TRUE STORM

TRUE STORM - CHAPTER 5

Storm beckons to Mohawk, who stands out against the Laster crowd like a flashing sign. She's the strangest mixture of clashing colors and patterns: black-and-bright-blue-streaked hair sticking up, wispy braids of her Mohawk coming down like a mane around her lovely face. Thick gold bands circle her neck, bright against her dusky skin. Today she wears a cropped jersey, faded red with the number twenty-three emblazoned across her chest in white, paired with zebra-striped leggings. She crouches next to Storm and opens a small plastic pouch fished from her carrier bag. Storm gently drops the white foaming item from the preacher man's mouth into the pouch. He wipes his fingers carefully on the dead man's shirt, avoiding the foamy parts. The dead man has gone a pearly pink color, as has Storm's fingers.

Storm speaks into his hidden earpiece. "Jared, take the twins home. The situation is no longer safe."

Of course we're safe, though. Who in their right mind would cross Nolan Storm? Most of the mob has pressed back; at least half have run away. Torch and Kira have disappeared. "Dammit. One little question," Storm says now as he gently lowers the dead man's eyelids. "Call the rovers." He turns to Mohawk. "Let them know there's a pickup."

"What did he do?" I find myself asking.

"Poison," Storm tells me, rubbing his hands together as though they've gone cold. "It's what agents have done throughout time to avoid telling their secrets when they've been captured."

Suicide? My mind reels. "But you hadn't captured him. You were just talking to him."

Storm's look turns me cold. I reckon it's the most direct reply I'll get tonight. The sky is striated with pink light, at odds with the strange discomfort of death. "When you're through making the call," he tells Mohawk bitingly, "get the girls home with Jared and take the sample to the lab. We'll be here a while yet."

***

The events of the night before get rolled into our school bags in the morning: just more homework to be unpacked and dealt with at a later date. Margot straightens her blue skirt and hikes her stockings up. "How do I look?" she asks, hooking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear.

"Perfect," I tell her with a smile. She returns it, a mirror image of my own, as she sits down beside me at the breakfast nook and starts spreading the toast that Alma brings in by the plateful, along with eggs and sausage and long strips of bacon. I pop a final strip into my mouth and look over our timetables for the umpteenth time. "We don't have the genomics exam until next Wednesday," I tell Margot.

"Good," she says with a shudder.

I give my sister a hard look. "You're not skipping the tutorials."

"I know," she replies under her breath. But of course, there will be no more ditching class. No more lighthearted days for either of us. We are headed back to our familiar stomping grounds, Grayguard Academy. But we are not the same girls we were.

Over the past few months our world has tipped sideways and become unrecognizable. This is someone else's life. Some other set of girls who are reentering their school, just four credits shy of graduation. Other girls who work and live with True Borns—not the diplomat's daughters, heiresses to the Upper Circle.

Other girls, girls who have secrets cached in their blood. 

I remember once overhearing a friend of my mother's telling a story about a young man from the Upper Circle who'd "gone off the rails." It was during one of their boozy afternoon sessions, the kind that ended in tears while the ladies collectively faced their fears of being Spliced. What happened to him? my mother had asked, her face a mask of disdain. Did he fall into the Lasters?