Ordinaries: Shifters Book II (Shifters series 2) (21 page)

Chapter 39

Piper and a Viper

–TANNER–

As we walk through the hall, I hear a commotion up ahead. Ryland looks at me, and I shake my head. Kae is not wearing her usual carefree expression. Kai takes her hand and keeps his eyes ahead. The rebel leaders are acting like all is normal, so we press onward. The sound increases the farther we go.

E turns to us and says, “Keep your eyes forward and follow our lead. Do not look around. If you appear out of place, they will watch you.” She eyes Kae and says, “Do not smile.”

Kae frowns.

“You just lead,” Kai tells E, as he squeezes Kae’s hand. She brightens.

“That stops now,” E says, nodding toward their grip on each other. “No touching, except for formal greetings while in common areas.”

Kai grunts, and Kae releases his hand, letting hers fall to her side. Kai gives Kae a reassuring look and says, “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

She squeezes her lips tight and nods.

We emerge into what reminds me of a busy city square. There are people walking every direction. Vehicles are moving through the crowd, noisily weaving between the pedestrians. The sunlight is reflecting from every smooth surface. I see Bryce wince at the brightness, and I’m glad they gave me these glasses.

The strange thing is, although there are so many people, they don’t acknowledge one another other than avoiding running into each other. It’s as though each is completely isolated amongst the masses. They aren’t silent in their seclusion, though. They are each barking out commands to unseen companions as they walk like they are giving and following orders as they move.

I try to keep my head facing forward, like E told us, while surveying the scene the best I can.

“What are they doing?” Kae whispers.

Without missing a beat, Baccas walks behind her and barks out, “Central location. Miss in twenty. Reveal fifty. Check. In ten. Silence mandatory.” His tone mimics the workers, and I hope Kae got his message in the midst of his ramblings.

She points her head forward, and we all serpentine through the hordes of machines and foot traffic. The rebels lead us through the crowd and toward what must be an entrance in a tall sleek structure that looks like it touches the top of the glass ceiling. I want to turn my head up and marvel at the sheer wonder of it, but I force myself to keep my head forward.

We reach a dark opening, and a man at the entrance raises his right hand with his fingers together and thumb outstretched. Baccas and E raise their hands, mimicking his gesture. Just before they lower their hands, I notice each of them bends their pinky slightly. The man nods and says, “G.” They repeat, “G” to him, and he steps aside.

I see Ryland’s head turn slightly toward me. I can’t see her eyes, but I’m sure she rolled them under the thick glasses, maybe not. Her dead feet walk forward, and I find myself wondering if she is even here with us right now.

She might be on Six. With Clay.

My stomach tightens, and I pray to whatever gods might be here on these worlds that Clay is alright, that this is some sort of misinterpretation. Sol
é
saw him die, but he doesn’t die, right? Right?

Inside the building, there are many rooms all separated by glass. I can’t see how far the rooms go on for, but it seems like miles. Everything is absolutely, spectacularly, impossibly clean. I can’t imagine how much Windex they go through every day, but it must be more than the whole state of Connecticut uses in a year.

Through the walls, there are all kinds of things happening. There are machines putting intricate parts together, silent carts moving about the floor, and people loading packages on conveyers and pushing tubes through pipes. I’m assuming it’s some kind of delivery system.

We follow our tour guides toward a large cylinder that appears to go up forever. When we approach, the cylindrical glass slides open, and we step inside. We turn around and face the opposite direction before the enclosure seals us in. The floor is glass. I glance down and see it drops forever. There is nothing holding us up. We start rising, and I look up and see nothing above us. It’s as if we are levitating in a sea of glass.

We rise for about a minute or so before it finally stops—its quick motion is smooth and graceful, not at all bouncy and awkward like elevators on Earth. A few people that weren’t with us get out. We stay. We rise again and then stop. Instead of the door opening, we begin to move sideways. I look at my sister, and she just shrugs.

I’m not even sure if that response was to my surprise or to my general presence. She isn’t reassuring me she is alright.

Without warning, we suddenly have nothing below us but a thin layer of glass and the city a mile below—we left the building, structure, thing altogether! We are traveling through an inter-building passageway a hundred floors above the streets with nothing below us except for a sheet of glass. The rebels stand stoic, like this is an everyday thing.

As my stomach starts to turn, we are plunged into darkness. We enter a dimly lit area—finally free of the blinding sun, which I suppose here is just a star—and stop. Then we start going down. By down, I mean
down
. I see the ground approaching so fast I think I might lose my lunch, and we aren’t slowing. We reach the bottom floor but keep going down. We drop for another long minute before the glass coffin of death finally opens.

The sound of regular talking hits us, and for a moment, it feels like I’m back on Earth. The pure normalcy of it is comforting. People are talking and laughing and clanking dishes together.

“Come,” E says, as she walks through the crowd.

“That was . . . something,” Bryce says.

“I’ve got to get me one of those,” Alice says, and Bryce shakes his head. “What?” she asks. “You gotta admit that was cool.”

“You’re an idiot,” Bryce tells her. “I never want to do that again.”

We practically have to run to keep up with Baccas and E. Finally, we reach a door, and they knock. A window slides open, and they both do that strange hand thing with their pinkies bent slightly. They both say, “G,” and the guy in the window repeats the greeting. There are the sounds of several locks disengaging, then the door slides ominously open.

We walk in, fear knotting in my stomach. How much can we trust these rebels? How much do we really know about them?

Inside there are several people watching monitors, and others are sitting around a large round table, playing some kind of game that reminds me vaguely of
Go Fish
. The door closes behind us, and everybody stops.

Then Marcus raises his hand in the same weird way, and the group looks at us. We stand there like idiots, doing absolutely nothing.

A couple of the guys put down their cards and stand to face us. This is definitely not the friendliest room I’ve been in, and I think it’s safe to say these don’t look like the nicest people I’ve ever met.

My sister nudges me. She starts to take off her glasses, so I follow her lead, glad to see she is thinking clearly about where we are now. We might need her. We both lower our hands, and she throws her glasses onto the game table. I do the same, followed by Kai and Kae.

“You have got to be kidding me,” a gruff voice responds. The crowd steps aside as a biker-looking guy weaves his way toward us.

–RYLAND–

“E, Baccas!” he shouts, and everyone cowers. “You brought Shifters here? After the bombing over in C?”

“Bombing?” Tanner hisses to me.

I nod as inconspicuously as I can. “We saw the smoke from the mountains.”

“We’re Young,” Tanner says, trying to calm the situation.

“I don’t give a flippendorf how young you are!” the older man yells.

I can’t help it. Flippendorf? That’s probably a curse word here or something, but it’s ridiculous. I burst out laughing.

He turns on me, his muscular arms bulging with spidery veins. His black jacket tightens around his chest, and his face is so red it barely looks human.

E cowers as though he might kill us all. Baccas’s face turns white.

“Flippendorf? Do you realize how silly that word sounds?” I ask, still cracking up.

Before the big dude can explode, Tanner throws up his hands like he’s about to be shot. “Hey,” he says as calmly as he can. “Look, we all want the same thing.”

“Oh, really, Shifter bucklead?” he says in what I can only assume is a vicious tone. What the heck is a bucklead? “You mean to tell me you want to see every last Shifter’s corpse burning in the sun out there?”

His breath reeks of alcohol, and I feel as though we’ve stepped into very dangerous territory. His hatred of Shifters doesn’t end with the Enforcers up there. It doesn’t end until every last one of us is slaughtered.

“Lee!” a woman’s voice shouts from the back of the crowd just as—Lee, apparently—raises his fist.

A woman appears from the back of the crowd with a huge, jagged scar running diagonally down her face. Her left eye is gone, hidden somewhere beneath the damaged tissue. Despite the horrific disfigurement, I can tell at one time she was beautiful. With striking features, a lean, muscular figure, and honey blond hair, she would have been a breathtaking lady.

“Piper,” Baccas smiles, seeming genuinely grateful at her intervention.

“Baccas, I’d like to see you and your . . . guests in my office.” Her face doesn’t change its expression.

I feel as though I understand her already. She feels no differently than Lee. She despises us and hates that we’re here, but she’s colder, more callous. She will use us if necessary.

As it turns out, her office is a small cave-like room off the mess hall, and it’s covered in different bomb designs. I can’t help but swallow as I realize throughout the room are various odds and ends, bits of mechanisms that are all bombs in the making.

This woman is a killer. I have killed people, but this woman is
truly
a killer. She callously kills without remorse.

“Why did you bring them here?” Her sultry voice has no real emotion.

“Piper,” E starts, but Piper holds up a hand to silence her.

In that moment, I recognize the similarities between the two. I wonder briefly if they might be related, if the resemblance is simply due to the small community on Nine or if it’s the passion and hatred they feel for Shifters.

“They have an army, ships,” Baccas explains, his face white with fear.

“And you think that means we should trust them?” Piper says with a bored expression as she tinkers with one of the small bombs on the table.

“Listen,” Tanner says. “We’re your allies. We’ve already helped retake Six.”

Piper laughs; it’s not a laugh filled with genuine affection, but a laugh of scorn and derision. “You mean to say you now run Six?” She shakes her head as she eyes Tanner with her one gray-blue eye. “We will not trade one abusive dictator for another.”

“We want to free you,” I say. Her eye turns to me, but I force myself to stay focused. “We were raised by Ordinaries on a planet where Shifters didn’t exist. We didn’t even know what we were until a few months ago.”

Piper’s cruel smile makes my stomach curdle like milk, spoiling inside me and making me nauseous. “And why should that little tale make me trust you? I am not E or Baccas, pretending bravery as I cower in the mountains. I fight here. Daily. Covertly.”

E’s face looks tortured, as though someone has slapped her. “We are not cowards.”

“No?” Piper asks in a singsong tone. “Then why not stay here and fight them?”

“I won’t work for them. Not even to pretend. I won’t make their ships and weapons to be used against our own people,” E says. Her face is hard, a mask of fury and righteous indignation. “I fight and suffer outside the dome, and I do it so I’ll not help them.”

Piper laughs, the bell-like sound of it making me shudder. She is a hard woman. “Oh, you are righteous, E. Tell them why you
really
had to leave,” she nods toward us.

E’s neck stiffens, but she lowers her eyes.

“I thought so,” Piper scoffs.

“Piper, we can use them. They can invade, destroy the Shifters here,” Baccas says.

“We won’t kill them all,” Tanner says. “I already told you; we can never take Gaia without the Shifters’ help. We cannot slaughter them.”

Piper eyes Tanner warily. “Then how do you propose to free us, Young one?”

Kae trembles as she finally says, “We imprison them. After we’ve won the war, you can put them on trial.”

Piper looks as though she might agree for a moment, then she hisses as though she’s been burned. “You brought a Viper here?” she practically screams at Baccas. “You brought it here, into our base? We could have been annihilated by your little band of allies. You idiot!” Her face is full of fury as she sneers at Kae.

Kae recoils as though someone has struck her. She looks to Kai for comfort, confused about what she has done so wrong. He grips her hand in his.

For a moment, I feel anger toward her. Then, I feel worry overtake me as I wonder where Clay is right now. Is he thinking of me?

“She doesn’t know what she is,” I say with unfocused eyes. “Her Apt is just beginning to manifest itself.”

Piper turns on me. “And you,” she says with hatred in her eyes. “What deceptiveness have you brought with you?”

“I’m a Flyer,” I say evenly.

“Then you are of no use here in the dome.” She smiles at me as though this is some victory.

“No,” I say, shrugging my shoulders as though her victory is no loss of mine.

“And the others?” she asks.

“A Shadow and a Controller,” I say flatly, nodding toward Kai and Tanner in turn.

Piper turns her eyes to Alice. “And this little one?”

I shrug. “Nothing.”

Chapter 40

We Let Them Win a Tiebreaker

–TANNER–

“Seriously, Ry,” I say, jutting my chin toward Alice. I think Ryland hurt her feelings.

“What?” Ryland says, raising her palms as though she’s completely innocent. “She asked.”

I stare at Piper and ask the important question. “What are
you
going to do to help
us
?
”

The leader roars with laughter. “Listen to me, you little flap,” she says, completely serious—you know, as though flap is some sort of actual insult. “It is clear we do not want the same thing.” She nods toward the men and says, “Take them. Throw them in the hole.”

Two men grab my arms, hard. Baccas and E scream for Piper to stop. Marcus and Kai eye each other. My sister’s face grows hard. Alice jerks her arms free and stares the men down. Kae’s mouth drops open—this may be the first time someone didn’t react positively toward her. My sister’s eyes smile as she and Kai share a silent plan.

I look at Kae and wonder if she knows what they’re planning. She shakes her head. This is not working. As the men start to force us toward a door in the back of the room, I jut my chin toward my sister. Kae looks helplessly toward Kai, and it’s like a lightbulb comes on.

We all look at each other struggling with our assailants and do a quick countdown. My heart races, and the familiar burn in my chest signals the time is right. The world stops, and I can see the expressions frozen on the rebels’ faces as it dawns on them what’s happening. Did they really think we would let them throw us in some dungeon?

I don’t think so!

I peel the hands off of my arms and walk around the two of them. I look at Kae, who’s moving much slower than me and realize for the first time that each of us moves at a slightly different speed. All of us are shifted, but we aren’t necessarily the same. Kai and Ryland appear to be about the same, but Kae appears to be slightly slower.

I push my two guys to the floor, one on top of the other. Kai takes two men and pushes their arms against the wall. Taking a hammer and nails, he pins their jacket sleeves to the wall. He steps back and smiles before turning his attention to Piper. My sister and Kae open the door we came in, carry their guys out, and return, shutting the door behind them.

Marcus has neatly arranged all of the men into a line in front of him. I turn around to see Kai has pinned Piper, spread-eagle, to the table and taken a seat in the large chair directly in front of her.

I break my shift and see each of our team come back into focus. Piper lets out a roar and struggles on the table, screaming, “I told you E! You brought this on!”

E and Baccas stare at us, their expressions conveying confusion and betrayal. The rebels begin to jump up, but Marcus points at them, and they decide it would be safer if they remain seated.

“What are you doing?” Baccas shouts.

E’s expression melds as she stares at the scene, becoming a smirk. She is not surprised by our reaction or our abilities.

“I’m going to ask one more time,” I say, eyeing the rebel pinned to the table. “What are
you
going to do to help
us
?”

Piper spits, “I knew we couldn’t trust you, Shifter!”

The two men pinned to the wall begin shouting what I assume are insults at us.

I look at Kai, who looks way too comfortable in the large chair, and say, “Quiet them down, would ya?”

Kai smiles and vanishes. I don’t take my eyes off of Piper as I hear their voices muffle. “Listen,” I say to the leader. “This is our fight as much as it is yours. We will fight, and we will win.”

“You’re children! What do you know of this? What do you know of centuries of oppression? Watching your family as they’re taken away? Forced to leave . . . to be enslaved?” she spits.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “We can’t even pretend to understand.”

“Tanner!” Ryland yells.

I give her a look and continue, “The things they put you through, your families, your loved ones, I can never imagine your loss . . . your pain.” Piper eyes me suspiciously. I don’t blame her. “This is your battle, your war. I don’t deny that.”

“That’s right!” Lee shouts from the floor. He grunts as Marcus kicks him, telling him to shut up.

I stare Lee in the eyes and say, “But don’t think we haven’t suffered.”

“Huh,” Piper scoffs. “What do you know of suffering?”

“They came after us!” I tell her. “They brought the war to our home, to our family. They killed mothers, fathers, children . . .” I choke out the last part, “. . . our baby sister.” I look at my sister. She has tears in her eyes. The last thing I wanted to do was bring up Peanut, especially when Sol
é
told us Clay is going to die.

Marcus is trying to maintain his composure. I know he has lost a wife and a daughter. I know Kai’s parents’ deaths are fresh in his mind. Although it wasn’t at the hands of the Shifters, it definitely was because of the prophesy.

“It’s our war too,” I quietly tell the leader. “The only difference is, we
will
take down The Council. We
will
prevail. We
will
fulfill the prophesy. It has been foreseen.”

“How can we trust you?” she asks. “How do we know you won’t treat us like slaves?”

I shake my head at her and say, “You don’t.”

“That’s what I thought,” she scoffs.

“I’ll tell you one thing. We didn’t grow up as your oppressors. Our parents are Ordinaries. We may have Shifter blood, but we have Ordinary hearts.”

Piper quiets and looks between my sister and me.

“The way I see it,” I tell her. “You can keep setting off your little explosions. Continue to be a nuisance to The Council. You may gain some notoriety, maybe make a name for yourself, but you will never really change anything. You’ll eventually be captured, maybe even killed.”

“If that’s what it takes,” Lee says before Marcus quiets him with another stomach full of his boot.

“There are plenty more to take my place,” Piper says.

“You don’t get it,” I say, shaking my head at her. “That’s exactly your problem.” She eyes me, so I explain, “You keep thinking small, disjointed. There are plenty more. All of these splinters, these small groups can’t do anything.”

“We’ve been doing plenty for centuries.”

“Is that what you want? Centuries more of
doing plenty?
” I ask her. “Wouldn’t it be better to end it now?”

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Piper asks.

“Unite,” I tell her. “We have already taken Six. We have a base. I say we bring all of the groups together. We focus our strategies and resources. Come up with a real plan. They have battled your strategies. The Council has never come up against a real, united, strategic force. That’s what we need to make a real change.”

–
RYLAND–

“Besides,” I say, eyeing Lee on the ground. “We kicked your butt in less than five minutes. Imagine what real Shifter Enforcer Units could do if they actually cared about crushing you.” My smug smile probably isn’t helping Tanner’s whole “We have Ordinary hearts” load of Hallmark hooey that he’s trying to force-feed down everyone’s throats. I don’t care. I’m right; she needs our help more than we need hers.

She tries to raise an eyebrow at me, but with her face all mangled, it looks more like a grimace. For the first time, she genuinely laughs. It still contains some of her harsh personality in its bell-like notes, but it’s actually sort of a pleasant sound.

Baccas looks like he might faint. I’m not sure if that’s out of relief that we aren’t all about to be executed for treason or if he is just happy to hear the sound of Piper’s laugh. My guess is it’s a little of both. He clearly has an admiration for the stark good-hearted bad girl type authority figure Piper has going on.

I glance at Kai, wondering how he will take Piper, given his relationship with past Ordinary protectors, but he’s smirking. He seems genuinely pleased at meeting someone as jaded as he is. I think he admires her courage and her grasp of the situation.

“Alright,” Piper says slowly. “If you agree this is our fight, then we do it my way—with my people in charge.”

I realize immediately we have no choice in allowing her this condition if we want her to work with us, but I also know there is no way that I’m giving her command of our troops. They’re kids. They’re kids whose lives she is willing to sacrifice without a second thought in order to win this war.

She doesn’t care about casualties. She cares about the bottom line. She cares about being in power when this war is over.

That isn’t who I want in charge of Bryce or Kae or Sol
é
or . . . Clay.

“Okay,” Tanner agrees, his face a mask.

I could just strangle that idiot boy for pretending he alone has the authority to even make such an agreement. As though the rest of us have absolutely no say in the way that this war is fought. As if we are simply here as his bodyguards. Because, let’s face it, Tanner hasn’t exactly been practicing combat as much as he should, let alone out there fighting real battles like the rest of us.

Thankfully, Marcus chimes in. “Hold on,” he says, holding up his hand. “I understand you know this planet, this colony better than we do. You know their defenses, their weapons, their families and friends. But you don’t know us, our skills, our tech. You would have no idea who to place on what team or for what purpose.”

He eyes me as he says this. “Some of our soldiers are highly specialized, really only good for specific missions. Others are not soldiers at all, they have skills that are valuable to our cause in other ways.”

“Then when I want your opinion, I’ll ask,” Piper says coldly, ignoring everything Marcus just said.

“She’s right,” Tanner says, “It’s her fight. It’s her planet. We let her run things.”

“No,” I say vehemently. “We let people run things on Six, and now Clay is going to die.
We
run things now.”

“I made that decision, Ryland,” Marcus says softly.

“You think I don’t know that?” I shout; Piper blanches at my sudden ferocity, wondering what fractured mess she’s gotten herself into.

“Ryland, Piper should lead on this one,” Tanner tries to say calmly.

“No,” I say. “It’s going to be a conclave. With votes.”

Piper watches me, expressionless, for a long moment. “And who would be on this conclave of yours?”

I hold my breath for a long moment before answering. This is going to be an interesting proposition. “Piper, Baccas, Kai, and Sol
é
.”

Piper’s eyebrows shoot up. “So, I am the sole member of my team on this council?”

“I’ve given you two Ordinaries and two Shifters,” I growl.

“And who is Sol
é
?” Piper asks, considering.

“Our Seer,” Tanner says in confusion, looking at me as though I’ve gone mad.

“You want me to be on a council?” Kai scoffs. “Ryland, I need to be out in the field.”

I can’t explain it. I need him safe. I need him here, where I know he’ll be okay, where I know I won’t lose him.

I swallow. “You’re a hothead, so is Piper. We need your desire for action and vengeance. You two will fuel this rebellion. We’ll need Baccas’s levelheadedness. And we need Sol
é’
s input.”

“Ryland,” Tanner says, shaking his head. “Sol
é
doesn’t make those kind of decisions.” His blue eyes plead with me.

I shake my head. “I need her here. I need her listening so she can tell us if something we’re doing will cause a disaster. She can help us be prepared.”

Piper thinks for one moment longer before saying, “I want E.”

“What?” E stammers in confusion.

“I want E to be our fifth member. Our tie breaker,” Piper says flatly.

“Why me?” E asks, sounding more like a child.

Piper shrugs.

“Fine,” I say.

Tanner looks at me, unsure of what I’m doing.

I’m not losing anyone else. That’s what I’m doing.