by Jalex Hansen
“This is more like it,” Connor said.
“It gets even better,” Joanne said. “You didn’t really think he’d meet you behind a dumpster or something, did you?”
The guards left them standing in front of a final door and returned the way they had come. The door in front of them slid open and Connor followed Joanne in.
The room was paneled in wood just like the corridor beyond. The carpet on the floor was deep and sound muffling. On the walls hung paintings Connor was sure must be originals. Monet, Da Vinci, even a Rembrandt. A huge oak desk sat throne-like at the apex of the room where an aquarium made a blue glowing wall full of tropical fish from floor to ceiling, and from one end of the room to the other.
Connor was so entranced with the giant fish wall, he didn’t even notice the Senator until he stood up behind the desk.
“It’s the best view I could create down here,” Angine said in a fish belly cold voice. “Do you like it?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s cool.”
“Thank you for taking the time to come see me.” The Senator indicated the chairs in front of his desk. “Please sit down.”
Connor took his place feeling like a boy called to the principal’s office. The Senator motioned in a general direction and a man entered with a tray. He placed two bottles of Voss down in front of Joanne and Connor and poured a cup of coffee, black naturally, for the Senator.
Connor took a sip of the water trying to think of something to say.
“I’m quite a fan of yours,” the Senator purred.
“Sure. I bet you are.”
“I imagine you’re wondering why I asked you here?” He nodded at Joanne. “Thank you for bringing him. I had a feeling that if anyone could get him here it would be you.”
Joanne smiled a half smile.
“You look nervous, Connor.”
“Um …no... just a little weirded out…the whole warehouse thing, armed guards.”
Angine smiled, sipped at his coffee. “Well, a man in my position can’t afford to take chances.”
“And what is your position exactly?”
Angine appeared amused by Connor’s audacity. He pushed his coffee away with a smutty chuckle. “Let’s just say, I don’t have a boss.”
“Okay,” Connor said. “Let’s just say that.”
Angine’s face fell. “I’ll allow you your disrespect because you are a young American, an entirely disrespectable group, but this is your only warning.”
“Or what?”
Joanne laid a hand on his arm. “Connor, stop it. Senator.” She turned on every watt of her considerable high voltage smile. “Connor’s over tired and he’s had a long day.”
It sounded like she was apologizing for a toddler’s tantrum.
Connor started to get to his feet. “Look. I’ve got things to do. I just wanna know why I’m here.”
“Would you give me that paper weight?” Angine indicated a heavy glass ball not six inches from his elbow.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, would you give me that paper weight?”
“Whatever floats your boat, man.” Connor leaned forward.
“No. Please give it to me without touching it.”
This guy was bat shit for sure. “Excuse me?” he said again.
Angine talked very slowly to him as though he were stupid. “Just concentrate on it and move it toward me.”
“What is this, an audition for X-Men?”
“Please humor me. Just try.”
To his complete embarrassment, Connor did try. He closed his eyes and pictured the paper weight moving across the desk toward the Senator. Next to him Joanne giggled and he opened his eyes. The paper weight had, of course, stayed put. Connor pushed back from the desk and stood. “I’ve had enough of this,” he snapped. “I have things to do.” He had no idea how he was going to find his way out of here, but he was leaving.
“Your brother, Ty, almost drowned when you were thirteen, Connor. Do you remember that?”
“Of course I remember.” There was no way the Senator should have known this. Connor had never even let the media get a hold of that.
“And do you remember what saved him?”
Connor was lured back to the desk, feeling himself wriggling on the hook Angine had caught him with. “I jumped in and saved him.”
Angine kept his eyes trained on him. “No you didn’t, jump in that is. But you did save him. Do you remember how?”
The truth was Connor had jumped in. At least that was how he remembered it. But suddenly he began to doubt this memory. It was like a role he had played once, a script he had memorized, layered on the truth, hiding it just underneath.
“You lifted him from the water, Connor. Without touching him.”
“I don’t know what kind of sick joke this is but--”
“I’m very sure you do know. You look too pretty to have any intelligence in that trademark, chiseled body of yours, but I know you are an intelligent boy, intelligent and resourceful enough to have hidden the truth even from yourself. I am allowing you to liberate yourself by acknowledging that truth now. I will even offer you another truth that may help you. Your parents are not your real parents.”
“Am I still black?” Con asked, smirking, but the flat calculation in Angine’s eyes wiped the expression from his face. This guy was serious.
Angine continued as though Connor had never spoken. “Your real parents are dead and the people that raised you are simply guardians. Guardians that knew exactly what you could do.”
Connor sat down heavily in the chair and rubbed his eyes, trying to make all this go away. “You’re a liar.”
“You know that I’m not, Con.” The Senator’s voice was strangely soothing. “In fact I may be the only person on Earth that has not lied to you.” He came around the desk and sat on the arm of Connor’s chair, placing a fatherly arm around him. “Everyone wants something from you, the studios, the fans, your adopted parents.”
Connor moved away from the chair quickly, trying to escape that heavy cold arm. “You must want something from me too,” he snarled. “Or else why would you bring me here?”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. That remains to be seen. But I can promise you, anything I get from you I’ll return tenfold. To begin with, I can get you out of that stupid contract that you hate so much and find you a private place to stay away from the media.”
“And?”
“And I can tell you everything you want to know about yourself and how you can use that to your best advantage. I can guarantee you access to anything you have ever wanted.”
Connor looked over at Joanne who was staring at him with an uncertain expression. She shrugged.
“Okay, Senator. You have a very good pitch. I’m intrigued. I’ll sit here and ask a few questions, and if you answer those questions to my satisfaction maybe we can deal. But first I’d like something to drink stronger than water.”
“Good boy,” Angine said, and raised his hand.
Chapter
Seven
“Holy crap, is this real?”
Hikari’s little brother Jason sat on her bed with the hard copies of all the info she had pulled on their dad spread across the bed.
“How did you get in my room, you little thief?”
“Girls always pick the worst security codes. It only took me two tries to figure it out.”
She was reaching to snatch the paper from his hand and add a few choice words he wasn’t suppose to know but used more than she did, when she realized how pale he was and the way his bottom lip stuck out, just like it used to when he was only a toddler and was getting ready to cry. She went over and sat on the bed next to him.
“Seriously, Hikari, is this real?”
“I think so.”
“How did you get all this?”
“I hacked it.”
He grinned at her, his face returning to normal. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”
“Thanks, pee wee. I guess that b
ad security code choices run in the family. It wasn’t all that hard to get.”
The frown returned to his mouth and he scanned the page he was holding again. “Papa and Uncle Ken are killing people.”
Hikari sighed. “I don’t think they’re killing people exactly, they just know about it.”
“They take money for it. They arrange it. That’s the same thing.”
“I guess.” Gently she reached over and took the files from him.
“You should probably burn those so you don’t get caught.”
“You’ve seen too much TV, Jace.”
“I’m really serious. Papa would kill you if he caught you with those.” He swallowed his bad choice of words. “Sorry, I didn’t mean literally.”
“Just shut up, okay.” The sibling equilibrium balanced itself again.
“What’s the deal with August 20th? Everywhere it’s mentioned, it’s printed in bright red.”
“I heard Angine say that we needed to get out of town on that date, but I don’t know why.”
Jason’s eyes were wide and dark. “Were you spying?”
“No. Yes.”
He looked at her with solemn eyes. “I’m sorry I ever said you were a bitch.”
“Uh, apology accepted. But I’m still a bitch, so look out.”
“What’s this one?” He handed her a sheet that hadn’t made it back in the folder.
“I don’t know. This one’s got me stumped.”
“It looks like your birth certificate.”
“Yeah, but it’s labeled copy two, and it has the wrong dates.”
Jason stood up and started jumping on the bed. “Maybe you’re adopted.”
“I wish,” she retaliated. “Then I could finally breathe easy knowing I’m not related to you, and if I ever have children they won’t come out with big tongues and small IQs.”
He stuck his tongue out.
“Get off my bed, loser.”
“Make me.” The door alarm beeped once and Jason and Hikari exchanged looks. She shoved the file at him and he jumped down to hide it under the bed while she answered the door. “Yes, Papa?”
Her father looked suspiciously at Jason. “I was just looking for Jason. What are you doing in here under the bed?”
“We were playing hide and seek,” Jason said.
Congressman Suzuki turned wide eyes to Hikari, and she nodded too emphatically. “I thought we should, you know, hang out together.”
“Are you hiding Yerik in here again?” her father demanded.
“Uh, no.”
Her father strode over to the closet and threw it open. Hikari half wished he would find Yerik in there to distract him, but no luck. He turned around and considered Jason for a moment and then dropped to his knees.
Hikari and Jason stared across the bed at each other in horror, but her father stood back up without ever noticing the folder. “Okay then. I don’t know what you two are up to, but I smell rotten fish.”
“That’s just Jason’s socks,” Hikari said.
Her father suppressed a smile, mollified for the moment. “Listen, I came in to tell you I have to go out of town for a few days. Do you think I can leave you two alone that long and not come back to any dead bodies?’
Hikari felt her heart give a little lurch and knew Jason felt the same. “Sure, Papa.”
“Okay. I’ll have Reena come by and clean the house as usual. Use the credit card to buy anything you need. And no boys.”
“Yes, Papa.”
He leaned over to kiss her forehead and she made herself stand still. “And whatever you do Hikari, don’t leave your brother alone okay? Stay close to home.” He looked so serious, so worried. “Aye, aye captain.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead just wished them goodnight and left the room.
“Whew! That was close!” Jason lay face down on the bed and took a few deep breaths.
“This is perfect! With him gone I can try to find out what I need to know without him breathing down my neck.”
“He said you can’t leave me alone.”
“I’m not,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”
Chapter
Eight
Lissa was hiding crouched in a bathroom, the only door she could open without a code when Gideon found her. It had been less than ten minutes since she had run out of the briefing. She was beginning to see the more irritating aspects of his abilities.
“Lissa, will you just spend a minute listening to me? This is about more than just you, a whole lot more.”
“I don’t really care about anybody else. I just want to feel sorry for myself, okay? Give me a break already. My parents are dead, my fake parents. Everyone thinks I have weird super hero powers. I’m living under ground like a... like a…”
“Fugitive?”
“I was going to say mole, but that sounded lame in my head.”
Tentatively they smiled at each other. She noticed again the sharpness of his features, the liquid ink of his hair falling almost to his shoulders, the fine lean muscles of his arms, and those eyes. She thought maybe she could give him five minutes to talk. But if she wasn’t satisfied--“You can explain this to me. The whole story this time. But after that, if I want to leave, you have to get me out of here.” She knew she really didn’t have any bargaining power.
“Where would you go?” he asked, his voice gentle.
“I have a list of names and locations memorized.”
“They are all dead. We’re all that’s left.”
“You could be lying to me.”
“But I’m not.” He slid down the wall to settle at her side, their hips touching. He felt warm, like he had a fever.
“Maybe I’ll just disappear and lead a normal life.”
“An orphaned seventeen-year-old with super powers and a history of being raised in isolation is never going to have a normal life.” He looked her in the eyes, his face so close she could smell him, something fresh and green like pine trees, no, more distinct than that, like ozone during a storm. “And they’ll find you. I’m not trying to scare you, but they will. Angine has very long arms and I can’t protect you if you leave me.” He was so close his breath ruffled her eyelashes. “And I want you to stay. I need you.”
“Why?”
“Because Gabrielle and I have been alone in this our whole lives. We were raised in this city. Like you, we never got to do the things kids our age should have done. We were raised by the Guardians to fulfill our purpose, to find and train the others.”
Lissa remembered her parents’ words. “So I’m just part of that purpose? An assignment for you?”
“No,” Gideon whispered. “You are so much more than that. Gabrielle, she doesn’t mind so much, she has Jared and her lab. But I want us to work together to fulfill our destiny, so we won’t be alone anymore.”
Those eyes, that rainy smell was hypnotizing her, she thought. Still she believed him, thought he was telling the truth. She shifted away from him when she really just wanted to fall into him, to find out what it was like to be touched and held by someone other than her parents. “Tell me,” she said.
He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes to summon a picture. “The Tesero have a book with the entire history of our people in it. In it there is supposed to be a prophecy that tells of the creation of the Lux. The Tesero have dedicated themselves to protecting that knowledge for centuries and centuries. They’ve been waiting for the time to be at hand, the time of the Children of the Light.”
“Sounds like ancient garbage to me. This is how crazy religions are started, you know.”
“Maybe. But we’re not crazy, and you’ve seen for yourself that our abilities are real. There have always been Guardians, trained to protect the Lux Children when they were eventually born, but no matter what they tried, the Tesero were never able to achieve what the prophecy said they could. Until Angine that is. He realized the prophecy was like a science manual of sorts, and th
at the reason they hadn’t been able to create the Lux Marker is because medicine and technology weren’t up to it. It was only when we realized what DNA was, and then how it could be altered or manipulated, that we were able to create the marker, and splice it correctly. Even so, nobody knows exactly what it will do. The prophecy is like most prophecies, vague. But Angine had an idea, and he was right. Somehow, after puberty the abilities start to manifest themselves.”
“Why didn’t my parents tell me?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her again. “Lissa, your parents loved you very much. They weren’t being cruel keeping this information from you. It was their duty as Guardians to protect you and raise you, and only to reveal who you were when the time was right. They, and many others besides, gave their lives so that we could do what we have to do.”
“And what is that exactly?”
“To start with we have to stop Angine. Because he’s going to do more than just stage a political coup, he’s going to change the whole world, make it into what he wants, a place where he has all the power.”
Without thinking Lissa reached out and ran her finger around the silvery mark on his wrist and she thought she felt him shiver under her touch. “Will I get one of these?”
“You’ll see.”
She rubbed her temples trying to absorb everything she had learned in the past few days. She felt like she could sleep for a million years. “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll do it”
“Are you sure?”
She hadn’t expected him to ask. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
“Good.” His smile was almost as brilliant as Gabrielle’s. “Then get a good night’s rest tonight. We’ll leave in the morning.”
She chose a room, the one that would be hers as long as she lived in the city. Which, from the looks of it, could be forever. It was plain but large. Way bigger than her tiny little room at the compound had been. Like the rest of the city it was underground, but in here thick colorful rugs had been laid, diminishing echoes and cushioning the feet. She walked forty paces from one end to the other and forty the other way. This was practically an apartment. She could picture a sofa over there and book shelves and a desk with a computer. Now it only offered a night table and a narrow bed with a thin blanket. The lights were soft and orange, the walls smooth, chalky rust-colored rock. She sat down on the bed and sighed.
