Page 4

TREY

“She’s been scrubbed!” I meant for that to come out a little less panicky.

“What?” Liz stands on the other side of her open front door, giving me a furrowed look. “Who’s been scrubbed?”

“Arella. They took her, then they interrogated me in z-prison for three days before finally letting me go. I just went to her apartment, looked straight into her eyes, and she didn’t recognize me. They fucking scrubbed her!”

Liz puts her gloved hands up, palms forward. “Wait, wait. Let’s start from the beginning. Who’s Arella?”

I gasp. “No! Not you too!”

Liz side-eyes me like she’s trying to figure out if I need to get checked into an asylum. It’s the same look Arella gave me earlier. “Why don’t you come in and sit down, T?”

I get only two steps into Liz’s house before my legs buckle and I fall to my knees. This can’t be happening. I can’t breathe. My throat feels like I’m swallowing sand. Is everybody scrubbed?

Liz grips my arm and helps me to my feet. “Come on, T. Let’s get you on the couch, then I’ll get you some water. Once you’re calm, you can tell me everything.”

It takes me a while to become calm enough to speak again.

I start off by telling Liz about my ZIRDA mission and how, over time, I fell deeply in love with Arella.

Then I tell her about the baby, Arella’s kidnapping, and how I found out that the person I thought was my uncle was actually my biological father, who was actually Aunt Jodi the whole time.

Liz ogles me like I’m telling her a horror story. “Oh my god. That’s a lot to process.”

“Oh, I’m not even done yet.”

“There’s more?”

“Yep. I found out today that the zovernment already knows that our soul mates can be Ordinaries. They also know that we can reproduce together. They only tell us we can’t so our worlds don’t mix again.

They don’t want to have to deal with another mass genocide, so basically, they’ve conditioned us to think Ordinaries aren’t an option. ”

“Wait.” Liz shakes her head like she can’t believe what I just said. I don’t blame her. A part of me is still trying to believe it too. “Does that mean there are a bunch of half-Ordi, half-Zordi people walking around?”

“Um, that, I don’t know. I didn’t even think to ask because I was so fixated on getting to Arella. Oh, by the way, when I got there, she was with some dude who claimed to be her boyfriend.”

“Damn.” Liz blows out a long breath. “In my memory, you called me up and said you needed a break from band stuff. You told me you were going to hop onto your bike and travel around for a week or two. Then you asked if I could tell Monique so you didn’t have to hear her yell at you about it.”

At least when the Scrubbers altered Liz’s memory, they gave her a fake one that’s reasonably believable. If that had actually happened, my band manager definitely would have yelled at me for taking two weeks off without notice.

I clear my throat as I prepare to say something stupid. “I have to go back.”

“Back where?”

“To the prison.”

“What?”

I knew it was stupid. “I don’t mean behind bars. I mean that I need to go back so I can beg them to unscrub her.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Fuck if I know, but I’m gonna find out.”

The sky is dismally dark by the time I pull my vehicle up to the z-prison’s guard booth. The barrier arms are down, blocking my car from going any farther.

I told Liz not to come with me, but she insisted. She gawks out the window at the empty road stretching ahead of us, then at the gigantic building at the end of it. “I’ve never seen a z-prison before. It looks kinda eerie.”

I roll my window down at the same time an Enforcer in his light blues peeks his head out the booth window.

“Sorry,” he says from under a gray mustache. “Visiting hours are over.”

The zense in my chest tingles from his nearness. “I’m not here to see an inmate. I’m here to see Mia Wang.” That is, if she’s still here. She could be back in New York by now.

“I dunno who that is, but either way, y’all can’t be here right now.”

“She’s an Executive Keeper. I was just here earlier today and spoke with her. I need to talk to her again.”

“This is a z-prison, sir, not a zovernment office. If you’re trying to talk to a Keeper, go bother them instead.”

“Find me someone who can get me in contact with Mia.” Oops . I didn’t mean for my words to come out so demandingly. I’m just still on edge from hearing Arella ask me, Who are you?

“Excuse me?” The Enforcer screws his face together as a tiny wave of anger floats into my head.

The perrizo is slowly wearing off, but it’s not fully out of my system yet.

If it was, I’m sure I’d be sensing heavier emotions from this man.

“You have no right to be making demands around here. If you’re trying to see a Keeper, an Executive Keeper at that, you’ve come to the wrong pl?—”

Ring. Ring.

The Enforcer slides his window shut, then picks up the booth phone and holds it to his ear. There’s a long pause as he listens to whatever is being said on the other line. He nods a few times, says words I can’t make out, nods again, then hangs up the phone.

The window slides back open. “Miss Wang will meet you out here in ten minutes. Stay in your vehicle until she arrives.”

“Thank you.” I roll my window up, then turn to Liz. “She must have known I was coming. This oughta be good.”

The ten minutes I’m forced to wait feels like ten hours.

Eventually, a black Cadillac Escalade with blinding headlights rolls down the road and stops on the other side of the barrier arms. The front passenger door pops open, then Mia Wang slides out.

She’s still wearing her burgundy suit and matching high heels.

Whoever is driving the vehicle remains in the car with the engine running.

Mia approaches my window as I roll it down. She bends at the hip to meet my eyes. I’m about to ask her how she knew I was coming when she says, “I’m a Seer. Besides, even if I wasn’t, I had a feeling you’d be back.”

“Is that why you’re still here?”

“You were my main reason for coming to California, but I had other things to take care of here. Things I’m not doing right now because I’m standing outside, talking to you.

You’ve got some nerve, Mr. Grant. We’ve had to make quite a few exceptions for you.

Dropping charges for exposure to an Ordinary.

Dropping charges for having sexual relations with an Ordinary.

Getting you that ride home. And now this.

Do you realize you can’t just show up to a z-prison and demand to speak to a Keeper?

Given your situation, I’m allowing you one free pass, so make it count. ”

I step out of my car and shut the door behind me. I expect Mia to be a little intimidated because I’m a full head taller than her, but the woman doesn’t look fazed at all. I guess she didn’t get that official crest branded onto her chest for nothing.

I cross my arms. “What did you do to her?”

Mia sighs as she tucks some of her long black hair behind an ear. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from her?”

“Did you really think I was gonna listen?”

Mia sighs again, heavier this time. “How about we go for a walk?”

I bend to peek my head into the car. “You cool to stay here for a bit?”

Liz nods. “I’ll be fine.”

Mia gestures down the road leading away from the prison. She doesn’t say anything as we fall into steady steps side by side. Maybe she’s waiting for me to speak first, so I ask my question again.

“What did you do to her?”

“You already know what happens to Ordinaries who get exposed to our world. Why are you surprised the same thing happened to her?”

Because I didn’t think it was possible to scrub her. Erasing and altering memories is a mind power that would affect Arella internally. She’s immune to that. “How did you do it?”

“With a Scrubber, of course.”

“Yes, but how?”

Mia chuckles under her breath. “Mr. Grant, if you know how to pleasure a woman right, then you should already know that it’s possible to bypass her immunity walls.” She throws up a hand, palm forward. “Before you get too worked up about that, no, we did not sexually violate her.”

I let out a breath because that’s exactly what I was about to accuse the zovernment of doing. “What did you do instead?”

Mia’s heels clack against the road as she pulls all her long hair to one shoulder. “Do you know what happens to the human brain during climax?”

“I dunno. Dopamine, I’m guessing.”

“Correct. That, along with a bunch of other hormones, are released. Most importantly, the brain shuts down the control center that has to do with fear. Getting a person to orgasm is not the only way to shut down that control center. As you’ve already figured out, when those fear controls are put into overdrive, she gains the ability to control and project her immunity.

So it’s simple: Shut down the fear and her invisible shield comes down. ”

That makes a ton of sense now that I think about it, except... “How did you shut down her fear?”

“Our zoctors did it with the right mix of drugs and hormone injections.” Mia puts another hand up. “Don’t worry. She was under anesthesia, and she doesn’t remember a thing.”

Since the zovernment knows so much about how to scrub an Immune, I’m going to assume Arella wasn’t their first. I wouldn’t be surprised if the zovernment was or is hosting research sessions on Immunes in a secret facility somewhere.

“What about when Arella woke up?” I ask. “Wouldn’t she have questioned why she was put to sleep by a bunch of people she didn’t know?”

“The Ordinary had a Zordi fetus inside her that stopped developing. She would have had to undergo a surgery for the removal anyway, so we took the liberty of doing both procedures at the same time.”