Cadence

by Wilson, Dianne J. ;

  Paintbrush’s eyes stretched so wide, Kai thought she might faint.

  Tau held out his hand, and Paintbrush slipped hers into his without hesitation. Her eyes locked on his.

  Kai held his breath and wondered if he should be sitting in on this moment, but to move away would be more disruptive, so he stayed put.

  A slow smile tugged at Tau’s mouth. Paintbrush grinned back, and Kai watched the green lines criss-crossing her heart snap back a strand at a time. Paintbrush shuffled across, crawled onto Tau’s lap, took his arms, and wrapped them around her. She snuggled into his chest with her head tucked under his chin.

  For a split second, Kai saw her hollow. He watched as light trickled in, absorbing the darkness, dispelling it until the small girl pulsed with a radiant glow. He blinked, and she was normal again. With a deep, contented sigh, she fell asleep.

  “I’ve never seen that before. She is whole. How?”

  “She believes. In me, in everything that I’ve done for her. Here, take her.”

  Before Kai could protest, Tau bundled the little glowing, sleeping girl onto his lap. “Right, I’m done here. Remember, what you see in the real world is not always accurate. Yes?”

  “But what about the others? I can’t do what you just did.”

  Tau laughed. “Think about the vacuum cleaner. You’ll do just fine.”

  “But...”

  Tau breathed on him and leaned in close. Kai prepared himself for a download of wisdom and direction.

  All Tau said was, “Think vacuum cleaner.” With a wink, he was gone.

  ~*~

  “Have a seat, girls. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Evazee and Bree huddled together on the couch he’d shown them to.

  Bree spoke through clenched teeth as a ventriloquist would. “I say we make a run for it.”

  Their escort stuck his head around the corner. “And don’t think of leaving. We lock the doors in case people get cold feet. We help them to stay strong.” He flashed a thumbs-up and left with a distinct click of a door lock sliding into place.

  Evazee waited until she couldn’t hear footsteps in the passage. “You know the storage room we walked past? What do you think was in the canisters?”

  Bree rubbed her arms against the chill in the room. “More like a warehouse than a room, really. I know those canisters. I would bet my good arm that those are full of serum.”

  “Affinity serum? That much? They were stacked floor to ceiling. That room must be five times the size of a normal school hall. Why so much?”

  “They must have big plans.”

  “That makes me feel a bit sick.” Evazee hung forward with her head between her hands. She studied the room they were in, looking for anything that could help them.

  Bree sat next to her, muttering under her breath.

  “I don’t want to be marked. Do you?” Evazee focussed on slowing her thoughts, slowing her lungs.

  Bree shook her head. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “The gurneys have restraints. Arms and legs. I don’t like the look of that either. There’s also a gas bottle on the floor between them. Entonox.”

  Bree was on her feet, pacing along the edges of the room, scanning for a way out. The room was sealed shut, a box with no windows and only one locked door. “Gas? What the heck? Are they going to poison us?”

  “It’s not poisonous. It’s for pain relief.” Pain. It was only a small gas bottle, but Evazee paled as the blood left her face and her nose and feet grew cold. First her imprint removed and now this...marking? She wanted to pray but no words came. She was so out of touch, Jesus probably wouldn’t listen anyway. She stayed in the chair as hope drained out of her.

  Bree checked to make sure the gas was turned off, picked up the bottle, unhooked the tubes and lugged it over to the side of the door. “Pain? I’ll show them pain.” She hoisted the bottle up and propped it up between the wall and her shoulder.

  “Bree, no!”

  The lock clicked again, and the door swung open. Bree launched the bottle with as much force as she could. Too heavy to go over the top, it swung sideways and rammed into a stomach. Elden’s stomach. With a deep oomph, he doubled over. Bree dropped the gas bottle and fell to her knees next to him.

  Evazee leapt up, squeezed her hands, and sat down again.

  “Don’t panic, I’ll live.” Elden eased onto his rear, grunting with effort.

  Bree glared at him, “You twit! How can you just waltz in here without warning? I could have hurt you.”

  Elden bit out words through clenched teeth, “I came to get you girls out.”

  The two lab coats stepped into the room, and one whistled. “Quite a wildcat we have here.” He grinned at Elden on the floor. “Glad to see you’ve got them under control. We’ll take it from here.” He shook his head as he crossed the floor to retrieve the gas bottle and set it back in place between the two gurneys. “There isn’t time to hook up the gas now. We’ll just have to go on without it.”

  The other grunted, which seemed to mean that he agreed. He took Evazee’s arm and led her to the closest gurney. Each had a padded hole at one end for breathing. A red mark on an arm restraint caught Evazee’s eye. Dried blood. Her chest squeezed tight. Adrenalin pumped through her veins, and she dug in her heels.

  There were more muscles to her captor than what the lab coat showed. He kicked behind her knees and caught her as she fell. A hard thwack to the back of her head and stars spun across her vision. Pins and needles claimed her arms and the fight left her. Face-down on the gurney, cold radiated through her as the cuffs clamped down on her arms and ankles.

  She fought rising panic that crawled under her skin like spiders. Her hair was caught up on top of her head, her pony tail swung over the end of the gurney.

  “This one is already marked.” The voice came from across the room where Bree struggled against her restraints, muttering under her breath.

  Evazee’s lab coat grunted in response. His fingers felt like cold snakes on her skin, and she ground her teeth not to scream.

  “This one isn’t. Wheel the machine this way.” A thin whine filled the air, which nearly drowned out the rattle of wheels on the tiled floors. “Get the lights.”

  A sharp click plunged the room into darkness. Before Evazee could think of screaming, burning hot pain seared the base of her skull. Her mind turned somersaults. A swoosh of icy cold washed over the back of her head and gave her an instant headache. At least the fire in her head had been damped.

  “That’s a bit skew, don’t you think? Honestly. You need to practice.”

  “Oh, please. Nobody cares. Anyway, if the general has his way, I’ll be getting more than enough practice soon enough.”

  “True. True. Let’s get these two to recovery.”

  “Not that yours has anything to recover from.” The two chuckled as if they’d made the funniest joke ever, and Evazee wanted to scream.

  Her brain swam, and she fought to stay conscious. How could Elden have let this happen?

  8

  Kai tucked Paintbrush into bed and pulled the blankets over her. Peta sat on the mattress opposite, watching. Kai tucked the blanket under Paintbrush’s chin the way he liked them to be, and straightened up to stretch out a knot in his back.

  Peta quietly padded over to him. Her silvery hair was tucked behind her ears, and she had dark rings under her eyes that made her seem more porcelain-fragile than usual. She tugged on his shirt. “Where’s Evazee?”

  I would love to know that myself. “She’ll be back soon, I’m sure. How are you?” He hadn’t seen much of the girl since they’d come home through the mist.

  Peta ignored his question. She balanced on one foot and drew circles on the floor with the other. Her whole attention was on Paintbrush. “Why is she all glowy?”

  “You can see that?”

  “Is it catching?” Peta backed up a few steps, holding her hands up.

  “No, not like chicken pox. Do you like it?”r />
  Peta wrinkled her forehead and as she was about to answer, a commotion broke out outside the room. Kai ran to go see.

  Evazee flew down the passage, red blotches riding high on her cheeks and trailing down her neck.

  Elden half-ran, half-walked to catch up.

  “Evazee, please just listen.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything more from you. Back off.” She brushed past Kai, misjudged the space, and slammed him against the wall.

  One look at her face took the words off his tongue. He caught Elden’s eye, but Elden looked away.

  Kai stopped him with a hand on his chest. “What’s going on?”

  Elden waved at Evazee’s departing back, ran a hand through his hair, and shrugged. “Women. I don’t get them.”

  “She’s steaming. You must have done something.”

  Bree pushed past Elden. “More like what he didn’t do.” She smacked her brother on the back of his head. “For the record, I would also be mad at you. Just saying.”

  “But I’m trying to explain myself, and she’s just not hearing me.”

  Peta poked Elden in the belly, waited for him to look at her, and then graced him with the fiercest glare she could muster. She turned on her heel and stormed off after Evazee.

  Elden followed them with his shoulders bunched and his hands in his pockets.

  Bree patted Kai’s arm. “We are in deep—” She glanced around, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Is there somewhere more private than this passage?”

  Kai took her arm and led the way to Torn’s office. The door shut behind them with a loud click that made Bree jump.

  “You stole the necklace.” The statement popped from Kai’s mouth as a hard accusation.

  Bree rolled her eyes. “Never mind that. You need to know what I saw. Kai, this is beyond anything I’ve seen. It’s an onslaught.”

  Kai perched on the edge of the desk and held out a hand. “Necklace.”

  “Are you serious? You won’t listen to me until I give it back? Plot twist. I don’t even have it. Evazee made sure she took it the moment it closed. Which I think is pretty dumb because my imprint is on it, not hers.”

  “Your paintbrush imprint was on the necklace?”

  Bree sighed as if he’d managed to drain her last splodge of energy. “Identical.”

  “Anyway, we borrowed it. We didn’t steal it. We were going to give it back as soon as we could. Now, can we please get back to the onslaught?”

  Kai made a mental note to get the necklace from Evazee. Though he should probably wait for her to calm down first. Bree was making no sense, and today had been too long. Once she’d gotten this off her chest, maybe he could convince her to make coffee.

  Bree poked him in the chest. “You’re not listening to me. I can see it in your face.”

  “You’re not saying anything that makes sense. Beyond thievery and general doom and gloom, I’m not hearing much to be concerned about.”

  “Fine. I’ll just say it. A building full of dark Affinity serum. If you think what happened here at the OS was bad, this was nothing. A gnat in the Amazon. This setup is not some haphazard thing to mess with some school kids. This is a carefully planned operation with a calculated mind behind it that is terrifying.”

  Kai shook his head. “Are we talking about reality, or something you saw on the internet?”

  “We walked through the rooms. I could have run my fingers along the glass bottles if I’d wanted to.” Bree shuddered.

  Her words sank in, and Kai’s stomach twisted. “If what you’re saying is real, I don’t know how one would ever reverse the effects of that much serum. Right now, I’m having a tough time undoing the damage done to this building full of kids. I’m not getting it right.” He blinked and shook his head. “Somebody needs to sort this out.”

  Bree paced. Her red hair bobbed as she walked. “Yes, you. You are here to fix this. There is more to this than the lives in this building.”

  “I don’t buy that. You make me sound like some sort of chosen one.”

  Bree stopped pacing. “You think you’re involved in this because of some freak accident.”

  “I’m the only person I know to get knocked over by a bus, so yeah, that fits.”

  “Don’t be cheeky.” She waved a finger in his face, one eyebrow riding dangerously high. “You know what? I don’t care if you are here by accident, or by some divine choosing. The fact is—you’re here. You can do something. I’ve seen you cringe as you walk amongst this bunch. If that serum is released, I can’t begin to imagine how far the damage will spread. You can’t ignore this.”

  “I could say the same of you. You are also here. Same with Zap, Evazee...even your brother.”

  “You’re right. I will do whatever you tell me to. But like it or not, you are the catalyst.”

  Nothing Kai thought of seemed an appropriate response to that. The best he could do was to not laugh out loud. “Your opinion has been noted, I still say we’ve each got a job to do. Now tell me where you were.”

  “We tracked down the pendant vision. I was hoping it would take me to my father. You know how you keep saying he’s alive?” Bree scuffed the carpet with one foot, avoiding his eyes. “There’s a part of me that really wants to believe you. Anyway, what we saw through the window looked familiar. The vision led us to my old school. It was horrible. It’s all burnt down, a charred skeleton of a building. But it turns out that the school is just a cover. Below the school is a massive storage depot. Somewhere they are pumping out and bottling the stuff faster than we can pat ourselves on the back for making it back home through the mist. There’s a lab onsite. I don’t know what for, maybe quality control? There must be some rich sponsors backing the whole operation. I didn’t get a chance to see it all properly. We were dragged through so fast.”

  “Wait, are you saying that those people knew you were there?”

  Bree went back to pacing, squeezing her fingers. “This is where it gets a little complicated. You know Elden was involved in the whole OS thing? Well, we ran into two guys who knew him. They thought he had sought them out on purpose, they didn’t seem to realize he is with us now. While they were talking to him, Evazee and I had a look around.”

  “You went snooping? Are you nuts?”

  “We didn’t think it through, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The guys who know Elden work in the labs, and they came and found us.”

  “And they took you on a tour and happily let you waltz out of there to come back here? I’m not buying it.” He grabbed a paper from the desk drawer, wrote on it, and held it up. What if you’re bugged?

  Bree snatched the paper, crumpled it up and threw it at his chest. “We weren’t bugged, that’s such a dumb idea. Good grief.”

  Kai threw the paper ball back at her, and it hit her on her nose. “You don’t know that. Why is Evazee so angry?”

  Bree squirmed. She shut her eyes tight and blurted, “They took us for marking. I got off lightly, but they did her. Elden stood by and watched. He didn’t stop them or say anything. She’s a bit cross.”

  “I don’t get it. Is Elden still working with them, or is he with us? And what does it mean, they did her?”

  Bree shrugged and looked lost. “Evazee was marked. Elden? I don’t know.”

  “You said you got off lightly. What does that mean?”

  “I’m marked already, Kai. But you know that.”

  “Your marking got us safely through the Spirit Cuttings. I remember.” Kai rubbed his neck. A few more knots had developed while he’d been talking to Bree. “This is a lot to take in. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You’re always speaking of Tau. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I do ask him about things.”

  “Then surely he should show up and tell you what to do.”

  Kai snorted, “It doesn’t work like that. I can’t just rub a magic lamp and suddenly poof, there he is.”

  “So how does it work, then?”

>   “I’m still figuring it out. A lot of it is joining the dots, and believing what he says.”

  “That makes no sense. But all that aside, listen to me carefully. If that serum gets released, you would never be able to undo the damage. The way I see it, you don’t have a choice. You have to stop it before. And to do that, you’re going to need an army.”

  ~*~

  Evazee stalked through the OS with her fury as a barrier. She made it to the lounge of stolen fruit without anyone speaking to her and shut herself in. The moment the lock clicked, hot tears ran. She felt her way to the couch and threw herself into its softness, fury blazing through her. None of this was fair. None of it made sense. To have her gift stolen was bad enough. Being marked as one of them? That disqualified her utterly and completely.

  Elden. The biggest sting, the pimple on the abscess. She couldn’t deny that he’d slipped through her defences, got under her skin. From the moment he’d taken over her training, she’d seen the tender side of the man. Feeding her on the roof, protecting her. But today? Today had been the ultimate betrayal. He’d stood by silent and allowed her to be marked, branded! as one of the enemy. There were a hundred ways he could have stopped it, but he didn’t. The memories blurred and bled together, but she remembered screaming. Screaming his name.

  Nothing.

  How could she have been such a fool to think he cared for her at all? Jesus, I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this. Help me.

  Nothing.

  No warm glow, no quiet peace inside. Cold, hard nothing.

  Her tears dried up, and she stayed on the couch, a small, curled bundle of heartache, shivering in the dark.

  The click of the door catch woke her. Another click and light flooded the room. It was Kai. He crouched down to her level. She could hear him speaking, but the sounds were like underwater bubbles. A familiar scent drifted through the air. Tea.

  “Evazee, wake up.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I made tea, you have to drink it. I don’t make tea for anyone.”

  She may be disqualified and outcast, but she couldn’t find it in herself to be mean, so she pushed herself upright and squinted at Kai through crusty eyelashes. He grinned and placed a hot mug in her hands. It stung her fingers, but it was good to feel again. She sipped and swallowed and felt warmth curling through her insides. She made it half-way through the cup before she was ready for talking. “I’m drinking your tea. What do you want?”