“I’m not sure how…” I started.
“You will learn, but for now, I have a task for you.” He winked as he rested his hand on my shoulder, steering me towards the elevator.
It took everything in me not to cry out in protest, not to beg him to let me go, to let me save my starving mother. But I knew it was a useless wish. I was now under his control.
A shudder rocked me as I walked back into my room, hours later. What had I done? What had I just done?
Coleman did not take me back to his office as I originally thought he would, but rather to a small room eight levels below us, deep inside Sub 9. He steered me down the hallway to a tiny room where a man sat alone, restraints holding him to the chair he occupied. Peter was standing just outside the door, but he didn’t follow us in and he avoided my questioning stares as I passed.
The man shook with fear as Coleman stood before him. Sweat glistened off his brow. I lingered in the doorway, looking to Coleman for a hint of why I was here and who this man was.
“This man, it seems, does not want to speak to me,” Coleman drawled. “And our usual tactic to extract information is…down at the moment.” Something like determination eddied in the man’s eyes as he clamped his mouth shut. He was not from Sub 9. His dark clothes and dirt-stained face told me he was one of the few who still resisted in the broken city outside.
“I need you to make him talk,” Coleman said to me.
I gaped at him. “Me? How?” I asked.
“With that.” He nodded to my left arm, which now hung limp at my side.
I shook my head slowly, trying to calculate my options. “Go on, make him talk.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.
I knew what he was asking me to do, but I didn’t know how. I could feel the current flowing through me, building up in my chest, but there was no clear path, no way out.
I shook my head at him. “I can’t.”
His eyes grew cold with impatience. “You can, and you will. Or would you rather I take away that tablet you use every night to watch your family?” My pulse raced. He knew. He knew I was watching them. How did he know? “There are no secrets in this place that you can hide from me.” A cold shiver ran down my spine.
I closed my eyes and did my best to steady my racing heart. This was it. He knew what I was doing all along, and if I didn’t do as he asked, he would take away the one thing that brought me joy. Who knows what else he would do. To me, to them. My chest tightened as I realized I couldn’t let anything happen to them, I wouldn’t.
I opened my eyes and felt the burning in my core building up. Coldness infiltrated my mind as I stepped closer to the man with no name. He was just that. A nobody, a nothing. I could do this. I could be this, for them.
The man’s eyes widened with fear as I lifted my left hand. The tingling now met the palm of my hand as I placed it on his shoulder, and I saw him tense with pain. A silent scream escaped his gaping mouth.
With a small nod from Coleman, I let go.
“Tell me where he is,” Coleman narrowed his eyes and his mouth formed a thin straight line.
The man gasped for breath and his body slumped into the chair. He looked to Coleman with lazy eyes, barely able to keep the lids open. “No.”
With another nod from Coleman, I released my power into him again. His body tensed so rigidly that when I let go I could smell the piss that now soaked his pants. Guilt ran through me as my throat bobbed up and down, but I held true to my task. For them.
“Where is he?” Coleman’s cold slithered behind me, crawling through my skin. I didn’t dare look back. The man just smiled. Smiled!
His eyes were barely opened as he breathed, “No.”
And with that, I let the powers flow through me and deep into his body. He shook with restraint and defiance as he sewed his lips shut, not even uttering a cry of pain. Never once begging me to stop. I didn’t know where this power ended, or how much was inside of me.
I glanced to Coleman, waiting for the sign to end it, but he let me continue. And so I did, right to the very end. I didn’t stop until the stranger’s body went limp under my touch and his heartbeat stopped with a sudden shudder at my own hands.
I stepped back, shaking my head. I hadn’t wanted this, I didn’t want for him to die. What had I done? Vomit threatened its way up and my stomach lurched with guilt and regret.
Coleman brushed past me before he spoke to his second in command, waiting outside the door. He stopped at the threshold, only inches from me. Turning to Peter and said, “Find out where he is, and get that damn Carbon back up and running so we can read their thoughts again rather than resorting to this.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Peter stumbled as he rushed past Coleman down the hallway. I followed but Coleman grabbed my wrist and stopped me.
The cold look in his eyes made me take an involuntary step back. “Next time you try to keep something from me, next time you try to disobey a direct order, they will pay. Not you, them.” My throat tightened and words evaded me. I nodded my acceptance, and he left me still standing in the doorway with cold sweat coating the back of my neck.
Back in my room, I sat motionless on my bed after throwing up all the contents in my stomach. It still churned at the smell of urine and death that still filled my nostrils. I couldn’t get the sight of that man’s lifeless eyes out of my mind. What had I done?
Chapter Four
That was the first night I dreamt of her. The girl with the amber brown eyes. There was a storm surrounding us. Lightning and thunder so consuming I had never seen anything like it before. The wind pushed her long dark hair away from her face and swirled it in circles behind her, but all I could see, all I noticed, were those eyes. She didn’t look away from me, either. Her face was hard with concentration and her stance made her look ready to fight. But her eyes. Those eyes. Looked deep into my soul, calming my every nerve. I felt ready to explode, but she kept me at bay as the amber rings sparkled in the light of the storm. There was no rain, only wind, booming thunder in the distance, and flashes of crooked, zigzagged branches of lightning. Flashes of light filled the night in crooked zigzagged branches, covering the sky as if it was a canvas and the artist wanted to touch every inch of the painting.
I jolted awake. My pulse was racing and my ears rang from the sound of the thunder. It took me a moment to realize where I was, and that it was only a dream.
Two weeks had passed.
Two weeks was all it took for my mom to wither away to nothing before my eyes. There was nothing I could do as I watched my brother try to wake her, as I saw the screams of realization that she was gone, she was dead. I wasn’t there to comfort him. I wasn’t there to save her.
My fists were shaking and my heart was a broken mess. I was so angry and devastated that I punched a hole right though my wall, sending a singe of pain down my arm, but it was nothing compared to the pain I saw in their faces.
I paced in my room, balling my fists around the star pendant in my pocket while I watched my brother and my dad buried her. My pulse raced with white-hot temper and I was barely keeping it together, holding back the tears, keeping what was inside of me at bay so I didn’t become the monster I knew hid somewhere deep inside.
I couldn’t hold it any longer. I dropped to the ground, clenched my stomach and hugged my knees in tight to my chest while hot tears dripped down my face. They spilled off my chin and soaked my sleeve while my body shook with uncontrollable sobs. There was nothing I could do for them.
I hadn’t used whatever was inside of me since the night I’d killed the man with no name. I didn’t dare try for fear of what would happen. It kept me up at night afraid of what this made me. A killer? A monster?
I switched off the tablet and left my room. I couldn’t watch them any longer. I couldn’t bear to see the pain I could not fix.
The halls had filled with Carbons, their precision marching marked them for what they truly were. Always calculated steps each Carbon knew before th
e command was given. Mindless soldiers, that’s what they were. Coleman stood at the end of the hallway watching each one of his creations with keen eyes.
I had rounded the corner and nearly bumped into her coming from the other direction. She was around my age and had flaming bright red hair curled in crazy strands around her face. She blushed as she stuttered, “S-so-rry,” stepping around me with an awkward nod of apology. I turned and stared at her back as she walked away, utterly baffled at what I just saw, and what I just felt.
“You noticed?” Coleman was at my side. He looked past me and down the hall as we watched the girl walk away. No, not a girl, a Carbon.
She felt barely different, enough that I knew she wasn’t human. But as my energy sparked when she passed. It confused my senses enough that I wasn’t certain what she was.
“Was she –”
“Yes,” Coleman answered before I could find the words. “She is a Carbon. I think we have finally found a way to really bring the Carbon to life, much like my daughter and I are.” I turned to him, suddenly reminded that he, too, was a Carbon. I had become so accustomed to him, to his energy and the way he was, so much different than the usual Carbons, that I often forgot.
“She is the closest I have come to solving the formula. The closest to having them truly become what they are meant to be.”
Coleman had told me once that he’d made himself and his daughter the way they are out of desperation. The original Carbons were just android copies of humans. They didn’t have a soul, they didn’t feel or bleed like humans. But when he created himself and his daughter, there was something different that occurred. Even he didn’t know what it was, only that it was something inside of them. Maybe it was the will power and desire, or need to still be alive in whatever way they could, but they were different. Though they were Carbons, they were also completely of themselves. They moved like humans, talked and had their same memories. They had emotions and feelings. And most of all, they bled. This was the Carbons’ biggest flaw, the way all other humans knew they weren’t human themselves—they did not bleed. Coleman … he bled. Real blood.
I had heard the testing over the past few years. I knew they had been trying day after day to find out what made Coleman different. Those screams haunted the halls. Dday after day he sacrificed so many humans just to figure it out, just to find out what he needed. I shuddered at the thought.
“What does that mean?” I finally asked, now turning away from the empty hallway.
“It means we will soon be sending you out. It means you must be ready.” Coleman nodded to me. “We now know what to look for. There is a code deep inside of a select few humans that will allow them to bond properly to the Carbon body. We must protect those humans. We have to bring them in so we can make them whole again.”
Something stirred in my chest for a moment but I kept the current of energy at bay. I couldn’t help but flinch at the idea that these humans we were looking for … they were yet whole. As if I too wasn’t whole, and never would be.
Three days later, I sat in another stark white room with thick glass windows looking out over Cytos with my two nurses. We were trying hopelessly to get my powers to rise within me. I could feel them, every bit of that current flowing through me crackled at the mere thought of it, but I had yet to produce anything substantial.
“Are you focusing?” Helen asked, and I nearly rolled my eyes.
“Yes I’m focusing,” I spat back. I had been at this since Coleman told me I had to be ready, knowing that my human skills in defence tactics were not going to keep me safe if I expected to go out in the city.
The thought of leaving this place, this prison, had my chest tightening. Maybe if I proved my worth, I could go find my brother and my dad—save them. Maybe I could be there for them, since I couldn’t be there for my mother. I tried not to think about it. I had to be strong and stay focused.
“Feel the power inside of you, feel as it builds and imagine it like a thunderstorm rolling in the distance, both inside and outside,” Susie, the other nurse said softly from beside me. She was the nicer one. She had more patience. The two nurses could have been sisters. And maybe they were, as they both had mousey brown hair curled into a poof on top of their heads. They both had the same frumpy body shape and white lab coats. Neither was willing to let me give up despite my continued frustration and limited success.
Helen—the one with less patience—sneered at me. “Do you realize what he will do to them if you don’t focus? If you don’t get this right?” I saw Susie narrow her eyes in warning at her sister.
Confusion must have been written across my face as she threw back her head a little at my ignorance. “Your family. What’s left of them, anyways.”
I shook my head. How did she know about my family?
Helen rolled her impatient eyes at my gaping mouth while she ignored Susie’s attempts to interject. “He will have them killed. He will torture them and make you watch. He won’t stop until he has what he wants and right now he wants whatever you’ve got inside of you, so you’d better start trying a little harder, Kenzie.”
My head shook from side to side, not wanting it to be true. He would never do that. He was protecting them. He wouldn’t hurt them just because I couldn’t do this…would he?
I knew the answer. He had already threatened me once before and had warned me that they would suffer, not me. He would do whatever he had to see this to the end. My family would be nothing to him—they meant nothing to him. I couldn’t let that happen.
Panic rolled through me as a cold sweat began to trickle down my back. I wouldn’t let him hurt them, I couldn’t. My hands shook and my vision blurred from the tears welling up in my eyes.
That power built up deep down inside of me, threatening to boil over as I saw their faces. My mom’s gaunt face now buried under a pile of rocks. My brother’s lanky figure that was too skinny, too weak. My father was a shadow of his old self, and I couldn’t let Coleman hurt them, couldn’t let him take any more of my family from me.
So I did it.
I didn’t know I was doing it until it was too late. It felt so natural, so much a part of me that I didn’t realize when it had left its cage and attacked the only other things in that room besides me.
The lights flicked so bright overhead before they exploded into a million little shards of glass. The sound was deafening as I looked to where my nurses once stood. But they were gone, disappeared. No, not disappeared, disintegrated. By me, at my hands, and this uncaged beast I had let out that now prowled around me, looking for more.
I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know how to let go of the power that consumed me. It stalked through the whole room, sending Sub 9 into a complete black out.
The thick bulletproof glass shattered against my powers, sending tiny specks of glass flying everywhere, and the cool night air hit my hot cheeks like a slap in the face. Just before my vision went black, before my body was drained completely of all its power, I saw those amber brown eyes one more time and the lightning storm behind her that I had created.
I woke up a week later, having drained myself so completely that my body needed that long to heal itself, even with my amplified ability to heal faster. I scanned the room with heavy lidded eyes, and realized I wasn’t alone. The Doctor sat in a chair beside my bed in the infirmary, her clipboard in hand.
I tried to sit up, but she laid a small hand on my chest, keeping me down.
“What happened?” My voice was hoarse and dry. “Where are my nurses?” I knew the answer.
“They are gone,” she said simply.
Panic rolled through me again but it was quickly stopped, paused by a soothing force rolling through me with gentle strokes.
“It’s okay. You’re okay,” she said. And for reasons I didn’t understand, I believed her. My body relaxed as I rested my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes.
“Good,” she soothed. “Now I want you to take me back to what happened in there.” The pani
c threatened to rise back up, but that gentle soothing stroke continued to keep it at bay.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t mean for them to—” I couldn’t say the word.
“I know. It’s not your fault, and he’s not mad.” Her voice was like a gentle breeze, calm and welcoming as I realized that soothing stroke against the burning inside my chest was coming from her.
“How are you doing that?” I asked.
She knew what I meant. “It is my power, my gift.” It was only then that I realized she was a Carbon, one of the new ones. The powers she was talking about were her Carbon abilities.
I nodded absently as I let her calmness seep in and relax my body.
“Kenzie, we need to know what happened. How it happened. So that we can learn how to control it.” She urged me to think back to that night. It felt like yesterday, though I knew more time had passed. I remembered being frustrated, and feeling threatened at the thought that someone was going to hurt my family. I didn’t dare speak those words aloud. The memory stirred my powers but the Doctor kept them in control.
“Fear. That’s what caused it to build up. That’s what caused it to overflow completely out of my control. Fear of a threat, fear of what I was, fear of what would happen if I didn’t do what I was supposed to.” She nodded as I continued to think back to that night. “Fear is my trigger…”
Chapter Five
She kept haunting my dreams. The girl with the amber-brown eyes. It frustrated me not to know who she was and why she was here, but my energy began to speak to her. It would roar and build and then soothe at a single look, a single flicker of her. Every night when I closed my eyes, I knew I would see her again. I didn’t know if I was scared or excited about it, all I knew is that my energy spoke to her, and her to it.
Untold: The Complete Watcher Series Mini Novellas (Watcher #4) Page 3