The Powerless Series: Complete 5-Book Set

by Jason Letts

  Chucky knew one of these men well, and he kept his eyes on the elderly farm master, who he had deceived countless times by drowning food in his oil. Now they shared a hard stare, each of them astonished to be seeing the other. The other man seemed to be in his late twenties. Clean cut, he reminded them of an older version of Will, but the fury in his face told them exactly how he perceived their intrusion.

  Vern didn’t wait to see how their new adversaries would strike first. He raised his arm to capture the younger one and pull him off his feet, but in that same instant Vern himself drifted into the air, tumbling forward until he suspended his own power and dropped face first on the floor.

  “He’s a reflector. Your tricks will never work on him,” the farm master laughed.

  Hearing all she needed to hear, and worrying that at every moment they would find a way to alert the ship, Mira stepped out from around Chucky and Aoi.

  “Take care of the old man,” she said, starting forward and swerving around Vern as he groaned and got up.

  Mira picked up speed, hopping over the short lip where the wall had been and barreling toward the ready fighter. He reached back to meet her with a punch, but Mira slid against the ground and knocked out his legs. He tumbled over forward, and by the time he hit the ground she held his arm back, pressing against his shoulder. The young man squirmed in vain. Mira looked up at the farm master, who appeared taken aback.

  “Looks like my tricks work just fine,” she glared at him.

  The awe-struck farm master turned his attention to Chucky and Aoi, who had started to corner him. He cowered back against the table.

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” Chucky said. “I figure I’ve taken advantage of you enough.”

  Something donned on the old man in that moment, and he quickly softened his grim expression into a smile. He scratched his bristly neck and held out his hand feebly.

  “You think you have, have you? It’s your oil. I can recount every item you stole, but I can’t believe you thought you were doing it without my blessing.”

  This time Chucky was the one who assumed a shocked expression. He put his hand to his chest, his fingers already sleek with oil.

  “You mean you knew about it all along? I thought I…‌but why?” he stammered.

  The farm master assumed more confidence now, striking something akin to a friendly manner, opening his hands to the lot of them.

  “Of course I knew about it. And I let it go because I knew you were the only ones who could get here. You were the only non-believers with any fight left in you. Let this be a lesson to you though, some of us are tired of this nightmare, and we’re waiting for you to put it to an end.”

  Even Aoi softened at his words, taking a more casual stance. Vern had joined them to listen, and they all looked relieved by this sudden change in the situation. Mira still struggled to hold down the convulsive soldier.

  “What are we going to do about them?” Vern asked her, and Mira turned to the farm master.

  “Can we absolutely trust you to stay here in this room and not talk to anyone?” she asked with firm sincerity.

  “If that’s what I can best do to help you, you got it,” he grinned.

  Mira held her mouth shut for a moment and stared openly at him. She had to decide if she could trust him or if he would ruin the whole thing. There was so much intensity and pressure. This couldn’t be the mistake that drowned them.

  “Fine,” she snapped.

  “What are we going to do about him?” Aoi asked, referring to the man she held. “I don’t think there’s any rope in this room.” Everyone looked to Mira for an answer.

  “We don’t need rope. We’re taking him with us,” she declared.

  The others blinked hard in surprise, and she rose to her feet along with her prisoner. Pushing him forward, they moved out of the corner of the room. The man looked bitter and riled. Vern motioned to take him from Mira, but Chucky quickly stepped in.

  “Let me. This guy won’t lift a finger unless I lift it for him,” he said, reaching around the prisoner’s neck and holding him close. “If you make even a peep, I won’t have any choice. Being quiet is what keeps you alive.”

  Aoi already had her ear against the door, checking the corridor for sounds. She waved the rest of them over and soon they were ready to make another attempt for the top deck. Before they left, Mira turned back to the farm master.

  “Remember, don’t leave this room. Don’t talk to anyone. We’re counting on you,” she stated.

  “Just get it done,” the farm master commanded, giving her a salute as he crouched to sit back in his chair.

  Moments later they had left him and reentered the still and silent corridor. Chucky grappled their prisoner, who fidgeted weakly as they continued on in the direction they’d run. No one could say anything, but Mira imagined they were all thinking about how fragile it all had become. Their plans and preparations had all been washed away, and she’d been forced to make new plans on the spot. Now all they needed was a little freedom to make it to the back of the ship.

  When they came to the end of the hallway, with the stairwell just around the corner, the onset of another hall wanderer threatened to give them away. Holding their prisoner tight, running was not an option. They huddled down against the side of the wall away from the light. Chucky wrapped his hand over his charge’s mouth. The walker continued right on past them, never turning his head and spotting the group of five right in plain sight.

  Hustling together, they took to the stairs. Chucky strained to keep a strong pace, but those behind him continually butted up against him. Turning onto the next flight, the prisoner fell, and Chucky had to drag him as he struggled to get his feet under him. Floor after floor was silent. Not a soul seemed to be around. The light from above grew stronger and in only moments they would emerge out into the open air.

  The exhilarating sunshine beamed down on the final flight of stairs leading to the top deck. Looking up from the corridor, nothing but a few crates blocked a clear view of the blue sky. Sounds of the ship crashing against the waves filtered in. Mira pressed to the foot of the stairs and let her hand drift into the bright beam of light. Its strength felt grainy, and she rubbed her fingers together, trying to think of how long it had been since she greeted a sunny day with pleasure.

  Taking a deep breath, she hopped into it and onto the stairs. One after the other, she quickly scaled them and poked her head out of the top. There was a navigator in the control deck and a few performing sailing duties at different points, but that was all the deck contained other than crates or small rowboats.

  Mira waved her friends forward, and they climbed the stairs to join her. There was enough space around to make it past the navigator’s field of view, and from there they could run for it across the open platform. Waiting for one sailor to disappear down another set of stairs, Mira and the others rushed for one of the rowboats. They huddled under its side, catching their breaths and waiting for the next sprint. The prisoner struggled, and Vern reached over from behind Chucky and smacked him in the head.

  The time came and they raced to a few crates stacked near the ship’s side. Out to their right, only a few thin bars separated them from the blue ocean stretching out forever. The sun glittered against the waves, peaceful and eternal.

  Rushing onward still, the ship’s rear came into view and they were almost out of the navigator’s field of vision. Mira watched him patiently steering in the elevated control room over the captain’s quarters. They passed another stairwell, and when Mira glanced down into it she saw a white-haired man climbing up. Alarmed, Mira changed directions and took her group left under the navigator’s outlook. Another sailor was off further toward the front of the ship, but they were almost there.

  They’d just made it around the corner when the man climbing the stairs had made it to the top. Turning, he caught sight of them and pointed.

  “Hey there! Captain!” he yelled, holding his other hand to his mouth.

&nb
sp; Instantly, everyone’s feet froze. They turned to look back and see the farm master had given them away. He glared with a greedy smirk while another sailor echoed his yell.

  Mira stood just near the doorway to the control room and the captain’s quarters. They’d only just run past when the door flew open, and there was only one possibility of who it could be. Other sailors started to close in, forcing them toward the back of the ship and the long bubbly wake created by the spinning propeller. They turned on their heels, backing away slowly and finally catching sight of someone standing on top of the control deck. Chucky squeezed his prisoner tight, sweating under the scrutiny of so many hateful eyes.

  “Maybe this wasn’t a good plan,” he fretted.

  “We’re there. Vern, don’t forget your promise. Go if you get the chance. The rest of you, stay with me,” Mira said.

  From around the corner, Crimshaw strode to confront them. His anger radiated from every inch of his skin, and his eyes seemed to smolder like lava. He pressed them back against the edge, flanked by a handful of soldiers. Still, there could’ve been many, many more. One of the soldiers raised his hand to them, making the air in between rupture in the hint of a vortex, but Crimshaw leapt to hold him back. The darkness in the air disappeared.

  “Don’t waste your time. Look at who they’re cowering behind.”

  His speech embodied writhing displeasure, taking deep, fuming breaths. As long as they had their prisoner, there would be no easy way for him to dispose of them.

  “There’s no escape!” he shouted. “You’re in the middle of the ocean. You should’ve been incinerated the second you stepped on board, but now you’re here. How did you know to find the one person of the hundreds on board who could save your skin?”

  The farm master hobbled up alongside his seething captain. Chucky started to twitch, deeply affected by the betrayal. Mira set her hand on his arm to calm him as she moved alongside him.

  “Because when right is on your side, the pieces always fall into place,” she scolded him. “There’s nothing you can do now. We’ve already won. Just stand down and accept your failure.”

  “Oh, that’s rich!” Crimshaw laughed. “We’ll have to do this the hard way, but it’ll be done nonetheless.”

  Crimshaw rolled up his sleeves and stepped forward. The others pressed closer, and the one on the roof hopped down to cover the side. Mira stood confidently, even as she knew they would never beat them in a fight.

  “It’s all come down to this,” Crimshaw sneered just a few feet away.

  “Yes, it has.”

  Reaching into her pocket, Mira removed her father’s snow globe. Holding it high in the air where it caught the sun, she growled as she threw it down at the deck. The glass smashed into a thousand pieces, but the ball of mist instantly expanded into a massive cloud that permeated every inch of the ship’s surface. No one could see anything but the hanging white haze in front of their eyes.

  Vern, his arms crossed against his chest, fell backward over the rear railing. Mira grabbed Aoi and Chucky, pulling them forward through the dense cloud. They slipped by their pursuers, Chucky dragging his prisoner along with them. Even though they couldn’t see a thing, Mira guided them back toward the doorway under the navigation room. Crimshaw roared amid the panicked voices of his other sailors.

  The mist started to clear by the time they ran across the short hallway and into the captain’s chamber. Finally able to see again, they closed the door, which only had a flimsy latch to keep it shut. Scanning the floor, Mira reached down and yanked away the rug, revealing a small hatch and a ladder right in the middle of it.

  Crimshaw looked over the back of the boat, where Vern easily tore away the crumbling grate to the ventilation shaft. He slipped inside a second later, leaving Crimshaw to pound his fist against the metal railing and storm away.

  “Hold the door, Chucky!” Mira shouted at the sound of the Crimshaw’s first hammering bangs, and Chucky, pressing the man flat against the door, exerted all the force he could to keep it shut.

  Mira and Aoi slipped down the hatch to the dark room below. A long metal tube ran right along the middle of it. Brushing her hand along the outside of it, Mira searched for bolts, and when she found them she pulled a screwdriver from her pocket.

  “I can’t, Mira!” Chucky screamed against the rattling door. The battered and squished prisoner seemed entirely unresponsive.

  “Keep holding!” Mira shouted as she tried to dig the screwdriver under the first bolt.

  “Excuse me,” Aoi interjected, shoving Mira away. She slammed her fist down along the seam in the metal, separating the two sheets. Reaching into the opening and pulling against one of the sheets, she tore away the entire panel. As it flew away, it revealed Vern huddling in the cramped tube.

  “Come on, let’s go!” he urged.

  Mira slid into the tube, shimmying to the end where another grate looked down on the shiny metal engine room and the fiend who powered it. Chucky’s scream echoed through the tube to her ears. Carefully, Mira pulled out her mother’s tiny bottle. It made a distinct popping sound when she pulled out the cork. Her eyes hung on its tip as she tilted the bottle in front of her, watching the liquid seep its way to the opening.

  “For all the tears you’ve caused my family, it’s time you reap what you sow.”

  A few drops dribbled from the bottle, falling through the grate and splattering onto Arent’s head and neck. Those drops possessed the power of Jeana Ipswich, and they would render Arent perfectly and unquestionably unconscious.

  Mira lifted the grate and slipped it under her legs. Vern was right behind her, and she nodded to him when she swung herself down into the large room below. Her landing just in front of the sleeping giant was as soft as a feather. A second later, Vern had stepped out onto the ceiling upside down.

  “Chucky!” Aoi called from the shaft’s torn section.

  Holes had already been broken through the door, and Chucky gratefully dove from it to the hatch. As he sailed down, the door flew open, Crimshaw standing there in front of his personal quarters. Stepping to the edge of the hatch, he saw Aoi slip into the tunnel and seal the metal sheets shut behind her.

  Once Chucky and Aoi finally made it safely down into the engine room, they turned to stare at their nemesis, Arent, known as the Savior to his coerced followers and the Warlord to his enemies. They had figured out his inauspicious origins and his pitiful life from their former teacher, Ogden Fortst. There he was before them, immobilized by the pillars and orbs that drained his energy and unconscious from the tears of the woman whose child he had stolen.

  Now that they’d finally made it, none of them could think for the flood of emotions rendered from his unspeakable actions. His hands had destroyed their homes, the society they were a part of, and the practices of their people. And for what? To quench his unyielding belief that the best way to get revenge for his isolated and forsaken life was to force it on those who had spurned him.

  But precious time was ticking away, and it would not be long before Crimshaw and the others made it to the engine room door.

  “And now we kill him, right? Isn’t that what we came for?” Vern asked, his voice warbling.

  “We can’t kill him,” Mira replied, stepping right in front of Arent’s still and restrained body. “This ship has no sails, remember? We’d be stranded out in the middle of the ocean if he didn’t take us home. No, he has to live, but what we came here for is this.”

  Extending a trembling hand, Mira reached for the collar of his robe and sliced it with the thin blade in her other hand. The fabric tore away, parting to reveal his chest all the way down to his solar plexus. Entrenched within his skin was a diamond cylinder, surrounded by knotted and rough scar tissue trying in vain to heal around this foreign obtrusion. Vern and Aoi leered closer to get a better look at this astonishing artifact. It was all right there, the carafe shard containing a piece of the power deemed greatest by the one who had them all.

  “Do you r
eally think once we take it out he won’t be able to see into people and control them anymore?” Chucky asked.

  “We’ll have to see. Take this in case he starts to stir,” Mira said to Vern, handing him the bottle of sleeping tears and pointing him up closer to the brute.

  “It dramatically expanded his own gift, and his energy reacted with the gifts of those he killed. That’s how he made the Earth stop spinning. It makes me think, what would it do to my gift?” said Aoi breathlessly.

  Mira, taking the thin knife, made the first cut around the outside of the short circular shard. Arent twitched, and Vern doused him with a few more drops. Soon Mira, cringing, was hacking away at his skin, trying to dislodge this piece that looked wide enough to fit around her forearm. Vern came down from behind Arent and rejoined Aoi and Chucky. He had used most of the bottle, and now nothing would awake Arent.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Chucky moaned, but still he couldn’t look away.

  Blood covered her fingers as Mira grabbed ahold of the diamond shard and tried to pull it loose. Making a disturbing squish, it started to jar, and soon she was sliding it out of its body. The buried half was covered in blood, and she discovered it had a jagged point when it broke free. It was a wonder it hadn’t killed him.

  Full of astonishment and disbelief, Mira turned to her friends as the shard came free in her hands. From just a glance, a bright flash forced its way into her mind, leading to a trampling procession of images, memories, and feelings, none of which were her own. A scream escaped her lips, and she threw her hands in the air, flinging away the shard so she could put her hands to her head. The diamond clattered against the ground and rolled away.

  Her eyelids twitching, the flood of foreign thoughts lodged itself in her mind. She had passed her eyes over Vern, Aoi, and Chucky for only an instant, and yet she had been given access to their deepest thoughts, their most painful memories, and their greatest fears. From Vern, a raft of insecurities lay just beneath his tranquil exterior. Sexual frustrations, fears of being unimportant, things he had never given mention of to anyone were crystal clear in Mira’s mind. She could see that he cared deeply for Aoi, but it tore him up to see her exceed him.