“There,” Natasha said, blinking herself out of the trance-like state she’d been in. “It’s not perfect, but it should hold.”
I could still see where the crack had been—the glass was now cloudy and blackened at the edges where it had previously been a jagged line—but it appeared solid. From the notable lightening of tension in the room, it was clear everyone else felt safer, too. Soft conversation broke out among the others, and a number wandered away to do something else, the interesting part of the day apparently over. I didn’t even know the names of half of the other Kin, and I didn’t feel as though I’d left them with the best impression of me.
“Come on,” said Hunter, his fingers pressing against my shoulder to guide me out of the Cavern and back down toward the living area. “Let’s take a break.”
We didn’t speak again until we were in the kitchen, with Hunter brewing a pot of coffee while I perched on the stool at the counter. No one else was around, and Hunter paused what he was doing to gently push the door shut. At least down here everything was made from good old concrete and wood, and I didn’t need to worry about shattering any more glass.
He placed the coffee down in front of me and sat on the adjacent stool.
“So,” he started, “Kit sent me off on a wild goose chase.”
I blinked. “What? Why would he do that?”
“Because he didn’t want me in the way.”
“Way of what?”
He lifted his eyebrows at me, and the penny dropped. “Oh, no. I seriously don’t think so. The guy doesn’t even like me.”
“Whether or not he likes you is irrelevant. I think he has a fascination with you.” He held my gaze. “Of course, I understand why.”
“You do?” My voice was unintentionally breathy.
“Sure. Talents like yours have never come along before. I can’t even imagine what your potential might be.”
“Oh, right, talents,” I flustered, heat creeping up my chest and settling in my face. What was it I’d expected him to say? That he thought Kit was fascinated with me because he thought I was beautiful? Not that I thought I was beautiful, but I guessed I’d hoped Hunter might have thought that.
“You kind of freaked everyone out with what happened back there, though,” he continued. “Did you seriously not know what you were doing?”
I shook my head. “Not a clue. Things started happening, and Kit put those electrodes on my head, and I began to feel claustrophobic and panicky, and the next thing I knew, the glass was breaking.” I looked away, focusing on my hands in my lap. I remembered what Kit had said. I needed to know if he’d been exaggerating, perhaps being dramatic because of what had happened. “Kit told me I was a danger to everyone here. He said I might bring the whole structure on everyone’s heads.”
I glanced back up at Hunter, to see what his reaction was. His hesitation was enough to tell me this was a possibility.
“I should leave,” I said abruptly, rising from the stool. “It’s as simple as that.”
Hunter reached out and pressed me back down again. “No, you need to learn to control what’s happening to you. What if we send you back home and someone upset you and you ended up killing them? A driver cuts you up on the road, and you flip his car without thinking about it? A shop assistant annoys you so you electrocute them through their till …”
My eyes widened. “I wouldn’t do that!”
“Ari, you’re doing these things without even realizing it. Your abilities are getting stronger.”
“What about the others when they first came here? Didn’t everyone else have to deal with this kind of thing, too?”
He shook his head. “Ari, most people have to train their abilities for months before they’re able to do what you’re doing. It can take days or even weeks just to lift the tennis ball, or illuminate a light bulb without touching it. We’ve never seen anyone do what you did today.”
I put my face in my hands. “I don’t know what to do to control it.”
He reached out and gently pulled my hands away. “It’s all about your emotions, Ari. You’re feeling things too strongly.”
“I can’t just turn off my feelings.”
His face took on a strangely hard angle. “You might have to, at least until you can figure out how to control what you can do.”
Turn off my feelings? I toyed with the idea in my head. Was such a thing even possible? Of course, if I was able to turn off everything I felt, it would mean I’d shut my heart off from Hunter, too.
Perhaps that was the safest thing for us both.
Chapter Fourteen
I didn’t try to do anything else for the rest of the day, too worried about what might happen if I did. Instead, I ate lunch at the big table in the common room with everyone else. Hunter introduced me to several of the other Kin who I hadn’t yet met officially, but who I’d spotted as being part of the crowd who’d been watching me through the glass. The girl sitting opposite me was Ashley. She was from Arkansas—I mentally repeated in my head Ashley from Arkansas to try to remember—and wore black framed glasses that were too large for her face. I got the impression she didn’t want to make eye contact with me when we were introduced, though I couldn’t figure out if she was shy, or if what I’d done made her nervous. Beside her sat a slightly overweight guy with prematurely thinning hair who chewed gum the whole time he was eating, something I found weirdly fascinating. His name was Russell, and he was the opposite of Ashley in that I kept looking up to find him staring at me. Whenever our gazes met, he looked away again, returning to chewing either his gum or meal—I still hadn’t quite figured out which.
Hunter nodded to a couple of others and told me their names, which promptly left my head. They all gave me half smiles and continued with their own conversations. I’d been seated between Hunter and Dixie, and felt safe under both their wings. If only I didn’t have to deal with some of the rest of them. Kit was at the head of the table, and I caught him watching me several times during the meal. Natasha had taken the seat on the other side of Hunter, and I tried not to notice the number of times she laughed at something he said, or flicked back her hair, or touched him on the arm. She’d barely said a word to me, and again, I didn’t know if she was normally standoffish, or if what I’d done had made people distance themselves from me.
When lunch was finished, most of us headed back into the Cavern. It seemed everyone else already knew where their skills lay, and went to the appropriate rooms. Those who had been at the Cavern the longest—Hunter, Kit, Dixie, and a couple of the others—led the training.
I lurked around, unsure of myself, moving from room to room, and trying to act as though I belonged. Both Hunter and Kit had already made it clear that I wasn’t going to be involved in any more exercises for the day. I didn’t think they quite knew what to do with me, which was hardly surprising as I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Instead, I watched the others as they went about their training. Kit was right when he said none of the other Kin were like me. They all appeared so in control and reserved. The few frustrations they did have were taken out in a normal way—swearing, and the occasional hand in the hair. No one else made a scene.
We ate dinner together that evening, and then I made my excuses and took myself off to bed. Dixie wasn’t around—I assumed she and Sledge had gone somewhere for some privacy—and Hunter had been busy with his own stuff. Curling beneath the covers, the lighting set to dim rather than full power—turning them off completely would have meant plunging myself into total black, something I wasn’t going to do on my first night in a strange place deep underground—I stared at the photographs of my family which I’d arranged on the bedside table. Loneliness swept over me, causing my heart to clench inside my chest, and I blinked back tears. I wished Karina was still alive, and that she was by my side to help me through this.
I didn’t think I’d ever missed my sister more than in that moment.
***
First night in my new be
d, and my sleep was fitful and full of nightmares. I dreamed of being in a box made of glass walls. Faces loomed beyond the walls, looking in from all sides, watching me—no, not just watching, but studying, criticizing, inspecting. I spotted faces I recognized—Hunter, my father, even my sister in a fleeting glimpse, and someone I thought to be my mother, but who could have been someone completely different, but warped in that strange way dreams did. The walls of the box began to move inward, reducing the space I had to move. I called out to everyone to help me, battered my hands against the glass panels. I couldn’t understand why no one was helping me, but instead continued to look at me as though I was insane.
Suddenly, the reason came to me. There was nothing external pushing the glass in toward me, bringing down the clear ceiling, forcing me into a smaller and smaller place until I thought it would crush me. The people outside couldn’t do anything to help or stop it, because I was the one making the walls move.
I was doing this to myself.
***
I woke, coated in sweat, panting hard and trying to shed the panic of my dream. Bolting upright in bed, I smacked my head against something hard above me. Confusion about where I was filled me. I was in darkness now, where I’d gone to sleep with the light on. Perhaps Dixie had come in and switched off my security light, yet I felt hemmed in, something directly above me, and the bed below. Had I somehow ended up in my dream? I reached out for the light on the bedside table, but my hand grasped only air.
“Ari?” Dixie’s voice came to me, but there was something wrong about it. Too far away, in the wrong direction.
Using my will, I focused my energy, telling the light to turn on. Instead of just my dim bedside lamp, the room filled with bright white illumination, one of the lights only inches from my face.
That was when I realized that while caught in the panic of my nightmare, I’d somehow caused my bed to elevate with me still lying on it. I was floating only inches away from the ceiling. My surprise at this revelation caused my panic to retreat and the bed dropped back to the floor with a bone-jarring crash.
Dixie was staring at me wide-eyed, biting her lip, as though she didn’t know if she was going to scream or burst out laughing. I sat, frozen, gripping the sides of my bed, half-terrified it was going to start moving again. Everything stayed as it was, and I allowed myself to exhale.
“Oh, my God, Ari!” Dixie declared. “No wonder you thought your sister was haunting you.”
She pulled a face at the look I gave her.
“Sorry,” she said. “Too soon? I have no filter.”
I threw my hands over my face. “No, you’re completely right! I’m such a freak!”
She left her bed to huddle onto mine, her arm around my shoulders. “Honey, we’re all freaks here.” She paused for effect. “Some are just a little more freakish than others.”
I jabbed her with my elbow, but let out a snort of laughter at the same time. I was glad I had her there. This place would have been a whole lot less welcoming without her.
“Has anything like that ever happened to you, Dixie?”
She twisted her lips and shook her head. “Nah. I’m not great with the telekinetic stuff. I mean, I can move things if I really try, but nothing massive. I’d struggle with a bed when I was awake, never mind doing it in my sleep.”
“But you have your other talent though,” I persisted, wanting information to try to understand what was happening to me a little more. “Can you control that? Hunter said you felt me wake up after the bombing.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t just waking up in the opening your eyes sense of the word. It was more like your mind had woken up to the possibility of what it was capable of doing. After a traumatic event—like for you, with the bomb—it’s as though our brains rewire themselves.”
“What was your event, Dixie?”
She glanced at me. “I almost drowned.”
“That must have been terrifying. What happened?”
She shook her head at herself. “Ah, it was stupid. I’m almost a little embarrassed to tell you after what you went through.”
“It’s fine, just tell me.”
“I went to a beach party. There were drinks going around and everyone was having a good time, then some of the guys suggested we go skinny dipping. I’d had a couple of beers by this point and it sounded like fun, so I jumped right in. I was showing off a bit—there were some cute guys there—and so I swam out a little too deep. I hadn’t realized I’d gotten caught in a current until I was too far away to get help. Then I got cramp in my legs and I was exhausted and I started to go under. The people back on the beach only just noticed something was wrong. It was dark, and they only had the moonlight to see me by.”
Her story held me rapt. “How did you survive?”
“I was lucky. The current washed me up on shore two miles farther down the beach. I was unconscious when they found me, but the moment I opened my eyes, I could hear them.”
I frowned. “Hear what?”
“All their thoughts, jangling around my head. I was unconscious, half-drowned, and naked. I remember one of the other girls thinking I needed to cut down on the fast food.” She gave a laugh. “I mean, I was half dead and this chick was criticizing my figure.”
“That’s nuts,” I said. “You have a gorgeous figure.”
Dixie waved me off. “I won’t tell you what some of the guys were thinking, but trust me, it wasn’t a criticism.” Her eyebrows lifted, her lips pressed together in a mischievous smile.
“That must have been insane, hearing everyone like that. You must have been terrified.”
“I thought I was going crazy. I started researching things on the internet, and stumbled across Kit on a forum. He’d already met Natasha by this point, and Hunter came along not long after. It felt good to meet people who were also experiencing these things, and one by one we started to put our experiences together—our mothers all dying from an aneurysm, and that we’d all started to be able to do insane things not long after being involved in an accident of some kind. I started being able to filter out what I was hearing, and by doing that I realized I could also sense when another one of us had woken up.”
My curiosity hadn’t yet been sated. “So when you sense us ‘wake up,’ what does that feel like?”
“It’s hard to explain. It’s like a distant light goes on in my head, or like I can feel a warmth from a certain direction and I’m drawn to it.”
“And you’re able to direct Hunter or Kit to the new person.”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
I was being selfish by asking the next question, but I needed to know exactly how many of my private thoughts Dixie could pick out of my head. “So, can you still hear what everyone else here is thinking?”
She shrugged. “Most of the time it just hits me. It’s like someone has spoken words into my head, and I just know them. I try not to pay any attention when I’m around you guys, but it’s hard. For example, I can’t help but pick up on this thing you and Hunter have going on between you.”
My cheeks warmed. “There’s nothing going on. Seriously. I’ve barely seen him since I’ve been here.”
“Hmm. That may be so, but I think even someone without my abilities would be able to see there’s a connection between the two of you.”
I shook my head. “I think you’re wrong there. I think Hunter and Natasha are more suited, and she clearly likes him.”
Dixie surprised me by bursting out laughing. “Oh, honey. Natasha’s more likely to want to spend time in your company than Hunter’s, if you get what I’m saying.”
My eyes widened. “Oh, she’s gay?”
“I’m not going to gossip, but you don’t need to worry about Natasha being competition for Hunter. Besides, Hunter wouldn’t be interested in her even if she was in him. It’s clear to everyone that he only has eyes for you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know about that.”
“You might not, but everyone else does, including
Kit. And I don’t know how that’s going to go down, if the two main men here are both after the same girl.”
My eyes widened. “You’re not talking about me!”
“Who else would I be talking about? Now, don’t go telling me I’m wrong. I can see into people’s heads, remember.”
“I’m not interested in Kit,” I said, firmly.
“You don’t need to convince me, but you might want to make sure Kit knows that. Hunter, too. We still don’t know the full background of what we are and what made us this way. We need to be a united group if we’re going to fight them one day, and it won’t help if something or someone comes between us.”
Her words were a warning to me.
“Who are we going to fight?”
“The people who want to use us. The same ones we think created us in the first place.”
Chapter Fifteen
The following day passed with me trying not to get in the way of everyone else. I stayed back, didn’t make nuisance of myself, and tried to blend in with the background. I was a sponge for information, listening in on other people’s conversations, trying to learn everything I could about what we were. I’d been hoping for definitive answers, but instead it seemed everyone made vague references to this being the government’s fault and that those were the people after us, though no one had names of people or even a specific department. If I hadn’t seen and experienced everything I had, I’d have thought this was all one paranoid conspiracy theory.
Most of the other Kin were cautious of me, but the longer I spent with them, the warmer they became. I learned several of Kin had only been discovered a matter of weeks and others months ago. Everyone was free to come and go as they pleased. No one was a prisoner down here. Most people were telekinetic, in the way they could move things with their minds. Only a few had different connections with the talent, such as Hunter with the air and Natasha with heat and cold. Affecting electricity, I discovered, was more common, though I’d only found two other people so far other than myself who were able to do it—Franklin, a skinny, tall guy from Missouri, and Caro, a girl with red hair who’d left New York to come here.
Flux (The Flux Series Book 1) Page 11
