Drastic Times (Book 3): Fierce Freedom

by Rock, R. A.

  “I’d like to call this meeting to order,” Madeline said, her voice stronger than I had heard it since we had found her on the ground at Sipwesk. She was sitting up in bed and seemed healthy after the treatments they had given her. Of course Yumi had healed her too, so that would have made the doctors’ job easier. Good thing I had stopped Yumi before she drained herself or she would be needing the treatments, as much as Madeline. “The doctors say I have to stay in bed another day, but I feel fine so I wanted to meet with you all and find out how you’re handling everything.”

  Grace was translating for Audrey in her head again and I could see that she was trying to keep up with the conversation and send the info on to Audrey at the same time. I didn’t envy her the task because it’s not the easiest telepathic task. But if anyone could do two things at once, it was Grace.

  “So, you know that it was you five who built the Sanctuary,” Madeline said, looking around at all of us with that direct gaze of hers.

  “Yes,” I said, answering as leader of our team. “Gideon filled us in. He didn’t give us details but we’ve got the gist of it.”

  “He hasn’t given you details because he doesn’t know details and neither do I,” she said, her tone sharp. “And that’s on purpose.”

  “To avoid changing things,” Shiv said. “We didn’t want to give ourselves too much information in case that affected what happened, right?”

  Madeline nodded.

  “Exactly. When you two showed up in 2002, it took a while to convince me but once you did, then I wanted to know everything. Every detail.”

  “But they wouldn’t tell you,” Shiv guessed.

  “No. Almost nothing. I didn’t even know how we met until I opened my eyes yesterday and saw you all standing over me at Sipwesk.”

  “In order to preserve the integrity of the timeline,” Shiv said. “Sounds just like me.”

  I nodded. It did sound exactly like something Shiv would tell us to do.

  “But Madeline,” Yumi said. “What I want to know is what you were doing at Sipwesk. How did you end up the way we found you?”

  Madeline grimaced and put her hand on her stomach where the internal injuries had been.

  “You tried to stop the attack,” Grace said before Madeline could speak. “You were there to prevent it, weren’t you? We must have told you about that?”

  Madeline nodded, self-recrimination in her eyes.

  “I didn’t stop it, though. And Brett caught me and had me beaten.”

  “Beaten? Why?” I said.

  “Does Brett need a reason?” Her beautiful face had a stormy expression on it as she remembered. “It was enough that I was clearly spying. Then when he realized who I was, he really went at it.”

  “What do you mean when he realized who you were?” Grace said. “He knows about your connection to The Sanctuary?”

  Madeline’s eyes got big.

  “No, God, no. No one knows about the Sanctuary. I wasn’t kidding about it being the best kept secret in the country. One of his henchmen told him that I was Ernest’s sister. And since he has a vendetta against my brother, he decided to punish him through me.”

  “You’re Ernest’s sister?” Grace said, a happy smile spreading across her face at the information. “That’s why you look familiar.”

  “If he killed you, then Ernest would suffer,” Shiv said.

  “Exactly. And since you helped Zoe escape,” she said, obviously knowing the whole story. “Brett hates the two of them like you wouldn’t believe. The attacks on the Sipwesk community have been getting worse and worse until this last one. It’s hard to believe he burned it to the ground. All that work.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, looking suddenly older.

  “Oh well, it’s just stuff. They’ll rebuild.”

  “They will?” Grace said, perking up. “They weren’t in the buildings?”

  “Oh, no,” Madeline said, horrified at the very idea. “You thought they were… Oh, Jesus. No, no, no. They’re all fine. You know how Brett is. Always running his mouth off. And of course when he thought I was unconscious, he gave orders to march the Sipwesk people south to the Survivor community in Jenpeg.”

  “Jenpeg?” Shiv said. “The hydro dam? What’s there?”

  “A Survivor community.” She thought for a moment. “It’s hard to remember what you know and don’t know right now. Do you know what that is?”

  We nodded and she went on.

  “Well, there’s this guy named Nathan Bakersfield who broke off from the main community near the Wastelands and took a group north. They went up to Jenpeg and built a castle in the dam, establishing a new community there about two years ago.”

  “In the dam?” Shiv said. “That sounds highly impractical.”

  Madeline shook her head.

  “Since the solar flare, everybody who ever watched an X-men movie wants to build a place to live in a dam. It’s ridiculous,” she said, rolling her eyes. “So, there’s a castle in the dam. Word has it that they’ve deviated pretty far from the original Survivor ideals. You know… Strong family, strong world. That’s their motto.” She got a thoughtful look on her face. “Not that many of them have been able to have families with all the fertility issues. But that’s besides the point.”

  “If Brett’s involved, I’m not surprised that they’ve deviated, as you say,” Grace said, making a disgusted face.

  “Exactly,” Madeline said, tapping her finger on the covers as she made her point. “So, here’s the thing. Everyone from Sipwesk is a prisoner, including the children.”

  My stomach churned thinking of little Penny as a prisoner in Brett’s clutches — again.

  “Most likely they’ll become slaves or as good as, since Nathan doesn’t care to uphold Survivor beliefs. Or he may just kill them if they’re too much trouble and too many mouths to feed. Of course he’s big on maintaining appearances, so who knows? Maybe he’ll integrate them into his group? I’ve never met him so I don’t really know enough to speculate.”

  “Seems like Brett would want the Sipwesk people to work for him,” Shiv pointed out. “Be his slaves. For revenge.”

  “Yes,” Madeline said. “But only if they’re not too much trouble. Some of those Sipwesk people likely wouldn’t know when to keep their mouths shut and would piss him off.”

  Yeah, I could see that.

  “We have to get them out,” Yumi said, her face determined.

  “Yumi,” Shiv said. “Think about what you’re saying. They’re locked up in a fortress, right Madeline? That dam must be impossible to get in or out of.”

  “That’s right,” Madeline said, fiddling with the covers.

  “And this Nathan guy doesn’t seem like someone to mess with. He’ll probably kill us for trying to take them.”

  “He’s very powerful,” Madeline confirmed. “His people respect him, but they also fear him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was some sort of soldier or something like that before the solar flare. I don’t know. But he’s definitely nobody to mess with. They say he tortures people in a room called the water chamber.”

  “What sort of torture?” I said.

  She shrugged, not answering. And her eyes were deeply troubled.

  Yumi shook her head and I knew the look on her face. It’s the expression she gets when she’s made up her mind — and there’s no changing it.

  “Penny is not going to be a slave. I won’t let it happen.”

  Shiv and Grace exchanged glances.

  Audrey closed her eyes in despair.

  “We are never getting home,” Audrey sent to all of us, a bit of a wobble in her mental voice.

  All of a sudden Yumi’s eyes bugged out and her head whipped around to stare at Madeline. The others did the same.

  “What?” I sent, feeling helpless and pissed off because something telepathic was happening and I was left out. “What’s going on?”

  Yumi didn’t answer, only started sending me thoughts. But they weren’t her thou
ghts. She was passing on someone else’s.

  “Of course you’re going home.” The voice in my head was unfamiliar. “The fact that this place exists proves that you will.”

  And I realized that the mental voice was Madeline’s.

  THE WATER OUTSIDE the force field was gradually darkening as the afternoon wore on into night outside The Sanctuary. I stared at it, trying to come to terms with the fact that there was another Telepath in this time.

  Everyone stood around Madeline’s hospital bed, gaping at the leader of The Resistance.

  The voice was untrained and rough, the connection a little… for want of a better word… static-y. But Madeline was sending telepathically.

  Holy shit.

  Of course it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise because we knew that Ernest was a Telepath, too. And we now knew that Madeline was his sister. But somehow we had thought that he was an outlier.

  And then there was the mysterious Kinetic who had saved Penny when Brett had kicked her chair off the balcony. We still hadn’t figured out who that had been because likely it was a latent Kinetic, who didn’t realize that they had any powers.

  Why were there so many people around here who had evolved the ante-prefrontal cortex?

  “I think, Yumi…” Shiv sent, having heard my thoughts, which I hadn’t been shielding. “I remember in my studies that the organ evolved in certain areas in more dense numbers than in others. So there may be no one around Winnipeg that has any powers but in this one area, say northern Manitoba, there might be ten people with mental abilities.”

  “Why?”

  “Because evolution doesn’t happen uniformly,” he explained. “There are bursts of the new trait in certain populations first. It takes a significant amount of time before it becomes widespread.”

  “All the more reason to shield. All the time,” Audrey put in.

  She was always telling us to shield our minds, being the paranoid person that she is. And I had to admit that we were getting lax in our shielding protocol being around all these people without powers.

  Back home, it had been second nature to keep our minds to ourselves. Here, though, we felt a little more freedom because so few people had our abilities. But it looked as though there were more people than we thought.

  “Madeline,” Grace said out loud a big smile on her face. “You’re a Telepath.”

  Madeline nodded, an expression on her face that said she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

  “I can a little bit of moving things with my mind, too,” she admitted, as if that was a sin or a curse or something.

  “That’s great,” Grace said, with enthusiasm.

  “Did you know that Ernest was too?” I said.

  “Yes, we used to play around as children, not realizing that nobody else could hear us when we spoke like that. When we realized that we were different and that people thought we were strange, we stopped trying to get others to hear.”

  “Smart,” Audrey sent to Madeline. In the mind, it’s all thought, so there’s no language barrier.

  “I can understand you,” came Madeline’s startled response.

  “Yep,” Audrey said in satisfaction. “There’s no language in the mind — only thought. So look, you need to learn how to shield. Obviously people have started evolving the ante-prefrontal cortex and you have to be able to protect yourself. Be able to keep them from getting into your mind.”

  Madeline frowned, her eyes a bit dazed.

  “The anti-pre… what? And what’s shielding?”

  Audrey looked at the rest of us.

  “She needs a training session,” she said in Primary.

  “Wait, why didn’t we train you before now?” Chad said.

  And Madeline looked at each of us before she finally spoke.

  “I didn’t know you were Telepaths and I never told anyone except Ernest.”

  “We must have known,” I said.

  “Definitely,” Shiv said. “But the timeline…”

  “Of course,” Chad said. “We wouldn’t have wanted to tell her because we remembered the first time we met and we knew we couldn’t tell her before then.”

  “About the training session?” Audrey said, a little impatient.

  “Well, you’re the one to do it,” I said, remembering how many high level Finders she had trained at The Agency.

  “But we need to discuss our plans,” Chad said.

  Audrey waved a hand.

  “You don’t need me for that. Just fill me in on what you’ve decided.”

  “Audrey…” I frowned. I thought she was over the whole I’m not a part of your group thing.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine, Yumi. Stop worrying.”

  But I couldn’t. Not after what had happened in New Winnipeg. And I definitely kept that thought shielded from her. I could tell that she was losing her desire to be good. She was finding it too difficult. She was wanting to just let go and slip back into her old ways because it was so much easier than choosing a new path.

  She walked over to me and gave me a little hug. Then she pulled back and put her hands on my shoulders, gazing into my eyes and sending on a tight band that no one else could hear.

  “I know I kind of lost it in New Winnipeg, but I’m better. You guys healed my heart. And I do feel a part of the group. You need to stop worrying about me. I may not be perfect but I’m going to be okay.”

  I studied her, knowing that you can’t lie in the mind, but feeling as though somehow she was keeping back a part of herself. The part that wanted to slide back down the slippery slope to being a villain who made bad choices at every turn.

  And I’m no saint, that’s for sure. I was no one to be judging because lately I’ve been the queen of bad choices. But somehow — probably because of having Chad, Grace, and Shiv — I had stayed on the straight and narrow. They constantly reminded me of why I wanted to make the best choices I could. And I had made a vow to myself and to all of them that I would be a better person.

  But I wasn’t judging her. I was really concerned about her. She was my friend. And she didn’t have anyone else but us in her life. Other than me, she wasn’t close to any other people, not even Chad, Grace, and Shiv. So, I suppose I felt responsible. Like it was my job to help her make good choices.

  “If you’re really better, then why don’t you want to be a part of the discussion? We don’t make decisions without all members of the team being on board.”

  She huffed out a frustrated breath, dropping her hands from my shoulders.

  “We don’t have much time and the leader of our Resistance kind of needs to know how to shield, Yumi.” She frowned, thinking. “How about I listen in through your mind and if there’s anything I disagree with, I’ll let you know?”

  “While you’re training Madeline?”

  There was a mental snort.

  “Training a brand new Telepath? I could do that in my sleep, Tanaka.”

  “Okay,” I gave in. “But you know we want you to be a part of things, right?”

  “Sure.”

  She smiled at me and then gave us all a pointed look. She obviously wanted us to leave so they could practise. It was nice of her to offer to train Madeline. That was doing something good, wasn’t it?

  She was fine. It would all be fine.

  I wasn’t sure if I believed my own words. But I kept telling myself that it would be okay, because what else could I do?

  “WELL, THAT WAS surprising,” Chad said, when we managed to find the common room near our quarters and sank down into one of the couches that littered the space. There was no one around I guess because it was still afternoon and working hours for them. I threw myself into a comfy chair.

  “It shouldn’t be — because of Ernest,” Grace said, perching on the edge of the couch. “But somehow it was.”

  “Everything today has been surprising,” Shiv said, folding his arms and walking to another window that looked out into the now dark lake water. It wa
sn’t clear water at the best of times and after the sun went down, you couldn’t see anything. That didn’t stop Shiv from attempting to gaze into it, though.

  “That’s true,” Grace said. “So. What’s the plan?”

  “The first question is whether or not we’re going to save Sipwesk again,” Shiv said, turning around.

  “It’s not a question,” I said, my jaw tight. “After everything we’ve gone through to help them, now you just want to give up and let Brett win? Really, Shiv?”

  “It’s just…” His voice got quiet. “I so want to go home. And it’s going to be so hard. And I’m so tired of all of this. It’s not our fight.”

  He plopped down on the couch next to Grace and she laid a hand on his knee.

  “I know what you mean, Shiv,” Chad said, glancing at me as if he expected me to attack him for taking Shiv’s side. He sat down next to his friend. “All I want is the quiet of my space station quarters, my guitar, and about a month off.”

  “Yeah, or half a year at Mum and Tato’s. Pasta. Going boating with Tato. Swimming. That would be sweet,” Grace said with a sigh, scooting back so she sat next to Shiv. (Tato means Dad in Polish and it’s what Chad and Grace call their father.)

  If I could have time off, what would I do? I felt my eyebrows scrunch together as I realized that I had no idea what I would do if I actually had time off.

  I had worked my whole life — first as a slave, then once I got to Chad and Grace’s family there had been school and chores. Then my Academy courses, then I had worked as a New Recruit, and finally as a Protector. Well, until we had to escape from The Agency. After that, we had been on the run for a long time. And then once we had taken down The Agency and were organizing The Alliance, it had been nothing but work 24/7.

  I had never had time off. Not really. The odd vacation, but I had never just done nothing for any length of time. I didn’t know if I could. And somehow it seemed pathetic that I didn’t even have an idea in my head of what I would want to do if I could choose my life.

  It was kind of sad.