by C. S. Wilde
I keep pushing, and at some point, the strength in my arms flows down to the space between me and Zed, almost as if I’m pressing the air between us against him. I must’ve hit my head somewhere. “Let me go, Zed!”
His face strains and his arms shake as if he’s pushing all his weight onto me. “By the dimensions, your telekinesis is too strong!”
I freeze. My telekinesis? He’s mistaken, I don’t have telekinesis and I certainly wasn’t using it just now.
“Listen to me, James. You. Can’t. Panic.” He glances around and nods ahead. “This is what happens when you do.”
He lets me up slowly, and I realize we’re standing in the middle of a big crater, huge in width but not so much in depth. I climb the crater, air racing in and out of my lungs as I stab my fingers against the dirt. I couldn’t have possibly done this…
The village has been wiped out, the languid reptilians too. I push myself up and into the circle of wasteland surrounding the crater, kneeling on the ground as I survey the scene. I’m hoping for a sign of life, but there are no huts, no vegetation, no one in sight—except for Chuck and the whisar female. They’re covered in dirt too.
Barren wasteland everywhere, as if someone dropped an H-bomb over the village. Trees snapped in half stand a few miles back where the forest begins, and I can spot the tips of yellow grass at the far distance, where the circle of destruction ends. But as far as life goes, that’s it.
The whisar female watches me with arms crossed, her expression weary. Chuck steps toward me with his hands in his pockets, almost as if all the destruction were no big deal to him.
“Chuck, what…” My voice fails because I don’t know what to ask.
“You panicked,” he says matter-of-factly.
“I did this?”
He nods.
I snort loudly, laughing off the insanity. “That’s impossible.”
“If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few days, it’s that the impossible isn’t as improbable as I thought.”
“Chuck, seriously—”
He raises a hand. “You’ve gained extreme telekinetic abilities that work full power under this planet’s magnetic field. That’s simply remarkable. Also, you should be dead.”
“But I’m fine. My body, thoughts, everything feels just like before.” I shake my head. “You’re wrong. There has to be a better explanation for this.”
“You miss my point.” He inhales deeply. “In the past, we tried inserting the genes for telekinesis into dead human bodies as an easier way to create vessels.” He blows air through his cheeks. “The skin melted off the corpses’ bones, James.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Humans can’t handle telekinetic abilities.” He peers at me beneath his scarce red eyebrows. “As I’ve said, you should be dead.”
“But Casey—”
“She’s a hybrid. Much like Miriam and I, she’s not fully human.” He pinches the skin on his arm. “Which brings us to the next question.”
“What… have I turned into?” I mumble.
My breathing accelerates, my body feels so cold. What’s going on? Where’s Miriam? This is a nightmare, it has to be. Air, I need air, can’t breathe. A strange force inside me pushes to go out, the same impulse as before, but then Chuck stands on his toes and slaps my left cheek. It tingles and burns at the same time.
“You can’t panic, do you understand?” he says behind gritted teeth. “I’ll try to fix this, I promise you, but you have to help me. Now, breathe.”
“I-I…”
“Breathe, James,” he pushes.
So I do. Once, twice.
The impulse inside me dims.
“Good.” Chuck gives me a pleased grin. “What we know so far is that Miriam has altered the planet’s magnetic field and allowed me and the others to use a slice of our telekinesis, which is the only reason why we’re alive right now.” He glances at the devastation surrounding us. “But even our full-powered skills pale in comparison to yours.”
I shake my head, wishing I could run and never stop. “I’m not like you, Chuck.”
“No, boy. You’re more.” He crosses his hands behind his back. “And if you don’t master your new abilities soon, you’ll endanger us all.”
I glance around and guilt, burning and cold at the same time, wraps me entirely. My knees quiver and I press my eyes shut because I can’t watch the destruction I caused. “I killed them all? The mothers, the children…”
“They were torn apart by the blast’s opposing currents. What remained of their bodies was flung into the distance.” No pity or compassion in his tone, just a simple fact. The sound of his steps shuffle closer and his hand rests on my back. “Open your eyes, boy.”
I shake my head. “I killed an entire village.” Tears swell beneath my eyelids. “I lost Miriam.”
“Open your eyes, James,” Chuck orders with a thundering tone that reverberates in my mind.
Slowly, I pry my eyelids open and focus on Chuck’s assuring figure, ignoring the devastation all around us—and the fact that I caused it.
He gives me a shy smile. “There are more settlements spread around this planet, you didn’t kill an entire race. Now that would be bad, wouldn’t it?”
I gaze at my hands. “I could’ve killed you and Zed.”
“But you didn’t.” He taps my back. “However, you’ll need to control your newfound abilities, especially now. We must find Werhn-za’har as fast as possible.”
A punch of thorny, razor sharp pain slashes across my chest. My shoulders slump and I swallow back the need to cry. “Miriam’s gone.”
The impulse starts swirling inside me again, and my body begins to shiver.
“Breathe, James,” he says. “Listen. If there’s a chance that we can get her back, Werhn-za’har will know.” He steps away and clears his throat. “We’re not giving up, not yet.” No doubt or sorrow in his tone.
I swallow back the tears, remembering to keep my breathing steady, and my emotions under control.
I wrap my arms around Chuck and press him against me. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have gotten to Miriam back at the base behind the moon. We wouldn’t be married, in fact, we’d be dead. Chuck has saved our lives more than once, and now he’ll do it again, I know he will. A soft, comforting sensation blooms in my chest. My wife vanished from my fingertips, but if anyone can find her, it’s Chuck. Maybe, just maybe, we can bring Miriam home.
“Thank you,” I croak.
Chuck’s a fierce defender of his personal space, so he must feel really uncomfortable right now. Still, he hugs me back for a quick second before he taps my back twice and pushes away.
Now that I can gather my thoughts, questions burst in my mind at once. “I knew Werhn-za’har was missing, it’s how Zed caught me in my lie,” I say. “But how can he help us?”
Chuck sighs. “There’s a lot I need to tell you, but we’ll do it on our way.” He points toward a looming mountain at the far distance. “Now, we walk.”
25
-James-
Chuck’s rucksack floats ahead of me, dangling in the air like a drunk hummingbird. It moves forward at the same pace I do, because I’ve synchronized it with my mind, whatever that means. To me, this feels like carrying it with my hand, the only problem is concentrating to keep the rucksack afloat and keep walking at the same time. It’s way too much multitasking. I’ve lost count of the times I tripped and almost fell over.
The yellow grass that towers above us is endless. I haven’t seen anything other than dry, gigantic grass since we started, and I’m getting sick of it. Being here makes me feel like we’re not getting anywhere, that we’ll never find Miriam.
The weight of the backpack—the heaviest of all four, thanks a lot, Chuck—presses against my mind nonstop. It was weird at first, because I expected to feel the pressure on my shoulders, not my brain. Chuck said that picturing my telekinesis as a shapeless extra limb can help, so in my mind, I see th
e link to the rucksack as a hand, and when I increase its size, the backpack’s weight vanishes. It stops shaking too. Now the rucksack moves in a sharp straight line.
“Yes!” I say to myself. That’s not too shabby for someone who’s had only a night and a day of practice with his brand new telekinesis.
“How’s it going, James?” Chuck asks without turning back to me, following the trail blazed by Sol’ut-eh, who leads the way.
Chuck, the embodiment of the lone-ranger type, has a sister. I can’t imagine Chuck playing tag with Sol’ut-eh in their whisar backyard, fighting each other like most siblings do, telling their whisar mom on one another. It’s inconceivable.
“You clearly haven’t grown up in a whisar household,” Sol’ut-eh’s voice echoes in my mind.
“Hey, what did we say about privacy?” I yell so she can hear me out front.
The backpack drops an inch.
“Focus,” Chuck grumbles.
“I apologize, James” she says with a chuckle, and it’s very strange, sensing a chuckle in my mind. “It’s just that your thoughts can be so loud.”
I blow air through my lips. “Well, Miriam didn’t give me any telepathy, so I can’t exactly control their volume.”
“I guess you’re stuck with extraordinary telekinesis,” Zed says from behind me, pushing a stalk of grass off his delicate face. “What a pity,” he adds with a tang of jealousy.
I can’t help but chuckle. “I think you meant to call me assface.”
He smiles. “Why, look at that. Perhaps you’ve acquired some telepathy after all.”
“Zed’phir-lack, you’ll do well not to distract him,” Chuck chides in the way of a strict professor, never glancing back at us. For a moment, I see the small mountain that was his former vessel, the true force of nature that he is, stamped against this scrawny twelve-year-old’s back.
“Of course, great Ah’rbal-ack-to.” Zed bows his head so quickly that his ponytail almost comes apart. “I deeply apologize.”
“The name’s Chuck now.”
Zed stutters for a moment, and I know he’s about to say that he apologizes again, so I interrupt their exchange. “Stop kissing his ass, Zed.”
“Focus, James,” Chuck orders from ahead.
Just as he speaks, I trip over the ground, hard. I’m slamming face to the dirt, there’s no stopping it, but then I halt midway, floating inches above the ground. I stare at the powdery dark orange, so close to the tip of my nose.
How am I doing this?
“Oh, that’s quite good,” Zed says with a chipper tone. “Why don’t you try to get back up? Just picture the mindlink doing what you want it to do.”
Sounds a lot easier than it might actually be. Still, I imagine the invisible hand between me and the floor, pushing me up, and just like that, I rise in the way that Dracula rises from his coffin, until I’m standing on my own two feet.
“Wow,” I mutter, gawking at my hands.
“Dude, you’re a fast learner.” Zed raises his red-fingernailed hand for a high-five. It’s not something that comes naturally to him, so he ends up looking like a kid who wants to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom.
I give him five anyway, silently thanking him for trying to cheer me up.
“Getting better, boy,” Chuck’s voice erupts from beyond the curtain of grass ahead. “But you dropped the bag.”
How on Earth could he know?
I gaze at the scrunched up backpack on the dirt and grunt a curse.
***
On this planet, everything is three times larger than back on Earth. We haven’t even reached the plateau before the mountain yet, and it’s been three days. Walking might be our only choice, but it’s not good enough. If we keep with this pace, it’ll take months until we’re up the mountain, where Chuck says Werhn-za’har will be.
What if that’s too late for Miriam?
Chuck says he has a plan, but doesn’t reveal much. I’d be surprised if he did, he isn’t much of a sharer, but he better start talking soon.
Our supplies ended two days ago, so it’s been all about hunting, which comes naturally to him and Sol’ut-eh—no idea where or how they learned to be so commando like that.
At least we’ve left the towering grass to venture through a gigantic rainforest. The size of the trees alone easily matches skyscrapers back home, each leaf the size of a car, roots as wide as highways. The climate is similar to that of a rainforest, though: stuffy and hot as hell. I’m so covered in sweat that being here or inside a sauna makes little difference. Not to mention the bugs, creatures as big as vultures with enough meat in them to feed small families.
Chuck killed one yesterday. He didn’t even flinch, he just jumped in the air and sliced the bug in half with his machete. Kid should’ve been named Rambo.
We cooked the bug—its white, dry meat tasted just like chicken—and took the leftovers for the trek, but now they’re running thin.
If Chuck and Sol’ut-eh’s guns hadn’t been damaged by the blast I created, things would have been a lot easier. But apparently the impulse destroyed all electric tools, including Chuck’s guiding pad, which means all they can rely upon are knives, their instincts, and a bit of telekinesis.
If I had been in their shoes I’d have panicked a long time ago, but being absurdly calm and centered seems to run in the family.
Today, I lift not only Sol’ut-eh’s backpack, but all four as we walk. The crumpled ball of bags floats ahead of me without shaking an inch. Their weight is nothing but a soft pressure at the back of my brain.
I’m getting good at this.
I glance up to see light fading slowly beyond the tree tops. Soon it’ll be nightfall, and we’ll need to arrange dinner before then. Hunting at night, as Chuck puts it, can be disadvantageous.
I hate this place, not because of the lack of amenities and the lurking threats, but because the sky has a blue sun and a purple moon. I miss our moon, our sun.
After a few moments, we reach a clearing with a fallen tree in its middle. The log is easily the size of a tunnel back home. Weak sunlight peers through the crowns of leaves to reveal moss growing on the log’s top and base.
I drop the bags on the log’s left wall and Zed hurries to take a bottle of water from his backpack, then sits on the puffy bed of moss.
“By the dimensions, it’s hot,” he says in between long gulps, his mascara melting down his face, which makes him look like Harley Quinn. Once he’s done, he picks up a make-up kit from his backpack and proceeds to fix the imperfections.
At least we won’t die of thirst. There are plenty of rivers everywhere, so dehydration isn’t a problem. According to Sol’ut-eh, the water is safe enough to drink, though the accumulated iron could be a problem if we stayed here longer than a month. Which we might just do.
No, I won’t stick around that long. Time is of the essence, and Chuck better start putting some sort of plan into action.
Sol’ut-eh glances around the glade. “We shouldn’t stay here for long. We’re easy prey.”
“Not really,” Chuck drops his machete on the ground and takes a good gulp of his water bottle. “Most animals consider us too small to prey upon.”
She snorts because she’s by far the biggest in our group. “Speak for yourself.”
A wall of blue vines hangs at the border between the glade and the forest, where the floor disappears beneath blue and yellow kudzu. A loud buzz blooms beyond it, increasing by the second.
Guess dinner has found us.
I turn to Chuck, expecting him to handle the bug like he always does, but he’s leaning against the gigantic tree log, water bottle still in hand. He nods to where the noise is coming from and says, “Why don’t you take care of dinner tonight?”
“Are you crazy?” I gasp. “I can’t stop a bug with my mind!”
He shrugs. “It’ll be harder, granted. Unlike the backpacks, living beings will push against your influence.” He winks. “But it’s just a bug, boy.”
&nbs
p; Before I can send him a bad sign with my finger, the giant bug dashes through the clearance, a mix between a dragonfly and a blue beetle, its stinger sharp like a sword. It circles above as if it’s trying to decide who to target.
Suddenly it stops, hovering above in the way of a helicopter, before it sinks in my direction, its sting aimed at my heart.
Looks like I’m the lucky winner.
“Deep breaths, James. Center yourself,” Chuck calmly repeats our lessons as if we were in the middle of a class and my life weren’t on the line.
“Damn it, Chuck,” I grunt as I follow his advice. It’s not like I have a choice.
Air soaks through my lungs, my feet heavy on the ground. Wings. The bug’s wings, transparent panels with tiny veins, flap faster than my eye can see. But in my mind, the dislocation of air echoes in slow motion, flap… flap… flap...
Stop.
The bug freefalls, buzzing madly because it probably doesn’t understand why its wings can’t move. Just before it hits the ground, I use my invisible hand to slow the fall and hold the bug a few inches above the ground.
“Perfect!” Chuck cheers. “Outstanding job, James!”
He seems overly excited, and Chuck’s never excited about anything. Keeping it cool is his middle name, but I don’t have time to worry about that.
The bug thrashes in midair, trying to break free. Its attempts push against my invisible grip, and all my muscles tighten as I hold my ground.
I increase the pressure around the creature and it stills in fear. With a smile on my face I turn to Chuck and ask, “What now?”
“You kill it,” Sol’ut-eh jumps in.
“What? Kill it with my mind?” The bug starts pressing again. I press back and it stops. When it senses my grip is weaker, it tries again. We can do this dance for a long time, buddy.
Sol’ut-eh bends over so that she looks me in the eye. “It’s not the first time you’ve killed something with your mind.”
The reminder feels like acid corroding my organs. “I-I didn’t mean to…”
“I know. But this bug tried to kill you.” Her clear blue irises chill me to the bone, showcasing a calculating creature beneath. “It’s easier to end them when they attack first.”
