by T. C. Edge
“Thanks again for understanding, Sophie. I’ll see you again soon, I’m sure.”
I suspect that her eagerness to maintain some involvement in my courtship with Adryan is to get some additional prestige herself. She has passion for her work, I’ll give her that.
However, what she doesn’t know is that this is all just a sham. Sure, I’ll have to go through official channels to ensure my budding ‘relationship’ with Adryan doesn’t appear suspicious, but other than that I have little interest in doing anything more than I have to.
When it comes to it, I’m sure I’ll be able to fit in over there easily enough. So far, there’s been no danger. When my abilities manifest, however, and I’m over in the lion’s den, I’ll have my wits about me at all times.
No coaching from Sophie is going to change that.
So, with another abbreviated embrace, I’m set on my way. I step into the car, shut the door, and am chauffeured back home.
Home.
Soon, I’m sure, that word will take on a new meaning.
10
It’s odd how a place you’ve lived your entire life can suddenly seem like the house of a stranger.
The comfort and security I used to feel stepping through the doors of Carmichael’s are no longer present. No longer do I look upon it as a beacon in the city, a place where I can relax and truly be myself.
Now, like everywhere else I go, I feel like an imposter. Like my life is a lie, and always has been.
At the core of it, I’m beginning to feel like I don’t belong.
And that being myself is an alien concept too. Because, really, I don’t know who I am either.
Tess’s continued chagrin doesn’t help. Since we were girls, we’ve been best friends, despite our different personalities and outlooks on the world. Thrust together by Mrs Carmichael, we’ve even grown into sisters. It pains me that our paths are now diverging so dramatically.
She was only 9 years old when she came here following the deaths of her parents. Deaths, I suppose, is putting it lightly.
They were murdered, and brutally so. Cut down in front of her during a robbery. I can barely imagine what that must be like for a girl of such a young age, how it would scar her. And when she first came here, she wasn’t the girl she is today.
She was a shadow, and little more. She drifted about the place, keeping mostly to herself, lost to her thoughts and terrible nightmares. I was charged by Mrs Carmichael with becoming a shadow myself: a shadow to her, following her around and helping her transition into life at the academy.
It was so different for her than it was for me. She’d had a taste of a normal life, felt the love of her true parents before it was snatched away so violently. I always considered that I had it much easier. I’d never had to taste such pain, suffer the loss of those who’d given me life.
Some people consider never having known your parents the worst of all fates. I disagree. Never have I seen someone so broken as when Tess first came here. Her world had been stripped away, never to be the same again.
Gradually, however, she emerged from her shell. Yet always she’s kept her hard edge, one forged that day her parents died. Tough and uncompromising, Tess has always found it difficult to find joy in anything.
And she’s always had a fondness for holding a grudge.
This one seems set to last a while. In the past our arguments have been brief, Tess’s frosty moods lasting a day or two before thawing. Yet until I explain to her how my life is changing – how I am changing – I suspect her rancour will remain, brewing and festering inside her.
And in the academy, I feel that winter chill descending. When I return to my room, my head starting to throb once more, my eyes praying for darkness, I find her descending back into shadow, coiled on her bed like a snake ready to strike.
The darkness inside her, always simmering beneath the surface, is rising once more to the fore.
I try to warm up the atmosphere with a simple: “Hey.”
She glares at me and returns the word, her tone very different from mine. Dark and empty.
I move towards my bed and settle in, desiring for the first time in many years that I could have a room to myself. I sense her watching me as I wearily undress and creep under the covers, wishing for sleep. Wishing for this pain in my head to go away.
I wish, too, for her to speak again. To ask me, perhaps, how the ball went. Or why I have little cuts all over my forehead.
No questions come. Definitive proof, if ever I needed it, that she has no feeling for me right now. No caring. No sympathy. No interest at all.
I lie there for a while, feeling swamped by the silence, wanting to draw her from her shell as I once did. Questions form and fade away. My voice begins to rise before being doused.
Then, lying with my eyes to the wall, to the empty space where the picture of my parents used to be, I hear the door click open, and then click shut. I let out a long breath, let my eyes relax and shut.
And fall into a long and dreamless sleep.
When I wake, I check my watch to find that a new day has dawned. I turn over and see Tess’s bed empty, a sight that gives me some relief. I sit up, and reach to my forehead, sliding my fingers across the skin.
It’s mostly clear, with only the lingering signs of the cuts remaining. The healing cream that Mrs Carmichael administered has worked its magic.
Behind the cuts, and the skin, and the flesh and skull, however, my brain continues to hum and drum. The unyielding cacophony refuses to relent, my mind being twisted and turned inside out, stretched this way and that as it battles to bring forth my true self.
I sway my eyes around the room, and find my vision struggling to focus. My heart thuds hard as I turn to the door, and my eyes shoot forward and centre on the handle, over five metres away and yet appearing as it it’s right in front of my nose.
I shake my head, my brain rattling, and blink hard. When I open my eyes my focus has drawn back again, the full picture of the room coming into view. And yet, it’s different than before, my eyes offering a wider profile. Staring forward, I can see further left and right, my peripheral vision altered and improved.
Once more, I blink, and find my eyes zooming in again against my control, shooting forward and forging a path right for a little crack on the wall. In mere moments the crack grows into a giant crevice before my eyes, like a canyon cut into the dried earth of the desert.
I take a sudden breath and push back against the wall behind me, clattering hard against it. Such is the force and speed of my movement that the room seems to shake a little, dust drifting down from the ceiling above.
I cough as it swamps me, and my focus pulls back again, returning to normal. I shut my eyes tight, blocking everything out, and feel the tingling, buzzing feeling in my limbs. They shake and tremble, my muscles so sore and stiff.
What’s happening to me? I groan to myself.
It’s a foolish question, and I know the answer. Yet this is more than I could have imagined, my body altering so fast, my physical make-up morphing and evolving at a rate I could never have expected.
Then, deep inside my head, echoing from the distant recesses of my consciousness, I hear a voice calling out.
“Brie…Brie…” it comes, ethereal and otherworldly, like no sound I’ve ever heard. “The shelter. Come to the shelter…”
I grimace and squeeze my eyelids shut as tightly as I can manage, and let my throat grumble to drown out the voice in my head.
It fades away like a wisp of mist on the wind, evaporating into the back of my mind.
I lie down again, still as I can, trying to stay calm. Gradually, my body settles, and my shallow, abbreviated breathing begins to soothe. And as my pulse settles too, I hear a sudden knock at the door.
I nearly have a heart attack.
My eyes flash open again and lock quickly on the door handle.
“Who is it?” I stutter anxiously.
The voice on the other side is too quiet I can b
arely hear it.
I ask again, calling louder this time.
The door opens, and I watch as the little face of Abby tentatively slips through the opening.
I immediately relax upon seeing her, my frame deflating back onto the bed.
“Abby,” I breathe. “What are you doing up here?”
She stays half in, half out of the room.
“I’m sorry, Brie. Did I wake you?”
“No, no. Come in.”
She slides her skinny little form through the gap, before pushing the door shut. I scan her quickly, my vision still threatening to thrust forward at any moment, before shutting my eyes tight to calm the beast within.
Was that a letter I saw in her hand?
When I open up one eye and peek through, I see Abby looking at me curiously.
“Are you OK?”
“Fine. I’m just fine.”
I open the eye fully, and then the other. My vision is just about playing ball.
She creeps forward and lifts her fingers. She does have a letter.
Zander…
“Is that for me?” I ask.
She nods and holds the letter out with both hands.
“It was the same boy as before,” she says. “No one saw me. I promise.”
“Good girl. Remember, you’re my sidekick.”
Her little cheeks swell and brighten.
“Always, Brie!” she says.
I waste no time in tearing the letter open and unfolding the contents. I frown as I look upon the words. There are only four of them.
The last shelter. Midnight.
The last shelter…he must mean the last one we were in. The one in district 6 here in the western quarter.
My eyes lift again to Abby, who appears to be waiting for some confirmation that she can leave.
“Good job, kiddo,” I say again. “You’d better get back downstairs before Mrs Carmichael catches you.”
A cheeky grin swamps her diminutive face. Like all children, the idea of being naughty carries some appeal.
“OK, Brie. Let me know if you need me to help you fight any crime!”
She performs a dramatic little turn, swishing an imaginary cape as she does so. With her fist pressed into a ball, she thrusts it out ahead of her and pretends to fly to the exit, scuttling off and simulating the sound of rushing wind as she goes.
It draws a melancholic smile to my lips. How simple, how innocent, things must be in her head.
The advancing years only make life more complicated.
Alone again, I look at the letter and check the time. It’s still mid morning. The following hours are going to be a torturous wait.
How best to pass them?
My head answers with a fresh thump, and my eyes begin to dance out of focus again. I drag my eyelids shut and rest my head back down on my pillow.
And back to sleep I go.
11
The game is up with Tess. The last time I snuck out to meet Zander, I’d made sure to offer some excuse, to conceal my true intentions. This time, I have no such inclination. She knows something’s going on. There’s no use in trying to hide it.
I leave the academy at 11.30PM, creeping into the quiet night with my body wrapped up warm and my head covered in a cloak. I give myself plenty of time to get to district 6, the Con-Cops prowling as they are, and the sky so filled with hovering drones.
By now, however, I’m used to slipping down the alleys and tiptoeing through the shadows, my senses more alert than ever given what would happen to me should I be captured.
No longer am I just a normal girl breaking curfew. No longer would I be taken off to holding on the edge of the city, my fate likely to be no worse than a severe dressing down. Given my recent fame, I doubt they’d do any worse than that.
Then again, knowing what I do now, I can’t be so sure.
Now, however, I can be sure what my punishment would be. I’m a hybrid. I’m a member of the Nameless.
Death would be the only sentence.
The going is slow. More and more, the streets fill with the reconditioned slaves of the Savants, the Con-Cops drifting about like ghosts in their little packs of three or four.
When the next attack from the Fanatics comes – and surely one is imminent – their numbers will only grow larger.
Already, Outer Haven is being strangled by fear. Slowly but surely, the Consortium are stretching their tendrils to all reaches of our world. Before long, the people will cede to anything they suggest if it will make their lives more bearable.
And then we’ll all be slaves.
The further north I travel, the less I have to hide. It appears as though the slaves of Inner Haven are being posted around the most populous districts, most likely to make them more obvious and prominent to anyone who might see them floating about outside their doors and windows.
The Consortium know full well that rumour is a popular pastime across Outer Haven, and that word about anything of interest will quickly spread. Stories of the proliferation of the Con-Cops and sentry drones are already being told in the streets.
Those who never even see one will be well aware that they’re out there, supposedly keeping us safe but, in reality, doing little more than closing us in a vise. Drawing Outer Haven deeper into their web of control.
To the northern districts of the western quarter, however, the population begins to thin, and therefore so do the creepy eyes that watch us. With five minutes to spare before the arrival of midnight, I reach the acid rain shelter in district 6 and quickly slip inside.
Turning on the light, I expect to find the place empty. I don’t.
Sitting in the shadows awaiting me, I see the shining hazel eyes of Zander. They grow brighter at my presence, and he lifts himself from his chair.
The first words to come from his mouth are those of concern.
“What happened to you!” he gasps, rushing forward.
His fingers brush my forehead, which has now completely cleared of cuts and left no scars at all.
Yet that’s merely what the human eye can see. Zander’s are able to penetrate deeper. To him, perhaps, the wounds are still entirely evident.
“Oh, I collapsed at the ball,” I tell him casually. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing.”
His eyes move from my forehead to my eyes. He’s only a foot or so from me. His usual intensity seems to be heightened.
“It’s already begun, hasn’t it,” he deduces. “You’re changing rapidly, Brie. That’s why you collapsed.”
I take a little step back.
“Are you reading my mind?”
“I don’t need to. But, it would be easier if I did. Rather than you telling me what happened…”
“No,” I say firmly, thinking back to the last, and only, time my mind was infiltrated. I didn’t much like the sensation as Deputy Burns looked into my thoughts and memories. I’d rather not experience it again.
“Fine, suit yourself. We can do it the old way if you wish. So, go ahead, start from the top…”
I quickly recount what happened at the ball, giving him the shortest version I can manage without leaving out anything of importance. Frankly, there’s nothing to tell him that he won’t know already. I’m sure that Adryan has already filled them in. Although, given how he was surprised by my forehead, perhaps not…
“So, sounds like you’ve had an interesting few days, sis,” he says with a wry smile.
“Cut it out, bro,” I counter. “Are we going to do this or what?”
He tilts his head to one side and guides his fingers to his chin.
“Um…do what, exactly?”
“Um, I don’t know, train…or something. My abilities are manifesting, and it’s driving me crazy. You’re meant to be taking me through this!”
“I already am,” he says cryptically. “Surely you heard me earlier?”
“Heard you? What do you…”
And then it hits me.
The voice. The ethereal voice in my head. It wa
s him…
“There it is,” he says, seeing the truth dawning in my eyes. “I thought you’d have figured it out straight away.”
“Figured it out! Give me a break, Zander. You may have been doing this since you were a kid, but it’s all new to me. Hearing voices in my head wasn’t something I expected. I didn’t even know Mind-Manipulators could do that!”
“They can’t, mostly. But we’re different, Brie. We’re unique. I’m surprised your powers have manifested so quickly. I thought it would be another day or so. But this morning, I felt it. I felt you. I’d hoped you’d hear me. It’s a good sign that you did.”
“Why?”
“Because it means your powers are rising quickly. And we need that to happen. We can’t wait on this, there’s no time for that. The stronger you become, the better chance we have.”
“To find out what the Consortium are up to?”
“To find them, yes,” he says, nodding. “And…to stop them.”
He turns to the back wall, and lays his fingers onto the brick. Pressing in, a secret lock clicks loudly. The brick wall coughs dust and opens.
The tunnel stretches into the darkness, black as empty space.
“After you, dear sister,” he says, stepping to the side.
I move into the shadows, entering the same tunnel I emerged from only days ago.
“So, we are training then?” I ask.
“We, no,” he corrects me. “You. Now come on, the night’s just getting started.”
A fizzle of annoyance burns through me at his pedantry. Perhaps that’s another measure of his Savant side coming to the surface.
I let my irritation fade as we enter into the darkness, the tunnel curving down at a fairly steep gradient as it digs deeper towards the large caverns and caves and wide passageways beneath the city.
Moving ahead of me, Zander lights up a torch and illuminates our way. Yet the further we go, the less I feel as though I need it.
I turn to him, and place my hand over the light.
“Turn it off,” I say.
He does so without hesitation.
I turn back to the darkness and wait a few moments for my vision to settle. At first, the loss of light plunges it into total blackness, no natural illumination from above penetrating this deep. Then, gradually, the shape of the passage begins to form, the jagged rock walls becoming clearer to my left and right, the low ceiling visible without the need for light.
