The Powerless Series: Complete 5-Book Set

by Jason Letts

  “What are you cooking? It smells delicious,” Mira said, her mouth watering.

  “Oh, I wish my food smelled so good! But it’ll be ready soon,” Jeana chuckled. The sound of boiling caught their ears, and she whisked herself back to the pot over the fire.

  Just then the laughter of young girls rang in chorus upstairs. Mira turned her head to the living room and saw two pairs of feet patting down the steps in a flash. In another moment, a pair of nearly identical girls with dark brown hair raced at their father. Bubbling over with joy, these cheery little eight-year-olds collided with him on both sides, wrapping their arms around him and nestling their heads against him.

  The one closest to Mira smelled so strongly of cinnamon that she had to rub her nose and take a step back. Kevin told his children he loved them, and they finally agreed to let him go after a particularly strong squeeze. They took a step back and finally noticed the person who accompanied their father. Standing side by side, they looked up at Mira, and Mira looked down at them.

  Mira’s mind unraveled at the sight of the little faces in front of her. Who were these girls? In silence, they watched each other for a time, tension seizing Mira’s heart when the first inkling dawned on her, but she instantly rejected it. But those four almond eyes didn’t go away, reviving the possibility over and over again. Still, she couldn’t let herself even think she saw her sister and herself.

  One of the girls had a nasty cut across her cheek. The open wound looked red and puffy. While her sister stood completely absorbed in the love of her father and her own amusement, this girl quickly became distracted from the happiness surrounding her. She would test the cut with her finger and feel a sting that made her wince. In this uniformly happy environment, that cut seemed to be alien, wrong in this place. It confused Mira more than anything else at all.

  “How did you get that?” Mira asked her. Without a trace of sympathy on her face, she bent down in front of the girl to look at it more closely.

  “She just woke up with them,” Kevin said, answering for the girl. “Nothing we’ve tried seems to help. Might have no choice but to seek the healer in Darmen.”

  “Them?” Mira asked.

  The girl looked at her father, who nodded his head. She rolled her left short sleeve over her shoulder, revealing another similar cut. This one had a little bit of white puss foaming in it.

  “I don’t understand. It just came from nowhere,” the young girl said.

  “That’s what you get for playing with metal all the time!” her sister teased, poking her finger at the cut shoulder. She ran away, taking away the intense smell of cinnamon. A big smiled formed on her sister’s face as a game of chase began.

  “Clara!” Kevin called, frowning on her behavior.

  “I’m gonna get you!” the girl laughed, and her sister screamed as they thundered up the stairs.

  “Come on back,” Jeana called from the kitchen. “Dinner’s just about ready.”

  Kevin rushed into the kitchen to assist her, leaving Mira all by herself. Wide-eyed and awe-struck at everything around her, Mira leaned against a nearby cabinet to right herself. Shaking her head and rubbing her face, she tried and again failed to make sense of her surroundings. She peeked into the cabinet, seeing stacks of Flip Widget’s Manuals of Science inside. The sight of those books made her flinch and slink away from that spot.

  Kevin and Jeana returned from the kitchen carrying steaming bowls of soup and breadbaskets. Mira’s stomach started rumbling and she felt like she would pass out if she didn’t dive into a bowl immediately. The giggling girls ran into the room and hopped into a pair of chairs on the far side. The table only had two more chairs, and Kevin searched around for something else to sit on. Finding a wooden crate, he set it on its side along the open end of the table. Pulling out his own chair, he offered it to Mira.

  “Please, have a seat and enjoy what we have to offer. You’ll have your strength back in no time.”

  Without any argument, Mira sat down in Kevin’s seat. He sat on the crate at a somewhat lower height, making the girls laugh as they stretched to be taller than him.

  They started eating, and Mira hastily started ferrying heaping spoonfuls to her mouth. The vegetable soup looked delicious, but by the time it got to her mouth it had a disturbing taste that didn’t make sense. Her hunger demanded she put any worries aside and continue consuming the soup. The others were enjoying their meals as well, and it gave Mira a bittersweet feeling to witness this family living together as a whole.

  “So you really don’t know how you get here?” Jeana asked, expressing her own confusion.

  “Not at all,” Mira replied.

  “It was the funniest thing,” Kevin recounted. “She knew Mira’s name even before I told it to her. How did you know that?”

  Hearing her name, the young girl with the cut on her face looked up. Mira, further bewildered, didn’t understand why they didn’t recognize her. She had the same color hair as the two girls and looked almost identical to them. She wanted to blurt out that she was Mira too. But, they already had a Mira, so she seemed to be nobody at all. It felt so cold being on the outside of her own perfect family. But even if she couldn’t be herself, she refused to give up on their connection entirely.

  “I know that because I know all of you,” Mira said. “I can even tell you what your powers are to prove it.”

  Amused, Kevin folded his napkin and grinned at her like they were playing a game. The others also wanted to see if she could guess too, except for one girl who looked pensively into her soup.

  “Go ahead then. Let’s hear it,” Kevin said.

  “OK, you can control the water in the air. And you can put things to sleep,” Mira said to the parents before moving on to the girls. “And Clara, I still haven’t quite figured out who you are. You…‌you make yourself where you are not.”

  But before Mira could finish with her younger self, Clara had to tell her how wrong she was through a fit of laughter.

  “If you couldn’t tell my gift when you walked through the door then you need to have your nose checked!” she laughed.

  The parents also chuckled freely at Mira’s incorrect assessment.

  “You can’t smell that cinnamon? She makes a cinnamon smell. And I can make seeds grow into beautiful flowers. The water in the air? Sounds so ridiculous,” Kevin gushed.

  “Look at this,” Jeana followed. Her hands together, she opened them like a book and a radiant rainbow formed between them. The beautiful colors drew bright smiles from the girls.

  Mira, shaking her head, couldn’t make sense of this startling difference between these people and the family she knew. It just seemed wrong, like a vital part of their identities had been replaced with some sickeningly cute imitation. But as bad as the difference was, it struck her how pathetic and weak all of these powers were.

  “You mean to tell me these are your powers? How could you possibly defend yourselves with cinnamon or flowers? Don’t you know what kind of danger you’re in? Why, any second someone could come knock down the door and you would be defenseless!”

  Mira’s comment drained all of the joy and laughter from the family, leaving only concerned and uncomfortable expressions. No one knew what to say to Mira’s seemingly perverse comment. When Mira’s younger self spoke to her, she couldn’t even meet her eyes.

  “Gifts are a reflection of who you are inside. But I don’t have a gift,” the girl said.

  “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t beautiful on the inside too,” Kevin added.

  Mira had torn a piece of bread, but she stopped and held it after hearing the young girl’s confession. This was her chance to get through to her, to show her they had something in common.

  “But I don’t have a power too. You see, we’re the same, Mira. Just the two of us,” Mira said.

  The young girl gave her a look of teary confusion, like the comment had senselessly abused her.

  “No, you’re not. Look at what you’re doing,” she said.


  Mira, struggling to figure out what she meant, lent her eyes to the small piece of bread she held in her hand. Right in front of her, a puff of blue mold crept from her fingers, engulfing the bread completely in the fuzzy coating of decay.

  Chapter 8: The Specials

  “I hate the sun,” Rowland scowled, taking another step into the open expanse of rolling hills. Leaving the scrub forest behind proved painful for the small group. They would now have nothing to shield them from the glaring sun. The only reason for any optimism came when Vern spotted a few cacti growing in the wastes. The water helped, but they had to move on far too soon.

  They noticed how close they were to the battlefield they had so recently left. Without any words, they steered clear of it and its horrifying memories. They rounded along the opposite edge of a hilltop, keeping the whole scene just out of sight. While the rest kept their eyes down, Will climbed to the top where he could overlook what remained.

  Countless bodies lay strewn over the ground amongst the boulders and stones of the destroyed hillside. Nothing gave any hint of life. The scrub forest stopped some distance behind, and farther along the valley he could see the cusp of the hill in front of where they had first decided to undertake their misguided and reckless mission.

  Returning to the others, he looked over at Mira, still cradled in Aoi’s arms. He still blamed her for where they were and for what had happened to them. The others just walked along in silence. The dreary environment made them all feel a little bit dead inside.

  “What about Dot and Kurt? Maybe we should bury them,” Will said.

  Burying them would be possible since they were so close, but they were still deep in enemy territory with the unceasing danger of being attacked. Vern appeared torn over what to do.

  “How would we even find them? What if the dust from the windstorm buried them enough already?” he questioned.

  “Are we really going to leave that up to chance? We’ve known them our entire lives, their entire lives,” Will said.

  The moral imperative touched all of them, and together they trekked up the hillside. Coming over the top, they all took in the painful, lifeless remainder of a battle they had barely survived.

  On their approach, the smell of rotting remains hit them first, which made their task that much more unpleasant. They shifted their hoods so their mouths and noses would be covered. The bodies, scattered all over the area, would take all day to pick through. Half of them had on the same tan uniforms, meaning they would need to get a good look at every face to know which ones were Dot and Kurt.

  Passing over the first bodies, their hearts dropped and the bones in their feet felt icy. None of them could stand the sight, and yet they had to look and even hope to find their deceased companions. All of these lifeless bodies, so formerly active and exuberant, now struck them with their eerie stillness.

  Coming closer to a heap of boulders, Will glanced over at the scrub forest. Something twinkled and shined along the edge. Though the dust had settled and the rocks had stopped rolling, Will knew he had stood here before.

  “This is worse than the battle,” Mary gasped.

  “So many hopes and dreams lay dead among these bodies,” Aoi lamented. She had set Mira down in the distance on the hillside. From where she stood, Mira looked just like another corpse.

  Will approached a few bodies from each army clustered together. Sticking out his foot, he went to kick at a shoulder so he could turn it over and look at the face. Guiding his foot closer to its target, an arm burst out of the pile and grabbed hold of his leg. Looking down in heart-rending horror, he saw the face of the man he killed reaching up at him. Its eyes were still closed, and yet the body grabbed him.

  “Ahh! I’m sorry!” Will screamed.

  His friends jerked their heads to look, just as other bodies started to wriggle and writhe around them. There were no sounds, no signs of life, and yet the bodies of the dead moved nonetheless. Everyone screamed as hands reached out to seize them from all directions. Will, mortified, ripped his leg away from the undead attacker.

  “Who is doing this?” Chucky howled, swinging Mira’s mace at them.

  “There’s someone in the forest!” Will shouted.

  Glancing at his beset friends and the cloaked animator, Vern struggled to decide. In the distance, a few bodies crawled toward Mira on the hillside. Knocking away another greedy hand, Vern ran for the forest and Chucky followed alongside. The others ran for Mira, fighting their way through the revolting heap that clawed at them.

  Roselyn tried to sing, but her song had no effect on them. Mary too could do nothing. Aoi fought them off, throwing one squirming body at another crawling near them. Will joined their desperate struggle to prevent the dead from getting to Mira. It sickened them that they still looked for Kurt’s red hair or Dot’s mousy face.

  Vern and Chucky raced into the forest, immediately catching sight of a woman in a flowing black cloak. She started to run away, leaving another dead warrior to defend her. Plowing past it, they chased her though the scrub forest. Vern tried to catch her and pull her back to him, but he caught only brittle trees instead.

  Aoi churned along the battlefield through the hordes of reanimated corpses. She fought them off as they punched at her, ripped at her uniform, and tried to hold her down. Their brute force was astounding, but Aoi never gave up. Even as the dead closed in on Mira, she fought, stretching her fingers out and trying to inch her way forward. The dead closed in all around them, and they screamed as they tried to bat them away.

  The woman in black spiraled backward through the air, glancing off trees as she fell toward Vern. Before she could get to him, a rotting hand grabbed him from behind and pulled him to the ground. The animator dropped suddenly and tried to scramble away.

  Aoi, gritting her teeth, watched in horror as a rotten arm reached for Mira’s defenseless, unconscious body. Close enough to see every twitching finger, Aoi was still too far away to do anything. Mary, Roselyn, Will, and Rowland screamed and pressed against the arms detaining them. Just as the hand closed in to grab Mira, it fell limp to the ground. The corpses surrounding them suddenly relented, and they too collapsed.

  Back in the forest, Chucky held Mira’s mace, surging with electricity, against the woman’s back. Its barbs pierced her clothing and delivered the voltage to her body. She fell lifelessly into the ash.

  Vern rose, and Chucky followed him back up the hillside away from the battlefield on the north side. Aoi, carrying Mira in her arms, lead the others around the west end to join them, taking the same path they did the first time they fled from there. When they finally met up, none of them stopped to take a breath. They continued to the east, fearful of the next cruel hazard to strike at them.

  For a while, Will wondered if Vern expected him to say something about the danger he had gotten them into. Will knew he wasn’t wrong to suggest they do something for Dot and Kurt, even if they thought the needs of the living outweighed those of the fallen. Considering how things had been going, there didn’t seem to be much difference between the two.

  Will kept his eyes to the dirt, a heavy squint on his face and at times shaking his head. No one else knew the man he killed had a second chance against him. None of the others felt the same torment after robbing a body of life and sending its essence back to the web. He alone had to carry what he had done.

  They trekked across the wasteland through the afternoon. Not another living thing caught their eyes. When the forward station came into view, it brought such a flood of relief that they wanted to cry. They were close enough to base camp to be safe. Somehow, more or less, they had survived their trip to the heart of the enemy’s territory.

  In the forward station, they made use of what little refreshments they could find. Even a cup of water seemed like a lifesaver. Resting on the benches under the roof, they kept looking to see if the sun began to set.

  “I can’t stop thinking about how close we were to that monster. If he hadn’t killed his gua
rd then there’s no way we would’ve gotten away,” Rowland said.

  “I swear one of those search parties turned toward us. But then it just circled around and left,” Mary said.

  “Makes you wonder if he let us get away,” Rowland added.

  Another veteran listened in on their conversation from against the wall. Having heard enough to rouse his interest, he casually interrupted them.

  “Retreaters came back days ago. What’ve you been doing out there all this time?”

  “We ran into trouble and had to run for it. We got lost and are only now making our way back,” Vern answered.

  “Looks like the battle took its toll on you,” the veteran said. He motioned to Mira, but his words resonated with all of them.

  “Do you have anything to heal her?” Vern begged. “We have something from a healer, but it’s not having any effect.”

  “You already helped yourself to everything we got,” growled the veteran, shrugging them away.

  Looking around, Vern saw his friends getting comfortable on the benches. Roselyn had taken off her shoes and put her head against the table.

  “We can’t stay here. We’ve got to get going,” Vern said.

  “Can’t we at least wait for the sun to go down? That would give us time enough for a nap,” Rowland pleaded.

  “Mira is counting on us! Now we already risked our lives today for two people we couldn’t help. How about we try to do something for somebody who could still use it? Yes, it’s going to be another sleepless night, but I’d much rather that than have Mira sleep for all of us.”

  There could be no argument against Vern’s words, and all of his fellow soldiers resigned themselves to the grueling journey awaiting them outside. Taking what they could of water and food, the small group left the forward station to retrace their steps back to Shade Base Camp.

  Navigating by the web in the sky and watching where they stepped with Mira’s flashlight, they marched through the somber and desolate night. None of them ever said more than a few words as the wasteland passed under their heels. Not even a desert octopus appeared to obstruct them.