by Jeff Sampson
Spreading his arms wide, Mr. Handler stood up straight. “Me, Emily. Or I should say, Us. I am the only living human who has merged with our true lords. I am blessed to provide the host body for his soul, his ka. I am his receptacle, his escape from a world that is dying. In exchange, he provides me with power and knowledge that will help propel humanity forward. And at times of great emergency, he deigns to let me use some of his power.”
“Praise them,” Mr. Savage said, nodding slowly from where he stood behind the desk.
Mr. Handler went on. “People like us, Emily—hosts for the gods and our vesper creations—are the future. We are the brightest stars in a sea of miserable black holes, and we shall lead the way for any who care to follow.”
I sat there for a moment. Silent. Considering what he’d said. I had to give it to the man—the words he spoke crackled with promise and salvation. No wonder a bunch of otherwise rational scientists fell prey to him and to the Akhakhu.
Too bad I wasn’t about to buy any of his crap.
“So what you’re saying,” I said slowly, “is that your special Akhakhu—the good ones—just want to possess people too. Only it’s a good possession, right?”
Mr. Handler lowered his hands. Annoyance flashed for just a moment on his features. “No, that’s not—”
I started walking slowly toward him across the luxe carpet.
“I mean, it couldn’t possibly be that your Akhakhu companion is only letting you have control now—or even pretending to be you—to whip people up into a frenzy about the possibility of being more than human, so they’ll be willingly taken over. Like my friend Evan’s mom. You know her, right? She went nuts, made up rituals, stabbed a man?” I stood chest to chest with Handler, reaching my arms around his torso so I could slam my hands on his desk. I looked him directly in the eye. “Right?”
He glared at me. I glared back. His eyes flicked away, losing him the win of our staring competition.
The man’s expression softened. “I’d like to show you something,” he said.
I took my hands off the desk, stood up straight, and crossed my arms. “What’s that?”
Mr. Handler snapped his fingers. Startled, Mr. Savage twisted his glasses, then sat down in the leather desk chair. He fumbled with the lid of an ornate gold box embedded into the polished wood, then got it open and pressed the button inside.
A whirring noise sounded behind him. He and Mr. Handler turned to watch as the bookcases that stood there slid to the side, revealing a series of monitors. They showed images from throughout the building—people working in offices, mostly. I thought I caught sight of someone who might be Tracie, but the image shifted, taking the girl or woman out of view.
Mr. Savage tapped at a keyboard in front of the computer monitor. “Ah, yes, just one moment.”
With a click of one last button, the images on the monitor changed. Instead of multiple camera views it was just one, blown up to fill all the screens.
At first I didn’t know what I was looking at. It looked like an ancient stone archway with vines and tree trunks growing out of it. But the image gradually became clearer and I could see two rings within the arch, spinning slowly. And the branches and vines were neither—they were inky black, tendrilous wires swooping out and connecting to massive machinery inset on the walls.
“This is my portal,” Mr. Handler said. “The one inside BioZenith is inadequate, a pale imitation of the one I discovered here in Volmond that started everything. With our machinery installed around the portal we can pass back and forth between the dimensions, though of course our gods are sadly incapable.”
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked.
He turned away from the monitor and smiled down at me. “You’ll know in good time, Emily. But first, you must do us a favor.”
Backing away from him, I threw my arms into the air. “A favor! How about you show me my friends are actually safe first? How about you tell me why you kidnapped us all, and where my family is? Or better yet, let me go, then I’ll gladly do you a favor.”
Mr. Handler shook his head. “I can’t do that, Emily. As you’ve experienced, there are factions outside these walls that have their own agendas. I can’t let you fall into their hands, not when you’re so important. Now that we know you exist, we can’t let you out of our sight. You will stay here.”
“But—”
“You will stay here,” Mr. Handler repeated, his voice growing loud, thunderous. “And you will give us a detailed account of everything that happened to you from the moment you discovered your enhanced abilities. I must know everything you’ve seen and experienced before we proceed with…well, we’ll discuss that at a future time. Once your account is written, then I will give you more answers than I have already so graciously done.”
I took in a long, shaky breath. Then exhaled. In and out, again and again, just like with Tracie behind the bleachers.
“No,” I said.
“No?” Mr. Handler asked, raising his eyebrows.
“You heard me,” I said. I crossed my arms. “And you’re lucky I’ve seen what your possessor can do or I’d take you down right here.”
He grinned. “Ah, yes, that’s our alpha. The killer.”
“I’m not a—” I started to protest.
Mr. Handler snapped his fingers. “Savage!”
The tiny man leaped out of the boss’s chair and raced around the desk to Mr. Handler’s side. “Yes, sir?”
“Get Limon. Have her assign Emily a new home. And I’m putting you in charge of making her…agreeable.”
Mr. Savage glanced at me and then swallowed nervously. “Me?”
The white-haired man slapped his lackey on the back. “Of course! Who else here knows her as well as you do? And if you succeed, know that you will have my favor.”
Nodding rapidly, Mr. Savage said, “Ah, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
The squirrelly faux counselor took me gently by the arm, and I let him. I turned purposefully away from Mr. Handler the cult leader and let myself be led back down the center of the room to the door where my gurney still sat.
“I’ll be seeing you soon!” Mr. Handler called after us.
I didn’t respond.
22
RECESS
They called my accommodations my new “room.” But my room had a bed that wasn’t a hard, twin-size mattress covered with gray sheets. My room had a desk with a computer connected to the internet, not a glorified word processer screwed into a tabletop that they hoped I’d use to tell them my life story. My room had DVDs and a TV and yellow curtains and a stuffed toy dog named Ein.
This room—this cell—had a fake window made up of a glowing panel that showed different outdoor scenes. It was the only thing I had to watch—while they watched me from the camera in the corner opposite my bed.
Yeah, no. Not my room at all.
I was led there by a woman in a suit-skirt combo, over which she wore a lab coat. Her brown hair was in a bun, and she wore glasses. It was all very cliché of her. While two of the blank-faced guards pointed their guns at me, she undid my cuffs and ushered me into bed.
And that’s where I spent the next few days.
I vaguely remembered different people coming to my door and trying to speak to me. But all I did was lie in bed and sleep. And when I couldn’t sleep, I’d stare at the blank gray wall opposite me and try not to think about what they were doing to my captive friends or how much my dad and stepmom would be worried about me.
I refused to look at the fake scenery out of my stupid fake window.
I didn’t eat at first, even though they provided some pretty decent meals. Even having been in stasis for a few weeks, I wasn’t trusting the food Vesper Company would serve me. It wasn’t until I found myself doubled over with ravenous hunger pangs that I stopped worrying about potential sedatives in the food and chowed down.
They also let me have a small, private bathroom with a shower and everything. When I got bored with all the wall staring an
d thinking, it was a nice respite to take off the thin button-up shirt and pajama pants they gave me to wear and climb into that shower, turn on the hot water, and let the jets scald my skin until a timer clicked and the shower turned itself off.
Still, each night when they asked if I’d written anything for Mr. Handler, reminding me that answers awaited only if I told him everything that happened to me, I refused.
Why? Partly because my first instinct was to resist being told what to do, especially by some guy who’d turned me into a Popsicle right when I was about to finally take down BioZenith. I had no idea why he wanted the information or what he planned to do with it, but it couldn’t be anything good.
It was also in part because I wanted to frustrate them into giving me more and more leeway to try and woo me into cooperating. Which would give me better chances to escape.
It worked.
After three days of refusing to do Mr. Handler his favor, they let me have a couple books to read. No one ever dared step fully into my cell without a bunch of armed guards—and, I mean, who could blame them—but it’s not like I wanted to hang out with them anyway.
They started feeding me five small meals a day, and better food, too—grilled chicken instead of boiled, roasted vegetables, garlic mashed potatoes. And that was just dinner.
Good books and good food. It was actually kind of nice after all the stress I’d gone through back at home. I found myself feeling actually comfortable, adapting to this new life—but all it took to keep me focused was remembering my friends were out there.
I needed out of that room.
The same woman who had put me in my cell the first day came to collect me at the end of my first week in captivity. She introduced herself again as Mrs. Lemon or Mrs. Limon or something like that.
“Enjoying the book?” she asked me from the doorway to my cell.
I stared at her and didn’t answer.
Clearing her throat, the woman gestured behind her. A younger man, also in a lab coat, scurried past her, dropped a pair of rubber-soled slippers next to my bed, then scampered out of the room as quickly as he could. He was clearly afraid of me.
“What are those for?” I asked.
Mrs. Lemon or whatever her name was smiled at me. “You’ve been cooped up in here for days now. We thought you might like some exercise.”
I could barely contain my grin.
I nodded in agreement. “I’d love to stretch my legs. Thanks.”
I slipped on the funny slippers and brushed past Mrs. Citrus Fruit into the bright, blank hallway. Of course, there were guards with guns waiting to escort me. I’d have been insulted if they didn’t think I was worth the trouble.
My entourage led me down several hallways to a pair of double doors, where the entire group stopped. Mrs. Limon and her skittish assistant opened the doors, and immediately cool, fresh air gusted through.
I stepped outside. I was in a big, square field surrounded on all sides by towering evergreens. It was a crisp, clear day, with cottony clouds swabbing clean a blue sky.
In the center of the clearing was what looked like an obstacle course. There were ropes and a rock wall to climb, tires to jump through, pipes to use as monkey bars.
The double doors slammed shut behind me and I heard a click as they locked. As they did, a hum sounded and all around the clearing a thin, almost transparent, mesh glowed with blue electricity for just a moment. The mesh was built inside glass walls that rose high up along the side of the five-story building I’d just exited.
I turned to study the wall of the Vesper Company facility, scanning everything to see if there was some path to freedom. There were lights inset in the wall, flush with the smooth bricks. I saw a few windows as well, but everything was designed so that the walls were a smooth surface—impossible to climb onto. At least for me. I wondered how they’d keep the telekinetic cheerleaders from hovering their way out.
“Hello, Emily.”
I spun, startled. Sitting in an old-fashioned leather armchair next to the doors, clutching a yellow legal pad and a fountain pen, was Mr. Savage.
I couldn’t help but clench my hands into fists. “What do you want?” I demanded.
He swallowed nervously, noticing my fists. “I, ah, uh, I’m just here to observe,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. Go ahead, run. Play.”
I considered going full hybrid, brutalizing the man, and then stealing his keycard. In the back of my Daytime mind, my Nighttime self urged me to do so. The wolf howled in agreement.
But it occurred to me that if they’d gone to such trouble to keep this square of land werewolf-proof, they weren’t going to give the man a key I could easily steal. Which explained the nervous sweat beading on his forehead—he was as trapped out here as I was.
Besides, this guy wasn’t Mr. Handler. Maybe I could weasel some information out of him.
“Oh, goody,” I said to Mr. Savage. “Recess! It was always my favorite subject.”
He gave an obliged chuckle, then coughed into his fist. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I hadn’t realized until that moment how stiff my body had felt since I was frozen, how atrophied and rickety. I cracked my knuckles and then ran forward and leaped. My hands grasped the first of the monkey bars and my feet swung forward. I let go of the bars and let my forward momentum lead me to the next and the next. I was across in a flash.
I glanced over at Mr. Savage. He scribbled furiously on his legal pad, consumed with detailing my movements. I dropped to the grass.
“So how do I compare to the other vespers?” I called out. “I beat their time?”
“The dev—ah, vespers—all made similar time on the monkey bars. You slightly edged out Tracie and Spencer, but were beat by Dal—” Clamping his mouth shut, he looked up at me.
I gaped back at him. “Dalton? Were you going to say ‘Dalton’?”
He shook his head. “No. Not at all. No.” My mouth shut and my surprised eyes narrowed into a glare. “Erm, maybe. Perhaps. Yes.”
Hands on my hip, I tilted my head. “How did he get back?”
The fidgety man crossed and uncrossed his legs, then crossed them again. He wiped his forehead with the back of his jacket sleeve.
“Vesper 0—ah, Evan Cooke—we managed to capture him in your home,” he finally said. “He came back from the other side in your room, where I gather you last saw him. Mr. Handler sent Evan through the portal to collect Dalton from the Rebel’s people. They were told if they did not return the boy, Mr. Handler would kill Rebel. So they complied.”
“Are they all right?” I asked.
Mr. Handler shrugged. “More or less.”
I let out a sigh of relief. So Spencer, Tracie, Dalton, and Evan were all here too, at least. And apparently Handler had a vested interest in keeping us alive if he made the effort to get Dalton back.
I turned away from Mr. Savage in his armchair and then bounded through the tires, my knees rising up to my chest as I bounced back and forth.
“Thanks for telling me,” I called. “You know, like I told Mr. Handler, you answer all my questions and maybe I’ll cooperate.”
“He felt that you might be more inclined to help us if you didn’t know their fates,” he called back. “That you, erm, might succumb to the worry.”
I leaped up and twisted in the air. I landed with one foot on either side of a tire’s rim, facing Mr. Savage.
“He doesn’t know me at all,” I said. “Maybe the old Emily might have writhed in worry. But after all that I’ve been through? I just get mad. You don’t want me mad, do you?”
He shook his head.
“Cool, I didn’t think so. So tell me, who else is here at Camp Vesper?”
Clearing his throat, he flipped through the pages of his legal pad. “All of the deviants have been taken—the vespers of branches A and B.”
So the wolves and the cheerleaders.
“One non-vesper is also being held captive. A Patrick Kelly.”
“Patrick?
” I asked. “Why him?”
Mr. Savage looked back up at me and let his pages flop down. “Ah, well, he spent a lot of time with Rebel’s host body, who we’ve surmised had some sort of cross-dimensional link to Rebel for a time. He may have information that can help us squash the rebellion.”
Poor Patrick. To think he only ever got involved in all this because I thought he was hot and mistook him for a werewolf.
I dropped down from the tire and made my way to the base of the rock-climbing wall. Dusting off my hands, I jumped up and gripped two of the hard plastic nubs. My feet found purchase below, and I started to ascend.
“What about our parents?” I shouted as I stretched my arm high to grab another fake rock.
“They were questioned and released,” Mr. Savage said. “They were…convinced to let us hold you. But they’re safe and at home.”
“Convinced, huh?” I muttered under my breath.
I hated that the last I’d seen of my dad I’d been so angry, so unlike myself. And I hated that Mr. Handler and his cultists forced him to let them keep me here.
Once I got out of here, I was going to go home and give that man a big hug.
I surged up the wall, then thrust off with my legs. I flew through the air—and grabbed on to the climbing rope that dangled from a tall pole. Shimmying down, I tried to think what to do with what little information I’d gotten out of my observer.
I walked back to Mr. Savage and said, “I think I’m done for the day.”
Standing up, he flung his pen and pad on the armchair behind him. “Good. I hope you enjoyed yourself.” He wiped his sweating forehead once more. “You, ah, wouldn’t happen to want to give us your account now? Now that I’ve told you the fate of your friends.”
Crossing my arms, I smirked at the man. “Nah.”
He blinked at me. “Why not?”
“Well, you see, I was all set to destroy BioZenith, and you guys took that away from me. But I also never would have had to deal with that, would still be a normal girl and my friends would all be safe, if you people hadn’t ordered BioZenith to create us in the first place.” I reached out and patted his shoulder. “You have a lot more to do to make all this up to me.”