Niko Read online

  Chapter 19

  She wore the black as requested but that’s not what caused their eyebrows to raise as she stepped into the breakfast room.

  Ari lifted her head. She had been reclining on the sofa; her head was propped in Malik’s lap. “You cut your hair,” she said.

  Niko shrugged. She had done it in the morning. She ignored the food taking a seat a little ways from the rest of them.

  Malik, who had been feeding Ari cherries, tracked her with his eyes, his brows pinched worriedly. With all that she’d discovered the night before and the questions they’d produced the fact that he was going to turn into a monster had fallen slightly to the wayside.

  She looked around, of all them Duc sat closest to her bright red sneakers propped up on the coffee table. He fiddled with his lip ring. Ben was leaning against the wall by the door. His eyes were on her. Everyone’s eyes were on her.

  Niko rubbed her hand against her knees. “So.”

  Obviously Ben had told them what happened because no one looked confused, but no one said anything either and she began to wonder if they all were going to play dumb. Then Ben raised his hand. He made a quiet shushing sound, his attention on something outside of the room. He waited a few heartbeats then closed the door.

  “Okay,” he said in a low voice, “Who wants to start?”

  Duc took his feet off the table and leaned forward his elbows on his knees. “Something tells me you’re not really interested in learning about how this all started and how many people we lost before it happened. Ben told us you broke into one of the rooms and looked through those folders so most likely you want to know about those photos.”

  Niko shrugged, it was all jumbled up in her head but that was as good a place to start as any.

  Duc took it as a signal to continue. “As part of our many duties to this glorious city we’re supposed to make sure there’s a minimum of eight people per Circle.” He waved a sardonic hand around the room highlighting its five occupants. Even with the inclusion of the Director it still meant the Rose Circle was short two members. “But because of a certain incident a year ago we---”

  “What happened?” Niko interrupted him mid-soliloquy.

  He closed his mouth and glanced at Malik, in fact they all did. Malik looked down at Ari spending his concentration on balancing a dark red cherry on her lips. “They turned into Slithers,” he said, letting go of the stem once the fruit no longer wobbled. “It caught us by surprise. We lost a lot of people.”

  “Like my sister.” Duc volunteered.

  Malik looked away and the cherry fell.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Duc. The idea that he or any of the others might have relatives had never occurred to her, they all seemed so self-contained like four islands only marginally connected to each other by a stretch of sand that only revealed itself when the tide was low.

  He said nothing just sat back and folded his arms over his chest. His contribution to the story was finished.

  Malik coughed nervously. “The Council told us we had to find new members but in this city everyone gets tested as soon as possible. Anyone who was old enough to manifest had already joined one Circle or another so there was really nothing else to do.”

  Ari raised a finger. “I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that I had suggested that we let people who test positive but hadn’t yet manifested join.” The boys’ groans drowned out the rest of what she was going to say.

  “You know that wouldn’t have worked,” Ben said, “The Council wouldn’t have allowed it. They’re supposed to join a Circle of their own choosing not lured toward ours because they think they’ll get to kill Slithers early. And what were we supposed to do with them anyway? Baby-sit them until they’re eighteen?”

  Ari tossed her cherry stem into the bowl. “We’d just use them as minions. And it would have worked too.” She rolled her eyes toward Niko. “Whatever they say just know it wasn’t my idea.”

  “Okay now that we’re done with the ass-coverage ...” Ben said. He smiled at Ari and she gave him a frosty one in return.

  “The Director suggested that we look outside the city. Even though we mostly have members from the city there are a few members that had lived Outside, anybody entering the city who tests positive is allowed to become a citizen as long as they join a Circle.

  “But no one had ever thought to actually go out and recruit Outsiders for the Circles. It was dangerous out there and who knew where to look? You couldn’t just start randomly flashing light into people’s eyes.”

  “Yet when Ben held up the list of potential names the Director had given him any qualms we had about raiding Outsiders conveniently disappeared.” Duc interjected.

  “They didn’t just disappear.” Ari protested.

  “Well we buried them deep enough that they might as well have,” Malik said. Ari sat up and scooted to the other side of the couch. She kept the bowl of cherries and wiggled her toes beneath Malik’s thigh.

  “Where did she get those names?” But Niko already knew the answer before Malik even said, “She collects them.”

  She remembered the ancient but official looking paper about the experiment and the baby boy. She wished she had taken the time to read more of it.

  “Even with the names and a general idea where they were, it was still more difficult than we had imagined,” Ben continued. “A lot of the families had died out, starved or whatever. And if it wasn’t that they had moved or tested negative or died never realizing they had the ability to kill Slithers.” They all looked horrified by the waste. “Still we found plenty who tested positive and we brought them back to the city.”

  “The catch being that once they were in the city they couldn’t leave it. Not even if Slithers were attacking their old neighborhoods,” Ari said as she inspected a cherry. “That was outside of the city and we were only allowed to protect the people in it.”

  “The excuse being that if too many of us are Outside fighting Slithers it’ll leave the city vulnerable to an attack.” Duc said and the rest of the group made their opinions known by rolling their eyes.

  “It didn’t seem right anymore,” Ben said, “They lived crappy lives Outside and then here we come taking away their only defense against Slithers. So we stopped.”

  “Not exactly,” Ari said,.She leaned toward Niko and whispered sotto voce, “He’s doing a wee bit of truth-stretching. He wants to impress you.” Then she laughed as Ben flushed scarlet. Malik looked less than thrilled. Niko remained silent.

  “If we just stopped everyone would notice and they’d find someone else. We’re rather replaceable.” Malik said with a quick glance at Ben. “We still do surveillance only now the results aren’t as fruitful which means less people trapped in the city and we try to help, give water, medicine, kill a few Slithers, anything.”

  “Ari had already taken enough photos of you and we’d decided a long time ago that it wouldn’t raise in any suspicions if we listed you as negative. It was a miracle we were still in the area, we were checking up on someone else.”

  Niko watched them with narrowed eyes. If they had been watching her as closely as they claimed how was it that they didn’t know she had two brothers? When she spoke the question out loud they went still and nobody said anything for a few tense moments.

  Finally Duc cleared his throat. “We forgot.” He sucked his lip ring into his mouth and let it pop back out again. “This isn’t an excuse but we process a lot of people, things probably got mixed up.”

  It was a plausible answer though she wondered how they would make it apply to the secret knowledge of Jared’s whereabouts.