Lissa woke disoriented and sat up so fast the room went into a wild spin. She was in the strangest place she had ever seen, a hollowed cavern in red earth, full of soft, ambient light.

Though it should have been primitive, it wasn’t. The floors were finished in thick slabs of stone and there were modern conveniences: controlled air, electricity, furniture.

She whipped her head around looking for implements of torture, cameras, anything to suggest interrogation, maybe a guard, but she was alone. She was not restrained and her wounds were dressed lightly.

There was a camera, discreet and almost unnoticeable up high near the ceiling, and she stared into it now, trying to imagine who was watching her. In a flash she remembered the explosion, her parent’s deaths, her own headlong rush into the dark and over the edge, that strange suspension that had held her in midair and kept her from falling.

She felt tears burning against the back of her eyes, but suppressed them, not wanting to show any weakness. The hiss of an airlock made her jump and she sank back against her pillow as the door slid open.

The boy that entered had longish, dark-brown hair that curled at the nape of his neck and a five o’clock shadow that suggested maturity, but the lanky jumble of his bones, the loose swing of his hips, and the way he ducked even though the door was tall enough for him, told her he wasn’t much older than she was. Still, there was an odd poise about him, a certain tension and awareness in the lines of his body, as though he carried the burden of something, like he had seen too much, knew too much, and this lay on his shoulders where he held it up with grace. And most startling of all, his eyes were an unusual shade of gray, one she’d never seen before on anyone, the gray of a sky just washed by rain but not yet clear. He was in a word, beautiful, and after the first erratic skip of her heart, Lissa tried to remind herself that an enemy was sure to use whatever tactics would work to gain her cooperation, including a boy that could have been a Calvin Klein model.

“I saw you wake on the camera,” he said. He held out his hand. On the inside of his left wrist there was a strange, glowing mark. “I’m Gideon.”

She watched his hand warily and did not reach for it. “Are you in the habit of introducing yourself to your prisoners?”

“You’re not my prisoner. Not anybody’s unless you are your own.” He pulled up a rolling chair and sat down beside her bed. “How do you feel?”

“Confused.”

“I meant physically, although I’ll address that confusion in just a moment.”

“Oh, fine I guess.”

“Good. Are you hungry?”

Lissa shook her head. “Thirsty maybe. Where am I?”

Gideon smiled at her. “The desert, although if you don’t mind I won’t be any more specific than that for the moment.”

“New Mexico?”

He held on to the small serene uplift of his lips. “No.”

“Are you one of us?” she asked.

“In a manner of speaking, yes. Your mother sent us a message on her way back to the lab just before the explosion. We came as fast as we could. Not fast enough for your parents and almost not fast enough for you. Why did you jump?”

“I thought you were Them.” She looked up at the camera. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t. But I imagine after you eat something, and heal, and wander around and see what we have here, you’ll realize that we’re on the same side.”

“Can I leave if I want to?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Then I am a prisoner.”

“It’s for your own good.”

“All my life I’ve been locked up for my own good. Can I go outside?”

“Eventually. Do you know why you were kept on the compound?”

She nodded. “I know things. Secrets that my parents gave me.”

“But there’s more. Something about you.”

“No. Nothing. They just told me that it was very important that I remember everything they told me.

They said a time would come that I might be needed.”

Gideon’s cool exterior wavered. “They never told you why?”

“They said there was trouble coming, political changes, war. That the information they gave me would be useful to turn the tide.” She stared right into his eyes. “I won’t tell you,” she said. “I’m keeping their secrets.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I already know about their studies in electromagnetics, and the Tesla device, and many other things. We’ve been communicating with your parents for a long time.”

Lissa sagged against the weight of his words. “Then there was no reason to save me.”

“There was every reason to save you.” There was still just the trace of a smile on his lips. “Lissa, your parents weren’t protecting information, they were protecting you. You’re very special. Like me.”

“I don’t understand.” Something stroked a cold finger down the back of her brain and she shivered, unwilling to consider it.

“I would like to be gentle with you, to tell you what you need to know in small increments so that I don’t overwhelm you, but there just isn’t time.”

Gideon reached out his hand toward the glass of water and Lissa watched in amazement as it lifted into the air and floated toward her. It hovered in front of her, nestled in a cocoon of blue-white light. She reached out slowly and wrapped her hand around the glass feeling that strange icy warmth for a second before the light evaporated and she held an ordinary glass of water. She took a sip and tasted nothing different about it.

With wide eyes she held it out to him and felt it leave her fingers, traveling through the air back to the table. “You’re the one that kept me from falling with that light or whatever... How did you do that?”

“These are things you will learn,” he said. “Things that are already possible for you.”

“I can’t do that, lift things with my mind.”

“You have the potential to do that and many other things besides, to control energy, other people’s thoughts--”

“What are you talking about?”

“The genetic marker is in your blood. The Lux Marker. And we aren’t the only ones.”

“So we’re related?” Figures the hot guy would be my cousin or something, she thought.

“No. We are only the same in this way.” His speech had odd cadences to it, as though he had learned a different English, an older one perhaps.

Lissa shook her head, rubbed her hands over her eyes. “Really, I think there’s a mistake. If I had a gift like that I would have known.”

Gideon shook his head gently. “No mistake.” He looked tired suddenly and maybe even sad. He traced the mark on his wrist absently. “And it’s not necessarily a gift.”

Lissa looked at the glass of water, focused all her attention on it, a laser beam of will, but the glass didn’t so much as shiver. “See, it’s a mistake.”

Gideon shook his head. “You’re trying too hard. There is no mistake.”

Tired beyond imagining, Lissa lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes.

“Do you want to rest some more?”

“I don’t think I can.”

She heard Gideon rise and opened her eyes again. He stood over her, his expression thoughtful. “I’m sure you can, just close your eyes again.” In the darkness she felt his hand on her head, his touch cool and warm, burning like ice, and then she knew nothing else as sleep claimed her.