Bloom (16 page)

After the twins left the room, Colton stood and walked to the window. Bernam’s plane was parked next to the building on the pavement below. Two men in blue coveralls stood on the wings, inspecting the jet engines on either side of the plane’s body.

The yellow-orange desert stretched out from the building in every direction. The landscape was dotted with dead cacti and small, branchy bushes. Ruddy mountains lined the horizon.

Colton thought about leaving.

He had considered it more and more as the days passed, and there were only two things keeping him around: Shelly, and the promise of doing something useful with his ability. Bernam had told him that they were going to help people who had been taken and held captive—people like Colton who, until recently, had just wanted to be left alone to lead a normal life.

As if it were a voice in his own head, someone spoke behind him.

“You’re hesitant about tonight.”

Colton turned to find Bernam standing next to the podium. He had entered and crossed the room silently and stood inspecting Colton with a steady gaze.

“I am, yes.”

Bernam studied him a moment longer and then walked to the window to look down at his plane. “That’s understandable. You have only just begun the process of defining yourself through your abilities. Ideally I would never ask anyone so—pardon the term—
fresh
to accompany me on such a dangerous mission. But I can see in your eyes that you want to be tested—that you long to know the true depths of your power.”

“I’m worried about Reece. He’s acting really strange.”

Bernam nodded. “Jealousy toward our kind is a very real problem. It is the reason we usually do not tolerate outsiders. They invariably feel confusion and eventually rage at their lack of abilities. They wonder why someone else was chosen instead of them. It is a futile line of thought that can sometimes have deadly consequences.”

“So why is he still here?”

“We all have a part to play, Colton. Even those without abilities can be useful.”

“What should I do about him?”

“I have already spoken to Reece. I assured him that he is welcome to stay even if you do not. He seemed much relieved.”

Colton frowned as he thought about the situation. He watched one of the workers on the plane jump down off the wing and walk into the building.

Bernam sighed. “You are still not convinced. Alright, then. I will give you another reason to go with us tonight.” He paused until Colton looked at him. “They have your mother.”

The world sank away around Colton and he was suddenly a small boy in his childhood home on the morning his mother abandoned him. His father stood in the kitchen, clutching her note in his hand until his chewed fingernails pierced his palm and blood dripped over the paper and splatted onto the tile floor.

His father had never let him read the note.

“Colton?” said Bernam.

Reality snapped back and Colton was standing in the conference room on the eleventh floor of a building in the middle of the Montana desert.

“My mother?” he said weakly.

“She was taken years ago, when you were a boy. They promised her a cure for her ability—an ability she was hoping that you did not inherit. They ran tests on her, Colton. Painful tests. She is still alive, but she is locked away deep within their secret facility under heavy guard.”

“Why won’t they let her go?”

“Because that’s what they do, Colton. They take what they want and hurt whoever stands in their way. We must draw them out into the open and follow them back to their headquarters. Only then can we save your mother and whoever else they are holding prisoner.”

Colton looked at Bernam. “Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”

16

T
he engines were already warming up when Colton stepped into the plane, their high-pitched whine slowly building to a loud roar. The twins were seated in the very back, their heads leaning in opposite directions as they slept.

Alistair sat in the chair closest to the door and nodded at Colton when he entered. He settled back into his seat and closed his eyes. Shelly was halfway down the plane, sitting in one of the oversized leather chairs that lined both sides of the cabin. She smiled at Colton and motioned for him to join her. He smiled back and walked down the aisle, then stopped when he passed Reece, who was slouched down in his seat with his face close to the window.

“Hey,” said Colton.

Reece shifted in his seat to twist farther away from the aisle.

“Come on, Reece.” Colton didn’t like the tension between the two of them and he wanted to clear the air so things could go back to the way they were before they left New York.

“Go sit with your girlfriend,” said Reece without looking over.

“Don’t be like this, man. What’s going on with you?”

“Pffff,” Reece sneered.

“Fine,” said Colton, shaking his head. He walked down the aisle and sat next to Shelly, sighing in frustration as the leather chair formed around his back.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“He’s being stupid, that’s what’s wrong.”

Shelly looked at Reece, who had propped one of his feet on the seat in front of him and still sat staring out the window.

“It’s a lot to get used to,” she said. “Especially if he feels like he isn’t, you know, one of
us
.”

“Why doesn’t he just leave, then? Bernam said he could stay, but why stick around if he’s miserable?”

“He’s your friend, Colton. Maybe he wants to stay here with you.”

Colton sighed again. “He should get over it.
I’m
doing just fine.”

“Well,” said Shelly with a smile, “you’re special, aren’t you?”

She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Colton blushed.

The door to the cabin closed loudly, sealing them inside. Bernam stepped from behind a partition at the front of the plane and looked around.

“Everyone here? Excellent. We should be at our destination in a little less than an hour. If you need to rest, I suggest you start now.” He paused when he saw Alistair and the twins. “Ah, good. I see some of you beat me to it. Very well, then.” He turned and went back through the partition.

The jet engines whirred to full power and the small plane rolled across the hot pavement next to the black-windowed building.

Shelly rested her hand on Colton’s leg as the plane picked up speed and the wheels lifted off the ground.

“You don’t like flying?” asked Colton.

“I love it, actually. Why do you ask?”

Colton looked down at her hand on his leg, then into her eyes. She looked back, her gaze steady and inviting.

“No reason,” he said. “Do you want to tell me now, or later?”

“Tell you what?”

“The thing you wouldn’t tell me in the meeting. What did Bernam promise everyone?”

“Oh, that,” she said. She pulled her hand off his leg and leaned back in her seat. “He said he could turn all of us into hybrids.”

“Hybrids,” repeated Colton. “Those exist?”

“One that we know about, but he died a long time ago. There’s a rumor that Bernam has found another one who is willing to help him figure out how to replicate the ability.”

“Why is it so hard to replicate?”

“Because someone born with only one ability—either Source or Con—can’t hold the opposite energy within their bodies for very long. A lot of people have tried. If they get the foreign energy out in time, they only go insane. If they hold on to it…well, let’s just say it isn’t pretty.”

“So Bernam thinks he can turn everyone into hybrids,” said Colton.

“Yeah,” said Shelly. “Pretty rad, huh?”

“But why? What’s the point?”

Shelly laughed and her short auburn hair bounced across her face. She tucked it back behind her ears and turned in her seat to face Colton. “Look what we can do now, with just one half of the equation. Imagine what it would be like if we didn’t spend our lives searching for the missing key—that one other person that holds the potential to unlock all of our power. Most of us never find that person. We spend our whole lives searching. I’m tired of waiting for it to happen on its own.”

“I don’t get why any Source isn’t compatible with just any Conduit.”

“I don’t get it either, but that’s just the way it is. A Source can burn themselves up trying to make it work, and they usually take the Con with them. It’s called feedback, and it’s a nasty thing to watch.”

“How do you know when you’ve found the right person?” asked Colton.

Shelly shrugged. “According to those that are lucky enough to find their counterpart, they just
know
.”

Colton sat silently for a long time, then said, “I thought we were going to be helping people.”

“We are! But just think how much more we can do once we’re hybrids! It’s the first step in the process.” She stuck her legs out and rested them across Colton’s lap. “After that,” she said, “we can save all the people you want, Mr. Boy Scout.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him playfully. “You know, there’s a special term for a hybrid. Once a person is has both abilities, they don’t call them a Source or a Conduit any more. I always hated that term, ‘Conduit’. Bleh! Like a piece of tubing or something.”

“What do they call them?”

“A Nova. As in
super
nova. As in the power of an exploding star.” Shelly spun in her seat and looked up at the ceiling. Strands of her hair fell out from behind her ears and bobbed over her face as she turned. “Shelly isn’t my real name,” she said.

“What?”

“My full name is Michelle. My parents named me after my Aunt.”

“It’s very pretty,” said Colton.

Sadness filled her eyes as she looked at him.

“Do you know what they did when I told them about my ability?”

Colton shook his head.

“They kicked me out. They wouldn’t even let me take a suitcase. That’s the kind of ignorance that being different reveals in people. Nothing about me had changed. I was still their daughter—still the same little girl I had always been. They were
scared
of me.”

She turned in her seat to look out the window, lost in her own thoughts.

Colton wanted to say he was sorry but thought she had probably heard it too many times before.

He looked over her shoulder and out through the small, circular window. The sky gradated dark to light as it dropped toward the horizon. The first colors of evening streaked across the sky; deep orange mixed with faint purple. Soon the sun would dip below the mountains and the temperature would plummet.

The ground below was a brown desert that stretched out in all directions. As the plane banked slightly in the air, Colton saw the distant lights of a city. Small pinpoints of white, yellow, and red shined like small stars in the desert.

He thought of what Shelly had said about becoming a hybrid. Colton didn’t know if he wanted more power than he already had. After he found his mother, he wanted to take her as far away from the people that hurt her as he could. He didn’t care what happened after that. If Bernam was serious about helping people who couldn’t help themselves, then maybe Colton would stick around a little while longer. Shelly was enough of a reason to stay, but he needed to get his mother to safety before he started thinking about himself.

Colton remembered the daydreams he had as a child—fantasies where he was a superhero with incredible powers that saved children from burning buildings. He watched all the cartoons and read all the comic books. He played with stiff-armed action figures that wore brightly-colored costumes and promised justice with their square jaws and obscene muscles.

Is that what I am now?
he wondered.
Is this what being a hero feels like?

Colton hadn’t saved anybody. He was no hero. Maybe he could be, later, but right then he could not ignore the foolish hope to bring his mother back home to his father, to put her hand in his and say, “There. Everything’s all better. Now we’re a family again.”

17

M
arius sat in front of Haven, squinting at her. They were in a large rectangular room that extended away from the dome like a big shoebox. The walls and floor were bare except for a few exercise mats and a wooden rack bolted to the wall that held a few broken broomsticks.

“Hmm,” said Marius. “Hmmmm.”

Haven’s shoulders dropped and she raised her eyebrows. “Well?!”

“I’m thinking,” he said. He scratched at the black and grey stubble on his chin, then his hand drifted up to the top of his head and he scratched his closely-shaven scalp. “Hmmmmm. You know martial arts?”

“No!” she said.

“Hand-to-hand? Disarming methods?

“Nope.”

“How to use gun?”

“Of course not.”

“Why ‘of course not’? In Russia I knew by age of seven.”

“We’re not in Russia.”

He chuckled. “Yes, I know this. Maybe we start with what you know, okay?” He looked at her, waiting. “So…what do you know?”

“About what?!”

He sighed, then stood. “Okay, we start small. I teach you defense, yes? Come.” He motioned for Haven to follow him as he stepped back from the door toward the center of the room. He glanced up at the ceiling twenty feet above their heads. “This will work,” he said.

“Work for what?” asked Haven. She stepped forward hesitantly, looking around as if she expected an attacker to materialize out of thin air.

Marius had been adamant about training her as much as possible before the group left for the medical center early the next morning. Haven said that she would have been useless if she tried to save her brother and Marius had immediately insisted that she follow him to what he called the “exercise room”.

“Okay,” he said, holding up his palms for her to stop walking. “Put hands up, like this.” He pulled his right hand close to his face and held it a few inches in front of his mouth, his palm open but his fingers firmly together as if he was about to slap someone. He moved his left arm away from him until his hand hovered about a foot in front of his face. Haven thought that if Marius closed his fists it would look like he was holding an invisible blowgun.