"Can't his little bird ass save himself?" Joseph whined as he squeezed back in the small backseat of the car. "Isn't he perfectly capable?"
"As a hollow-boned bitch?" Zane said. "I don't think so." The car's tires squealed against the asphalt as he stepped on the gas. Jonas shot back in his seat, his eyes widened as his head hit the headrest, his hair ruffled as his long arms grasped the sides of the seat, holding on for dear life. He never made a sound, though. Whatever else he may be thinking, he trusted Zane.
The crowd, dispersed in the wake of the first car, quickly gave Zane room as he yanked left on the wheel, rocketing the car into a tight nearby alley, the same one the previous car had turned into. Zane spotted the car rounding a bend ahead of them.
Joseph gasped as the mirror chafed the wall beside them and broke off, rolling along behind them, losing its velocity. "You know, car chases are cooler in movies," he said. "In real life, they're just outright terrifying. Especially with you driving."
"Asshole," Zane muttered again. Joseph grunted in response. He leaned forward, avoiding getting too close to the walls lest he become the mirror. Zane laughed.
"Are you a psychopath?"
"Am I a psychopath if I'm enjoying this?" he said, still chuckling. "If so, then yes, I'm a psychopath." Zane could practically hear Joseph grimace in the backseat and roll his eyes. Zane smiled and yanked the wheel, taking the tight turn the car in front of them had taken.
Jonas closed his eyes. "They know we're tailing them," he said, as if he could see through his eyelids. His eyes could be seen shooting around underneath his eyelids, retrieving information from the microchip. "Turn into the alley on your left."
Zane turned to him, slowing the car a little bit. The alleyway was coming fast. "Why?"
Jonas's eyes shot open, fixing Zane with a dark brown glare. "They're heading for the denser traffic," he said. "They think they can lose us there. Turn left, it'll get us there before them. Trust me."
Zane turned. "I trust you," he said. He meant, of course, that he trusted both Jonas and the information stored in Wawrzynski's microchip, but he wouldn't say that. He wanted Jonas to trust him too and not think he was just using him like Wawrzynski had. Which of course, he wasn't.
The alleyway was even thinner than the last one, and the other mirror was gone in a matter of milliseconds. Joseph cringed. "Could you slow down?"
Jonas closed his eyes briefly, running over some calculations in his head. "No," he said. "If anything, speed up."
"Don't speed up!"
"We have to make it in time," Jonas said calmly, his voice a point of serenity in the chaos of a car chase. "We have to beat that car, or we might not get Marcus back."
"How do you know?"
"Intuition and imported facts, my guy," he said, chuckling. "Intuition and imported facts."
A small dip in the road brought the car several seconds of air time. Joseph squealed and Zane whooped. Despite his reluctance to drive earlier, he was having an excellent time. Joseph clearly wasn't. "Could you stop the car? I'm gonna hurl,"
"Zane, do not stop this car!" Jonas said. Zane was torn between stopping to help Joseph and obeying Jonas's orders and cutting off the other car. Only when he thought of Marcus, trapped in the car in bird form did he step on the gas and the car sped up, flying through the alleyway, jumping over several more bumps. Joseph made retching sounds in the back seat.
Zane hollered as they burst free from the alley, the car launching onto a street with several cars heading toward downtown London, finally tired of the unoccupied jet landed in the city square. Zane yanked the wheel to the left, skidding the wheels along the asphalt, turning the car to align with the rest. The traffic was condensed, unmoving. A large intersection was up ahead and jam-packed with cars trying to get places. Either London always had very heavy traffic, or for some strange reason, rush hour was taking place near midnight.
Joseph gasped. "If this goes on any longer, I'll be the one killing his little bird-bitch ass." He collapsed to the side as if the sentence took a lot of effort out of him. He grabbed at his stomach and squeezed, trying to block out the horrible bile he obviously felt creeping up his throat.
"There!" Jonas shouted, pointing behind them. Zane whirled around. The car behind them was exactly the same as the one they'd followed through the alley, complete with scratch marks and a missing mirror.
A petite woman was seated in the passenger seat. Her skinny arms, thinner than Jonas's even, were placed upon the dashboard. Her mouth was set in a grim line, her eyes straight forward. She didn't notice that the car in front of her was the same one that had been following them. Apparently it was normal for cars to come careening out of alleyways and drift onto the street.
The driver was a small man, barely able to see over the wheel. He was grimacing, sneaking glances at the small girl beside him. She flashed him a smile and her brown hair, tied up in a braid, flipped and hit the window. He appeared to apologize and turned back to the road in front of him.
"She's got the serum," Jonas said. "Why else would he be so scared of her? She's practically a female me, and I'm a toothpick." He snickered.
Joseph leaned forward. "Stop the car," he said.
"Joseph, I'm not stopping this car so you can puke,"
Joseph rolled his eyes. "Not that," he said. "Do you see Marcus anywhere?"
The car behind them contained only the small girl about their age and the small old man, nobody else. Zane wrinkled his brow. Where was Marcus? He snorted in disgust and put the car in park, halting the suspectful car behind them. "What do you suppose we do?" he asked.
"Well, that girl is unpredictable," Jonas theorized. "We don't know what she can do yet. Maybe you could just send some of your cells, enough to be unnoticeable, into the car, see if you can find Marcus. If he's not there, we don't have to bother with these people."
Zane sighed. "But what if they're the ones sent here to kill us?" he asked.
Jonas sighed right back at him. "If that's the case and we immediately disposed of them, don't you think Wawrzynski would send in triple the people to kill us?"
Zane conceded, saying nothing. Jonas was right, of course. Zane didn't know why he argued. The other boy had the knowledge and intuition of a thousand lifetimes of his own. He probably knew everything about New Vancouver and Wawrzynski's experiments, for that was what his microchip was intended for. Zane was worried that all this new input might overheat his microchip and kill him.
Zane rolled down the window, and the fresh city air rushed in. Zane tried to imagine what the world would be like if the air outside the car was worse than inside. He tried to imagine what London was like before, a polluted city with thousands of deaths caused by just the air itself. Zane struggled to think that something unseen could be so deadly.
Everything that had ever harmed him was visible. Even his mental agony was caused by New Vancouver, a very obvious city on the pacific coast of a large continent. The serum he had been injected with was visible, a light pink liquid designed to transform him. He had watched a bullet sink into his leg, but he just couldn't comprehend the idea that an invisible particle could be so dangerous. Which was ironic, considering his power. He laughed.
He sloughed off the rest of his pinkie, a small, barely unnoticeable amount, just like Jonas had suggested. The cells floated listlessly out the window, and even Zane, who was looking for them, could hardly see them. He released a breath in relief and sent them backward.
The images from the particles shot through his vision, tiny videos in front of a larger monitor, his real vision. Flecks of sound surrounded him, but no matter the strength of his particles, the senses of his mostly complete body dominated his mind. Sights were sharper and textures were more pronounced. But when he blinked, the small screens of his particles persisted.
It was very easy for his cells to slip into the car. They simply slid through the small gap between the window and the top of the car. Sparks of yellow flooded his vision because the girl's shirt was blaringly yellow as if she longed to be a literal star, a burning ball of bright gas in the sky. He winced at the harshness of the color, and it disoriented him. The small man obviously didn't want to blind people: he was wearing all black.
Zane dispersed his cells around the car, careful to stop them from multiplying and becoming noticeable. He closed his real eyes to focus on all the images flooding in, searching for Marcus, a small, prone, bird body lying on the seat or floor of the car, but he saw nothing. He was almost disappointed. He found his mind and body twitching, itching for something to happen despite the hundreds of possible deaths he'd avoided in the last month.
Zane, his body in the lead car, immersed himself in the rear car. His mind was focused on every detail in the back car, his real senses slowly fading as his desire to find Marcus grew and grew. He saw the frayed threads on the dark leather seats of the car, the seams on the girl's shirt. He noticed the faint specks of dirt on the floor and the separate ridges on the radio dials. He dialed back the intensity of these visions and focused only on locating Marcus.
Seeing that Marcus wasn't in the rear car, he withdrew his cells, removing them from the car and back to his body. He came back to his body, his senses back at normal levels, his vision back on the road ahead. Jonas and Joseph were staring at him expectantly.
Joseph sighed. "That is the coolest thing I've ever seen,"
Zane scoffed. "You mean, besides turning into steel?"
"Yup," he responded. Zane rolled his eyes.
"Marcus is not in the car," he relayed. "We have no further business with these people, we should skedaddle."
Jonas said, "Did you just use the word skedaddle?"
Zane ignored him. "They may or may not know that that bird was Marcus, but I seriously doubt they know where we all are. I suggest we bide our time, make Wawrzynski work to catch us. It could possibly delay any attacks he may have planned because he'd know we're still out here and that we can stop him."
Joseph nodded. "Jonas, do you know the way back?"
"Bitch, please,"
Five minutes later, they were back outside the foster home, and Marcus was on the steps, enclosed in a viciously gentle embrace from Mallory. He had found his way home. They stayed in the car for a while, letting the two of them have a moment or two. Zane understood how Mallory felt about Marcus. It was the same way he felt about Joseph. She wanted to protect Marcus no matter what, even if it cost her her own safety. She was prepared to sacrifice her own life for his: he felt the same about Joseph. His own wants and needs didn't matter if Joseph wasn't happy.
He smiled.
When Mallory and Marcus disappeared, Zane leaned back and, before Joseph could react, kissed him quickly. Joseph, shocked, didn't respond, so Zane broke away and got out of the car, leaving him stupidly beautiful in the backseat. He laughed and walked toward the foster home, the kind woman waiting at the door with a plate of homemade donuts. He smiled. This day just kept getting better.
He mumbled both his thanks and an apology through a mouthful of jam-filled donut. This caused him to laugh hysterically, and he realized they were in a pretty good place. People still wanted them dead, but they were in the least danger they'd ever been in. There was a possibility only two people were on their tail. They both may desire to wipe them from the face of the earth, but they were seven people now. Seven against two sounded like odds in their favor.
Zane walked upstairs with the donut already half gone, his mouth full. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, he found Daisy barring the entrance. "You're not allowed in here," she said, her eyes narrowing. The hallway was dark, and her hair almost appeared black, like it had been in her photograph.
"Why not?" he asked, jam hanging from his bottom lip.
"Me and Anastasia are tired of sleeping on the couches,"
"It's Anastasia and I,"
"Whatever, you asshole," she said, her arms still spread across the doorway. "There's a bedroom at the far end with one bed. I was gonna send Joseph over too, but for that last comment, I just might send Jonas. He's so bony he could break your nose if he thrashes in his sleep." She smiled, pleased with herself.
He rolled his eyes. "I know you," he said. "You won't send Jonas. You're my wingman, you'll send Joseph." He winked.
"The one time you acknowledge it, nobody's here to hear it," she said, throwing her arms in the air. "I'm even more inclined to send Jonas now, but I want to see you with Joseph. You're so cute together." She squealed. "Get going, then."
Zane, still rolling his eyes, walked down the hall, shoving the last of the donut in his mouth. He ducked in the room just as he heard Daisy scolding Joseph for trying to get into the other room. He protested for several moments, but one sentence from Daisy quieted him and sent him hurrying down the hall. Zane chuckled. He had an idea what that sentence had been.
Joseph walked in, his shirt hanging loosely over his collarbone. He smiled. "What was that for out there?" he asked, cocking his head.
"I'm just happy you're here with me," Zane said, returning the smile. It was fully dark now, for it had been twilight when Marcus had left in bird form. The window was dark, the stars twinkling in the clear sky far above. The fluorescent light above them illuminated Joseph's figure in the darkness, his broad shoulders, his sharply ruffled hair. Zane found himself grinning even wider.
Zane laid down on the bed, and Joseph came over next to him. He lay down, and the bed creaked. "I'm happy to be here," he said, reaching over a hand to entangle it with Zane's. Zane smiled as he felt Joseph's rough fingers close around his smoother ones, and a fingernail brushed his palm. He bumped his leg against Joseph's, soaking up the other boy's warmth.
"Tomorrow we'll have to go get those two," Zane said, referring to the girl and man in the car.
Joseph shook his head and clicked his tongue. "You don't get to talk about that tonight," he said. "No business tonight. Right now there's nothing outside this room."
"How are you going to stop me from talking about it?" Zane asked. "We need to talk about interrogating them. How else are we supposed to-"
"You're so serious,"
Joseph cut him off with a kiss. He was propped up on an elbow, his face stretched down so his lips could connect with Zane's. His beautiful blue eyes watched Zane carefully when he pulled away. Zane opened his mouth to speak again, but Joseph cut him off again. He placed an arm on the other side of Zane.
"You're impossible," Zane said, pushing back against Joseph, their kiss cut short. But he was trapped between Joseph's arms, and the dark-haired boy swept a leg over him as well.
"This is how I plan to keep you from talking about Wawrzynski and his psycho plans." He dropped down, bracing himself only in a plank position. He kissed Zane again, and their chests pressed together. He closed his eyes.
Zane, laughing, pulled away. "Do you think kissing me can solve everything?"
"If it can, I'm in luck,"
"Oh, you bumbling idiot," Zane said, a blush spreading through his face.
"I'm your bumbling idiot,"