I STARED AT ADRIEN over my steaming bowl of protein goo. Yesterday I’d finally tracked him down and asked him what was wrong.
“Nothing,” he’d said with averted eyes. When I reached out and touched his arm, he flinched away from me. At first I thought he was still angry and hurt that I had accused him of foreseeing the sabotaged mission and not stopping it. And could I blame him? He already felt so guilty about his visions causing horrible things, and I’d just reinforced it with my accusations.
Still, it had been over a month since we’d been back. I couldn’t help wondering if it was about more than him just being hurt at what I’d said. All kinds of doubts nagged at the edges of my mind. What if he simply didn’t want to be with me anymore? Our romance had been a whirlwind from the start, but what if now that I was actually here, living in close proximity to him, he realized I wasn’t the girl he’d built me up in his mind to be? He’d been walking around with these visions of this amazing leader in his head, but in person I didn’t match up.
Today Adrien was sitting at the other end of the Caf with a guy I didn’t know. He clearly wasn’t a Rez fighter. I squinted.
“Who is that?” I nudged Ginni and pointed over to him.
“Oh,” Ginni smiled. “That’s…” She paused, eyebrows coming together. “It’s … give me a second. I swear I know his name.” She frowned. “But I can’t seem to remember it now that I try to think of it.”
Adrien suddenly looked up and caught me staring. I quickly glanced away. In case he was trying to avoid me, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I was glad when Saminsa walked past, and I shifted my gaze to pretend I’d been watching her as she dropped the rest of her food in the trash and left the Caf.
Adrien quickly stood up and headed towards us, the other boy with him following suit.
“Hey everyone,” he said, his voice light and easy. “This is Simin.”
“Hi,” Ginni said, standing up. She grabbed his hand and pumped it. “It’s so lovely to meet you, Simin!”
The boy pulled his hand away, pointing to the book open on Ginni’s tablet by her plate. “You’re reading that again? Doesn’t it always make you cry?”
“How did you know that?” Ginni gasped. “Is your power telepathy?”
Simin sighed. “We’ve met like ten times already.” He looked over at Adrien. “I told you this was a dumb idea.”
“Nah,” Adrien said, putting a hand on Simin’s back and pushing him lightly into a chair at our table. “The more days in a row they see you, the better chance they’ll have at remembering you.”
“Remembering him?” I asked.
“Simin is the glitcher who keeps the Foundation’s location safe. Anyone who meets him immediately forgets that they saw him. Taylor has anyone who visits talk to Simin before they leave, and they forget where they’ve been.”
“So why can’t I remember him?” Ginni asked. “I haven’t left the Foundation.”
“It doesn’t just work on people leaving,” the boy said, staring down at the ground uncomfortably. “Everyone forgets me.”
“Whoa,” Rand said. He stared at the boy, frowning. “You don’t like, live in the dorms with us do ya?”
“I stay in the security hub,” Simin mumbled. His eyes darted back to Ginni before quickly looking away.
I remembered going to the security hub once with Adrien, but when I tried to think about anyone else there, the details became indistinct.
“The hub’s below the Foundation,” Adrien continued. “Simin’s a techer too. He handles all the communications for the Foundation.”
“So how do you remember him?” I asked. Adrien looked at me, our eyes holding each other’s gaze for a moment before he answered.
“I wrote it down and put a note on the side of my bed to look at each morning. Figured he could use some company.”
My heart swelled. Despite everything weighing on his shoulders, Adrien still thought so much about other people.
“Can I sit here?” Adrien pointed at the empty chair beside me. He leaned over. “I’m sorry for how busy I’ve been lately,” he whispered in my ear. “I’ve been researching with Simin on a task for the General. But I miss you.”
His breath was warm on my neck and I felt the chills race up my arms. It was the closest we’d come to touching in so long. I felt a rush of relief. I’d been making a big deal out of nothing. He did still want to be with me, he’d just been busy.
“I missed you too,” I said, and grabbed his hand. The second my skin connected with his I felt a wave of warmth and security wash down my body. I tugged him down and he sat. A shy smile warmed his face. I interwove my fingers with his, my hand a perfect fit.
But almost the instant he’d settled into his chair, his body went rigid. He stared at the wall beyond me, his eyes vacant. No matter how many times I witnessed one of Adrien’s visions, they were still unsettling.
“What?” I asked as soon as he shook his head, his eyes refocusing and his face taking on a look of horror.
“Get down!” he yelled.
A billowing flame of fire blew outward from the kitchen.
Everyone except the ex-Regs immediately dove from the explosion, arms over faces. I raised my arms too, but my chair was jammed in too tightly to move. I looked behind me frantically. Adrien had dropped under the table and I thought I heard his voice screaming my name amid all the shouting. A blindingly orange fire had spread over half the cafeteria wall, filling the room with a haze of smoke.
It was a surreal moment—the ex-Reg Eli just sat against the wall completely still, even though the upper half of his body was in flames. Part of the skin on his face had been burned away, leaving only the metal of his reinforced jaw behind.
The buzzing in my head eclipsed the chaos. The sprinklers weren’t coming on, I didn’t know why. Tyryn had grabbed a fire extinguisher, but he was no match for the wall of flame. Other Rez fighters ran for the hallways to look for more. Some people from tables near the door escaped through the doorway, but then the blaze moved toward the entrance. We were trapped.
I finally managed to push my chair back and stand up. The others had climbed out the other side of the table and were stumbling toward the wall farthest away from the blaze. It was hard to see much of anything beyond the basic outline of their bodies through the smoke. I turned back to the fire.
I had to do something. But when I sent my telek outward, I couldn’t get a hold of the fire. It wasn’t a solid object I could just surround like I normally did. It kept morphing and changing shapes and right when I thought I’d managed to catch some of it, it danced out of my grasp.
I grabbed all the glasses of water from the surrounding tables with my power and hurled them at the fire, but when they hit, it only seemed to make it spread.
The buzzing screamed in my mind, but there was nothing I could do. The ex-Reg continued to burn and the flame licked over to the table beside me. I yanked off the tablecloth with my telek and tried to smother some of the fire with it. But it barely made a dent in the blaze and quickly caught aflame itself.
I tripped backward, only barely managing to stay on my feet. The smoke and heat were disorienting. I coughed and covered my face with my tunic sleeve, my mind racing for something else to try.
Then an image popped into my head—of Saminsa, and how she’d covered herself with an orb of light. The picture took hold and I stopped trying to get a hold on the fire and instead imagined a bubble without oxygen surrounding me. As I imagined it, I could suddenly feel the tingling of energy as the air around me shifted.
Finally, a surface to hold on to! Even though they were infinitesimal, I could feel the oxygen molecules clustered like a cloud. I took a deep breath and then pushed the cloud away from me right as the flame leapt closer. The flame stopped like it had hit an invisible wall.
I continued leeching the oxygen from the air around the fire, pushing the bubble outward. The flame on the tablecloth fizzled and died out. Next I immediately concentrated on the ex-Reg, stamping out the fire on his skin and clothing. I pushed past him toward the fiery wall.
I wasn’t even sure exactly how I was doing it. I wasn’t focusing anymore on the individual molecules, but it was like I’d gotten the feel of them and now I could just do it. My power was like a dampening wave. I felt light- headed from not taking a breath, but kept going anyway. Only a little bit longer. The people behind me were far
