“He’s not,” Sensor added. Beth’s nervous gaze didn’t seem to agree.
Smiling, the Doctor approached her. “If you relax, it won’t hurt as much.”
Angela wiggled in the chair, desperate to break free. Without thinking, her fire powers began to come to life, and flames covered her body.
The Doctor stepped back. “Fascinating.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty hot,” JD’s voice said from the doorway.
“You,” the Doctor spat. “Why is it that every time I’m about to do something productive, you come around and distract me?”
“It’s what annoying teenagers do best.” JD moved closer and stepped into Angela’s view. Of course, he had to be completely decked out in his costume. Boxers over his jeans, a T-shirt with a Chihuahua on it, and a cape made from an old bedsheet. Each time she saw the outfit, it changed slightly.
Growling, the Doctor pushed away from the medical chair and went to his desk. He grabbed a gun and pointed it at JD. “I don’t particularly want to hurt you, but you drive me crazy. And since you have no posse to protect you, and I don’t have anyone to help guide my moral compass, I can actually get away with taking matters into my own hands.”
“Hey now, we don’t need to do anything rash. Maybe we can just talk. I’m posse-less, and I’m not armed. Let’s just chat, the two of us.” JD approached slowly, keeping his hands in front of him. “All I want is for you to let her go.” He pointed to his sister.
The Doctor scoffed. “Why would I do that? She belongs to me. She’s one of my experiments, and I would like to make her complete, train her, and then sell her to an appropriate client. With what I’m seeing of her powers, I could get a great deal of money off her. She’ll help with me getting more funding, among other things.”
“I get that you gave her powers, but she doesn’t want this. Can’t you let this one go and be normal?”
“If I do, then I’m down an experiment.”
“What’s one experiment?”
The Doctor narrowed his gaze under his mask. “Everything.”
“W-what if I offered you a trade,” JD said. He moved closer to Angela and put his hands on her chair, avoiding the flames licking off her. It was a small miracle that nothing else was starting on fire. If she focused enough, she could contain her power to not harm anything else around her. A skill that took a lot of her concentration. JD’s proposal was almost enough to break it.
Slowly, the Doctor’s head cocked to the side. “I’m listening, but I’m making no promises.”
“I don’t have powers,” JD said. “You can experiment on me instead.”
“Are you crazy?” Angela cried out. “No!”
JD glared at her from under his mask. “It seems like a fair trade to me. I’m sure you’ve got all kinds of new formulas and whatnot.”
“I do,” the Doctor said. “I’m not sure if I should believe you or not. Hold still. We’ll see if you’re lying or not soon enough.”
Sensor approached JD, now also wearing a black mask. Everything about his features was a mystery, and Angela kicked herself for not paying better attention to what the guy looked like before he put the thing on.
With an outstretched hand, Sensor touched JD on the shoulder and closed his eyes. “He’s tapped by a tribe. Rosalotuve, to be more specific, but he’s telling the truth. I’m not getting any abilities from him. Or rather, they’re there, but they’re still…blocked. Odd.”
JD folded his arms in front of him. “So there you go. You can experiment on my body all you want. Inject me with anything. Don’t expect me to sell the secrets of my people to you, though. That’s not going to happen.”
“No, of course not,” the Doctor said. He eyed Angela curiously. “She’s important to you.”
“All of these teens you’re experimenting on are important to me! How many have wound up dead since all of this began?” JD snapped.
The Doctor waved his hand in front of him. “That was nothing more than an unfortunate incident. This last batch has had no deaths, thankfully. While your proposal is noble, I’m not sure how much it will benefit me.” He pointed to Angela. “She, on the other hand, is powerful. I can use her.”
“Sir, if I may interject?” Sensor said.
“Of course.” But she noticed the Doctor roll his eyes. He sat down at his desk chair, but never once did he take his gun off JD.
Sensor eyed her brother. “There’s something inside of him, building up. The more he talks, the stronger it gets. What I’m noticing, however, is that it can’t be released. It trickles out slowly. I think there’s a great deal of potential in his powers. If anything, he’s a great example of those from Altura who are born with a gift but can’t get it unlocked. It will also show the ineffectiveness of the Wimosiphyer . I’m assuming that’s what was used to give you powers in the first place.”
JD nodded slowly. The more this Sensor kid spoke, the more Angela wanted to punch him. He shouldn’t have been encouraging JD’s idiocy, and he tried to sound too mature for a teenager. It all ground her nerves the wrong way.
For a moment, the Doctor tapped his chin with his free hand. “I’m still not sure if I’m liking this trade. You get your powers unlocked and I get what, exactly? The pleasure of experimenting on your body? Please, that is hardly worth it. I can get all sorts of teenagers to willingly contribute to my operation.”
“Yet you’re choosing to work on one who never wanted your stupid drug in the first place?” JD snapped.
“If it’s so stupid, why do you want me to inject you with it?”
JD dropped his gaze. “Either way, she’s busting out of here. Just figured I’d try to do it in a more civil way than come in and blowing up the joint.”
“Like that’s stopped you before?”
“Obviously, I don’t have the firepower to do it now. But I can get it. Thing is, I’m tired of everything going off in a big bang, and we all know you’re going to move your lab again anyway when you’re done tonight. Plus, maybe your work isn’t as awful as everyone says. You just have crummy outcomes.”
Did he smoke something on his way here? How does he think any of this is a good idea? The Doctor is evil. Why? Are you that desperate for powers? Seriously? Angela closed her eyes. If she took one more look at her brother, she might have burst through the restraints and strangled him. Was that what he wanted? To make her royally mad at him so she could get free? If that was the case, he had a lot more confidence in her strength than she did. She caught things on fire but didn’t gain any actual extra muscle.
There was a great deal of quiet. She hated only hearing ambient noise because it made the whole situation suffocating. Being trapped in the tunnels was more evident, and she found herself taking deeper breaths to keep herself from having a meltdown. Maybe JD thought it a great idea for her to explode—she didn’t. Her powers in tight, enclosed space could prove dangerous.
“Okay,” the Doctor said at last. “I’ll trade you for her. Disappointing, but I’ll have other moments to work with her. That being said, I want something more from you than just your body.”
“I told you, I’m not—” JD began and he clenched his fists.
The Doctor laughed. “I won’t make you spill any secrets you don’t want to spill. No, I want something else, but we’ll discuss that just the two of us after I release the girl.”
“Okay, deal,” JD said, holding out his hand. The Doctor took it, and the deal was sealed.
Sensor stuck a metal strip onto Angela’s arm and loosened her restraints. “Memory stick in place.”
“You have an hour,” the Doctor said to Angela. “Then everything that happened from the past six hours of your life is going to be a complete blank. I suggest getting home as quickly as possible because some of the side effects aren’t all too great.”
“Like?” she asked, her voice shaking. She kicked her legs down so she was sitting upright.
“Nausea, in some cases actual vomiting, headaches, fever, chills. Non
e of them are permanent or life threatening. It’s just the body reacting to the chemicals distorting your memory. The memory loss itself will be the most frightening part of the whole thing. I hate having to do it, but it’s necessary. Can’t have you leaving and telling what you’ve seen.”
No, of course not. Getting home in an hour would be harder than it should have been since she didn’t have the car. She got off of the chair, gave JD one last shake of her head, and bolted from the room before someone changed their mind.
Finding the exit to the tunnels was her first goal; the second was finding cell phone reception. Looking up at the signs by all of the pathways, she tried to get a feel for where she was in town. They had gone into the tunnels near her high school, which wasn’t far from home. She could walk home from school in about twenty minutes. But when they entered the tunnel, she had also walked for a few minutes. The tunnels were deceptive in direction as well as distance. Without the sky and the outside landmarks, it was hard to discern where she was going.
“Main—two and a half miles, Royal Oaks—one mile, and Saints Arena—four miles.” She tried to calm herself enough to not go into a panic. Thinking clearly was key. “Royal Oaks is closer, but I’m not sure what that is. Saints Arena is in the opposite direction of home. Main I recognize.” It would get her in the right direction to home. From Main, home was about a ten-minute walk. If I can find an exit before actually reaching Main, I might find myself closer than I thought. And time was not on her side.
She headed toward the plaza, or what used to be a plaza. The old mall had been imploded back in the end of October and was nothing more than a big empty space while the construction workers waited for the snow to melt to begin renovating the area into a modern shopping complex.
Angela ran through the tunnel, using the illumination of her cell phone to guide her as she got further from the overhead electric lights. As much as she wanted to turn on more lights to see by, she didn’t want to be followed or to run into any other surprises. After jogging for what felt like forever, she found a ladder. She climbed to the top and put all of her weight against the manhole cover blocking her from freedom. Grunting, she lifted it just enough to be able to slide it to the side, which took a lot more effort than she imagined. Pure adrenaline gave her the strength she needed to move it.
Her arms shaking, she pulled herself out and took a moment to catch her breath on the wet ground beneath her. She lay back crying softly, out of fear for herself and for her brother, out of exhaustion and frustration. As she stared up at the night sky, taking in the tranquility to let it calm her, her cell phone started to ring. She recognized the ringtone immediately.
“Orly, I need you,” she sobbed into the phone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Orlando stayed with Tait until she was deep in sleep. The fear both she and her brother displayed in their eyes during the process of being captured was hard to look at. Once she was unconscious, he thought the whole situation would be easier to witness. That was far from the truth. If anything, it was harder. Alan claimed the alien computer wiping her memory wouldn’t harm her. How much did he actually know? Was he certain? Alan’s tribe experimenting on Tait and other enemy teens like her was no different than what the Doctor was doing.
This is war. And for the first time, it felt like war.
He walked down the hall to the room Alan was working in. Gideon sat in a chair holding a medium-sized gold box, his body visibly shaking. When Orlando glanced to his right, he understood why. Earth was in full view in a window.
“Can you close that, please?” he grumbled, finding a place to sit as well.
Alan pressed a button and a thick, metal, sheet lowered over the window. “Of course. How is everything going in there?”
“Okay,” Orlando said.
“Okay?” Alan raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, there don’t seem to be any problems. No one is dead or sick, no fights, seems smooth.” Maybe too smooth. She should have fought more. Payton had more bite and he’s a teddy bear in comparison.
“I understand now,” Alan said. Orlando had no clue what that was supposed to mean.
“Anyway,” Orlando mumbled. “How long is this going to take?”
“A few hours. Now that we have a better understanding of the Ilotus, we can do more in a shorter amount of time. My techs believe this should be the last treatment.”
Thank goodness. Can I go home yet? Funny how he actually wanted to go back to the mansion. He’d been on more dangerous missions and not batted an eye. Something about what he was doing on Alan’s ship didn’t sit right with him, and it wasn’t necessarily because of Tait. He once told Alan they needed to do anything they could to win, and he stood by those words. It bothered him to have to stoop to the level of kidnapping and brainwashing, yet he knew it was needed. And they’d do the same to me. Gut instinct was telling him to get back to earth. Either that, or he hated being in space more than he thought he would. Guess I won’t be going to Altura anytime soon. He snorted a little at the thought.
“S-sir?” Gideon broke the silence.
Alan smiled ever so slightly. No one addressed him as “sir” in the group, so Orlando guessed he was getting a big kick out of it. The alien nodded at Gideon. “Yes?”
“Something weird is happening.” Gideon gazed down at the gold box in his hands. “Someone else is trying to access the information on the Ilotus.”
Alan stood straight, snapping his attention to the teen boy. “You’re sure? It might just be one of my people.”
Gideon nodded slowly. “I’m inside it still, it gave me permission to explore, and then it began shutting down, saying there was an intruder. At first I thought I’d done something wrong. Then I noticed someone else’s presence—someone like me. It’s not another computer, but an actual person connecting and trying to bond with the Ilotus, and now it’s freaking out.”
“Computers can freak out?” Orlando asked.
“This one can.”
Orlando stared at the golden box in awe. The thing could maybe hold a pair of shoes. He knew computers could be small, some on earth were the size of a pinhead. With how much power and information the Ilotus supposedly contained, for some reason he’d imagined it would be much larger.
“So if it’s another person connected and not another computer, does that mean the rehabilitation equipment isn’t transmitting to the Ilotus?” he asked.
Alan shook his head. “It is. We connect the computers through something similar to what you call WiFi, or your wireless Internet. What Gideon is describing, however, is an actual living thing connecting to the device…I’m assuming?”
“Yes,” the kid whimpered. “I can’t…I can’t even begin to describe…how it feels…like it’s being violated.”
“Shut it down. Now.” Alan walked to the back corner of the room and spoke into his wrist. “Abort the operation…Don’t ask, just do it.”
Gideon closed his eyes. At first Orlando didn’t think anything was different about the room. Then he noticed the lack of a discreet hum that had been present before. He hadn’t even realized it was present until it was no longer there.
“The Ilotus is off,” Gideon whispered.
Alan let out a heavy breath. “Good. I’ll have to arrange for another time where you can bond with it.”
“That would be nice.”
Then Alan began to pace, a hand to his ear as he listened to something only he could hear. The longer he did this, the more he frowned. He ran a hand over his face and then gazed at the two teenagers. “I’m going to send you both home. Some things aren’t going according to plan, and it would be safer for you to be back on earth.”
I feel like I should have never left. Yet, Orlando wanted to argue all the same. The point of him coming was to help with whatever problems may arise. His powers could be useful. And what about Tait? If something was wrong, was she in danger?
“So long as you’re sure you don’t need us for anythin
g,” he said. If they had been back at the Apartment, he’d have put up more of a fight. Alan’s ship was his domain. Disrespecting Alan in front of his peers wasn’t a good idea. Besides, if Orlando was rebellious, news would get back to his father and he’d never hear the end of it.
Alan gazed at Orlando, unblinking, as if he were expecting some resistance. Orlando hated being out of character. For the sake of the cause, he’d suck it up.
“Well?” Orlando pressed. “Do you need us for anything else? Or anything at all since I’ve done nothing but sit back and watch the whole time?”
“We were expecting more fight,” Alan confessed. “Last time we brought Sprout on board, she broke the nose of one of my techs and tried to command a decorative plant to attack us. Tonight, she’s doing…nothing.”
Orlando nodded. “Which is weird.”
“Yes,” Alan whispered. “I’ll send you home. Next time, I will make the trip worthwhile.”
“Good.”
Gideon set the Ilotus down on a table and stood, walking to Alan. “I need some fresh air. I think I’m going to have a panic attack.”
Raising an eyebrow, Orlando pulled Gideon closer. Alan put a hand on each teen and then in a flash, they were back on earth. No puff of smoke, no bang, like some of the other times Alan had used his teleportation ability. What Orlando did notice was that the journey from space to earth lasted a few seconds longer than when they had traveled from city to city on the planet. Not an experience he enjoyed or wanted to repeat often. Teleporting always left him disoriented.
As soon as they were back on solid ground, Gideon hunched down on his knees and put his head between his legs. “Ugh, I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Good thing we’re outside then,” Orlando said, noticing they were in the middle of the park near where Tait lived. Close to Lunar Falls High School, as well, which was convenient. His car was still parked in the high school lot.
Gideon didn’t puke, but he did take a lot of long, slow breaths. “I don’t like being enclosed.”
“I’ll remember that for the future,” Alan said. He gave a slight nod to the two teens. “I must go. You two can take care of yourselves from here, yes?”
Opheliac Page 20
