I had practiced small jumps through the stone taking mom with me just in case and it was incredibly hard to maintain my focus on another person as we traveled. If I lost that focus and control then she could be lost within the earth's crust for all time. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find them, if I lost grip for even an instant, and I dared not test it out.
I could sense fear and wonder in both Tajwa and Asuka but above all else I sensed trust from them and that gave me a big boost of confidence and it was with a sure stride that lead us into the stone.
We traveled to Syria first, the journey was quick but I was overjoyed to realize as we traveled that there was no signature of the Power detectable around us, it was located in such small spaces that I felt sure Sean couldn’t sense them even a few feet away. I hoped that would be enough to mask out movements from the Enemy and his minions. The golems didn’t seem to be detected so I felt some assurance.
Still I was wary as we stepped out into the sweltering heat of a sun blasted hillside. Off in the distance the Library stood and without a word Tajwa began marching off in that direction. Her mind determined and already pouring over the list she had created and memorized.
The weave of Power energies I had tied to her were the most intricate thing I had done to this point and I couldn’t help but feel proud of it. A knot of isolated Power influence that was tied to Tajwa and activated whenever she spoke or made physical contact with a person. The strength of the influence was tied to the volume of her voice, the quieter she spoke the more powerful the compulsion would be on those listening. There was some chance of discovery but the Enemies minions would have to right on top of Tajwa when she spoke to feel it.
It should both protect her and help her get access to the archives and repositories she needed. I had built the same weave of Power and set it on Asuka and I took her hand now and stepped back into the rock, slipping beneath the earth's surface to travel halfway around the world.
We stepped out into Battery Park in Manhattan and I looked around pleased to see no one had noticed us step free of the concrete wall. Asuka had a determined look on her face but I could sense her fear as well. She began to head off in the direction of Wall Street just a couple blocks away, but I held her hand tight.
“Wait,” I said and drawing deeply on the Power I sunk my senses into the surface of the streets and sent it questing out in a fan throughout Manhattan as far as I could reach. After so many amazing orgasms over the past few days I surprised myself when I felt the tendrils of Power reach out over seven football fields of distance.
I had felt the Enemy and his minions’ signature twice now and it was what I looked for now. Like a bloodhound on a scent I used fine filaments of Power to sample and test the city. What I found deeply disturbed me.
Dark essence was spread all over Manhattan, faint and weak but the creatures had definitely been here and in many places.
“They are here.” I said to Asuka's questioning look.
Asuka froze in place, fear bubbling up in her and drowning out reason, I was just about to flex the Power and calm her down, but she managed to calm herself with a couple of deep breaths.
“We can’t afford to fail here.” Asuka had a hard and determined look to her face again and only I could sense how strongly the fear gripped her, “What do we do now?”
“We keep to the plan,” I said, “but I will come with you.” I tried to pull her after me through the park but Asuka wouldn’t move. Turning I scanned her and felt myself get frustrated at her thinking. The brave stupid beautiful woman.
“You know we can’t afford to skip the hospital, and besides,” Asuka said motioning around with one hand, “you aren’t exactly inconspicuous Ashlyn.”
I tend to ignore the looks I draw in public, but I took note now, not having to turn and look; with the Power at my fingertips. Asuka did have a point, there was far too much attention coming my way. I could use the Power to adjust my appearance and make myself less but there was a chance that could be detected.
“Very well,” I said and I had to struggle to keep the frustration from my voice, “then you stick to the plan and signal me as soon as possible.” Then I pulled the smaller woman into a fierce embrace and released her quickly, wiping at a tear that was falling down one cheek, “Go quickly then.”
Asuka gave me a tight-lipped smile and her face once again determined she began marching off in the direction of Wall Street. I didn’t wait around to watch her go, not wanting to draw any more attention to myself. I slipped back under the bridge and found some dark shadows where I could slip back beneath the earth without being noticed.
Stepping out into an alley I felt the icy wind of Rochester; Minnesota pull at my skin and I took a moment to get my bearings. Once more I reached out with feather light fingers of the Power but I could sense nothing of the Enemies foul presence in this city. My real fear was for Asuka in the city, so I hurried out of the alley and down the street to the tall building that was my destination, and held my hope for victory.
The Mayo Clinic houses some of the greatest medical technology and physicians in the world and it was for exactly this reason I had come. Pausing in the lobby I closed my eyes and let the Power fill me and send it questing out, searching for her. In a few seconds I found her talking to a patient on an upper floor.
Ignoring the stares, I was getting I headed over to the elevators and made my way up. Distracting security guards along the way with a tiny flex of Power I passed several checkpoints and then finally felt myself nearing her.
Her mind shone with a brilliance of synaptic connections that dwarfed all others in the building, and this was home to world class doctors. Ignoring the rest of the hospitals personnel I stepped into the patient's room to find the woman glaring at me as I interrupted her.
“I am in the middle of a consultation, please remove yourself from the room.” The woman turned back to her patient; certain her words would be heeded. I could never remember being so thoroughly dismissed by another person before.
Dr. Lorelai Khan is a giant in her field and at thirty-four had pioneered several medical techniques that were even now saving lives all around the globe. Beneath a drab exterior she was also a striking Eurasian beauty. Standing at mid height with smooth pale skin and the most gorgeous almond shaped eyes. Her little button nose looked like it belonged on a Korean pop-star instead of the leading neuro-scientist in the world. I couldn’t make out much of her body beneath the big white coat and baggy cargo pants the woman wore and unbrushed hair. There was definitely a Laney Boggs feel from the She’s All That movie, somewhere under that unkempt appearance was a beautiful woman, too distracted to care what she looked like.
“Are you the Dr. Kahn that wrote the paper on Induced Sub-neural Simulated Death and its Applications?” I let the Power lace my words, drawing the woman’s annoyed attention once more. I couldn’t afford to play around with this woman’s mind, it was far too valuable to risk damaging it. But I’m not above helping myself get noticed.
“Can’t this wait? I am with a patient,” she motioned towards an overweight man with pale waxy skin laying propped up in his hospital bed.
“No,” I said locking the hospital door behind me and approaching the bed. Dr. Khan looked alarmed and reached for the nurse’s button on the bed, hitting it repeatedly as she said.
“I won’t write you a prescription! Security will be here in seconds!” Her voice rising shrilly as she backed away from the bed holding her clipboard tight to her chest. Her patient was watching her in confusion and annoyance more than he was me.
“Calm down,” I said in an annoyed tone, “I don’t want drugs and I’m not here to hurt anyone. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about your procedure.”
“My… my procedure?” Dr. Khan repositioned her glasses and blinked looking around in surprise before narrowing her eyes on me in sharp contrast to how she looked seconds before, very strange woman. “What do you want with a procedure to trick the mind into thi
nking the body is dead?”
“Only to save the world.” I said it quietly staring straight into the woman’s eyes and for one brief moment she wanted to believe me, then she barked a laugh.
“You’re a mad woman. It has applications for research but little else without the use of a lab in Eastern Europe and willing human subjects, and I would never agree to such research.”
“I can provide human subjects willing to undergo the procedure, given its great rewards and certitude of their safety.” I could see the war going on inside the woman as she took me in again. Shrewd eyes taking in my designer clothes and shoes, hair and makeup.
“You’re with Pfizer?” She asked, her lips pulling up in a sneer. “I already told those suits I won’t work with them for any price.” She looked over my shoulder at the door, wondering where security was.
“No,” I said again with a smile this time, “I am not with any pharma corporations I’m with a private individual but I assure you, if your procedure works the price my master is willing to pay is one you would never say no to.
“I doubt that very much,” Dr Khan said, “now please leave.”
I held up one hand and drew the Power deeply into myself, deeper and deeper until I could feel the edges of tingling pain prick my extremities and then my skin began to glow with faint trailing wisps of golden light. It was hard to see the golden energy flowing around my skin and trailing off it, but not impossible. Dr Khan and her patient looked on with wide awe filled eyes as my hand filled with the golden light, the Power pooling and coalescing into a warping wobbling ball of glowing golden energy.
“Not even for the power to truly heal a person?” My voice was soft as a whisper as I reached over to the man, he pulled back in fear for just one second and then the Power was flowing down into him like a waterfall out of my hand.
He breathed in a shocked gasp and then let it out in a slow deep sigh; his color returning in seconds. The construct I had learn to create the day before, did its work within him. Logical flows of the Power swept out through the man’s body, detecting where things were functioning properly and then swarming around cancerous cells obliterating them and replacing it with what the genetic recipe called for.
The man’s face was flush, and he was breathing in smooth steady breaths in moments. It didn’t stop just at the cancer, the Power wrought construct continued on moving through the rest of his body, find and healing old scar tissue. It ate away at fat in excess and deposited muscle fibers in proper proportions. All of this taking place while the mind is numbed as if under a powerful narcotic. It was crude requiring extreme amounts of power to fill in the gaps of my lack of knowledge but effective and worked quicker than I thought it would.
Dr Khan rushed forward and checked the man’s vitals, hands pressing at his abdomen and lymph nodes.
“This is not possible.” She said turning to look at me, her awe filled eye still holding a light of analyzing intelligence. “The tumors are gone, how? Who or what are you?”
“I am just a woman, or I was before I was gifted this Power.” I replied, baiting the hook.
“Gifted?” Her eyes scanned me again, taking in the golden wisps of Power, and I could see her for the first time really taking in my beauty; as I recognized the slightly intimidated tightness around her eyes, and in her thoughts.
“I had been wounded,” I said, not wanting to relive those terrible moments, but knowing this was what she needed to hear.
“Laying on the edge of death as I stared up into my brother and mothers’ eyes.” She was captivated by my story and my Power enhanced words. “When the world closed in before my eyes and I felt as though I was at the end of a dark tunnel, with life on the other end retreating ever further from me.”
“A typical NDE response.” Dr Khan whispered, her arms once more wrapped around the clipboard and hugging it to her chest.
“I don’t know what an NDE is, but I felt death near, I could taste it. And then a Golden light,” I lifted my hand once more and filled it with a glowing sphere of the Power, “drifted from the center of my step brothers chest and into mine and with it the breath of life, healing my injuries and endowing me with this.” I said raising my hand up before my face.
The woman blinked and looked from the glowing energy to me and her faced screwed up in irritation at her unsated curiosity.
“How did you brother receive this gift? What is it really? What laws govern its use? No chemistry, biology or physics I know could cause what I witnessed here. Is it only the ability to heal? What was the catalyst for the endowment? Was the transfer not begun until actual death occurred? Because if it is actual death them, I am no sure my procedure will be of use to you. I still have reservation about human testing, no matter your healing powers. Where is your lab? Out of the country? I refuse to fly, so would need to provide adequate ground transportation if I agreed. Train is preferred and I will need to review the records of any driver who will be transporting me. Is your localized energy granted from a lab? Are you affiliated with any universities or are you truly independent? Does that energy glow any color besides golden? Could the spectrum have some interaction with your energies wavelengths?”
She began moving almost as soon as speaking and just as quickly. Going about the bed, removing IV and all the other items attached to the sleeping man. Finally, her babble of chatter ran to an end and she paused eyes resting where they had refused to look for a couple minutes, into the healthy sleeping face of a man who up until minutes before had been destined for death. He had been overweight and all around unhealthy in addition to the cancerous cells that riddled his body. Laying before her now was a perfectly healthy man.
The doctor reached out, her fingers fishing in the man’s mouth and came out with two fillings.
“His… teeth…” she turned to look at me in fascinated horror, “are perfect. They regrew.”
I looked at the woman and cocked an eyebrow at her in my most: Now do you get what the fuck I’m talking about? kind of expression. For some reason it was the teeth that got through to her.
“What the fuck!” She shouted, then she turned on me falling to her knees and reaching out her hands toward me pleading, “Please, I will do anything for the gift to heal people with this efficacy! You will let me try? My procedure? Anything!!”
I gave the woman a smirk and crossed my arms, glancing at the clock I nodded to the door behind me.
“Go, you have twenty minutes to gather what you need.” The woman began to rush off and I reached out a hand, halting her in place. “Please bring only what you can carry and meet me in the lobby, we travel swiftly.”
Her mind filled with fear at thoughts of flying, panic choked her throat, so she just nodded and rushed off. Feeling for the first time in her life like she had won the lottery, mind racing to inventory exactly what she needed.
I spent the most agonizing seventeen minutes of my life waiting in the lobby for her to show up. I sensed no dark presence anywhere near or ever having been nearby recently, but still the skin on my shoulder blades crawled with nerves. I felt eyes in the back of my head.
The schedule was being pushed to the absolute limit as a frazzled and hurried Lorelai Khan cane sliding out of a side door and over to me. She had several satchels draped over her shoulders and clutched two laptops beneath her arms, along with a pile of cords that looked like they had been yanked out of a wall.
Turning I lead the woman out of the building and down to a different alleyway in the opposite direction. There I didn’t say a word, not wanting to deal with the hassle of explaining what was about to happen. I took her shoulder in one Power strong hand and walked us into the concrete wall of the building and holding the shaking confused woman in a grip of iron will we stepped out into a subway tunnel just off grand central station.
Dr Khan squawked something at my side, but I ignored her and quested out quickly, relieved to discover Asuka nearby in the upper station floor, near the food court. I send her a strong mental signal
and could feel her want to sob in relief. The tough woman just began moving in my direction as I laid out a map to us.
I had just begun to feel confident and sure that we could pull this off when the creeping darkness and itching evil of the Enemies shadow presence began to seep through the tunnels of the subway. Like a stench on the wind it grew stronger and I could almost feel them drawing close.
Dr Khan must have sensed something of my unease as she quickly grew silent and drew close to me, my concentration reaching out in as quiet a voice as possible and telling Asuka to hurry.
There was the screech of steel on steel and the head light of a subway train appeared at the end of the tunnel approaching our platform and the reek of their evil presence hit me stronger than ever. I drew the Power in deeply, fear spiking in my guts.
Fuck.
They were hundreds of meters away and approaching fast, at least a half dozen of the creatures. I was raising my hand, Power coalescing and ready to blast whatever foul creature emerged from the car, when Asuka burst around the corner and the second her hand lit upon my wrist we were sinking down and away from that place as fast as I could take us.
I could sense the minions swarming out of the car, sniffing around and searching for the Power’s origin. I caught a hint of their minds as we left, my own strength amazing me, and I was able to learn much.
They had no idea I and my Mother had the Power in us now. They knew, just like those old men in my brothers’ dreams, that the Power lived only in one male, every generation.
My nerves were still on edge, but I was filled with excitement as we stepped out into the baking heat of Syria. Dr Khan was blessedly silent and Tajwa was waiting exactly where she was supposed to be with a big grin on her face.
“Did you find anything useful?” I asked, voice filled with hope.
The Power 4 Page 3