The Future Chosen [was Anti-Dynasty/Extraordinary]

Broken Chapter 16 - end of Part 1

He'd never been this invisible in his life, and it was an interesting feeling. The closest to this would be whenever he got to travel. It wasn't often, but it was still considered acceptable—people expected their public officials to see the world, learn from the world, bring the world back home. Do it too often and you'd be branded as ostentatious, and that wasn't acceptable.

Andres had been able to, since the age of fifteen, travel four times. North America, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, South Asia. He spent a lot of that time walking, just walking, wherever he happened to be, and it was for a time anonymous. Safe, anonymous, just another guy walking down the street. Just another teenager.

The past nine days, walking around as nurse Alejandro, required him to wear a mask over his nose and mouth most times. No one paid attention to him. No one cared about a guy who was only meant to usher a patient in and out of a room, bring her food. "Alejandro" was pre-cleared for many areas in the compound so his presence wasn't questioned.

Since that was the case, he tried to test it. If someone was tampering with Lourdes's food and medicine, they'd have to be doing it at the source. They'd have to be in Callemara as well, dressed exactly as he was, walking among the invisible.

Andres wondered if he'd be able to find someone who was trying to blend in, just as he was. And he did. Maybe it took one to know one.

The woman's hair was tied back in a severe bun, all the better to hide it under the cap. Still, he noticed the unusual color. Dark, dark red, passing for brown in poor light. He didn't remember seeing her during his other shifts, even when he was merely passing through, picking up whatever Lourdes needed. He waited for her in the pharmacy, another area he had access to thanks to Lala. He had seen other nurses work the system of boxed medication and went through the motions for more than half an hour, going over labels, looking at checklists, taking note of the prescriptions for Lourdes and where they would be.

She, the other invisible one, arrived and went straight for Lourdes' prescriptions, like she knew what she was doing. By then the pain meds were barely medication—Lourdes was completely off it, would do fine without it. This woman looked into a small bottle and counted pills, placed them back into the compartment. Then she left.

Andres took a risk staking out the pharmacy first; he wasn't sure if the food was being tampered at the same time by different people. Instead of making his way inside the kitchen to check, he watched the only door to it from a viewing deck two floors up.

The usual people came and went. The nurse with the very bright shoes. The aide wearing the blue apron. Familiar body forms, if not faces, taking familiar routes in and out of the kitchen in their usual morning shift.

And he saw her again, leaving the kitchen.

He checked the time--twenty minutes before his shift started. If she had been doing this every day, it was this early, but only minutes before he came in and, like an idiot, trusted that this place was safe, and delivered something to Lourdes that would have...

What would it have done?

Maybe not killed her. If someone was inside, invisible like him, the more efficient way would be another bullet, better aim.

This was something else.

***

He wasn't able to tail her for very long. That was one problem of also being invisible, apparently, and wanting to stay that way—you shouldn't draw attention to yourself. Andres took note of everything, anything, he could on the woman, and then went back to the nurse's office.

Then he went over charts. Checklists. Schedules. Reservation notices.

Just like school, he said, laughing a little. He liked school, actually was good at it. Didn't mind the family strategy shift to more legislative work because he read a lot as a senator's intern, and wouldn't mind doing it again. He read fine print. Many people didn't.

So many things to be discovered in the fine print.

He was at this for hours--Lourdes's lunch would have been served by someone else.

He couldn't wait to tell her about his morning.

And then he didn't have to wait to tell her, because the door to the administrative library opened and she was there, inside, with him.

"Thank you," she told some guy behind her. "Please leave us now."

"Wait," he began to say.

"No." Her face was flushed and she was trying to catch her breath. "I went all over this place. Three buildings. The helipad. Took the electric freaking car to the villa down on the beach. Called the airport, the sea port. It figures I'd find you in here. In the freaking library."

He had the presence of mind to lock the door but would it have helped? There was probably a camera inside this room. The search she'd just described...asking for him everywhere...

"I didn't leave you behind," he said.

She pulled at his uniform, pulled him closer. "I know that now."

Cameras be damned. He wrapped his arms around her. "I had a busy morning. I was going to tell you about it."

She was shaking, shaking there in his arms, calming down with her face against his chest. This couldn't have been good for her blood pressure; he felt the frantic beating of her heart against him.

"I didn't leave you behind," he repeated. "I've been telling you this whole time. I can't. I won't anymore."

"I was going to tell you this morning that we should end it. Again. It's too hard."

He ran his fingers through her hair, brought her face toward his. "You changed your mind?"

She nodded. "I thought I could handle it, knowing you were around. At least you're alive, and you're happy, and that's all I should want for you, right? But it's not."

"It's not?"

"I can't be happy with anyone else. I don't think you can either. We're just...no one else can do this. No one else."

He dropped a kiss onto her forehead, on the bridge of her nose. "So what do we do?"

"What we do best," she said. "Sneak around."

"You have your big engagement party coming up. My family's about to ruin someone's career. We've got an election in less than a year."

"I didn't say it would be easy."

It was never going to be. Nothing about their lives were, no matter how many times they were labeled as privileged.

"We weren't born for easy, Love. Do you think we can do this?"

He hadn't seen that kind of fire in her eyes for years. He loved it, loved her.

"No one else but us," she said.

Cameras be damned. He pulled her in for a kiss, right on the mouth.

Their story continues in part 2, Lying Season (see External Link to get your free copy)