"Don't worry about paralyzing them," Ajax instructed. "Get through them; get to the building."
Balor charged toward them and the fight began. I was able to immobilize two of them immediately, having spent years honing my reflexes while dodging tennis balls projected at me from various angles and at dizzying speeds. As I fought the guards, I wielded my staff in front of me and struck side to side, getting in close enough to stab the place where a heart would be, until two of them fell paralyzed at my feet. Their bodies dissolved into the ground. Tory was small enough to break through, and she slipped by the guards, making a run for the building. Malik followed her.
"Two down!" I called out. My staff was drained and I had to be more physical. I pushed on.
"Two more!" called Ajax.
"I got three!" Balor answered.
"One more!" Caden answered. Eight down and only four left.
"Kaia!" Ajax yelled. He was heading for the building. I turned away from the fight to join him, but as I did so, a Virtual cracked me across the back. A thousand needles of electricity stabbed at my skin and I stumbled but stayed on my feet. Caden and Balor protected my retreat, fighting the guards off furiously while easing toward the building. Ajax took my arm and we ran the rest of the way together, stopping once we got inside.
The interior was far more modern than the archaic exterior. Right away we had a choice of going upstairs or down, and several floors stretched either way. Long corridors lined the perimeter, ringed with double rows of rounded metal railings. The corridors formed a giant, rectangular space, and in the middle of the space, there were metal stairways crisscrossed throughout the center of the building, connecting various floors, and making it impossible to see the ground.
We only had a few seconds to take it all in. There was no time to form a plan or wait for Balor and Caden, because the building kept shifting. Staircases going up suddenly went down while the floor shook violently enough to make us stumble and we had to move or else be tossed over the side.
"Down!" Malik shouted from somewhere below us, so down we went. We ran along corridors and past windows, barely stopping to catch glimpses of the inside. When we caught up with Tory and Malik we tried to pause along one of the hallways but the ground rumbled around us.
"Caden!" Malik shouted, hoping to give the same general directions he gave to us.
"What is this place?" Tory asked, her eyes taking it all in. The hallways were lined with classrooms, many of them full of students staring at old fashioned monitors or working at long laboratory tables. They weren't actual Students because they wore regular clothing rather than energy suits. Virtual Guards stood ominously inside the rooms, their presence discouraging entry.
"It looks like a school," Malik guessed. What else could it be with all of those classrooms? The floor shook again, but not as violently, as Balor swung onto the landing followed by Caden.
"Miss us?" Balor grinned.
"C'mon," Ajax said, when the ground continued to shake and we had to grab the railing or stumble. We ran after Ajax, down the hallway, upstairs and down, searching for the black bag but never stopping because when we did, the ground would tremble and pull us toward the metal railings.
As I streaked by one of the classrooms, I caught a flash of black in my peripheral vision and I stopped abruptly, causing Balor to plow into me from behind. The force of his body crashing against mine sent us both hurtling to the floor. I tried to grab hold of something, but the tumble sent me skidding over the side, and I was just able to keep hold of the concrete floor. My feet dangled precariously into the maze of stairwells below. Balor wasn't as lucky and the fall sent him over the side with no time to grab anything. His body crashed onto a landing somewhere below me.
"Balor!" Malik shouted.
"He's on his feet," Tory answered, relief in her voice, but Malik motioned to Caden anyway.
"Make sure he's all right," he instructed, and Caden quickly retreated, heading off to find the right staircase in order to get to Balor.
"Hold on, Kaia!" Ajax kneeled down and frantically put his own hands over mine, holding them to keep me steady for the moment. My arms were already burning from the strain of holding on. If Ajax let go, I would surely fall.
"The bag Ajax, I saw the bag! The window behind you," I jerked my head in the general direction. "I saw it. It's in that classroom, go get it." He let his emotions slip, and I could feel his uneasiness by the thought of letting me go.
"I can't leave you here."
"Yes, you can. Go get the bag and I'll hold on."
"No, you won't be able to. Malik, help me pull her up. Tory, go get the bag," he ordered. As soon as Tory made a move toward the classroom, several Virtual Guards emerged, blocking the entrance. They attacked Tory and Malik furiously. Ajax had no choice but to let me go.
"Swing to your right," he told me, grasping my hands tighter. The heat from them sent warm energy up my arms.
"Go get the bag," I said it again so he wouldn't be foolish and follow me over the side. His forehead creased with worry, but he let go of my hands and struggled to his feet while the ground moved beneath him.
"Sway to your right," he repeated. I took another look down, quickly, to try and judge the distance, then I swung my body to create a little momentum, as much as I could with the tenuous hold I had on the concrete, and pushed myself away, letting go and allowing myself to fall, all the while keeping in my mind the picture of where I wanted to land.
I made my target, but the landing shot pain through my knees. I fell, ungracefully, onto my behind. A guard leaped at me immediately and I had to scramble to my feet. I fought to free myself and get to Caden and Balor, but the guard was ferocious.
"Hang in there, Kaia!" Caden called to me. The Virtual beat at me and swung its staff at a maddening pace. I deflected the blows and tried to get the upper hand, to reach in and paralyze it, but it was quick. Sweat poured into my eyes, an annoyance my opponent did not have to face.
"Over here, Kaia," Balor jumped on the landing adjacent to mine and held his hand out toward me. I glanced at him, and the slight distraction was my downfall. The guard was able to get in close and grab hold of my neck. It lifted me off the floor until my legs dangled beneath me. In my left hand, I kept a firm grasp on my staff, while my right clawed at the guard's fingers around my neck. While I gasped for air, I tried to swing my staff at its legs, but with limited oxygen, I couldn't think clearly, and my blows were ineffectual.
"Ask for the escape," the non-human voice rasped at me. I wouldn't do it, I wouldn't let the guard win. Where was Balor? I couldn't turn my head to find out. Unable to breathe, I couldn't scream for help.
Ajax! I screamed without words instead because no sound could escape my lips. Either Ajax could hear me or he couldn't, but this would be no time for him to pretend. I was in trouble. Whether he responded to my plea or had simply witnessed my distress I didn't know, but only a few seconds passed before he crashed onto the landing much as I had. The guard didn't wait for Ajax to come after it, he simply flung me over the side as if I was an empty energy suit. Rather than finish him off, Ajax leaped after me, his hands reaching toward me as we fell, the myriad of staircases disappearing around us, leaving nothing to grasp.
Slow! Ajax yelled the command into my head, confirming he had been ignoring me after all, but I couldn't afford to waste any energy on the thought. I used every ounce of willpower I had to command the air around me to slow my fall. With my hands in front of me, I forced my body to slow down. The stairways and classrooms, and everything else in the building faded away and somehow we were outside, falling through the dull gray sky like we'd been flung out over a cliff. Below us, the wet, rocky shore came rushing up and we crashed into it violently, despite our efforts to slow down.
Falling onto the stairwell was nothing compared to hitting those rocks. The impact jarred my whole body and my left arm twisted painfully as I hit. I tasted blood in my mouth, and the earth started to spin. All sound was lost as I struggled no
t to pass out. It felt like I was in a long tunnel and I couldn't catch my breath.
Ajax crawled over to me and gently turned me over. He pulled my energy suit back to look at my neck, then fumbled in his pack for the healing balm.
"Are you okay?" His hands shook as he applied it, massaging it tenderly into my skin. "You're all bruised up." His voice shook too.
I lay there, stunned by it all, my arm throbbing, my neck sore, everything sore and hurting. Ajax had to be hurt too, but he seemed more concerned for me at the moment.
"How did we end up here?" I asked him, my own voice shaking a bit. I'd just been tossed from a stairwell while inside, only to find myself crash landed outside, several meters below the building. From this vantage point, we could see the building sat atop a cliff, its back teetering over the rocks that spilled down into the ocean below.
"I don't know," he answered truthfully, "but we need to find the others, or maybe they'll find us."
"What happened to the bag? Wasn't it in the classroom?"
"Yes, I think so. I tried to get in, but the doors were locked."
I sat up, feeling a bit better as the healing balm eased some of my pain. Without thinking, I reached out and straightened Ajax's necklace, letting my fingers momentarily trace the words embedded in the stone. Electric current shot through my arm as the stone came in contact with my skin and images quickly flashed through my head: cliffs, the white haired lady, caves. All of the images similar to what I'd seen when I touched Professor Baal's bracelet. I met Ajax's eyes, but his feelings were guarded, as always. My heart pounded in my chest and I had a strong desire to take the necklace off of him and place it around my own throat, as if it could protect me from harm, like the boy who wore it.
"Are you hurt?" I asked, letting it go and pulling away from him before the desire became too much to resist. I wanted his necklace around my own neck and my reasons weren't altogether clear.
"Just a little shaken up, like you," he answered, getting to his feet and reaching out a hand to help me up. There were many questions I wanted to ask, but I held my tongue. It wasn't the time to demand answers for things he probably didn't want to answer for anyway. He took out his mailbox and began sending our coordinates to the others. Professor Baal hadn't returned the mailboxes she confiscated, but Ajax and Malik still had theirs.
As he fiddled with the device, I took a closer look at our surroundings. The mouth of a cave opened in the rocks just a few meters from where we stood. I walked toward it, noting the cave seemed naturally made, not altered by humans the way many of the other openings were. There was no forced symmetry, just a ragged hole in the rocks, the opening stretching back farther than my eye could see.
It was dark in the cave, and wet. No sunlight penetrated the gray sky outside, and little light could pierce the darkness inside. Water pooled on the floor and dripped slowly from the ceiling.
There were people in the cave, men so pale they looked to be glowing. Their skin was translucent and provided the only light in the dimness of the cave. They crawled all over the walls and ceiling, crawling and climbing, but going nowhere.
I stepped a bit closer, into the cave itself. On the ground, not more than a meter in front of me, sat the black bag in a pool of water halfway between each side. To get to it, I would have to go farther in while those human creatures crawled all around me. With a few more steps, I wondered if I could just call the bag to me. The cave dwellers seemed to take no notice of my presence.
Ajax stepped up silently by my side. Without thinking, I reached for his hand just as I would have when we were children running around and exploring caves such as these back in our own Grid. His hand felt as familiar as it had when we were younger and I held on tight, forgetting myself for the moment, forgetting the way he ignored me, forgetting the way he denied our friendship, forgetting everything, as I stared mesmerized by the creatures in the cave.
Footsteps behind us, and then Malik's voice pulled me back to reality and I dropped Ajax's hand immediately, feeling the color rise in my cheeks. The rest of our team had found their way to us and stood as mesmerized by the cave dwellers as we were. Curiosity and fear emanated from their bodies. I reached out my hand to call the bag to me, hoping I had the will to lift it from the water and into my hands. It rose up shakily, but when it did so, one of the cave dwellers stopped his climbing and turned his face toward mine. His eyes were colorless, like a piece of sea glass washed ashore after many years, and his direct gaze startled me into dropping the bag with a splash. He disconnected from the cave wall and landed nimbly on the ground. His companions did the same, filling in the space behind him.
"Who are they?" Malik asked, his voice a whisper behind me.
Their hair, what little there was atop their heads, was colorless too, not gray, not white, but somewhere in between the two. They were small for men, but all lean muscle, their veins showing through their skin like faint purple tributaries upon a pale landscape. Each of them wore only a pair of shorts, possibly made of cotton, tied at the waist with a simple drawstring and colorless like everything else about them.
The leader, the one who dropped first, picked up the bag and took a step toward us.
"If you want this, you'll have to come into the caves to get it," he said aloud. In my head he said, Are you the one?
My heartbeat roared inside my ears. Ajax picked up my hand and held it tight. Did he do it out of habit too, or was he trying to hold me in place? I took another step.
"What did you say?" I asked.
"He said we need to go into the cave to get the bag," Balor answered, stepping up on the other side of me, "so let's go." As usual, he was ready to charge. But I was looking for a different answer.
What did you say? I asked again, silently. The cave dwellers were retreating. One by one they eased back into the darkness, where my eyes could not follow, until only the leader remained.
"If you want your answer, you have to come into the caves," he said, and then he retreated as well, taking the bag with him and leaving us gaping after them.
Chapter Eleven
Caves
Balor immediately started to follow, but Caden stopped him.
"Hold up, Balor," he said. "Let's talk this out for a second. How did the two of you get out here?"
"I don't know," I shrugged. "The Virtual threw me and Ajax jumped after me. The building disappeared and when we landed, we ended up out there." I pointed in the general direction of where we'd crashed on the ground.
"I watched him throw you and then the two of you vanished." Caden was troubled. I could feel his confusion all around him.
"I fell. I fell a few times and I never landed outside," Balor pointed out.
"The two of you should be smashed to bits. How far did you fall?" Caden continued with his questions.
"Far," Ajax answered tersely. "We had to make our bodies slow down."
There was a long silence as the others looked at us curiously. Only Malik seemed unfettered by the admission.
"How did you do that?" Tory asked, curious.
"It takes concentration," Ajax answered. "You have to will the energy around you to slow the fall. We can work on it sometime."
"Do you think you can teach us?" she asked, excited by the prospect.
"I'll try," he smiled at her, transforming his face from gloomy to handsome for just a few seconds.
"Are we a team, Kaia? All of us? Or just you and Ajax?" Caden asked, not at all charmed by Ajax's smile.
"We're a team," I answered without hesitation. "All of us. What are you so upset about?"
"What did the cave dweller say to you?" he wanted to know.
"You heard him," Balor jumped to my defense. "We all heard him. He said we had to go into the caves to get the bag."
"No," Caden shook his head, "there was something else. I saw your face, he upset you."
I looked at Ajax, out of habit perhaps, unsure what to do. It didn't make sense, what the cave dweller said, and I didn't want to share
it since I didn't understand it myself and didn't need another thing to set me apart.
"What did the cave dweller say to you?" Caden persisted. "Are you going to tell all of us, or wait until later and just tell Ajax?"
I didn't like the way he questioned me, it made me angry, but I understood where Caden was coming from and I pushed down the unwelcome emotion. No one said anything for several moments, and the silence stretched out until only the drip- drip of water could be heard as I thought about how to answer him. It wasn't my intention to say anything about what the cave dweller said to me, but I would have told Ajax at some point, maybe silently. Did I trust all of them? I had to decide.
"He asked if I was 'the one'," I finally answered, truthfully.
"The one what?" Balor asked, his face scrunched in confusion.
"I don't know; that's why I was asking."
"When did he ask you?" Caden didn't want to let it go.
"When he told us we had to go into the cave," I admitted.
"I didn't hear him, did anyone else?" Caden looked around, but nobody else had heard, of course.
"He said it in my head." I felt defiant then. He wanted answers? Fine. I wasn't the only one keeping secrets.
"I thought so. Why didn't you tell us you could speak and hear without words?"
"I don't know, Caden. I guess I didn't want to advertise I was a freak, you know?" I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my head away from him.
"I can do it, too," Malik spoke up. He moved to my side. I looked at him and he gave me an apologetic smile. "I should have told you all as well. It's not an easy thing to share."
"I can do it, too," Ajax admitted, but he didn't meet my eyes.
The Energy Crusades Page 12
