Savant

5: Last Chance to Bail

And so there we were. The Midori Building, a thirty-story cylinder of steel and glass, towered above us, looking like something from the future. On either side, buildings just as tall and glittering reflected one another's images, a city of mirrors. The train track ran perpendicular to the street, cutting between the Midori Building and the skyscraper to its immediate right, supported on massive concrete pillars that held it level with the building's twentieth story. As we watched, the train streaked by, sleek as a bullet and liquid smooth.

I was beginning to feel the effects of jet-lag: soreness, exhaustion, irritability. I'd never been one to sleep on planes, and had spent the entire flight across the Pacific imagining the various scenarios in which we'd find-or not find-Strauss.

"Do we go in?" asked Colin, his laptop tucked under his arm. He suddenly looked very young and small and out of place, his bright orange hair standing out wildly amid the crowd of black-haired Japanese. Diego fit in a little better with his Hispanic coloring, though he was taller and broader. With her pale hair and light green eyes, Nina was as misplaced as Colin. We all are, I thought. We shouldn't be doing this. We're just kids. School is where we ought to be, not chasing psychopath scientists all over the world.

But we weren't ordinary kids anymore, thanks to Corpus. We were Savants, and no matter what we found about our past lives or our old identities, I doubted anything could change that. We could find answers, perhaps, but we couldn't change what we'd become-and who we had become. It was all too easy to shut my eyes and imagine us finding Strauss, not finding Strauss, getting our answers or getting shot... but no amount of imagination could invent a picture of us living normal lives. For the first time, I wondered if our quest to discover our pasts was pointless. If we should just give up now.

These were not good thoughts to be having right now, when I'd need the full strength of my conviction to see this through. I blamed my funk on jet lag and turned to Colin.

"Yes and no," I said. "Diego and I go in. You and Nina set up shop in that sushi joint." I pointed to a corner restaurant with a sign depicting a pair of chopsticks holding a smiling sushi roll.

Colin nodded; this was our usual course of action: he kept watch and directed us from afar, Diego and I did the grunt work, and Nina colored ponies.

Colin dug out the earpieces from his pocket and distributed the precious little devices to each of us. Even Nina got one, in case she got separated from us.

Despite our looks and our gadgets, we didn't garner a second glance from any of the speed walking passersby. This was Tokyo, and if any city could give New York City a run for its weirdness, this was it. We passed one (girl? boy? alien?) dressed in pink pajamas, wearing a bedazzled Kabuki mask, with Hello Kitty dolls sewed at random all over the clothes. Not far behind her, we came across a pair of what seemed to be middle-aged women wearing giant pigeon heads, just standing motionless in the middle of the busy sidewalk. With these kind of characters populating the urban landscape, nobody cared a fig about the four American teens gearing up like stunt doubles in a Mission: Impossible film.

As I slid the device into my ear, my eye caught a Caucasian face amid the crowd, and my heart missed a beat. The man surfaced from the crowd and disappeared back into it as swiftly as a fish leaping from a stream.

"Diego!" I grabbed his arm.

"What is it?"

"I saw..." I turned; the face had passed by, vanished into the mass of people. My throat dry, I scanned the sea of faces, but he was gone.

"Jen?"

"I thought... No. Couldn't have been," I murmured.

Diego leaned into my line of sight. "What is it, babe?"

"I'm just on edge, I guess."

"It'll be over soon," he said, giving my arm a squeeze. "So what do you think. Will we be in range?"

I squinted at the Midori Building, then at the sushi restaurant, measuring the distance, comparing it to the range of the earpieces. "We should be fine. Might get a little static if we end up on the roof of that thing, though."

"Then we'll stay off the roof."

"Fine with me," I said. I looked around at our little band, at the faces of Colin and Nina, who were like my brother and sister, and at Diego, who was my heart. "Let's go."

But before I could step onto the crosswalk, Nina grabbed my hand. Her eyes were wide and distraught, and at first I thought she might be having one of her where-the-hell-are-my-Crayolas fits.

I was wrong.

"Don't go," she said fiercely. "It will be bad. Jenna, please. Let's go away. Let's go now!"

She began pulling my arm and bewildered, I pulled back. "Nina, stop! Everything will be fine. This isn't like Moscow. They knew we were coming then. They wanted us to come. This time is different, Nina, they don't expect us."

But she kept tugging at me, her eyes beginning to well with tears. She began jabbering in Russian. I looked at Diego and Colin and saw equally confused looks on their faces. Diego gently took Nina's hands and pried them off my arm.

"Hey, now," he murmured, "easy, Nina. Go with Colin. If you need us, we'll be right here." He tapped her earpiece. "We'll be close."

She gave him a haunted look. "Go with Colin. Like Lucy goes with Edmund."

"Yeah, like Lucy goes with Edmund."

Instead of looking reassured, Nina only seemed to shrink into herself, her eyes huge and vacant. Colin took her hand.

"Go on, guys," he said. "I've got her."

"Bye, Nina," I said. "I'll see you soon."

"No." She looked down at her shoes. "You got a train to catch."

"What?"

"Just go, guys. I'll take care of her." Colin waved his free hand, shooing us away.

"Keep us updated," said Diego. "If we need to, we can call it off and try again tomorrow."

"For all we know, Strauss could be leaving the country tonight," he replied. "Go."

I nodded, reluctant, not wanting to leave it like this. Nina's panicky expression was caught in my thoughts, like a piece of tape stuck to my finger that I couldn't shake off. Our plan-our survival-depended on things going smoothly, on us working together as a unit. Regardless of her disabilities, Nina was part of our unit and having her not fully on board made me want to call the whole thing off.

But Diego was ready to go and Colin was holding tight to Nina's hand. This is just nerves, I told myself. Jet lag and bad daydreams and you losing your grip on your courage.

My face warmed by shame at my own indecision at this crucial time, I let out an unsteady breath and took Diego's hand. "We'll be close," I said to Nina, but as I said it I felt a rush of warmth to my ears, the same as I always did when I told a lie.

"Guys," said Colin, his blue eyes pinched and troubled behind his glasses, "be careful."

Diego nodded and I tried to give him a reassuring, we-totally-got-this-in-the-bag grin, but it fell flat. Colin pulled Nina through the crowd and into the sushi restaurant.

I turned to Diego. "What was Nina saying, when she lapsed into Russian?"

He frowned. "Nothing, really. She kept saying, 'Don't touch the Turkish delight'."

Inexplicably, the words made my hair stand on end.

Then the light changed over the intersection and a flood of people poured into the crosswalk leading to the Midori Building, and we were swept away with them.