gifted

by Charmaine Ross

  I was sick of being a victim.

  I was armed with knowledge and anger. I was equipped and prepared. For the first time, I had a running chance.

  It was time to turn the tables.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The ache inside me was so large and so hollow. It hurt—it physically hurt. Seth had taken Julius. I was going to fight. People didn’t deserve to have a death sentence because of me. I hadn’t sorted out what I felt for Julius, but it was beyond just friendship. Beyond anything I’d experienced before.

  If I was truthful, I would tell myself that I was falling for him. But that was scary and way too much for me to process now. Right now, I knew I’d had but a taste of something more, more than I could ever dream about having, and that it was important enough for me to fight for.

  Fuck my father, and fuck what he’d done to me. I picked myself off the pavement, wiping the tears from my face. Self-pity would get me nowhere. Time to stop feeling sorry for myself. Embrace the anger, the heat. Energy simmered through my blood, like millions of effervescent bubbles. I tilted my head back, embracing the feeling of strength, of empowerment invigorating me. It was sure better than being frightened all of the time. It gave me power. Made me clearheaded.

  Energy hissed and crackled inside my head, a distant sound in my ears, singing in my blood, waiting for a command. A thought to make an action. I was armed. And I was mad as hell.

  The street was lined with parked cars when I spotted just what I needed. A motorbike. High-technology style. It looked like earlier models, two wheels, a saddle, foot pedals. But through the LearnX, I knew it was installed with technology that wouldn’t allow it to be stolen. Unless you could do what I did.

  I walked over to the bike as though it were mine to take. I slung my leg over the saddle, placed my knees behind the leg guard, and sent a line of energy into the console. There were a couple of sparks when I burnt out the personal recognition technology. Then I sent another burst into the starter motor. The bike hummed, the reverberations running like silk through my body.

  I slipped out onto the streets with a quiet whir. The magnetic-gravity motors were more powerful than their old gas-guzzling ancestors, but they had nothing on the gutsy sound of the bikes I was used to riding.

  I headed out onto the freeways, passing several launch ramps. There was one address I knew would be the epicenter to all of this, and it was seared into my mind. The site of where it all started. If there was one location to start, that would be it. Too much had gone down in the past to totally eradicate its history. I would find something.

  If you knew where to look.

  And I did. Intimately.

  Dread seeped into my gut with each passing kilometer. I battled against years of running, of hiding. Memories captured me in their horror, swirling like insidious leeches, whittling me down to the frightened scrap they’d turned me into. I pushed it all from my mind, concentrating instead on the road unfolding in front of me. That wasn’t important now. What was important was that I found Julius as fast as I could.

  I exited the city. Melbourne had grown, but mostly vertically. I headed out through Lilydale into the Yarra Valley. The hills and valleys hadn’t changed. The forest was still thick and impenetrable, filled with huge tree ferns, rambling ancient gums, and thick underbrush.

  I wound through the Toolangi State Forest, my heart beating like mad. This area was tainted for me. I’d stayed well away from this area until the day they dragged me back. Yet still, it was scorched into my mind, just as I’d annihilated the earth and the trees that day.

  I slowed and hit a dirt track that would take me deep into the forest. The fronds of large tree ferns snagged the side of the bike, whipping my arms and legs. The track dwindled to a barely detectible flattening of grass between trees. I went in as far as I could on the bike and went the rest of the way on foot.

  In my head, I knew a century had passed since I’d last been here. But for me, it had only been days. The fires. The heat. The ash.

  The dread.

  I climbed to the top of a steep valley. I crouched below a sapling, keeping to the shadows.

  My father had been secretive. There was no indication that an entire facility lay beneath the earth here. It had been top secret in my day, and it certainly hadn’t been discovered since. There’d been no records of it on the LearnX at any point, and I wondered how it had managed to still be off the radar given this section had been discovered when they’d unearthed me. I’d been kept inside in underground cells, and I didn’t have the faintest clue of the layout. I’d been kept disoriented and blindfolded if they moved me. After my first escape, they hadn’t taken any chances. But this was the only place I thought Seth could have brought Julius. I had to try to find him here first.

  Below me, low-level lights lit up the area, from the articles I’d read about my discovery on the LearnX. Road building vehicles were scattered as though they’d just been stopped the day they’d discovered me. There was a gaping hole in the middle of the road construction. That was where the dirt had fallen through and how they’d found me. It was smaller than the images I’d seen. So small I wondered how I’d been found at all.

  The area looked empty, but I stayed on my perch at the top of the hill listening and waiting to see if anyone would be around. It took an hour—I was patient—before I cautiously descended into the valley and into the cleared area, certain that no one was here except me.

  I hunched behind a grader until I was certain the area was completely deserted and jogged over to the hole. Beneath the dirt was a thick concrete slab with a jagged crack about a meter high and wide enough for a person to slip through. The article stated that when they found me, it was no more than a crack, and they’d had to chip away at it to get me out.

  Various work items had been left scattered around the opening. A jackhammer, hand tools and ... a torch. I slid through the opening and swung the beam around.

  Just as I remembered, only it looked like a war zone. Chairs were scattered and lying on their sides on the ground. Computer screens were blackened and smashed. Papers were scattered over the ground. Pens. Office items. The room I’d been taken to the day of the fires. The torch beam glinted, and my blood froze as it illuminated the capsule.

  I swallowed hard, biting down the urge to flee, measuring my breathing. I had to purposely remind myself that those people were gone. Dead a long time ago. No one was going to pop out of the shadows and assault me, no one was going to hold me down and do those unspeakable things to me. If I had anything to do about it, no one would ever again.

  I hadn’t gone into that capsule quietly. I kicked, screamed, and bit, struggled like I’d not struggled before. There’d been urgency when they’d put me in. Worried faces, raised voices, my father’s angry face. Pain. Always pain. His hard eyes seared into me as though I’d done something wrong. Eyes drowned in hate.

  Dirt and gravel scratched underfoot as I walked over to it. I wanted to think of it as a capsule, a scientific machine that allowed me to remain in suspended animation for a century, but the more I looked at it, the more it was a coffin to me. My coffin. My mouth went dry when I remembered being shoved inside.

  A bunch of wires were attached from the side of the capsule to a complicated panel on the wall. I absently scratched my arm where various needles had connected me to the wires. My life-support system. A bunch of translucent pipes. The flimsiness of my situation became clear. It was an absolute miracle I’d survived at all. I’d been hooked up and left for dead.

  There were fingerprints through the grime that coated the metal. Marks where people had ripped off the top panel and left it lying discarded on the floor when I’d been discovered.

  The clear window on top had been wiped clean, despite the grime elsewhere on it. I guessed it had been cleaned to see me inside it.

  Inside the capsule, where I’d lain, was like the inside of a bullet. Shiny, silver, metal. Around where my head would have been were discarded wires, limp strands
with little suction cups on the ends. I felt along my hairline, trailed my fingers through my hair. They would have been attached to me.

  Further along, about halfway down, there were larger wires and tubes with needles on the ends. And blood on the sides that had dripped and turned near black. I pulled my sleeve up my arm. The marks were there, right over my veins at my wrist and elbow. It was the same on my other arm. I gripped the edge of the capsule, bent over, and closed my eyes, waiting for the sudden nausea to pass.

  Why? Why would anyone go to such lengths to keep me alive? Surely ending my life would have been a whole lot easier and less costly than going to all this trouble. It didn’t make any sense, I gasped, as my memory surfaced and clarified. There’d been other capsules! All lined up in a neat row. But where had they gone?

  I swung the beam, and I knew my answer. The rest of the room had disintegrated. It had been quite large, but now I saw I was only in a small segment of it. The ceiling had collapsed in a rubble of broken concrete slabs and boulders and had wiped them all out. Only mine had remained. I shuddered. I could have been beneath all of that rock. It looked like mine had survived by pure chance.

  Apart from the hole I’d come through, there was no other exit. Fissures cracked the walls and the ceiling. The room looked as though it could collapse at any moment. One wall had completely crumbled. Impenetrable rocks locked tight against each other. I brushed some gravel away from the rocks at floor level to see a gap between the rocks. A cool breeze caressed my skin. The rest of the room must have survived behind the rock wall. Not exactly a door, but it was space.

  And my thought-energy was strong. And I had learned that my thought-energy could be manipulated in more ways than I could have imagined. Emotion seemed to be the key to its strength.

  I used anger and hate and hope and focused everything I had on the rock. I imagined I was dissolving into the stone, through the densely packed layers, winding through grit and minerals. There was nothing more to my consciousness than the rock, becoming a part of it. The physical world dimmed into insignificance. I no longer felt my body.

  My consciousness shrank to a pinprick, my vision diminishing until all I was aware of was glistening brown mineral surrounding me. I was hot and cold all at the same time, fever burning, melting me on the inside, ice that stung on the outside. I didn’t seem to have a body anymore. My consciousness hung suspended, no touch, no sight, no sound. I willed my thought-energy into my core. I concentrated on the pinprick end of my awareness and sent it hurtling with every ounce of will I owned.

  My mind shrieked, energy ripped through every cell, every muscle, bone, sinew, vein, until my cells were no longer joined, but scattered into misty air. I saw the spaces between the minerals, the emptiness that I filled, filtering into the area between the spaces.

  Then, when I could fill no more, I expanded the energy outward, swelling, inflating. I pushed against the minerals until they couldn’t hold out. My energy was freed as minerals shattered, turning rock into more dust.

  The rock disintegrated. My consciousness retreated back into my mind, as though it had stretched as far as it could and came hurtling back at twice the speed I’d sent it out, retreating backward through a microscopic tunnel to my mind.

  My head snapped back. My body screamed in agony with the full force of awareness returning to my mind. I sagged to the cool, hard floor and gave myself over to the simmering pain.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I don’t know how long I lay there for. It could have been minutes or hours. I’d abused my body, and it protested. Nerve endings hissed as though they’d been fried; my eyes were pricked with red-hot needles; behind my forehead, something was scraping the inside of my skull. I lay on my side, afraid to move, heaving as wave after wave of nausea wracked my gut.

  I dragged air in through my nostrils, releasing through my mouth, a slow and steady rhythm. My skin was clammy as beads of sweat rolled off my forehead, between my shoulder blades and my lower back. Right in this moment, I was helpless. I’d used everything I’d had, and I was hollow.

  I hadn’t realized how much that would take out of me, but I sure as hell didn’t expect this. I gathered enough strength to wipe the sweat from my eyes. My hand shook. I let it sink back to the floor, but at least I could open my eyes and have them not stinging with perspiration.

  I blinked back into focus, for a moment not realizing what I saw. What I’d done. The rock had disappeared. It was gone! Nothing there but black space and brown dust on the ground. I’d totally obliterated it. A sob broke from the back of my throat, only half believing what I’d been able to do.

  I tossed the torch through the hole, hunched my shoulders, and squeezed into the space. I pushed myself in. My head. Shoulders. Waist and legs. My lungs constricted, immovable rock pressing into my sides so that I was incapable of taking a full breath. The ragged edges sloped inward, making the rock more of a tomb than a tunnel.

  Move. Keep going. One hand in front of the other. Stretch onto the stomach. Push through the hands, head, elbows, knees, toes. Forget skin being scraped. Don’t think about being crushed by tons of rock.

  My lungs burst, filling with the grime of dust, screaming to breathe but trying to conserve oxygen. There was a cusp of rough-edged rock at my fingertips, then glorious empty space, as I wiggled through the end of the tunnel. I turned over on my back, filling my lungs with glorious cool air.

  I blinked the torch beam into focus, moving slowly to readjust my senses. My body groaned, but I grit my teeth and ignored it. I turned onto hands and knees and reached for the torch.

  As silent as a crypt, the room was completely still and dark. It had survived! I made out objects, dusted with weak light and blending into deeper shadow. The other capsules had survived and they were all opened.

  My chest tightened. There’d been more people in the capsules. When or how I had no idea, but they’d been used. Metal gleamed in the dull torch light. The tubes attached to the capsule were in good condition and pliable. There were no needles inside. No blood. It was clean and sterilized.

  There were the smashed remains of a capsule beneath the rock wall. Maybe that’s why I’d been left for so long. They might have thought I had been crushed alongside this one. The end of the room disintegrated beneath tons of rock.

  From here though, there should be access to the rest of the facility. I spied a dust-covered metal door. It was stuck fast in years of gritty dirt and grime. I tugged with all my strength, using my foot against the door frame for leverage, but it didn’t budge. That’s when I noticed the panel next to it on the wall. A power panel like the ones in Julius’s kitchen. I must be able to open the door this way, but there was no blue light, no power.

  I placed my palm over the panel, but there was nothing. I reached with my thought-energy, but didn’t detect any electricity buzzing behind it. It had probably been fried. The room was totally cut off. No way through. Insurance against people getting through.

  But I had to. Somehow. I’d managed to start the motorcycle. Maybe I could manage to open up the door. I gritted my teeth, plunging my thought-energy into the panel. There was a faint tingle against my skin and a weak blue light started to glow. I pushed harder, charging more power into the panel. There was an audible buzz, and the door opened a fraction. There was a pop as air rushed through the crack. I huffed a laugh, resting my pounding head against the wall. A trickle of perspiration ran down my cheek, and I brushed it away, ignoring the lethargy that clawed at me.

  I clawed my fingers around the edge of the door, wrenching it open, a fraction at a time, until I had a tiny space I could slip through into a pitch-dark hallway.

  I hesitated, listening, but there was nothing but the plink of a drip of water falling somewhere close by. The hallway stretched endlessly into the dark in either direction. I needed a marker to find my way back. I scraped my heel through the dirt, making a line to mark the door if I needed to come back this way. I kept close to the wall, following the corridor, fe
eling my way with the brush of my fingertips along the wall. It was freezing here. There were no lights, stale air. No one had been here in a long, long time.

  My fingers felt around the edge of a door, and I stepped into a room. The dull metal walls gleamed beneath the torch beam. A skeleton of a metal cot had been tossed onto its side. Along one wall was a metal toilet and a basin welded to the wall. A thick coating of grime covered every surface. I knew this room. Intimately.

  I leaned on the wall to steady myself as my knees buckled. This was my room. My cell. My room of nightmares. Bile rose in my throat, and I worked to breathe through the contracting in my gut. This was where I was kept all those long years. In a metal cage. Not even that far from the laboratories and the capsules. I hadn’t known how close it had all been. Scientists working alongside my father, knowing their lab rat was in the next room. It was all so perverted.

  I had to get out of here. Run. Now. Legs staggering over damp concrete. Thick darkness all around, crushing me. Fought for breath, but somehow managed to gasp the next one. The horror. The nightmare. Still here. Still a tangible thing. I could have died in that room, and no one would have known. Would have even cared.

  I came to a corner and slipped around it. There was the unmistakable tap of footsteps somewhere up ahead. I doused the torch, catching my breath, keeping still. There was someone here! The sound became louder, and with it, lights in the distant corridor flickered on, and the surrounding black around me grew lighter until I saw the walls and ceiling without the need of the torch.