by Jade Kerrion
“Are those really your names?” Danyael asked.
“Uh, no, but we’ve used them for a long time. Our mum used to call us Tweedledum and Tweedledee. She said it was from a book.”
“Alice in Wonderland.”
“That’s the one. I’ve never read it.” She spun around and grabbed food and cutlery off the kitchen counter. “Here, I’ll give you a hand. Must be hard with the crutches.” The crowd parted for her, and he followed in her wake to the dining room. She set the plate down at an empty seat and then sat across from him.
Dinner was not an option. Danyael knew it even before he picked up the fork, but he tried anyway. He managed a few grains of rice before he set down his fork and reached for the glass of water.
Dee chatted on, not noticing that Danyael had stopped eating. “You’ve picked a good place to get a fresh start,” she affirmed. “You’ve got a famous face, but here, nobody asks questions. You don’t need ID. Hell, even real names are optional. Just don’t be surprised if someone tacks on a ‘brother’ to your name.”
“Brother?”
“Yeah. Reyes has been trying for years to get everyone to address everyone else as brother or sister. Build a sense of community and all that crap.” She wrinkled her nose with disgust. “Most of the grown-ups play along, but the young people have more sense than that.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Since our mum died eight years ago in the genetic riots in Wichita. No one would take us in because she was a mutant, and folks were worried we’d turn out like her, so Reyes sort of adopted us and brought us here.”
“And did you turn out to be like her?” Danyael asked.
Dee rolled her eyes. “No, thank God. Just growing up is hard enough, you know what I mean? If I had to deal with some crazy mutant powers at the same time, I’d probably go nuts.” She looked around the room. “Most folks here are derivatives—clones and in vitros—but there are lots of regular humans too. I guess people are getting sick of the real world. Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Sick of the real world.”
Danyael shrugged before replying. “I think the jury is still out on that.”
Dee smiled. “Reyes said you’d say something like that.”
“He did?”
“Yup. He came by this morning and told Dum and me that he was placing you in the southern wing and that we were supposed to look out for you, help out if needed, that sort of thing. He also said we could learn a thing or two from you if we shut our mouths and opened our eyes. Like persistence, how not to quit even when things get real tough. He said we’d need a spine like yours to get through life, especially real life.” Dee laughed suddenly. “I’m not doing so well on the shutting my mouth part, am I?”
He did not mind. If she talked, it meant he did not have to.
Dee chatted on. “It’s not really fair that Dum has it easier than me on the shutting-up part. I mean, just not being able to speak doesn’t deserve as much credit as actually trying to shut up.”
“Why doesn’t he speak?” Danyael asked.
The vivacity leeched out of Dee’s eyes. She was briefly silent, and when she finally spoke, it was slowly, the words drawn reluctantly from her. “Years ago, pro-humanists from Purest Humanity broke into our home. They tied up our parents. They called Dad a mutie and said he contaminated the gene pool by having children. They…they made Dum hold the gun and pull the trigger.” She looked down at her plate and grimaced. “He stopped talking after that.”
Danyael braced against the echo of her pain as it resonated through him. “How old were you then?”
“Five.” She looked up at Danyael, and her eyes flashed. “And get a load of this. Dad wasn’t even a mutant. It was Mum. Sometimes I wonder, if they knew that Mum was the mutant, would they have made me pull the trigger instead?”
Danyael filtered through the complex dissonance of her emotions. “You do know that this, none of this, is your fault or your brother’s.”
Dee’s throat worked. “Reyes said you’re an empath and that you control feelings. Can you change how I feel?”
“Yes, I can, but people feel things for a reason, Dee, and I can’t change those reasons. Those feelings will return eventually, unless you change the way you think about the situations that triggered those feelings. Mutant powers may seem like a convenient shortcut, but they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Including yours?”
Danyael smiled faintly. “Especially mine.”
“But what about Dum?” she asked. “Can you do something for him?”
Danyael glanced across the dining room. Dum was seated alone at a table. The teenager did not take his eyes off his plate as he ate with a methodical precision that contrasted with his indifferent appearance. Deliberately Danyael reached out with his empathic senses. To his surprise, Dum looked up sharply, meeting his gaze with startling directness.
Only another empath or telepath could have sensed the subtle brush of Danyael’s empathic powers. Which was Dum, Danyael wondered, and more importantly, did anyone else know of Dum’s fledging mutant powers?
“Can you? Can you help him?” Dee asked again, her voice tinged with impatience.
“I don’t know. Perhaps,” Danyael said. “It’ll take time.”
“We have time. Lots of it.” Dee rolled her eyes. “This place is duller than the South Pole. Nothing ever happens here.”
The hour he spent at dinner passed quickly. Dee entertained him with stories of Elysium’s more unique residents, and a small crowd gathered to laugh along. Panic, agitated by the press of people around him, flickered behind Danyael’s reinforced psychic shields, but nothing leaked through. He was, nevertheless, glad to take his leave after dinner. Until he was stronger, it was safest to be alone.
Danyael made a quick stop at the library before returning to his room. He spent an hour reading until a soft knock on the door drew him away from the desk where he had been seated. He opened the door to see Reyes Maddox.
Reyes smiled. “I came by to see how you’re settling in. May I come in?”
“Of course.” Danyael stepped aside.
The small room seemed crowded with the two of them in it. Reyes settled down in the room’s only chair. “Hope you don’t mind if I take a seat,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “Old bones. Nothing your empathic healing powers can fix.”
Danyael said nothing. For a man almost ninety, Reyes was in excellent shape.
“I heard you met Dee today,” Reyes continued. “I’m glad to hear you got out and about. It would have been too easy to just hide behind locked doors.”
“I’ve spent too much time behind locked doors recently.”
Reyes nodded, conceding the point. “How are you doing?”
“Better.” That, Danyael reflected, was true. He hoped it would satisfy Reyes’s demands for honesty. A dissection of his wrecked emotional state was not up for discussion, ever.
Reyes paused for a moment before continuing, “Are you ready to talk about what happened?”
“My last clear memory is of being arrested by the Mutant Affairs Council and the Mutant Assault Group. I had…killed several people while trying to protect others—” While trying to save Lucien. “But I thought I would be sent to a mutant detention center to await trial.”
Reyes frowned. “Prior to your arrest, the Mutant Affairs Council classified you as a level-five threat.”
Danyael’s eyes widened. Level five? Alex Saunders knew all the facts around Lucien’s rescue. How could Alex have sanctioned the change in Danyael’s status?
Reyes continued. “When you were captured, you were taken directly, without trial, to a maximum-security prison—ADX Florence—for life.”
Danyael’s head reeled. He could barely get a single word out. “Why?”
“Why did they switch you to a level five? I don’t know. No one does.”
Danyael pressed his hand against his forehead. He
had lived under the benevolent protection of the council for sixteen years. What had he done to cause them to turn so violently against him? “I…don’t understand.”
“When word got out, it triggered an outcry, but the council clamped down on it.” Reyes shook his head. “I always thought the Mutant Assault Group tended to play free and easy with human and mutant lives. I didn’t think I’d live to see the day when the Mutant Affairs Council—supposed defender of mutant rights—would too. You would have died at ADX, if Sakti hadn’t freed you.”
“Sakti?” The name was vaguely familiar, but Danyael could not place it.
“Patriots, fighting for the America we thought we lived in, a country that offers justice, equality, and freedom for all. They broke into ADX, freed you and others, and brought you here when they realized that you needed more than an energy drink to recover. They have neither the time nor resources to tend to the badly wounded, but we do.”
“But why did Sakti—?”
Reyes’s shoulders straightened. “We all need to stand up for something. They risked their lives for you and others like you, imprisoned without cause. You’re a symbol of everything that could happen to any of us if we allow this country, our country, to continue down this path.”
“But—”
Reyes stood up. “I’m under strict orders from Eric not to overly stress you today. You need rest. I’m certain you have many questions, but none of your doubts will be resolved right now. All you need to know for now is that you’re finally safe and among friends.” He looked around in a cursory way. “You should feel free to make yourself at home, make this room your own.”
Danyael had nothing to his name and was entirely dependent on the charity of others. “What can I do to help out around here?”
“When you’re better, and I do mean ‘when you’re better’ as opposed to ‘tomorrow,’ Eric would appreciate having another doctor around. There’s a lot to do here. You’ll be busy for as long as you choose to stay, though of course, you’re free to leave whenever you like.”
“Should I leave to keep your colony safe?”
“No, of course not. Don’t imagine for a moment that you’re putting us at risk by staying.”
Danyael’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t there some kind of warrant out for my arrest?”
“It’s been two weeks since Sakti freed you from prison. If someone was looking, don’t you think they would have shown up by now? But they haven’t, and they won’t, because even the government respects the fact that Elysium is a sanctuary. We’ve been a sanctuary for derivatives and humans for a decade. We keep our noses clean. People with true criminal intent are not welcome here. That was why I agreed to take you, and only you, in. Sakti freed many from Florence, but no one else was allowed to stay here.”
Danyael shook his head. Nothing was ever as simple as Reyes made it sound.
“Trust me,” Reyes nodded. “You are safe here.”
“I…appreciate it.”
“You don’t quite sound like you believe it.” Reyes smiled faintly. “It’ll take time, I know, for you to realize that you’re free, you’re safe, and no one is going to make any demands of you here. You’ll never find a cleaner, fresher start than this.”
“Thank you,” Danyael murmured.
“It’s my pleasure. I know what happened to you, Danyael, and I’d like to be the one to cut you a lucky break. In time, I hope you’ll consider me a friend.” Reyes stood slowly. “Sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Reyes left the room, closing the door behind him. Danyael flipped the lock. He was alone again, safe again. With his teeth gritted against the grinding pain, Danyael relaxed his psychic shields. His stomach pitched. How much of the sensation was due to the customary nausea versus the unfamiliar flutter of hope, he couldn’t tell, but perhaps it was a change for the better.
CHAPTER FOUR
As the hours passed, a full moon rose, its light spilling in through the paneled windows to pool on the threadbare carpet. Unable to sleep, Danyael stared at the light, comforted by its glow. The darkness of night felt unnatural after a year spent under the unrelenting spotlights in his cell.
Much felt unnatural to him now. He was afraid of water. What should have been a perfectly normal act—stepping into the shower and turning on the water—required deliberate suppression of fear. He no longer wore an electric collar, but rationality and logic had little power over an irrational fear deeply ingrained in his brutalized mind and body.
Time. All he needed was time. He could lock away the mental scarring from a year of torture. He could bury the pain beneath psychic shields, and the physical scars would heal over time. The emotional damage, however, required a different resolution. Emotional heartache, in the hands of an alpha empath, was a weapon to be nurtured, the source of his deadly powers.
He stared down at his hands, the right one perfect, the left one subtly misshapen, the bones once broken and then poorly reset from a childhood injury he did not remember. They represented the duality of his empathic powers, the ability to be a blessing or a curse. With a touch, he could heal or kill.
Or I could choose to preserve my own sanity for a change. Additional power was an option he could live without. His past provided sufficient fuel for the dark side of his empathic powers. The real trick, one his instructors from the Mutant Affairs Council had failed to tell him, was not to go completely insane in the process of becoming powerful.
“I’ll be all right,” he whispered. Even without Lucien.
His hands remained on his lap, palms up, trembling as pain roiled through him. He bit down on his lower lip as he tried to coach himself through the physical manifestation of emotional anguish, the curse of his empathic powers.
A muffled scream pierced the fog of his grief. Startled, Danyael looked up. Clumsy with exhaustion and pain, he fumbled with his crutches and limped toward the door. He flung the door open and then staggered back, his dark eyes wide with alarm as a surge of pure terror drove him to his knees. Panic swamped him, stunning him, before his perfectly cultivated equilibrium, so trained as to be instinctive, kicked in. Gritting his teeth, he absorbed the panic and terror, driving them down, before dragging himself back to his feet and stumbling back to the door.
He caught the arm of a boy as the youngster ran past. “What’s going on?” he asked.
The boy stared at Danyael, his eyes wide. “They’ve attacked the western and eastern wings.”
“Who? Sakti?”
The boy shook his head. “No, the police. Come, this way! The emergency exit is this way. We have to get out into the tunnels.”
“Wait.” Danyael gripped the boy’s arm before the boy dashed back out. People were crushed together in their desperate race toward the exit. Someone screamed, dragged under by the tidal wave of panicked humanity.
Danyael inhaled deeply and released his breath slowly. He closed his eyes. Darkness embraced him and allowed him to focus his emotions. Peace eased out like a warm blanket. It swept over the crowd, a subtle undercurrent rippling against the swell of fear and terror.
The maddened rush slowed. As one, the people breathed deeply and slowly, their cadence matching Danyael’s. When they began moving again, the pace was quick, but no longer frantic. The young and elderly were helped along, carried by the flow instead of crushed beneath it.
Danyael loosened his grip on the boy. “You can go now.” The boy dashed out, and Danyael followed him into the corridor.
“Danyael!” Dee pushed through the crowd. She stumbled to a halt in his doorway. Words tumbled out in a breathless rush. “I can’t find Dum. You’ve got to help me.”
Moving against the flow of the crowd was a great deal harder than going with it, but the crowd thinned as they approached the central hall. “This way.” Dee raced ahead of him down the corridor of the west wing. Furniture and debris spilled from rooms into the hallway. Lights flickered erratically overhead. Sections of the drywall had collapsed, slowing Danyael’s progress thr
ough the hall. Once or twice, his crutches slipped on the blood that streaked the tiles. All around, Danyael saw signs of struggle, but no bodies. Where was everyone?
The screams began, faint sounds from the northern wing, muffled by walls and doors. The police were searching another section of the enclave.
Dee plunged through an open doorway. “Here!” She screamed. “Help.”
Dum crouched in a corner of the room, trembling. In the other corner, Reyes sprawled on the ground, a hand pressed against a crimson stain on his shirt. Danyael let his crutches fall and dropped gracelessly to the ground beside Reyes. His empathic senses swept through Reyes’s body. Internal bleeding, not severe, but persistent.
Screams headed their way. He would have to heal Reyes later; the old man had time yet, not much, but, Danyael hoped, sufficient. “Help me move him.”
Dee tugged futilely at her brother. “Dum, come with me. Come on,” Dee wailed.
Danyael hobbled to his feet and limped across the room. Dum did not acknowledge him. The teenager stared, vacant-eyed, at the blood on the tiles. Shock, Danyael decided as he placed a gentle hand on Dum’s shoulder, and terror. Danyael’s eyes narrowed as he sifted through Dum’s emotional state. No, Dum was not terrified. His emotions were far more nuanced—horror and surprisingly a strong undercurrent of hatred, both inwardly and outwardly directed. But why?
Behind him, Reyes coughed weakly, a gurgling sound. Danyael’s empathic powers surged. Dum jerked beneath Danyael’s touch, and he pulled away, scrambling to his feet. The teenager’s dull eyes sharpened to alertness when he looked toward Reyes. Tears glistened against the brown of his irises.
“I need your help with Reyes,” Danyael said quietly.
Dum looked at Danyael as if seeing him for the first time. The teenager nodded after a moment of hesitation. Dee twitched with impatience as Dum and Danyael slipped their arms around Reyes’s shoulders and lifted the older man off the floor. “My crutches. Just one,” Danyael said when Dee grabbed them. “Thanks. Which way to the closest exit?”
