The Awakening

by K. E. Ganshert

  He gives her a polite nod-smile combo that has Jillian’s cheeks turning the color of Leela’s favorite strawberry pink nail polish. Claire gives us each a ladle of colorless oatmeal, another of canned peaches, and Jillian leads us toward an empty table in the corner, away from the prying eyes of Danielle and Ashley.

  “Did you get the pill I left behind?”

  I nod, keeping my gaze pinned on the back of Jillian’s off-white sweatshirt, thankful we reach the table before he has a chance to ask whether or not I took said pill. Breakfast is as tasteless as it looks. The only edible way to eat the meal is by mixing the peaches with the oatmeal, and while this makes the oatmeal cold, at least it’s not quite so flavorless.

  Once all the trays are stacked on the cart and everyone begins filtering out of the cafeteria, Non pulls Luka and I aside to give us the rundown—explaining the cycle of daily duties and the rules for all underage students. She puts extra emphasis on no purpling after lights out, which makes me suspect Cap told her that he found Luka in my room last night. She explains that training will be in the afternoon, then leads us down the corridor into one of the classrooms, where Sticks stands up front lecturing glassy-eyed teenagers. He barely pauses as we find empty seats at a table.

  While my new bean-pole-of-a-teacher talks about some obscure war I’ve never heard of before, Luka twirls a pencil around the tip of his thumb. I try to listen to Sticks, but I’m much more intrigued by him than his words. In all my martial arts training, I’ve never once seen a man as tall as him in the dojo. His slacks stop short of his ankles, acting more like high waters than pants. I’m sure he has to make do with whatever clothes they can scrounge up and these are the longest they have. I try to imagine one of his long legs doing a round-house kick, but I can’t picture it. Still, he must be a good Fighter if he’s the one who does the training.

  The question is—what, exactly, are we training for?

  *

  Morning classes drag into lunch. Jillian invites Luka and I to sit at the largest table in the cafeteria with Link and Claire and Jose. There’s still no sign of Rosie. I stuff my mouth with peanut butter and jelly sandwich and carrot sticks, as if the quicker I eat, the faster the meal will end. All it gets me is a stomachache and time to spare. Nobody besides me seems to be in a hurry to start training.

  My leg begins to jiggle.

  Perhaps in an attempt to calm me, Luka places his palm over my knee. And while it’s the opposite of calming, it definitely distracts me from training. My not-boyfriend is touching the inside of my thigh. It has me sitting up straighter. Sucking in my stomach. Impossibly aware of the subtle way his thumb moves back and forth, stirring up heat in places that don’t need to be stirred. Conversation floats about—all-too-normal-teenage banter that Luka joins when prompted. Me? I’m zeroed in on other things. Like what Jillian would say if she looked underneath the table. And not letting my eyes roll into the back of my head. If this goes on for much longer, I might melt into a puddle on the floor.

  Finally, Non rolls around the cart collecting trays while Anna and Fray slip out unnoticed. Jillian excuses herself for cleanup in the kitchen. Luka removes his hand, but the impression he leaves behind remains. I begin to fidget—with my napkin, with Luka’s hemp bracelet, with a hangnail I’ve found on my thumb. Do Fighters report to one room and Shields to another? Will Luka and I be given further instruction? By the time Sticks approaches our table with his long lanky stride, I’m sitting ramrod straight, raring to go.

  “Need my services today?” Link asks him.

  “Not today, I’m afraid,” Sticks says.

  Claire and Jose exchange disappointed looks.

  “I hear I’ll be getting a new student soon.” Sticks may tip his chin at me, but all eyes turn to Luka. Apparently, if one of the newbies is a Fighter, I’m not the likely candidate. “I look forward to seeing what you’re made of, Tess.”

  There’s a beat of shocked silence as Sticks’ comment sinks in, and then …

  “Wait—you’re a Fighter?”

  I look Claire straight in her disbelieving face with my chin slightly raised. I can’t tell if she’s more shocked or appalled. There’s definitely a healthy dose of both.

  “Cap says once the medicine you’ve been taking leaves your system, you’ll join us for training.”

  My posture wilts. I’d hoped to join them today.

  “What do you do for training?” Luka asks.

  “Looks like you’ll get to find out this afternoon,” I say dejectedly.

  “I don’t mean Shield training. I mean Fighter training.”

  Luka’s words have everyone’s attention sliding in my direction. My face blossoms with heat.

  “The two aren’t so different. A lot of the same concepts, anyway.” Sticks gives my shoulder a paternal squeeze, then nods at his young apprentices. Jose and Claire follow him out of the cafeteria. To where, I haven’t a clue. Non pushes the cart of trays into the kitchen, then collects the Shields. Luka doesn’t budge.

  “You should go,” I say. “Maybe you can finally learn how to throw that force field thing you’ve been trying to throw.”

  My words hit their mark. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  The question rubs me the wrong way. What does Luka think—that I can’t survive without him for an afternoon? He sure didn’t have a problem leaving me last night. “I’ll be fine.”

  He gives me one last lingering look, then follows after Non and the rest of them. All that remains is the clatter of trays and the spray of water coming from the kitchen, and my one-and-only tablemate. Link folds his hands behind his head and leans back in his chair. “Tess the Fighter, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  He wags his eyebrows at me. “Care to join me for a little research?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Plan

  Link spreads his arms wide. “Welcome to my lair.”

  We are standing inside the computer lab Rosie showed me and Luka during our tour—the room with the password-protected computers and other unidentifiable gadgetry with wires running every which way. “How’d you get all this stuff?”

  Link plops onto a desk chair with a gash on the seat. The force rolls him and the chair toward the piece de resistance in the center of the lab. A Rubik’s Cube sits by the keyboard.

  “Not without a lot of effort and planning.” He boots up the large supercomputer and the screen glows to life. “Dr. Carlyle’s a big help. Rosie and Bass, too.”

  “I don’t understand why Cap lets the two smallest and youngest people at the hub go above ground.” You’d think he’d send someone like Jose or Gabe. I can’t imagine too many would dare hassle them on the streets. Rosie and Bass on the other hand? It’s a wonder they have made it this long.

  “It’s because they have the most street smarts.” The screen, now fully lit, casts an ethereal glow onto Link’s profile. He types a code onto the keyboard so quick it’s nothing but a flurry of finger movement. “And nobody’s looking for them. Bass and Rosie are wards of the state.”

  “Shouldn’t their social workers be looking for them, then?”

  “Them and a hundred other wards of the state. Before they came here, Rosie and Bass spent more time on the street than they did under a roof. Their social worker was never too concerned about it.” Link opens up a file.

  It’s a database. I’ve seen plenty while working with my dad. Safe Guard has a database for every affluent neighborhood in the United States, including what type of security system each resident uses. I spent many Saturdays looking through them, trying to help Dad identify potential customers. I take a step closer and squint over Link’s shoulder. “Who are you searching for?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” He punches enter. Name after name loads onto the screen. “It’s a list of all the patients currently at the Detroit Rehabilitation Center. A pretty innocuous name for what it really is, if you ask me.”

  “What is it really?”

  “Psych ward. Insane a
sylum. Living morgue. Take your pick. They definitely aren’t doing any rehabilitating, that’s for sure.”

  His words drum up a memory that’s never too far from the surface of my consciousness. Every time I shut my eyes, I can see them—lifeless bodies hooked to machines with atrophied muscles like Cap’s. “Luka and I broke into a place like that in Oregon.”

  Link swivels around, fascination twinkling in the honey-brown of his irises.

  I tell him the story about our break-in to Shady Wood, about finding my grandmother, our quick escape, and everything else in between. When I finish, his eyes no longer twinkle—they dance.

  “I can’t believe you got into Shady Wood.”

  “Yeah, well, they weren’t rehabilitating anyone either. Not by the looks of it.”

  “It’s the same thing that’s happening here in Detroit.”

  The very idea of another Shady Wood called by a different name has heat swirling inside my chest. It’s inhumane. It’s not right. I don’t care how crazy those people may be, they don’t deserve to have their lives drained away while they lie comatose on a bed. “Why don’t more people know about this?”

  “It’s not hard to hide what people don’t want to see.”

  “But if the public knew, if they saw, they’d do something about it.”

  A doubtful noise sounds from the back of Link’s throat.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “You’ve heard Cormack’s speeches, haven’t you? Our country is only as strong as our weakest members. The public eats it up. Everyone’s been brainwashed to shun abnormality, to stomp it out at the first hint.”

  “And we’re okay with that?” Seeing Link’s amused expression at my question riles me up. “I’m serious. The public deserves to know. And if you can really hack into anything, like Rosie says, then why can’t we hack into media channels and start raising awareness?”

  Link is grinning at me.

  “What?” I bark.

  “You’re going all Captain Janeway on me.”

  “Captain who?”

  He sets his palm against his chest, like I shot him in the heart. “Captain Janeway? From Star Trek Voyager?”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. I shake away the confusion, refusing to let myself be sidetracked. “A major injustice has been brought to our attention. You don’t think we have an obligation to do something about it?”

  “Oh, I do. I’m more on board than you know. I just think we should teach you to fly before you captain that Starfleet.” His smile widens, revealing a deep (and charming) set of dimples. “Ready for your first lesson?”

  I pull up a chair and park myself beside him.

  He threads his fingers together and cracks his knuckles, looking borderline giddy, as if this were some giant video game to conquer and he can’t wait to get to the next level. “I’ve been working on identifying The Gifting. A lot of them are in mental hospitals. Hence, the database.”

  “How do you find them?”

  “Key words, mostly. Everybody’s gifting is different. Even Shields have unique abilities. But there are commonalities, too. Hallucinations, for example. Every person with the gifting sees the supernatural, or the spiritual. Whatever you want to call it. So I set up the system to pull every patient file that lists hallucinations as a symptom.” He punches some buttons and types in a few codes. The database re-configures itself, shrinking by a good fifty percent. “Still a lot of names, though. So I do another key word search. Let’s go with dreams.”

  He punches more buttons, and the list shrinks again.

  “The dreams are very telling when it comes to figuring out what someone is. Fighters, for example, almost always describe their dreams as prophetic.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  Link tosses me a mischievous wink. “Shields usually have incredibly frustrating dreams where they need to protect someone they love, but they can’t remember how. Personally, I find Cloaks to be the most interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “Anna’s dreams were crawling with chameleons.”

  I quirk one of my eyebrows.

  “She could turn people into a chameleon. She could make them change color, even shape, all to blend in with their surroundings.”

  “Do all Cloaks dream about chameleons?”

  “No, that was just Anna. In Fray’s dreams, anything he touches turns invisible.”

  My clammy fingers twist the small stones inside Luka’s bracelet. I want to ask about Keepers. What kind of dreams do they have? But I can’t figure out how to do it without sounding overly interested. “What happens after you identify someone?”

  “I awaken them to their gifting.”

  “Awaken?”

  Link plucks the Rubik’s Cube off the desk. “Most people like us think they’re crazy. I visit them in their dreams and explain what’s going on. Once they’re ‘awake’, things get very real, and a lot more dangerous.”

  I lean closer, like a plant hungry for the sun. “How so?”

  “So far the only person we’ve rescued is Anna. Everyone else here came through Dr. Carlyle.”

  “You broke her out?”

  “Of this very facility.” Link nods at the computer screen, twisting the cube around with deft fingers. “It’s not easy. In fact, without the skill of a very powerful fighter, it would be impossible. If we didn’t have Cap, we wouldn’t be able to break anyone out.”

  “Wait … Cap is a fighter?” But he’s in a wheelchair. His legs have no muscle mass.

  “When it comes to The Gifting, what you see is rarely ever what you get. Cap is the only one with the skill to manipulate the physical while in spiritual form. Sticks can do it occasionally, but not consistently and when it comes to rescue missions, consistence is mandatory.”

  My mind hums louder than the supercomputer in front of us. “What do you mean—manipulate the physical while in spiritual form?”

  “It’s like this. Think of our world in terms of realms, right? There’s the physical realm, which is everything we can see and touch. It’s what we can prove because of our senses. We are physical beings.” As if to prove his point, he sets the Rubik’s Cube down and gives my hair a playful tug. “But we’re also spiritual beings. Every single one of us has a soul.”

  “You realize that ninety-nine percent of the population would call you crazy for that statement.” My dad would be the first to balk him out of the room.

  “I’m well aware. But it’s the truth. A person can choose not to believe it, but that doesn’t make their soul go away. It’s there, whether they want to acknowledge it or not. The supernatural realm is just as real as the physical one, only you can’t see it. It’s the realm of good and evil, light and dark. From everything we can gather, these two forces are at war, and in order to join the battle, passageways are required.”

  “Dreams.”

  Link nods enthusiastically. “Dreams have doorways. But only Fighters—and Linkers, like myself—are able to pass through them into the supernatural realm.”

  “What about Guardians?”

  “They can’t pass through unless I bring them over. It’s one of my more valuable assets as a Linker.” His mouth draws up on one side. “Once a Fighter enters the supernatural realm, they can fight supernatural beings, but manipulating physical things is nearly impossible. Only the most highly-skilled Fighters can do it. And even then, it’s crazy dangerous.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s what landed Cap in four wheels.”

  “What happened?”

  “He doesn’t like to talk about the details. All I know is that several years ago, he crossed over and things went bad.”

  I clear away the dryness in my throat. Best not to dwell on that one for too long. “Okay, so how does it all work—this rescue plan you managed with Anna?”

  “After I awaken a person to their gifting and explain what’s going on, Cap steps through a doorway and switches out their medicine. It’s important that they still act
like they’re medicated, so as not to tip anyone off. Once they have their strength back, we guide them out of the facility without ever being there. At least not in the physical sense.”

  I sit back in the chair and let out a puff of breath. “That is brilliant.”

  Link smiles. “Makes us almost impossible to catch.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Screaming in the Night

  An hour into research, Cap rolls into the room requiring Link’s assistance, which means I’m left alone with thoughts that twist and tug in a thousand different directions. In an attempt to distract myself, I peruse the makeshift library, hoping to settle into a book. But it’s no use. Outspoken Jo March, moody Heathcliff, not even Alice and her confusing tumble down the rabbit hole can distract me from the restlessness in my legs. I want to run outside, hike through the woods, roam the beach. Since I’m stuck down here, I settle for the closest thing to it.

  I change into sweats and pour out my energy on one of the treadmills. I push and push and push until my lungs are heaving and my muscles are burning and sweat soaks through my clothes. Maybe if I perspire enough, the medicine will leave my system and I’ll be able to join Claire and Jose tomorrow afternoon. I don’t stop until my legs have become overstretched rubber bands; then I move to the weights. After a frenzy of various sets and repetitions, I lay back against the bench with my putty-like arms dangling toward the floor. I take back my breath, clean up my sweat with a clump of paper towels, and hit the shower.

  The water’s not even lukewarm, but after such an intense workout, the coolness comes as a relief and the surprisingly high pressure kneads my poor muscles. I have no idea how long I stand there beneath the stream as it washes down my body, flowing like rivulets between my toes, onto the cement floor, and down the drain straddled between my feet. Eventually, a toilet flushes. Hands are washed and footsteps fade into silence.

  I shut off the water and rub my eyes. After I’m dried and dressed and combed, I head toward the common room. Lazy chatter filters out into the hallway, which means afternoon training must be finished. I give my wet hair a self-conscious tussle.