by Aaron Slade
“I’m not all-powerful, Evee,” I said. “There are limits to what I can do.” I couldn’t understand my ability– or control it.
My eyes found the cyan pools that I had fallen so in love with, but their magic was spent. Evee and I no longer had a chance to be together with her father keeping me away. I didn’t want to be the reason she died. I had to let her go. The holographic form of her was just a tease if I could never have the real thing again.
“You should leave, Evee,” I said. I knew it wasn’t what I wanted, but Colonel Ford had already won. She and I would both be safer if she left me alone.
“You don’t mean that,” she said. Her eyes were glistening with tears. I’d never seen her so hurt.
“Did you hear what your father said?” I asked. “If you want to live, I have to stay away from you.”
“He said a lot of things, Casper!” Evee exploded. Disappointment and resentment set on her face. “I know you don’t really believe them.”
I knew I was going to lose her. Somehow, I’d always known that she and I were only temporary, because she’d always been too good to be true. I couldn’t fight Colonel Ford. And if Evee was going to die, her father would be able to protect her better than I ever could. If love did exist, and I loved her, I had to let her go.
“Please, Evee,” I pleaded. “Just go.”
Hunks of ice melted on the floor next to me, forming into a small puddle.
“You’re lucky, Casper,” Evee said. “Most people have to feel love and just trust that it exists. But you can actually see it. You know it’s real regardless of what my father said. And I know it’s real because I feel it.” Her chin and lips quivered briefly, and she knelt down close to me. “What do you see, Casper? Tell me.”
Her aura dimmed, flickering to nothingness. It wasn’t her fault, but mine. I was too afraid to see it. “I don’t see anything.” My aura was gone, and I imagined that this must be similar to how Adam felt– scared and alone. His parents ignored him most of the time, and he’d be sad to know we’d lost the only parent we’d ever known– mine. “There’s nothing, Evee.”
Evee inhaled an emotional breath. “Then I feel sorry for you, Casper Vance.” She stood up and turned her back toward me, staring at my reflection in Mom’s bathroom mirror. “I’m leaving for now,” she said. “But I won’t give up on you.”
The image of her body dissolved into empty space where it had been standing.
It’s better this way, I thought. She’ll be safe.
WHISPERS
Evee:
“Evee,” the voice whispered.
For days I listened to the voice speak my name, but the whispers came from nowhere. The voice haunted me wherever I went. After a few seconds of silence, I continued walking around the Military’s perimeter, trying to find a way into Fallon. I examined the lonely desert town in the distance. I had to warn Casper of the Military’s plans, but first I had to find him, and I hadn’t heard from him in days. I closed my eyes, pleading to no one, that Casper be kept safe.
After Dad arrested Casper’s family, he made sure that I wouldn’t be able to ruin any of his plans. I spent the first day trapped in the house. After that I left the base and my physical body behind. I’d never spent this much time away from my physical body, and I could feel the effects it had. In some ways, it was like I didn’t exist anymore, interacting with nothing in my environment. Standing on the outskirts of Fallon, I wished so desperately that I could enter the city, but I was locked out.
A glass-like, scarlet dome towered around the city’s perimeter, trapping everyone inside. The rosy wall of the dome glowed, illuminating the city with its pinkish tint. No one was allowed in or out of Fallon. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this. It was the same thing that happened in Seattle before Dad and Zana destroyed it. The pattern was already repeating.
It wouldn’t be long before all soldiers were reassigned away from Fallon. They wouldn’t hurt their friends and families. Fallon would be demolished when the soldiers left, and thousands would die. There was nothing I could do. Every time I tried to enter Fallon in my phantom body the barrier stopped me, disrupting my concentration. It was like my ability didn’t work properly inside the dome, but still I tried.
From a distance a jeep patrolled around the dome, and it approached the area where I tried to penetrate the barrier. I knew who it was when I saw the crazed hair– Connie Bender. The unbalanced girl joined Zana’s team a few years back, and she was the one responsible for the barrier. Dad’s containment plans usually depended on Connie’s extra-human trait. I disappeared and then reappeared on the opposite side of Fallon so Connie wouldn’t see me.
“Evee,” the voice echoed around me again as if sounding from every direction.
I froze, waiting for the voice to say more than my name, but it never did. A part of me wondered if I was going crazy; being separated from my physical body for so long was having adverse effects on my brain. But deep down, I knew it was Casper’s voice. He was in trouble, and for some reason I could hear him calling out to me. It hurt to think about Casper. The last time I’d seen him, he was so broken– perhaps beyond repair. How would he survive trapped in the city without his family? What would people do to him after they read the lies printed in the newspaper? How much longer did Fallon have?
“Evee.” The voice sounded painfully weak.
I couldn’t take hearing the voice for one more minute. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to hear it in my physical body. I returned home, leaving the desert behind and waking up in my real body as if I’d been asleep for the last day and a half. Hunger and exhaustion hit me all at once, but I couldn’t satisfy either.
The empty, generic house became my prison and couldn’t have been further from a home. The only home I could call mine was in Fallon, and I couldn’t even get in the city. Staring out my window, I watched the team of soldiers ordered to watch the house as they paced back and forth under the sweltering Nevada sun. They stood guard by both doors and set up a perimeter around the yard as if people were lining up to kidnap me. The soldiers were my babysitters, or at least that was what I called them. My death stayed on my mind constantly, and I could only imagine with the way things were heading, it would happen soon.
“Make sure she doesn’t leave,” Dad had told them. “And make sure no one comes near this house.”
Dad seemed certain Casper would try to contact me, but I didn’t have as much faith. Casper lost everything, and part of it was my fault. It was my father that took his family away. It was my father that would destroy an entire city again.
Outside my bedroom door, I listened to the sound of heavy Military boots slowly ascend the stairs. If someone was in the house, it could only be one person, and I was no longer speaking to him. When the door opened, Dad stood in the doorway. I impulsively turned away from him, staring at the white, blank wall.
“How long are you not going to talk to me?” he asked. There was tenderness to his voice I didn’t recognize.
Forever, I shouted in my head. He took away the most precious thing in my life, and I could never forgive him. Nothing could fill the hollowness I felt– an absence of true feeling that Dad was incapable of giving me. I worried that the numbness would consume me and I’d turn out just like Dad.
The Colonel stood in the doorway, waiting for me to speak, but I had nothing to say to him. “You’re better off without him, Evee.”
My jaw clenched so hard I nearly chipped a tooth. I refused to look at him, but I had to tell him what I thought of him.
“You’re a monster,” I whispered.
The sound of Dad’s breathing silenced. “That’s what your mother thought too. When she found out what I was doing, she used those exact words.” He almost sounded ashamed, and my shock from hearing him speak about Mom disrupted my train of thought. “I’m hoping you’ll understand what your mother never could. I’m not the bad guy, Evee… I just follow orders. Do you think I honestly like having to do the things I’ve done?”
I turned to face him, catching a glimpse of regret in his eyes. Was he telling the truth? He never mentioned Mom– at least, not since I was a little girl.
“You don’t have to work for the Military,” I said. “Or maybe you could change the Military. You are a commanding officer.”
Dad let out a frustrated laugh. “Oh, what it must be like to be young and naïve. You’re old enough now to know the truth, Evelyn. You should know the Military hasn’t been in control of society since the Blight.” He paused, waiting for the alarm of his words to hit me.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “The Military rules everyone.” I didn’t know how to trust his new honesty.
“That’s the way it looks, anyway,” Dad said. “But the Military is just the muscle that the real person in charge uses to establish his control.”
Nothing made sense. “If that’s the truth, then why do you serve?” I asked. “You have a choice. You could run away!”
“I don’t have a choice, and I never did,” Dad said. “The last seventeen years, I’ve been protecting you the same way I had to protect your mother. Do you know how the Military could use your ability? There are people in high places that want you. They wanted your mother’s ability too. I have an understanding that as long as I serve, my family would go untouched. I never had a choice. I will do anything for my family.” For the first time in years, I watched the cold blue of Dad’s eyes reveal the slightest bit of emotion.
Guilt hit me like a person with extra-human strength punched me in the stomach. Did Dad do his job to protect me? “Please, Dad. Just leave your job. I’d rather you fight the Military.”
“There is no fighting the Military,” Dad said. His head hung low. He didn’t leave, but stood there behind me as if trying to find a way to rectify the situation. Surely he knew our family connection was over if he stayed with the Military. “You should start packing. We’ll be leaving Fallon at the end of the week.”
I turned a cold shoulder to him again, facing the wall. I’d never talk to him again, and I had no intentions of leaving this town– at least, not with him.
“There’s going to come a moment, Evee,” Dad said. “The decision you make in that moment will determine if you live or die. I wish I could see it. My team of precogs can’t see how you’ll die, but they know you’re not with me when it happens. So I have to keep you close. If you try to find him… you will die. It would be stupid to die over a boy, Evelyn.” He walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The second he was gone, I grabbed the nearest thing I could and hurled it at the door. The small lamp broke into several pieces, falling on the floor. I screamed so loud it hurt my own ears, and I continued to throw anything I could find. I wanted to destroy it all. All the worthless possessions I’d accumulated over the years meant nothing to me now that I was a prisoner. I wanted to be free of him, and I’d burn this damn house to the ground to do it.
“Evee.”
The voice was back, distracting me from my fit of rage.
“Evee.”
I looked around, but no one was there, and the person kept repeating my name over and over again.
“Evee. Evee. Evee.” My name echoed around me as if I was trapped in a crowd of people calling out to me. The whispers overwhelmed me and I collapsed, covering my ears, but then I realized that the voice was in my head.
“Evee, listen to me. It’s Jesse.”
I looked around, wondering how this was possible. Jesse had been given the Knight drug. Where was he if he could talk to me?
In a few moments, the soldiers will inject me with the Knight again, and I’ll be too drugged to contact you. Listen carefully. Both of us have glimpsed the future. Both of us were meant to find Casper. We have to listen to Shannon’s predictions. Find Casper, and make sure he’s safe. Don’t give up. Whatever Shannon told you must come to pass.
Stunned, I looked at the picture of Casper in my hand that had been moments away from being thrown across the room. I pulled the picture into a hug, disappointed that I’d lost control of my emotions. I won’t give up, I thought. Even if it meant I had to die like Shannon predicted.
Jesse’s voice was gone, leaving me all alone in the house again. I had to find Casper, but I didn’t know where to begin. Suddenly, an idea hit me. I had to find Adam or Seth first. They’d help their friend and protect him.
Casper:
Darkness surrounded me in a way that I’d never experienced before. There was no light, no moon, and no sun, as if the universe extinguished or ceased to exist. I felt around for a light switch, but I couldn’t even find a wall. I walked with my arms out in front of me, waiting to bump into something familiar. There was no air– only the empty vacuum of the blackness. I’d never been claustrophobic and I wondered how I could be, in such an open space. I felt trapped by the boundless darkness.
“HELLO,” I yelled. I waited for some sort of response, but nothing came– not even an echo.
Dizziness flooded my head and I felt like I was spinning in circles, but I wasn’t. I was falling– dropping down, down, down into a bottomless abyss. The fear of plummeting left me, but it was replaced by the dread of hitting solid ground. No matter what thoughts I focused on, I couldn’t fly. My ability was gone. The fall would kill me.
Do I want to die? I honestly didn’t know how to answer the question for myself. Was there anything left for me? Everything I cared about was gone– taken from me. Mom. Dad. Uncle Jesse. Evee. I would never see them again.
I tried to yell for help, but thoughts of death paralyzed me.
My body made contact with the ground, but there was no pain. I expected my legs to be crushed by the fall, or my back broken, but I was still alive and unharmed.
“Casper.”
Someone called my name. I could hear it being called from all around me as if a hundred people lay hidden in the darkness, whispering for me, but the voices were faint. The sound of the s in my name resonated like a hissing snake as all the voices pleaded for my attention.
“Casper.” The voices came again. But they backed off, leaving only one, familiar inflection. It was Uncle Jesse in my head.
“Uncle Jesse, where are you?” I shouted.
Silence.
“Casper.” It sounded as if it was coming from behind me, but there was no direction, no up or down, left or right. I looked over my shoulder, finding a light in the distance. The soft glow pierced the surrounding darkness a few hundred yards away. I ran towards the source.
A lone table took up the small space of the light, but the table wasn’t empty. There was someone sleeping on it– not sleeping, I realized– dying.
“MOM,” I yelled. I tried shaking her unconscious body. “Wake up!” I knew she’d been given the Knight, but if only I could wake her, she could speed off so fast there would be no chance of her ever being caught again.
“Casper.”
The voice came from behind me again. I turned around, finding two more tables occupying a spotlight– Dad and Uncle Jesse.
I jerked on both of their bodies, hoping for some kind of a response. “Please, wake up.” There was no movement from any of them. Their lifeless bodies remained motionless.
I turned back towards Mom. I placed my hand on top of hers. I didn’t know what to expect, but I couldn’t feel anything. Her touch was empty, not like a mother’s touch.
“Mom, please…”
I pushed her bangs off of her face and noticed that she had gray tresses. I’d never seen grey strands in her hair before. I looked at Dad and Uncle Jesse, who both now had full heads of silver hair and facial wrinkles. What was happening?
I turned back to Mom. The hand I held wrinkled, and instantly, before my eyes, the skin turned saggy with large, dark liver spots. The image of the woman’s face was foreign to me. I didn’t recognize her, but somehow I knew it was Mom.
“Casper,” another voice sounded through the darkness.
I looked around but saw no one. I turned my atte
ntion back to Mom, but her body disappeared. All three of them were gone. I relived the pain of losing them all over again.
“Casper, wake up!”
Wake up? Was I dreaming? This was only a nightmare.
The voice was gone. The dusk returned as I seeped into a deeper unconsciousness.
SAFE?
Casper:
Reality returned slowly. I hoped to wake up in my bed, and that Mom, Dad, and Uncle Jesse would be safe in their rooms– unharmed and safe. I would get ready for school and meet Evee in first period, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that something bad had happened. As soon as I opened my eyes, my hopes were crushed. I wasn’t in my room, but somewhere I’d never been before. Scarlet light bled into the dark room from the mailbox-sized window above me, illuminating the wall of cardboard boxes stacked around me.
Someone had placed me on an uncomfortable cot, and dressed the wounds on my shoulders. Damp bandages covered the raw skin, and both shoulders still stung when I moved at all. I needed to find some regeneration cream to heal the burns, not to mention some food. I was starving. My breathing instinctively changed to short, staccato breaths when I accidently rolled on my shoulder, feeling the searing pain in the skinless wounds.
Someone moved in the darkness just a few feet away. “You’re awake!”
I squinted to see who. “Adam?” I noticed his unmistakable blond hair and blue eyes as he moved closer in the odd, colored light. Even though my family was gone, I still had my brother. “Where am I?”
“You’re safe.” We were in some kind of abandoned storage room or something. Adam looked smaller as if he’d been starving himself, or as if he hadn’t spent the last three years lifting weights. His jaw and cheekbones protruded more than I’d ever seen.
“Why am I not at my house?”
He cringed, and I could see that he hoped I wouldn’t ask the question. For a few moments he avoided eye contact. “Your house is gone, Casper.”