PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “No you weren’t,” I scoffed.

  I looked over at Casper. The look on his face, concerned and confused, reminded me of earlier today, of the way he looked at me over the whole ‘Mrs. Goolsby’ thing.

  “He wasn’t,” I told him. “He said I was telling the truth. There’s no way he was talking to us.”

  I looked back at Mr. Echo but, this time, everything was different. The cluttered normal office had changed. It was still cluttered, but instead of stacks of boxes, the walls were lined with weapons. Swords, axes, those balls on chains with the spikes sticking out of ‘em; they were behind glass all around us. It was like I had suddenly found myself in a medieval torture chamber. The walls that, just a second ago, were plain and painted gray, were now jagged stone. They looked old, and not just worn old, but ancient; like what I always imagined the inside of a castle would look like. Hanging at the four corners of the room were lit lanterns. So, the fluorescent light that had been illuminating the room was now replaced with a softer orange glow.

  Mr. Echo, for his part, looked the same; same lumberjack PJs, same scruffy beard. But behind him, where once were stacks of boxes, now two people stood. They were burly, like the people who brought us in here. They wore dark formfitting clothes and had red ‘W’s drawn in red over every inch of exposed skin. They were staring silently at Casper and me and, just to put the cherry on top of an already killer day, they had twin crossbows loaded and pointed at our heads.

  I turned to Casper, terror rising in my chest. His eyes were still on me, still concerned, still much calmer than he had any right to be. Oh God. He didn’t see it. He didn’t see any of it.

  “You heard me,” Mr. Echo murmured. “You can hear me now, can’t you?”

  His eyes flickered up to the man and his right shoulder and then back to me. As though he was realizing for the first time that I could see them, he lifted his hands submissively.

  “They won’t hurt you,” he said. “They won’t do anything I don’t tell them to.”

  “Dude, what are you talking about?” Casper looked back and forth between us. “This is another one of those things I’m not gonna remember, isn’t it?”

  Mr. Echo ignored Casper. “If you can see them, it means you can see all of it. And if you can see all of it, it means you’re not what you think you are.”

  His voice was calm; soothing even. It was obvious he was trying to keep things under control. It wasn’t working though. What I was? What did that mean? I didn’t know a lot of things; what was going on, what Owen, my mom, or Jiqui and Ezra were up to, what the hell a fiscal cliff was. But I knew what I was.

  I was me.

  I stood up slowly and starting backing toward the door. Casper followed me. My eyes were still on Mr. Echo, still on the archers behind him.

  “I need you to stay calm.” Mr. Echo stood now too; his voice still soothing, his hands still splayed in front of him. “I know this is a lot to take in, and I imagine this is a confusing time for you. I want you to know that I’ve been where you are now. We all have.”

  He motioned to the archers. Rounding the desk, he continued. “You’ve been seeing crazy things, things that others don’t. You feel like someone’s been messing with you, like there’s a stranger in your head pulling at your memory. That’s because there is.”

  I kept backing up until I could see from the corner of my eye that the door was in striking distance.

  “I can help you,” Mr. Echo said. “It’s what I do, what this place is for. I just need to know who sent you here. I-“

  I turned and bolted for the door. Casper followed, huffing behind me. As I twisted the handle and ran through the doorway, I heard Mr. Echo over my shoulder.

  “Wait! Who’s Ash?! Where did you hear that name?! Where did you hear it?!”

  Like Mr. Echo’s office, the rest of the detention center had twisted and changed. What once was a worn down but generally ordinary facility, had become something entirely different. Gone were the rotted floors with their missing tiles. There was plush carpet covering the floor now. Where cells once stood; glass boxes stacked three stories high, doors of every color lined the walls. The shape didn’t even make sense. This place, this new place, seemed to stretch on forever. It had to be twice as big as it looked when we first walked through it. The gym and ping pong tables had transformed into an indoor archery range and the hugest pool I had ever seen. The space broke off into at least a dozen halls that weren’t there before. There was a piano and a harp sitting on a stage to the left, and the prisoners- Well, they weren’t prisoners at all.

  All the kids who had watched us walk through were still there. They were still looking at us, but there were no cells to hold them. There were no orange jumpsuits to identify them. Instead, they wore all different sorts of outfits. Some were in the tight leather attire of our guides. Others were in plain old street clothes. Some of them were even stylish. The only thing, it seemed, that had stayed the same, was the copy of Great Expectations in the wet haired boy’s hand.

  I guess it turned out, in any iteration, you couldn’t change Dickens.

  “Cresta!” Casper yelled.

  I turned to find him running repeatedly into the baby grand. He couldn’t see it. He could only see the detention center. I ran back and grabbed his hand. Mr. Echo’s voice boomed through the loudspeakers.

  “Stop them!”

  I pulled Casper behind me like he was blindfolded.

  “I can’t see everything, can I?” He asked. He sounded scared and helpless, not that I blamed him.

  “Just close your eyes. I’ve got you,” I told him.

  ‘W’s were etched along the walls. Sometimes they were carved crudely into the wood. In other places they were weaved decoratively into the designs. Regardless of their nature though, I couldn’t look two feet in any direction without being met with the letter.

  The onetime prisoners advanced on us. There were more than I previously thought. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get away from them, seeing as how, in seconds, they had already blocked the door, but I was going to give it my best. My joints were popping and aching as I ran faster. I could already feel my throat closing up. Realistically, there was no hope for us; an asthmatic girl and a boy who was basically blind. Still, I wouldn’t stop; not until I found Morgan Montgomery, not until I did what my mother asked.

  I was almost at the door; at the sea of people who were blocking it anyway, when I felt my legs go out from under me. I knew this feeling. It was the same one I had in Mrs. Goolsby’s basement, before Owen made the world go dark.

  To my left, I saw a woman. She was blond and refined looking; 35 maybe 40. Her hands were contorted in ways similar to how Owen’s were last night. The last thing I saw before everything blacked away, was the refined woman kneeling over me; her hair brushed into a tight bun.

  She sighed. “I knew you’d be trouble.”

  ***

  I half expected to wake in my bed, in my house, with my Mother downstairs talking to Casper about planting cucumbers or something random like that. Like the whole thing was a dream, like I could go back to being normal; whatever that was.

  The room I did wake in was nothing like my bedroom. To start, it was gigantic. The floor was covered in thick red carpet, and the bed, softer than what I imagined a cloud would feel like, had a lace trimmed canopy; the sort you’d expect to see in a fairy tale. As I pulled myself up, my body still aching, I was acutely away that I was no Cinderella.

  My flannel pajamas and Avengers tee had been replaced by a soft lavender gown. As I swung off the bed, I found a pair of slippers at my feet. Slipping them on, I got up to investigate my surroundings. Before I could though, the door swung open. A thin woman with brown lifeless hair and a gaunt face greeted me.

  “Ready to face the day, dear?” She had a thick English accent and was carrying a tray full of fresh fruit, yogurt, bacon, eggs scrambled with cheese, a stack of pancakes, and orange juice, along with a single sunflower sticking out of a vase.


  “Where am I?” I asked. “Where’s Casper?”

  She sat the tray on a table by the door and smiled. “You’re in Weathersby, of course. And your friend is fine. I assume he’s still sleeping. It’s quite early yet.”

  “Where are my clothes? I want to leave.”

  She frowned. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, at least not yet. Mr. Echo will want to talk to you first. I’ll let him know you’re up. In the meantime, try and eat something, won’t you dear? I suggest the juice. There’s a splash of mango in it, and it’s just divine.”

  “I want Casper and I want to leave!” I huffed, but the thin lady just smiled and left, closing the door behind her.

  I was determined not to eat from the platter she had left but, as the minutes passed, it became more and more difficult to pass up. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten anything, and it turned out my stomach couldn’t either.

  A half an hour after the thin woman left it, the smell of the food became too tempting. By the time Mr. Echo came to see me, I was finishing a fistful of bacon.

  “Making yourself at home, I see. That’s good.” He was more dashing than he had been the night before; dressed in a suit. His beard even seemed to be better tended, though I’m not sure how much of that was accurate. My eyes had been playing tricks on me lately.

  I pushed the platter away and folded my arms. He circled the room and sat on chair across from me.

  “I do hope the color is to your liking,” he motioned to my gown. “I’m afraid we had to do away with your clothes. They were- Well, they were covered in blood.”

  “It wasn’t mine,” I said. “I don’t, I’m not hurt.”

  “I know. I ordered a physical on you and your friend. Aside from a few bumps and bruises, you’re perfectly fine.”

  I looked down at the gown, suddenly very aware that someone had to remove my clothes in order to put it on.

  “I didn’t perform the physical myself, nor did I change you. We have people better suited for that,” he answered, as though he was reading my face. “It does beg the question though, how did the blood get there, Cresta?”

  “How do you know my name?” I tensed up.

  “It’s on your driver’s license,” he explained. “Plus, Casper was screaming it in our general area.”

  It sounded strange to hear our names coming from his mouth, like he was trespassing on what it meant to be us.

  I reached for my locket, wanting to twist it up between my fingers, before I remembered that it, like everything else, was gone. “What is this place? It’s not a juvie.”

  “It isn’t,” he conceded, drumming his fingers along the nearby dresser as he had his desk last night. “It’s-It’s a school of sorts.”

  “What does that mean?” I folded my arms again.

  He leaned forward. “I told you last night that I knew what you were. That’s because I’m one too. We’re the same, you and I.”

  “And what is that?” He was starting to sound like one of those crazy evangelicals from TV, but I was sorta trapped, so I might as well listen to him.

  “You’re evolved ,Cresta. “

  “Evolved?” I repeated.

  “Your mind,” he reached toward my head, but when I flinched away, settled his fingers on his own temples. “There are people in this world; there have always been people in this world, who are special. We are genetically superior; bred so that our minds and bodies are more advanced than the general population. Because of our genetics, we’re able to do certain things. We can make people see things, make people forget things, move objects with little more than a thought.”

  Suddenly, my arms started to lift from the bed. Before I knew it, and without my consent, they stretched out straight in front of me. The smile on Mr. Echo’s face told me he was the culprit.

  “Stop that!” I said, trying my best not to let my voice shake.

  As suddenly as they had lifted, my arms fell.

  “My apologies.”

  “So, you’ve got superpowers?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered. “We’ve got superpowers; you, me, and, with the exception of your red haired friend in the next room, everyone in Weathersby.”

  I relaxed a little. Even with all the crazy he was dropping on me, it was good to know Casper was in the next room.

  “Though we are all capable of things like that,” he pointed to my arms.”Each of us have special abilities, things we’re more naturally inclined towards. Some of us are illusionists. They’re the ones that make sure you see or don’t see certain things. There are empaths, who control the feelings of those around them. Some of us can reach into your head and pull out a memory, or plant one there. There are even those who can read everything about you with a single touch.”

  I turned my hand over. Looking at my palm, I remembered the way Owen looked when he touched me. And then, what he said in Mrs. Goolsby’s basement.

  “The lines,” I muttered.

  Mr. Echo’s eyes narrowed. “Cresta, tell me what happened to get you here?”

  “I’m not one of you,” I said, still looking at my palm.

  “You are,” he answered. “That’s why you could see through the illusions.”

  His lip didn’t move as he spoke and his voice echoed as though it was inside of my head.

  :That’s why you can hear me now:

  “Stop it!” I clutched at my temples. “So what if I am one of you? What, am I just supposed to move in here and sit around your school all day?”

  He laughed. “Is that what you think we do? Cresta, people like us have a higher calling. Have you ever heard of the Free Masons?”

  I nodded. Casper had always been a fan of conspiracy theories. In addition to never ending talks about the Mayans, Shakespeare being a woman, and Kennedy’s real assassin (FBI agents who were afraid he was going to give away the secrets of Area 51), Casper also told me about the Free Masons. From what I remembered about the parts I wasn’t able to block out, the Free Masons were a secret society dating back to the founding fathers who were really powerful and who guided the world in whatever direction suited them.

  “Well, we’re not the power hungry manipulators people would tell you we are.”

  Great, so I listened to Casper for nothing.

  “You’re a Free Mason?” I asked.

  “In a way,” he stood now, and started pacing. “For hundreds of years, evolved people like us have been saving the world. How, you ask?”

  I hadn’t actually, but go on.

  “The most powerful of our kind have the ability to glimpse into the future. Seers, we call them. Using the intel these seers give us, we’re able to create a roadmap of the future. And, with that roadmap, we’re able to make sure the world doesn’t devolve into disaster, as it’s so prone to do. We avert disasters, whether they be natural or manmade. We are the last line of defense against the horrors of fate, the only thing standing between the world you know and constant and utter chaos. We break away from the horrible things that could be. We are the Breakers.”

  He seemed really proud of himself just then.

  “So you do manipulate things?” I asked.

  Mr. Echo stammered. “I-I don’t think you’re listening. What we do is save the world, over and over again. There was a missile crisis. We just saved it last week.”

  “Right. Whatever,” I stood. I had had quite enough, thank you. Super evolved or not, this was getting old, and it wasn’t getting me any closer to Morgan Montgomery.

  “Cresta, you’re one of us.” He grabbed my arm, as though he thought I was going to run again.

  “Why, because I can see through your stupid illusions?” I jerked my hand away. “You ever think maybe you’re just not as good as you think you are?” I straightened the front of my lavender gown. “Besides, if everything you’ve said is true, wouldn’t I have powers too?”

  The wide smile that appeared on his face made me uneasy.

  “I have a theory about that.” He dippe
d to the floor and came up with a silver square. It wasn’t just any silver square though. It was mine; the suitcase Mom gave me before the house blew up. I thought I had lost in the ruckus. Casper must have picked it up when he drug me out of there.

  “That’s mine!” I reached for it.

  “I know,” he said, and flung it on the bed before I could grab it. Maybe it was the way the suitcase hit or maybe it was his weird evolved person- Breaker powers, either way the suitcase popped open as it hit the bed. Inside was a fresh pair of clothes (something I desperately needed), a stacked cube of hundred dollar bills, and at least two dozen inhalers, and a phone.

  This was Mom’s going away present. In case we ever had to leave, God forbid in case we ever got separated, like we were now, she wanted to make sure I’d be okay.

  “You’re asthmatic, I presume?” Mr. Echo said. He didn’t make a grab for anything. He didn’t even look at the money.

  “You guys did the physical. You tell me,” I said bitterly.

  “That’s just it. While you’re results showed effects of the symptoms of asthma. It didn’t show the actual condition. Cresta, you are one of us. You have the genetic markers. I’ve seen them.”

  Now he did go for the case, but it wasn’t the money he was after. He picked up one of the inhaler and studied it.

  “We did a chemical analysis on your medication. It doesn’t treat asthma. In fact, it causes your body to mimic the symptoms of asthma.”

  “What? Why?” That didn’t make any sense.

  “Because it also stymies a third of your neurological pathways. It negates the evolved nature of your mind, strips you of who you are. Whoever is giving you this medicine, whoever gave you this suitcase, has been drugging you.”

  “No!” I yelled. “That’s not true! I don’t believe you.” Mom gave me that suitcase, that medicine. Mom always gave me my medicine. She wouldn’t drug me. She wouldn’t.

  “Believe it or not Cresta. That’s your prerogative. But it’s been cleansed from your system, and I bet you haven’t felt this good in years; free of closed throat and shallow breathing. Soon, your mind will open up, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. You’ll start to notice little things at first, but then your abilities will awaken, and the whole world will change. I can help you through that if you let me. I can teach you how to do these things. I think that’s why Ash sent you to me.”