CHAPTER 13 — KINDRED
They continued past the central point where the four corridors met and walked through the one straight ahead of them. A short distance down the opposite walkway they walked up a staircase that led to the cafeteria. Morris entered and stood in front of her. There were six other people in the cafeteria when Jane entered. There was one group of three, one group of two and one other young man who sat by himself. They were scattered throughout the room in a sparse fashion. They all seemed to be within two years of her age, most of them around the same age or older.
She noticed immediately that they looked tired and dejected; still, there was also something wonderful about them. Jane wondered whether this impression was simply because she was suddenly in the presence of people her age with whom she had something fundamentally in common, or whether it was perhaps something intrinsic to them.
She felt an unusual sensation, like a rush of air, as she looked back towards them and the small amount of chattering stopped. The entire room fell silent; slowly, everyone’s gaze fell upon her. Everyone in the room was suddenly looking at her.
As they stared, an ineffable energy, a crackling, seemed to rise in the room. She felt the others connecting to her in a way she could not describe. It was as though, suddenly, invisible tethers had come from them and latched onto her. Morris had been walking towards the serving station when he hesitated and turned around to look at her. She could see it on his face also; whatever it was, he could feel it.
The chef had been ladeling food into a tray. Now he was watching them. His ladle clanked against one of the metallic food containers. The sound echoed around the room, breaking the spell. Jane looked over at him and then back at the room. Though they were all still watching, the groups had returned to their conversations, which were now obviously about her. She went over to the counter with Morris. As he smiled at her, she found herself very glad that he was next to her.
She was served eggs with bacon. She reluctantly took the food from the chef, who smiled at her sardonically and turned around. The others continued watching her, more discreetly now, as she and Morris moved through the room to find a seat. They chose an empty table in the corner of the room. Just next to it was a large window that ran along the length of the cafeteria. Outside and underneath them was the main hallway that ran along the front side of her room.
Through this window, stretching from the ground to the second floor ceiling, Jane saw the full extent of the arboretum. It was full of trees and beautiful flowers. She gasped when she saw it, for its grandeur was unexpected. She placed her tray on the table as she and Morris sat down opposite each other. He smiled at her, and she returned the smile tentatively.
She turned again to examine the beautiful sight to her right. The centrepiece was an oak tree that stretched through the space towards a giant slanted skylight in the ceiling. Light beamed through its branches in slanted, dusty arcs, contrasting with the green below. There were smaller bushes and plants scattered throughout, while the ground was covered with closely cropped grass.
The plants bore beautiful flowers, many of which were white. There were also bright red roses and ornamental lilies. They seemed to be, even from this distance, more alive than any flowers she had ever seen.
“That was unusual,” she heard Morris say. She turned around to face him again. At first she had no idea what he was talking about. Then she realised he was referring to what had happened when she had entered the room. She smiled.
“Yes, what was that actually?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at the people scattered throughout the room.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re just desperate for new company,” he said, smiling widely.
She knew he was trying to make her feel better. She looked down at the food, realizing that she was very hungry but not finding her meal appetizing. She picked at it and forced herself to eat some. “Is this how they all usually sit? Do you sit with them at all?” she asked.
“Sometimes. There’s a few, like those three over there, who do.” He nodded in the direction of the three people Jane had noticed sitting together.
She looked over her shoulder at them.
“Carl, Ciara and Joel,” he said.
One of them was looking at her; the girl turned away when Jane looked in their direction.
“They seem to get along quite well,” he continued. “And Mike hangs out with Colin a lot. There seem to be natural connections that form between us.”
When he said this, something about Morris that she had already suspected struck Jane quite clearly: he was intelligent and keenly aware. She was glad of this, and found her body relax just a little more as she exhaled. She turned around to her far right and saw a girl sitting by herself in the far corner of the room.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“That’s Sophia. She sits by herself a lot. She’s been here for several months, and she’s barely said as much as ‘hello’ to any of us. I think she’s talked to Mike a few times, but that’s about it.”
“Not so friendly?”
“Nah, I don’t think she’s that bad, really. I just think she’s mad about being in here.”
Jane turned back and picked at her food some more. “So Morris, if they let us out of our rooms in the mornings, what else do people actually do in this place?” She took a bite of the eggs. They tasted half decent to her, if a little bland.
“I play video games, read, work out in the gym. There are recreation rooms with film libraries. They call them ‘digital theatres,’ but they’re really just glorified flatscreens with sofas. We have some digital devices, but no internet access unless it’s monitored—only standard stuff like encyclopedias, that kind of thing. Probably ninety-nine percent of the internet is completely blocked.”
“So we can’t post about our situation, presumably.”
“No. Of course, the internet would be the perfect means to catalogue everything that’s happening in this place. But…not a network in sight!”
She listened to him while delicately picking at the food. “Okay, all I’ve seen so far are a few rooms and corridors. What else is there?” she asked.
“Not a whole lot. There’s a fitness room with a small court for playing games, and the arboretum,” he said, looking to Jane’s right. “As you can see.”
“Yes. Why would they go to that kind of trouble for us, though?” she asked.
He looked across the corridor through the two glass windows that separated them from the beautiful garden. “I don’t know. It’s something I’ve thought about though,” he said between mouthfuls of food. He seemed unfazed by the taste and continued to eat.
Jane tried some of the bacon and found it wasn’t quite as bad as it looked. “We were going to talk about Lucas last night, but you didn’t really say much about him.”
The smile faded from his lips. “Well…that’s because I don’t like the guy.”
She stopped eating and stared at him. Morris swallowed another mouthful of food, and, after a moment, began speaking again.
“You know, things have changed around here recently. People seem more rushed, him included. It’s like somebody’s put gold bars in their pockets or something. It’s strange, but…” His gaze drifted to the empty side of the table as he considered this.
“What is it?” Jane asked, sensing something important was lurking just underneath the surface.
“I guess, what I’ve only come to realise recently, is that it seems like now more than ever…they’re trying to find something.”
Jane’s brow furrowed as she considered this. Something clicked into place inside her. “And him; what about him?” she asked, referring to Lucas.
“Him especially. I haven’t told you about the testing room yet. It’s at the far end of the complex. When they lower the dampening field, I’ve tried to scan the room next to it, to see who, or what, is in there, but I haven’t been able to see much. I could tell that there was equipment of some kind, but I wasn’t able to see much else. I
had a conversation once with a couple of the guys—Mike and Colin.” He nodded towards her right shoulder, and she turned to see the two young men sitting together on the other side of the cafeteria. The one she suspected was Mike was facing her; he had been looking at her when she turned around, as if foreseeing it.
Morris continued. “We were thinking that if we could find out how the dampening field works, and found a way to turn it down just a little bit, we could pool our abilities and…maybe we could get out of here if we tried hard enough.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“Well, we thought about it, but we felt defeated at the time. We didn’t think we would stand any chance against Lucas and an army of technicians and people with advanced weaponry.” He looked up and his gaze drifted outward to the arboretum. Then he continued. “But something’s changed now. They used to take us into the testing room maybe once a week. They said it was for the purpose of rehabilitation—learning to use psychic function responsibly, as if that’s something any of these idiots could teach. Now it’s at least twice, or even three times, a week.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He took another bite of food, then pushed his tray aside, having eaten most of it. “Until recently, they would lower the field only a small amount, just enough to let you levitate a single marble or push a piece of crumpled paper. Now they’re lowering it more, pushing us to use our abilities further—taking risks. It’s still not enough for us to do any damage in there or escape, but…it just doesn’t really make sense, I suppose.”
Jane considered this and again experienced the familiar feeling that some vital piece of information was missing and just beyond her reach. She thought back to when she had been in the abandoned house with Max, just a day ago, and to that moment when she asked him what he was omitting from the information he had given her. She suspected then that it had been something grand. Now she suspected these two things were interrelated, and for the first time the thought entered her mind that she didn’t know very much about Max or his intentions.
“And Lucas…he’s more into this testing than the others?” she asked.
“Yes, far more. Obsessed even, I would say. Before, he was just checking on us, to see what we could do. Now he seems to want something. I don’t know what it is though,” Morris said and paused. “I get the distinct impression that he’s dangerous.”
“Why?”
“It’s just the way he handles us—his mannerisms. It’s kind of disgusting. He’s careless, too; the last time he lowered the field, I got one brief flash that I thought came from his mind. It was just a single image, though.”
“What was it?”
Morris paused and a look of consternation came over his face. He relaxed his grip on his fork, then tightened it again. His eyes moved over the various utensils on the table.
“It was the sea,” he said in a calm, drifting voice. “As though I were flying over the sea, searching for something.”
Jane felt something click inside her again when he said this, but she wasn’t sure what it was. “What do you think that means?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied, nodding his head. “I don’t know what it’s about.” He looked down at his now-empty tray. Jane could feel the reticence coming off him in waves.
She looked around at the others in the room. She took a quick glance out at the arboretum and was glad to at least have some green to look at instead of the endless white walls.
They left when Jane had finished eating as much of the food as she could. She and Morris made plans to watch a film in one of the recreation rooms. As she left, the six others in the room stared at her once again in that same longing fashion. She found the courage to smile back at them tentatively as she and Morris walked out.
The Ethereal Vision Page 25