^^Above, chapter title credit: Song by the Police.^^

{Geoffrey}

The move into the frat actually isn't bad. Matt and I still share a room, but it's bigger now and we get our own bathroom. He seems a little better after a couple weeks at home, but we're still on only semi-speaking terms. The only one I can't get off my back is Ridley. I'd managed to persuade Jake into giving him an interview at least, so he thinks I did something. But sure enough, four days into the new semester, he manages to track me down before class.

"Hey, Geoff," he says, pulling me out of the way. "There's something I wanna show you. Are you free tonight?"

I think of Raina, who I haven't seen since we left for the holiday break. I'd been planning on going over there tonight to surprise her, but now I guess it'll have to wait.

"I...guess," I say, even though I don't know what I'm getting myself into.

"Cool." His expression is surprised, like he wasn't expecting me to accept it. "Meet me out front after dinner?"

"Um...sure." It'd been nice, not having to look at or talk to Ridley all the time we were away. But now that we were back, I have to get back to expecting him everywhere I go.

"Don't bring anyone, okay? It's something I want just us to know about."

That, more than anything, sets off an alarm bell in my mind. He'd been wanting to get me alone most of last semester, but I'd always had Matt with me. If I can convince him that this doesn't look right, then maybe he'll come with me. Or even better, stop me.

≈

"Ridley wants you alone?" Matt says when I tell him. "If he'd wanted some private time, why doesn't he just ask you out?"

"Come on, man, this is serious." At least Matt's coming back around to joking with me. "I don't trust Ridley, and I know you don't. That's why I'm telling you."

Matt stops twiddling his Rubik's cube and sits up. "You think he's gonna pull something? Or try to?"

I shrug. "I dunno, actually. I didn't like the look of that green stuff, but who knows what that's going to be."

"Okay. Here's what we're gonna do. Is he driving you?"

"He didn't specify."

"Well, whatever he does, I'm gonna tail you. Just so, you know, he doesn't try to blow you up or anything. Sound okay?"

"Thanks, Matt," I say, and I mean it.

"Hey, no problem." He shrugs. "Besides, we're not just roomies now, we're brothers."

So after we finish dinner around seven-thirty, I bundle up and go outside to meet Ridley, who's leaning against the hood of a car. Despite the chill he doesn't seem cold at all, dressed in just jeans and a sweatshirt with a beanie over his hair.

"You look warm," he says to me when I join him. "Really bundled up for this, didn't you?"

"It's freakin' thirty-eight degrees out here, Ridley." I can feel the cold even through my sweater, jacket, and coat. "Let's get this crazy thing over with so we can come back and get warm."

He pushes himself away from the hood and walks around to the driver's side, while I get in shotgun. I glimpse Matt from the front window of the frat house, and he gives me a nod, so discreetly that I barely see it. Then Ridley puts the car in gear and we're off.

We drive across the river and then keep going, headed due east. I watch a neighborhood whip past, and after that, forest. Then, abruptly, he turns left. Through a break in the trees, I see a lake, crusted with ice. And then it's more driving straight. I check my watch; it's been forty minutes since we left campus. Wherever he's taking us, it must be really out of the way.

Finally, he turns into a cul-de-sac, and we pass houses that look like they haven't been lived in for years. We pull into the driveway of the last one, and that's when he finally turns off the car.

"There's a flashlight in the glove compartment," he says, the first time he's spoken to me in at least an hour. "Might wanna grab it."

I open the glove compartment, and thankfully he wasn't kidding about that. I take it out and switch it on, and its beam lights up a spray-painted symbol across the mostly caved-in garage door. This house is condemned, just like most of the houses on this street.

"We shouldn't dawdle," Ridley says, at the front door now. His tone is unfamiliar — short and clipped and all business.

I shove one hand in my pocket and keep the other tightly wrapped around the flashlight, following him up the rickety front stairs. The front door is unlocked — surprise, surprise — and a musty smell immediately hits me when we walk in. I move the flashlight beam over the front room, seeing more mold and cobwebs than anything of what the house used to be. I wouldn't have been any less shocked if he'd secretly been cooking up drugs in here. If I didn't know him better, I would've said he was.

"It's this way." He starts off down the hall, but stops halfway, opening a creaky door that leads down into the basement. The rotting wood steps look like they wouldn't even hold a mouse. Tentatively, he steps on the first one, and it creaks ominously. But it holds.

When we get down to the bottom, he pulls a chain and a lightbulb comes to life. I almost drop the flashlight. We're surrounded by shelves of the green liquid, in bottles of all sizes. Down the center of the room is a worktable, part of it cluttered with beakers, syringes, and test tubes. On the other side of it lies a body.

I was right. He is cooking drugs.

"Here, come closer." He walks towards it in a way that tells me he thinks nothing's wrong, but I see all sorts of bad things here. For starters, the body, not moving. It's a young girl, probably high-school age, her long blonde hair draped over the edge of the table. There's a big purple bruise on her temple, and a tear up the sleeve of her shirt.

"Is she—" I start, trying and failing to not stare.

"She's alive," Ridley says, his tone unsettlingly casual. "Because I know that's what you were about to ask."

"Okay." Now that we've gotten that out of the way. At least I know now I wasn't brought here to be murdered. "Why is she here?"

"Simply put, she's got superpowers." Ridley's expression is smug.

I shake my head. "How would you know that just by looking?"

"I don't," he says, impatient now. "I can sense when another super is around, that's how. She's my first test subject, human at least."

"Wait. You're testing this stuff?" I pick up a bottle of it and hold it up to the light. There's nothing off about it — actually, it looks pretty normal, like water with green food coloring in it. It's not even glowing or anything. "And you're not even sure if it works?"

"That's why I'm using a super now," Ridley says slowly, like he's explaining to a little kid. "And we'll see if it actually does."

"You're crazy, Rid. You can't just jump to human trials. That takes years." I'm trying to reason with him but deep down I know it won't work. He's a sociopath, and he doesn't seem to care either way.

"Are you gonna be a big softie, Geoff, or are you gonna help me do this?" Ridley's eyes glint dangerously, a smile that I don't particularly like playing around his mouth. "I need this table completely cleared off, by the way."

I don't even respond to that, the way he seems to be ordering me around like I'm his lab assistant or something.

"Geoff?" he says, and even though I think it's supposed to sound like a question, I hear a dangerous tone underneath it.

I brush past him and sweep the entire mess off with my arm. There's a loud crash, all the glass breaking at once. Ridley's eye twitches, but he doesn't react. That's when the girl stirs, because I hear her groan as she wakes. We both glance over, right as she sits up.

"Where am I?" she asks, her brow furrowed and eyes bleary. As she moves, she winces, making my fists curl at the thought of Ridley hurting her. She looks so young and innocent. So vulnerable.

"You're here," Ridley says, his voice turning smooth and silky. I'd never heard him talk like that before. "That's all that matters."

"What am I doing here?" A note of panic begins to creep into her voice, the initial surprise wearing off.

"You're helping us, of course." Ridley finally smiles, a predatory one. "With research."

"Then will you let me go?" Her eyes flick between us, wide, fearful, and swimming with tears.

"Sure. If you show us what you can do first."

"Do?" She blinks, and two tears come out. "L-like what?"

"Rid—" I hiss, but he throws a surprisingly well-aimed elbow into my stomach, cutting me off.

"You might not know this yet, but you're a super. Ever done something you can't explain, or begun to have an itch for trouble?" Ridley slinks closer, sliding his hand along the table edge. "Ever felt like there's a problem you just have to fix?"

She shakes her head, more tears running down her cheeks. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you?" Ridley rounds the end and then comes up on her other side, his hand now on her thigh. "You don't even want to know what it's like having superpowers?"

"I don't h-have superpowers," she says, shaking her head again and shying away from Ridley. "J-just let me go, please!"

"I said we will, after you show us what you can do."

"I can't do anything!" she cries, her voice pleading and desperate. It's tearing at my insides. "Let me go! Please!"

Then, so fast I hardly see it, he whips out a syringe from nowhere. The girl's eyes follow it, and she suddenly begins to scramble away. Ridley's faster, catching her by the arm. I leap at him in the same second, knocking him over and tossing the girl aside with a frightened yelp. I hear the syringe fly off somewhere and shatter, but it's hardly a concern to me considering Ridley punches me in the face right then. I hold him down and concentrate, my body disappearing. That catches him off-guard, and that allows me to haul him up and slam him against the wall, punching him right back.

He suddenly rams his knee into my groin, making me lose my concentration and dropping him. Before I can catch him, he crawls between my legs and dives for the girl, who screams and tries to dodge him. He catches her ankle and hauls her back, and right as she screams again, I whirl around and stamp on Ridley's hand. He yowls with pain and releases her, but at the same time I feel a pinch of a needle in my leg and I look down. He's jabbed another syringe in my calf. I yank it out and toss it away, but I feel an odd heaviness beginning to spread in my limbs.

I yank Ridley to his feet again, backing him into the table this time.

"How much did you stick into me, you little dipstick?"

"I didn't—"

"Then what the hell was in that syringe?" I shake him, and his head bobbles loosely around on his neck. "Answer me, Green!"

"Sedative, okay?" he yelps, sounding much more like himself again. "It was all I had!"

I shake my head, knowing he's gone too far this time. So I curl my fist and whack him a good one in the jaw, and he goes limp. I toss him aside and approach the girl, cowering in the corner, her bloody hands splayed over her face.

"Hey," I say, raising my hands to show I'm weaponless. "Let's get you out of here, okay?"

She whimpers and closes her fingers, pressing herself tightly into the corner.

"Look here, at me." I sink down to a knee. "What's your name?"

Slowly she parts her fingers again, tears tinged red with blood running between them. "L-Lindsay."

"I'm going to get you out of here, Lindsay, okay? How's that sound?" I glance behind me at Ridley, but he's not moving.

"You're...y-you're not with him?" She's shaking, so badly I can see it from here.

"No. I never was."

That, more than anything, seems to convince her. Slowly, she unfolds herself from her crouched position, and I'm startled to see so much blood on her. As she inches towards me, though, I see it's from her hands, torn to ribbons by the broken glass. I reach out and take one, and we stand up together. Slowly I lead her out of the basement and down the hall to the front door, neither of us saying a word the whole time.

"Th-thank you," she says finally, when we reach Ridley's car. I glimpse another car behind it. Matt.

He climbs out when he sees us, breath steaming in the cold air. Lindsay whimpers and shrinks away, making him stop a couple feet away.

"What the hell?" he breathes.

"Matt." I can feel the sedative spreading, and now my vision's starting to blur. "Do me a favor, won't you?"

"Yeah, man, anything." His brow furrows with concern.

"Get her..." I feel myself swaying, and my ears roar so loud I can't think. "Safe..."

"Whoa, man, you okay?" He grabs my shoulder, but I barely feel it.

"Sedative...got me..." My mind tries to grasp onto something, anything solid. "Raina...get me to Raina..."

Then, all at once, I collapse.