I slammed myself into every spinning white hole of every pregnant woman in Havenville. I vomited immediately.
“What’s happening? Are you okay?” Ryan’s voice was hurried and panicked in my ear.
The twins giggled in amusement.
“She’ll be fine. Connecting to the light takes far more stamina and mental agility than connecting to the dead. Let her be,” Roberta’s voice was calming and she sounded so sure of herself. It made me gain a little bit more of my bearings.
“Chelsan, you can stop. I don’t want you to get hurt.” Ryan was completely ignoring Roberta, his only concern was for my safety.
“No, I’m good. I’m connected to them all. It’s just… overwhelming.” Every fiber of my being felt like it was spinning with energy. If I thought connecting to the dirt was a trip, this was like being filled up with a giant shaft of light, beaming life into every cell of my body. It was incredible. And I knew in that moment I had to stop. If I didn’t I’d be lost to it.
Just get them in the ship.
I had to repeat it over and over in my head.
I tried with all my might to ignore the exhilaration thrusting through me.
I was controlling life.
Life.
These were human beings that I made walk through town toward the giant transport ship waiting to take them back to the babies’ birth parents. I could hear the screams from the town. I was causing chaos and terror as I made thousands of women leave town against their will. The light was surging through my veins. I felt all powerful. I was all powerful. I could make atoms move.
Focus.
Focus.
Just get them into the ship.
It was the longest twenty minutes of my life. It was the most elating. It was the most terrifying. I could feel Ryan and Roberta’s light like they were stars bursting into existence. I hardly noticed the twins. I was draining them so utterly, I was barely aware of the small whimpering sounds they started to make.
“They’re all in. They’re all in,” Nancy’s voice sounded through Roberta’s speaker phone.
“Disconnect, Chelsan,” Ryan said in my ear loudly. I was vaguely aware of the fact that it was the fifth time he had said it.
The light was enthralling, I didn’t want to disconnect from the twins at all. I wanted to bask in this light. The spinning white holes were so much purer than the darkness I was bound to. I was tired of death. Of using death. Of seeing death everywhere in everything. It was an anchor. A curse. The light was healing and invigorating. It was alive.
“Chelsan, stop. You’re killing them,” Ryan pleaded.
That’s when I noticed the black spinning chasms starting to grow in the center of John and Samuel.
I disconnected and fell into Ryan’s arms. My sight back to normal. No more bright light. No more over-exposure. My eyes still needed to adjust, it was like I had walked into a dark cave from a bright sunny day.
The twins were still standing, but they were whimpering like injured dogs.
I did that to them.
I couldn’t look at them.
I closed my eyes and took comfort in Ryan’s hand stroking my hair.
Turner’s voice interrupted the moment, an unpleasant reminder that we weren’t done yet, “Get to Building Sixty. We need to take the kids back to the Farm.”
Roberta grabbed my arm to jolt me out of my stupor. “You two can hug later, let’s get over to Geoffrey.”
Ryan removed Roberta’s hand from my arm with an angry shove. Roberta looked like she was on the verge of some kind of attack so I stood up and calmed her down with a look. “I’m ready.”
Roberta walked over to John and Samuel and forced John to take her hand. She led the way, and with the twins in tow, we exited the vehicle, jogging toward Building Sixty. The town was in turmoil, everyone running around like they were under attack, but no one was shooting. They ignored us completely and before we knew it we were standing in front of the giant warehouse.
I was no longer connected to the twins so I couldn’t test the theory of whether or not the I.Q. kids were really inside, but I was going to take Turner’s word for it. Gramps came to greet us with fifteen of his soldiers behind him.
“My scouts say that Elisha and Roland are in there with the kids,” Turner informed us.
“They don’t have super strength or anything do they?” I asked wanting no surprises.
“No, they should pretty much be comatose, and they are in children’s bodies so they’re weak,” Turner responded.
Comforting. And it suddenly occurred to me this was another reason Turner kept the I.Q. kids kids. It must drive the sociopaths crazy not being able to have the physical strength to hurt anyone.
“Once we’re in there, I’ll connect with the twins again and we’ll get those kids into the transport. Just keep Elisha and Roland busy,” I said as I led the charge inside.
I opened the door and hurried down the corridor to the main entrance. I could feel rather than see the entourage of people behind me. My back-up: crazy grandparents, psycho twins, and fifteen soldiers who had probably tried to take me out at one time or another in the last couple of months. Ryan was the only one I could truly trust, which was why my hand was pretty much glued to his.
“Are you going to open it?” Turner hissed with impatience.
I opened the door.
We entered into a room that looked like a recreation of Turner’s I.Q. Farm. Most of the kids were connected to the same kind of brain machines Ryan had been wired in to, but a few others were standing against the wall behind Elisha and Roland, holding hands, staring at seemingly nothing. To say it was scary would be an understatement.
Elisha and Roland watched us all come in with a calmness that suggested they were expecting us.
Uh-oh.
I suddenly didn’t care too much about the I.Q. kids, I just wanted to get out of there.
“Chelsan, do your thing.” Turner smiled triumphantly at Elisha, but she stared back at him with such confidence that I seriously wanted to run away screaming.
I figured I’d just get this over with: one way or another, I wasn’t going to let Elisha use her army of crazies.
I slammed into John and Samuel’s black swirling heads once again.
I was accustomed to it this time. I immediately shifted focus to keep everything in over-exposed vision. No more blinding light. I was about to connect to all the I.Q. kids when I realized…
I still couldn’t see their spinning white centers. I could see Elisha and Roland’s and all of my gang, but not theirs.
Wait.
There were three others I could see just out of view behind one of the consoles. They must be lying down and they were…
Pregnant.
Elisha still had three pregnant women.
“Now!” Elisha screamed.
Now what?
SLAM!
I lost all sight. All I could see were the white spinning holes against complete darkness. I gasped for air. I tried to connect to Elisha to stop her from whatever she was doing to me, but…
I couldn’t.
I physically couldn’t connect to any of the white holes.
And then I saw them. All of them. All of the I.Q. kids like a swarm of fireflies surrounding my head.
It wasn’t their physical bodies, it was their life sources. Elisha had managed to use the machines to separate them from their physical forms and essentially render me useless.
I tried disconnecting from the twins, but the I.Q. collective stopped me from doing that as well. It was worse than being buried alive. I was trapped inside my own head. Inside my own power. Inside John and Samuel’s power.
Ryan’s light was brighter than it had ever been, standing next to me, squeezing my hand, knowing something was terribly wrong. He was trying to push me out of the building, but Turner’s men wouldn’t let him. I could hear Turner and Roberta telling him that the only way to break Elisha’s hold was to keep me there and fight.
&n
bsp; “Ryan, trust us. We can break her hold, but not without Chelsan here,” Roberta pleaded with him.
I wanted to speak, but even speech was taken away from me. I was more helpless than I’d ever been. My only ray of light was literally Ryan standing next to me, not letting go.
I could hear Roberta and Turner chanting. They were about to do some major mojo.
SLAM!
The swarm of lights made me connect to Ryan, my grandparents and their men, stopping them from helping me in any way. The I.Q. kids forced me to keep Ryan and the soldiers and, more importantly, my grandparents, completely still.
I suddenly knew how John and Samuel felt when I’d used them to get the surrogates into the transport hover. It was horrifying and draining. The harder I concentrated the tighter the swarm of lights closed in on my head. I needed to break out of their hold…
…But I didn’t even know where to start.
“Bring out the vessels.” I saw Roland’s white swirling hole walk toward the three pregnant women. From the way their lights moved I could tell they were on hover-gurneys. Their lights and the lights of their babies floated toward me until there were six glowing spheres right in front of me in the darkness.
I really wished I could see normally. Even if it was only out of the corner of my eye, just to see Ryan. I felt so alone. I could still feel his hand in mine, but neither one of us could squeeze or hold on tight. We were just locked together that way because it happened to be the position we were in when the I.Q. swarm took over my body.
“Ready?” Elisha asked out loud.
“Yes,” the collective swarm of I.Q. kids answered in unison.
SLAM!
Oh no.
No.
No.
They made me connect to the white swirling lights of the mothers and their babies and disconnect them from it. The same way I disconnect the black holes from dead things so that they’re dead forever, so that no one else can control them. Elisha and her army were making me kill these three surrogate mothers and their babies.
And I couldn’t stop them.
In seconds I had done it. I had disconnected them from their light.
But…
They weren’t dead.
Their lights were spinning as bright as ever.
Oh man.
Just like Roberta when she was pregnant with Franklin.
And it hit me.
Elisha just made me do what the twins did to Roberta and my father. I’d just created three babies who would have powers like mine.
I wanted to ask a million questions, but the I.Q. kids held me under their power with an iron grip.
“Did it work?” Elisha’s voice sounded in the darkness.
“Yes. They’re all alive,” Roland’s voice answered with some excitement.
“Wonderful.” Elisha was obviously thrilled by this. “Get the ritual prepared for Chelsan.”
“Of course.” I could hear Roland clinking around in front of me.
The ritual. The ritual to take my powers and kill me in the process. I couldn’t let that happen. If Elisha had my powers she would be able to connect to the twins and pretty much kill anything she wanted within a four-mile radius. And I was relatively sure that’s exactly what she would do, starting with all of us.
But…
A part of me knew this couldn’t be true otherwise she would have done it already. She just had me disconnect the pregnant women from their lights, so why didn’t she have me do the same to my posse? Too difficult maybe? I didn’t know, but I filed it away as a possible weakness I could hopefully exploit.
I needed to stall her while I tried to break through this I.Q.-craptasic-wonder-prison she’d managed to snare me in before she’d make me do something like… kill Ryan. I erased that thought from my brain. It made me lose focus. I concentrated as hard as I could and it took every ounce of strength I had to mutter the word, “Gramps.”
I wasn’t sure why I chose that particular word, but I was sure it would make Elisha say or do something. She hated Turner as much as I did. Maybe more. I hoped it would distract her for a minute or two while I figured a way out of this mess.
I wasn’t disappointed.
“All that energy expended and you call out to him for help?” Elisha snarled. “Tell me Chelsan, did you ever ask yourself why I was to be executed?”
My plan was to completely ignore Elisha to stay focused, but now that she said it out loud, I realized that after I’d helped her escape I never did find out the reason why she was to be executed. I just assumed it was because… well… because it was her.
“Why?” I managed to squeeze out. This was good. The more I pushed, the more words I could form. I was still in the darkness, but maybe I could break out of this trap after all.
“She’s regaining speech, tighten your hold,” Elisha ordered, her voice carrying an edge of hysteria to it.
Good: it worried her. I was on the right track.
Bad: I immediately felt the circle of I.Q. kids’ light tighten around my throat. I almost choked from the pressure of it.
“Good,” Elisha crooned. “Your grandfather was going to kill me because I was working on a very special project for him. In fact, you’re witnessing his project right now. I was told to come up with a way to control you, Chelsan.”
“He what?” Wow. That came out despite the choke hold. I had no idea how I was breaking through their grasp, so I had no idea how to expand on it. I tried to move any body part, a finger, toe, eyebrow, anything. But I couldn’t budge a muscle.
“I said tighter!” Elisha screamed. She was not liking this a bit. Nice. Let her think I was stronger than I was, maybe I could use it to my advantage. The grip of the lights grew tighter: I didn’t know how much longer I could breathe through the pinhole of air I had left in my throat.
“Yes! I figured out a way to use the machines to unite the farm children and to take control of your body, but Turner wanted my invention for himself. He knew I’d use it against him. Do you hear me, Chelsan? He was going to keep you in the farm as a comatose puppet and use your power for his own purposes. He’d have the gift of life and death. Now that power will be mine.”
“Chelsan, can you hear me?” Ryan’s voice popped into my head.
My heart surged with excitement. I almost thought I was imagining the whole thing out of false hope until he said into my thoughts, “Can you connect to me and make me move?”
Elisha was still ranting about Gramps. I tuned her out, positive she had no idea Ryan and I were communicating.
“I’m connected to you now, but Elisha stopped me from controlling anyone,” I said in my head and hoped he’d hear me. His light was still the brightest in the darkness. “I’ll try and break through.” I seriously crossed my fingers that I was actually communicating to him. The swarm of lights were closing in like a noose, but I concentrated as hard as I possibly could to slither my way through to Ryan’s limbs.
Nothing.
I needed a different tactic.
So far the only way I was able to break through anything was by tapping into my anger for my grandfather. So… emotions. Maybe if I thought about everything that Ryan meant to me…
A flood of images raced through my brain. Our first kiss, holding hands, his arms around me, his smile, his laugh, making love…
SLAM!
“Got it,” I said in my thoughts and knew Ryan heard me.
I was in his head, and in full control of his body!
But more importantly, I could see.
I was seeing through Ryan’s eyes. It was like seeing double, like when I took over a corpse. I could still see the shadow of darkness with the bright lights from my eyes, but I could also see everything else with Ryan’s sight.
The pregnant women were in front of us on the hover-gurneys. They appeared to be asleep and had IV’s strapped to their arms. Elisha was ranting, while Roland watched her with moonbeams in his eyes as he prepared for the ritual. The I.Q. kids were all still, motionl
ess as if in some sort of coma, controlling my mind and body. My grandparents and their men stood behind us like statues.
So far, no one knew I had control over Ryan.
“I need to plug into one of the machines,” Ryan’s voice sounded in my head.
“What? No. Why?” I thought nervously. There was no way I wanted Ryan to strap himself into that machine again.
“Just trust me. All you’ll need to do is make my right arm reach over to the right, see? I only need to attach one node to my head. Don’t worry, they suction on,” Ryan’s voice in my brain was calm and reassuring.
“Ryan, don’t risk yourself, I think I can break out of this.” I didn’t really know if I could or not, but I was terrified Ryan would get hurt.
“Chelsan, you have to trust me. Make me grab the node.” Ryan was firm and commanding. He was right: I needed to trust his judgment. I hoped he knew what he was doing.
“Here goes,” I thought to him.
I made Ryan move as slowly as I possibly could for fear of Elisha noticing. I carefully had him grab a node from the spider-like tubes attached to the holo-computer stations and place the suction cup on his forehead.
SWOOSH!
Our surroundings blurred into a billion threads of light. It felt like we were flying at light speed down a tunnel of colors and lines.
“What’s happening?” I could barely think.
“We’re in the machine,” Ryan’s voice was cool and composed it made my heart slow down a few notches. “I had a few days to explore the ins and outs of this place. Hold on tight,” Ryan said as we raced through the inside of the machine.
I couldn’t believe how fast we were moving. Everything was still a blur, but the more I looked around, the more I could see little details here and there. It was like we were flying over a city made of holo-chips and tubes. It was very disorienting and exhilarating at the same time.
Suddenly, up ahead, there was a line of the brightest lights I’d ever seen. As we flew closer to them I recognized them immediately: the swarm of I.Q. kids, their life sources joined as one in the machine.
The Riser Saga Page 63