The Athena Effect

by Anderson, Derrolyn

  Caledonia returned her books and tried to get past them to leave, but they stood blocking the doorway. She turned sideways to pass between them, surprised when she felt a sharp tug on her braid. She spun around to see them laughing, and her eyes flew open with a flash of indignation. They laughed even louder, unaware of how numerous and fierce her defenses were.

  Lightening quick, she swung her leg around, scooping Hillary right off her platform heels, sending her crashing onto Debbie, toppling them like dominos. She stood staring down at them, delivering a powerful blast of ice-cold fear.

  The librarian glanced up to see two girls sprawled on the floor, looking up at Caledonia with completely horrified faces. “What happened over there?” she called out.

  “They tripped,” answered the quiet girl who’d been haunting the library for the past few weeks. She flipped her braid over her shoulder, and walked out the door with a lighter bag and a heavier heart.

  After school Calvin was waiting for her again, throwing his arms around her like they’d been apart for days instead of just hours. She was a little taken aback, unused to being showered with so much affection. He kissed her worried face, and she relaxed a little, letting his sweet happiness flow over her, tempering her own dark mood.

  She looked up to see a trio of girls walking by with stares so filled with vibrating red and green hostility that Caledonia could feel the burning heat coming off of them. “Slut,” she heard one of them say under her breath. She turned her face away from Cal’s, uncomfortable again.

  “They hate me because of you.”

  “Ignore them. They’re just jealous,” he said, kissing her behind her ear.

  “I know,” she replied. “But now they want to hurt me.”

  “They won’t do anything. They’re just a bunch of stupid girls,” he added, concentrating on the way she fit so perfectly into his arms.

  “Then why did you kiss them?” she asked, stopping him.

  “Uh… I don’t know.”

  She pulled back from him, “I suppose I’m just a stupid girl too.”

  “No! It’s not the same thing!”

  “It looks exactly the same,” she said sadly.

  He struggled with his words, “It’s different… You’re different. You’re not like other girls.”

  She frowned, looking down, “I’m aware of that.”

  He sighed, “That’s not what I mean. It’s me… I’m different. You make me feel different.”

  Her eyes flashed angrily, “I told you, I’m not making you feel anything!” She tried to walk off but he grabbed her arm. She looked up to see the girls had been joined by Hillary and Debbie, watching them from across the courtyard with palpable hatred. All of their hurtful words came rushing back into her mind, “Let me go.”

  He shook his head no, “Don’t let them get you all upset… They have nothing to do with us.”

  She looked at them, and back at him, hesitating.

  “C’mon, let me take you home… Please?”

  She drew a shaky breath and agreed, following him out to the parking lot.

  “Do you wanna come over and hang out for awhile?” he asked hopefully.

  She shook her head no, afraid to look him in the eye, “I better go to my aunt’s. I have some things I need to take care of.”

  Truthfully, she was shaken. Seeing girls he’d been intimate with so recently made her feel even more insecure and frightened than ever. She was scared because it was too late; despite all of her caution, whether she wanted to admit it or not, she’d already surrendered her wounded heart to him.

  Calvin drove the short distance home extra slowly, racking his brain for a reason to make her change her mind. She promised to see him first thing in the morning, reminding him it would be their last day at school. He watched her make her way into the condo with a heavy heart, feeling lonely the minute the door closed behind her.

  ~

  Chapter Fifteen – DISCOVERED

  ~

  Professor Reed was having a bad day. His subjects kept inexplicably dying, his most senior employee was growing increasingly insolent, and he was having trouble procuring a rare synthetic compound. He logged onto his computer, sifting through investment accounts and bank statements until something stopped him cold in his tracks.

  Mackenzie, David and Jennifer. The names had appeared on a long forgotten automated search; materializing like ghosts from the far distant past. He scanned the information with a dry mouth, reading an obituary notice posted in a small town newspaper. He picked up the phone and dialed it with shaking hands.

  “I need you in the office immediately,” he said.

  Within minutes a hulking man in a black suit appeared, taking a seat opposite him.

  The Professor leaned forward in his chair, “Maximillion, I need you to drop everything and retrieve some information for me immediately.”

  The big man frowned, “Listen doc. I have a little problem to dispose of, if you know what I mean. Two more of ‘em dropped dead this morning, and–”

  “It can wait. This is a matter of the utmost urgency.”

  “It’s your call,” Max shrugged.

  “Someone crucial to this entire project has surfaced, and I need you to locate her at once.” Reed’s voice was vibrating with excitement, making the big man sit up and take notice. “There’s a substantial bonus in it for you if you get me her location within the hour.”

  Max had never seen Reed so agitated, and he used it to his advantage, “It’ll cost you double my fee.”

  The Professor nodded, showing Max the obituary. He pointed out the line that mentioned the couple was survived by a daughter. “Find the girl,” he ordered. Max got up, leaving Professor Reed to his thoughts.

  The old man stared off into space, a faraway look in his eyes. How incredibly fortuitous, he mused, to have such a gift fall right into his lap just when things were looking so bleak. It must be a sign that all his hard work would soon be paying off, and all of his sacrifices would prove to be worthwhile.

  He was stunned to know that David and Jennifer had not only survived all this time, but that they had eluded his efforts to find them. Somehow they had slipped through the electronic drag net that he’d monitored for years.

  And there was a daughter! He had always assumed that they’d succumbed to the madness that had engulfed the others of the first generation, never imagining that they might be capable of raising a child.

  He mustn’t get his hopes up, he thought. There was a possibility that the child wasn’t theirs, or perhaps some cretin at the small town newspaper had gotten the facts wrong. Still… the timeline was about right, and if it was true…

  He remembered Jenny and David fondly, saddened that he didn’t get a chance to perform their autopsies. They truly were amazing, he thought, among the brightest of his little family of research students. He would have liked to have seen the condition of their brains after all these years.

  He leaned back in his chair, fingertips together. The child would be, what… sixteen, seventeen years old. If his hypothesis was correct, she would be in possession of powerful second generation abilities. With both parents in the first generation she could have double the Athena effect; she would truly be a one of a kind specimen. He cursed the fact he’d been denied the opportunity to raise her as his own.

  He must have her at all costs.

  Max came back into the office within the hour, unbuttoning his suit coat and taking a chair with an air of satisfaction. The professor looked up eagerly, “Well?”

  “The kid is in Santa Rosa, living with her aunt, one Angela Jenkins. The aunt has custody until she turns eighteen in October. Kid’s name’s Cal-ah-do-ni-a,” he said slowly. “That’s weird.”

  “It’s lovely,” smiled the professor. “Ah yes, I met with Angela once when David and Jenny first went missing. It makes perfect sense. So she has guardianship?”

  “Yep,” he slid a piece of paper over to the professor. “The address and phone.”
>
  Professor Reed smiled, “I’ll have to call and offer my condolences.”

  “My bonus?” Max asked.

  “I’ll have it deposited immediately. I’m going to need a driver. We’ll be leaving to retrieve the girl as soon as possible.”

  Max got up to leave, pausing at the door, “What if she doesn’t want to come?”

  “We’ll make the aunt an offer.”

  “What if she won’t take it?”

  The professor was irritated by his questions, but he wasn’t going to let the big oaf’s doubts ruin his glorious day. He waved his hand dismissively, “I’ll take Layla with me. That should do the trick.”

  “Whatever you say,” Max shrugged, turning to leave.

  The professor’s brow knit together, thinking he really couldn’t afford to take a chance, “Wait… I’d like you to assemble a team and be ready to go… Just in case.”

  When the door clicked shut he sat back in his chair with an excited smile. Jenny and David’s child– nearly within his grasp… And a girl to boot! It was almost too good to be true. Surely the offspring of two such brilliant minds would be extraordinary. He got up to pace, unable to contain his excitement as he considered the possibilities.

  A door may have closed, but a window had just opened.

  ~

  Calvin got home from school that day, passing through the partying crowd with a serious look on his face. They called for him to join in, but he waved them off, heading straight to his room to flop onto his bed and wrestle with his feelings.

  Caledonia was driving him crazy.

  He wanted to be with her every minute of the day, but she obviously didn’t feel the same way. She made him think about the future, and question the way he’d been living his life; she made him dream about having things that he never thought he’d want. He’d never felt this way about anyone ever before.

  But she didn’t trust him, and he knew it.

  He could feel her resistance, and it scared him; it seemed like she was always on the verge of slipping out of his reach. Her ability to control animals, and now even people, only pointed out to him how far out of his league she was. She might not know much about everyday life, but she was the smartest person he’d ever met, and from what he’d read on the internet, both of her parents had been practically geniuses. They would probably never have approved of her being with someone like him.

  His feelings were so powerful it was alarming; he couldn’t imagine going back to the way his life was before he found her.

  Or rather, she found him, he thought, recalling the night she’d saved him from a brutal beating. The fact that her aunt’s boyfriend was the reason she wandered the streets at night filled him with a renewed surge of vengeful hatred, and he had to fight the urge to run back to her house and beat the hell out of the big bastard. He sighed, remembering that the way she controlled his brother and the cops.

  She really didn’t need his help.

  She didn’t need him for anything at all, he thought, a lump of dread settling in his stomach. She could run away and disappear as mysteriously as she had arrived, and he had no idea where he would look for her if she did. As far as he knew, Caledonia was still planning on leaving, and he knew how elusive she could be when she wanted to hide.

  He sat up with determination.

  He had to find a way to make her trust him. He had to make her want to stay, and he started formulating plans, thinking about all the places he could take her. Her strange upbringing made her easy to impress, because even the simplest things were brand new to her. Maybe if he kept her entertained enough she’d want to stick around… Maybe even forever.

  He wondered about her parents, finding it hard to imagine why two such intelligent and highly educated people would choose to raise their only child in such a primitive way. What could possibly be awful enough to make them hide out for all those years? The more he considered it, nothing about their story made sense at all. He reached for his laptop.

  He went back to the group photo on a hunch, looking up a few of the other student researchers to see what had become of them. What he uncovered made his hair stand on end. All six of the other students in the photo with Caledonia’s parents had taken their own lives.

  There was a hanging, two overdoses, and a flying leap from the Golden Gate Bridge. One graduate student had jumped from a twentieth floor balcony, leaving her twin toddlers orphaned. All the accounts attributed the bizarre suicides to depression, alcoholism, or paranoid schizophrenia.

  The most astounding death was the widely covered case of a man who had set himself aflame on the steps of the university’s admissions office. Calvin remembered hearing about the shocking self-immolation when he was a little kid, and his mind started racing.

  Caledonia had described how her parents suffered from terrifying visions and seizures, and now he knew that all of their fellow researchers had killed themselves. Project Athena must have done something to them.

  Calvin took a closer look at the professor. He came across a university newsletter that reported the suspension of his funding, announcing his immediate dismissal for ethics violations. Professor Reed left the university in disgrace, and there was nothing more to be found about him; it was as if he simply dropped off the face of the earth along with Caledonia’s parents.

  Calvin fell back on his bed with a great whoosh of an exhale.

  Whatever the cause, it was clear that Caledonia had been raised in isolation by a couple of very troubled people. Her parents sounded disturbed at best, and it was possible that they were slowly going insane. Could they have been afraid of something that existed only in their own minds?

  Calvin went back to look at all of the smiling young faces in the original photo, searching for any sign of the tragedy that lie ahead of each of them. There was nothing there but hopeful optimism and great expectations for a brilliant future. He could see Caledonia in her parent’s faces, and he was suddenly more afraid for her than he was for himself.

  ~

  “Cal! You’re finally home!” Angie called out happily. “Come in here!”

  She walked in the door to see Phil and Angie seated at the kitchen table with a flaming haired boy and girl. They pair looked up simultaneously, sizzling with curiosity.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” Angie smiled up at her, “He was your father’s college professor.”

  An older man rose from a chair with a warm smile, and Caledonia stepped forward, politely shaking his outstretched hand. He was practically vibrating with excitement, scrutinizing her with an intensely saturated yellow orange. Although he looked quite a bit older, she recognized him from the internet photos Calvin had shown her.

  “My goodness, you certainly did inherit David’s hair!” he said, his eyes studying her face avidly. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m Doctor Theodore Reed, but you can call me Teddy.”

  Something inside Caledonia recoiled, and the girl on the other side of the table startled. She turned to look at the two teens, struck by their unusual coloration. They were pale and heavily freckled, each one crowned with a head of curly red-hair. Unlike the other teenagers she’d seen at school, their posture was oddly formal, and they dressed like they’d come from another era.

  The girl wore a cardigan sweater over a full skirt, her lacy buttoned-up collar accented by a cameo pinned primly at the neck. The boy had on a suit and tie, a neatly folded handkerchief poking out of his breast pocket. Their eyes hadn’t left her since she walked in the door, and they both stared intensely.

  Caledonia looked closer and gasped, surprised to see that the girl had mismatched eyes; one green, the other a light golden brown.

  The professor cleared his throat, “These are two of my brightest students, Layla and Michael.” The girl smiled benignly, sending a calming lavender cloud wafting in Caledonia’s direction.

  They rose from their chairs, and Caledonia shook their hands as well, pushing the feeling back the way it came. Did the girl’s eyes
just narrow?

  “You have heterochromia too,” Caledonia observed, fascinated to see another person whose eyes did not match. Layla glanced to the Professor for direction.

  “You’re clearly a very clever girl,” Professor Reed jumped in, “And that’s why we’re here today.”

  “Sit down Cal. We need to talk,” Angie smiled tranquilly, radiating the same lavender that the girl had just launched in her direction. Cal couldn’t help but notice that her usually harried and scatterbrained aunt seemed strangely calm. Even Phil was staring off into space with a dreamy look on his beefy face. She looked back at the girl, wondering.

  The professor cleared his throat, getting Cal’s attention. “I can’t express to you how sorry I was to learn of your parent’s tragic accident. When I found out that they had a child, well, naturally I wanted to do something to help.”

  “How did you find out?” Caledonia asked suspiciously.

  “I came across the obituary in the Anderson Valley Gazette.” He made a little woeful clucking sound. “Tragic… simply tragic. Those two kids– your parents– They were like family to me. I loved them as if they were my own children.” Caledonia remembered the article that described how he had presided so paternally over her parent’s research project.

  Though she saw nothing to suggest he was lying, Caledonia couldn’t shake the queasy feelings of alarm that were emanating from deep within her belly. The old man had none of the calm and steady wisdom that poured from Calvin’s grandparents. He looked at her with undisguised interest, an interest that seemed almost predatory.

  He went on, “So, in their honor, I’d like to offer you an all-expense paid education. Everything covered, including room and board.”

  “Isn’t that great?” Angie chimed in.

  “Great,” Phil echoed.

  “Layla and Michael can show you everything. I’d like to take you with us today, so you have time to get settled in,” said the professor.

  “She can pack her things and leave right now,” Phil said. He’d already made the decision for her.

  Caledonia’s guard went up, and she tensed, poised to flee. “I need to think about it.” She wasn’t sure why, but somehow she knew that she must play for time.