Winds of Change

by Christine Pope

  “Good morning, Adara,” Agent Lenz said. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Very,” I responded coolly. “So, you’re going to observe today? I would have thought you’d prefer to maintain a safe distance when I’m working with my power.”

  Like Dr. Richards, Randall Lenz was a professional. The pleasant expression he wore didn’t shift an inch, although I noticed he squinted slightly, as if his pale blue eyes couldn’t handle the bright glare of the June sun overhead. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m quite eager to see what you can do in controlled circumstances.”

  I glanced over at Dr. Richards and Dr. Woodrow. He stood about a foot behind her, obviously deferring to his superior. “But I don’t have any control,” I told him. “Not really. That’s the problem.”

  “And that’s what we’re going to work on,” Dr. Richards said. “But first, I’d like a demonstration of raw power.” From inside the pocket of her lab coat, she brought out a photograph and handed it to me. “How does this make you feel?”

  Mystified, I took the photo from her and stared down at it. For a second, I didn’t even recognize what I was looking at — I saw flowers, and green grass.

  And a bare patch in that grass, about six feet long and three feet wide. No headstone yet, of course; it took time to order those things and have them engraved with the proper information.

  I was looking at my mother’s grave.

  An aching mixture of anger and sorrow rose within me, and once again, I could feel the air begin to waken and stir as those emotions rode the current of my magic all the way into the sky. This time, though, I didn’t try to hold it back, to allow the wind and the weather to continue undisturbed by the storm raging within me.

  They wanted a demonstration?

  Fine…they’d get one.

  From nowhere, clouds came boiling toward us, building up even as we watched, darkening the sky so that day seemed almost night. A furious wind tore at our clothes and hair, mussing Dr. Richards’ precise bob and rippling the hem of Dr. Woodrow’s lab coat. Randall Lenz’s hair was cut too short to be much disturbed, although his tie whipped in the wind before he reached up to calmly hold it against his chest until the tempest had passed.

  Thunder growled, and the damp air grew even more moist, thick and heavy against my skin. A cold drop hit my cheek, then another.

  And a bolt of lightning flashed from the heavy clouds, striking the grass a hundred paces off. The sharp scent of ozone flared in my nostrils, and Dr. Woodrow muttered a curse under his breath, although both Agent Lenz and Dr. Richards remained silent as they watched the spectacle. A few feet away, the two guards watched the display with faces so impassive, they might have been carved from stone.

  As quickly as it had come, the storm began to dissolve, the clouds blowing away on the wind. Within a minute, the day was bright again, the only sign that the clouds had been there at all a small charred patch on the green grass of the field where we stood.

  “It made me angry,” I said, and handed the photo back to Dr. Richards.

  She took it from me and returned it to her pocket. “That was…very impressive.”

  “Glad to oblige.”

  Randall Lenz hadn’t moved an inch. If he’d been at all disturbed by standing so close to a lightning bolt, he didn’t show any sign of it. When he spoke, his voice was calm, almost amused. “I told you she was very strong.”

  “I can see that,” Dr. Richards said. Her gaze flicked toward me. “Addie, what did it feel like when you were angry and the storm came?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure if I can really explain it. Something upsets me, and it’s like the emotions inside talk to the storm outside.”

  “So, you don’t create the storms from nothing?” Dr. Woodrow asked then, even as a small flicker of irritation appeared in Dr. Richard’s face. Apparently, she would have preferred to ask that question herself.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. No point in giving everything away; I would have to do my best to be vague while at the same time providing just enough information that they wouldn’t get frustrated by my lack of response. “I think I just kind of work with whatever’s already there.”

  “The sky was clear,” Dr. Woodrow pointed out.

  “Well, it looked clear,” I told him. “But there’s always moisture in the air. Things are always moving on the wind. I guess my gift just works with that. Don’t ask me how, though. I’ve spent the last fourteen years doing my best to not think about it, to keep it from taking over my life.”

  Dr. Richards’ mouth turned down for just the briefest instant before her expression smoothed itself again. Clearly, she didn’t think I’d done a very good job at preventing my strange talent from affecting my life. In that one thing, I was inclined to agree with her.

  “We’ll figure out how it works,” she assured me. “For now, let’s try for a little control. With many of our other subjects, all that was required was some work on focus. Mindfulness techniques tend to work very well.”

  “‘Mindfulness’?” I repeated. I knew I’d seen the phrase in some of the self-help books my mother always had lying around, but since I’d never read any of them, I honestly didn’t know what it meant.

  “Paying attention to the here and now,” Randall Lenz said then. I was a little startled by that particular contribution to the conversation, since I’d gotten the impression that he didn’t have much to do with the day-to-day training of the facility’s inmates. However, I didn’t say anything, only stood there and waited for him to go on. “Our minds like to jump ahead to the future, to imagining contingencies and worst-case scenarios. Mindfulness trains you to remain focused on what’s in front of you.”

  Had he trained himself in that kind of mental focus? Was that why he’d fixed on me like some sort of guided missile and hadn’t let go? I didn’t dare ask him those questions, not with Dr. Richards and Dr. Woodrow listening to everything we said, but I had to wonder.

  “I have some guided meditations that will help,” Dr. Richards said. She might have been irritated by the way Agent Lenz had inserted himself in the conversation, or she might not. Her expression once again was pleasant, neutral, impossible to read. “You can access them from the entertainment console in your suite. They’ve been very effective for our other guests.”

  Prisoners, I corrected her mentally, but I only nodded. And all right, the rest of the test subjects didn’t seem that upset about being trapped there, but that was simply because they had no idea who they really were, that they all had families in the witch world, connections they didn’t even know existed. They’d lived such lonely lives…but it didn’t have to be that way.

  “Anything else?” I asked. “You want me to call a tornado or something?”

  “Could you?” Dr. Richards responded with the slightest lift of an eyebrow.

  Actually, I could, although I knew better than to answer with the truth. “I’ve done it in the past,” I said, replying without really replying. “But only when I was really upset.”

  A nod as she absorbed that particular piece of information. “I don’t think it’s necessary at the moment. Better for you to learn some focus first. After all, we don’t want a tornado flattening half the complex, do we?”

  Probably not. Then again, although from the outside, the SED’s facility looked like a normal office complex, I knew there was far more to it than met the eye. Even if one of my tornadoes managed to level all the visible structures, there would be far more that survived underground.

  About all I could do was shrug in answer to her question, which I guessed had been mostly rhetorical.

  “I’d also suggest that you should talk to our other guests,” Dr. Richards went on. “I think they’ll be able to provide a great deal of insight on how to gain control over your talent. Like you, they all had to come to that control gradually. It wasn’t something they understood by instinct.”

  Again, pretty much the same thing both Jake and Joanna had told me about my powers. Dr. Ri
chards and her team were on the right track, even if they had no idea that the people they were working with just happened to be a bunch of witches and warlocks.

  “Okay,” I said. “They were all very nice yesterday, so I’m sure they’d be happy to give me some advice.”

  “Oh, they will,” Dr. Richards replied. “All you have to do is ask. In fact, I’ll take you down to the lounge now. It’s a little early, but most of them will be up and about.” A glance over at Randall Lenz, and she added, “That is, if it’s all right with you, Agent Lenz. Did you have anything else planned for Addie today?”

  “Not at the moment,” he said.

  That response made me want to sag with relief. Although I thought I’d maintained fairly well during this particular go-’round, I definitely didn’t want to spend any more time in his company than I absolutely had to.

  He must have detected some shift in my expression, though, because almost at once he went on with a faint smile, “But that doesn’t preclude another meeting later on. In the meantime, have a good day.”

  A nod at Dr. Richards and me — he basically ignored Dr. Woodrow and the two bodyguards — and then he turned and headed back into the building.

  Damn it. I should have known Randall Lenz wouldn’t let me off that easy.

  9

  Randall Lenz paused the video once more at the exact moment when the lightning bolt speared the ground of the facility’s north field. Its glare turned all their faces dead white — and quite clearly revealed the look of terror on Alec Woodrow’s features. Even though the entire team had been briefed on what to expect from Adara Grant, it seemed obvious enough that Woodrow still hadn’t been anticipating quite such a display…or at least, not one in his immediate vicinity.

  Well, he’d know to be a bit more on his toes in the future.

  However, Dr. Woodrow wasn’t his immediate concern. The man was generally competent, although he didn’t take matters quite as seriously as Randall Lenz would have liked. No, he instead kept replaying that scene with Adara in his mind, the way she’d claimed she didn’t know exactly how her powers worked, that she had no real control over them and they lashed out whenever she was troubled or angry or afraid. Her reaction to the photo Dr. Richards had shown her seemed genuine enough…but at the same time, he couldn’t help wondering if Ms. Grant had manufactured the entire display, had given them what she thought they wanted from her.

  Showing Adara her mother’s grave had been a piece of casual cruelty he hadn’t quite expected. While he couldn’t entirely approve of Michelle Richards’ decision to do so, he wouldn’t argue that the stratagem had produced some interesting results.

  He just wasn’t sure whether he could trust those particular results.

  His finger touched the mouse, and the scene continued. The north field’s hidden surveillance equipment had picked up both sound and video, but on this replay, he’d turned down the sound, not wanting to be distracted by their words when instead he was focusing on the minute shifts in Adara Grant’s expression, the subtle tells that might provide some clue as to what was going on inside her head.

  For someone trapped in a situation that was none of her choosing, she appeared remarkably self-possessed, as if she held some secret knowledge within her that allowed her to believe her tenure in the Daedalus Program would be of short duration.

  Something to do with the mysterious Jake? Very possibly, especially since the man seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet. No one matching his description could be found in the government’s databases of known foreign operatives, Russian or otherwise, but Dawson was still meticulously sifting through what data she had to work with, hoping against hope that just maybe, she might stumble across something useful. So frustrating to know the man was out there somewhere, and yet the best analysts in the world couldn’t seem to pin down his location.

  The video was nearing the end of the little convo they’d all shared while standing out in the north field. Once again, Lenz paused it, this time so he could study the expression on Adara’s face. It was right when he’d informed her that he didn’t see any need to work with her further that day. Yes, the relief that flashed in her eyes was obvious, although her features had gone still immediately afterward, as if she’d realized she’d given away too much. And then, a minute later, just as he offered the not-so-subtle threat of seeing her later on, he couldn’t help noting the way her lips had pressed together and her slender body had gone rigid.

  No, she had no love for him, that much was obvious.

  Which was to be expected. He knew there was no point in protesting to her that he’d never intended her mother any harm. She wouldn’t believe a word of it, and besides, her antipathy didn’t necessarily need to create a barrier between them. The wound was still raw and new, but he hoped that once she’d settled into her life here at the facility, she’d realize she was in the only place she logically could have ended up. No worries about her gift causing harm to herself or anyone around her, all her needs provided for, similarly gifted people as her companions…everything that had been uncertain in her previous life would be taken care of here.

  All the same, he thought they had better clear the air between them.

  He reached for the phone on his desk and entered Dr. Richards’ extension. It rang a few times, then made the faint click that told him he was being transferred to another extension. A moment later, a woman’s voice answered.

  “Corey Liu.”

  Corey was one of the lab techs who worked the overnight shift. Lenz glanced down at his watch and saw it was almost seven, telling him that Michelle Richards was long gone for the day. She rarely stayed past five-thirty.

  Well, no matter. He certainly didn’t need Dr. Richards’ permission to conduct an interview with one of the test subjects.

  “Randall Lenz here. Could you bring Adara Grant to my office?”

  Not even a hesitation, which he appreciated. “Of course, Dr. Lenz. I’ll have her up there in less than ten minutes.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Liu.”

  He hung up then, wondering if he was interrupting Adara in the middle of her dinner. All of the test subjects were given their evening meals sometime between six-thirty and seven-thirty, but he didn’t know where she’d ended up in the rotation. However, it was a risk he was willing to take. She could always eat after he was done speaking with her, if she hadn’t done so already.

  Exactly eight minutes later, the intercom on his phone buzzed. “Corey Liu and Adara Grant to see you, Agent Lenz,” came the voice of Lionel McGraw, the evening security guard on duty.

  “Send them in,” Lenz responded.

  A moment passed, and then Ms. Liu and Adara Grant appeared at the open door to his office. Adara was wearing her studiously expressionless face again, which told him she was less than pleased by the summons.

  “Here’s Ms. Grant, sir,” Liu said, quite unnecessarily. But she was young and energetic, and generally wanted to make sure she followed all the protocols, even if the current situation didn’t call for them.

  “Thank you, Ms. Liu,” he replied. “I’ll be in touch when it’s time to take Ms. Grant back to her apartment. You can close the door as you leave.”

  The tech inclined her head. “Of course, sir.”

  She went out, shutting the door behind her as requested. Adara remained standing a scant foot inside the office, her expression now wary, slender form rigid, reminding him of a wild animal caught in a pair of headlights and trying to decide whether or not it would be safe to bolt.

  “Please sit down, Ms. Grant,” he said pleasantly.

  For a second or two, she hesitated. Then she seemed to realize it probably wasn’t worth the effort to challenge him on such a minor request, and she went ahead and took a seat in the chair that faced his desk. Her fingers gripped the armrests, pale against the black leather. He saw the way her gaze flickered around the office, apparently taking in the sleek modern furniture, the framed photos of black and white cityscape
s — New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago. Possibly the slightest flare of surprise as that gaze settled on the single personal item in the space, a photograph of Lenz and his parents from his freshman year of college…the last year the world could still be called normal.

  “Is that your family?” she asked.

  He’d already decided to be frank with her on some topics, mostly because he didn’t see the harm…and also because anything he could do to establish some sort of rapport between them would, he hoped, make her more manageable as a test subject.

  “Yes,” he replied. “That was taken when I was just about to start school at Columbia University.”

  She appeared to absorb that information, inquiring, “You’re from New York?”

  “Yes. I grew up in Manhattan.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re from New York.”

  He allowed himself a smile. “Is that a compliment?”

  “Just an observation.”

  So wary. He could see it in the tension in her shoulders, the way her gaze flicked from one side to the other. A beautiful girl, actually, he thought with some surprise, as if just noticing her appearance for the first time. He’d been so intent on making sure he found her and made her part of the program that he honestly hadn’t paid any attention to her looks.

  Not that she interested him sexually. She was far too young, and making any sort of advance on a test subject would be the very worst abuse of his power. Still, he could see why Jake — whoever he was — might have had an interest in her that wasn’t entirely professional.

  “Is your family still in New York?” she asked next. He could tell she was probing because she wanted to see when he would decide to shut her down.

  Well, he would allow the questions…up to a point. “My mother is.”

  “Your father moved away?”

  “Not exactly,” Lenz replied, voice level. Odd how the pain was still there, so many years later. “He was working in the North Tower when the first airplane hit.”

  That comment only elicited a puzzled frown, and he had to remind himself of how young Adara Grant actually was. She would have been barely more than a toddler at the time.