The Powerless Series: Complete 5-Book Set

by Jason Letts

  “Do you think it’ll really be a human?” Chucky asked.

  “I guess we won’t know for sure until we can see it. Judging by how long she’s been pregnant, the only other animals that come close would be a cow and a moose.”

  “No, I don’t want a cow!” Vika hollered.

  “Stay calm and keep breathing!” Mira shouted back at her before turning to the others. “But I think she’d probably get torn apart if that were that case.”

  “Not a gift I would want to have,” Aoi chirped, cringing and looking faint.

  “Are you OK?” Vern asked, leaning over to her and cracking a smile at her distress.

  “I’m fine!” she snapped. “Just a little queasy, nauseous, and grossed out.”

  “You’ve never been afraid of blood before,” Chucky added.

  “This blood is different. Look, stop talking to me! Shouldn’t we be doing something for her pain?” Aoi rattled.

  “Yes, we should, but we really don’t have anything to give her. She’ll have to make due with the body’s natural endorphins, which will fight her pain all the way through the labor process.”

  “They don’t seem to be working,” Chucky noted after Vika unleashed a harsh groan. Her face was red and she squirmed constantly. Mira held her knees and tried to breath deeply so Vika could imitate. In all of the panic of what was going on, something came to Mira though and she looked to her friends.

  “Have any of you ever seen a baby being born before?” she asked. Her hair was a mess and sweat dripped down her face.

  “I guess I saw my cousin being born, but I was too young to remember it,” Chucky replied while the other two shook their heads.

  “So how do you know when the power gets implanted in the baby?”

  “I don’t know,” Chucky added. “The web of the universe sends down one of the powers it has stored for every newborn.”

  “There’s got to be a sign!” Mira gasped, her voice rising. “It can’t just come from nowhere. Maybe a little ball of light hits it once it meets the air. Maybe it’s something in the egg and the sperm. If only I could study these things. If only Widget had told me before he died with Yannick. If only I knew what I was looking for here!”

  Her friends were taken aback by the desperation that crept into her voice. They looked at each other, perhaps only now understanding the importance of this for her. She looked so frazzled, analyzing Vika’s every move, arranging her supplies, and making calculations.

  “Some things just have to be believed,” Aoi explained in a rare moment of composure.

  “I still don’t know what I believe,” Mira whispered, slumping back and staring off into the writhing light of a candle.

  Mira could only hide within her thoughts for a moment though, because Vika had no patience for her wonderings. Her hollering took on an alarmed sense of urgency. Mira snapped herself away from her thoughts and immediately got back to work.

  “OK, she’s fully dilated, and the baby should start to crown any moment. It’s going to feel like burning or stretching, but she’s got to bare down and push anyway in line with the contractions. Can you guys coach her with that? Aoi, come over here and help me prepare to receive the fetus.”

  Complying, Aoi started to come around, but she put her hand to her mouth after one look and rushed for the door.

  “I’m going to be sick!” she groaned, exiting the building.

  Chucky and Vern looked at each other across the expectant mother, and Vern subtly twitched his head. Sighing, Chucky got up and moved next to Mira. As he calmly kneeled down beside her, she did a double take, appraising his manner and constitution. Both seemed unshaken by the situation.

  He put on his gloves and handed Mira things when she asked for them. The two worked into a seamless rhythm, and their focus resulted in a perfect delivery. As the baby emerged, Mira watched for any signs, anything out of the ordinary, but she spotted nothing indicating that a power had merged with the newborn.

  “What is it?” Vika yelped through her worn, groggy delusional state, while Vern held her down.

  “It’s a human!” Mira cheered.

  “Really? Oh, I can’t believe it!” she shuddered in relief, seeing the newborn baby boy and collapsing into a euphoric haze. Big smiles found their way onto everyone’s faces as Mira wrapped the crying child in a towel and handed him to his mother. The sloth had made the long trek from the wall down to the bed to see, the collie had looked on with tongue flapping all over, and even the squirrel seemed quietly contented by the scene.

  “What are you going to call him?” Chucky asked.

  Vika leaned her head over and started to ask him to repeat himself when his meaning came to her.

  “Something strong. Something better than this awful place. I’ll call him Knoll.”

  “Knoll!” Vern cheered, and everyone joined in with big smiles.

  But Mira’s smile had a heavy heart behind it, and she turned away to hide a painful wince. In another moment, the door had slipped open and she had vanished through it.

  The blood of childbirth dripping from her hands, she walked alone through a small shortcut between huts and dense foliage. It should’ve been late at night, but the sun still hung high in the sky. The sound of swaying branches and footsteps behind made her sigh.

  “Mira!” a voice called.

  Without stopping or looking back, she forced Vern to jog to catch up. She wished he hadn’t come, and she hoped even more that he wouldn’t try to touch her as he caught up. Everything inside and out felt so gross.

  “Mira, what’s wrong?” he asked, and she shrugged her shoulders to guard against an attempt to turn her around. But he let her walk, following close behind.

  “Nothing’s wrong. I just need some space after that,” she explained.

  “Please don’t lie to me, Mira. What you just did was amazing. If I were you, I’d want to celebrate, not lock myself up in my head.”

  “But you’re not me. No one is,” she said, brushing away a branch and letting it snap back at Vern. He caught it and ducked underneath.

  “Is that what this is about?” he asked.

  Turning a corner, the trees parted and they emerged onto a stretch of beach. The shimmering ocean stretched out for as far as they could see. Wave after wave slowly lurched against the shore and then washed back into the sea. Standing in the shade of browning palm trees leaning out toward the water, Mira finally turned to Vern.

  “I just keep asking myself, why am I this way? The answer to that question came to me from Widget, but the part he could never tell me was why it happened to me. Why am I the one who has to always be alone? Tonight was supposed to be my one chance to figure out how it worked, to see web, power, and life join together in the harmony I’ll never know. But I came away with nothing, not even a clue. Now that little boy will develop a power of his own and leave me behind.”

  She avoided Vern’s eyes, choosing instead to hang her head and stare down at the sand.

  “We need more people like you imagining ways to create things instead of people like them imagining ways to destroy them. I can tell you you’ve nothing to feel bad about, because I’ve seen your own special kind of brilliance countless times. Just because you don’t do it by waving your hand doesn’t make it any less real. Look at all you’ve done for us. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” Vern countered.

  But Mira scoffed at his remarks, turned, and started along the shady beach.

  “Yes, and where we are is just so wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “I meant alive,” Vern corrected, walking alongside her. “We wouldn’t have survived the war if it weren’t for you. When the Warlord tried to corrupt us, you were there to show us the way. Now our minds are still free, and that’s something few can say around here.”

  “Are you sure they’re not better off, our friends who died? It’s such a long list. At least they can rest and leave behind this unending torment,” she lamented.

  “It’s not like you
to leave the hard work to someone else. I’m glad I’m still here so I can keep fighting for them, and I’m going to keep fighting the Warlord until my dying breath, whether he wants to be called king or savior or anything else. He’s destroyed our home, taken everything away from us because he envied what other people had. And that’s why we need to find a way to—”

  “No, Vern, please don’t,” Mira begged.

  “Escape,” Vern finished. “Why are you so against it? I know you don’t like being forced to work for them either, so why don’t we figure out how to get away from this place?”

  “Because we can’t leave,” Mira emphasized. “There’s no way to get out, and even if we did there’d be no place to go. What are we going to do, set up our own four-person town and pretend we’re rid of them?”

  “That’s not true, Mira, and you know it. We’d have something to do. Fortst is still out there. Will must still be out there. Your parents, Mary, we could find someone. Heck, even Goober must be somewhere,” he said.

  “It’ll never work.”

  “The Warlord must be out there, because he’s sure not here! The first time I see him, I’m making a run at him, no matter who or what is in the way,” Vern declared. “Have you forgotten why we set out to stop him?”

  “Don’t you think I’d do something if I could? But I can’t, and that’s because of how stuck we are. Even if we did get to him, we don’t have a plan to defeat him, so it would be just like outside of Darmen, when we were so close but just had nothing to fight him with. You know I want to make sure he gets what he deserves, but you’ve got to trust me that we’re better off here than we are out there. I’ll come up with a way to fix things, but we’ve got to just hold on. That’s a promise.”

  “So we’re stuck,” Vern concluded.

  “For now,” Mira added.

  Passing under a group of tall palms, they came to the camp’s shipyard. Tracks and treads riddled the sand between the docks and the boathouses on shore. Towering above everything, a patchwork of steel and wood formed the figure of a great galleon. It rested against supports and cranes, several of which extended back further in anticipation of the ship’s full skeleton. Stretching into the water, a slipway would convey the completed vessel out into the open ocean. Seeing this massive boat in the infancy of its construction made them turn their head up in awe.

  “I understand why you come here when you want to feel small,” Vern said to Mira.

  She said nothing, instead envisioning what it would all look like when it was done and wondering what it was all for. Vern gazed at the frame and the stacks of supplies and materials that would be fed into this growing monstrosity.

  “Where do you think they get all of the metal for this?” he wondered aloud.

  “I have no idea,” Mira replied.

  Chapter 2: Speechless

  No amount of scrubbing would ever get this floor clean. Dragging a grimy rag back and forth, a solitary figure worked her way over tile after tile. Her hand clutched at the rag as she dipped it into a bucket of slimy, cold water. On her feet, knees, and left hand, the hard floor had rewarded her attention with bruises. The dirt from the floor and the rag covered her, seeming to crawl up her limbs, stretch over the scars on her neck, and inch onto her face.

  The dirt even got into her blonde hair, which curled like a spiral staircase.

  In the middle of the room, watching over her, was the image of the Warlord in stone. In his presence, she gurgled and wheezed as she worked, trying not to look at him. Constantly keeping the back of her head to his figure, she wallowed through the filth in agony and shame.

  Only thick wooden pillars supported the roof, meaning little obstructed the view outside the temple. Pine and fir trees dotted the ground in between stone and wooden cabins. As many trees stood as had been felled to clear the land and compose the buildings. Amidst the bright sunshine pouring down around her from every side, the most significant structure was the huge forge located a ways down the hill near the bottom of the camp. Black smoke rose from the tall chimney, providing a constant reminder of the fires and metalwork being done inside.

  A large-breasted, middle-aged woman and a young-looking woman with silver hair strolled from one side of the temple around to the other, where they started up the temple’s steps. One of them carried a broom and let it clack against every step. They wore cheap, dark fabric like the girl slaving away in the center of the room, but that didn’t stop them from having a good laugh at her as they rested for a moment. Once simply watching her lost its amusement, the plumper one finally called out.

  “Hey, Garbage Girl, clear out of there! We’re about to ring the bell and start the service.”

  Depositing the filthy rag in the bucket, she grabbed its thin metal handle and started to walk toward them for the supply shack beyond. Swallowing hard, she adjusted her course to avoid them, always keeping her eyes on the floor. The younger one slid out to intercept her though, and soon both women were blocking her way to the steps.

  “How you doing today, dearie?” the older one started up with feigned concern.

  “I don’t think she’s going to answer you,” the younger one said.

  The girl tried to squeeze between them, but they bumped together to repel her. Nothing they did changed the forlorn, hollow look on her face.

  “That’s so rude! Such a shame people don’t have the common decency anymore to answer a simple question. Why, it’s unfathomable,” she howled.

  “It’s deplorable,” echoed the other.

  Pursing her lips, the girl attempted to pass on one side and then the other. She blinked hard, hiding her blue eyes.

  “Why in such a rush, dearie?” the older one heckled. The girl found one way clear, or so she thought. The older one stuck her foot out, tripping the girl and sending her sprawling onto the stone steps. The bucket from the water splashed against her, and the impact cut into her shins and forearms. Her harassers started laughing, but then the older one cut it short.

  “I told you to ring that bell ages ago! Have you no sense of time?” she chided her companion, taking a harsh tone.

  By the time the temple bell started to ring, the worst of the sting and ache from the fall had subsided. The girl got up, grabbed her bucket, and tossed it into the storage shack. She could already hear large numbers of people approaching. Some emerged from the nearby buildings and others descended from further up the mountainside.

  People, young and old, short and tall, approached the temple from all directions. The girl stood near the small shack, out of the way. The faces of those who passed her were covered in soot or smeared with dirt and mud. A few had thick overalls and boots, which were caked with grit. They tracked their mud right up the steps and onto the tile flooring. Those in black Sunfighter uniforms mingled in amongst the crowd, directing traffic and keeping order.

  Someone suddenly appeared near the shack, taking the girl’s hand into her own. She had straight brown hair, brown eyes, and nothing but stress and wear on her face. Their fingers intertwined, and they both squeezed them.

  “Roselyn, come on,” Mary urged, and she pulled her friend into the crowd. People formed rows in the temple, grabbing from a stack of prayer books on the way in. The two girls deliberately settled in the very rear where they couldn’t see. Roselyn kept her head down to the dirty floor she had been cleaning just minutes ago.

  When those assembled opened their mouths to sing in praise of their new King, Roselyn kept hers closed. Under the watchful eye of her captors, Mary had to sing, even if faintly. But Roselyn didn’t open her mouth once, and the majestic, beautiful notes made her eyes well up and shed tears that spilled from her cheeks onto the floor. She had never made it through a single song without crying.

  After the service had ended, Mary again took Roselyn’s hand and led her out. From this direction, they could see down the mountainside and into a valley. Other green peaks rose in the distance, reaching into the bright sky toward the ever-present sun. They took to the sid
e, walking slowly so the others could pass them. Still tearful, Roselyn caught her friend’s eyes.

  “I know it’s hard for you. I don’t like being here any more than you, but we have to stay hopeful. When things are this bad, you know they can’t last forever. And remember, we’re not alone. So let’s just keep fighting to make it through today, OK?”

  Roselyn nodded, squelching back her sniffles and her tears. Down the way, they saw a clearing out in the middle of a few structures. A large pulley had been set up to suspend a hefty and heavy looking barrel over the center of it. The crowd stopped just short of the clearing because of a rope tied between buildings on both sides.

  The sound of licking lips and grumbling stomachs echoed along with cracking knuckles and surly grunts. They shoved and jostled their way as close to the rope as they could get. Everyone in the crowd had their eyes on the suspended barrel, which contained the day’s ration of food.

  Like horses before a race, the mob twitched even more when the door to one of the cabins opened and a tall cloaked woman with one eye stepped onto the porch. Using her remaining eye, she took hold of the two ropes and prepared to pull out their knots.

  Standing as far back up the hill as they could without appearing uninvolved, Roselyn and Mary watched her send the suspended barrel flipping upside down. It rained fruit, vegetables, and cuts of meat onto the coating of needles that covered the ground. Apples rolled out in every direction. Twisting her wrist, she undid the other knot, which dropped the rope restraining the crowd.

  Instantly, all chaos broke loose as the slave camp’s hungry inhabitants fought over the scraps of food. Little puffs of smoke appeared within the brawl here and there as everyone moved into the clearing. It was impossible to lay a hand on the produce without someone else grabbing it too, often destroying it in the struggle. Red splotches on the slaves that looked like blood could’ve just as easily been from tomatoes.

  “I love it,” the cloaked woman laughed. “Nobody with nothin’ more than what they can get their hands on. You do our savior proud!”