“Purple?!” both Alex and Mia echoed in disbelief, each from two different rooms.
“What color is my shirt, Zoey?”
“Dark green?” She eyed him, confused, and leaned forward to get a better look.
“Correct. Now tell me what you see.” He extended one hand in a blossoming gesture to reveal what looked like droplets of water jumping up and down his fingers, like liquid on a full on speaker.
“I see dancing water droplets…”
“And now?” Alex’s hands reflected light moving in waves.
“I see lilac and sometimes golden light?” She began to wonder if they didn’t.
Alex muttered in a language neither Mia nor Zoey spoke.
“Language!” Mia broke through the speakers.
Alex shook his head in disbelief and what Zoey perceived as slight irritation.
“What’s the matter, Alex?”
“Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation that consists of components with different wavelengths, so what humans and optans actually perceive is just a small portion of all the light there is. Simply put, our retina is sensitive to only a very limited portion of the enormous electromagnetic spectrum. Yours however…is not.”
“Is not what?” Her eyes widened.
“Limited. The curious thing is that you can see color variation in energy, which is like nothing I’ve ever witnessed. Energy does not have color to our eyes, it’s…invisible.” Alex was struck by the acknowledgment, a discovery that shifted the balance of what he knew as possible.
“What were you showing me before?” Zoey’s torso came forward. She even tilted her head like little puppies did.
“Low frequency radiation. Optans wear kalenium bands, bracelets, watches, whatever you want to call them, to help channel and control their enhancements until their percentage becomes definite, until we learn to apply our gifts and master them. It’s why Jasper gave Rufus one.” He glanced at Mia, hoping it didn’t make her uneasy. “Mia’s hidden tracker also had kalenium, because Beck probably wanted her to better channel her powers and help him portal wherever he wished. He didn’t implant any kalenium in you—maybe because he didn’t wish for your enhancements to fully develop until he felt ready to manipulate you into not turning on him. Just a theory.”
“I have been with him the longest, that’s a fact.” Mia didn’t display any sign of surprise. “And I certainly think my portalling skills didn’t pose a threat to his life. I couldn’t just open a portal and throw him in—I am the portal. If I don’t walk through, it doesn’t work!”
“But we know Rufus’s enhancements did pose a threat. And maybe Zoey’s, once we figure out what she’s capable of. I hate speculating, but I think we’re onto something!” Alex was finally feeling positive.
“If we can figure out your enhancements, maybe we can see what he’s after, like doing a puzzle!” Mia’s voice came through the speakers crystal clear, making Alex frown. “Hey, I mean, if the pieces fit, we’ll be one step closer to Rufus, right?” There was eagerness and hope in her voice, the right amount to make Zoey feel for her more than ever. She’d been in her shoes, equally desperate when that madman had Sam.
“Right!” Zoey replied, feeling adamant. “What I’m curious to know is if we all got multiple enhancements like you.” She turned to Alex. “I mean, Rufus can control body and mind and liquefy!”
“You have high hopes for someone who can’t forget and can perceive invisible colors, I’ll give you that!” Mia’s mood improved and that alone meant progress.
γ
The lush, high-ceilinged training room could have perfectly served as a small ballroom if you only looked up. Looking around, however, revealed an abundance of weapons on display on cherry velvet cushioned walls. The exhibition amounted to around thirty-six maces and clubs, Italian Arditi daggers, trench knives, and infantry weapons fanned out on the north wall like precious trophies. The east wall, on the other hand, was the only one upholstered in dark green velvet and crammed with what looked like kalenium geometric shapes in all sizes. The grey floor felt soft underfoot, like walking on a yoga mat—a yoga mat that wasn’t entirely pain-free when being crashed against, face-down.
“Merde!” Emma was panting hard, her cheek contorted against the pressure of Lilou’s hand sinking her head harder into the foamy floor. It was the millionth time Lilou’s knee clenched at her back, rendering her as useful as a wet cloth. Sam found it beyond belief how such a small, frail creature could ninja the living crap out of them.
“Le français ne va pas vous aider ici!” smartass Lilou said in perfect French. Having enhanced language skills sure paid off, even if it was just to make a point.
“Why do you know how to fight like that when you don’t really have to fight at all? I mean, you could just throw all those weapons at us with your mind and be done with it!” Sam sat on a bench to the side, bewildered and arms crossed two feet from them.
Lilou’s dimples showed when she smiled. “There’s dignity in fighting…and I like it!” she effortlessly pointed out, extending a hand to help Emma up. There was no doubt she loved a good fight, just as there was none regarding Emma’s ass-kicking technique. ‘Zero skills’ would be an understatement and there was enough bruising to prove it.
“I think I’d rather collapse here, thank you. There’s no way I can get to 5% of that swag in two days!” She eyed the towels next to Sam, eager to reach for one.
“If there’s an exponential growth to 4% and that 4% is enough to keep you on your feet, I’ll consider my job done.” Lilou pulled her up and turned to Sam.
“The art of staying out of danger is way harder than avoiding two punches, especially in our field. Defending yourselves is cool, but managing to skip a fight, now that’s pro!” She propped her hands on her narrow waist and exhaled, fresh sweat dripping from her temples. “The hardest thing to teach you guys is to be intuitive about a bunch of things you’ve never witnessed.”
“Ha!” Sam shook her head, smelling defeat.
“Alex gave us the okay for a fifteen minute break if you’re up for it.” Lilou announced, looking at her watch.
“We can’t afford breaks, not until my body tells me to stop, at least.” Emma was set on fast improvement. “If you’re not tired, I can’t afford to be.”
“That’s my girl!” Sam took her hoodie off to reveal a white tank top against her perfect tan, and stretched her arms and neck sideways in preparation.
“Ready for you, Lou!”
Lilou walked toward her with no indication that she was suddenly going to do a backflip and strike her in between her shoulder blades, resulting in Sam falling like a pancake, face down.
“This is not a fair fight!” she muffled, pressed to the floor. She was game and thought she had it in her, given her five years of intense CrossFit background. Boy, was she wrong…
“It never is with aliens, is it? You have to learn not to expect my moves. You’re not going to have fights with people like yourselves. If you take this road, your opponents will most likely be much inferior to me, naturally,” she raised her brows in a smug move, “but still very much enhanced compared to you. Now, I can afford being confrontational because I have the skills to shield me and my cockiness alike. You, however, need to learn how to avoid people like me instead of being a direct target.” Lilou made sense—how could they even stand a chance against some enhanced, evolved species? “We wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you, Emma, and that is solely because you were the last thing Beck expected to see in his lab and that alone allowed victory.”
“You may be superior in most aspects, but evolution hasn’t discarded the surprise factor, has it?” Sam was assertive.
“And that’s your win. Our frontal cortex still needs time to process information and act based on recalculating angles. We’re genetically designed to study the best approach, and that’s where your advantage lies. You act without thinking things through, and sometimes, the quickest way is what gets the job do
ne! Optans are unable to make a jump before doing the math. Apparently, neither is Beck now.”
“Fascinating!” A line appeared between Emma’s brows. “So for the past two hours you’ve been mopping the floor with us for what reason, exactly?”
“Don’t be mistaken, I’ve taught you how to fall, haven’t I?” Lilou smirked and threw a towel at Emma. “Now, this time around I’ll fight you like an optan, not like a human. Ready?” She straightened her back and leaped half a room, twisting midair only to fall as swift as a panther, facing them from the farthest corner. Lilou clapped her hands and lifted her chin, provoking. They both registered the move. Lilou’s strategy meant never losing your opponent’s sight: as long as her eyes were on them, she’d have the winning hand.
“No, she didn’t!” Emma bolted up and straightened her shoulders. There they were, like in a western movie, making small eyes at each other, eyeing every angle in the room, concocting strategies without losing sight of the adversary.
There was no other way but forward, so Emma sunk a heavy foot on the soft grey floor and darted for Lilou, her body stiff and sweaty in the decadence of stretchy synthetic pants. She passionately hated nylon, polyester, and the like. She also hated defeat, even in a rigged game such as this one, but this woman was not about to go down without a half-fair fight.
Newton’s Second Law of Motion
The more force, the more acceleration.
Alex patted her shoulder and spoke. “Alright, Zoey, that’s enough for now. Time for Mia to take the stance.”
This all felt a bit too familiar for Mia and too unfamiliar for Zoey. Captivity taught her that reward came with obedience—and so did progress when it came to enhancements. She’d been strapped to chairs and tables, wired, monitored, and injected more times than she could count in what she calculated as seven months since her abduction.
What Alex didn’t know was exactly how thick Mia’s skin had gotten in all this time and how far she was willing to go for Rufus.
She entered the room and exchanged seats with Zoey as Alex made his way into the small monitoring room followed by a heap of bouncing copper curls.
“Mia, I’m going to read your algorithms before I start if that’s okay with you?” He sank further in his chair under Zoey’s curious stare. Mia nodded, taking a seat on the recliner only to hear his voice again two minutes later. “Can you tell me how you developed your portalling skills?”
“You want the short version or the long one?”
Alex’s forehead creased in response. “I don’t know how to answer that question. Go ahead, take your pick.”
“Um, well, what I initially knew from what they told me was that they rescued me from having a seizure in the middle of the street and cured me with an experimental treatment which required constant monitoring and no external contact, no phones or tablets, presumably because I was to stay away from any form of radiation, ionizing or non-ionizing, as a result of,” she air quoted, “‘the very sensitive treatment I was on.’ Of course, what they didn’t know was that I was soon to graduate computer engineering and what they had going on in that lab surpassed any radiation a smartphone could possibly emit, so I confronted Beck. He eventually confessed to the lie, saying they needed to buy time for my sequencing to run smoothly and my gifts to set in. When I began training, I still had no clue what they wanted from me, although I had seen what Etienne could do.”
Alex rubbed his chin, intrigued. “What did Etienne show you?”
“He lifted objects with his mind, he could portal anywhere—he told me he’d given me the portalling gift because it seemed fit for a rebel. For the first week I think I spent around four hours a day submerged vertically in the molecular pool—my head was out and connected to all sorts of wires—I suppose they were monitoring me just like you are doing with this band.” Zoey cringed at the sound of her words and bit her lip as Mia continued, “They ran all sorts of tests on me, to see what triggered my enhancement, I guess. They electrocuted me, instilled all sorts of pain while I was conscious and unconscious and nothing worked. We all learned that my mind had to be willing to cooperate. It wouldn’t work faster if they tried to torture it out of me. That’s when they switched strategy and rewarded me if I learned to channel my demons. I began by feeling my enhancement in my spine and arms like some sort of electricity and learned how to bring it out of my body—which was hard because I could contain it inside, but did not know what to do with it on the outside, and my blood pressure dropped lower every time.”
“Hear that, Zoey?” Alex pursed his lips and turned to face her. “Beck is fully aware that enhancements are directly connected with your frontal cortex, so using and perfecting them has to be your decision—he can’t force it out of you but rather make you want to develop it further. It’s the same for us, you know—no one can force me to use my enhancements, it has to be my choice or they wouldn’t work. This only confirms some very important aspects, which are quite obvious: A—Beck was after you the night Jasper found you, Zoey, he knew we were all coming with you on Sunday, which takes us to B—whatever he’s after, he’s running out of time and he needs all altered subjects enough to risk being exposed to optans…”
Mia stood motionless. There was no give and take with Beck, no dynamic engagement if he wasn’t sure he’d win.
Alex got close to the mic and spoke again. “When did you portal for the first time, Mia?”
“After they killed my dad. I had to keep Mom safe, so I tried hard and did everything they said.” Zoey felt as if someone had punched her guts. She had no clue what Mia had gone through, no idea how far the damage extended. They had ruined her life. She clenched her fists, feeling the merge of anxiety and outrage tear at her insides.
Alex got close to the mic again. “What happened when you opened the first portal?”
“It took a while because I couldn’t extend it past the size of a ball, and I too was curious and kept my eyes on it at all times, so I kept concentrating until I felt the expansion with my eyes closed like Etienne showed me. He portalled me to Italy on my birthday—it was by far the most peculiar thing I’ve ever felt, and I too wanted to do it. Weird, right?” She pulled her knees to chest and continued, “I pressed my hand to the floor and thought of Italy. He was by my side when it happened and held my other hand, kept saying not to lose myself in the fall, to keep visualizing the place where I would land, its coordinates, and…I did it.”
“The beauty of cognition. Where have you portalled to since?” Alex took notes of everything.
“I counted around six countries, as I already told Jasper—but he had to take me there first until I learned to channel coordinates like a GPS, more or less. I can’t simply close my eyes and think of Paris if I’ve never been there. If I memorize coordinates, on the other hand, I can land quite accurately now. I’d never been to Zoey’s house but since she had an implanted tracker with direct coordinates, well…I could deliver Sam.”
Alex went quiet. He too had portalling skills which he’d developed and trained from an early age, so he could relate to the frustration of not achieving goals. It had taken Mia months to master her enhancement—it had taken him years with guidance and training. Long, frustrating years. Etienne seemed to be bettering enhancements, polishing genome editing.
“What’s kept you from portalling back to Beck’s lab to save Rufus?” He broke the silence.
“I’m not stupid, Alex, I know you don’t trust me yet—I could very well have the Stockholm syndrome or be double-crossing you for all you know. But no, this is not even about me anymore. I could return the question, why didn’t you send me to get Rufus? Were you afraid I might unleash Beck on you if you gave me the coordinates back to this place?”
“You knew it from the moment we landed here—this place exists in a time loop, it’s a singularity. You wouldn’t be able to portal back unless I taught you.”
“So teach me!” she dared him.
“I want to see how far your enhancement can go, b
ut we’ll need someone to track your progress because I’ll have to join you in there.” Alex tapped his intersat with eager fingers. “Alright, so, next step is seeing how far you can actually go, Mia. I’ve asked Jasper to come down and monitor us from here,” he announced, bolting up and sliding the intersat into his pocket. “I’m hoping you’ll find some focus by the time we get back, Zoey, your heart rate’s too elevated for your own good.” He turned to see her flustered on the small bench behind his work station.
“I find it hard to concentrate in closed spaces—maybe I could join Lilou and the girls since I’ll be no use to Jasper from here?” Please say yes! she begged with her eyes.
“On the contrary, he can keep working on you as he monitors Mia. You’ll have to trust him, ambassadors strive at multitasking.”
Great. Zoey mentally facepalmed herself. What was life if you didn’t slip out of your shorts to slide on the ice once in a while? Because that’s what seeing Jasper would feel like right about now.
Arms folded, she propped her back hard against the wall. Her whole frame tensed. Alex turned to her and shook his head. He thought he understood her exasperation. He’d lived it himself as he grew to master in high percentage only three out of the five skills he’d been given. His telekinetic abilities served to knock a pencil off the table, and that was as far as they’d stretch.
When you could be so much more, do so much more, not being able to forget was lame enough for Alex to take a step back and not give her a hard time about it.
“Zoey, we made progress today and we’ll keep on making progress as long as you stay focused.” Listening to Alex only made Zoey tap her foot faster, although she was almost thankful he thought it was all about her enhancements… or rather the lack of them.
Lost in Amber Page 18
