Chapter 5: First Blackout

JUNO'S POV

Nobody talked on the way to Roosevelt High.

After Siren said my voice in my voice — after she said "My boss wants you" — the air went weird.

Alice kept glancing at me like I was a bomb that might tick.

Vera walked behind me now, not in front. Not to protect my back. To watch me.

Kai walked next to me, close enough that his shoulder brushed mine every few steps, but he didn't say anything. His jaw was tight.

Only Ren walked like nothing happened. He scouted ahead, silent, disappearing and reappearing on rooftops. But every time he came back, his eyes found me first.

I kept wiping my nose. The bleeding wouldn't fully stop. My head felt like someone had taken a hammer to the inside of my skull — which, given Vera had an actual hammer, felt appropriate.

The system text kept flickering at the edge of my vision, faint, like a low battery warning.

[TIMELINE DIVERGENCE: 8% - STABLE]

[WARNING: YOU HAVE BEEN MARKED BY HEX #1]

[SPOILER LVL 1 EXP: 30/100]

Marked. Like Siren put a tracker on me. Great. I haven't even been in the book timeline for long and I'm already marked.

Roosevelt High looked exactly like the book described. School buses turned on their sides to make a wall. Barbed wire made from gym bleachers. The front sign still said GO COUGARS but someone had spray-painted GO HOME under it.

Two guards on the bus wall saw us and waved.

"Kai! Vera! You got the meds?"

Vera lifted the metal box. The guards cheered.

They opened a small gate made of a lunch table.

Inside was... almost normal.

Almost.

Kids playing soccer with a deflated ball in the courtyard. An old man cooking something over a fire in a trash can. Laundry hanging between classroom windows. A woman teaching three kids to read on the steps.

Twelve survivors, the book said. Twelve people Alice's team protected.

And in the middle of the courtyard, sitting on a tire swing, a little girl with puffy curly hair and missing front tooth.

Maya. Eight years old. Vera's adopted daughter in everything but blood. The girl Siren had mimicked.

Maya saw Vera and screamed, "Mama!"

She ran.

Vera dropped her hammer — actually dropped it, which I learned later she never does — and scooped Maya up, hugging her so tight the little girl squealed.

"Mama, you're squeezing!"

"I know, baby. I know. Mama heard you crying and got scared."

Maya frowned. "I wasn't crying. I was napping with Jonah."

I felt my knees go weak with relief. She was okay. She was alive. In the book, Chapter 12, she doesn't stay alive when Siren comes.

My change — my 8% — made Siren come early, but it also made us run back early. Maybe I saved her without even trying.

Alice saw my face. "You okay?"

I nodded too fast. "Yeah. Just... happy she's okay."

"You knew her name earlier," Alice said quietly, so only I could hear. "On the street. Before we said it."

My blood went cold.

"I... I guessed?" I said. Weakest lie ever.

Alice didn't call me out. She just looked at Maya, then at me, then back.

Kai touched my elbow. "Come inside. You need to clean that blood off."

He led me into what used to be the teacher's lounge. Now it was their war room. Maps on the wall, guns on tables, a first aid kit.

He pointed at a chair. "Sit."

I sat. My legs were still jelly.

He crouched in front of me with a wet rag. No glow, no ARK power. Almost like a simple guy with a rag.

"Hold still," he said.

He wiped the black Rotter blood off my cheek. Then the blood from my nose. Gentle, even though his hands were rough and scarred.

I should have pulled away. I know every red flag in romance novels. The broody male lead who cleans your face after battle? That's Chapter 1 of falling in love and Chapter 50 of heartbreak.

But I didn't pull away. Because his hand was warm and I was freezing and I had just been told by a mutant that the main villain of the entire series wants me specifically.

"Does it still hurt?" he asked, looking at my eyes. Checking my pupils for concussion.

"My head? Yes. Like a drum."

"Your power does that every time?"

"Every time I see something. The more important, the more it hurts."

He was quiet for a second, wiping a spot of blood off my chin.

"When you touched Ren, you saved Vera," he said.

"I saw it. Ten seconds before."

"Could you see what Siren was going to do to you?"

I shook my head. "I didn't touch her. And I don't want to."

He almost smiled. "Smart."

Then his eyes went serious again.

"Juno," he said, low. "What did Siren mean when she said her boss wants you?"

I swallowed. The rag was now pink with my blood.

"I don't know," I lied.

It was a bad lie and he knew it.

In the book, Dr. Silas Crowe, the big bad scientist wants anomalies. He wants people whose ARK glitches because he thinks glitches are the key to a perfect human. In Chapter 60, he captures a boy whose power is duplication and cuts him open to see how it works.

If Crowe wanted me because I was an ERROR...

I didn't want to think about what he would do.

Kai must have seen the fear on my face because his expression softened. He threw the rag away and sat on the table in front of me, so we were eye level.

"Listen," he said. "I don't know where you're truly from. Queens, book, alternate world, whatever. I don't care. You saved Vera today. Vera is like my sister. So you are under my protection now. But you have to tell us the truth. If Crowe knows you exist, we are all in danger. Not just you."

Protection. Under his protection.

My stupid heart did a flip. No. Bad heart. He belongs to Alice in the original story. Don't ruin that.

"I... I will tell you," I whispered. "Just... not tonight? My head... I think I'm going to pass out."

It wasn't a lie. The edges of my vision were going dark. The system text was blurring.

Kai frowned and caught me as I swayed.

"Vera!" he shouted.

Vera came in, still carrying Maya on her hip.

"She's crashing," Kai said. "After-effect?"

Vera put her big hand on my forehead. Her power, Titan, made her skin slightly metallic when she activated it, but now it was warm and normal.

"She's burning up," Vera said. "Alice! Get the antibiotics!"

Alice ran in.

Maya, from Vera's hip, looked at me with big eyes.

"Is the new girl sick, Mama?"

"Yeah, baby. She's sick."

Maya reached out and touched my hand.

The instant her small, warm fingers touched mine —

Flash.

Not ten seconds.

Longer.

Much longer.

I saw Maya, but older, maybe 10, standing in this same courtyard, but burning. Fire everywhere. Siren standing over her, mouth open. Vera screaming, too far to reach.

I saw Maya die.

I saw the exact future where we don't kill Siren in time.

I screamed.

I yanked my hand back from Maya, fell off the chair onto the floor, clutching my head.

Blood poured from my nose now, not a drip. A stream.

The system exploded in front of my eyes, red.

[CRITICAL WARNING: EXTENDED VISION TRIGGERED - 2 MINUTES FUTURE]

[SPOILER LVL 1 OVERLOAD - 80/100 EXP]

[HOST DAMAGE: SEVERE MIGRAINE - FAINT IMMINENT]

[FUTURE SEEN: HEX #1 KILLS MAYA IN 6 DAYS IF NOT STOPPED]

Six days.

We had six days.

Alice grabbed me. "Juno! Juno, what did you see!"

I couldn't speak. My mouth tasted like copper.

I looked at Maya — alive, small, scared, hiding behind Vera's leg now — and at Vera — big, strong, who would break if this little girl died — and I forced the words out with blood on my lips.

"Siren... she comes back... six days... Maya..."

Vera went white. Her Titan power activated involuntarily, her skin turning silver.

"What about Maya?" she roared, so loud Maya flinched.

"She... she..." I couldn't finish. I blacked out.

The last thing I saw before darkness took me was Kai catching me again, his gray eyes wide with real fear this time, shouting my name — not Error, not pizza girl — my actual name.

"Juno!"

Then it all went black.

And in that blackness, a new text, not blue, but white, popped up.

[TIMELINE DIVERGENCE: 12%]

[DR. ELARA QUINN HAS BEEN NOTIFIED: READER #89 HAS AWAKENED]

Two doctors now. One who wants to cut me open. One who... might have been the one who summoned me in the first place?

I was so screwed, and so asleep, that I didn't have time to be scared about it.

I just hoped I would wake up still in one piece.