Bree had her hood pulled up over her mop of hair. The tip of her nose that stuck out was red from cold. “I don’t remember much about a school, Elden. Did we go there?”
Elden had his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “Maybe seeing it will remind you. Come on, let’s go.” He positioned himself between the two girls and slid an arm around each of them as if to protect them.
Evazee felt the heat from his fingertips and shivered. The pavement they walked on was chipped and broken. They picked their way forward carefully, stepped gingerly in between sharp bits of glass bottles. They made their way past a wall covered in crude graffiti. The school gate hung on one hinge, the other had rusted through. The school itself was a burnt-out shell of what was left standing after a raging fire had torn through the place. A sign on the outside wall declared that the school was in the process of being rebuilt, but judging from the rusted sign, it was a project that had been long abandoned.
“I guess this isn’t it.” Evazee felt silly for stating the obvious.
“Either that, or the pendant wasn’t accurate.” A crease marked Elden’s forehead. “Remind me again why we thought that thing would show us something real?”
Bree focussed on the tuft of grass beneath her sneakers. She kicked at it repeatedly, looking small and alone.
Evazee studied her for a moment, wishing for some glowing words. C’mon, Jesus. Anything.
Nothing.
She slipped her arm around Bree’s shoulders. “Should we go look around anyway? Maybe we’ll find a clue or something.”
Bree sniffed and rubbed her sleeve across her nose. “Yeah.”
Elden hung back for a moment as if waiting for someone to ask his opinion.
Evazee waved to him to join them. “We came all this way. We might as well have a quick look.”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea.” Elden’s forehead was creased.
“It’s your old school. I know it will feel weird, but aren’t you curious? I want to know what caused this fire.” Contrary to what was coming out of her mouth, Evazee had no real desire to go near the charred structure. It was an all-too-real reminder of just how harsh life could be. But her heart ached for Bree, and it was enough to make her pump some enthusiasm into her voice and to steer her feet towards the building.
Elden held the gate for the girls to pass through and followed after. He whistled low. “Look at the gardens.”
“What gardens?” asked Evazee.
“Exactly.” Elden waved to a tangled, overgrown mess. “This here. It used to be a riot of colour, and now it’s all weeds. I don’t even think weeds are thriving. Nobody has been here in a long time.”
Bree sniffed, “I disagree. There’s a smouldering cigarette butt.”
Evazee stared at the smoking object and her belly twisted as her pulse quickened. “What if they’re still here?”
Elden held his finger to his lips and slipped into stealth mode. He melted into the shadows with his back against the wall, tiptoeing sideways, making no sound even on the dry grass.
Evazee caught Bree’s eye and they both stifled giggles. Elden glared at them, motioning for them to join him. Evazee felt like a prize twit as she sidled into the shadows next to him. Bree rolled her eyes and shuffled in next to Evazee.
No sooner were they hidden, when two men strode out of the passageway to the school entrance. Evazee bit her lip to keep from gasping. The men wore white lab coats and spoke in low, urgent voices. One held a device between them that they studied as they walked.
Evazee’s heart pounded so loudly in her ears, she could hardly hear over the thump. She forced herself to breathe slower and tried to shut her eyes. The feeling of imminent discovery overwhelmed her. She had to see where the men were, and if they were coming closer. Sweet aftershave drifted on the breeze, and Evazee blocked her nose to stop from sneezing.
The men were so engrossed in their discussion that they passed by the three without spotting them.
Once they were safely out of earshot, Evazee grabbed Elden’s and Bree’s arms and whispered, “Was that your dad?”
Elden looked at her as if she’d crawled out from under a rock. “Do you need glasses? Those guys were our age.”
“I was too scared to look that closely in case they felt me looking and saw us. I focussed on the thing they were staring at.” Evazee sniffed.
“Girls make no sense. Honestly.” Elden pulled away from her hand and froze.
“Elden? Is that you?” The voice was deep and male. One of the lab coat guys was back. Tension radiated off him in tangible waves. “Where have you been? We thought you’d been taken to the Crux.”
Elden cleared his throat, “Girls, give me a moment. Stay right here, I just need to have a word with this guy.” Elden and the lab coat took themselves around the corner, out of sight and earshot.
“Well that’s not half suspicious.” Evazee tried to read the expression on Bree’s face. It was a curious combination of relief and disgust.
Bree shrugged, her mouth in a tight line. She peeped around the corner. “They aren’t close by. I think we grab the gap and go look around inside.”
“I don’t know, Bree. What if there are more of them?”
“Then we hide or run. Simple.”
~*~
Kai shut the door to Torn’s office and set his guitar down on the stand in the corner. He’d have to stop thinking about it as Torn’s office, but for now the name stuck. He’d been so sure he could help these kids, but he was hitting blank walls trying to get through to them.
Runt’s necklace—now there was an interesting artefact. Perhaps if he could fix it, it might be able to show them something useful. He reached into his pocket to pull it out, but his pocket was empty. Odd. He patted the other side and dug in deep. Also empty. There were no holes, it couldn’t have slipped out the bottom and the pockets were too deep for anything to have fallen out easily. Maybe he’d lost it when he tossed his jacket to help the cleaning girl.
He traced his steps back to the stairs and was bent over double, searching the floor behind the staircase when Zap and Ruaan found him.
Zap tapped Kai on the shoulder and as he stood up, slapped a hand on his forehead. “Are you sick or something? You’re being weird.”
Zap bounced from one foot to the other in the way he did when he was nervous, but it was Ruaan who spoke. “We have to talk to you.” Ruaan’s face was a few degrees more serious than before a meal.
Should he lie about what he was looking for? His mind spun through options.
Zap paled a fraction. “You lost the thing.”
Kai sighed. Apparently, his friend’s ability to hear thoughts was working just fine.
Ruaan blinked like an owl. “What thing? What are you both talking about?”
Kai looked for a distraction. “You wanted to ask me something?”
Zap rubbed his chin and stared upwards as if the words were written on ceiling. “Not ask. Tell. This teaching thing you want us to do. I don’t know how to put this...”
Ruaan shoved his shoulder and blurted, “It’s not working. It’s just not. I don’t know what you were expecting, but we wasted a few hours today and left with nothing to show for it but some irritated kids. It was a dumb idea.”
Kai dismissed his statement with a wave. “It’s still early days.” He saw a muscle twitch in Zap’s jaw and knew Zap was about to talk. Kai scrambled for something to ask before Zap could get back on the subject of the pendant. “Have either of you seen Evazee? I haven’t seen her since early this morning.”
Ruaan scratched his head, “But you sent her on a mission, didn’t you? Evazee, Bree, and Elden were getting into the OS bus as I came back with my group. I asked where they were going, and Evazee said they were going to check something out. She told me you’d asked them to go.”
Kai’s forehead crumpled, and he searched his memory for anything he’d said that could have given such a wrong impression. “I’m drawing blanks here. I didn’t
even know the OS had a van. Where could the three of them have gone?”
Ruaan leaned forward, whispering in such a loud hiss that it probably could be heard across the building. “I think they are trying to find the place they saw in the pendant vision.”
Kai paled. Maybe his empty pockets weren’t empty by accident. “But that’s daft. It is damaged. Obviously, whatever it shows isn’t accurate. Even I know that.”
“How do you know it’s damaged?” Zap had a hand on his hip in his best challenge-authority pose.
“You’re forgetting what I do."
Zap’s eyes widened, “Of course. This is the microwave all over again. I didn’t doubt your skills for a moment. Why don’t we have a look? Maybe with the right clue, we can find them.”
Kai smacked his forehead. “They took it.” Kai flinched as the memory of the awkward conversation came back to him.
“What? The pendant?” Ruaan’s eyebrow lifted, pulling his face askew.
Zap spoke at the same time. “Bree and Evazee?”
“Bree and Evazee. I thought it was odd. They’ve never been friends, but they came to me together and chatted about nothing, then left.” Kai grimaced. “It was at the exact time I’d taken my jacket off. One of them kept me so busy, I didn’t keep an eye on the other. And now they’ve drawn Elden in too. We’ve got enough on our hands with this lot.” He waved vaguely, motioning towards all the kids upstairs. “And now to have to babysit our own? That’s a bit much.”
7
“We should go back. There’s nothing here.” Evazee peered back down the tunnel to see if Elden was back.
Bree bent over, searching the ground for any sign of anything other than the charred remains of the school. “I think I see something. Come on.” Bree scuttled down a hallway through patches of sunlight and shade caused by missing portions of the roof that had been destroyed. She ran like a nimble rock rabbit. Or a bloodhound on a scent.
Evazee cast a wistful glance where they’d come from, shook her head, and followed Bree. Her belly twisted as she moved past burnt classrooms, hollowed shells peppered with the debris of all it took to massage knowledge into the heads of children. A sick thought, were the children still in school when the fire hit? Evazee swallowed hard and hurried after Bree.
Evazee found her down the passage, on the other side of a hall big enough to seat the entire school for assembly. The walls were sooty, but mostly intact, though the ceiling was broken in patches. Bree grinned smugly, her hands on her hips.
“I told you. There’s more.”
Evazee scuttled across the wide-open space, running on her tiptoes, hunched over as if she could make herself smaller and lighter. She hissed at Bree, “All the more reason to get out of here.”
Bree waved her over. “Look.” She turned and disappeared down a few steps.
Evazee followed, hoping her compliance would be enough to persuade the redhead to leave. Surely Elden would be back by now. Hopefully Kai was so busy at the OS that he wouldn’t have noticed their absence.
The stairs that led under the stage were standard for those that led to an orchestra pit. The door at the end of them, however, was most unusual. Surrounded by scorched wood and bricks, the shiny stainless-steel surface reflected the damage without being touched by it. A small panel glowed softly in the centre of a door without a handle.
“You can’t tell me this is a regular under-a-school-stage type of door. There are some secret things happening behind here.” Bree’s eyes were sparkling.
Evazee longed for golden words that carried enough urgency to convince this girl it was time to leave. None appeared, so she put on her best furious face, even flaring her nostrils a little. “We have to go. Now.”
Bree frowned at her, focussed on her nostrils and backed off. “What is up with your nose?”
“Now.”
“Fine. I just want to see if—” She reached for the glowing panel.
“Don’t touch that! What if you set off an alarm or something?”
“She’s right. Don’t touch that.” The voice was male and not Elden’s. “It’s fingerprint coded. You would have got a nasty surprise.”
Cold shot through Evazee. A man came down the stairs two at a time and pulled Bree away from the door. He was one of the two who had recognised Elden. Under his lab coat he wore a heavy metal T-shirt and jeans. Without hesitation, he reached for the glowing panel and pressed his thumb against the smooth surface. A trail of lights circled the button, and the door swung open with a slow hiss.
Elden and the other one joined them.
Evazee tried to read his face, but she got nothing. His jaw was clenched hard enough to make the muscles in his cheek twitch.
They stepped through the doorway and left the burnt devastation behind. Stainless steel gleamed from the walls, floor, and ceiling. Brightly lit passages led off in three directions, and there were no windows that Evazee could see. The whole set up was underground.
“Take the girls to Marking. Elden, come with me. They’re waiting for you in the boardroom.”
Heavy metal T-shirt grinned. “Sure. I’d far rather spend time with these two pretties anyway.” He shuffled in between the two of them and hooked their arms to lead them down the passage to the left.
Evazee panicked. “Elden!”
Elden mouthed a few quick words to his captor and jogged back to Evazee. He leaned in close and whispered, “Just go with it. They know you’re with me. You won’t come to any harm.”
“Elden, we can’t keep them waiting.” Lab coat’s foot tapped the floor.
“I will find you.”
There was an edge to Elden’s voice that raised the hair down Evazee’s arms.
~*~
Fresh air washed over Kai as he stepped out onto the roof. He took a moment to breathe. Moonlight had a way of softening reality that he needed, and he drank it in. The harsh lines blended and glowed in a soothing shade of blue. He made his way to the centre of the roof and stretched out on his back with his guitar across his chest.
“Tau, I need you. None of this works without you. I’m not moving from here until you show up.” Cold seeped into his back through his sweater, but he welcomed the sensation. His fingers found strings, and he plucked out a gentle tune. He shut his eyes and let the music take him. Soaring riffs, tingling harmonics danced from the union of fingers and strings, blowing helium and lifting the weight he’d been living under. He laughed.
Tau.
His skin felt it first. The warm glow more intimate than sun rays. His fingers slowed, but he kept playing, scared to do anything that would chase this moment. His awareness deepened. Blood rushed through his veins, through his heart, tingled down his back, and flooded warmth where there’d been ice.
And then a shift. Tau was on the roof. Kai knew it even though his eyes were tightly shut. His self-consciousness, his failings, short-comings and grief rose up as a wall between him and Tau, but Tau slipped right through.
“You can open your eyes. I’m not going anywhere.”
Kai peeped and sat up in shock. His friend sat on the rooftop, grinning at him. Tau was here, and he’d brought daylight. The rooftop beneath Kai’s fingers was silky smooth, no longer cement, but obsidian. Lava Rock. The first time he’d seen the OS in the spiritual, it had been an oppressive, dark square that brooded over the area. Now, the obsidian seemed lit from inside and glowed in colours that took Kai’s breath away.
“Is this the same place as before?”
Tau tipped his head to the side, “What do you think?”
“It is the same, yet completely different. I can hardly breathe.”
Tau stood up and stretched as if he’d been sitting next to Kai for a long time. “You haven’t seen the best part yet. Come check this out.” Tau took Kai to the edge of the building. Kai steeled himself, expecting the slums.
Tau sat down on the edge with his legs swinging. He leaned back and breathed deeply. “What do you think?”
Kai crept towards t
he edge and gingerly swung his legs over. An expanse rolled out before them, not shacks and squalor, but sparkling lawn in an exquisite shade of turquoise dotted with patches of deep colour. The light from the OS cast a warm glow on the area, no longer brooding over it in malevolence, but rather transforming.
Kai laughed, though it was tinged with sadness. “This is not real. This is just because you’re here. When you go, it’s all as dark and messed up as it was before. I haven’t been able to fix anyone. I don’t understand it.” He shot a sideways glance at Tau, who leaned back on his arms next to Kai with his eyes closed. “Are you even listening to me?”
“You are trying to vacuum the floor without plugging in the vacuum cleaner. How’s that working out for you?”
“What are you talking about?”
A smile lit up Tau’s face. It was nearly enough to shift Kai’s frown. He heard movement behind. It was the little Chinese girl with paintbrush ponytails.
“What is this place? I’m dreaming, right?”
Tau swung his legs back onto the roof, turned to face the girl, and crossed them, contemplating her without saying a word. Love rolled off him.
It hit Kai as a delicious heat wave.
Paintbrush girl skipped to Tau and sat close enough that her knees touched his. She examined him through narrowed eyes. “Do I know you?”
The green pulsed around her heart. It seemed to pull tighter with each breath she took. Kai felt his own heart constrict in sympathy. Help her, Tau.
“Not yet. Would you like to?” Tau wasn’t smiling, yet it didn’t seem to bother Paintbrush.
“Do you know me?”
“I know you like three sugars in your tea, but you only take one because three feels wasteful. You don’t want a puppy or a kitten, but you do want a chameleon. You’d like to learn how to paint the sea, but you feel you can’t because you’ve never seen it for yourself. When you’re sleeping you either dream of drowning in waves bigger than buildings, or you dream that you’re flying over the top of the waves. You don’t want to wake up when you have the flying dreams because you feel free.”
Cadence Page 5
