didn’t kill him, love.”
And I say, “Maybe you didn’t see what I saw.”
“You are misunderstanding the situation entirely. You didn’t do anything to hurt him.”
I shake my head against his chest. “What are you talking about?”
“It wasn’t you. I know it wasn’t you.”
I pull back. Look up into his eyes. “How can you know something like that?”
“Because,” he says. “It wasn’t you who hurt Kenji. It was me.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
“What?”
“He’s not dead,” Warner says, “though he is severely injured. I suspect they should be able to revive him.”
“What”—I’m panicking, panicking in my bones—“what are you talking about—”
“Please,” Warner says. “Sit down. I’ll explain.” He folds himself onto the floor and pats the place beside him. I don’t know what else to do and my legs are now officially too shaky to stand on their own.
My limbs spill onto the ground, both our backs against the wall, his right side and my left side divided only by a thin inch of air.
1
2
3 seconds pass.
“I didn’t want to believe Castle when he told me I might have a … a gift,” Warner says. His voice is pitched so low that I have to strain to hear it even though I’m only inches away. “A part of me hoped he was trying to drive me mad for his own benefit.” A small sigh. “But it did make a bit of sense, if I really thought about it. Castle told me about Kent, too,” Warner says. “About how he can touch you and how they’ve discovered why. For a moment I wondered if perhaps I had a similar ability. One just as pathetic. Equally as useless.” He laughs. “I was extremely reluctant to believe it.”
“It’s not a useless ability,” I hear myself saying.
“Really?” He turns to face me. Our shoulders are almost touching. “Tell me, love. What can he do?”
“He can disable things. Abilities.”
“Right,” he says, “but how will that ever help him? How could it ever help him to disable the powers of his own people? It’s absurd. It’s wasteful. It won’t help at all in this war.”
I bristle. Decide to ignore that. “What does any of this have to do with Kenji?”
He turns away from me again. His voice is softer when he says, “Would you believe me if I told you I could sense your energy right now? Sense the tone and weight of it?”
I stare at him, study his features and the earnest, tentative note in his voice. “Yes,” I tell him. “I think I’d believe you.”
Warner smiles in a way that seems to sadden him. “I can sense,” he says, taking a deep breath, “the emotions you’re feeling most strongly. And because I know you, I’m able to put those feelings into context. I know the fear you’re feeling right now, for example, is not directed toward me, but toward yourself, and what you think you’ve done to Kenji. I sense your hesitation—your reluctance to believe that it wasn’t your fault. I feel your sadness, your grief.”
“You can really feel that?” I ask.
He nods without looking at me.
“I never knew that was possible,” I tell him.
“I didn’t either—I wasn’t aware of it,” he says. “Not for a very long time. I actually thought it was normal to be so acutely aware of human emotions. I thought perhaps I was more perceptive than most. It’s a big factor in why my father allowed me to take over Sector 45,” he tells me. “Because I have an uncanny ability to tell whenever someone is hiding something, or feeling guilty, or, most importantly, lying.” A pause. “That,” he says, “and because I’m not afraid to deliver consequences if the occasion calls for it.
“It wasn’t until Castle suggested there might be something more to me that I really began to analyze it. I nearly lost my mind.” He shakes his head. “I kept going over it, thinking of ways to prove and disprove his theories. Even with all my careful deliberation, I dismissed it. And while I am a bit sorry—for your sake, not for mine—that Kenji had to be stupid enough to interfere tonight, I think it was actually quite serendipitous. Because now I finally have proof. Proof that I was wrong. That Castle,” he says, “was right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I took your Energy,” he tells me, “and I didn’t know I could. I could feel it all very vividly when the four of us connected. Adam was inaccessible—which, by the way, explains why I never suspected him of being disloyal. His emotions were always hidden; always blocked off. I was naive and assumed he was merely robotic, devoid of any real personality or interests. He eluded me and it was my own fault. I trusted myself too much to be able to anticipate a flaw in my system.”
And I want to say, Adam’s ability isn’t so useless after all, is it?
But I don’t.
“And Kenji,” Warner says after a moment. He rubs his forehead. Laughs a little. “Kenji was … very smart. A lot smarter than I gave him credit for—which, as it turns out, was exactly his tactic. Kenji,” he says, blowing out a breath, “was careful to be an obvious threat as opposed to a discreet one.
“He was always getting into trouble—demanding extra portions at meals, fighting with the other soldiers, breaking curfew. He broke simple rules in order to draw attention to himself. In order to trick me into seeing him as an irritant and nothing more. I always felt there was something off about him, but I attributed it to his loud, raucous behavior and his inability to follow rules. I dismissed him as a poor soldier. Someone who would never be promoted. Someone who would always be recognized as a waste of time.” He shakes his head. Raises his eyebrows at the ground. “Brilliant,” he says, looking almost impressed. “It was brilliant. His only mistake,” Warner adds after a moment, “was being too openly friendly with Kent. And that mistake nearly cost him his life.”
