by KT Belt
Carmen closed her eyes and shuddered. He was right. As sure as she was breathing, he was right. It was obvious from the day she was born to all who had ever known her. She had kept her parents prisoners in their own home before she could even walk. Everyone in her neighborhood was terrified of her, even though she knew absolutely nothing about them. There may as well have been a sign in the front yard that said, “Beware of Clairvoyant.”
She began to cry again. And the rot—that festering, ever constant rot—grew worse. In the back of her mind, she had always known. She had tried so hard not to be, but it never made a difference. Carmen remembered a time when she was younger and a boy her own age had been terrified after he accidently bumped into her. No matter how many times she said she didn’t mind, he ran away from her. His parents ran with him. She could never be rid of all her talents and her ability. She reeked of them. That was their price, and it was too high. She hated herself for it. She always had.
“What happened to me?” Carmen whimpered softly, closing her eyes. “How…how did this—”
“Nothing has happened to you,” Janus replied.
“No,” she said sharply. “I…I couldn’t have done this. I wouldn’t do this. I don’t hurt people. All I want is to go home. All I have ever wanted was to go home!”
Janus sighed before he spoke. “You should know more than anyone, especially now, Edge, that there is no such thing. There is no rest or relaxation. There is no salvation. There is only power and desire. And, considering how much power you have, if you ever truly wanted to go home, you would have by now. There is nothing standing in your way.”
Carmen thought about what he said. At the same moment, her fingers tingled and she felt decidedly hot. “There’s you,” she said. She opened her eyes and stared at him. They glowed. “It has always been you. I may make the choices, but you don’t give me any choice,” she added as the lights in the room flickered wildly. She got to her feet. “You’re my handler. You’ve known that all I wanted was to leave, but you kept me here. This is all your fault.”
Janus looked completely unmoved. “If I have anything to do with you and your self, then remove me from your path as you did your dog,” he said simply. “A lie will always remain such, no matter how much you believe it.”
Carmen winced. His words stung. “Shut up!” she yelled as she hit him as hard as she could in the face.
It just happened. One minute, she was sitting on the ground crying; the next, he was staggering before her and her fist was throbbing. Carmen’s mouth hung open in surprise. Janus had never lied to her; she had to give him at least that. When he said he was a monster, that was the straight truth. He was an unfeeling, inhuman, evil monster. She had lived in terror of him almost from the day she met him. And now, hard as it was to believe, she had actually managed to hurt him.
It was as if the sun turned black, water flowed uphill, or bricks had learned to fly. And in that unending quagmire, one last untouched piece of her let go. Until this point, she didn’t even know it existed, but now, watching him, it screamed. The room cooled and even grew darker. A spark rippled along her arm, followed by another and then another until her body was consumed by them. The hair of people half a mile away stood on end. Nearer, several vomited. Scores of people outright fainted in the observation booth. Carmen, however, noticed none of this. Her sole attention was on Janus. She’d hurt him. It was a drop in the bucket compared to what he had caused her, and she wasn’t finished.
“How do you like it?” she screamed. “Let’s see you pass this test!”
She rushed him. There was no technique or focus to her attack; she simply leapt on him, bringing them both to the ground. Her hands wrapped around his throat.
“I hate you!” she yelled.
Janus didn’t fight back. He didn’t even try. He simply stared at her. Carmen stared back. She could have popped his head off with a thought, but she wanted her muscles to do the deed. She squeezed as hard as she possibly could. She’d never get her life back, but she wanted to feel his drain from his wretched body with every fiber of her being.
“I hate you!” she yelled again. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! Why me? Why did you have to do this to me? I didn’t have to be here!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the body of a Construct and then Mikayla. She focused in on Janus and tried to ignore them, but she couldn’t completely. He was almost gone, and realizing that filled her spirit with joy. The feeling washed over her like warm honey. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to hurt him—badly. Yet there was another part of her, long unseen and almost forgotten. She was surprised it still remained in her. It whispered one thing so softly that it was a miracle it could be even be heard. But hear it she did, and it reminded her of one important thing she was terrified to admit. That, while what she was feeling was devilishly sweet, it was not a flavor that was meant to be enjoyed. No matter how much she wanted to outright kill her handler, and no matter how easy that would be, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t allow herself to—not anymore. She couldn’t blame this all on him. She couldn’t innocently say it wasn’t her fault. This would be her choice, and for the first time, Carmen was aware of it.
Janus was right. He’d never lied to her. There were no obstacles in front of her. At least, the obstacles were not this place, the Constructs, or Janus himself. It was just her. It had always been just her. No matter how long she lived, how many excuses she came up with, or how many opponents she slew, her one and only obstacle would always be herself.
Her grip on Janus’s throat began to slacken. Suddenly, the door burst open and several armed soldiers ran into the room. They pointed their guns at her and fired even before her telekinetically amplified reflexes could react. Their weapons, however, didn’t fire bullets. Instead, a thick, sticky foam struck her with enough force to blow her off her handler before nearly entombing her to the adjacent wall. She struggled against it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Are you all right, sir?” one of the men asked.
Janus coughed a few times before he answered. “Yes, I’m fine.”
But the men didn’t pay him much heed. They swapped out their foam guns for guns that did fire bullets and leveled them all on Carmen, who still couldn’t move.
“What about her?” one of them asked.
Janus looked at Carmen. She stared right back. Neither wavered, withered, or made any reaction at all. They just stared. He was sure that had to be the first time she didn’t shy away.
“She won’t give you any trouble,” he said. “Take her back to her room.”
8
Carmen vs. Edge
Days, weeks, months—Carmen had no idea how much time passed. The hours blended together into a never-ending loop she could not escape. She spent most of the time crying. Try as she might, she just couldn’t stop. She’d have a respite of a few seconds every now and then, until an old memory or unwanted feeling got her started again. After a while, she cried just because she was crying, and then she no longer knew anymore. It was like she’d been lost in the dark for so long that she’d forgotten how to see the light. Her only rest came when she was too exhausted from it all and passed out from the effort.
Janus sat in the dining hall alone. The idiots hadn’t graced him with their presence for quite some time. He did not know why; until recently, he couldn’t escape them, even to the point that he considered making threats of bodily harm so they’d leave him alone. But lately, nothing. It was possible they thought the question of who was better, Edge or Artemis, had been answered. He had finally broken his charge, and what remained couldn’t be called impressive. Maybe everyone had forgotten about her? He hadn’t. Janus had not seen her since that day, but he never could forget her.
Carmen felt so weak. Even sitting up in bed was a struggle. Her captors weren’t completely inhumane and brought food regularly. She hadn’t had the heart to eat any of it, though. Most of the time, she didn’t even notice it was there, let alone that someone came in to
drop it off. She had perceived the room and everything in it only faintly. Food was the furthest thing from her mind, but now she could eat a few bites. The effort took her all, and she threw it up more times than not, but she could eat. Each morsel always tumbled down her throat, echoing as it went. It was in those moments that she was perversely aware of her own body. It was a wonder if she even existed at all.
Now that she thought about it, her room was deserving of that same question. There was nothing in here that she had ever asked for or wanted. Her books, toys, couch, and table were merely ornaments meant to sooth her nightmare of a life. All of it had nothing to do with her. She remembered what her old room had been like, if barely. It wasn’t much, but it had been hers, decorated how she wished, stocked with what she liked, and given character by the limited means to fulfill her growing tastes. Her present living quarters were as much a construct as the shells she constantly fought.
She sat in bed with her head spinning and face wet. She was too weak to stand for more than ten minutes without falling down, yet she crushed her chair into dust with no more than a thought. She telekinetically threw her table into the wall hard enough to turn it into splinters. It was dark in her room, yet she felt each falling particle like they were crashing boulders. Her attention turned to her toys and they were burned to ash. Her books became confetti. On and on she went until there was nothing left. Now her room was properly empty, as it had always truly been. She looked in the dark where Mikayla usually sat, yearning for the comfort of her resting on her shoulder. But Carmen had to reminder herself—the room was empty.
Several people left the dining hall all at once. Janus did not know why, but he didn’t care. He was still lost in his thoughts. If there was one day that would forever be seared into his memory, it was when he first met Edge. She was not what he expected. The briefing he’d gotten beforehand and the personality profiles could only say so much, especially at her age. What exactly he had expected was hard for him to remember. Everyone feared something more violent and savage than the average Clairvoyant. Maybe a child that bordered on the inhuman; perhaps some kind of beast? All that power had to have colored her psyche in some way. It certainly did now. But the reality of Edge and the figment of everyone’s imagination that predicted what she would be couldn’t have been further apart.
It had started before he could even see her house. Her power had manifested itself faintly in the distance, like a star that was only a point of light in the night sky. Clairvoyants had no command of gravity, but to say they weren’t falling deeper and deeper into her well as they went would be a stretch. The Clairvoyants that had been with him were weaker than himself, and their hair stood on end miles away. The sensation was blunted for Janus. If anything, the girl’s energy was a curious thing. The spectacle was much the same as watching a waterfall or an erupting volcano. It was power—raw power. Even the non-clairvoyant members of his team, who were dim to such things, could sense it on the approach.
He remembered wondering what could remain in the face of such destructive potential. It was not that Edge’s personality profile implied that she was inherently violent, but she was a child, and the potential was always there. A bath unwanted or a cookie ungiven was all it took to make tempers flare. There were all kinds of monsters.
Isabelle couldn’t help a small smile. It had taken months and months and months. There were countless bribes as dozens of people were shuffled to new jobs to ensure that only those who wanted this to happen remained. Now the day had finally come. Her plotting surely rivaled that of Admiral What’s-His-Name—Carsono Wright, or something? It was such a weird name. Anyway, the last and hardest piece had always been getting that watch dog, Janus, away from Edge. Monetary coaxing aside, almost everyone else was onboard from the start, even Artemis’s handler. He went as far as to say that he didn’t know what Janus’s problem was and that the assets wouldn’t care either way.
She was apt to agree. It also helped that she was set to make quite a bit of money from the endeavor. Artemis was a killer in the truest sense of the word. The facility never went on lockdown whenever Edge was moved. Sure, she was strong, but at this level it all came down to instincts, and Edge’s would make her nothing other than dead meat. It was possible Janus knew that and that was the real reason he didn’t want them to fight. What difference does it make? Isabelle thought. Clairvoyants died all the time in forging. Sure, not all of them were able to be reanimated, and it would be a pity if that happened to Edge. Still, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for this place.
Isabelle sighed. Janus could be so stupid sometimes. She’d even say that to his face if he wasn’t a Clairvoyant. On second thought, he probably knew what she thought about him anyway. She tried not to think about that and its implications. Instead, she thought on how she’d spend her winnings. She smiled again. It wasn’t going to be just in bets either. She planned to sell the video to the highest bidder if the fight was a hit. Even the UTE would probably want it. No one had ever seen two Clairvoyants with this level of power fight each other before. Some of the scientists in the facility salivated at the thought of studying the data.
Just then, the thought of those riches, not to mention fame, didn’t produce the warm, tingly feeling it usually did. She felt decidedly uncomfortable in her own skin all of a sudden. Sweat beaded on her forehead. It became ten times worse when the elevator opened to the dormitory level. Isabelle had never been on this floor before, as it was usually reserved for each asset’s respective handler and the janitors. Edge’s room wouldn’t be too hard to find, though. And it didn’t take a bribe to get a key to her room, just front row seats.
Walking down that hall may have been the hardest thing Isabelle ever did in her life. A small pit in her stomach felt heavier and heavier the closer to Edge’s room she got. The sensation made no sense. Even so, she slapped her hand to her mouth several times to keep from throwing up.
“I was fine this morning,” she muttered to herself. It has to be something I ate, she thought.
The feeling didn’t get better. Instead, it got much, much worse. She felt weak, and her legs seemed like they were made of rubber, as if some force had sucked the energy right out of her. It was only the knowledge of all the money she’d make that kept her from running back into the elevator and never coming back. Her hand practically shook as she opened Edge’s door. There was nothing she could think to do to stop the tremors. Her fingers were numb. Her hand, if not her entire body, felt more like some sort of ghostly aberration than something she consciously controlled.
Her breath caught in her throat when the door opened. For a few seconds, she could do nothing more than stand in the doorway and stare. She wasn’t a handler, just a technician. Most of her time was spent with computers, calibrating instruments, and of course Larry. In all honesty, she didn’t know much about Clairvoyants, despite working here. She would have never guessed this was how they lived.
The lights in the room were off, but the destruction was quite easy to see. Edge’s room looked like it had been literally ground to powder. Isabelle knew the assets were given some meager possessions to occupy their time between forging, but none of that was here. Nothing at all remained, other than a fine dust and splinters on the floor with ashes dispersed between. A cold, dry air crept toward her. It was hard to tell if the facility’s ventilation system was malfunctioning or if it was just her nerves. Truth be told, goosebumps riddled Isabelle’s body as she looked at the, well…emptiness. Then she looked at the room’s occupant.
Edge sat on her bed and leaned against the wall. Her arms rested loosely on her knees. She didn’t move at all, other than the ever so slight tremble of her breathing. Isabelle took a small step back without even realizing it, and her arms went across her chest almost as if she was hugging herself. Edge looked at her in that moment. Isabelle didn’t know how she knew that, since the girl’s face was obscured in the dark, but there was no denying it.
Her hand found the handcuffs on her be
lt on their own accord, and with it a small measure of confidence.
“Lights,” she said, squinting as her eyes adjusted. Edge made no reaction to the brightness. “I’m your handler now,” Isabelle said, stepping back into the room. “You’re coming with me.”
She tried to make her best show of it. She had no idea how handlers were supposed to act, but she doubted they were scared out of their minds. All things considered, she may as well be in here with a rampaging terrasaur or an antimatter bomb. Perhaps Larry should have retrieved Edge instead. It didn’t help that Isabelle felt sick to her stomach. Each step made the room spin. It grew worse the closer she got to the Clairvoyant. The girl made no reaction, though. She simply watched.
Isabelle stopped at the foot of Edge’s bed. She pulled the handcuffs off her belt. “You’re—” she started to say, but her words were cut short as she choked back her rising bile.
Isabelle looked at the twelve-year-old and wondered what she thought of her. Did she know what she intended? If she did, did she care? Was she simply waiting for the opportune moment to strike? Why would a Clairvoyant of her power even need to wait?
She took a deep breath. “You’re not going to give me a hard time, are you?”
Edge sat still, but just then she leaned forward and tied her hair in a ponytail. Isabelle swallowed hard. She had no idea what that meant. When the girl was finished, she presented her arms. Isabelle slapped the handcuffs on her.
“Good,” she said softly to herself. She held the links between the handcuffs and smiled. The sickening feel was gone and the room was no longer spinning, but neither were the cause of her joy. “Good,” she said again. Carmen shook her head a few times, but Isabelle didn’t notice her discomfort. She pulled her to her feet with the handcuffs and almost dragged her out of the room. “Come on,” she said roughly.