The Gifted

by C. C. Lynch

  I looked around for a minute, confusion setting in. “Wait, how did you get here?”

  Connor’s smile turned into a playful, mischievous one. “You’ll find out soon enough.” He pointed to the control room, “they’ve got that covered for now. Lena just freed the animals and Al and Luka are trying to help the ‘normys’ out of their cages.” His mouth formed a sympathetic smile, “maybe get this guy to a holding cell?”

  “Good idea,” I nodded before doing as he suggested. I left Slade in the stall and closed the door quickly, looking at the other ones. There were five more stalls open, and only one more before the bathrooms would need to be shared.

  I made it back to the area where I had left Connor. He was still there, but looking antsy. “That’s good,” he nodded, “that was something different. Look, I’ve got to go somewhere, but you should really give Bernice a heads-up.”

  “Bernice?” I looked at him confused. “You mean Beatrice?”

  “Yeah, that one.” Connor looked at the door to the control room and shrugged. “They should be good in there. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “Wait,” I called out to him before he jogged away. “Where’s Steph?”

  “Safe,” he nodded, “she’s safe.”

  “Thank you,” I shouted, before running in the opposite direction.

  I followed the hallway to an elevator and waited for the doors to open so that I could travel to the floor where Beatrice’s small office was nestled. Invisibility gave me a slight sense of confidence, despite how easily Jeremiah had found me when I used it to hide from him at Glaston Academy.

  I put my hand towards the doorknob, then changed my mind last minute. I pushed my way through with Luka’s intangibility gift. Once on the other side I saw Jeremiah’s arms wrapped around Beatrice’s waste and Osiris was to the side of them.

  “Good morning, Miss Abbott,” Osiris sneered, “would you mind telling me where my sons are?”

  I stopped using the invisibility. Apparently, it was not useful around Osiris and Jeremiah. “I have no idea where Draxe and Jay are.” I shrugged, “don’t really know where Vlaine is either.”

  “I must warn you not to cross me,” he shook his head, and looked at Beatrice. “I don’t gift warnings often.”

  “I’m telling the truth,” I growled. I turned towards Beatrice and gave a sympathetic shrug, “I’m sorry I’m too late.”

  Jeremiah’s knuckles turned white as he grasped Beatrice tighter and sent a shock of electricity through her.

  “Vlaine is in the demonstration room,” I finally said. I hoped that my urgency covered the shakiness of my fib.

  “I loathe doings things the difficult way.” Osiris sighed. He put his hand in Beatrice’s direction and her body fell limp to the floor as his hand waved through the air. It was “the pure” once again.

  Flashbacks of when I saw Deliah fall from the sky and Shane slump over ran through my mind. The hot, putrid taste of bile began to rise.

  I needed to get out of there, fast. My mind fought a panicked fog, trying to find any place in my memory to teleport to. Osiris’s hand was wrapped around my arm. “I really do despise doing things the difficult way.”

  After his words finished, we were in a different place. The room was dark and it took a bit for my eyes to adjust. Once they did, I realized we were in 12F.

  I tried to blast Osiris backwards, but I failed to replicate the gift.

  “No,” he shook his head, “that’s not going to work in here.”

  I began walking backwards towards the door, trying to create room between me and Osiris. The door behind me opened and I rushed towards it, hoping that it was a friend, not foe. As I pushed through, hands shoved me backwards. I looked up at a man I had never seen before, but his face filled me with dread.

  Deep set wrinkles ran across his forehead, grey hairs were speckled about black ones, and menacing and soulless hazel eyes peered at me below thick black brows. I could tell by the similarity in the face that it was Ivan, Erik’s father.

  He began tapping a large rod on his shoulder and looked at me accusingly. “I can’t seem to find my son anywhere.” He shrugged, “do you happen to know where he is?”

  Icy tentacles of manipulation wrapped around my body, freezing me in place. I fought through the tendrils of trepidation, backing away slowly. Something inside me told me that the longer I hesitated to give the man an answer, the stronger those invisible tentacles would grasp onto me. “The stables at Gl… Glaston Academy,” I stammered. My answer only provided me the slightest bit of relief from his manipulation.

  “Very good,” he spoke slowly, “would you kindly take me to him.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded, “yeah.” His presence was overpowering.

  Ivan looked at Osiris and cocked his head to the side. “See, old friend, all you have to do is ask,” he spread his hands in the air, “and you shall receive.” His eyes fell to mine. “Now let’s go into the hallway so you can take me there.”

  I followed him, fearing the worst. I was so terribly frightened of the man that I did not dare to cross him.

  His fingers dug into my upper arm and I bit my tongue so that I wouldn’t yelp in pain. He signaled for us to leave and I nodded and took him to the stables. We were directly in front of Erik’s stall and I did not want Ivan to know Slade was there. I bent the light around the glass on Slade’s door so that Ivan would not see him.

  Ivan held his hand out, indicating that he wanted me to open Erik’s cell. I did as he wished. Erik strolled out and gave his dad a thankful nod then pointed his finger at me, “not cool, Abrielle, not cool at all.”

  Ivan’s palm pushed me roughly into the stall that Erik had been in and a few seconds later Osiris appeared. The old headmaster sneered and shook his head in disgust. “I had such high hopes for you.” He raised his hand and sent a blot of electricity through my body.

  Pain radiated through my body and once it left, my elbows were too sore to move. I bent over, coughing from the surge. My gaze drifted up slowly from the wooden barn floor to Osiris. As our eyes made contact, he sent a jolt of electricity through me once more.

  My jaw clamped shut and it felt like my heart was in my throat, pulsing so fast that it would explode in any moment. The pain was unbearable. Aftershocks radiated in every single joint. I tried to count, breathe, do something just to feel some relief in my burning, tense muscles.

  “Stop,” Erik ordered, as if he was in control of Osriris.

  “I don’t take orders from children,” Osiris spat, then sent another jolt through me to make his point.

  “Ohh,” I shrieked in pain. I was now limp on the floor, unable to move. Nausea swirled in my stomach and I turned my head to be sick. A metallic taste filled my mouth and my nostrils felt like they were filled with smoke; the air almost too thick to breathe.

  “Tsk-tsk, Osiris,” Ivan scolded, “we mustn’t let our emotions command our actions, shall we?”

  Osiris flashed a challenging glare at Ivan, which went ignored. “Let us go back to the building, shall we?” He turned to his son. “Would you like to stay here, or return with us?”

  Erik looked at his father then back to me, contemplating his options. “I’ll stay,” he said flatly, “I think she took more damage than someone is supposed to handle in one day.” He glared at Osiris.

  The two men left and Erik walked to my side. Pain radiated throughout my body and nausea kept me still. I gripped my stomach with my hands, but my strength was dissipating quickly. My hands slid off my abdomen and onto the floor as weakness rendered my limbs motionless.

  Erik’s voice was kind and gentle. “Can you heal yourself?”

  I inhaled and blinked slowly, the only way I could say “no” at that time. He put his hand on my arm gently. “You can try and heal me if you want.”

  I gave a small smile, not able to do much more than that. “You know, I heard somewhere that holding someone is a proven way to heal trauma.” He flicked his hand, “I mean, I’m
no doctor, but I read it on the internet, so it’s got to be true.”

  The thought of speaking to him telepathically was exhausting, but I wanted to try. He had his hand on me, so it was worth a shot.

  I’ll be fine in a few minutes, I thought to him.

  “You can’t even speak, I don’t really think a few minutes will do the trick.” He was being kind. His twisted thinking truly was a product of his upbringing. Ivan had raised him to think that the tree house was a place where things were done for the greater good.

  I just need to sleep. The thought was so difficult to form, I thought for sure he would not hear it. I was using every bit of energy to keep my eyes open, because I knew the second I closed them I would fall asleep.

  My lids fell into slits, growing heavier by the second.

  “No,” Erik shouted, shaking me gently, “you can’t sleep. Don’t fall asleep.” He looked around wildly shouting for help. “Abrielle, stay with me,” he pleaded, “stay.”

  I could not stay. I was too tired and my body was ready to give up.

  Time unraveled. Fractions of seconds ticked by, seeming to be mammoth blocks of consciousness, allowing me the awareness to recognize that I could not handle the shocks I received. My body went numb and I closed my eyes, aware of only what was happening in my mind.

  I’m dying. I knew what was happening, that I was facing my demise. I was ready to give in to the sleep. I was at peace with it.

  The word “stay” lingered as darkness took over my vision and my consciousness fell into an abyss of blackness.

  11

  CONNOR

  “Jamie, Albert, Sean, whatever your name is…” my mother grunted while taking everything off the heat of the stove.

  “Connor,” I replied, unscathed by my mother’s loss of my name. She usually said three or four before she got it right, especially when she was stressed.

  “Connor,” she sighed, grabbing a handful of forks from the drawer, “can you please tell your brothers that supper is ready. And get Seth to set the table please.”

  “Sure thing, mom.” I nodded before heading outside to let everyone know we were about to eat. I was number five in a family of nine brothers. I was the ignored, the scapegoat, and the unappreciated. I did not mind so much though, we all had a part to play. Plus, it helped so that they would not realize I was different. Jamie, Colin, Seth, Albert, Sean, Riley, Mikey, and Ryan may have gotten more attention than I did, but they were common.

  My mother worked hard to put food on the table. She drove the school bus, served lunch at our school, and came home to make sure we were fed. She tried to be there for every moment of our day. I could forgive her for not being able to get my name right on the first try. My dad worked at the post office and a night shift as a janitor as the local college. He always got our names right, when he was around at least.

  One can imagine the excitement they had when they found that “Sean, Seth, Ryan… er, Connor” got a full boat to a college. I hugged my father, kissed my mother, and traveled all the way from Quincy, Massachusetts to nowhere New Mexico.

  “What’s your talent?” I hadn’t even made it through the doors of the school before someone was inquiring about my gift.

  Unaccustomed to attention, I turned to the guy preparing to give me a tour and shrugged. “I don’t really know what to call it.”

  He nodded, familiar to such an admission. “Explain it, I might know the term.”

  My mind went back to the first time I realized I was not normal like my brothers. That’s not true. It went back to the second time, the event that confirmed something was not exactly natural about me. The entire fifth grade was on a field trip to the Boston Science Museum. Everyone had already been there at least half a dozen times so the only thing we were really looking forward to was the lightning show and knowing that we were missing an entire day of classes. People had always played jokes on me and used me as their scapegoat and that day was no different. Returning to the buses was always chaos because half the students were using the restroom before the fifteen-minute bus ride back to school while the other half were pure chaos outside.

  “Hey, Connor,” a toothy classmate yelled, “looks like your frog is headed back to the river.”

  The kid had stolen a clear bouncy ball with a rubber tree frog in the center from my backpack. My mother had given me five dollars to buy myself a present from the gift shop and the jerk was holding three dollars’ worth of my spending money.

  “Give it back,” I yelled and lunged at him just before he pitched the ball across the street.

  Irrational instinct took over and I ran for the ball that belonged to me. Cars littered the road and I somehow managed to dodge all lanes of traffic until the very last, a red car with a driver that had never even seen me in the street. I waited for the pain to take over, or to die, but instead the car stopped a millimeter away from my body and ricocheted back at what seemed to be, in my childish mind, twice as fast as it had been coming towards me.

  All anyone seemed to see was the bizarre accident where the car just malfunctioned and caused a three-car pileup that afternoon. The traffic around the car slowed to a near halt and I ran back to the group and stuck my tongue out at the kid that had nearly caused me to die. His eyes were wide as if he had just seen superman in the flesh.

  My attention snapped back from the memory to the guy anxiously waiting my explanation. “I can redirect force.”

  “Cool!” The guy’s voice squeaked in a high-pitched yell. “We haven’t had one of those before, at least not since I’ve been here. I bet you could really mess some stuff up.”

  “I… I guess so,” I stuttered, not knowing exactly how to respond to his statement. Instead I tried to refocus the attention on him. “What can you do?”

  “Oh man,” he began excitedly, “I can do this thing where if I concentrate really hard or touch something it starts to freeze. I’m almost at the point where I can make a pool an ice skating rink.” He shrugged, “It only lasts an hour or so, but I’m getting better.”

  “Cool,” I nodded.

  Just as we made our way into the building one student unsuccessfully practicing his telekinesis sent a text book flying in the direction of a girl just to my left. I lunged my hand forward to try and stop it from hitting her and sent the book back towards the original owner of the textbook only to have it knock over someone’s soda on their notes.

  “Good job, new kid,” the guy taunted.

  “Already?” I muttered under my breath. Apparently at Lanshaw Academy I would not be immune to the same crap I had dealt with growing up. “Sorry about that,” I waved to the person furiously dabbing tissues over their notes.

  My tour guide looked around nervously, embarrassed to be seen next to the perpetrator.

  “The luck of the Irish followed me to New Mexico,” I grunted sarcastically.

  “Huh?” His eyes looked to me, then hastily back to the scene I had caused.

  “Nothing,” I shook my head, “let’s finish the tour before you become a patsy by association.”

  Months of being a fall guy at a new school had gone by and one morning I thought for sure that my unfortunate knack of being an easy target was going to be the end of me. Our entire dormitory hall had been pranked and I heard someone yell my last name loudly and my entire body went numb. I had heard of your blood being like ice, but that was the first time I felt it. Someone thought that I was behind the prank and soon the whole school would. It would be the end of me.

  Fortunately, the coloration on my skin from my pranked shower gave away my innocence. After I got cleaned up, I began walking to class with my friends and I was stopped by a girl with desperation in her eyes. I would have done anything to make that fear go away.

  12

  mIRANDA

  “I’ll see you soon, button,” my father patted my head affectionately and kissed my forehead.

  “Bye daddy,” I squeezed him tightly, not wanting to let go. My eyes began to water. It happ
ened every time he left whether it was for a day, a few weeks, or several months.

  He pinched my chin gently. “Shine a light for me when it gets too dark.”

  “I will,” I smiled.

  My father was a sailor and back then I used to believe that he searched the depths of the oceans for strange and unusual creatures. My favorite animal was a lanternfish. It could make light like I could, and I believed they lit the way for my father’s ship and kept it on a safe course.

  My father told me that the first thing I did when I was born was find the light in the room. I did not cry, I did not scream, I found the light and stared at it curiously. It was not until I left the hands of the nurse and entered my mom’s arms that I finally took my eyes off the source.

  Just like most children, I was afraid of the dark. I found the absence of illumination to be too unnatural so I made my own nightlights. My parents did not find it strange or disturbing, but beautiful. My mom called me her little star and my father called me button because of my button nose.

  We kept our secrets amongst ourselves. Both of my parents had their own talents. My mother’s eyes would sparkle when she would make things dance in the air and my father thought it was just as miraculous as I did. My father could change the weight of things. Sometimes he had to hide it when we were in public. I remember one time I was crying because I wanted some toy but we were at the store to get a new television. In the midst of trying to calm me while saying no, he picked the television up like he was picking up a book. A worker made their way to us and commented on how strong my father was. He shrugged and said something about how flat screens were light, but remained cautious afterwards.

  My home was a happy one, carefree even. My mother dressed in flowy skirts, was fascinated by stars, and spent her free time in the garden with our tabby cat, Gaea. My father worked too much, but completed the house when he was back.

  Even as I grew older, I pretended that he was an adventurer, wandering through the ocean depths learning all her secrets. Every now and then I would pluck the light from my room and send it through the window to the ocean. I could see it flitter across the water towards whatever direction I had sent it. I never questioned whether or not it made it to its destination, I just felt assured that my father would know I was sending him a light to help him along his journey.