Shatter Me Complete Collection (64 page)

There’s a general murmur among the crowd.

“You must imagine that it is your mother. Your father. Your brothers and sisters among them. They are hurting and they are beaten down. We have to do what little we can to help. It’s the only way. We are their only hope.”

“What about our men?” Another person gets to his feet. He must be in his late 40s, round and robust, towering over the room. “Where is the guarantee that we will get Winston and Brendan back?”

Castle’s gaze drops for only a second. I wonder if I’m the only one who noticed the pain flit in and out of his eyes. “There is no guarantee, my friend. There never is. But we will do our best. We will not give up.”

“Then what good was it to take the kid hostage?” he protests. “Why not just kill him? Why are we keeping him alive? He’s done us no good and he’s eating our food and using resources that should go to the rest of us!”

The crowd bursts into an aggravated frenzy, angry, insane with emotions. Everyone is shouting at once, shouting things like, “Kill him!” and “That’ll show the supreme!” and “We have to make a statement!” and “He deserves to die!”

There’s a sudden constriction in my heart. I’ve almost begun to hyperventilate and I realize, for the very first time, that the thought of Warner dead is anything but appealing to me.

It horrifies me.

I look to Adam for a different kind of reaction but I don’t know what I was expecting. I’m stupid to be surprised at the tension in his eyes, his forehead, the stiff set of his lips. I’m stupid to have expected anything but hatred from Adam. Of course Adam hates Warner. Of course he does.

Warner tried to
murder
him.

Of course he, too, wants Warner dead.

I think I’m going to be sick.

“Please!” Castle shouts. “I know you’re upset! Tomorrow is a difficult thing to face, but we can’t channel our aggression onto one person. We have to use it as fuel for our fight and we have to remain united. We cannot allow anything to divide us. Not now!”

6 ticks of silence.

“I won’t fight until he’s dead!”

“We kill him tonight!”

“Let’s get him now!”

The crowd is a roar of angry bodies, determined, ugly faces so scary, so savage, so twisted in inhuman rage. I hadn’t realized that the people of Omega Point were harboring so much resentment.

“STOP!” Castle’s hands are in the air, his eyes on fire. Every table and chair in the room has begun to rattle. People are looking around, scattered and scared, unnerved.

They’re still unwilling to undermine Castle’s authority. At least for now.

“Our hostage,” Castle begins, “is no longer a hostage.”

Impossible.

It’s
impossible
.

It’s not
possible
.

“He has come to me, just tonight,” Castle says, “and asked for sanctuary at Omega Point.”

My brain is screaming, raging against the 14 words Castle has just confessed.

It can’t be true. Warner said he was going to leave. He said he was going to find a way to get
out
.

But Omega Point is even more shocked than I am. Even Adam is shaking with anger beside me. I’m afraid to look at his face.

“SILENCE! PLEASE!” Castle holds out another hand to quell the explosion of protests.

He says, “We have recently discovered that he, too, has a gift. And he says he wants to join us. He says he will fight with us tomorrow. He says he will fight against his father and help us find Brendan and Winston.”

Chaos

Chaos

Chaos

explodes in every corner of the room.

“He’s a liar!”

“Prove it!”

“How can you believe him?”

“He’s a traitor to his own people! He’ll be a traitor to us!”

“I’ll never fight beside him!”

“I’ll kill him first!”

Castle’s eyes narrow, flashing under the fluorescent lights, and his hands move through the air like whisks, gathering up every plate, every spoon, every glass cup in the room and he holds them there, right in midair, daring someone to speak, to shout, to disagree.

“You will not touch him,” he says quietly. “I took an oath to help the members of our kind and I will not break it now. Think of yourselves!” he shouts. “Think of the day you found out! Think of the loneliness, the isolation, the terror that overcame you! Think of how you were cast off by your families and your friends! You don’t think he could be a changed man? How have
you
changed, friends? You judge him now! You judge one of your own who asks for amnesty!”

Castle looks disgusted.

“If he does anything to compromise any of us, if he does one single thing to disprove his loyalty—only then are you free to pass judgment upon his person. But we first give him a chance, do we not?” He is no longer bothering to hide his anger. “He says he will help us find our men! He says he will fight against his father! He has valuable information we can use! Why should we be unwilling to take a chance? He is no more than a child of nineteen! He is only one and we are many more!”

The crowd is hushed, whispering amongst itself and I hear snippets of conversation and things like “naive” and “ridiculous” and “he’s going to get all of us killed!” but no one speaks up and I’m relieved. I can’t believe what I’m feeling right now and I wish I didn’t care at all about what happens to Warner.

I wish I could want him dead. I wish I felt nothing for him.

But I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

“How do you know?” someone asks. A new voice, a calm voice, a voice struggling to be rational.

The voice sitting right beside me.

Adam gets to his feet. Swallows, hard. Says, “How do you know he has a gift? Have you tested him?”

And he looks at me, Castle looks at me, he stares at me as if to will me to speak and I feel like I’ve sucked all of the air out of this room, like I’ve been thrown into a vat of boiling water, like I will never find my heartbeat ever again and I am begging praying hoping and wishing he will not say the words he says next but he does.

Of course he does.

“Yes,” Castle says. “We know that he, like you, can touch Juliette.”

It’s like spending 6 months just trying to inhale.

It’s like forgetting how to move your muscles and reliving every nauseous moment in your life and struggling to get all the splinters out from underneath your skin. It’s like that one time you woke up and tripped down a rabbit hole and a blond girl in a blue dress kept asking you for directions but you couldn’t tell her, you had no idea, you kept trying to speak but your throat was full of rain clouds and it’s like someone has taken the ocean and filled it with silence and dumped it all over this room.

It’s like this.

No one is speaking. No one is moving. Everyone is staring.

At me.

At Adam.

At Adam staring at me.

His eyes are wide, blinking too fast, his features shifting in and out of confusion and anger and pain and confusion so much confusion and a touch of betrayal, of suspicion, of so much more confusion and an extra dose of pain and I’m gaping like a fish in the moments before it dies.

I wish he would say something. I wish he would at least ask or accuse or demand
something
but he says nothing, he only studies me, stares at me, and I watch as the light goes out of his eyes, as the anger gives way to the pain and the extraordinary impossibility he must be experiencing right now and he sits down.

He does not look in my direction.

“Adam—”

He’s up. He’s up. He’s up and he’s charging out of the room and I scramble to my feet, I chase him out the door and I hear the chaos erupt in my wake, the crowd dissolving into anger all over again and I almost slam right into him, I’m gasping and he spins around and he says

“I don’t understand.” His eyes are so hurt, so deep, so blue.

“Adam, I—”

“He’s touched you.” It’s not a question. He can hardly meet my eyes and he looks almost embarrassed by the words he speaks next. “He’s touched your skin.”

If only it were just that. If only it were that simple. If only I could get these currents out of my blood and Warner out of my head and
why am I so confused

“Juliette.”

“Yes,” I tell him, I hardly move my lips. The answer to his nonquestion is yes.

Adam touches his fingers to his mouth, looks up, looks away, makes a strange, disbelieving sound. “When?”

I tell him.

I tell him when it happened, how it all began, I tell him how I was wearing one of the dresses Warner always made me wear, how he was fighting to stop me before I jumped out the window, how his hand grazed my leg and how he touched me and nothing happened.

I tell him how I tried to pretend it was all just a figment of my imagination until Warner caught us again.

I don’t tell him how Warner told me he missed me, how he told me he loved me and he kissed me, how he kissed me with such wild, reckless intensity. I don’t tell him that I pretended to return Warner’s affections just so I could slip my hands under his coat to get the gun out of his inside pocket. I don’t tell him that I was surprised, shocked, even, at how it felt to be in his arms, and that I pushed away those strange feelings because I hated Warner, because I was so horrified that he’d shot Adam that I wanted to kill him.

All Adam knows is that I almost did. That I almost killed Warner.

And now Adam is blinking, digesting the words I’m telling him, innocent of the things I’ve kept to myself.

I really am a monster.

“I didn’t want you to know,” I manage to say. “I thought it would complicate things between us—after everything we’ve had to deal with—I just thought it would be better to ignore it and I don’t know.” I fumble, fail for words. “It was stupid. I was stupid. I should have told you and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

Adam is breathing hard, rubbing the back of his head before running a hand through his hair and he says, “I don’t—I don’t get it—I mean—do we know why he can touch you? Is it like me? Can he do what I do? I don’t—
God
, Juliette, and you’ve been spending all that time alone with him—”

“Nothing happened,” I tell him. “All I did was talk to him and he never tried to touch me. And I have no idea why he can touch me—I don’t think anyone does. He hasn’t started testing with Castle yet.”

Adam sighs and drags a hand across his face and says, so quietly only I can hear him, “I don’t even know why I’m surprised. We share the same goddamn DNA.” He swears under his breath. Swears again. “Am I ever going to catch a break?” he asks, raising his voice, talking to the air. “Is there ever going to be a time when some shitty thing isn’t being thrown in my face? Jesus. It’s like this insanity is never going to end.”

I want to tell him that I don’t think it ever will.

“Juliette.”

I freeze at the sound of his voice.

I squeeze my eyes shut tight, so tight, refusing to believe my ears. Warner cannot be here. Of course he’s not here. It’s not even
possible
for him to be out here but then I remember. Castle said he’s no longer a hostage.

Castle must’ve let him out of his room.

Oh.

Oh no.

This can’t be happening. Warner is not standing so close to me and Adam right now, not again, not like this not after everything this
cannot
be happening

but Adam looks over my shoulder, looks behind me at the person I’m trying so hard to ignore and I can’t lift my eyes. I don’t want to see what’s about to happen.

Adam’s voice is like acid when he speaks. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s good to see you again, Kent.” I can actually hear Warner smile. “We should catch up, you know. Especially in light of this new discovery. I had no idea we had so much in common.”

You really, truly have no idea, I want to say out loud.

“You sick piece of shit,” Adam says to him, his voice low, measured.

“Such unfortunate language.” Warner shakes his head. “Only those who cannot express themselves intelligently would resort to such crude substitutions in vocabulary.” A pause. “Is it because I intimidate you, Kent? Am I making you nervous?” He laughs. “You seem to be struggling to hold yourself together.”

“I will
kill you—
” Adam charges forward to grab Warner by the throat just as Kenji slams into him, into both of them, shoving them apart with a look of absolute disgust on his face.

“What the
hell
do you two think you’re doing?” His eyes are blazing. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you’re standing right in front of the doorway and you’re scaring the
shit
out of the little kids, Kent, so I’m going to have to ask you to calm your ass down.” Adam tries to speak but Kenji cuts him off. “Listen, I don’t have a clue what Warner is doing out of his room, but that’s not my call to make. Castle is in charge around here, and we have to respect that. You can’t go around killing people just because you feel like it.”

“This is the same guy who tried to torture me to death!” Adam shouts. “He had his men beat the shit out of you! And I have to live with him? Fight with him? Pretend everything is fine? Has Castle
lost his mind
—”

“Castle knows what he’s doing,” Kenji snaps. “You don’t need to have an opinion. You will defer to his judgment.”

Adam throws his hands in the air, furious. “I don’t believe this. This is a
joke
! Who does this? Who treats hostages like they’re on some kind of retreat?” he shouts again, making no effort to keep his voice down. “He could go back and give away every detail of this place—he could give away our exact location!”

“That’s impossible,” Warner says. “I have no idea where we are.”

Adam turns on Warner so quickly that I spin around just as fast, just to catch the action. Adam is shouting, saying something, looking like he might attack Warner right here in this moment and Kenji is trying to restrain him but I can hardly hear what’s going on around me. The blood is pounding too hard in my head and my eyes are forgetting to blink because Warner is looking at me, only me, his eyes so focused, so intent, so heart-wrenchingly deep it renders me completely still.