“Remember what they did to your family—what he did.”
With another flash of white light, a picture all too familiar to Landon emerged. He saw the same tall man, now in a grey trench coat, and his kind-faced wife, who wore a black peacoat, lying on a snow-covered sidewalk in front of a quaint toyshop in the middle of winter. Their shopping bags were scattered around them, and running out from under them was a pool of crimson blood seeping into the snowy ground. A man in a dark hooded sweatshirt, who Landon knew to be a young Dr. Brighton, walked past as he put a gun in his pocket.
The image faded away to reveal the red-haired woman again. She was so close, only inches from his face, that Landon felt if he stuck out his tongue he would lick her. Her face was covered in fine brown freckles—something he hadn’t noticed before—and her green eyes had tiny flecks of gold in them. She began to speak in the same unusual voice, but her tone had changed; there was a new level of authority and command, like a teacher to her pupil.
“Remember, Celia. Remember, and you cannot fail your mission. You are bound to meet people who may have even been your friends in a different world, but you must remember that anyone who stands in the way of your mission is your enemy. You have been directed to seek out an end to the Pallas Corporation, and we know that until you have obtained your revenge, you will never reach your potential.
“Do whatever you must, my fair Artemis. Lie, deceive, manipulate if you must, for revenge is cold and unyielding. It does not have a conscience; it does not have morals; it is a burning flame that if not fed will devour you. If you deviate from it, or forget it, it will send you to your ruin. Put aside remorse, put aside feelings, and do whatever you must to reach your goal—no matter the cost. Do your duty. . . . Nothing else matters.
“Remember your family. Remember what they did to them. And remember that your revenge is your salvation.”
A burning white light consumed Landon’s mind, and he was suddenly bombarded by the deafening sounds of the crowd. Landon looked around, confused. He was back in the arena. He wondered what had just happened. He searched the faces of the people around him, but all eyes were fixed on the playing field. If anyone else had experienced what he just did, they didn’t seem affected by it. Landon looked down to find his hand gripping the railing of the stairs so hard that his knuckles had gone white and his hand was cramping. Overwhelmed by the chaos of the moment, Landon turned back to the field.
Celia looked beside herself. Landon could see her anger and frustration as her hope of beating Joshua waned. With a clenched jaw, she widened her stance and started to pull her arms upward. They moved slowly; she was straining like someone dead-lifting five hundred pounds. Then out of the still earth, a column of dirt and debris burst forth as if a bomb had exploded, showering the field in grime. Out of the fog appeared a giant tree trunk floating in the air. The audience gasped in amazement and horror.
The ancient, decomposing conifer was gnarled and jagged. Broken branches and twigs, the remnants of some horrific storm that had caused the tree’s demise, spiked the heavy core from top to bottom.
Landon quickened his pace down the stairs. He could feel her intent. But he wasn’t even sure she knew what she was doing. Perhaps if he reached her in time, he could stop her. Celia, no! Don’t do it! he screamed out to her with his mind, but she was closed off to him. He couldn’t break through. She was gone . . . consumed by her abilities.
Then the ground ignited in flames just like the tables in the Academy’s cafeteria when Celia had her apocratusis. It started in a circle around Celia and began to spread quickly, moving outward like ripples in a pond. Landon skidded to a stop, aghast at what he could sense was about to happen. Frightened screams burst from the spectators, and Landon could see the sudden fear on Joshua’s face—his eyebrows raised and drawn together.
Before Landon could even call out to her again, Celia launched the decaying tree trunk at Joshua with unbelievable force. In the clutches of intense fear, Joshua was frozen in place, helpless to stop it. When the tree hit him, blood sprayed everywhere, staining the ground where he had just been standing, as Joshua and the tree trunk flew out of sight past the side of the bleachers.
Suddenly, over the shouts of shock and panic, over the sounds of pounding feet as people fled the stands, Landon heard a prolonged scream so horrifying, so bloodcurdling—a scream saturated with pain and terror—that Landon’s eyes welled up with tears. His attention darted toward the source. Through the frenzied crowd, Landon was only able to get a glimpse of Joshua’s twin, Jeremiah, as he stood stationary amid the pandemonium, his wail piercing the arena.
Then his scream stopped.
CHAPTER TWENTY
AFTERMATH
“Murderer!” Riley screamed at Celia as she passed through the cafeteria doors.
Aghast at his insensitive outburst, Katie Leigh forcefully whacked Riley in the arm. “Riley!”
All Landon could muster was a disappointed look at his friend. He couldn’t believe things had come to this. While forking his eggs, Landon gazed at Celia to make sure she was all right. She appeared unaffected, her strength shielding her from the daily attacks, but Landon knew her defenses were wearing thin—they had to be.
The cafeteria became eerily quiet. Every face honed in on Celia as she moved through the food services area with a heightened level of self-consciousness. No one spoke, but everyone thought the same thing: There she is . . . the murderer.
Two weeks had passed since the Qualifiers’ tragic end. The tournament was indefinitely postponed and unconcluded. After what happened, no one wanted to watch the final rounds of the contest.
Landon had a hard time remembering everything that had happened that day. Things got so hectic. In the minutes following the incident, the staff guided the students into the cafeteria to wait while others tended to Joshua Crane’s injuries. With its cavernous walls and high ceilings, the room blared with wailing cries and hysterical chatter. The weight of the tragedy reverberated off the walls to a point where it seemed that even the building cried out in horror. The events on the field had happened so quickly, and either from panic or curiosity, people had fled the stands without consideration for anyone but themselves. The commotion caused others to get injured as people fought to get clear of Celia’s inferno. The fire that ignited around her had set the dry field ablaze, and like the crowds, it quickly got out of control. Amid the chaos, some of the staff were smart enough to grab a group of students and direct them to use their telekinetic abilities to bring water from the lake to squelch the flames; some spectators, however, were not fast enough to avoid the spreading flames and were escorted straight to the medical wing to be treated for first- and second-degree burns to their arms and legs. There was so much screaming and panic and chaos as the stands cleared before the situation was brought under control.
Once safe and inside, everyone started to share experiences, trying to confirm what they had witnessed. Since that day, graphic rumors about Joshua’s brutal demise had been circulating. They spoke of how his body—bloody, mangled and lifeless—had been impaled by the jagged broken branches of the gnarly tree trunk Celia had summoned from hell, and how it crushed him under its awesome weight as it tossed and rolled him across the hard, dry ground.
Some, who’d braved a return to the site, claimed the parched earth had drank his blood like water, and a wealth of grass, growing faster and greener than anything around it, had sprouted from the red-stained ground.
On that day, they were forced to wait hours until Dr. Wells entered the cafeteria and told everyone the news—Joshua Crane had died at 12:35 p.m. as a result of complications from his injuries. Landon barely remembered the assembly. He stood near the back of the cafeteria, staring blankly at the white tile, cut off from the world. To this day he still felt numb, disconnected, completely void of thought or emotion. It all seemed unreal to him, a bad d
ream he just couldn’t manage to wake up from.
Scenario after scenario played through his mind as he relived the events and what he could have done to stop it all from happening. He had known what was coming. He had sensed it, yet he did nothing. Landon was certain he could have saved Joshua if he had only acted faster. The fact that Landon’s scheming enabled the fatal battle between Joshua and Celia only haunted him more. He had let Celia beat him in the first round. If he hadn’t, Joshua would never have faced her. He had never weighed the possible cost of his plan, only the end goal, and he couldn’t forgive himself for it. If I’d only tried harder to stop her, he’d berated himself over and over again. If only I hadn’t let her win.
Everything in the Gymnasium changed after Joshua’s death. It was like a cloud descended on the students: fights arose over trivial things like an accidental nudge; people broke out in hysterical sobs that could only be assuaged by the consoling embrace of friends. It was communicated that the Crane family had decided to hold the funeral services outside of the Gymnasium, so many of his friends and classmates were still struggling with not having a chance to tell him goodbye and get closure. A few days later, Dr. Wells brought in a special therapist to help the students work through the trauma and cope with their grief, some woman named Maureen Hammond.
Landon declined the offer to meet with her, but he’d seen her walking the halls. He was shocked the first time he laid eyes on her. She had chestnut hair that fell in heavy waves around her smooth-skinned, attractive face, and she walked with an unsympathetic gait, striding determinedly toward her destination with no regard for whoever stood in her path. The soles of her shoes clicked in rhythmic staccato so Landon could hear her coming well before he saw her. And she was tall, very tall for a woman, which was only exaggerated by her four-inch heels. They elongated her slender, toned legs, which complemented her subtly curved figure to perfection. She was gorgeous, but frightening. She didn’t act anything like a therapist. Nothing about her screamed, Tell me your problems, but more so If you have an issue, take it up with someone who cares. Because of this, Landon had his suspicions about her and decided it was too dangerous to talk to her, but he was nervous that this decision would only draw more suspicion.
Jeremiah Crane was gone, too. He had resigned from his duties on the Pantheon and no longer resided at the Gymnasium. After a week spent in the medical wing, it was decided he would be better off in the care of his family. Rumors circulated that Jeremiah had, in fact, gone insane after the death of his twin—that somehow the death had severed him from reality and deranged his mind. Some even said that Jeremiah had died in the medical wing; because of their bond as twins and the connectedness of their abilities, he wasn’t able to survive without his brother. Landon’s ill-fated plan had resulted in two openings on the Pantheon in less than a week. His plan was too successful, in a way he would never have wished or expected. Castor and Pollux were gone.
Blamed for killing Joshua Crane, Celia became an outcast. Everywhere Celia went she was met with accusatory stares, brutal comments, and aggression, though overt attacks were rare. Even though everyone shunned her, her performance on the field that day had also engrained a very real fear of her. People were afraid they’d burst into flames if they got too close. The administration did their best to squelch the students’ animosity toward Celia, but they weren’t very effective at it. They fruitlessly attempted to convince the students that the incident was an accident brought on by Celia’s temporary loss of control to her psychokinetic abilities. They sited that reason for why she was still in the Gymnasium and not kicked out. They’d used the same reason for why Landon was a student—if she were expelled she’d never learn to control her abilities.
Celia, however, seemed comfortable in her isolation. She sat alone, never speaking to anyone, moving through life like a lone wolf forced to reside in a den of jackals. During training sessions, she would enter silently, take her position, work through the lesson, and leave just as silently. She never reacted to, or even acknowledged, any of the heckling or cruelty.
Landon believed she was hurting more than she let on, but he couldn’t know for sure. She certainly wasn’t talking to him. Although the circumstances were tragic, Landon felt he could relate to her more than ever before. In his mind, they now shared a similar experience. After spending hours dwelling on the Qualifiers match between Celia and Joshua, Landon was convinced the administration was right and that her abilities had taken control of her, just like what had happened to him during his apocratusis—causing a horrible accident brought on by desperation. She’d surrendered herself to her abilities in a frantic attempt to win when the flame of victory was all but burned out. He believed she had no control over what had happened.
With her tray now carrying a simple breakfast, Celia headed towards an empty section of the table along the back wall of the cafeteria. Eyes continued to follow her as she moved down the aisle, but Celia fought to maintain her composure. She was stoic as she walked with her head held high and her pride carrying her forward, past table after table, never looking down or locking eyes with a single glaring student. Heads swiveled, locked on her like a heat-seeking missile to a flame, but she never broke her stride.
Out of the corner of Landon’s eye, he noticed someone get up from her seat; the sound of the bench sliding backward as she rose from the table echoed through the silent hall. It was Courtney Lambert, the athletic girl Cortland had forfeit to, and Landon’s weren’t the only eyes she’d caught. As if pulled by a magnet, every head in the cafeteria turned to her.
Courtney stepped into the middle of the aisle, blocking Celia’s path. Her feet were spread while her muscular arms were crossed over her chest, like a bouncer blocking the entrance to a dance club. Her face was tight with her eyes squinted, her jaw clenched, and her lips pursed. Landon felt his heart beat a bit faster as the tension in the air escalated to a new level.
Celia halted a few feet before she reached Courtney’s blockade, ceasing leisurely like a driver approaching a school crossing. For what seemed like minutes, the two stared at one another, each one sizing up the other.
“Murderers are not welcome here,” Courtney said commandingly.
Celia didn’t reply but blinked slowly as she raised her eyebrows and tensed her lips, looking bored by what she deemed a hollow display of unfounded superiority. Courtney’s face drew in even more at this as her anger mounted. Landon knew all too well that Celia didn’t require words to convey her feelings. She could communicate sympathy with a touch and authority with a furtive glance.
With a raised voice, Courtney repeated, “I said, you are not welcome here!” Courtney unfolded her arms and with a determined flick of the wrist, flipped Celia’s tray up onto her chest. Maple and brown sugar oatmeal glooped down Celia’s shirt as the rest of her meal fell to the floor with a splatter. Red grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe and chunks of pineapple skipped out around her when they bounced off the floor and a glass of milk shattered on the tile, spraying liquid in every direction. Some gasped at the sight while others winced, preparing for Celia to burn them all for Courtney’s transgression.
Her expression unchanged, Celia let the now-empty plastic tray fall to the ground. She then drew her hand to her face, and with a deliberate swipe of her index finger, wiped a glob of oatmeal off her chin. She looked down at it for a moment before licking it off as she stared defiantly at Courtney, who Landon could sense was fighting a twinge of anxiety.
Celia pulled her shoulders up as she let out an exaggerated groan of enjoyment. “Mmm, delicious,” she said. They were the first words Landon had heard her speak since that day. Celia then placed her hand in front of her. Globules of oats and droplets of milk rose from the ground and jumped off her clothes, coalescing in a flowing, amorphous blob above her upturned palm. Everyone watched with bated breath. After several moments of this, Celia was as clean as she’d been the moment she ent
ered the cafeteria. Then, with a burst of energy, she launched the ball of breakfast at a nervous Courtney, who still stood before her.
Courtney, employing her quick reflexes, managed to avoid getting hit directly in the chest by the ball, but Luisa Garcia wasn’t as lucky. With a resounding splat, food exploded onto her face, enveloping her head with chunky white slop, as milky flak hit students more than ten feet from her.
The attention of everyone, including Landon, shot to Luisa, who sat with her eyes closed and mouth agape with her hands next to her face, her expression stuck in an exaggerated look of surprise and disgust. She looked like she was screaming, but her voice was as frozen as her expression. Food coated her entire face, and chunks stuck to her dark brown hair. When Landon looked back, the place where Celia had stood was now empty. Looking around, he caught a glimpse of her just as she passed through the exit, leaving the cafeteria and this wretched business in her wake. Acting on instinct, Landon jumped up from his seat and darted toward the exit, leaving his half-eaten plate of food behind as he chased after her. No matter how their relationship had deteriorated, Landon knew Celia needed him in that instant.
Landon stopped just outside the cafeteria, looking in both directions to figure out which way Celia was headed. To his right, he saw her for a split second before she disappeared behind a corner. She looked to be heading toward the staircase that led to the Atrium. Quickening his step, Landon raced in that direction, hoping to catch up to her.
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