The Elders

by Dima Zales

  The usual sense of nonbeing I associate with Nirvana is gone. Instead, I again feel a strange sense of corporealness. As soon as it appears, it slips away, almost as if it’s being erased. This happened during my Assimilation with Frederick, only this is a hundred times worse.

  George has only one goal: he wants to complete this process of erasing me, the success of which would make me Inert.

  I have to do something about it, I realize, and mentally push back.

  An extremely unsavory sensation overcomes me. It feels as if I’m killing an innocent or vandalizing something beautiful.

  I remind myself that George isn’t a unique and beautiful snowflake. He’s the fucker who tried to choke me on the Island. With that mental reassurance, I push again.

  The turbulent feeling intensifies. A fresh wave of fear arises from George, its intensity mixing with my own. I feel echoes of that ‘being erased’ feeling emanating from him, or maybe they’re my own; it’s hard to tell.

  “Stop, Darren,” his vile thought tells me. “Please.”

  Due to the Assimilation, I know he really means it; he really wants me to stop.

  Well, no shit. That just means that whatever I’m doing is working. Good. I push hard, capitalizing on my success.

  The feeling of being erased increases, but I can tell it’s him who’s being affected and not me.

  My discomfort from feeling as though I’m doing something horrible increases too. I fight it, trying to make my mind ruthless. I remind myself how close Mira came to death before I reversed Thomas’s instructions. This revitalizes my resolve, and I try to crush the mind responsible for nearly killing her.

  “Let’s make a deal, Darren,” George tries again. “I can’t lie right now. Can’t you tell that?”

  I feel myself disappear, just a little, but getting erased even a little is worse than getting kicked in the face—and I’m speaking from experience.

  He’s distracting me with his words, trying to wiggle his way out. And the worst part is that, for a moment, it worked.

  Well, two can play this game, I decide, and try to speak the way I did when I was dealing with Frederick. “Why are you doing this, George? Why are you trying to kill the Enlightened?”

  As I await his reply, I gather my energy for my next mental attack.

  “The Elders are fools to want to foster this peace,” he responds, but I sense he’s not actually being truthful with me.

  “You’re lying,” I challenge, mostly to keep him off-balance. I don’t care that much about his explanation.

  “I just didn’t say the whole truth,” he responds. “I have other, more personal reasons that I don’t think are as relevant.” This time, his response is more truthful. “A Leacher killed my parents.”

  I gather more energy and say, “That’s still not the complete truth.”

  “What do you want, a full list of my grievances against the Leachers? You probably don’t have enough Reach for me to enumerate them all. The Leachers started this war, not us. Why should their atrocities be forgotten?”

  His reply is truthful, if not very informative. He must realize this, because he explains, “I’m not doing this solely for me. I’m here on Mary’s behalf. Markus Robinson killed Henry, her husband. She never recovered from that, as you yourself witnessed.”

  The feeling of being erased gets a little stronger as I ruminate on what he just said. That would make Henry, Mary’s husband, my great-grandfather.

  “Who the hell is Markus?” I ask. Robinson was my dad’s last name . . .

  “He was the father of one of these so-called Enlightened,” George answers truthfully. “Now his son, Paul, will pay with his life, as will the rest of them, putting any notion of peace to rest once and for all.”

  As I lose a little more of myself, I process what he’s saying. If Markus is Paul’s father, it means one of my great-grandfathers killed the other. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to make me feel. Did my parents know?

  Suddenly, I feel a chunk of me disappear. George used my confusion to his advantage. With a sense of vertigo, I feel as if I’m shrinking. If this continues, he’ll win, and soon.

  “Stop fighting me, and I will let you live,” George’s thought arrives, and to my surprise, he’s telling the truth. “I will even let your Leacher girlfriend live if you give up now.”

  The offer comes with another mental assault.

  Instead of replying, I unleash all the mental energy I’ve been saving during this back-and-forth. When I feel it take effect, I give him my counteroffer. “Stop killing everyone, and I will let you live. Stop fighting me now, and I’ll take it as you accepting my offer.”

  He responds with a renewed mental onslaught, but it’s less forceful now.

  I need to use his strategy against him.

  “Why did you try to have Kyle kill all those scientists?” I ask.

  I’m fully prepared to ignore his answer, reminding myself why I need to erase this man.

  “If I die, you will never know,” he replies, but his answer is way more fearful than truthful. “Without my work, the Unencumbered will use transformative technology to become uncontrollable—”

  I only partially register his words. My goal is to distract him. Instead of listening, I apply pressure again.

  I feel something that makes me think my plan is working. George’s mind noticeably gives. I’m assaulted by his emotions—fear, disappointment, and something else, something that might be his belated realization that I duped him.

  It’s frightening how intertwined our emotions are. As I destroy him, I almost feel as if I’m losing myself, or more accurately, making him part of me. I feel overwhelming pity, so much so that I’m not sure I can go on.

  I need to hold on to myself if I’m to win. I need to push through my doubts. Thus determined, I focus on erasing him some more, all the while reminding myself that if I succeed, I’m merely making him Inert.

  The anguish coming from George is maddening. I need to find a way to become unwavering. I need to center myself so I can finish this grisly task.

  I turn George’s crimes into a mantra that I repeat in my mind as I attack him. I remember how I felt when Thomas and Mira attacked me at the funeral, when the cops almost shot me, and when I was standing next to Mira and my moms. I channel all that anger and frustration into mentally squashing him.

  A wave of mental terror hits me, but I ignore it. I focus on the memory of the time he attacked me in the library. I take the recollection of his hands around my throat and use it to push. I can feel his growing fear and dismay, but I replay the memory of seeing those bloodied monks for the first time and push harder.

  “No, please, no,” he begs, and with a tsunami of horror, he gives in a little more.

  I replay the scene of Paul getting punched in the stomach and push harder. George’s hold on me shrinks.

  Ignoring his desperate pleas and squishing that bothersome feeling of doing something sacrilegious, I remind myself how Thomas was ready to choke Mira to death.

  This memory is what does it.

  As I channel the threat of losing Mira, I feel George growing smaller and smaller.

  I feel frighteningly powerful. Something tells me no mortal should do what I’m about to do, but I ignore the feeling, focusing instead on George’s atrocities for my last mental assault.

  After a moment of anguish that seems to last an eternity, I feel the release of crossing that final threshold.

  Suddenly, I regain the insubstantiality of Level 2, and George’s mind is gone—and I don’t just mean his neural network that I’ve been fighting. Even the frozen-in-time version of him is gone, which makes sense since he’s now Inert.

  Instead of elation, I feel as though I’ve been trapped in a sensory deprivation chamber for a year. I no longer have the sense that I’m floating in Nirvana; instead, it’s as if I’m drowning and falling from a great height at the same time. It’s so disconcerting that if my frozen self were in front of me, I�
�d be tempted to phase out, the rest of Kate’s team be damned.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Mimir’s tone of thought is sad. “But you have to deal with them.”

  I gather whatever mental reserves I have left, and without responding to Mimir, I choose one of the two remaining minds and fall into its memories like a brick into a lake.

  * * *

  Our stepbrother’s fist looks enormous as it slams into our nose.

  The pain is jarring and we stand there, momentarily stunned by it. The world seems to slow down, as it often does when we’re in trouble.

  “Is the little Puddy Tat going to cry?” he says in his ever-changing, squeaky thirteen-year-old voice.

  His taunts are worse than the pain of his assaults, and they snap us back to attention.

  “My name is Kate,” we want to scream but suppress the urge. Instead, we cup our nose with our small hands in the hope that he perceives it as a submissive gesture. We make heaving motions to make him think we’re crying, but in reality, we’re distracting him so we can scan the room for something to use against him. With a side glance, we notice he’s rubbing his fist.

  Of course, we think scornfully. He’s never been in a fight against someone his size, or likely any size. All he’s good at is bullying an eight-year-old girl. Well, we intend to make this go very differently from how he imagined.

  We spot what we’re looking for: a toy sword a few feet away. It’s made out of wood, and in our opinion, it’s something a boy his age should’ve outgrown.

  We grab the glorified stick and swing it at his head.

  He’s stunned when the stick connects with his face, but we don’t use the moment to gloat. This time, we aim the sword at his crotch.

  I, Darren, disassociate. This is Kate, but Kate from a very, very long time ago. In my post-Assimilation fugue, I must’ve jumped back much further than I intended. That she was already frightening at such a young age is something I file under ‘deal with later.’ For now, I can’t waste even a second more, so I begin Guiding her:

  You will stop killing monks and cops. You will instead focus on protecting Darren and assisting Eleanor . . .

  * * *

  I’m back in Level 2. The sensation of drowning has intensified. I don’t even recall exiting Kate’s mind, but I’m confident I gave her enough instructions that she won’t be a problem anymore.

  One more person to go, and then I can get out of here.

  And possibly lose my powers forever, a part of me thinks. The feeling of drowning grows even stronger.

  James’s mind should provide some relief, I hope as I initiate the connection. Again, I enter the mind violently, like a bungee jumper whose rope has snapped.

  * * *

  Warm. Comforting. Safe.

  I, Darren, am confused. I’m supposed to be in James’s mind, but James isn’t in his own mind. Only the faintest sensory perceptions exist. Did I jump to a time when James was comatose? Is that why his awareness is lacking conscious thought?

  No, that theory wouldn’t explain all the weirdness. For starters, this darkness isn’t what I’d expect from a dream. This darkness is different, as though James has his eyes open while sitting in a dark cave, with only vague hints of starlight coming in from the outside.

  Stranger still is the floating sensation. At first, it makes me wonder whether I’ve finally lost it and am currently back in Nirvana, where I feel like I’m floating in the dark. But no, Nirvana-floating is an illusion caused by not having a body. Here, James is truly floating; it’s just happening in a tight, dark place.

  I allow his memory to overtake me.

  Unlike the silence of Level 2, there are sounds here. Specifically, some kind of a steady thumping sound that comes in at regular intervals, and the tiny part of us that is James finds it very comforting.

  Then I discover another parallel to Level 2: we’re not breathing.

  After a few moments of trying to piece all of this together, it finally hits me.

  When I thought I’d jumped too far into Kate’s mind, it was nothing compared to this.

  James isn’t comatose.

  He hasn’t been born yet.

  I’m James so early in his life that he’s still in his mother’s womb.

  This realization comes with little details I didn’t comprehend before, like the distant sound we really like, which must be his mother’s voice. Some more primitive senses are available to us, allowing us to taste the subtle flavor of curry in the amniotic fluid we just swallowed. His mom must’ve eaten Indian food. The comfortingly squishy feeling of pushing against the boundaries of our little world is what makes me realize how creepy this is. In fact, I’m not sure whether I should be in awe or creeped out, but I experience both in equal measures.

  Suddenly, the Reading is interrupted.

  * * *

  I hear the sounds of the forest and the footsteps of my police entourage, and I smell greenery.

  I’m back in the forest.

  I must’ve finally run out of Depth and phased out. I’m running with my hand still clutching the phone, and my muscles are aching.

  All this lasts for only a moment before the tip of my shoe catches on a root and I fall, my head slamming into a nearby tree.

  Chapter 27

  “Sir,” a voice with a southern accent says. “Are you all right?”

  I lie there, considering the answer to that question. A cowardly thought enters my mind. I wonder whether everything that happened today—the attack on the Temple, the Assimilation, the too-deep jumps into memories, and most importantly, Eugene’s machine that took away my abilities, maybe forever—were delusions brought on by falling and hitting my head. There’s only one way to test the realness of the situation.

  I try to phase into the Quiet as I usually would.

  I can tell it didn’t work, because I hear, “Sir, do you want me to radio in for medical help?”

  “Yes.” I open my eyes. “Have them helicopter in a lot of medical help, but not for me.”

  As the man says something into his radio, I touch the side of my head. I have the mother of all bumps there, but otherwise, I feel well enough. My right hand hurts—I’m still clutching my phone in a death-like grip—so I pocket the object.

  “How long was I out?” I ask the sheriff.

  “You were out?” He looks at me, confused. “You fell down a second ago.”

  And before I can respond, a gunshot rings out through the woods.

  The sudden sound makes me realize that there’s been relative silence coming from the direction of the Temple, which is good news. However, since I didn’t succeed in reversing James and because George is simply Inert and not neutralized, I know I need to get back there to see what’s happening.

  “Help me up,” I say as I try to stand on my own. The sheriff and a young deputy help me to my feet. Once I make sure I’m not too dizzy to stand, I tell them, “Follow me. We’re not far now.”

  I run as fast as I can without repeating the falling fiasco. I think I’m getting the hang of running while hurt, hungry, and exhausted. If they make this into an Olympic sport, I might try for the gold.

  Surprisingly, running clears my mind when it comes to dealing with the things that transpired in Level 2. It even dampens my gnawing fear about the possibility of being Inert forever, though I might just be exercising my favorite coping mechanism—which, according to Liz, is denial.

  Finally, I see the clearing through the trees that surround the Temple.

  A couple of officers, including the sheriff and the young guy who tased me, step out of the forest first. I quickly follow them. This is when I see them staring at a figure in the distance.

  George.

  He’s about twenty feet away, and as soon as he sees the cops, he yells, “Protect me as per your orders—”

  Then his eyes focus on me, and even from this distance, I can see powerful emotions contorting his face—a little bit of horror, mixed with fear and hatred. He mu
st’ve instinctively tried to phase into the Quiet and failed.

  With substantially less confidence in his voice, George continues. “Twenty-three. Order twenty-three. Attack that man.”

  He points at me at the same time as he takes out a shell from his pocket and loads it into his shotgun.

  Though I can’t phase into the Quiet, the world does seem to slow down—the effect of an adrenaline rush.

  In this slow-motion state, I realize I don’t need my powers to know what’s going on in George’s mind. He thought he could use these cops against me; he must’ve implanted some kind of code word in their minds that would allow him to take control of them, but that was before I overrode his orders.

  In my most commanding tone, I say, “Don’t listen to him. He’s an escaped convict, apprehend him using—”

  I don’t finish my sentence.

  George must’ve caught on to my reprogramming. He stops reloading his gun and takes a few steps backwards. As he does, he retrieves something from his pocket.

  My entourage reaches for their guns, their movements so eerily synchronized they seem rehearsed.

  I take out the long-barreled tranquilizer gun Hillary gave me—a reminder of how this mission was supposed to be surreptitious and casualty-free—from the back of my pants.

  Meanwhile, George is holding a round and familiar-looking object. I recently saw its cousin in the folds of Edward’s robe.

  “Grenade!” I shout in case the cops missed it.

  I’m about to say more, but the words die in my throat when George frantically pulls the pin and throws the grenade in my direction.