The Invisible (3 page)

“Mmm.” I hear him stir in his bed. “I know that voice.”

My chest buzzes with anticipation—even in his weakened condition, seeing Ford gives me a charge every time. I let myself linger there for another second before I pull the curtain, hoping to find a healthier Ford this time. But when I lift the curtain and move into the darkened alcove where his bed is, the wheeze in his chest sounds worse than before. I force a smile.

“Morning,” I whisper, standing just a foot from the bed. I grope in the dark until I find the wooden back of the desk chair. I turn the chair around so it faces the bed before I sit down. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, now that you’re here.” I can hear him smiling in the dark. A silence opens up that Ford breaks after a few beats. “I stood up for a whole shower yesterday.”

“That’s progress.” When he first came home from Jax’s lab after his coma, he couldn’t stand up at all.

“Guess so,” he says, but he sounds nonplussed. He must be miserable not being able to do what he normally does, which is run and train and generally power through his days. Though he doesn’t say it, I know that in his mind, without exercise, he may as well be dead.

I find the lamp on his desk and switch it on, careful to keep my face neutral even though my heart sinks as I take in how pale he is, his gaunt cheeks. He must have lost at least twenty pounds by now. Maybe more.

“You look good,” I lie. I search his face for evidence that he’s getting better. But if anything, he looks weaker and sicker than ever.

I think back to when I woke up from my surgery on Jax’s gurney. I was off and running—more like flying, actually—the same day. Why couldn’t Jax do the same for Ford, who didn’t even need a transplant? Who wasn’t even clinically dead?

“You’ll be better in no time.” I hope I look like I’m sure of it. I don’t want to betray my new suspicion that he might never fully recover from Gavin’s bullet, and that he’ll have me to blame for a miserable life spent hobbling to and from his bed. If he hadn’t followed me to Gavin’s house that night, everything would be different now. I might not be here at all.

“How long has it been, anyway?” Ford asks. He can’t remember the first week, when he was in a coma, and time has been sketchy for him ever since.

“Three and a half weeks.”

“These things take time, I guess,” Ford starts, lifting his head from the pillow and then collapsing back down in exhaustion.

I try to think of something to say to him, something to cheer him up or at least distract him. I’m about to tell him about the horses, the skywriting, ask him if he’s heard of the Invisible, when I hear little feet scampering on the planks of the wood floor.

“Sam and Sydney are up,” I whisper. Ford makes an effort to sit up taller in bed, and I help him by stuffing another pillow behind his back.

“Guess who’s here, girls?” Abe says to them, and then they’re running toward us, two mop-headed balls of energy in matching pink cotton nightgowns. Sam is five, serious under her big pile of curly black hair. Sydney is seven, a bigger version of Sam, and more of a joker.

Sam dives onto Ford’s bed atop the covers, and Sydney gives me a hug, her curls tickling my neck.

“Hi, you two. What’s shaking?” I ask. Their energy is infectious enough to lift my mood a bit.

“Sam, show Anthem your new moves!” Ford demands, a cough rattling in his throat.

“Good idea!” Five-year-old Sam leaps off the bed and pulls the curtain back all the way, exposing the alcove to the rest of the room. Abe rummages in the fridge, putting ingredients for a second batch of pancakes on the counter. “Let me get my music.”

She scampers into her bedroom, and Sydney follows. “You mean
my
music,” she corrects her little sister as she runs after her.

While they’re gone, Ford grabs my hand. “Thanks for coming by,” he says. His eyes look ablaze with fever or emotion, I’m not sure which. “It must be getting kind of boring for you.”

“Are you kidding? This is the best part of my week.” I’m blushing again, and I’m not quite sure why. But when I sneak another peek at him, I think Ford might be blushing too. This is harder for him than for me, I remind myself.

He’s made it pretty clear that that our relationship is more than just a friendship to him. But his protracted recovery is clouding his mind. It must be. How can you love the person who almost got you killed?

“When’s the last time you saw Jax?” I don’t say
because I think something’s wrong
, but I’m sure it’s written all over my face.

“Last Friday,” Ford says. “She told me to wait and see how I’m doing in a week or two.”

“That’s it?” I say lightly, wondering if maybe Ford looks worse than he feels. Could this really be normal, part of his recovery after losing all that blood?

Ford shrugs, and suddenly I feel angry with Jax. Can’t she do something more than just wait and see? The scientist who invented my chimeric heart should be able to do better than this. Extra vitamins? Plasma? Antibiotics? There must be something she hasn’t tried yet. Something that will fix him. I make a mental note to pay her a visit.

“Abe thinks I’m doing better. Right, Unc?” Ford raises his voice a little to reach his uncle across the small expanse of the room.

“Yup,” Abe says over the hissing of batter in the frying pan. “A little.”

“I could take you to see Jax right now,” I suggest. It’d be nice to see Ford out of bed. To breathe fresh air with him. “Today.”

“Abe will do it.” Ford shakes his head, staring down at his sallow hands on the bedspread. They’re losing their calluses, no longer the hands of a boxer. “When I’m ready. I’d rather he sees me limping than you.”

“Okay, weirdo,” I say, busying myself with a stack of pictures on Ford’s desk, frustrated by his stubbornness.

I find a shot of him in the ring, his stance victorious after a knockout. Back when he boxed for money. Before he was driven underground by the Syndicate, when he stopped throwing fights for them.

“Look at you here,” I say, more to myself than to him as I stare at the photo. He’s pouring sweat, his opponent laid out on the mat to one side of him. Ford’s sculpted arms are raised in victory, one glove still on, the other clutched in his hand. His mouth guard swelling his smile.

“Yeah.” He smiles now, but it looks pained. “Hope I can get back to training soon.”

Ford wants me to think he’s strong, but I already know he is. I’ve seen him at death’s door. I carried him to Jax after he was shot, his blood soaking through my clothes. Most people would have died from the blood loss then and there. At least that’s what she told me. He needed more than a gallon of transfusions when I got him to her lab.

“Want to come to the table?” I ask. I want to see him walk. If I see it, I’ll know he’s really getting better.

Before he answers, the girls come back from their room, dragging a cracked plastic record player covered in stickers. “Wow, that thing is ancient.”

“It was my mom’s when she was a kid. Probably was her mom’s before that,” Ford says. The girls carefully place the needle on the record, and the tinny twinkle of a tune—“Dance Me to the End of the Road,” I think it’s called—comes out of the record player.

Sam has tied on the tutu I brought her—one of mine from Level One, a foamy blue wisp of tulle—and assumes first position, pausing to look me in the eyes and grin before she puts her game face back on and spins to the music. Sydney joins in after a minute, and soon they’re both spin-jumping off the couch in fits of giggles.

“Bravo!” we shout. Ford smiles, the glint in his eyes brighter now. Abe, too, pauses to watch as he puts pancakes on plates. The small dark room in the basement of the run-down building is filled with music, laughter, and the smell of batter sizzling in the pan.

Ford inches toward the edge of the bed, wincing as he pulls himself to his feet. It’s an effortful maneuver. So much so that he almost falls.

I rush to help him up, to steady him, but he shrugs me off and indicates he can do it himself. “At least I’m out of bed, right?”

“It’s great,” I agree as I watch him hobble toward the kitchen table. His movements are tentative, painful, as if each and every step requires everything he’s got. The last person I saw walk this way was my grandmother after surgery. That was two weeks before she died.

Ford’s
not
getting better. Even if he doesn’t want to admit, it’s plain as day. The realization kicks me in the gut as I watch him hobble around like an eighty-year-old. And believing time will fix this is just wishful thinking.

My insides ache when I think back to the shooting, to the moment he burst into Gavin’s office. All because he was protecting me. It’s my fault he’s in this condition. And now I have to do everything I can to fix it.

It’s 4:45
A.M.,
and the boy has been inching along on his belly inside a metal tube for the better part of an hour. It’s making him sweat. The tube is part of the ventilation system in the top of the recently shuttered Hillside Palisades Mall. The sweating is making his mask itch, so he stops crawling and pulls it off to blow air upward onto his wet forehead.

If his calculations are correct, the next opening in the vent is the former Big N’ Tall Shoe Palace, the unofficial den of The Hammer, one of the Syndicate’s top lieutenants. Rumor has it The Hammer likes to sleep in the mall.

The boy pulls his mask back over his face and keeps crawling, hoping there aren’t too many guards watching over The Hammer. Hoping they don’t hear him coming. His arms protest the continued push forward, but his body still hums with anticipation. If he takes down The Hammer, he’s one step closer to dismantling the Syndicate’s central power structure.

Finally, he reaches the slatted vent above the Big N’ Tall. It’s dark down there, but he thinks he sees a flicker of light between the vent’s metal slats. Slowly, he reaches for a dime in his pocket. Taking care to be absolutely silent, he uses it to unscrew the vent’s four corners. After he removes the last screw, he holds his breath and slides the vent’s plate away, making no sound, save a tiny scrape of metal.

He pulls the wool mask down over his nose and mouth and sticks his head into the store, relieved to spot the extra-large shoe racks on the wall. He’s found the Big N’ Tall.

There’s a metal trash can in the center of the room, a low fire burning inside it that smells chemical and toxic. A tent is set up in one corner of the store. Behind it, stacks of footlockers. Must be around thirty of them. He wonders what’s inside. Likely pharms, if he had to guess. That’s what The Hammer deals in, after all. Droopies, Giggles, Smokestacks, BodMods, and whatever else they’re pushing. And when his corner boys don’t come through, he deals in making examples of them.

Other than the tent, there’s nothing here except a bunch of empty office chairs strewn around the room.

The boy flexes his arms, makes sure he’s got his strength after all that crawling. Then he lowers himself into the room, hanging from the ceiling a moment before dropping down, wincing at the muted thump his feet produce when they hit the carpet.

“Go see what that is,” he hears a man say from outside the store.

He races to the wall of footlockers, but though he’s fast, he’s not fast enough. A girl enters the store, young, skinny, strung out on something. And she carries a rifle. She spots him before he can dive behind the footlockers. She looks shocked to see it’s him. His mask is known. He is known. He’s been in the papers for a solid three months now.
VIGILANTE CAMPAIGN FOR JUSTICE. HOPE FOR THE CITY. THE HOPE CONTINUES CRUSADING.
The headlines never seem to get old.

Her eyes widen, and she falters, lowering her rifle a half-inch. A Syndicate tattoo rides her collarbone like a necklace, a yellow bruise from an old black eye on the ridge of her cheek. “It’s you,” she breathes.

He nods, doesn’t say anything. Tries not to look down the barrel of her gun. His is in his boot. He considers grabbing it, but so far he opts to wait. Something about her tells him she’s better than this.

“I hate him,” she mouths, eyes flicking on the tent, then back to him. He wonders if The Hammer is the person who gave her that black eye.

Then she faces the door and calls to whoever sent her in here, “Nothing here. Must’ve been a mouse or something.”

Before she leaves, she points to the tent. Folds her hands together, rests her face on them to indicate he’s sleeping.

Careful
, she mouths before she goes. When the door closes behind her, he takes out his gun. Holds it in front of him as he unzips the tent.

Then everything speeds up the way it does when his adrenaline rises. The eyes of The Hammer—a short man with giant, steroidal arms, a buzz cut, and a red, greasy face—flutter open. He reaches for something, but the boy beats him there, yanking a sawed-off shotgun from The Hammer’s sleeping bag.

He pulls The Hammer out, presses a gloved hand over his mouth with one hand, the gun in the other pressed into his sweaty temple. “Don’t make a sound,” he mutters. The mask is enough to tell The Hammer he’ll do it. He’s killed several of them, but he prefers not to.

The girl out there might keep the other guards occupied. But she might not. He doesn’t want to kill anyone. He wants to take The Hammer alive. Deliver him to the cops. See justice served.

The Hammer breaks free and runs toward the door. He’s slow and clumsy, though, and the boy is quicksilver. He slams The Hammer over the head with his gun twice. It’s all it takes to lay him out cold.

Now he has two choices. Get the big man out through the vent, or charge through the mall.

Eyes darting toward the front of the store, where several tall, bulky shadows move behind the paper covering the windows, he opts for the vent. He hears the girl talking on and on, diverting their attention. He was right about her. She’s one of the good ones.

It takes three minutes, and all the strength he has, to boost the unconscious Hammer up on top of a stack of chairs. Then he climbs on top of him, slides into the ceiling through the opened vent, and pulls the impossibly heavy man through.

In fifteen minutes, they’ll have cleared all the vents, and the boy can get him to the police with a long list of incriminating evidence he’s compiled. And a little something extra—two packages of pink-and-blue striped gigglepills he’s found in The Hammer’s pockets.