by Jalex Hansen
“Do I look like I’m in denial?”
Lissa took in his high-top converse and tight t-shirt and suppressed her own laughter.
Jared wagged a finger in her face. “I can hear you laughing even if it’s only in your head,” he said. “Gideon’s waiting for you in the briefing room.”
“Okay, we’re on our way there.”
“Bet I can beat you.” Jared sauntered off toward the nearest corridor, obviously not worried that they would catch up to him.
“Don’t be fooled.” Gabrielle said. “He acts like that, but he’s very talented. If it’s a machine he can hack it, shoot it, or fly it.”
The next level had wider corridors, but still no windows. Lissa felt more claustrophobic now than she had in the hospital ward, maybe because she could sense the surface nearby.
“Why is the city underground?”
“Well it’s cooler for one, and two, because we’re hiding. The elders that built this place anticipated that someday there would be the capability of seeing things from above the earth’s surface, so they took precautions.”
“How did they know that?” The weight of the earth above her head, the weight of the things she had already been told, made Lissa feel like she couldn’t breathe.
“They knew a lot of things. The Guardians will tell you more.”
“The Guardians?”
Gabrielle did not answer, but continued her tour monologue as though Lissa hadn’t spoken at all. “We’re only down about twenty feet here. If you go right down this corridor it will lead you to a hallway that goes straight to the surface. It’s guarded at all times. This way is the briefing room. It’s where everything important takes place, meetings, tactical plans, everything. Down there are the IT rooms, hundreds of computers that monitor everything going on in here and out in the world. We’ll save that for another time though. Gideon’s waiting.”
The briefing room was the size of a small amphitheater with stationary benches that ringed three fourths of the room. At the back of the room was a raised platform and in the center several tables were set up in a casual arrangement. Gideon sat at one of these tables with Jared and two other men. At the other table sat three adults, two men and a woman, overly serious people, easily her parents’ age.
Lissa smiled tentatively at Gideon and sat down next to him. Among all these strangers he suddenly seemed like a long lost friend. Jared winked at her and patted Gabrielle down into the seat next to him. Two of the adults at the table looked at each other and sighed, overwhelmed perhaps by having teenagers to watch over. The woman shuffled some papers and cleared her throat. “Welcome, Lissa. I’m Maggie Osborn, one of the fifty Guardians here in the city. On my right is Aaron and on my left is Dr. Michael Godfrey. I assume that Gideon and Gabrielle have caught you up to speed on certain things, including the abilities that are hosted by the Lux Marker.”
Lissa nodded, suddenly wishing she could go back to the hospital ward and block this all out.
“We were all saddened by the loss of your parents. They were good people, excellent scientists.” The doctor laid a hand on her arm and Maggie shifted direction. “Gideon tells us that your abilities are dormant, is this correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jared chuckled, apparently above manners, or beneath them.
Maggie quelled him with a glance and turned back to Lissa. “We know very little about your powers and frankly we do not even know if they can be teased out again. It may be that without use they diminish or the gene is turned off, so to speak, because the body assumes they are unneeded. The scientists here manipulated your DNA using... very old knowledge, and were unsure of exactly what the results would be.”
Lissa felt that she had to find her voice soon or it would be lost forever. “Old knowledge, like what?”
“Gideon will explain in more detail when he takes you for training.” Maggie said. “We highly suggested that this training take place here in the city where you are safest, but Gideon has insisted that you need to be isolated and in peace in order to develop your talents. Because of his exemplary record we are approving his request.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint all of you,” Lissa said, “But you need to find someone else. I’m not capable of this.”
Maggie spoke again. “Gideon believes you are capable.” She closed her folder and nodded to Gideon. “You have one month and if you cannot produce a result all may be lost.”
Lissa glanced helplessly at Gideon who smiled reassuringly at her. That smile, full of liquid peace was suddenly getting on her nerves. “Excuse me, but why? Why do I even need these abilities or whatever they are? Haven’t they caused enough trouble already? Isn’t it safer if I just leave them... turned off?’
Maggie looked to Aaron. He was a huge man, tall and wide, the color of a Hershey chocolate bar. His teeth and his tunic were white. He met Lissa’s eyes with a laser-like intent and she suspected he might be the leader here, if they had such a thing.
“Have you heard of Senator Angine?”
“The California Senator?”
“Yes. The so-called Senator. Most of the world thinks he is a political upstart, a rich man vying for the presidency. He is after something much greater. World domination.”
Lissa half expected to hear ominous music and someone announcing, First he will take over the world and then the entire galaxy.
Aaron ignored Lissa’s skeptical look. “He was once a Guardian, but that was not enough for him. He is vastly intelligent and was one of our brightest minds. In fact, he was the one that isolated the Lux Marker and figured out how to manipulate it. He figured out before the rest of us what effects the Lux might have. He has spent decades amassing a fortune infiltrating the banking system and using it to slowly buy out the governments of the world, the communications systems, the media, essential military leaders. When he has finally reached a level where he is the most powerful man on earth he will simply take over. Everything is almost in place.”
“But how can that happen? I can’t imagine every country in the world will just roll over and give in to him.”
“They will if he has the Lux Children,” Gideon interjected.
“Why doesn’t he just make more Lux people if he knows how?”
Aaron smiled at her, an echo of Gideon’s, and in it Lissa saw something she didn’t expect, love and admiration, the look a father might give if he were proud. “Well, luckily for us it isn’t that simple. Not just any child will do. He tried that and it failed, with horrible results. No, the child must come from Tesero.”
Lissa rubbed her hand through her hair, something she did when she was stressed and under pressure. “And where is here exactly?”
“We call ourselves the Tesero,” Aaron said. “This place has no name, and for now, while your mind is unprotected I cannot give you our location. It may be ferreted out of you. This is the place you were born Lissa, and for now you may simply think of it as home. Soon, you will see the whole picture, but even with pieces missing you must understand our urgency, and your importance in this matter.”
“I don’t understand at all, to be honest.”
There was a subdued chuckle around the room at this and Lissa flushed.
Maggie held up her hand calling silence. “You must be trained to use your abilities in order to protect yourself, and then you and Gideon will go out and find the other Lux Children before Angine does.”
“And once we find them and bring them back here we’ll be safe?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Aaron said. “Angine knew that that could possibly happen, and that is why he has developed a master stroke.”
Lissa felt cold in the pit of her stomach. “Which is what?”
“We believe he has a device he can use to alter the weather, create catastrophes. There is already evidence that he has been testing it.”
Lissa wrapped her arms around herself. “The things my parents were working on. They weren’t to fight him. They wanted to know how he did it.”
“Yes.”
Gideon reached across the table and took her hand in his. “They did want to fight him. We all do.”
Everyone looked at Gideon, and he too looked like he wished he were somewhere else. “There’s more you don’t know,” he said.
Lissa was sure she was going to like what he was about to tell her even less than she liked all the rest.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “You deserve to know the whole story.”
Maggie sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think she’s ready yet.”
“She’d better be ready,” Jared interrupted. “Just give it to her straight.”
Lissa’s stomach was churning. “What? What is it?” Her eyes found Gideon’s and held there. “Tell me.”
“Your parents weren’t really your parents.”
This was impossible. She remembered them back to her first memories. She knew them. She loved them. And she missed them so much that this last blow was too much to take.
Lissa shook her head. “No. This is insane. Unbelievable.”
Gideon reached for her hand again and she snatched it away. “I won’t do it!” she shouted startled by the sound of her own raised voice in this echoey space. “No matter what you say, you can’t make me!”
She stumbled to her feet and backed away from the table. “You can’t hold me prisoner,” she told them. “I’ll find a way out of here.”
She turned and ran out of the room.
Chapter
Five
It was a good thing it was summer, otherwise Hikari would never have been able to get into the coat closet in her father’s office. A mink left from God knows when sent up dusty mothball scented clouds every now and then, and she was sure she was going to sneeze. She batted it out of her face.
“Hey!” Yerik shouted. “Keep your fuzzy little friend over there.”
“Shhh! Do you want to get us both killed?”
Through the crack in the door Hikari saw her father come into the office followed by Senator Angine. He was dressed in a black suit with a black shirt and tie, the ultimate undertaker. Even in the warm room he looked cool, slimy almost, his soap opera doctor’s handsome face with its strong planes and angles, distorted somehow by something deep inside him, a permanent stain that oozed out of his sharp white grin. She wondered how everyone was duped by him, or maybe it was just the smell of money and power, a toxic cloud that altered judgment. It had worked on her father for sure, a man usually immune to such things.
The hairs on Yerik’s arm tickled her and she tried to concentrate.
“Would you like a drink?” her father asked.
“Certainly.” The Senator’s voice made Hikari think for some reason, of coal smoke.
Her father poured two neat whiskeys, offered a cigar which was declined, and they got down to business.
“Has Lissa Trent been located?” Angine asked.
“No, not yet.”
“And why is that?”
Congressman Suzuki looked uncharacteristically nervous. “We have reason to believe that the insurgents have picked her up.”
“Really?” Angine didn’t look surprised at all. “And what gives you that impression?”
Her father finished his whiskey and studied the bottom of the glass as though he wanted another one very badly.
Next to Hikari, Yerik jostled for viewing space. She discouraged him by inserting a stiletto into the small bones of the top of his foot.
Suzuki set down his glass and leaned back, rubbing his temples. “We were right on top of her. She had run and penned herself on a plateau. In five minutes someone would have been at the top, but they beat us to it. A helicopter picked her up.”
“How can you be certain it was the insurgents?”
“The blue light. The one you told us to look for.”
Angine cast a thoughtful glance out the window as though he were peering across the distance straight at Lissa Trent. “Gideon then,” he said.
Suzuki sighed, rose to his feet and faced out the window as if he were afraid to look Angine in the eye. “Sir, if we knew where they were, we could perhaps infiltrate their lair. My brother’s men are willing to do whatever you ask. But we have no idea where they might be. The trail has gone cold.”
“How is your daughter Hikari?” Angine asked and she saw her father’s shoulders slump.
“She’s fine. A brilliant student, very dutiful and loyal.”
Angine chuckled. “I hear daughters are very good at fooling their fathers.” He stood and pushed in the chair. “I would suggest you keep an eye on her, just to be on the safe side, so to speak. Good day Congressman Suzuki, thank you for the whiskey. Next time you might offer me the better bottle. The one you keep in the back right corner. A 50 year Highland Park, I believe.”
Hikari’s father turned incredulous eyes to his liquor cabinet, where he did indeed hide such a bottle. In that moment when he wasn’t watching the Senator, Angine looked directly at the coat closet and waggled his fingers at her and Yerik in a perverted howdy-do. “I’ll be seeing you again soon,” he said, and Hikari knew he was talking to her and not her father.
He stopped with his hand on the door knob and turned to look over his shoulder. “I believe you have been loyal, Congressman, and so I will do you one favor. I suggest you take your daughter and get out of the city on August 20th. Maybe get some fresh country air.”
Hikari and Yerik waited, motionless and antsy, while her father consumed three more drinks and left the room after throwing his glass against the wall.
They fell out of the closet scratching unsatisfied itches and shaking the kinks out of cramped muscles.
Yerik rubbed his nose trying to get rid of mink fur. “Well, that went well, don’t you think?”
“Angine saw us. He knew we were here.”
“You’re just paranoid.”
“I am not. He freakin’ waved at me.” She wanted to curl back up in the mink, try to get rid of the chill the Senator’s gaze had given her.
“That was some weird shit, I’ll give you that. He really is up to something. What was that about the blue light?”
“I have no idea. Let’s get out of here before my dad comes back.”
Yerik glanced at the broken shards of glass. “Should we clean that up?”
“No, let’s just go back to the apartment.” She stood still a moment studying the broken glass, considering her father’s fear, the loss of his cool.
“Hey,” Yerik turned her around tilted her chin up with his long fingers. “I’m sorry. I guess you were right about him and I’m sorry your dad’s all mixed up in this.”
She turned her head, afraid if she let him touch her she would feel too much, would start to cry. “Don’t worry about it. I just hope it’s not too late to do something.”
Chapter
Six
The limousine took Connor and Joanne downtown to an older area full of closed factories and warehouses.
“Are you going to shoot me in an alley or something for breaking up with you?”
“This is where Angine keeps his secret office.”
“Nice location.” On the corner a homeless man stopped picking through trash long enough to watch them pass.
“It isn’t where you’d expect for a reason.”
All this cloak and dagger made Connor apprehensive. “I have an interview at six in the morning, and then I have to be on the set, this better not take long.”
Joanne looked up at him through a fringe of dark lashes. “I promise you this might be the most important meeting of your life.”
Connor doubted that, but he didn’t say as much. He couldn’t imagine what that high- powered business mogul turned politician could want with him besides an autograph for his daughter or something.
They pulled up to a really nasty piece of work, a warehouse with its hangar door falling off the hinges, and a spray of graffiti suggesting a whole lot of things that would have made Connor’s mother choke on her oatmeal.
“Classy,” he said.
Joanne rolled her eyes and got out of the door the driver had opened for her. “Just wait. You’ll see.”
He followed her into the dark cavern of the warehouse trying to see anything. He had to hurry to keep up with her. At the back of the building a man in military fatigues stood with an automatic weapon trained on them, which made Connor uneasy as hell. “What is this?”
“Shhh.” She turned back to the guard. “The Senator’s expecting us.”
The soldier lowered his weapon and gave Joanne a lecherous once over. “Right this way, Miss Webb.” He didn’t even so much glance at Connor.
He pushed a button hanging from an electric cord, and from behind an old metal elevator door came the creaking and grinding of gears and cables. He pulled the doors open and gestured them into a freight elevator. This was getting weirder by the second. Connor followed Joanne and watched as the guard disappeared back into the gloom. Crap duty that one had pulled.
Joanne looked totally unfazed in the dim fluorescent light inside the freight elevator. “You’re really pessimistic,” she said.
“So shoot me.”
“Listen. Once we get in there, be polite. He’s kind of intimidating and he likes it that way. But he’s willing to do you a favor.” She grimaced watching him. “Uh oh. I know that look. You’re going to do that opposite of what I say just because I said it, aren’t you?”
Connor shrugged.
“Suit yourself. It’s your funeral.”
The elevator continued to descend. “Where’s this thing going?” he asked after another thirty seconds. “Middle Earth?” Just then they came to a jarring halt and the door was pulled open from the outside. This time there were two guards looking less impressed even than the first.
They led them down a corridor lit by more fluorescents. The walls were made of concrete block. Old school all the way.
One of the guards stepped up to the eye scanner, and a third door opened onto a corridor so different from the one they were in, Connor blinked a few times. The bottom half of the walls were paneled wood waxed to a glossy sheen, and the top half was mirrored, reflecting the amber halogens embedded in the ceiling above them.