A Freedom to Fight For

By K.D. Van Brunt

All Jace has ever wanted was to escape the control of Cracked and run. Now, Gray is on the escape-from list too. She can’t bring herself to ever face him again, not after his betrayal. Angry, disillusioned, and broken, Jace accepts a permanent assignment to the President’s security detail, intending to never see Gray or Cracked ever again.

But something changes inside her. With the United States facing an unprecedented threat that only she and Gray may be able to stop, Jace confronts a choice. She can cut and run, or stand and fight alongside the boy she swore she would never let inside her heart again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Teen
• Release date: Apr 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772337693

Book preview

Chapter One

Gray

Blood, so much blood. It’s sprayed across the off-white, enamel-painted cinderblocks making up the wall behind her body, like something a maniacal graffiti tagger might do with a can of crimson spray paint while high on cocaine. I grab Jace’s hand, trying desperately to will strength into her the way she’s done with me before—during my fitness test, and then again at the Venezuelan embassy.

My mind keeps raising the question I don’t want to ask and the one I don’t want answered: is she dead? I have to run from this question like a scared rabbit, because I won’t be able to handle the answer. It’s bad. I know it’s bad. So, I dodge and weave, duck and hide from the words, but I can’t quite get away from it. I hear the line from the Apollo 13 movie, when Tom Hanks exclaims, ‘what’s the story here, Jack, we keep flirting with gimbal lock.’ My brain keeps flirting with Jace-is-dead lock.

As I squeeze her hand, I try to join with her like we’ve done so many times before, but her mind is not responding to me. I do feel something, though; it’s not the usual electricity that flows between us when we touch. This is erratic, like the way the lights flicker before the power fails. I also begin to feel a desperate, almost frantic pull emanating from her, a pull that wants me to open myself to her and surrender. I can’t say no to this. So I don’t. I open myself up, like throwing wide the window shutters and letting the sunlight into a dark room. Then, in a blaze of light, my mind and body suddenly know what to do, as though something buried inside me is finally awakening.

My entire frame shudders violently and it feels as if all of me is being sucked out through a narrow straw. I gasp as an explosion of white fire flashes in my brain—it seems to go on for an hour, but it’s really only an instant or two, and when the stabbing, whiteness fades, I can feel Jace. I sense what she senses. I gasp at the pain from the gunshot. I know this pain. I’ve lived through this pain. Memories from Boston instantly flash into my brain—memories of lying on dirty snow, shot and dying with quarts of my blood draining out of Tina’s body. Our minds are joined together the way we experienced in flashes before, but this time I know it’s permanent. This is mesme . . . and more.

I want to collapse in exhaustion and shock, except I can’t—whatever is going on is not over. I can feel something more coming—an ominous tidal wave that will drag me out to a place I can’t come back from. A surge of nausea washes over me, but I manage to keep my stomach from turning itself inside out. Our bodies aren’t done with each other yet. Something bigger, something better waits on the edge of my consciousness. My body feels as if it’s about to liquefy into a puddle on the concrete.

I grab Jace’s hand, squeezing so hard it’s a miracle her bones don’t snap, but maybe they don’t because she’s squeezing back just as hard. My mouth hangs open and I begin to pant like a dog, sweat instantly breaking out all across my body. Something enormous is ripping through me, ripping through both of us, like an out of control freight train. I tense for impact, but all the roiling chaos inside me comes to an abrupt halt—it’s as if I’m in the eye of the hurricane. Jace’s grip relaxes. I start to pull my hand back, but I feel this overpowering urge to surrender. Surrender to what? Something remains to be done, something Jace’s body is desperately urging me to do. I have to complete what we’ve started.

Out of the quietness in my mind, I suddenly know what I can do, what I have to do, what Jace’s body is crying out for me to do. I glance over at Max, who has come to stand by me, his assault gun dangling loosely from his index finger looped in the trigger guard.

I’ll be back, I whisper in a hoarse voice. Don’t call me in.

I expect questions, but Max just nods and stares at me with a horrified look of fascination on his face.

Then, I do it. I do what my body suddenly knows how to do . . . what Jace’s body wants me to do, needs me to do. I shift into her. I say shift, because it’s the only word I have for it, except I never acquired Jace, at least not in the conventional sense—rule 101: shifters can’t acquire other shifters. This is more like a merger of two bodies into a third, which in some way is beyond the sum of its parts. It feels like a normal shift—a slight, tingly sensation; a blurring of sight and sound; and the re-emergence of myself as somebody else. The difference is this time the somebody else is Jace, and I didn’t shift so much as fuse with her mortally wounded body lying on the ground. When the shift-merge is done, I’m gone. All I am is now inside Jace’s body, and I’m not alone here, not at all. I sense her presence, the flicker of her consciousness, like a candle flame on the verge of being extinguished by a gust of wind. Jace’s soul has all but shut down from the shock of the wound.

My shifter instincts instantly recoil at being inside a wounded body. Reflexively, my subconscious is telling me to shift out of this shape and away to somebody else—to flee the approach of death, but I tamp down this urge and I force myself to stay in place and focus on . . . on what? I don’t know how to explain what is happening now, but my body is inside Jace and it’s giving our merged body what it needs to heal our wounds, to fix the damage. I can feel her body taking from mine what it has to have. Our heartbeat, erratic and fluttering after the shift-merge, now begins to stabilize and beat a tiny bit stronger. The bleeding too is slowing as our lung begins to regenerate and stitch itself together. Then things go instantly dark—it’s as though I’m watching a movie and someone pulls the power cord on the DVD player.

When I become aware of us again, I’m not sure where we are or how much time has passed. There’s a mask over our mouth and we can’t seem to open our eyes. I feel us blacking out again, but before shutting down, our brain processes a splash of sounds around us.

Put her in OR five. Move it, people.

How the hell is she even alive?

As blackness descends again it feels like we are falling and falling and falling, but never reaching any kind of bottom. I’m not conscious of anything beyond the blackness around us I’m spiraling into, but I am aware of the two of us. Together. We embrace during our free fall to hell—or wherever lost souls go to die. The descent through the dark continues for what seems like forever, but in this state of not being able to sense anything we have no way to gauge the passage of time. Then, the darkness ends abruptly, as if we have awakened and just opened our eyes.

I’m standing on a concrete sidewalk, which has a layer of sand on it coating the bottoms of my bare feet. Then I notice the surfer trunks I’m wearing, which hang to my knees, along with a grey tank top with the U.S. Army logo. I recognize this shirt; it’s one of J’s. And, gazing around, I recognize this street, this entire place. Stunned, I walk forward toward the crashing waves and the early morning sun rising to bask Rehoboth Beach with warm, amber light.

When I come alongside Dolle’s famous saltwater taffy store, I see her sitting on a long bench made up of a series of white wooden slats. Jace. She’s facing away from me surveying the sea. I showed this place to her once in a dream and she’s brought me back here now.

Finally, she says as I drop down next to her on the bench. She looks over at me with a smile that looks distant and mysterious.

You’re going to be okay? I answer, not sure if I’m asking a question or making a statement.

No. I’m not. For an instant there’s a lost look in her eyes, but then she’s grinning like a child at her birthday party. Come on. Let’s get some ice cream.

Later, armed with waffle cones, we walk south along the beach on the wet sand just far enough away from the sea that the incoming waves are no more than ankle high. We talk, but mostly it’s about small, trifling things. She wants to know more about what Nia and I did the summer we spent at Rehoboth. My questions to her about what the hell just happened go unanswered. We walk all the way to Dewey Beach and all the way back, which takes about an hour and a half, before she stops. I glance to my left to take in the hotel where Nia and I once stayed—the Atlantic Sands Hotel, right on the boardwalk.

I’m staying here. She points to the hotel.

But I never took you inside. How?

A pained look crosses her face for a second, but she recovers quickly. You don’t have to show me anymore, Gray. Every memory you have is now mine.

On this creepy note, I tug on her elbow and say, Let’s go. It’s time to get the hell out of this dream.

She shakes her head vigorously. I’m not going back. I’m staying here.

Stay? For how long?

Goodbye, Gray. It’s time for you leave.

Our eyes snap open. We’ve been intubated, which explains the tube shoved down our throat, a throat so dry and raw it’s as if someone has scraped it repeatedly with an iron file. I can’t open our eyes; it’s like they’re glued shut, which makes me panic at the prospect of blindness, but I quickly squelch it. I don’t know if we’re alone in this room or not, and I don’t care. I have to get out of Jace’s body. As she said, it’s time for me to leave. Before I do, I reach out for her to say goodbye, but when I sense her sleeping consciousness alongside me I decide to let her be for now. Reversing the shift-merge from earlier takes less than an instant, after which I find myself on all fours on the tile floor of a hospital intensive care unit. The room is dark, but for the instrumentation lights and monitors, some of which seem to blink in rhythm with the whirring of machines and the whoosh of air from the ventilator. Rising to my feet, I stare down at Jace, whom I can hardly recognize under the tubes and wires around her face.

When I move to step out of the intensive care room, I’m completely naked—this is a first; I’ve never lost my clothes during a shift. Gazing out through the room’s window, I immediately spot Max deep in conversation with Persey. This can’t be good. Standing in the hallways and by every door are a couple squads of soldiers, all armed to the nines. One of them spots me pretty fast when I exit the OR, hollers something into a mike, and six of them immediately advance on me with their G-36 assault rifles leveled at my chest. Max turns at the commotion, spots me, and a large, stupid looking grin breaks out on his face.

Chapter Two

Jace

The overhead sun beats down like it’s the middle of August, but the cooler breeze from the ocean blowing across my body buffers me, relaxing me as I lounge by the hotel pool. I take a sip from the decoratively cut crystal glass filled with sangria. Although I have memories of the sensation of alcohol from London, I’ve never had sangria . . . but Gray has. I could drink this all day, except my head is beginning to feel squishy, so I set the glass back down and resume reading from Fodor’s travel guide to Rome. I’ve never been to Rome and neither has Gray, so I have no memories of the place, otherwise I’d be there right now instead of here.

I’m hot, the girl reclining in the lounge chair to my right announces. Time for a dip in the pool. Who’s with me? Jace?

I lower my sunglasses to the end of my nose and peer over them at a yellow-bikini-clad Rachel, who’s sitting up now and peering back at me expectantly. In a minute, I respond. I want to finish this chapter first.

How about it, Nia? Rachel asks the girl lounging to my left.

Sure, Nia responds. She follows Rachel to the edge of the pool, before lowering herself to sit on the edge with her legs dangling in the water. In seconds, she slips in, sinking down until the water comes up to her chest. The Nia before me is the Nia Gray remembers from the summer they spent here; she’s younger, happier, and funnier than the Nia Gray remembers from the last couple of years. I like her. We talk easily with each other, a lot of it about Gray. She’s helping me sort out my feelings, my issues, with him. She’s become a good friend, if you can call someone you hang out with in your dreams a friend.

Hey, Gray! Rachel cries out before diving under the water.

I remember this day, Gray says to me as he strides over to stand beside my lounger. He kneels alongside, bringing his eyes level with mine.

I hold my drink up to him. Sip?

He shakes his head and lowers his palm to cover my hand. I yank my hand back and he frowns.

Jace, listen . . . I’m sorry.

This must be the thousandth time he’s said those words. He regularly comes to me here in my dream and always ends up saying those words, although usually only at the end, right before I toss him out. This is my dream and I make the world here and the rules it follows. He may be able to enter when he wants, but I can push him out as easily as I flick away a fly.

Well, if you’re not going to take a sip, join me on the beach.

Gray nods, following behind me as I leave the hotel pool area, cross the boardwalk, and stomp through the sand toward the surf. I let him take my hand. I’m not mad at him really. I understand what happened, but now that it’s happened I’m stuck with a situation I can’t live with.

You were going to die, he says, once we begin strolling hand in hand on the wet sand. I had no choice.

You should have just let me die. I sigh.

I couldn’t do that.

So you’ve said before. I don’t blame you. But I can’t live with you, not inside my head, inside my body, like this.

You’ve said that before, he responds. Look, Persey says we can manage this mesme thing. She wants us to talk to a couple of people who have gone through it.

I roll my eyes at this. Gray, this wasn’t just mesme, and you know it. Yes, our minds joined and remain joined, but our bodies merged too—it was far more than just mesme. He can slip back into my body any time he wants. I couldn’t stop him. And vice versa, of course. This repels me. I want to be separate and have my own inviolate space. I suppose normals would feel the same repugnance if they knew I could acquire them, shift to them, and then know and feel everything that makes them who they are. Yes, perhaps I’m just getting a taste of my own medicine, but they’re ignorant of it. I’m not, and I hate it.

No one knows about it except Max and Persey. Neither of them will tell the General or anyone else.

It’s not about who knows, Gray!

He kicks the sand in frustration, but doesn’t let loose of my hand. We both walk on in silence. Then he stops walking, pulling me to a stop close to his chest.

Jace, you’ve been in a coma for days. You need to come back. Please!

Nope, I’m going to stay here.

Gray lets go of my hand and drags the fingers of both of his hands through his hair like a comb. I’ve never seen him so agitated.

We can make this work, J. Whatever you want, I’ll do it. Please.

I reach up to place my hand against his cheek, giving him my best tragic smile. Gray is not my enemy; he’s a victim of this like me. But there can be no us . . . not if there is to be any semblance of a me.

Come see me again, Gray. I affectionately push my hand through his hair. But for now, you need to leave.

Don’t, J. Don’t send me away. Please.

Goodbye, Gray.

Chapter Three

Gray

Persey sits down across the table from me with a bagel on small plate and a cup of coffee. The cafeteria here at CRAG is better, more relaxing than the chow hall at Cracked. This may be due in part to all the windows and morning sunlight; other than a series of overhead, soot-covered skylights, the chow hall at Cracked has no windows. Also, the kids here are far too cheerful compared to their somber Cracked counterparts, for whom a bad day in classes could mean dreaded reassignment.

How is she? Persey asks, as she wrestles with her bagel, trying to pull the two halves apart.

She’s upset. I look down at my bowl of soggy Cheerios and push it aside, my appetite gone. "She’s not ready to deal with what happened.

Did you explain mesme can be managed?

Yes. I sigh heavily and rub my hand across my face. But this goes beyond mesme. We didn’t just join minds . . . we joined bodies. It’s how she survived. It bothers her. I pause, reluctant to say more, but Persey should know everything. Plus, I promised her this wouldn’t happen without her permission. It pisses her off that she had no say in any of this.

Persey pushes her plate to the side. I guess she’s lost her appetite too.

Without you she would have died.

She gets that, but it still bothers her. I decide to shift the conversation to a different subject. Speaking of which, what’s the latest from the doctors?

She’s healing remarkably fast. They’re calling her a medical miracle. They don’t understand how she’s alive. But they’re also confused why she hasn’t regained consciousness.

I nod slowly. A miracle. Right. Now, I just need one more. Do they know about any of . . . this? I put special emphasis on ‘this.’

Some, she says with a shrug. CRAG doctors know about senders; they know about mesme. It’s why she’s here instead of at Cracked. She stops to survey my face. I’m not sure what sign she’s looking for, but apparently she sees what she wants in my expression and continues. But, no. They don’t know about the physical joining, about you merging with her. I told you, I’m not going to tell anyone about it and I suggest you do the same. If word of it got back to Cracked, God knows what experiments that idiot Barnes would put you two through.

You two. There is no two of us, at least not now. We are one now, in mind and in body—at least, we are if Jace ever decides to wake up. I want to ask Persey how long people will allow Jace to linger on in a coma. At some point, they’ll declare her a vegetable and pull the plug, or in her case, flip the switch.

Can you help me contact the General? I ask. Today? I want to talk to him before I see her again tonight.

Why?

I have an idea. Putting my elbows on the table, I lean forward and place my chin on my interlaced fingers. The slight furrowing of her brow tells me I have Persey’s full attention, so I proceed to explain what I want to do.

The rest of the morning I spend in the gym working out, first lifting weights and then working the speed bag until my arms are too tired for me to lift them. I’ll never be the boxer Jace is, but she’d want me to keep training. After showering, I skip lunch and spend most of the afternoon wandering around the CRAG grounds, checking out some of the buildings, such as the commissary and the library. Unlike Cracked, there are no walls and guard towers here; only a modest chain link fence encloses the CRAG grounds, seemingly designed more to mark the boundaries rather than keep anyone in or out.

I have little interaction with the CRAG kids, although I pick up on some their unfocussed sendings from time to time. Persey and I have been spending a lot of time together since Jace arrived here three days ago, and people have noticed me and I draw stares, but no one tries to talk to me.

Late in the afternoon after classes end for the day, I follow a group of kids into the rec hall—a large, ground-floor room in one of the dorms with couches and overstuffed chairs arrayed around a giant seventy-inch, flat screen TV. A large group of some thirty kids are gathered around the TV to watch a CNN special report. I glance at the screen as I make my way to a long sideboard against the far wall that has a spread of snacks and beverages. I freeze when I see a picture of Jace fill the screen. It’s been five days since the shooting and there’s been little press coverage, just a passing mention of an incident in which a federal officer was wounded. The Army cleaned up the scene pretty fast and managed to keep Jace and me away from any cameras.

CNN has learned that the federal officer wounded earlier this week in a shootout near Chicago’s Midway Airport is Special Agent Jace Moray, who, along with her partner, were part of the security detail last month in London for the President’s state visit. A picture of me pops up on the screen alongside Jace. Special Agent Moray and her partner were instrumental in thwarting a highly publicized attack on the President’s children. A short video clip of Jace and me lashing out at the Green Reign gang flashes across the screen—it’s a clip TV stations played a thousand times on the news for days after the incident. When the clip ends, the pictures of Jace and me pop back on the screen, and this is when all eyes in the room turn to stare at me. I raise my right hand as if I’m about to swear an oath, and I wave weakly at everyone. No one reacts. They just gawk at me.

Fortunately, the CNN anchor recaptures everyone’s attention and heads swivel back to the TV screen. The White House released the following statement this afternoon. Our pictures are replaced on screen with two sentences against a cream background: ‘U.S. Army Captain and Special Agent Jace Moray was seriously wounded last Monday afternoon in a successful operation to stop a planned terrorist attack. The First Family extends their prayers to Captain Moray for a full and speedy recovery.’ The screen shifts back to the anchor, who resumes speaking. When pressed for details on the nature of this terrorist attack and Captain Moray’s current status, Press Secretary Simons said the White House has no further comment. We have a report from special correspondent, Rebecca Balzer.

Rebecca is standing in front of the Mount Sinai Hospital where the ambulance took us after the shooting and where we stayed for twenty-four hours before being medevaced to CRAG. She’s trying to look composed and in control, but a brisk wind keeps blowing her shoulder length auburn hair across her face and in her mouth. "Adam, the hospital is not releasing any details about Captain Moray’s injuries. However, one employee who spoke to us off the record has said that she suffered a single gunshot wound to the chest and was in extremely critical condition. Earlier, the Chicago Sun was reporting she died on the operating table and was revived, but they are now retracting that."

The scene shifts to a reporter with mike in front of the White House, who drones on about the White House’s statement, but has little new to add, except when he’s asked about the Pentagon. Adam, the Pentagon has not issued a statement, but my sources inside the Pentagon are telling me that Captain Moray was a member of a five man—er, person—special ops squad out of Fort Meade in Maryland. I’m being told her team took out all eight suspects and that Captain Moray was their only casualty.

What about her? the anchor asks. It was perhaps understandable that someone so young as her might assist with guarding the President’s children, but why would she be part of this special ops squad as you call it?

Adam, we can’t get an answer to this question, the White House reporter answers. We couldn’t get any information about her last month in London after the attack and we’re not getting anything today. Obviously, as we saw in London, she is physically well trained and she probably wouldn’t be part of this squad if she weren’t the best at what she does. I can only speculate she has special training that, in light of the particular circumstances of this threat, made her indispensable.

That’s the guy, someone in the room sends.

Since many pairs of eyes are now looking at me, it’s clear I’m the guy he’s referring to.

Yeah, but what’s he doing here? someone else sends in response.

Some VIP thing, a third person responds. He eats almost every meal with the Major.

I’m a little annoyed they’re talking about me as if I’m not standing right in front of them, so I speak up and push out a general sending to the whole room. My name is Gray. I’m here with her. I probably shouldn’t be telling them Jace is here, but they’re going to find out sooner or later if they haven’t already. We’re senders like you.

Several of the kids almost have to pick their jaws up off the floor, and the rest gape at me as if I just arrived in a flying sleigh and announced I was Santa Claus—here, help me with the presents. Then, pandemonium breaks out as everyone starts sending at once, all clamoring to hurl questions at each other and at me. I can’t help smiling. Jace would love this.

Later that night after spending hours talking with the kids here, who grill me about the army, Jace, Cracked, and dozens of other subjects, I finally retire to the small dorm room I’ve been given and lapse into sleep. Then, I make my way into her dream. She’s still hanging out in Rehoboth and it’s still a beautiful sunny day. I find her sitting in a bright red beach chair positioned close enough to the surf that the incoming waves lap around her outstretched feet. She has on the same big, goofy sunglasses she wore in London.

You look comfortable, I say, as I come up behind her.

She glances back over her shoulder at me.