Superior

Chapter 48

Chapter Forty-Eight

Delaney

Caleb had changed.

That much was obvious, even to my blurred, fever-tainted vision. And it wasn't just his newly restructured and flawless face (which, by the way, was decidedly unsettling.) There was something different in his familiar green eyes—something frigid and distant.

And I didn't like it.

I'd noticed it first when he'd burst into the glass room, and it had only become more evident as the moments passed. He seemed meaner now, and colder, like he'd completed some kind of Superior hazing ceremony that had left him just as heartless as the rest of them.

It felt, too, like he was shutting us out. Yeah, his memories had been wiped: I got that. But the old Caleb would have been kind to us, regardless of whether or not he remembered us. He wasn't Carlie, or Miracle, or Dr. Leary; he was a human being. The old Caleb would have run to help me right away. He wouldn't have argued with Trai. He wouldn't have snapped at Abby. It was as if, along with his new Superior appearance, he had also acquired a new superior attitude.

Then again, maybe I was wrong. I mean, for the longest time, I hadn't particularly liked Caleb. I'd thought he was cold, superficial, and manipulative. I had been mistaken then, as I much as I hated to admit it. He'd turned out to be a genuine Popular; a complete oxymoron. But even though he became my friend, I never got to know him all that well. Unlike Trai and Abby, who had grown up with him, I was just a last minute addition to the team. And I surely couldn't read people like Carlie, so what did I know? I could have been seeing things.

But it still seemed like he was pushing us away.

I made a feeble attempt to push away those thoughts as we moved down a series of dark hallways, but my brain would have nothing of it. It—my brain, that is—had to know that thinking about Caleb's transformation only stressed me out more. And I had enough tension to deal with, considering the impaired state I was in. Dr. Leary's immunity injection was starting to feel more like a poison; it had taken a second wind, and was now busy altering the temperature of my bloodstream so that I went from pyretic to hypothermic every few seconds.

I could tell that Caleb felt the fluctuations, because every now and then, he'd shift me in his arms. Every movement made me cringe; each time his grip changed, a glimmer of repulsion washed over me. I knew that I shouldn't be disgusted: that it was just Caleb, my friend, and that—even if I had no desire to be at such close proximity to him—he wouldn't hurt me. But he was still a Superior. He had become the very thing he had been against from the beginning.

He had changed. And I didn't like it.

Caleb shifted his grasp again, and my head lolled back against his forearm. It was a rather uncomfortable position, but I was too weary to do anything. My head felt heavy; a dead weight, and febrile besides. I had closed my eyes; I wasn't sure I'd be able to open them.

I tried not to think about my condition, but how could I not? Dr. Leary had said that his vaccinations had failed in the past, ending in the death of the people who had been experimented on. Who was to say that he hadn't just botched the serum and given me poison instead? I certainly wouldn't but it past him.

But, like I said: I was trying not to think about it.

Caleb's breaths were cool and quiet, blowing down on my face in short streams. Sometimes I thought he was mumbling to himself, but so softly that I couldn't hear the words. That is, until he hissed one sentence: "She said I didn't know anyone named Delaney."