Crystal Fire

by Jordan Dane

  “I’m asking each of you to do something that won’t be easy. We must learn to rely on one another, to become a real family now. That requires trust.”

  Gabe should have known their training would come to this. Trust had always been difficult for him. Living life on the run with his mother had meant secrecy ruled. They trusted no one except each other, but his uncle was right. Real trust was the next step.

  “Out of necessity, we’ve all learned to build mind shields to block our private thoughts from being read,” the man said. “Being connected to others as we are, it’s self-preservation to strengthen our shields and it’s a good skill to build upon.”

  Gabe knew his uncle and he knew there was a “but” coming. The somber look on his face was a dead giveaway.

  “There’s a reason I bring this up now. There will come a point where we’ll leave this home and confront the Believers,” he told them.

  Gabe hadn’t missed the fact that his uncle had used the word we.

  “Having strong shields may sustain us if we’re taken by the Believers,” his uncle said. “I know that’s not a pleasant thought, but given what we know about each other and this place, it would not be good if we break under pressure. Being able to block...the pain of torture might help us survive and keep these children safe.”

  Gabe looked at Lucas. They’d shared the same nightmares of the tortures on Ward 8 at Haven Hills. He hadn’t talked about it with Luke, but eventually he’d have to.

  “The other side of the exercise will be a challenge. That’s why I want you in pairs.”

  “Pairs?” Kendra asked.

  “I’d like you to partner with Lucas, my dear. I’m proposing a test of your mind shields.”

  “What?” Kendra crossed her arms. “We have shields for a reason. What’s private should be off-limits.”

  “Believe me, I understand your concern. I wouldn’t ask any of you to do this if I didn’t think it was necessary.”

  Not even Gabe liked the sound of this. From the looks of the others, they didn’t either.

  “As we grow stronger, it will require us to establish rules,” Uncle Reginald explained. “Ethics, if you will. There will be times we break those rules with others to defend ourselves. In an ideal world, we would all want to live in respectful civility, but the world we live in isn’t ideal.”

  His uncle gazed at each face and let his words sink in before he went on.

  “I’m talking about psychic attacks, memory invasions, altering dreams and manipulating the behavior of others.”

  Gabe glanced at Lucas and Kendra. They’d seen him cross the line of psychic attacks and manipulation after he confronted Boelens and his men in the tunnels. He didn’t feel bad about that. Not even a little.

  “These tactics have grave consequences, even with the best intentions.” His uncle sighed. “Unfortunately, in order to up our game, we must learn how to do these incredibly invasive things. The most responsible way to practice is on each other, the people we trust most.”

  “On each other? What are you asking us to do...exactly?” Kendra didn’t look happy.

  “One of you will resist the mind probe by reinforcing your shield while the other will try to break through. Then you will have a go at your partner by switching roles. I don’t expect all of you to be successful. Given your abilities, each of you will pose a unique challenge.”

  “How do we prove that we got past the shield?” Gabe asked.

  “Yes, good point.” His uncle nodded. “So we can respect each other’s privacy, the one breaking through should only take a short glimpse and get out fast. Find a harmless memory and confide that to your partner, no one else. You should not talk about what you see...with anyone. Understood?”

  What his uncle had asked them to do wouldn’t be easy. Everyone looked worried, but when Lucas shrugged and looked ready to try it, he glanced at Kendra. She clenched her jaw and shook her head, stopping him cold.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t do that. I won’t. Not with Lucas.”

  Luke looked utterly confused. Uncle Reginald could have pressed Kendra for a reason, but he chose a different way.

  “I know this isn’t easy. I won’t pressure any of you, if you’re uncomfortable with this method. Like I said, this will take trust and—”

  “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t try,” she explained. “If Rafael is okay with it, I choose him.”

  All eyes shifted to Rafe. He clearly didn’t like being the focus of attention, but eventually he shrugged.

  “I’m game, I guess,” Rafe said. “I got a shitload of crap in my head, but if you can get at it, it’s yours.”

  Before Frederick budged an inch, Rafael pointed at Dead Fred and said, “I got this.” The butler only raised an eyebrow and watched him leave with Kendra.

  Lucas’s face turned red as she left with Rafael. The kid looked lost.

  “Don’t read into it. Letting someone behind the curtain of Oz for the first time... It’ll be hard for all of us,” Gabe told Luke under his breath, so no one else heard. “She’s known Rafe longer. That’s probably all it is.”

  Lucas nodded, but he didn’t look as if he bought his explanation. Gabe felt sorry for the guy, but that didn’t mean he’d go easy. Luke was a Crystal child, like him. If they were meant to survive, the kid had to step up. They all did.

  Haven Hills Treatment Facility

  Ward 8

  Fiona had been so eager to see Oliver that she pulled through garage security with only a wave and didn’t bother to slow down to show her badge. Everyone knew her on sight, no matter what time of day she came. She went straight to Ward 8 without a detour to her office.

  She would never dare admit it to anyone, but as she stepped out of the elevator at Haven Hills, the humid odor and darkness of the corridor outside Ward 8 got to her. It was creepy. She deserved better than to operate out of a basement. Still, the magnitude of her work benefited from absolute secrecy, and within the secured walls of the ward, everything was state of the art. She came and went at all hours, without anyone second-guessing her reason for being there.

  Not even Alexander knew how far she’d gone with Oliver. As she walked under the red and white sign of Ward 8 and headed through the double doors of the secured facility, the face of Oliver Blue—and his striking green eyes—obsessed her with every step. The anticipation of seeing him sent adrenaline coursing through her veins.

  Fiona had done it. She’d finally achieved something truly remarkable.

  She and Alexander and the most dedicated Believers were the only defense against an enemy who lived among them. As a scientist she had to act, especially when she knew that 99 percent of all species that inhabited the earth before man were extinct now because they never saw the end coming. They simply weren’t prepared for Armageddon. Fiona felt the threat of kids like Oliver and she was in a unique position to do something about it.

  Lately Alexander Reese had different ideas.

  He had targeted Lucas Darby as a greater threat because he’d manifested into a Crystal child early at fifteen. If the transformation of Indigos were on the rise, he saw that as a warning sign that they should focus on those kids at the expense of everything else. Fiona didn’t have blinders on when it came to viable targets.

  She saw all these kids as potential threats. Lucas Darby had turned into a priority for Alexander, but a distraction to her. That’s why she had to keep the man in the dark on her diverging agenda with the Indigos. He wasn’t a scientist. He wouldn’t understand such scholarly pursuits. It took vision and a keen intellect to see the future as she did and have the guts to do what must be done to these children in order to defend against their potential superiority.

  Fiona had always wondered. If she deliberately sense-deprived one of these kids, what would happen to their already responsive brain? Could s
he escalate their abilities in a controlled experiment? If this were true, they’d be like clay in her hands. She could control evolution, manipulate it or stifle it.

  The possibility of that was staggering, especially if she could achieve even a fraction of success with a normal human being. Would that be possible? Could becoming the next evolution be achievable by anyone? Her work could level the playing field, and her vision had the potential to alter the future of all men. She marveled at her impending contribution to history as she headed for the boy’s locked cell.

  “Oliver, I knew you had potential, a strong boy like you,” she said. “Now we’ll see how special you really are.”

  5

  Haven Hills Treatment Facility

  Ward 8

  Fiona stood outside Oliver Blue’s locked door, but she couldn’t go in. She stared through the small wire-mesh window to look at him, reassuring her that he was still under her control. After she’d seen him in her bathroom that morning, it had been a very mixed blessing.

  Had she manipulated Oliver into exhibiting the first signs of teleporting or had she triggered something darker in him? When she looked into the shadowy room, the boy’s legs and torso were strapped to the light table. His mouth gasped for air like a dying fish, and his body jerked as if the erratic twitching was beyond his power to control it. She forced her eyes away from the boy and shifted her focus to the machines that tracked his vitals and brain activity, something easier to watch.

  What she’d done had been necessary, to advance science and sustain her faith. The church placed humanity above other creatures, including Oliver Blue and those like him. Seeing the boy and knowing what he’d done to haunt her in her home, she felt justified in her actions to safeguard mankind from a kid like Oliver. Even if she had a hand in making him a monster, the potential within him had given her plenty of reason to do what must be done to control his kind.

  Fiona took a deep breath, unbuttoned her suit jacket and opened the door with her ID passkey. She didn’t have to be careful about not making a sound. Oliver couldn’t hear or see her.

  The backlighting of the table cast an eerie glow onto his body, making his twitching more unsettling up close. Fiona couldn’t see his face. Only his gaping mouth struggled to breathe. He moaned with the effort, a sound that would only vibrate in his head and not be heard over the white noise she had programmed to play in his ears to control his sleep patterns. As she stood over him, her eyes trailed down his body toward his stomach. His muscles flinched and quivered as he gasped.

  But something else caused her to bend closer to see a mark on his shuddering belly. A bruise. Fiona shouldn’t have done it, but she couldn’t stop her urge. She slowly reached down and placed her hand over the mottled flesh of his stomach. His skin felt warm to her touch and she pressed down to hold him in place as he struggled under her hand.

  The boy jerked and cried out, “Who’s th-there? H-help me.”

  The bruise was in the shape of a small hand, smaller than hers. As Oliver called out to her in his delirium, begging for her help, Fiona stroked his belly to calm him, but she didn’t say a word.

  He wouldn’t have heard her anyway.

  Minutes later

  After Fiona had questioned her staff about the mark on Oliver’s body and no one shed light on what had happened, she knew only one way to get to the bottom of the mystery. When she got behind closed doors in her office, she hit the speed dial to the head of security, Stan Caulfield. She never bothered with anyone else.

  “I want the surveillance footage for Oliver Blue’s room and the corridor outside, plus the card key reports for anyone accessing his room. Top priority, Mr. Caulfield.”

  “How far back do you want to go, Dr. Haugstad?”

  Fiona slumped back in her chair with the phone to her ear. She had no idea and had to think. Oliver had been held in that room for over a month, isolated by sensory-deprivation gear, but the bruise looked fresh. Could someone unauthorized have visited him? Staff had been told not to touch him. Any interaction would have been minimal. Although she hadn’t seen him in a week, reports from the nursing staff had kept her apprised of his condition, but those records would not account for something remarkable like what she’d witnessed in her bathroom.

  “Send me the last week,” she told him.

  But before she hung up, Fiona thought differently about the bruise that looked like a small hand on Oliver’s stomach and played a hunch.

  “Give me the same for Caila Ferrie.”

  “Anything else, Doctor?”

  “No, that’ll be all.”

  She hung up the phone and got up from her desk to walk toward the large floor-to-ceiling window in her office. A lovely day. The incredible view overlooked the pristine grounds of Haven Hills, near the back of the property where the secured private delivery bay was located. Whenever she stood by that window, she could look down to see the new Indigo children being delivered—or the bodies being disposed of afterward.

  Fiona oversaw everything that truly mattered at Haven Hills. Alexander Reese had seen to that. But now as she faced a critical part of her experiment with Oliver, she had to decide.

  When would she let him out of the headgear? And once he was free of it, what new things would she discover in the boy? Despite the ultimate sacrifice Oliver was bound to make for science, he would only be a footnote to history—a practice run for the real thing. Fiona knew her real accomplishment was yet to come. She hadn’t forgotten about Lucas Darby. They needed a new lead and good fortune to find him. Alexander Reese’s man O’Dell had escalated his efforts to find the boy, without results so far.

  Because of Oliver, she couldn’t wait to get her hands on a Crystal child—Lucas or that other mysterious boy she’d found on a surveillance camera, traveling with Rayne Darby. Either would do.

  Stewart Estate

  Kendra Walker knew she had hurt Lucas, but she had her reasons for choosing Rafael to test the strength of her mind shield instead of him. Lucas was too powerful for her to survive his mind attack, and she didn’t want him digging around in her head again. She had too much to hide.

  When Lucas had been sick with a fever from his concussion—from an injury she had a hand in causing by grandstanding with the Believers—he’d tapped into her memory against her will. He repeated words she’d said and it felt as if he mocked her pain.

  “I didn’t mean to do it, Daddy. It just...happened. Please don’t hate me.”

  Hearing those words again shoved her right back there, as if it were yesterday. It was as if he’d read her mind, down to her darkest secret. At the time she tried to reach him in the only way she knew how—with her mind.

  No. Stop, Lucas. You don’t know what you’re saying, she’d told him. Please don’t...

  But he didn’t stop. He said it over and over and everything he mumbled brought back a terrifying crush of memories. She felt betrayed, even though he denied doing it and didn’t remember what he’d done. She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that his delirium had caused it, but the truth was that she didn’t know him well enough to trust him with the one thing she couldn’t let anyone know.

  That dark memory was the only thing she kept from her beloved Indigos.

  In a community where privacy of thought was fragile, she had vowed to keep that secret—until she fell in love with someone special. A life should not be built on lies. If she ever fell in love that hard, Kendra would have no choice. She would have to risk losing everything to tell the truth to the one person she hoped would understand and love her in spite of what she’d done.

  But Lucas had threatened that vow and her right to choose. Whether he had meant to or not, Lucas had taken that memory from her. That was reason enough to avoid him and his ability to get around her shield, but she also felt the strained relationship between her and Rafe, ever since she’d kiss
ed him at Benny’s funeral.

  That kiss had changed everything.

  Once they got under a shade tree in the mountain meadow, Rafael stopped and turned to her. He had a serious expression on his face and Kendra knew he had something on his mind, beyond the psychic exercise they’d been asked to try.

  “You can see anything I got. I have no secrets from you,” he said.

  Kendra had to smile. She’d expected a confrontation, but his honesty and willingness to let her in had surprised her. Mostly she felt like crap for being the complete opposite.

  “The point is that you’re supposed to block me, make it hard for me to see what you’re hiding.” She trailed a finger down his arm before she held his hand. “You can’t make it that easy.”

  She caught the twitch of a rare, shy smile. When his face flushed, she knew she’d embarrassed him.

  “I know, but if you don’t want to do it, I understand,” he said. “I’ll back you up. You need me to lie and tell them that we did it, I’m good with that.”

  Rafael knew how to read her. She didn’t know if this came from his Indigo nature or it had always been a part of him. He respected her beliefs about Indigos, listened quietly to her rants on injustice and supported her radical ways without much complaint.

  But after they both lost everything—Benny and the home that the Believers had destroyed—it had opened her eyes to how much her feelings for Rafe had changed. He’d been the strong one, the one who had his head on straight. They’d been punished because of her arrogance. Her defiance had cost them all, but Rafael never made her feel bad over what happened—not even when she wanted him to blame her for Benny.

  What happened made her doubt everything she’d been fighting for. Rafael had been her rock all along. She wasn’t worthy of his loyalty, or anyone’s, but she had to do her part now.

  “No. Gabe’s uncle is right,” she said. “We gotta do this.”

  “Then you hit me first. I can take it.”

  Rafe took a deep breath and turned his back on her. He walked out from under the sprawling tree and headed toward the edge of the meadow and a steep drop-off that overlooked the rolling hills of a valley. She followed him and watched as he sat on the ground and closed his eyes to concentrate.