The Awakening

by K. E. Ganshert

  I process the cryptic warning like a hiccup.

  Luka lets go of my waist and strides to the door.

  Clarity comes like a glass of ice water to the face. He means to go without me. He’s going to leave me behind. I take a step toward him, but Cap grabs my arm.

  Gabe unlocks the bolt.

  The splash of metaphorical water morphs into a wave, or maybe a tsunami. He can’t go out there alone, unprotected. “Luka!”

  He turns around, his eyes full of apology. “You’re safer here.”

  I attempt to yank my arm free, but Cap’s grip is unnaturally strong. “Luka, don’t leave!” Splitting up is a horrible idea. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. I have this sudden, sinking dread that he won’t return. That we will never see each other again. “Luka, please!”

  He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t seem to hear me at all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rarities

  Cap hands me off to Gabe. No matter how much I twist and pull, I am not strong enough to escape his unyielding grip on my arm. He drags me behind Cap’s wheelchair and doesn’t let go until we reach the small cafeteria. And even then, he lets go very slowly, as if gauging to see whether or not I will turn around and bolt toward the exit. I’d try if I wasn’t positive he would catch me and drag me back again.

  After a subtle nod from Cap, Gabe pivots around and returns from where we came. A sense of hopelessness sinks like an anchor through my chest. Base, it turns out, is no longer base at all, but a prison. One with no sunlight and no Luka. What if he never returns? What if he’s caught by the police or killed by a criminal? What if he finally comes to his senses, and now that I’m safe, decides to return to Thornsdale and live the normal life I’ve been urging him to live? That last option should make me rejoice, but I am a selfish creature. The thought of never seeing him again turns breathing into an impossible task.

  I’m so lost in my frantic storm of what-ifs that it takes several beats before I realize the cafeteria has fallen into silence. I am the new girl all over again. Everyone stares at me, sandwiched between Cap and little Rosie. The thick scent of garlic hangs in the air. I haven’t eaten anything since continental breakfast early this morning. I should be past the point of hungry. But I can’t drum up even a hint of appetite.

  Cap rolls ahead, nodding for me to follow. When we reach the makeshift counter, he hands me a tray. The person behind the counter serves us each a tong-full of noodles, a ladle of marinara sauce, a slice of garlic bread, and an empty plastic cup. Rosie and I follow Cap as he wheels to a faucet that looks more like an outdoor hose spigot. He fills his cup, then wheels away to sit with Sticks and Non without a single word of comfort or explanation. I eye the door, wondering if now’s the time to make my escape. Maybe I can slip out unnoticed and find a way to get past Gabe.

  Rosie fills up my cup, then hers, and snags my attention with a nudge. I follow her to the largest of all the tables, where the boy named Link leans back in his chair, the front two legs tipped off the floor. Claire sits beside him, looking regal with her long straight nose and her white-blonde braid. Rosie takes a seat between a large, swarthy boy with a unibrow and a girl with a nose as large and pointy as a rat’s. I take the open spot beside Link, which has Claire eying me like vermin just sat down at the table. It’s hard to care when I’m so preoccupied with my own turmoil. Since Luka broke me out of the Edward Brooks Facility a week ago, we’ve only been apart once, and that was for a frantic five-minute span when I tried running away. Being without him now, his warning still fresh in my ear, has me questioning which way is up.

  Don’t reveal too much.

  Does he not trust these people? The medicine from the pills still runs through my veins, which means he can feel and see things I cannot currently feel and see. But then, why would he leave me with people he doesn’t trust? If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that Luka cares about my safety. He wouldn’t have left if he thought I was in danger. So then, what did he mean by his warning?

  Link tips his chair down so all four legs hit the ground. “Where’s your guy friend?”

  “Um …”

  “He left to check out of the hotel they were staying at.” Rosie sticks a forkful of noodles into her mouth and chews enthusiastically.

  I watch Link for a reaction—anything that might tell me whether or not I’m overreacting about Luka’s departure, but all he does is nod toward the swarthy boy across from him. “That’s Jose. And that’s Jilly-bean. You already know Claire.”

  “It’s Jillian, actually.” The girl with the rat-like nose gives Link a good-natured eye roll, then studies me with such exuberance, I’m reminded of Leela. How is my friend? Did she get caught helping us? I’ll never be able to forgive myself if she did. “It’s great to finally see a fresh face. Things can get pretty monotonous around here.”

  “Things were fine the way they were,” Claire says.

  I ignore the barb and glance at the door, willing Luka to walk through, but I know it’s a foolish hope. He’s probably not even reached the tattoo parlor on the street corner yet. I pick up a fork and twist noodles around my plate as the pricks and prods of curious onlookers slowly melt away.

  Jillian sets her elbows on the table. “So what’s your gifting?”

  “Um—my gifting?”

  “Yeah. Are you a Guardian or a Fighter?”

  The question reminds me of a dream I had a long time ago. Wrestling one of those white-eyed men off the Golden Gate Bridge. He called me a fighter as we tumbled through the air. Is this what I am? “I—I guess I don’t know what you mean.”

  Rosie swallows a big bite. Her plate is almost empty. “Up until a little bit ago, she didn’t even know what a Cloak was. I don’t think she really knows anything.”

  Had anyone besides Rosie made the statement, I would have resented it. I know some things. To prove my point, I start a mental list. The supernatural realm is real. Luka and I are part of The Gifting. There are others, which we have found. There are regular folk who believe, like Dr. Roth and Dr. Carlyle, who call themselves believers. I bite my lip, searching for more. Okay, so maybe Rosie is more right than I want her to be. My list is sparse.

  “There’s no shame in not knowing,” Jillian says, wrapping her fingers around her glass. “None of us knew much when we came. But you’ll learn quick enough. At least if Sticks and Non have anything to say about it.”

  I pull off a piece of garlic bread, roll it into a small, dense ball between my fingers, and force it in my mouth. I may be too adrenaline-logged for an appetite, but that doesn’t mean my body doesn’t still need sustenance. I glance at the table Cap sits with Non and Sticks. Their heads are bent close together. Luka said not to reveal much, but he never warned against asking questions.

  “What are you?” I ask Jillian.

  “Just a Shield.”

  “Oh come on, Jilly-bean. You’re not just a shield.” Link flicks some bread crust at her. It lands in front of Rosie, who picks it up and pops it in her mouth without missing a beat. “It’s an important job.”

  “Not as important as fighting.” There’s no shame or longing in her words, simply matter-of-fact resignation—as though what she says is fact and there’s no refuting it. “Claire and Jose are the only underage Fighters at the hub.”

  “Jose’s not a very good one,” Claire teases.

  He smirks at his tray. “We can’t all be like you.”

  Jillian forks what’s left of her noodles onto Rosie’s empty plate. “The rest of us are Guardians. Our role is to protect, not fight.”

  “I thought you said you were a Shield.”

  “I am. A Shield is a type of Guardian. The most common. That’s what Rosie and I are.” Jillian smiles at her young friend with the robust appetite. Perhaps there’s something to be said about sunlight and metabolism. “With the proper training, we can shield Fighters against attack.”

  This explains things. Neither Luka nor I understood why our gifting manife
sted itself so differently. Well, now I do. We’re different types—I’m a Fighter and he’s a Shield. “What are the other kinds?”

  “You know about Cloaks,” Rosie says around her last mouthful.

  “We only have two. Anna and Fray.” Jillian points across the cafeteria. “They’re over there.”

  I follow the direction of her finger. At the smallest table sits a woman with gray, coarse hair pulled back into a messy bun. It looks as though she slept on it and never bothered to redo it. A man, considerably younger, sits across from her, looking every inch his name. Neither of them talk. They both stare off into space with a dazed-sort of expression, like they’ve forgotten something and are concentrating really hard on recalling what it is. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with them,” Claire says. “They’re working.”

  “They’re always working.” Link flicks his head, a quick gesture that shakes shaggy bangs from his eyes. “It’s why we’re looking for more. It’s been a tough search. Cloaks are a rarity. And dead useful, too.”

  I break off another piece of bread and roll it into a ball, remembering what Rosie said on the tour guide. Something about how they hide us from the other side.

  Jillian leans over the table. “Imagine being constantly distracted. A part of their mind has to be aware of their job at all times. Carrying on a conversation with them can be …”

  Link’s mouth curls up in the corners. “Entertaining.”

  I look over my shoulder and study them openly. I could probably stare for hours and they wouldn’t notice. “How do they sleep?”

  “Not very well,” Rosie says, her eyes on my mound of uneaten spaghetti.

  I scoot it over to her. “So that’s it—Shields and Cloaks?”

  “There’s one more type of Guardian, but they’re even rarer than Cloaks.” Jillian’s words seem to send a ripple of excitement around the table. “They’re called Keepers.”

  “Created for the sole purpose of protecting one person,” Link says. “When they find that one person, they don’t have to be trained or taught. Their powers come like a reaction.”

  Goose bumps march across my arms.

  Claire rolls her eyes. It’s not nearly as good-natured as Jillian’s. “Link calls them ‘soul mates’.”

  Jillian clasps her hands beneath her chin and sighs. “I think it’s romantic.”

  I run my teeth over my bottom lip and touch the hemp bracelet around my wrist—the one Luka put there. “Why are Keepers so rare?”

  “Because,” Jillian’s eyes dance, “only the most powerful Fighters have them.”

  *

  Jose has dish duty. After dinner, he heads to the kitchen. I stack my tray on a cart that a girl with dishwater-blonde dreads and a small diamond nose ring rolls around, then follow my dinner-mates through the hub with nerves that grow increasingly jumpy. I’m the strangest combination of bereft and giddy. It’s true when they say knowledge equals power. After what I learned in the cafeteria, I feel like I have a handful of it in my back pocket.

  And I want more.

  My thoughts circle around the dinner conversation like hungry buzzards as we meander toward the common room. Keepers don’t have to be trained. Nobody trained Luka when he protected me with that strange force field. But only the most powerful Fighters have Keepers, so there’s no way Luka can be one. His ability to protect me without training is simply a matter of Luka being Luka. There’s nothing he’s not good at. Take football, for example. He wasn’t even on the team back in Thornsdale and yet he could throw further than the varsity quarterback.

  When we arrive, Jillian introduces me to the five I haven’t yet met—three girls, one of whom is the dishwater blonde with dreads. Her name is Ellen. Then there’s a scrawny boy named Bass (like the fish) with eyes as hard as marbles, and a fiery-headed freckled kid named Declan whose resemblance is so uncannily similar to Dustin O’Malley back in Jude I’m reminded of the séance that started everything—my family’s cross-country move to Thornsdale, appointments with Dr. Roth at the Edward Brooks Facility. Meeting Luka.

  I nod hello to all of them, but am unable to keep up any resemblance of a coherent conversation. Perhaps they will mistake me for a Cloak. I keep peeking at Gabe and the door, trying to guess how much time has passed. I find a spot on a couch furthest away from the hubbub and let my conflicted thoughts wander in disjointed circles. I shouldn’t want Luka to come back. In light of all this supernatural talk, I should be praying him onto the next Greyhound bus back to Thornsdale. But his absence has left a physical ache inside my chest. I stare so intently at the door, I don’t bother checking to see who sits next to me when the cushion sinks with weight.

  “Do you have x-ray vision?” The question belongs to Link.

  “Is x-ray vision part of The Gifting?”

  “You have no idea how much I wish it were.”

  I let out a tense breath, an attempt at laughter.

  “He’ll be back, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I shouldn’t want him to be.”

  Link raises his eyebrows.

  Don’t reveal too much. Those were Luka’s instructions. How can I possibly unpack my statement to Link without doing exactly that? I bury my face in my hands and attempt to recover the fumble. “He should wait to come back until morning. Detroit isn’t a very safe place to wander around at night.” Never mind the supernatural realm and whatever forces of evil exist within it, there are real-life, tangible dangers up there on those streets—including but not limited to muggers and gang members. “How do we know he hasn’t been stabbed and robbed, left to bleed out in some abandoned alleyway?”

  “Now there’s a morbid thought.”

  “What’s a morbid thought?”

  I remove my hands from my face.

  Jillian leans between us, her elbows propped on the backrest of the couch.

  “Tess is worried her boyfriend has been stabbed to death.”

  “Boyfriend?” Jillian hops over the back of the couch like a female Jack-be-nimble and sits cross-legged on the other side of Link. “Tell me more so that I can live vicariously through you.”

  “Luka and I aren’t—we’re not exactly …” A slow burn moves its way from my cheeks into my ears. “He’s not my boyfriend.” We may have used that excuse in Thornsdale as a cover up for our unusual relationship, but there’s no reason for that here. Sure, we’ve kissed a couple times—a thought that makes the burn creep up into my forehead—but that’s always been in the wake of an extreme bout of relief. Luka relieved to see me after we broke into Shady Wood. Luka relieved that his nightmare wasn’t real. Relief and attraction are easily confused things. We spent the night together alone in a motel room, followed by an entire day, most of which was spent sitting in the same bed. He never tried kissing me then.

  Jillian looks disappointed.

  I scratch the inside of my wrist, then pull my sleeves over my hands. Off to one side of the common room, Rosie stands as one point of a three-person triangle, kicking a Hacky Sack into the air with Declan and Bass. Ellen sits off in the corner, reading a book. Claire and the other two girls huddle around the television. Sticks and Non pop up on the screen. Number one and number two on FBI’s Most Wanted List. Link lets out a whoop, like it’s a funny joke.

  “So what are you?” I never got around to inquiring about his gifting over dinner.

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He props his arm along the backrest of the couch. “What do you think I am?”

  I look him up and down. “You’re too cognizant to be a Cloak. Jillian didn’t include you with the Shields or the Fighters …” I shrug, at a loss. Surely if he were a Keeper, someone would have said so when the topic arose over plates of spaghetti.

  “Link’s a complete freak,” Jillian says.

  He picks up a pillow and whaps her in the face. “I prefer one of a kind.”

  “Does your kind have a name?”

  “Andrew.”

 
; “Huh?”

  “My name’s not really Link. It’s Andrew.”

  “So why are you called Link?”

  “Because that’s what I do—I link people.”

  I must look every bit as confused as I feel, because Jillian rushes to explain. “Fighters can only cover a certain amount of area. The more powerful the Fighter, the more territory they can cover.”

  “Imagine it like this.” Link holds out his left hand, palm up. “If Claire’s here, in Detroit, she can’t fight in New York. She can’t even fight in Chicago. Fighters are bound by geography. But let’s say you have two fighters. One in Detroit, another in Chicago.” He holds out his right hand, palm up, then brings both hands together. “I can link them. That way, they can cross over into each other’s territories and help each other fight.”

  “A lot more ground is covered,” Jillian says.

  “And that’s only the tippity-top of the iceberg. I have many more skills up my sleeve.”

  Another memory wiggles into consciousness. It’s from a dream not too long ago, when I watched Pete nearly lose his life in a car pile-up. Off in the distance, I saw somebody else fighting against the evil causing the mayhem. Did somebody link us? And who was the Fighter? “Are you sure you’re the only one?”

  “The only one down here.” Link shrugs. “The best thing about being me? I’m completely under the radar. I can link to kingdom come and the other side has no idea what’s going on. They don’t seem to notice me as part of The Gifting at all. I’m like an undercover agent for the good guys.”

  “Link thinks he’s invincible,” Jillian says.

  “I don’t think, Jilly-bean. I know.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Reunited

  The longer Luka’s absence, the stronger my anxiety. The news ends. The Hacky Sack circle grows. Link moves from my couch to Claire’s. The two flirt the same way Luka and Summer used to flirt, back when I was the new girl at Thornsdale. Jillian scoots over to where Link was sitting and explains the hub’s social hierarchy while I half-listen.