When the daylight waned, Marcus transformed.
In the guise of a sparrow, he flew out the window to survey the city from the air. Daisy offered to go with, but a human being flying through the air was more noticeable than a small bird. Zane, being unfamiliar with birds, gawked at the perfectly organized feathers and weightlessness that enabled Marcus to fly. His flight was allowed by the laws of physics, whereas Daisy's was not.
Joseph and Jonas, too, watched Marcus fly away with veiled awe. Being in New Vancouver, wildlife simply hadn't existed. Here, though, in the midst of a recovering environment, life abounded. Zane had seen a deer on the walk to London and had paused for nearly a minute to admire the simple magnificence of the creature.
This unfamiliarity with the natural world opened a rift between the former New Vancouver citizens and their friends. Zane, Joseph and Jonas were absolutely stupefied whereas Mallory, Anastasia and Daisy took it as a simple fact of life, a constant. Zane once again felt left out, as if he didn't know something that was common knowledge.
Zane realized something in the span of a second; the sheer size and grandeur of the world scared him. He was but a bug on the surface of a tree. So many places he had never seen which were in his reach. He only needed to have the resolve to reach for the sky.
But he was also excited at the opportunities laid out before him. These two emotions conflicted inside of him, battling for dominance of his thoughts. But as he gazed out the window at Marcus's small avian form disappearing in the distance, they quelled and became one. A kind of brave fear, a paradox that made sense despite its contradictory nature.
He smiled despite the cold, gray sky he gazed at. Small flakes of snow drifted down, collecting on the windowsill, and he understood why Daisy regarded snow as the single most beautiful thing crafted by the earth. It was mind-boggling; light and fluffy but cold enough to shock. It piled on top of itself, refusing to be soaked up or melted. It was as if the precipitation itself was rebellious, defying nature and surviving against all odds.
Zane surveyed his friends. They all seemed to share the same brave fear he did, defiant but scared looks scrawled across their faces. Mallory looked deeply concerned. After Marcus had offered to go, she had tried to convince him to stay, worried a personality bend would strike in midair, rendering him flightless. He had calmly reassured her and held her hands, promising to come back. He'd said he was simply going to observe and nothing else.
"You think Wawrzynski will come here soon?" Joseph asked, his hands threatening to begin wringing themselves. He sat on a nearby bed, his forehead creased with worry. He would never say it, but he was just like Zane; worried about other's well-being instead of his own.
Zane sat down next to him, and Joseph's hands stilled, falling into his lap. Zane smiled. He was glad he could help Joseph by simply being there. Jonas fixed a gaze on him. "That email said nothing about when he was going to attack?" Zane shook his head. "Suspicious," the tall boy muttered.
Joseph's hand twitched.
All at once, without warning, Zane was sucked into another unwelcome memory of New Vancouver.
He tried in vain to force his mind from the reminiscion, but to no avail.
He was fourteen, wearing a new gray suit, the wrinkles still dominant. He received a new one annually for he was still growing and his old suit had almost been at his knees. Again, it was as if he was watching his memory happen, watching himself take actions he couldn't influence.
He was in school, avidly scribbling in a notebook while his ninth-grade teacher droned on. Mr. Davenport, his mind screamed, the name abruptly slipping into his mind. Zane didn't know what subject was being taught because his gaze was fixed on two men at the doorway.
Wawrzynski was one of them. A younger, newly adult Wawrzynski was conversing with a short woman who held a tablet and typed frantically. Fourteen year-old Zane didn't notice. He was fixated on the information being taught. But present Zane noticed, and he seethed with anger. Why this memory was coming back to him, he did not know.
They were watching him. Wawrzynski's gaze was fixed on his younger self, the regulation blond hair, the bright green eyes. Zane felt violated as the man's gaze swept over him again and again, analyzing patterns and personalities.
He leaned to the woman next to him, and Zane heard every word spoken as if it were a stage whisper. "I think he's the one," Wawrzynski said confidently. "Paired with the Romanson boy, it'll be the perfect balance. It'll be their best shot at surviving the procedure." The woman nodded but never looked up from her tablet. Wawrzynski continued. "He looks like a perfectly obedient teenager. If that Romanson boy doesn't pass on his prejudicial qualities, he'll be the perfect weapon."
Zane screamed in frustration, but nobody could hear him. The woman grunted her agreement. "In that case, we better use the acid-induced serum. It's the deadliest ability we can give. The Romanson boy could never be trusted with something so destructive."
"We'll choose him for the division at the ceremony, inject them both, and then introduce them to the other subjects," Wawrzynski said. "Knowing them, they'll try and escape. We will do everything in our power to hold them, but if they manage to slip through our grasp, we'll track them down and kill them. I have no qualms."
"Me neither,"
Zane snapped from the memory, thoroughly convinced now in his pure hatred of Wawrzynski. His participation in the experiment had been assured years ago, as well as Joseph's. Wawrzynski had predicted what they would do nearly three years ago, in a middle school in New Vancouver. He truly was a monster if he'd planned out their fates in advance.
He bounced from the memory to shocking sunshine, which had begun to peek through the bleak clouds outside the dusty window. It shone directly into his eyes and he squinted.
"Dude, you zoned out hard," Mallory said, pacing across the worn wooden floor. She never looked at him. He must have jerked when his mind was released from the harsh remembrance. He rubbed at his eyes, struggling to disperse the horrible images of Wawrzynski pondering his fate.
"How long?" he asked.
"Ten seconds," she responded, shrugging.
He calmed himself. He didn't know why the memories were coming back to him or if it was a consequence of Wawrzynski's serum, but they couldn't dominate his fears. Joseph had told him he overthought everything, and he knew he did, but he couldn't stop. Everything was so monumental now. His actions may have lasting consequences on the world he lived in. It was terrifying. But again, it was that brave fear, that longing to be scared, to confront it.
A shout echoed from outside the window, sparing him from overthinking.
He ran to the window, Mallory hot on his heels. A dark shadow flitted over the street below, drawing his gaze upward. A flash of memory swept over him, but it was not a dangerous one. It was one of an hour before, inside a jet, looking down at London.
A dark military plane, identical to the one Jonas had landed just hours earlier, was flying low over the city, its shadow sweeping over small houses and shops, drawing eyes upward. Jaws were dropped and eyes were widened as the citizens experienced the second military jet in less than a day. London's police forces would be scrambling to mobilize, to combat this new and unexpected development.
But Zane was worried. What did it mean that Wawrzynski was only sending one jet into London? Was it possible it was a scout plane, analyzing the future battleground or surveying Wawrzynski's expected kingdom? Zane didn't know, but he wasn't sure he wanted to find out.
Mallory was similarly awed. "One plane," she whispered. "What does it mean?"
Knowing she had whispered the question only for personal benefit, Zane didn't bother expressing his lack of information. It made no sense. Wawrzynski had stated an outright assault without warning in the email. Unless...
"He's played us again," he said, slamming his hands into the windowsill, slivers digging into his palms. He didn't feel them. "We'll never beat him." He punched the wall, disgusted in the world, himself, and Wawrzynski.
Bones crunched when he hit the wooden wall and he hissed in pain. Several seconds of focus sloughed off his cells and healed the broken bones. Full of rage, he reeled back to punch the wall again.
Joseph grabbed his hand, halting his forward swing. Zane yelled curses, trying to free himself from the stronger boy's grip. He flailed with his other hand, and his skin broke before Joseph grabbed hold of that hand as well. Blood trickled through Zane's fingers and onto Joseph's wrist. Zane screamed. "We'll never escape him!" Tears flooded down his face, and the smell of blood and tears filled the room, along with a distinct scent of fear. "We can't be free! He's gonna kill us!"
Joseph stayed calm. "He can't kill us, he doesn't know where we are," he said confidently. He was putting on a brave face, for Zane's sake. Zane had helped him on the plane and now he was returning the favor.
Zane's eyes darkened and he stopped struggling. "He knows everything," he said ominously, his eyes flashing. Daisy, standing nearby, looked appalled at his sudden violent snap. "For all we know, he'd got trackers in us. He's probably watching us through a hologram right now." Joseph shivered, as did Zane. The thought of Wawrzynski seeing all their personal affairs was repellent. He remembered when he'd kissed Joseph, and gagged at the thought of Wawrzynski knowing Joseph had been about to kill himself and did nothing but watch.
The thought of trackers had not crossed any of their minds. Zane grimaced, feeling violated and slightly embarrassed. His hand continued to drip blood at a steady rate. Joseph didn't seem to mind although he probably should have.
Zane stopped the flow of tears with some effort. He steadied his breath before continuing. "The email I read said nothing about a scout plane or a survey mission, only about a frontal assault in London."
Anastasia grimaced. "So either his plans have changed, or the email was set up for us to steal," she said, her eyebrows drawing together. Zane nodded.
Joseph looked concerned. "But how could he have known we'd steal them? How could he have known you'd be able to get into his office?" He directed the last question at Zane as he held his hands firmly, effectively stopping another attempt to punch the wall, which now had several indents in it.
Zane, struggling to quell his desire to murder something, shook his head. "I don't know," he told Joseph. "But somehow he's managed to always anticipate exactly what we'll do, where we'll be, and what we'll convince each other to do." He leaned back against Joseph slightly, enough to feel the boy's heat. "Perhaps he did survive an injection. Perhaps he has some sort of mind-reading ability or prophecy shit. I don't know."
The room quieted, nobody daring to speak their mind or share their depressing thoughts about what to do next. Mallory kept glancing to the window and Zane knew she was watching for Marcus, waiting anxiously for the moment his sparrow form would fly through the window. Zane knew he was waiting for that too, not wanting his friend stranded outside while Wawrzynski's soldiers flew overhead.
Zane thought of the implications of the email being a fraud. In that case, Wawrzynski had been directing them someplace, in this case London. But would he really send them to the front lines of his war when he knew they would not fight on his side? It seemed he was jeopardizing his own victory.
Zane had no doubt that Wawrzynski had continued testing after they'd escaped. Could it be that he recruited New Vancouver citizens, loyal people without flaws or faults, and injected them with his serums?
It also meant he knew Jonas was with them. Somehow he had gotten that information. He'd known none of his subjects had the ability to fly a plane, so it was either they had persuaded a pilot to fly them away or they had found his foster son who was looking for a way to escape his life as a filing cabinet. And Zane anticipated a New Vancouver pilot would rather die than fly rebels to freedom.
Zane suddenly had a flash of recognition. Wawrzynski had known his son was retaining every horrible thing he'd seen and was getting rebellious. He must have coerced Jonas to leave and known he'd take shelter in that rundown bookstore. Knowing this, he had directed his armies to the hangar nearby, knowing Zane and the others would head there, increasing the chance they would run into Jonas, who was desperate for a way out.
If that was the case, Wawrzynski had wanted them to have access to a plane and to escape. He had somehow known they'd have the email and that they'd want to stop the war. Which could only mean one thing; he had orchestrated to send them to London. That was his plan.
But Zane took pleasure in the fact that one of his plans had been foiled. The medieval weapons had no use now. Whatever Wawrzynski had intended, it was lying in the dirt at his feet, dead. Zane felt a rush of pride despite the tedious revelations.
Zane spoke. "There's no attack," he said. "The email was orchestrated, it was fake, sending us here on purpose."
Joseph released his hands. "What's his goal, then?"
Zane sighed. "He set it up so we'd run into Jonas and he would fly us out of there," he said, running his clean hand through his hair, ruffling it the way Joseph liked. "The email was meant to send us here for a place to kill us quietly and maybe wreak some destruction and distrust inside one of the most powerful cities on the planet."
"What are you saying?" Daisy asked curiously, not picking up what he was putting down.
"I'm saying-" he paused. "-London is not the target Wawrzynski is eliminating."
Joseph finished for him. "We are,"