Page 50 of Anarchy Missing

“I know that,” I say. “I’m not giving up on him. Just like you’re not giving up on me. But we’ve got to face facts here. Lincoln isn’t human. Hasn’t been for a very long time. And the Blue Boar wasn’t human either. I think there’s a lot more nonhumans running around this town than we even realize. So whatever happened to me—whatever is still happening to me, Thomas—it’s got nothing to do with being human. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

He turns away and walks back to the chairs in front of my large steel desk. Takes a seat and crosses his legs. “Lulu Lightly is going to be a problem.”

“How so?” I ask, a little stunned by the change of subject.

“Molly says the DA’s office is out to get her and Lulu Lightly is on the team handling this case.”

“What case?” I ask. “There’s no case. No charges have been filed.”

“Not yet. But Lincoln had her plant some code in the CCPD computers so he can track things and they link up with the DA’s office in some instances. They’re on to us.”

“We haven’t done anything yet.”

“Right,” Thomas says. “But we’re about to. We’re only days away from Stage One and this—” He waves his hand flippantly at the window. At the outside world. “This stuff going on right now. The power outage, the phones, the water. It’s them, trying to set us up for failure.”

“Nah,” I say. “Who’s left aside from us? I mean,” I correct myself quickly, “who’s left who knows what we know?”

“We probably missed a few people that night.”

I squint my eyes at him. “Missed a few people? How? We blew the school up that night. We killed everyone.”

“We didn’t get Molly.”

“No, but Lincoln—” And then it hits me. The Blue Boar. “She was under his control?” I ask. “That whole time?”

“Molly has disclosed some very interesting things to Lincoln over the past several months about what the Blue Boar told her. He always knew where she was. And Will was there too. Not to mention my… mother.”

He spits that word out with contempt. We don’t really know for sure if Martha Masters was Thomas’s mother. All we know is that Atticus, Thomas, and Molly are genetically related through the Blue Boar’s DNA. All three of them could have different mothers. But Atticus seemed convinced that Martha belonged with him. At least enough to save her in the end.

“And now Atticus and Martha are missing.”

“Or dead,” I add.

“Not likely,” he quips. “They’re still alive, I feel it.”

“You think this is them?” I ask, waving my hand at the window. “Doing all that bullshit down there?”

“Who knows? But it’s not us, Case. That’s the only thing that matters. Someone else has a plan that doesn’t involve us. That’s the important part. We’re close and we’re not going to let some outsider take what’s ours. You need to rein in Lulu Lightly.”

“How the hell would I do that? Just go up to her and say, ‘Hey, Lulu. I know we haven’t seen each other much over the past seven or eight years, but my supervillain friends and I have this really great revenge plan for what they did to us out at Prodigy School, and could you do us a solid and just back off until we’re done?’”

Thomas actually smiles. Like… maybe a real one. His phone beeps and he looks down at it for a second before giving me his full attention again. “You’re kind of a genius, Case.” He pans his hands around at my massive ToyBox office. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. But I’ve been here long enough and my helicopter is here to take me downtown. I have things to do back at SkyEye, especially since the cell towers are all down. This plays perfectly into our hands, you realize that, right?”

I nod. Smile. “Go get ’em, asshole.”

Thomas gets up and walks to the door. He’s got his hand on the knob, ready to turn it and leave, when he stops and looks at me over his shoulder. “Be up at Lincoln’s house tonight. I mean it. Sheila will fix it, Case. Whatever it is, she’ll fix it.”

I want to believe him. Typically, when Thomas Brooks says something is fact, I take him at his word. He’s super fucking smart. Not like me and my genius imagination for inventing things that got me this massive ToyBox office. Or like Lincoln, who really isn’t human anymore, if he ever was in the first place. But smart in another way. Smart in a street way. The kind of way that makes people trust in him. Take his word as truth. Go along with all his decisions and let him take the lead on things.

But he doesn’t know what I know about what’s happening to my body. He doesn’t know about the light and heat inside me. About how all it wants is to escape and how it compels me to cut myself every night.

And yeah, my symptoms sound a little bit like Lincoln. We definitely have something in common. I think that jellyfish stuff is responsible for the light and the heat. But what if Thomas is right? What if that lariat thing Molly was using as a weapon that night we took down Blue Corp was laced with something that altered me at the DNA level?

The cutting is wrong somehow. I know Lincoln well. He’s trusted me with most of his secrets, if not all of them, since we were kids. And I know for a fact he never cut himself to ease the pain.

So maybe this is just my psyche’s way of controlling things. Maybe I need those vents in my hands like Lincoln has had forever? And once I get them, it will all make sense.

But maybe this is something new. This cutting bullshit. Maybe that lariat sent something into my body that makes me want to self-destruct?