Althea took a step towards her, urgency brimming in her eyes. “Yes, and they are worried about me.”
Anita sat in the other chair, tugging on Althea’s hand until she moved closer. “Are they able to take care of a girl with your special circumstances?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…” Anita looked her up and down. “It doesn’t look like you’re being given enough food, you’re wearing a boy’s undershirt and a skirt made from leather bits. No shoes… Are your parents taking proper care of you, is all I’m asking.”
“You just described every kid in the Badlands.” Althea’s tone came off flat. “I get extra hungry when I make the sicks and the hurts go away.”
The two exchanged a glance. Althea read their thoughts; watching her mend Dean on some kind of magic square of floating light left them both awestruck. These people in black wanted her too; though it felt like curiosity more than greed.
“You know what I can do. You saw the man outside get better. That’s why I don’t get sick.”
“Althea, is it?”
“Yes.”
“We know of some others who have talents like yours. We call it accelerated healing. What has us confused is we have never seen someone able to do it to other people.”
The man walked closer. “In all documented cases, those who have been gifted with that ability could only restore their own bodies.”
Althea shrugged.
“Maybe she got some radiation or something from the Badlands?” The man lifted an eyebrow.
“You’ve read too many vid comics, Mike. Radiation doesn’t turn you into a superhero; it melts your skin off.”
“Yeah in large fast doses sure, but who knows what very low level exposure over generations can do.” He smiled. “We know what we saw; can you explain it?”
“Althea, there is a place we can take you where you can learn how to get the most from your abilities. It’s a safe place where we can protect you and teach you.”
“Home. I want to go home.” She stomped each time she said ‘home.’
“What if we brought your family here?” Michael patted her on the back. “Just for a little while so you can be with them while you see the school. If you don’t like it, you can go back.”
Althea stared at the floor. This place might be tolerable with Karina and Father, but the people of Querq depended on her too. “My home needs me. There are so many people there I miss.”
“Why would anyone want to be out there? All the creatures, the mutants, the gangs, the violence…” Anita shook her head.
Officer made a noise, stifling a thought. Althea peeked. He wanted to say “we got gangs here, too.” Some of the images in his mind looked terrifying. Flying cars, screaming people, gunfights in the streets, junkies, homeless, crime scenes, all of it swam together and made her wrench her telepathic link away from him with a whimper.
“What’s wrong?” Anita tried to be consoling, but she was not her sister.
“I don’t like this place. There’s evil here. I’m sick of being kidnapped so much. I was finally happy, and they took me away again.” Her voice twisted with tears, but she defied the urge to sob. “I want to go home, and I want to go home right now.”
“You haven’t been kidnapped, honey.” Anita patted her lightly on the cheek. “You’ve been rescued.”
“It feels the same.” She pouted. “‘Cept I’m not tied up.”
“That’s so sad.” Mike passed over a cup of hot chocolate from one of the blue men. “Here, hon. Take this. It’s good.”
She sniffed at it, allowing Anita to pull her into her lap. A big swallow went down her throat like fire as she discovered how hot it was, and cried out. Gasping, she fanned at her mouth. It tasted wonderful, but hurt.
“Sip it, slow.” The woman giggled. “See, there’s a lot you need to learn. That’s why we would like to take you to the school. It’s not safe out there.”
“People don’t hurt me; they just lock me up and fight over who owns me. They call me the Prophet. I don’t want to be owned anymore, and I know I can make them stop now.”
“You’re in the city, Althea. Nobody out there knows who you are. It’s a dangerous place for a little girl. Hell, it’s a dangerous place for me.” Mike laughed.
Althea sipped the sweet, warm liquid, staring over the rising edge of the cup at his blue eyes. He wanted something from her, but not the same way the raiders did. She intrigued him the way inventing things intrigued the Water Man. They wanted to help her. There was no malice in them, but they also were not letting her go back to her family.
“Look. We have to follow procedure.” Anita sighed. “Let’s pretend for a bit the law would allow us to send you back into the Badlands; before we could do it, we’d have to at least work with you for a little while to understand what you can do.”
“Why?”
Slurp.
“It’s the law. We need to catalog psionics, especially when we find someone that can do things no one has ever seen before.”
Slurp.
She stared at him. They were afraid she would be a danger to people, a thought she found ludicrous. “I can’t kill people. All I want to do is help.”
A telempathic pulse of sadness at being thought of as a potential threat knocked them both loopy for a moment.
“Oh my.” Mike grabbed his head.
Out in the hallway, four men burst into tears.
“Telempath.” Anita gasped, sniffling into full on sobs. “Sadness… Please stop. Holy shit, she’s strong. I can’t resist her.”
Althea backed off. “I’m sorry. It made me sad when he thought I could kill someone.”
“Hey.” Mike tipped her chin up with his finger, sucking back the urge to cry. “I believe you, but our boss will be mad at us if we don’t. Will you help us, just for a few hours and then we’ll talk to her about getting you home. We have cars that can fly out there if everything works out okay.”
If she’s this powerful, she might be better off out there away from the corporations. Mike’s voice in Anita’s mind; Althea overheard him.
“What’s a corporation?”
Anita mumbled. “You know it’s rude to…”
“What is rude?”
Slurp.
Mike cracked up laughing. He thought for a moment, and smiled. “A corporation is like a gang, only they use money instead of guns.”
She stared. “That’s stupid. Who’s afraid of money?”
“You’d be surprised.” Anita chuckled.
Slurp.
The cocoa was gone.
ecause they promised to take her home when they could, she agreed to go with them. Beard’s truck was missing from the space between the gates when they walked outside. In its place sat a shiny black car with a strip of clear glass across the roof that snapped side to side with nanosecond flares of blinding blue light. Mike led her by the hand to the door; the steel ground had gotten colder now since the sun hid behind the jagged claws of metal and light that scratched at the sky.
Althea trembled at the city looming over her. It felt as though it would come crashing down at any time, smothering her with a strange foreboding darkness she could feel lurking just behind the gleaming edifice of civilization. She stood on the far side of the great wall of flame the elders had spoken of, only it was not made of flames. It was made of metal, with guns bigger than cars that threw fire instead of bullets. When she had asked about it, Mike told her it was to protect the city from mutants and gangs. There were no ancestors here. This was not the land of the dead.
She frowned at the blue spots her eyes made on the armored door panel until it swung up and open. Soft grey seats waited for her, and she gathered her skirt up and sat. Mike reached across her for the seat belt, and she stiffened like a dutiful slave as he pulled the strap across her lap.
“You said you wouldn’t tie me.” A tear rolled down her cheek.
“This is a safety belt; just in case we hit something, you won’t
get hurt.”
Seeing Anita put one on as well calmed her down, and she sat still as Mike closed her door. The console flooded with light as Anita played with buttons and Mike slid into the passenger seat and belted himself in.
When they floated straight up, Althea lost her mind. Screaming, she scratched at the glass and kicked at the seat. The belt held her down and she tugged at it, trying to escape. Anita set the hovercar back on its wheels hard, struggling to overcome the radiant terror emanating from their passenger. As soon as they hit solid ground, Althea’s panic became bawling tears. Mike leaned through the gap between the seats and held her hand.
“Hey, calm down, sweetie. There’s nothing to be scared of. You’re in a hovercar; it’s supposed to fly.” He smiled.
Althea clutched the lap belt and strained, grimacing as she tried to get out. Mike reached over and clicked the buckle off. Freedom let her relax. He laboriously explained the workings of the seat belt, telling her to look at his thoughts if she needed to. She did, and after a few sniveling breaths, put it back on. When the vehicle again moved into the air, her fingers clawed at the seat, but she contained herself.
The inner wall of the checkpoint fell out of view as they floated higher. She looked out over an endless sea of great buildings glimmering into the horizon. With terrified curiosity, her head swiveled around as they climbed to join a stream of similar flying cars. These sights were beyond imagining, not a scrap of bare earth or vegetation to be seen anywhere. So many people lived in this place, yet this mountain of human achievement was flooded with such sorrow.
Waves of bad emotions zoomed by from other cars. Anger was the most popular, jealousy, greed, and depression followed. One car made her raise an eyebrow, as the mood wafting from it seemed as though someone was getting wifed.
She had gone with them only to get home as fast as possible; whatever it was they wanted to do would take a few hours, and then they promised they would send her home if she still wanted to go. The city slid by outside, blurred by the haze of liquid sadness that fell from her eyes. When the passing windows slid upward, she realized the car descended and looked to the front.
“There you are.”
The voice, with a British accent, came from a ghostly head protruding from the console with thick brown hair and a prominent brow. He offered an arrogant smile in Althea’s direction which curled the thin moustache fringing his mouth. A patch of hair beneath his lower lip spread down over his chin.
“Who the hell are you?” Mike glared at him.
Althea drew a breath. “Ghost?”
“No, it’s a hologram,” Anita muttered. “Someone hacked our comm channel.”
“Do holler grams have feelings?” Althea’s voice trembled.
“No, they’re just li―what the hell?” Anita blinked at the head. “Mike… That fucking hologram has surface thoughts… Ow.” Anita gasped and grabbed her head.
“How amusing.” The head frowned at her. “Indeed I do, but they are not for the perusal of my lessers.”
“You realize you are intruding upon Divis―” Mike grabbed his head and screamed.
“That is quite enough prattle from drones.” The head sneered at Mike. “You… time for a nap.”
Mike faceplanted the dashboard, instantly unconscious.
“You…” The head looked at Anita and the free will melted out of her face. “Please give my guest a ride to our rendezvous point.”
The eyes within the holographic head flashed to static for a second. Anita pulled at the control sticks and the car banked off to the left, taking a slow glide to the ground. Althea hyperventilated, seeing her promised trip home evaporate. In her panic, she forgot how to work the seatbelt and thrashed at it.
The hologram chuckled. “You have much to learn, Althea. You needn’t be afraid of me; I am like you.”
She froze, staring, not liking the way he pronounced her name, all-thaya.”
Rage and terror collided in equal amounts in her mind, leaving her feeling neither. “What?”
“These pathetic individuals are merely psionic. What we are is something much greater.”
“Don’t hurt them.” She writhed; her heels slid off the seat as she tried to get her hips through the belt.
His laugh made her feel small. “I will not hurt them if you behave yourself. I am just borrowing them for a moment. I am saving you from the tyranny of a society that cannot possibly understand you. They only want to control you, like everyone else. If you think they would have actually ferried you back into primate land, you are sorely mistaken.”
“I want to go home.” Her downcast gaze fell among tangled strands of leather. A glint of chromatic light danced across the silver button, and she remembered how to work the belt.
“You are going home, child, to a home that can properly nurture you.”
She crawled through the gap between the seats, grabbing Anita’s arm in both hands and shaking her. Android-like, she gazed with lifeless eyes at the passing buildings.
Althea shoved and pulled. “Wake up.”
The head laughed. “You cannot reach her, child. Do not feel sorry for them. They only led you into slavery once again. Only I can offer you true freedom.”
The shimmering light from this head flashed patterns on her skin as she stared at him. “Who are you?”
“I am the man who will usher in the dawn of the Awakened. I am Archon.” He gazed up and to the right, infinitely proud of his own destiny.
She blinked. “Awakened at dawn? Most people wake up at dawn.”
He frowned. “Droll child. Are you truly simple, or do you mock me?”
“Sorry.” She looked back and forth at the lights all over the console. This flying car had so many complicated things. She could not even work out how to use a steering wheel and pedals, and this car did not have a wheel―just two sticks. “What is awakened?”
“These Division 0 fools are psionic in the way a baby crawls. You and I, we are walking; no… flying. We are a higher order. Your eyes mark you as one of us.”
Althea cringed from the pride and desire radiating from the face floating over the console. Leaping forward, she swatted at buttons and switches at random, trying to make the bad man go away.
“What are you doing, child? Sit down!” His voice flooded her thoughts.
She fell onto the hard plastic between the two front seats, grabbing her head. A second later, she hopped back into her seat and grinned vapidly at him like a little girl trying to please her daddy. It felt like such a wonderful idea to just sit there and behave.
The smiling faces of Karina and Father flashed in her mind. A tiny scream started in the back of her mind, growing and coming forward until it erupted from her mouth; she shoved him out of her head.
“No.” The car flooded with blue light and she leapt into the front again, pounding her fists into the console, left and right, at anything that glowed.
A bad sound throbbed through her ears as everything inside the car flashed red. The head vanished as the center part of the dashboard went dark. She floated into the air when the car fell like a stone; her back brushed the cloth liner at the top of the cabin. Seeing the ground approaching fast, she screamed. Her arms were too short to reach Anita while pinned to the roof. Growling, she swung a leg down and pressed her foot to the side of the woman’s head.
Strange scrambled energy occupied the space where the brain should be; nothing seemed physically wrong, but the brain was not “turned on.” She tried every way of pushing at it she could think of as she searched for a way to purge the harmful presence before they reached the ground.
Anita’s eyes shot open and she screamed, bashing her fist into a red button. Light spread through the console as she hauled back on the sticks. Althea crashed onto the floor and flew into the rear, barking a noise like a kicked goose as she thumped flat against the seatback. She reached for the belt, but became weightless again an instant before a tremendous smash hit the car from below. Sky, road, and city flashe
d by the window as the vehicle tumbled end over end. It stopped for several seconds as Anita regained control. Althea found herself lying on her back in the front seat again and could not explain how she’d gotten there. Her head pounded, the warmth of blood ran down her face.
Althea closed her eyes, focusing inward. White smears of bone in the shapes of her life had cracked: ribs, an arm, and her thigh. She cringed at the snap of her right femur coming back together, after which the crunch of her reintegrating arm was no big deal. Angular shards broke into the red cloud, and she forced them out one by one, feeling small fragments slide through her skin and clink to the carpet beneath her. The cut on her head was minor, and after a few minutes’ meditation, she pushed herself up off the floor and looked around.
She wanted food again.
The windshield had become a dented slab of metal covered in broken glass that somehow made it see-through before it broke. Mike was out; Anita remained awake and bleeding.
“You okay?” The woman coughed up blood.
“Don’t talk.” Althea took her hand.
She did not have much left, but focused what little energy remained into the wounded cop. Althea budgeted it enough to stabilize her and prevent death. When she opened her eyes, Anita tried to speak.
“Stim…” A weak whisper, made less clear by Althea’s fatigue.
She did not ask for clarification, instead looking into Anita’s mind. Small red devices on her belt held medicine. They would make her less tired. Althea rummaged through the little black cases, avoiding the strange silver gun. In one of the pouches, she found five red tubes and took one out.
“How do I work it?” Althea searched into the woman’s mind for the answer as the thoughts formed.
Althea pushed the end into her thigh, but nothing happened.
“Safety cap…”
Turning it over, she bit a yellow plastic cap off the end, exposing a tiny hole at the center of a metal spot. When next she pressed it into her leg, it hissed, and flooded her thigh with a cool presence. Althea did not know what synthetic adrenaline was, but within seconds, a surge of energy replaced her fatigue. Anita was confused; she had meant for the girl to give her the stimpak.
Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) Page 28