Wild-born

by Adrian Howell

  The shaking was getting worse here now, and the structure was no longer unaffected by it. The walls bent inwards, then outwards. The whole facility was twisting in on itself.

  The elevator doors closed, and we were rising. It might have only been half a minute, but as I watched the elevator walls start to buckle, expecting the cable to break and send us plunging to our deaths at any moment, it was as agonizing as the time I spent being tortured by the Wolf.

  The doors finally slid open and we ran out of the elevator. There was an enormous, solid metal gate in front of us, but it was half-open and we sprinted through, again feeling the floor start to shake. What was happening below us?

  I looked around. There were passages leading every which way. Level 2 was bigger than I expected.

  “Addy, this way!”

  Alia was tugging on my hand. Had she been awake when she was brought in? There were dead bodies lying around here too, but we took little notice as we ran, Alia pulling me along as fast as she could. Two corridors and a flight of stairs later, we were in what looked a bit like the reception hall of a big hospital. This was Level 1, which was still underground. Where was the exit?

  “Over here!” said Alia as she pulled me through a large doorway.

  I looked around at the room we had entered. It was a medium-size circular space with no furniture and no other exits.

  “This is a dead end, Ali,” I said, wondering if perhaps we were going to die here after all.

  Alia let go of my hand and pushed one of three small buttons on the wall. I felt the entire room start to rise up like an elevator. A few seconds later, a soft breeze blew in through the doorway from which we had entered, bringing with it the heavenly scent of clean, cool night air.

  We stepped out.

  Dawn was still a long way off, but the night was clear and the moonlight softly illuminated the grassy field where we found ourselves. It was Derrick’s dream field, though the grass here was green and not as tall. There was not a single house, streetlamp, or anything manmade giving off light in any direction as far as the eye could see. The entrance room quietly descended back into the earth, leaving us in the middle of nowhere.

  The ground started to quiver slightly. Nightmare was still down there. I grabbed Alia’s left hand, hoping to run far from Nightmare’s power. The direction didn’t matter on an open plain. We just had to get going.

  I heard Alia shout in my head, “Addy! Look!”

  I followed Alia’s pointing finger with my eyes, at first mistaking the light in the sky for a bright star. As I looked closer, however, I realized that it was a massive military helicopter. It wasn’t a gunship, but I figured a transport like that out here could only mean a pack of Wolves.

  “Come on, Ali!” I shouted, frantically tugging on her arm, but she resisted.

  “It’s Cindy!”

  The ground was really starting to shake now, and the soft earth felt like it was liquefying beneath our feet. The helicopter swooped low, bearing down on us at full tilt. I could see the people in the cockpit now too. In addition to two helmeted pilots, there was a figure crouched between them and looking out at us. Even at this distance, I could easily make out her long silvery hair shining in the moonlight.

  As the helicopter hovered overhead with its side door open, I levitated Alia aboard, and then propelled myself into the cabin too.

  I couldn’t make everyone out in the dim cabin light, but there must have been at least a dozen people including Mr. Koontz and Janice, whose white clothes I could easily identify. I saw another familiar face grinning at me: Mark Parnell.

  Mark slid the cabin door shut, and I felt the helicopter lurch forward. Ralph, who was piloting the huge transport, flew us in a wide half-circle around the site.

  Pressing my nose to the cabin window, I watched in stunned horror as the ground below us quickly became a churning vortex of mud and slime, swirling deeper in on itself until only a dark gaping hole was left in the ground. I half-expected Nightmare to appear out of the abyss, but that didn’t happen. To this day, I don’t know anything more about Nightmare than I’ve already said, though I still have nightmares about him sometimes.

  Turning my face away from the scene below, I saw Cindy. She was holding Alia and looking at me in the gentle way I had so sorely missed, her eyes quiet and understanding.

  I opened my mouth, but the words failed me.

  What do you say to someone who risked everything to save your life? “Thank you”? What do you say to someone whose love you rejected in selfish arrogance? “I’m sorry”? What do you say to someone who can forgive your betrayal in a heartbeat? What do you say to someone like Cynthia Gifford?

  As I stared down at the cabin floor, unable to put into words all that I felt and all that I wanted to say to her, I felt her arms around me. Cindy may well have been a delver reading my mind, because she whispered softly, “Don’t say anything, Adrian. Don’t say anything.”

  Chapter 19: The Long Road Ahead

  As dawn broke over the hazy, violet horizon, Ralph set the helicopter down near our getaway car. Cindy could hide us from other psionics even in the air, but the government would probably notice a stolen military helicopter in the daytime sky. Our getaway car, however, turned out to be a psychedelically patterned bright yellow minibus that reminded me of Cat’s crazy pillow. The only way in which it didn’t stand out was that it couldn’t fly.

  Mark drove, and Cindy introduced me to the team that saved us. The Guardians’ leader was not Ralph, but a lean and muscular man in his late forties named Travis Baker. He was a healer and hider. Once Cindy had finished with the introductions, Mr. Baker nodded to her, and she seemed to know what she was expected to say.

  “Adrian, you know I could never have gotten you out of there by myself,” Cindy began carefully, and I guessed what this was leading to.

  “If you mean that I have to join the Guardians…” I said, but Mr. Baker lifted a hand to stop me.

  Shaking his head, the Guardian leader said lightly, “Oh, you don’t have to join us, Adrian. Not at all.” He threw a side-long glance at Ralph and chuckled. “In fact, I doubt very much we could take you by force even if we wanted to.”

  Ralph shot me a nasty look, and I returned an equally nasty smirk. Well, at least we weren’t trying to kill each other anymore.

  “Adrian,” continued Cindy, “I’m going to rejoin the Guardians. That’s the agreement I made with Travis and Ralph in exchange for their help.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Cindy cut me off, saying, “Please don’t feel guilty about it! It was my choice. I’m taking Alia with me, and Mark is coming too, until we can find some way to hide him from the Wolves.”

  “And don’t you go feeling guilty about me either,” Mark called back from the driver’s seat.

  I did feel guilty. I had given the Wolves Cindy’s real name. I had told them about her connection to Mark Parnell. I knew it would be very difficult for Cindy and Mark to safely settle down again. But, as with all of the many mistakes I had made, I knew I couldn’t undo what I had done. All I could do was try to make up for it. I didn’t even want to hear Cindy ask.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said quickly. “I’ll join.”

  “Excellent!” said Mr. Baker, clasping my shoulder. “Welcome to the Guardians, Adrian. I do hope you won’t be disappointed.”

  “I’ve been very impressed so far,” I said.

  Mr. Baker smiled. “Cindy here has told me that you want to save your sister from the Angels. I can’t promise you that we’ll make it our top priority, but God willing, we may be able to help you get her back.”

  I gaped at him. Despite what I had once said to Cindy, I never seriously believed that the Guardians would help me retrieve Cat from the Angels. If I had, I might have joined them for that reason alone.

  In a way, I was glad I hadn’t believed it. Cat was already family, flesh and blood. But Cindy and Alia were family too, and joining the Guardians with them made a lot of sense to
me.

  “So, Adrian,” Cindy said brightly, “we have another long road ahead, and I want to hear all about your adventures over the last few months.”

  “Right this instant?” I asked, my exhaustion from the previous night finally catching up with me. Alia was already asleep on her seat, leaning against what I recognized with a smile as her old unicorn.

  “It can wait,” said Cindy. “Give it to me little by little. For now, at least you can tell me what happened in town.”

  I had to think about that for a moment. What town?

  “Oh!” I said, finally remembering. “You mean the mystery graviton!”

  “So, did you find him?” asked Cindy. “Who was he?”

  “He was a she,” I replied quietly.

  “Ah… And what happened?”

  “Nothing…” I muttered.

  Cindy raised her eyebrows. “Adrian?”

  “Okay! She crashed into me on a bicycle, glued me to the sidewalk, threatened me and went on her merry way. Happy?”

  Cindy giggled. I looked away embarrassedly, and she burst out laughing.

  “Always a pleasure to amuse,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay, Adrian,” said Cindy, extending her hand to me. “Friends?”

  I shook it.

  This pentalogy will continue right where it left off in

  Adrian Howell’s PSIONIC

  Book Two

  The Tower

  Reader Review Request

  Thank you for reading PSIONIC Book One: Wild-born. Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you have enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on your online bookseller’s site. Even if it’s only a sentence or two, it would make all the difference and would be very much appreciated.

  About the Author

  Born of a Japanese mother and American father, Adrian Howell (pen name) was raised for a time in California and currently lives a quiet life in Japan where he teaches English to small groups of children and adults. Aside from reading and writing fiction, his hobbies include recumbent cycling, skiing, medium-distance trekking, sketching and oversleeping.

  Send comments and questions to the author at:

  adrianhowellbooks@gmail.com