Destination Unknown (Lumen Academy Book 1)

by Penelope Wright

  Mona launches herself out of her swivel chair and scurries to peer at the monitor. Clarissa crowds next to her.

  All three people watch in silence for a few moments, then Darius sighs. “It appears they found her, Mona.”

  “You can’t tell that for sure.”

  “The pin is moving at a walking pace.”

  “At least we know she’s not dead.”

  “We know nothing of the sort. She may have been dead on arrival. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Her body could have blown apart anywhere in transit. Perhaps only her head arrived in The Citadel. Maybe even just her ear.”

  Clarissa makes a slight gagging sound and turns away.

  Mona snarls. “Now you’re just being disgusting.”

  “I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘realistic.’”

  “No, Darius, everything that you’ve said is speculation. This girl has something special. No one has ever teleported the distance she traveled.”

  “The distance her earlobe traveled.”

  “Stop it.”

  “We have to Cancel the whole event. Might save her life in the process. You’re so concerned about her survival. Wouldn’t you rather she be a drooling vegetable than a dead body?”

  “No. You’re offering false equivalencies. Her GPS pin is moving. Marston must be onsite by now. He may be the one who located her. We don’t know what goes on behind Citadel walls. Running might be the stupidest thing they could possibly do. We have to wait for Marston to report in.”

  “And why hasn’t he?”

  “Like I just said, we don’t know what goes on behind those walls. If you were deep inside The Citadel, would you pull out a sat phone and call in with a status report?”

  Darius blinks at her slowly. “Mona, I’ve wanted to Cancel this from the moment I walked into your studio and you told me what happened. The only reason I have not is because of our personal history. And as I’m sure you agree, that’s not a valid basis for impractical decisions. So unless you can give me a better reason that I should put our entire order in danger than ‘she seems nice,’ I’m going to have to do my duty.”

  Mona turns to Clarissa. “Help me out here.”

  Clarissa shrugs. “I’m sorry. I agree with him.”

  Mona’s eyes narrow and her voice drops to a seething whisper. “How dare you? You got her into this.”

  “I knew she had ability. I wouldn’t have brought her if I wasn’t sure. You were the one who took an unacceptable risk and played a B-flat note while she was under hypnosis.”

  “She was lavender suppressed!” Mona yells.

  “Ladies, ladies,” Darius says dryly. “Let’s move the conversation forward please. We’re past the point of blame.”

  “Easy for you to say, Darius. She agrees with you. It’s two against one.” Mona watches the pin moving at its slow walking pace, and she puts one hand over her eyes. “Her mind…when I delved into her mind, what I saw reminded me of…me.”

  Darius scoffs. “A gray? Reminded you of yourself? In what way?”

  Mona’s face hardens. “Clarissa? A moment please?”

  Clarissa’s eyes move between Mona’s and Darius’s faces. Darius gives her a slight nod. She knows they’re on the same team. Darius needs her now. He wouldn’t trick her. She bows stiffly and exits the room.

  Mona turns away from Darius and stares at the readout screen, watching the pin making its slow progress through the halls of The Citadel. Heidi isn’t finding a way out. She’s going deeper within. She closes her eyes, fighting back the tears that threaten to make an extremely unprofessional appearance.

  “How did this gray girl remind you of yourself, Mona?” Darius prods softly. His voice has changed somehow. It’s gentler, more personal.

  Mona straightens and allows low burning anger to consume and overwhelm her sorrow. “When you left me for your wife. Her pain. It was eerily familiar.”

  Darius rises from his chair, his face a wooden mask. “It was an arranged marriage, Mona. I had no choice.”

  “You always had a choice,” she hisses. “You just made the easy one.”

  Darius pivots on his heel, rips off his knit cap, and stuffs it inside the top of his loose leather boot. He stares at Mona, the wrinkles around his eyes seeming to grow deeper. “I have to protect the order. Not your feelings. I’m calling in my Canceler. But I’ll do it outside your studio. You won’t be involved. You’ll forget about the girl, given time.”

  “The way I’ve clearly forgotten about you?”

  Darius points his finger at her. “You moved on, Mona. Immediately. Or do your memories not include your own betrayals? Yes, I married the woman chosen for me by the order. You entered the breeding program. You bore the children of strangers. We both have to live with our choices, and I’d say you got the better end of the deal. At least you have people who love you.”

  Mona places a hand over her stomach, as if connecting with and drawing strength from the children who stretched its skin long ago. “Please don’t do this, Darius. Give Marston a chance to report.”

  “He had his chance.”

  “How can you be so heartless? We don’t send Cancelers after our own people, Darius.”

  “She’s not one of ours,” Darius responds curtly. “She’s a stranger off the streets. How do you know she wasn’t a Watcher plant in the first place, sent here to lure one of our best people into their midst?”

  Mona glares at him. “That theory’s a stretch, even for you. Don’t do this, Darius. Let Marston complete his mission. Wait for his call.”

  Darius glances at the face of his sat phone. “His mission has already lasted thirty-two minutes. His time’s up. I can’t put our entire organization at risk because you have a soft spot for a girl you just met.” He presses the button to activate his sat phone, taps, and holds the phone to his ear. “It’s me. I need Canceler number seventeen.” He pauses for a moment. “What? Dammit.” Another beat passes. “I’ll come get her.”

  “Problem?” Mona asks innocently.

  “My Canceler seems to have been called away unexpectedly. She’s on a flight to Region Two.”

  “A flight? Why wouldn’t they send a Jumper to transport your best Canceler when you need her most? Oh, that’s so unfortunate,” Mona says, doing her best to twist her mouth down as if in commiseration.

  Darius reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and pulls out a small rock. His mouth twists wryly. “Yes, yes, keep talking and there’s no way I’d suspect you had anything to do with it. Good thing I thought to bring such a large amount of pure quartz with me.” He places the rock on the back of his tongue, picks up his teacup, and swallows.

  “She’s in midair, Darius,” Mona snaps. “Traveling at five hundred seventy-five miles per hour. Not even you would be that crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy, Mona,” Darius says. “I’m talented.”

  He hits a different button on his phone and a melodious tone peals forth.

  Mona throws her hands over her ears to muffle the sound.

  Darius smiles, tilts his head, then vanishes.

  13

  Heidi

  “So, you’re a Jumper,” I say, humoring this very good-looking figment of my imagination. “I’ve always wondered how that worked. I thought Jumpers could go wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted to. But you can’t?”

  “I need the proper amount of charge before I can travel. Bringing you with me saps my wellspring much faster.”

  “Fascinating. We’re led to believe you Lumens guys are invincible. All of you. Do the other talents have limitations too?”

  “It’s your hallucination. You tell me.”

  “Well…I don’t really know. You’ve talked about not having enough charge, and I assume that has something to do with you eating gravel back there.”

  “Believe me, gravel wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it typically has a large limestone content and enough of that will do the trick.”

  I smile and wo
nder how my brain is coming up with all this stuff. “So what’s the trick?” I ask. I’m curious to see what kind of explanations my wildly synapsing brain will supply.

  “Mineral combustion.”

  “So, like, burning rocks?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. No one’s actually burning anything, though. It’s a complicated chemical process that starts with an abnormality of the gallbladder that makes it function somewhat like a gizzard and—”

  I raise my hand and cut Marston off. “I don’t think my knowledge of anatomy goes deep enough to imagine anything that makes sense beyond ‘gallbladder,’ so why don’t you skip the scientific details?”

  “If you’re going to learn how to control your power, you’ll have to study this sort of thing eventually.”

  “Well, let’s put it off as long as possible,” I say, humoring him again. “But we can talk about the ‘me having a power’ thing, I like the sounds of that. Tell me more.”

  “You have a power.”

  I whack at tall grass with a stick I picked up somewhere and slap at a bug that has crawled inside my tunic sleeve. “Could you embellish that with a few additional details?”

  “I don’t know, can I?” Marston says sardonically. “This is your mind making up the whole thing, or so you’ve told me. Nice mosquitoes, by the way. You think you could conjure up less of those?”

  “You talk back an awful lot for a figment of my imagination. I am kind of surprised at your sass.”

  “I live to bewilder.”

  “You told me before that your friends call you ‘Mars,’ but you don’t have friends. You know what? I like you. This is way more interesting than my normal life. Superpowers? Exotic locales? Jungle beasts? This beats the bobbin factory by about a billion light years. I think I’m gonna call you ‘Mars.’”

  “Hmm.” He looks at me sidelong and flicks a mosquito off his own wrist. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever spoken to me so honestly. Kudos. Oddly enough, I like you too.”

  “Thank you.” I whack more grass absentmindedly.

  “I’m just putting this out there, but you might have to switch job assignments soon.”

  “Wrong,” I say. “Quarter end was two weeks ago. If they were going to switch me, it would have been then. I’ll be there another eleven weeks at least.”

  “Humor me again and pretend what you’re experiencing right now is actually real. Do you truly think you’d be able to just slide back into your factory position after all this? You know far too much now. And you have a talent.”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “If this were real, I would have stepped on a thorn or something by now. I’m barefoot, remember?”

  “Crap, I forgot. Well, if this really is a hallucination and you’re in charge of this whole thing, why didn’t you make yourself some imaginary shoes?”

  “I’m not a cobbler. I don’t think I can imagine things that I don’t already know how to do.”

  Marston – Mars – stops, faces me, and grips my upper arms. “Heidi, I’ve tried playing along, but it’s getting us nowhere. You have to understand. This is really happening. It isn’t your brain tricking you, you’re not passed out, or high on drugs, or anything. You are here, with me. I exist. And you have a power. You have the same power I do. Yours is incredibly strong and I have no idea why.”

  “Yeah, I can’t explain that, either, because I can fully assure you I’ve never eaten gravel.”

  Mars falls a half-step behind me while he checks his phone again and I turn back to shoot him a grin. He scowls at his phone but raises one eyebrow at me, and I marvel at how he can look sexy, pissed, and interested all at the same time. I thought John was attractive, but he doesn’t hold a candle to this guy. “How about quartz?” Mars asks.

  “Like, the thing they put in watches in the olden days?”

  “Yes, exactly that.”

  “No, it’s never been a major part of my diet. Rocks in general are something I stay away from.”

  “Salt is a rock.”

  “Is it? How interesting,” I say in my most bored voice.

  “So is magnesium. You eat more rocks than you realize.”

  “Don’t birds eat rocks? I’m sure I read that somewhere before my schooling ended.”

  “Lots of them do, and actually, they’re the only other creatures that can teleport, though I don’t think they do it with the sort of awareness that our kind does.”

  “Really? Birds can just vanish from one place and turn up in another? Do they ever wake up to find themselves in bed with strangers?”

  “All the time.”

  I laugh, and Marston shoots me another of his sexy grins, the polar opposite of the expression he gets every time he looks at his sat phone and discovers that he still has no uplink. “No one notices when a small number of birds vanish from a flock. You don’t think geese actually fly all the way to Region Seven for the winter, do you? They do it in short teleportation hops, a few at a time. Of course, entire flocks of birds will vanish just before a tornado hits. Look it up sometime.”

  “I don’t have data access.”

  “You will.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Keep talking, figment.”

  “You don’t act like any of the grays I’ve ever met before.”

  “I can act however I want to. It’s my delusion.”

  Mars gives a sigh of aggravation, and apparently, since he’s already going to be irritated, he checks his satellite phone again, but this time, his eyes light up. “I have an uplink!”

  He pounds on his phone enthusiastically and holds it to his ear. His expression changes from expectant to frustrated as he waits for the person on the other end to pick up.

  I want to ask Mars who he’s trying to call, but for some reason, all of a sudden, I can’t focus on him. Something’s happening to me. Something’s wrong. My head feels like it’s been stuffed with mud, and that mud is oozing out of my eyes, nose, and mouth. I swipe at my nose, surprised when the back of my hand doesn’t come away dirty. My vision swims, but I can see Mars stabbing at his phone again with his finger. I have to get his attention. I attempt to make noises with my mouth, but it’s hard, and when the words come out, they’re all messed up.

  “Me….with…wrong…something’s…Mars…” I choke out.

  He glances up from his phone, and even through my blurry vision, I can read the alarm in his eyes.

  He shoves his phone in his pocket. “Heidi, talk to me.”

  But I don’t think I can. My head snaps up and down in an uncontrolled nodding fashion and my teeth clack together.

  “Wrong…something’s…” I manage to gasp.

  “Holy shit!” Mars shoves his phone in his pocket. “Someone’s trying to Cancel you. Goddammit.”

  Now his voice changes, but it’s weird. I can see his mouth moving, shaping words, but I’m hearing them come out backward. “Happen…this…let…gonna…not…I’m,” he says, though his mouth shapes them in the opposite order. “Go…let…don’t. Me…onto…hold.”

  He wraps his arms around me again and I lock my arms behind his neck, using every ounce of strength and control I have left in my body. He puts his hands under my butt and hikes me up. I think I experience the suction cup feeling, but I can’t tell for sure because my whole body feels like it’s caving in on itself, like I’m a sandcastle struck by a sneaker wave.

  I cling to Marston like a tree frog. We’re surrounded by dark gray mist, thick like cheesecloth against my skin. The mist hangs so heavily between us, his face is a blur, and I feel like the mist is grabbing at me with a million fingers, trying to peel me up like a sticker off a piece of fruit, but I’m not going to let go.

  I can breathe through my nose now, but when I open my mouth to try to speak, the mist pours in and it tastes like gasoline. I snap my mouth shut, squeeze my eyes closed, and I don’t let go.

  I hear a gargantuan sucking sound, like some god is trying to pull a stuck train out of a tunnel with a giant plunger, and then there’s a pop
, and I sense bright light behind my tightly shut eyes.

  “Open your eyes, Heidi,” Mars says urgently, and I do. The jungle is gone. Marston and I stand in some sort of crowded outdoor market. Unusual fruits and vegetables are piled high on wooden display cases. People weave all around us, calling out to each other in a language I don’t understand. And I’m in Marston’s arms, my body twisted around his like I’m in the middle of some sort of exotic dance.

  I gasp in embarrassment and Mars sets me down, but though my feet are on the ground, he doesn’t let go of me, and I keep my hands clasped behind his neck. He stares into my pupils like he’s trying to see all the way to the back of my skull. “Follow my finger,” he says, sliding it back and forth in front of my gaze. He sighs with relief as my eyes easily follow his slowly moving index finger. “Can you talk?” he asks.

  My tongue feels unnaturally swollen and I have a mad urge to grab the juiciest fruit off the display rack and suck it dry before I even try to speak, but I restrain myself. “Water,” I croak instead.

  “Oh thank god,” Mars says, and his body softens in relief. “No brain damage.” He unwinds his arms from around me, then holds my elbow to keep me steady.

  “I don’t have anything to drink on me,” Mars says. “But we’ll find a café. Something with caffeine or electrolytes will help more than plain water.” He points behind me and to the left. “That place looks promising.”

  I peer over my own shoulder at a little hole-in-the-wall-style place with a couple of sets of cheap patio furniture out on the sidewalk. It reminds me a bit of the restaurant where John broke up with me, but I don’t care about him at all anymore, and if the people here can get me a cup of anything liquid, I’ll be indebted to them for life.

  “Come on,” Mars says. He moves his fingers down my arm until he’s holding my hand. “But don’t let go of my hand. We shouldn’t lose contact, just in case.”

  I nod silently. Whatever his reasons for holding my hand are, I don’t care. I don’t want to lose the security of touch right now, either.