Infinity Son by Adam Silvera (e book reader free txt) 📗

more hopeless by the day. Wesley is clearly itching for a trip to Philadelphia to visit Ruth and Esther, but remains close to shop for supplies and coordinate moves to other shelters for the celestials who no longer feel safe under our care.

I wish I could send Brighton, Prudencia, and Ma elsewhere. Brighton has been damn near manic since he pulled his video offline. He’s locked himself in the computer lab, and from what I can see, he’s monitoring our social media accounts but not posting anything as Iris instructed. I think he’s looking for an impossible solution. Sort of like Prudencia, who is spending all her time in the library to unearth more information about the mysterious ingredients Sera listed in the journal. I try to help, but she’s been rejecting my company. I can’t help but feel like she blames me for everything that’s going wrong in her life, like having to turn her back on her aunt and Brighton turning his back on her. Ma was running dangerously low on heart and anxiety meds, so Wesley braved returning to our apartment to get more for her, but since we can’t exactly risk Ma personally going to get her prescription refilled, it’s only a matter of time before we’ll have to break into a pharmacy to steal everything she needs; more ammo for Senator Iron’s campaign if we get caught.

There’s a shift whenever I walk these halls. The people in our care used to admire me, and now they walk past me like there’s nothing I can do for them. Honestly, I’m with them. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that we’re fighting a losing war. Iron will be elected president. The future for all celestials will grow grimmer by the year. They’ll lose their rights and will be forced into camps—or worse—for their powers. History repeats itself, and in my past lives, I die young for the cause. This one won’t be any different.

Instead of hiding under the covers and dreading whatever mission we’ll have to go on next, I take care of Ness. The others haven’t been particularly sympathetic considering that Ness has been rallying hate against celestials since his early teens, but I can’t forget that he’s a human who was raised by a monster. Iron won’t ever change his ways, but I have hope that Ness can bounce back. So I get him time in the bathroom to wash up and handle his business. I give him an air mattress so he doesn’t sleep on the floor. I make sure we’re feeding him as much as anyone else, sometimes even hooking him up with extra portions from my plates that I can’t eat since they’re not plant-based.

I’ve been doing more research on shifters too, ever since Ness’s threat that he could kill me if he wanted to. I was getting nervous that he could morph into some six-foot-six bodybuilder and crush my skull with one hand, but his power only allows him to take on the physical glamour, not to gain strength or speed or mimic abilities that aren’t there. Still doubt that I would win if we threw down fists, so I got to be quick with fire if he comes for me. I don’t think he will. He’s been harmless—he doesn’t thank me for the food or books I bring him, but it’s all good as long as he doesn’t swing at me.

I’ve got dinner for him tonight, so I go to his room and knock gently. He doesn’t invite me in, but that’s usually how it goes down. I enter, and where Ness usually rests, there’s an older white man murmuring in his sleep. The first three times I walked in on Ness sleeping as someone else—a woman who was balding, a young boy with burnt fingertips, a man with greasy hair and a mousy face—I assumed he was playing some weird game with me. But this is the first time I’ve seen him so distressed. The man’s long red hair is plastered to his sweaty forehead, and a deep scar runs across his face. On closer inspection, he’s missing a chunk of his nose.

“Please don’t, please don’t,” the man mutters.

I set down the plate of food and rub the man’s shoulder. “Ness?”

The man snaps awake, and his hand finds its way around my throat quick as a blink. His nails are digging into my flesh and have trapped my next breath from reaching me when I need it most. He’s missing an eye, but the bright blue one that remains burns with more than enough hate to make up for it. I pound at his wrist, his arm, his chest, but every punch is weaker than the last. I’m fading, and a gray light and loosened grip and new breath keeps me awake. Ness is himself again, and he’s shaking. He removes his hand from my throat.

“That wasn’t me,” Ness says. “I didn’t do it.”

Of course that was him, of course he did it. What is he running his mouth about?

I fall on my back, breathing in and out, in and out. He hovers over me. He’s been threatened by Maribelle left and right, but this is the first time I’ve seen pure concern on his face. I massage my neck while my heart runs wild.

“I’m sorry. That happens sometimes,” Ness says as he helps me up, resting me against the wall closest to the door. “Turning into other people when I sleep.”

I’m so thrown by all of this—the strangling and the apology and the opening up.

It takes me a minute, but I get the words out: “Who is he?”

Ness sits against the opposite wall. There couldn’t be more space between us. “He was a trafficker who tried killing me that night on the dock. So I killed him first.”

I figured Ness had taken a life before, but the confirmation still pins me. I’m afraid to ask, but I have to know. “So those other people I’ve seen you turn into . . .”

“I