The Felix Chronicles: Tides of Winter

by R. T. Lowe

  “I don’t think so,” Felix finally answered. “I think he respects her too much, if that makes sense.”

  “Sounds like he needs therapy,” Allison replied.

  “We all need therapy.”

  Allison laughed and muttered, “No shit.”

  “How’s your arm?” he asked.

  “Not bad.” She ran her hand over it. “I checked the stitches at Bill’s. Looks okay, but I’m pretty sure the doctor wouldn’t recommend punching anyone else in the head.”

  “Yeah.” Felix smiled. “You should really do something about your anger control issues.”

  Allison pretended to be offended and nudged him with her arm—her good arm.

  They left her room and went up the flight of stairs to the fourth floor. According to Felix’s watch it was just after ten o’clock on Thursday, and he felt as if Thursday had dragged on forever, mostly, he supposed, because the drugs Sophia had administered had knocked him out cold. Prior to learning from Allison that he’d only been unconscious for a few hours, he didn’t know if his forced sleep had lasted minutes or days. One of the rooms in the long hallway had its door open and as they passed by they saw a group of kids hanging out, listening to music.

  “Allison!” a girl’s voice called from somewhere in the back of the room behind a wall of bodies.

  They stopped in the hall, waiting to see who it was. “Hey Maggie,” Allison called back as a girl wriggled her way through the crowd. “Go ahead,” Allison said to Felix, “I’ll be there in a sec.”

  Felix continued down the hallway, stopping for a second to talk to Gavin, a kid he happened to share the same class schedule with. Fridays were going to be tough this semester, all four classes and Biology lab on the same day. He tried to remember if he’d missed any assignments or if there was anything he had to turn in tomorrow and Gavin confirmed that their professors hadn’t asked much of them so far this semester. It seemed that with the campus shooting, the Numbered Ones video of the creatures eating the Cummings brothers in Ashfield Forest, and then the Rose Bowl Massacre and the indictment of Congress, the instructors were giving the students a chance to breathe and to digest the events that had left the country reeling.

  Felix opened the door to his room, leaving it ajar as he stepped in. Harper sat on Felix’s bed, drinking wine from the fancy crystal glasses Lucas’s agent had sent last semester to congratulate him for launching his own cologne, while Caitlin and Lucas were sharing Lucas’s bed, each with a half empty glass of wine.

  “Hey,” Felix muttered apologetically. “Sorry, I”—he glanced at Caitlin and thought she looked much better than when he’d seen her at the hospital—“I, uh, I couldn’t make it.”

  “Thank God you’re okay.” Caitlin jumped up from the rumpled comforter. “Allison was in my room and her arms started bleeding all over.” She made slashing motions across her arm, the wine swirling in her glass. “She said your name then she just took off.”

  “Sorry about not picking you up. Something…” He didn’t want to get into the whole thing again. He was all talked out after being at Bill’s so he gave Caitlin a chagrined smile. “I was even gonna get coffees for you guys.”

  “Dude,” Lucas said, smiling. “I’m not even sure why we thought all five of us could fit in your Jeep. Four in the passenger seat would be pretty tight.” He grinned at Caitlin. “Of course Little C wouldn’t mind. I know you live for those special occasions when I permit you to sit on my lap.”

  “I’ll sit on your face if you don’t shut up!” Caitlin snapped. She sucked in a sharp gasping breath. “Not what I meant,” she stammered. “That’s not what I meant!”

  Lucas laughed and drank from his glass, clearly enjoying the torment he was causing her.

  “Where’s Allison?” Harper asked, her eyes searching Felix’s face.

  Felix, laughing at Caitlin’s consternation and the horrified look on her face, jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  Someone grabbed his hand.

  “Careful with that thing,” Allison said, squeezing his fingers for a brief moment before letting them go. “You could take out an eye, you know.” She noticed the bottles of wine on Lucas’s desk and broke out in a huge smile. “I could totally drink like a whole bottle of that stuff right now. Is it the same as before?”

  “Yeah.” Lucas scooted off the bed to retrieve a glass from the bookshelf over his desk. “Even Caitlin likes it and you know what an insufferable snob she is.”

  “That’s me,” Caitlin remarked drolly, adopting an exaggerated accent that might have been British. “The insufferable snob.” Careful to keep the wine from spilling out of her glass, she crossed the room to Allison and hugged her, holding on tightly with both arms, the wine balanced precariously in her right hand behind Allison’s waist. “We were so worried about you.” Her voice sounded soft and muffled against Allison’s shoulder. “You sure you’re okay? Your arms? Everything all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Allison said gently and reached out to receive a nearly overflowing glass from Lucas. “Felix was the one getting cut up—not me. It only hurts for a little while.” She took a long swallow and gave Caitlin a sisterly kiss on the forehead. “You look good. Feeling better?”

  Caitlin nodded. “Thanks to you guys—yeah. Of course I was almost breakfast for that freak in the tightie-whities.” She shuddered at the memory.

  “You want one?” Lucas asked Felix as he uncorked a fresh bottle. “I have about half a case left.”

  “Nah,” Felix replied after a conflicted pause. “I’d just be wasting your good stuff.”

  Lucas gave him a puzzled look.

  “Alcohol doesn’t affect him anymore,” Allison explained.

  Lucas’s eyes widened in shock. “That’s… terrible. I’m so sorry, dude. Your superpowers are pretty cool and all, but that’s just awful. I think I’d rather be a puny mortal than a flame throwing airbender who can’t get a buzz.”

  “You hear that?” Felix said to Allison, standing tall and expanding his chest grandly. “A ‘flame throwing airbender’. That sounds a little more badass than ‘Restrainer.’”

  Lucas came over with a full glass of wine and handed it to Felix. “Maybe you won’t get buzzed, but at least your taste buds aren’t super powered or anything, right?”

  “Thanks.” Felix laughed, but his laughter was cut short by Caitlin’s sudden startled cry.

  “You okay?” Caitlin said, stepping over to Harper whose face had gone parchment white. “You’re not getting sick, are you? That’s only your second one, isn’t it?”

  Harper was cupping her glass on her lap with both hands, but it was tilting to the side and dangerously close to spilling its contents onto her leg. She blinked rapidly and seemed to catch herself, flashing her disarmingly perfect smile.

  “Sorry,” Harper said. “I’m just relieved to see you guys. It’s been such a crazy last couple of days. Maybe you Sourcerors don’t have an issue with any of this, but it’s just so weird and scary. Sorry. So, um, what… what happened?” She looked to Allison who had taken a seat on Lucas’s desk, resting her flip flops on his chair. “You tore out of the hospital and then we didn’t hear anything from you.”

  Allison drank deeply, licked her lips and closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the taste. “You remember that girl who worked at the Caffeine Hut? Sophia? Seemed nice enough?”

  Harper shook her head, saying nothing, her long blonde hair spilling over her shoulders.

  “Well,” Allison said, “she was a Protector and she convinced Felix to check out a secret room in an abandoned building in the Old Campus. Felix, big flame throwing airbender dummy that he is”—she narrowed her eyes at him in a stinging glare—“let her knock him out with some kind of tranquilizer that’d probably kill an elephant. I ran back to campus and found the building and the staircase and then the secret room. I figured it had to be a trap.” She drank from her glass, knowing everyone was hanging on her words. “It was.”

  Lucas stared at h
er, eyes wide. “What was it? Who was there? That Sophia chick?”

  “Protectors.” Allison spat the word as though uttering it burned her wine stained lips.

  “Sophia?” Harper put a hand to her mouth in disbelief. “The Caffeine Hut girl? She was a Protector?”

  “And some of her friends,” Allison answered casually.

  “There were four,” Felix explained, still amazed by Allison’s exploits in the chamber. “When I woke up, Allison was taking care of the last one.”

  “Taking care?” Lucas said, confused.

  Allison raised her eyebrows meaningfully at him.

  “Oh,” Lucas said, realizing what she meant.

  “Sophia too?” Caitlin asked, and she sounded almost sad. “I think I know who you’re talking about. She did seem nice. Wore glasses, right?”

  Allison nodded.

  “Wow,” Harper said softly, her complexion reddening. “Are they still, um there? In that secret room? You just left the bodies?”

  “Yeah.” Allison shrugged as though she’d been asked if the garbage had been left at the street. She emptied her glass and filled it back up, then turned to Felix. “Maybe you should have ashed them. It’s gonna really start stinking up that building, you know.”

  Felix frowned. “I’ll do it next time I’m there.” He tried to sound nonchalant about it, but even the thought of going back to the chamber sent chills whispering over his skin.

  “Ashed them?” Lucas said, sounding uncertain. “Oh—that flame throwing thing, right?”

  “Yeah,” Felix said. “What I did with that psycho who abducted Caitlin.”

  Caitlin hugged her arms to her chest and stared down at the floor.

  Harper turned the glass slowly in her hands, staring up at Allison. “Do you know why? Did they say anything?”

  “Say anything?” Allison echoed with a sarcastic laugh. “They didn’t say much. They tried to kill me. I took their knives. I killed them. That was pretty much the extent of our conversation.”

  “Oh.” Harper coughed into her fist. “That must’ve been terrifying.”

  Allison shrugged as if to say not really. “They did leave a phone behind and we figured out they’d planned to kill me and make Felix think Lofton was behind it so Felix would join the Order.”

  Harper’s coughing started up again. She took a sip of wine and cleared her throat, nodding slowly. “Really?”

  Allison grunted. “But the Protectors are so fucking stupid you’d have to be brain dead to fall for it.”

  Harper’s face tightened, her fingers curling around the stem of the glass, her knuckles losing their color.

  “Apparently,” Allison continued, “the Protectors would like to see Felix in the Order so the Order and the Drestianites can wipe each other out.” She laughed. “But not only do the Protectors fight like children, they couldn’t strategize their way out of a game of checkers. They’re pathetic.”

  Harper raised her glass to her lips and gulped it down, not leaving a drop.

  “What a week, huh?” Lucas looked around the room. “I never thought I’d say this, but I think I’m actually looking forward to class tomorrow. Can’t we all just be college students for a while?”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Felix lifted his glass in a toast. “Here’s to being a proud Sturgeon.”

  Felix kept his glass up, waiting for Harper to refill hers. When she tapped her glass against his, he noticed she’d gone pale again and he wondered if she wasn’t feeling well.

  Chapter 5

  REJECTIONISTS

  Felix’s first class of the day was Psychology, and despite his desperate desire to be an ordinary freshman trying to survive his busiest class day of the week, he had several things working against him. The kids around him were all talking about the lead story on the morning news. The National Guard had cornered a small pack of Numbered Ones that had been killing livestock in a rural area of Wisconsin. The footage Felix had watched in Downey’s common room showed the Numbered Ones advancing without haste (though they were snapping their jaws threateningly and displaying their enormous teeth) toward five or six soldiers who stared them down bravely, statue still, rifles raised. When the Numbered Ones were within twenty or thirty yards, the soldiers opened fire, unloading hundreds of rounds into the creatures, tearing them to bloody shreds. The newscasters had reacted giddily and effused confidence at the New Government’s ‘continued success’ of eradicating the Old Government’s monstrous legacy. It was a charade, Felix knew, and an obvious one at that since the Numbered Ones were the deadliest adversaries he’d ever faced, fast, intelligent and shockingly strong. Yet they’d marched right up to the soldiers without even an attempt at self-preservation. Lofton must have staged it, of course, sacrificing a few of his creatures so that the ERA—now generally referred to as the ‘New Government’—would appear that much more competent than their predecessors.

  Then there was Professor Malone, the psychology professor who was presently quieting the students by calling out “Good Morning” and raising a hand. Malone, with his corduroy pants, turtleneck and tweed jacket, certainly looked the part of the distinguished scholar and college professor, and the low timbre of his voice had a way of putting the class on edge, commanding respect. To every one of the students in the classroom, he was simply Professor Malone, the chair of the Psychology department, a demanding no-nonsense instructor, and one of the toughest graders at the school. To Felix, however, he was a Sourceror, a member of the Order, and the man whose wife was the leader of their Fortress until one terrible morning when the Protectors assassinated her and left her without a heart. Felix attempted to listen as Malone began the lecture, but his mind had other plans.

  Can I trust him? Felix wondered.

  Allison did. Wholeheartedly. That would be enough for Felix, normally. But Allison had told Malone of her empathic abilities and the trap laid by Sophia and the other Protectors wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t known that Allison could feel Felix’s pain. So even if Allison was correct about Malone, it didn’t mean the people he was with—the Order—were trustworthy. Kane and Lilly had attempted to kill him, so it wasn’t a spiraling descent into the realm of paranoia to assume there were others in the Order sympathetic to those two lunatics. All it would take is for Malone to tell a single member of the Order—the current leader of his Fortress Zara, for example—and the dominoes would begin to fall. Besides, it was far easier to believe someone in the Order had disclosed Allison’s abilities to Sophia than one of Felix’s friends. He considered that for a moment, thinking about Harper, Lucas and Caitlin, picturing their faces. He shook his head, rejecting even the idea that any of them could be anything other than what he knew them to be. Caitlin a Protector? Harper? Lucas? It was preposterous. Beyond preposterous.

  Malone was still lecturing about something, but now Felix’s eyes seemed to be drawn inescapably to the empty seat beside him where Sophia had sat just days before. The emptiness rattled him somewhere deep down in his core, a place you couldn’t find on any anatomy charts, and he recalled the Mercedes SUV the Protectors had left running in the parking lot at the Cliff Walk. There were four Protectors there that December morning. They had all arrived in that SUV, but none had departed in it. An empty car. An empty seat. Both waiting for people who would never arrive. Ever. The finality of death struck a disquieting chord, unnerving him. There was no rewind button. No second chances. Felix swallowed hard, remembering the seemingly pleasant girl with the guileless smile and a charming interest in PC’s secret past.

  Guileless, he thought, disgusted with himself. She could have killed him. Unconscious and at her mercy, Sophia could have carved his head cleanly from his shoulders and taken it with her as a trophy. His healing powers had bailed him out of trouble on more than one occasion, but he couldn’t reattach his head. He wasn’t invincible, and for one reason or another—misguided trust in virtual strangers, lack of a clear fighting strategy, unwillingness to use his powers for fear of killin
g—he’d blundered into situations where he’d only managed to survive through a combination of factors that didn’t include skill or mental agility. Allison’s scalding words at the chamber was more than warranted. He deserved her ire and he needed to take it to heart. The world was a dangerous place and he couldn’t bumble into life and death situations and hope to survive by serendipity. Eventually his luck would run out. When that happened, it wouldn’t just be his funeral, it would be Allison’s, and he couldn’t let that happen. He had powers—amazing powers—and he needed to get a grip and start using them like—

  Can you though? a voice rang out from somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind, freezing his insides. He hadn’t used his powers since learning the Source didn’t exist, and he hadn’t been able to help Allison when she was battling the last Protector down in the chamber. He’d thought it was because he was disoriented, his mind addled from the drugs, but what if… what if it was something more than that? He stared at the monitor on his laptop, a blank page, the icon blinking on a white background, waiting for him to type something. If he wanted to close it without using his hands, how would he go about it? Whenever he’d used his powers—whether to move objects with his mind, create fire or form a shield—he’d focused his thoughts and imagined himself tapping into the Source as if he was a cord plugging into an electrical outlet. Now that he knew the Source didn’t exist, wouldn’t he have to alter his perspective? There was no need to connect to something outside of himself, but if the power resided within him, how would he access it? What was the thought process? Would the triggering mechanism be the same or something completely different? Slowly, Felix raised his right hand from his lap and extended his index finger at the screen, thinking he would lower it an inch or two, just enough to prove to himself that his powers were still intact. He focused for a second and… He closed his eyes and turned off his mind, lowering his hand. Today he was determined to be a college student. A freshman. Not a Sourceror and not a kid who used to think he was the Belus.