My thoughts exactly.

Sophie and Logan, aka Buddy, looked at each other for a several heartbeats of silence then Sophie's gaze shifted to Parker.

"Forgive me, but I took some liberties." Parker looked at me.

Well hell yeah, he did. My friends were Freaking Out.

"I anticipated some of what may happen with Caleb, and I certainly had some foreknowledge of what may happen with Jade." He shrugged and looked at Sophie. "He will be your guard. You can convince her to come here. She'll need to go with you when you return."

I wanted her with me, that was a no-brainer. But why couldn't I get the shit, come back to our world and give her a dose?

Parker gave me steady eyes. "She has the least amount of time, Caleb."

I swallowed past my misery. "How much?"

He looked at all my friends. "They may have a few weeks, some," his eyes touched on the Weller kids, Jonesy, "somewhat more."

"And Jade?" I asked in a hoarse voice.

"Days, Caleb."

"Why me?" I asked in a low voice and Gramps frowned as Clyde moved forward.

"Do you remember what I said to you upon our first acquaintance?" Clyde's eyes searched mine and I nodded dully.

"To whom much is given, much is expected," I responded in a reactive fugue.

"You were given much, Caleb," he said.

And Parker added to the torture, "what you experience now is critical to who you'll be in the future, Caleb. You must be tested with these experiences to become the man you'll be."

"Maybe I don't want to be him," I said in a voice that brooked no argument, drenched with my impotent rage.

"You already are, Caleb. You already are."

CHAPTER 17

Jade

Jade moved her hand to her temple again, massaging the tender pain that pulsed there. She'd felt sick for two days and her head swam with disturbing images of suffering and pain.

She would try to think in a linear way and a press of sickening memories and images would wash away her thought processes like water running down glass.

She felt muddled. For some reason, Howie was taking her to school every day and she wasn't fighting it. It seemed so much more reasonable to go along with it.

But Jade was frightened. This fog inside her head made her hands shake. They trembled now as she pulsed the lock Caleb had installed on her door that led to the dungeon where she lived. In the bowels of the Frazier home.

The last two nights Howie had waited until his parents were drinking at the local tavern and his soft rapping on the door had been replaced by his foot kicking it.

She remembered the first night with perfect recall.

"Jade," Howie used his big knuckles to hit the door, their hollow banging causing the metal of the door to echo. "Let me in, let's talk," he'd said in conspirator's tones.

Her hand had hovered over the lock, her mind in a fog of swirling confusion. She knew there was some kind of warning here, she just couldn't think of it. All she could think of was her dead father's words about how bad of a girl she was.

How slutty.

How dirty.

She licked her dry lips, her fingers caressing over the locking pulse mechanism, her thumb hovering dangerously close to release.

But Howie said the words that made the pain stab relentlessly in her head. He slapped his open palm against the metal of the door. "Open this goddamned lock, you bitch!" he yelled through the metal slab, his palm's impact lifting her forehead away from the cool surface where it'd been resting.

She backed away then, his words following her no matter where she went in the room. Jade gave a soft whimper as the pain bloomed like a sickened flower inside her head.

"That cocksucker boyfriend of yours isn't here to save your ass. It's me that you need, Jade. Not some pretty boy like Hart. Me," he slapped the metal and the door shuddered, "ME!" He began kicking it at the base and the metal rippled and squealed in protest.

Please hold, Jade thought.

Please.

And on the heels of her muddled consciousness she had a small hope flare.

Caleb.

Then she remembered that she'd let him go.

She couldn't remember why now. It seemed... vague, soft. When she tried to grab hold of it, it slipped through her fingers like smoke through a gap.

*

Brett

Off in the distance Brett Mason felt the echo of her feelings and shot straight up in his bed. Their inadvertent connection bound them together. He felt her fear, her confusion. He didn't know the cause of the latter but he knew the fear well.

He'd felt it many times in the past. As fists rained down on his body, as words pierced his mind.

Brett threw his shit on, hopping to his windowsill, he balanced expertly on the edge, jumping the three meters to the dead grass below, his foot kicking up dirt from a gopher mound.

He smiled without knowing it, his memory bank supplying the one person that had ever stood up for him beside Jade.

Caleb Hart. Brett hated him... but he admired him too.

The whole thing was a warped fucking mess.

Oh well, shit happens.

And then ya die.

Brett raced to Jade's house. He'd beat Frazier until he wasn't standing. Nobody was gonna ever hurt Jade again. Not like he'd been hurt.

He wouldn't let it happen.

After all, he loved her.

He always had.

*

"You've got to be kidding me?" I asked. I couldn't believe it.

"I'm not. You've got to find one of the brothers, stab him with this," he held up a small device that had many small "teeth" embedded on it. A collection disc. I'd seen a buttload of those things in the med clinics. They took blood and other bodily crap.

"We gotta collect their piss or something?" Jonesy asked with distaste.

"No, it's a blood collection extractor," John answered him and Parker nodded.

"That's a relief," Tiff said dryly.

"Yeah, so easy to collect, Parker!" Bry threw up his hands, frustrated.

"Nah, we'll get it," Alex said with certainty and Randi looked up at him, fluttering her eyelashes.

Geez.

I put my hand up. "Why their blood?"

"It's the ultimate security. No matter what happened to the drug, the deactivation code remains embedded in their blood."

"WTF? The sleazeballs!" Jonesy said, kicking a tin can, making it skitter into the gloom of the twilight that'd descended.

Parker nodded. "Dumping them off to be dealt with by the..."

He glanced at me and I filled in the word, "fragment."

He nodded, "It was clever but now you'll have to find them, get a sample of their blood, combine it with this," he pulled a small vial out of his pocket and swirled the amber-colored fluid that was inside and said, "and administer one drop under the tongue of everyone present."

"Ah..." Bry raised a hand.

"Except you."

"Right," he said, muttering, "I knew it was cool to be a mundane."

I didn't know about that. His sister had gotten nailed. Maybe they only needed to do in one Weller brain.

"Why can't one of us guys go with Soph? Why does Tracker get to go? He's a proven lying sack 'o shit," Jonesy's eyes narrowed on Tracker and he moved forward.

Jonesy's hands clenched into fists, "Wanna go, ya dick hole?"

"Yeah, I do..." Logan said, moving toward him.

Parker inclined his head and the zombies sprinted to the two, pulling them apart before they could start in on each other.

Parker said, "Get a hold of it, Tracker. Forget the girl. She's a target, that's it. You volunteered for this assignment after your lengthy punishment. So don't do anything to screw this up."

Tracker elbowed one of the zombies in the gut and a smell of decay washed over the area. It hissed and clamped down on Tracker and he grunted.

"It's just a love clench now, Logan. You know what their potential is." Parker raised his brows. Logan nodded reluctantly, throwing Parker a glare.

I knew.

The zombie released Tracker, hissing as he did.

Friendly bunch.

Parker looked at Jonesy. "Tracker is a trained agent. He is a sixth belt in Karate, he understands and can execute hand to hand combat with exactness. Some teenage boys aren't going to deter him from his goal. Which is?" Parker promoted, cocking a brow in Logan's direction.

"Acquisition of Jade LeClerc, protection of Sophia Morris."

Tears rolled down Sophie's cheeks in strangled tendrils of water.

Logan and Jonesy glared at each other as her tears fell to the soft dirt at everyone's feet. Dampening the ground with her sadness.

"You boys understand what's at stake here?" Parker asked.

Gramps answered for us all, "Yeah, I think we've got the low-down. Now stop jawing and get that girl. I, for one, want to shut these jag-ups down."

"Forever," I said.

****

Jade

Jade ran from one end of her sparse room to the other, lifting and looking through her books, her pink pack that Caleb had gotten her a year ago for her birthday. Her room was a slob-fest. She hadn't kept it neat like normal, she'd been so slow, so confused.

Not at the moment. With Howie trying to beat her door down, she had one thing on her mind.

Pulse Sophie. She could get help.

Even now, as she found her pulse and wrapped her hand around its cool shiny pink exterior she could feel Brett moving toward her.

But Howie was crazy.

And he wasn't a mundane.

He was that new thing... she rummaged through her addled brain. Ah! She remembered now.

A Manipulative.

He'd just been categorized. An ability so dangerous, he was in a class by himself, taught by a powerful, five-point Null. He could not make Jade do his bidding with just his voice.

But if he touched her, she would be putty in his hands. Her Empath nature would act as a a natural complement to his directives.

All of them.

Brett would be similarly vulnerable. She needed to get a message to Sophie.

Jade depressed the thumb pad even as she felt Brett enter the house, his emotional signature, linked to her as she had tried to slip from this world almost a year ago, a pulse all its own.

High Emotive Response

Jade's hands shook as she thought Sophie's contact pulse signature.

Do you require medical or emergency response? Emergency Auto Protection Response.

Shall we pulse 911 on your behalf? Emergency Auto Protection Response.

Of course, Jade thought, my pulse will activate it. She was relieved. Maybe she wouldn't have to screw with bugging Sophie. Jade jumped when Howie's foot slammed into the door again, a dent bowing the door into a grotesque lump of metal on her side. Her anxious eyes traveled back to her pulse, the luminescent green characters floating into the familiar configuration used to contact a recipient. Her knuckles whitening with the exertion of her grip, the etched hearts on the surface biting into her palm.

Yes- Jade LeClerc

initializing.

emergency response intercept.

Jade brows drew together in confusion, she shook the pulse.

emergency response [national security] intercept.

emergency response failed.

Jade looked at her pulse for a heartbeat and realized that not all was what it seemed. She scratched the irritating mark on her arm and pulsed Sophie.

For some reason her pulse wasn't going through to 911.

It was supposed to go through no matter what.

Jade swiped her thumb and thought: new contact.

Top Five Contact- BFF

initializing

Sophia Morris- BFF

Jade watched anxiously as the characters came together and solidified. Howie's foot pounded a staccato rhythm on the door. Rat-a-tat-tat. She looked at the door, her hair flying in front of her face, she looked back at her pulse, swinging it behind her shoulder.

initializing

contact failure.

Jade's head whipped up as she heard footsteps on the stairs, then scuffling.

Brett had arrived.

Jade couldn't contact anyone for help.

Her pulse had been neutralized.

By who, her mind screamed inside her cotton-filled head.

By who?

*

Sophie looked at Caleb, then Parker. "I can't get her!" she relayed anxiously.

I moved toward her, grabbing her pulse. I used my thumb and depressed it on her unlocked catalog.

I thought, Jade LeClerc.

Pulse History:

BFF initialized, contact failed.

[national security intercept]

My eyes snapped to Parker. "They're already involved." Then, "Jade's in trouble."

I showed him the pulse intercept.

"Damn," is all Parker said. He looked at me. "You'll have to decide what to do, Caleb. They want Jade taken down. Out." His eyes searched mine.