by A. P. Kensey
“Hey,” said Colton.
Reece shifted in his seat to twist farther away from the aisle.
“Come on, Reece.” Colton didn’t like the tension between the two of them and he wanted to clear the air so things could go back to the way they were before they left New York.
“Go sit with your girlfriend,” said Reece without looking over.
“Don’t be like this, man. What’s going on with you?”
“Pffff,” Reece sneered.
“Fine,” said Colton, shaking his head. He walked down the aisle and sat next to Shelly, sighing in frustration as the leather chair formed around his back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“He’s being stupid, that’s what’s wrong.”
Shelly looked at Reece, who had propped one of his feet on the seat in front of him and still sat staring out the window.
“It’s a lot to get used to,” she said. “Especially if he feels like he isn’t, you know, one of us.”
“Why doesn’t he just leave, then? Bernam said he could stay, but why stick around if he’s miserable?”
“He’s your friend, Colton. Maybe he wants to stay here with you.”
Colton sighed again. “He should get over it. I’m doing just fine.”
“Well,” said Shelly with a smile, “you’re special, aren’t you?”
She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
Colton blushed.
The door to the cabin closed loudly, sealing them inside. Bernam stepped from behind a partition at the front of the plane and looked around.
“Everyone here? Excellent. We should be at our destination in a little less than an hour. If you need to rest, I suggest you start now.” He paused when he saw Alistair and the twins. “Ah, good. I see some of you beat me to it. Very well, then.” He turned and went back through the partition.
The jet engines whirred to full power and the small plane rolled across the hot pavement next to the black-windowed building.
Shelly rested her hand on Colton’s leg as the plane picked up speed and the wheels lifted off the ground.
“You don’t like flying?” asked Colton.
“I love it, actually. Why do you ask?”
Colton looked down at her hand on his leg, then into her eyes. She looked back, her gaze steady and inviting.
“No reason,” he said. “Do you want to tell me now, or later?”
“Tell you what?”
“The thing you wouldn’t tell me in the meeting. What did Bernam promise everyone?”
“Oh, that,” she said. She pulled her hand off his leg and leaned back in her seat. “He said he could turn all of us into hybrids.”
“Hybrids,” repeated Colton. “Those exist?”
“One that we know about, but he died a long time ago. There’s a rumor that Bernam has found another one who is willing to help him figure out how to replicate the ability.”
“Why is it so hard to replicate?”
“Because someone born with only one ability—either Source or Con—can’t hold the opposite energy within their bodies for very long. A lot of people have tried. If they get the foreign energy out in time, they only go insane. If they hold on to it…well, let’s just say it isn’t pretty.”
“So Bernam thinks he can turn everyone into hybrids,” said Colton.
“Yeah,” said Shelly. “Pretty rad, huh?”
“But why? What’s the point?”
Shelly laughed and her short auburn hair bounced across her face. She tucked it back behind her ears and turned in her seat to face Colton. “Look what we can do now, with just one half of the equation. Imagine what it would be like if we didn’t spend our lives searching for the missing key—that one other person that holds the potential to unlock all of our power. Most of us never find that person. We spend our whole lives searching. I’m tired of waiting for it to happen on its own.”
“I don’t get why any Source isn’t compatible with just any Conduit.”
“I don’t get it either, but that’s just the way it is. A Source can burn themselves up trying to make it work, and they usually take the Con with them. It’s called feedback, and it’s a nasty thing to watch.”
“How do you know when you’ve found the right person?” asked Colton.
Shelly shrugged. “According to those that are lucky enough to find their counterpart, they just know.”
Colton sat silently for a long time, then said, “I thought we were going to be helping people.”
“We are! But just think how much more we can do once we’re hybrids! It’s the first step in the process.” She stuck her legs out and rested them across Colton’s lap. “After that,” she said, “we can save all the people you want, Mr. Boy Scout.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him playfully. “You know, there’s a special term for a hybrid. If a person has both abilities, they don’t call them a Source or a Conduit any more. I always hated that term, ‘Conduit’. Bleh! Like a piece of tubing or something.”
“What do they call them?”
“A Nova. As in supernova. As in the power of an exploding star.” Shelly spun in her seat and looked up at the ceiling. Strands of her hair fell out from behind her ears and bobbed over her face as she turned. “Shelly isn’t my real name,” she said.
“What?”
“My full name is Michelle. My parents named me after my Aunt.”
“It’s very pretty,” said Colton.
Sadness filled her eyes as she looked at him.
“Do you know what they did when I told them about my ability?”
Colton shook his head.
“They kicked me out. They wouldn’t even let me take a suitcase. That’s the kind of ignorance that being different reveals in people. Nothing about me had changed. I was still their daughter—still the same little girl I had always been. They were scared of me.”
She turned in her seat to look out the window, lost in her own thoughts.
Colton wanted to say he was sorry but thought she had probably heard it too many times before.
He looked over her shoulder and out through the small, circular window. The sky gradated dark to light as it dropped toward the horizon. The first colors of evening streaked across the sky; deep orange mixed with faint purple. Soon the sun would dip below the mountains and the temperature would plummet.
The ground below was a brown desert that stretched out in all directions. As the plane banked slightly in the air, Colton saw the distant lights of a city. Small pinpoints of white, yellow, and red shined like small stars in the desert.
He thought of what Shelly had said about becoming a hybrid. Colton didn’t know if he wanted more power than he already had. After he found his mother, he wanted to take her as far away from the people that hurt her as he could. He didn’t care what happened after that. If Bernam was serious about helping people who couldn’t help themselves, then maybe Colton would stick around a little while longer. Shelly was enough of a reason to stay, but he needed to get his mother to safety before he started thinking about himself.
Colton remembered the daydreams he had as a child—fantasies where he was a superhero with incredible powers that saved children from burning buildings. He watched all the cartoons and read all the comic books. He played with stiff-armed action figures that wore brightly-colored costumes and promised justice with their square jaws and obscene muscles.
Is that what I am now? he wondered. Is this what being a hero feels like?
Colton hadn’t saved anybody. He was no hero. Maybe he could be, later, but right then he could not ignore the foolish hope to bring his mother back home to his father, to put her hand in his and say, “There. Everything’s all better. Now we’re a family again.”
25
Marius sat in front of Haven, squinting at her. They were in a large rectangular room that extended away from the dome like a big shoebox. The walls and floor were bare except for a few exercise mats and a wooden rack bolted to the wall that held a few broken brooms
ticks.
“Hmm,” said Marius. “Hmmmm.”
Haven’s shoulders dropped and she raised her eyebrows. “Well?!”
“I’m thinking,” he said. He scratched at the black and grey stubble on his chin, then his hand drifted up to the top of his head and he scratched his closely-shaven scalp. “Hmmmmm. You know martial arts?”
“No!” she said.
“Hand-to-hand? Disarming methods?
“Nope.”
“How to use gun?”
“Of course not.”
“Why ‘of course not’? In Russia I knew by age of seven.”
“We’re not in Russia.”
He chuckled. “Yes, I know this. Maybe we start with what you know, okay?” He looked at her, waiting. “So…what do you know?”
“About what?!”
He sighed, then stood. “Okay, we start small. I teach you defense, yes? Come.” He motioned for Haven to follow him as he stepped back from the door toward the center of the room. He glanced up at the ceiling twenty feet above their heads. “This will work,” he said.
“Work for what?” asked Haven. She stepped forward hesitantly, looking around as if she expected an attacker to materialize out of thin air.
Marius had been adamant about training her as much as possible before the group left for the medical center early the next morning. Haven said that she would have been useless if she tried to save her brother and Marius had immediately insisted that she follow him to what he called the “exercise room”.
“Okay,” he said, holding up his palms for her to stop walking. “Put hands up, like this.” He pulled his right hand close to his face and held it a few inches in front of his mouth, his palm open but his fingers firmly together as if he was about to slap someone. He moved his left arm away from him until his hand hovered about a foot in front of his face. Haven thought that if Marius closed his fists it would look like he was holding an invisible blowgun.
She imitated his motions as best she could.
“Good,” he said. “Now.” He stepped toward her and brought his left hand down to her face in slow motion. She stepped away and swatted his hand to the side. “Okay, good,” he said. “Except opponent moves much faster in real life, yes? You want to keep one arm close to your body, always, in case they get near you with knife or something else. Always push away from your body, like this…”
Marius swung at her again in slow motion, a wide swing that Haven easily deflected away from her body. She turned as his arm swept past her.
“Ah-ah,” he scolded.
She looked down to see the fingers of his other hand barely touching the side of her ribcage.
“Bye-bye lung,” he said, grinning.
Haven pushed his hand away and replanted her feet. Marius looked down at them and frowned.
“Wider stance,” he said.
She spread her feet farther apart.
“No pigeon-toe,” he said. “Line them up the same way. Good. Now move that one back a few inches. Very good. This way you don’t lose balance when I do this.”
He kicked out his leg and hooked his foot behind one of her ankles. He yanked back, taking her leg with him, but Haven hopped forward on her other foot and managed to stay standing.
Marius laughed. “Very good! Still much to learn, but I think you will be good student, yes? It will be many weeks before you are ready to fight a real opponent, but a few hours a day and you will be better than Marius, I think.”
She sighed and crossed her arms.
“Oh, don’t look so sad,” he said. “Tomorrow, we get back your brother and everything is okay again.”
“It won’t ever be okay again,” she said with more venom than she had intended. “My parents are dead. They’re not ever coming back!”
Haven turned and wiped away the tears running down her cheeks—tears that had fallen more often as the hours wore on.
“Oh, my,” said Marius. He walked over and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I did not mean that you should forget them. I did not mean that at all.”
She sniffed. “My home is gone. Burned to the ground. Even if I get Noah back, there’s nowhere to go.”
“You stay here!” he said quickly. “You both stay here. We have food, water, gymnasium.” He gestured grandly to the empty room in which they stood and Haven smiled. “All the things growing girl and boy need. Okay?”
Haven could think of a hundred other places she would rather stay than a damp underground shelter, but until she knew that Noah was one-hundred percent safe, she didn’t see any other option.
She nodded and Marius clapped his hands together loudly.
“Excellent!” he said. “But training not over yet. Best to teach you something you will definitely use tomorrow. Now is time for the fun stuff.”
He twirled his finger to indicate that she should turn to face him. She did so and moved one foot in front of the other as he had shown her.
“More of that later,” said Marius. “For now, relax. Hands by side. Good. Close your eyes.”
She raised one eyebrow and looked at him.
“Trust me,” he said.
She closed her eyes and waited for his instructions.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “There is a light inside of you. It burns brighter than anything else in this world.” He spoke softly and his voice circled around her. “It is your soul—it is everything you are and also much more. It is life, it is energy, and you feel it growing stronger within you.”
In her mind’s eye, Haven saw a vast nothingness. A dim blue light sparked to life in the distance and grew stronger as it approached.
“You can hold this energy inside of you,” said Marius, “but not forever. You must guide it as it grows. You must shape it for its true purpose. Otherwise it will fade, and you will lose it forever. Control it, keep it close. Once it is strong enough, release it slowly…carefully.”
The blue light in the darkness expanded until it was a small star in Haven’s imagination. It turned slowly and its surface shifted like blue lava—swirling and bubbling with immense power. Strands like solar flares arced from the expanding ball and snapped in half, sending strings of blue plasma spinning into the blackness.
Heat traveled down her spine and spread across her entire body. It pushed through her blood and muscle tissue until it ran along the surface of her skin as if she stood under a waterfall of boiling water. It didn’t hurt her—even when the heat intensified—but she could still feel its presence.
Haven heard Marius step away and she opened her eyes.
Electric blue light cascaded over her vision like the flicking flames of a violent fire. Marius stood twenty feet away, on the other side of the room.
“Close your eyes!” he shouted.
She did, but something was wrong. The energy that had been building within her shifted to the side like a heavy weight and slipped off her body. She opened her eyes as a blue stream of burning plasma shot from her left arm and hit the wall just above Marius’s head. He shouted and dove out of the way as the stream seared into the wall.
Haven screamed and stepped backward. She raised her left arm and the blue stream scraped up the wall to the ceiling, leaving behind a blackened streak on the metal.
“What do I do?!” she shouted.
The energy was already dissipating. The stream shooting out of her arm faded like a dying flashlight beam until it disappeared. Haven dropped to her knees, sweaty and exhausted. She gulped down air as if she had almost drowned.
Marius ran over and knelt beside her. He gripped her shoulders firmly and supported her when she started to shake all over.
“It’s okay,” he said. He lowered her to a sitting position and smoothed down her hair, which was sticking out in every direction. He looked up at the long strip of blackened metal on the wall and ceiling. “That was…that was good, for first time. Practice makes perfect, yes?”
“I lost it,” said Haven, still breathing heavily. “I felt it but then I lost it.�
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“Happens to everyone,” said Marius. “Still happens to me if I am distracted. What did you see?”
She thought for a moment. “A blue light in the darkness, like a star. It grew brighter and brighter and came close enough that I could see every detail.”
Marius was nodding. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Good. For me, I imagine it building up in my hands until I can no longer keep it inside. It is different for everyone, but the important thing is that you find something that works. Eventually you will be able to skip the seeing and jump right to the zapping.” He looked back at the black scar on the wall, then down at his own hands. “Maybe next time I try your method. Maybe I get something a little stronger! But listen to me. The goal is to control the energy—to not let go all at once. This way it is not all gone in five seconds and then the bad guys get you.”
Haven sat up straighter and took a deep breath. “Why are you fighting?” she asked. “With Bernam and the others.”
Marius frowned. “There is always fighting. There is always someone who wants more power, and who will take it from others. And always there are people willing to help that person. It is a terrible truth, but one that we all must face.” He shook his head sadly.
Haven smiled and pushed his shoulder. “I think I need some water.”
He slapped his forehead. “Of course you do! How stupid of me.” He stood and helped her to her feet. “Very thirsty work. But don’t worry, is worth it. Everybody has limits, but with more training you will not believe what you can do.”
Haven followed Marius to the door. She looked down at her hands, then gently rubbed her forearms. Her skin was cool, and there was no sign that fire or any other kind of destructive energy had been flowing over her body. A shiver ran down her spine when she thought about the power that had been available to her a few moments earlier.
It felt like she had tapped into a nuclear generator and was pulling unlimited power from its core, weaving it together into a giant sphere of energy. Up until the moment she had lost control, Haven felt as if she could have blown up a building.
As she followed Marius out of the training room and into the dome, she had a hard time convincing herself that having that kind of power was a good thing.