Lissa was hiding, crouched in a bathroom, the only door she could open without a code, when Gideon found her. It had been less than ten minutes since she had run out of the briefing. She was beginning to see the more irritating aspects of his abilities.
“Lissa, will you just spend a minute listening to me? This is about more than just you, a whole lot more.”
“I don’t really care about anybody else. I just want to feel sorry for myself, okay? Give me a break already. My parents are dead, my fake parents. Everyone thinks I have weird super hero powers. I’m living under ground like a… like a… ”
“Fugitive?”
“I was going to say mole, but that sounded lame in my head.”
Tentatively, they smiled at each other. She noticed again the sharpness of his features, the liquid ink of his hair falling almost to his shoulders, the fine lean muscles of his arms, and those eyes. She thought maybe she could give him five minutes to talk. But if she wasn’t satisfied-- “You can explain this to me. The whole story this time. But after that, if I want to leave, you have to get me out of here.” She knew she really didn’t have any bargaining power.
“Where would you go?” he asked, his voice gentle.
“I have a list of names and locations memorized.”
“They are all dead. We’re all that’s left.”
“You could be lying to me.”
“But I’m not.” He slid down the wall to settle at her side, their hips touching. He felt warm, like he had a fever.
“Maybe I’ll just disappear and lead a normal life.”
“An orphaned seventeen-year-old with super powers and a history of being raised in isolation is never going to have a normal life.” He looked her in the eyes, his face so close she could smell him, something fresh and green like pine trees, no, more distinct than that, like ozone during a storm. “And they’ll find you. I’m not trying to scare you, but they will. Angine has very long arms and I can’t protect you if you leave me.” He was so close his breath ruffled her eyelashes. “And I want you to stay. I need you.”
“Why?”
“Because Gabrielle and I have been alone in this our whole lives. We were raised in this city. Like you, we never got to do the things kids our age should have done. We were raised by the Guardians to fulfill our purpose, to find and train the others.”
Lissa remembered her parents’ words. “So I’m just part of that purpose? An assignment for you?”
“No,” Gideon whispered. “You are so much more than that. I want us to work together to fulfill our destiny, so we won’t be alone anymore.”
Those eyes, that rainy smell was hypnotizing her, she thought. Still, she believed him, thought he was telling the truth. She shifted away from him when she really just wanted to fall into him, to find out what it was like to be touched and held by someone other than her parents. “Tell me,” she said.
He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes to summon a picture. “The Tesero have a book with the entire history of our people in it. In it there is supposed to be a prophecy that tells of the creation of the Lux. The Tesero have dedicated themselves to protecting that knowledge for centuries and centuries. They’ve been waiting for the time to be at hand, the time of the Children of the Light.”
“Sounds like ancient garbage to me. This is how crazy religions are started, you know.”
“Maybe. But we’re not crazy, and you’ve seen for yourself that our abilities are real. There have always been Guardians, trained to protect the Lux when they were eventually born, but no matter what they tried, the Tesero were never able to achieve what the prophecy said they could. Until Angine. He realized the prophecy was like a science manual of sorts, and that the reason they hadn’t been able to create the Lux Marker is because medicine and technology weren’t up to it. It was only when we realized what DNA was, and then how it could be altered or manipulated, that we were able to create the marker, and splice it correctly. Even so, nobody knows exactly what it will do. The prophecy is like most prophecies, vague. But Angine had an idea, and he was right. Somehow, after puberty the abilities start to manifest themselves.”
“Why didn’t my parents tell me?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her again. “Lissa, your parents loved you very much. They weren’t being cruel keeping this information from you. It was their duty as Guardians to protect you and raise you, and only to reveal who you were when the time was right. They, and many others besides, gave their lives so that we could do what we have to do.”
“And what is that exactly?”
“To start with, we have to stop Angine. Because he’s going to do more than just stage a political coup, he’s going to change the whole world, make it into what he wants, a place where he has all the power.”
Without thinking Lissa reached out and ran her finger around the silvery mark on his wrist and she thought she felt him shiver under her touch. “Will I get one of these?”
“You’ll see.”
She rubbed her temples trying to absorb everything she had learned in the past few days. She felt like she could sleep for a million years. “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll do it”
“Are you sure?”
She hadn’t expected him to ask. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
“Good.” His smile was almost as brilliant as Gabrielle’s. “Then get a good night’s rest tonight. We’ll leave in the morning.”
She chose a room, the one that would be hers as long as she lived in the city, which from the looks of it could be forever. It was plain but large. Way bigger than her tiny little room at the compound had been. Like the rest of the city it was underground, but in here, thick colorful rugs had been laid, diminishing echoes and cushioning the feet. She walked forty paces from one end to the other and forty the other way. This was practically an apartment. She could picture a sofa over there and book shelves and a desk with a computer. Now it only offered a night table and a narrow bed with a thin blanket. The lights were soft and orange, the walls smooth, chalky, rust-colored rock. She sat down on the bed and sighed.
A few moments later a light went on over her bed, alerting her that someone was there.
She held down the button on the intercom as she had been told. “Hello?”
“It’s Gabrielle. I brought you some stuff.”
Lissa entered the code she had memorized and the door slid open. Gabrielle was in the corridor behind a stack of blankets and a precariously tilting lamp. “Thought you might need some creature comforts.”
She came in and dropped the load on the bed. “This stuff is from my room, but if you want, I’ll get some things together for you while you’re gone.”
“Sure, that would be great. This is great. Thanks.”
“No problem. Just make a list of things you like and I’ll see what I can do.” She unfolded the blankets as she talked. She smoothed out the wrinkles and fluffed the pillows just like Lissa’s mother would have done. “There you go. At least it’s better.”
“Thanks again, really, for everything.”
Gabrielle went to the door and entered her own code. She stopped halfway into the corridor and turned around. “It’s going to be okay you know. Maybe not for awhile, but eventually.”
“I hope so.”
“And Lissa… ”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you, really. You’re doing something for us that can’t even be measured.” The door slid shut behind her.
Lissa got a bottle of water from the refrigerator sunk into the wall and lay back on her bed to study the ceiling.
She turned on her side and stared at the bottle of water, and this time, instead of closing her eyes she opened them, and studied the lines and contours of the bottle, imagined its heft and weight. She thought of all the tiny magical little atoms and molecules that buzzed and quivered, packed so tightly together the object looked solid. She imagined how it would feel in her hand and how it would feel if she just lifted it. The bottle came off the table with the gentleness of a butterfly, and came over to Lissa outlined in a faint but distinct blue-white light. She was so surprised she lost her mental grip on the water and it tumbled down onto the bed and doused the blankets Gabrielle had just brought her.
“Great, just perfect.”
She jumped up and grabbed the edge of her sheet trying to mop up the puddle, and it hit her. The water spreading out into the fibers of the fabric was proof that she was what Gideon said she was. She laughed a little too much for a moment and then sat down in the wet spot feeling sick to her stomach. “Oh my god, I did it,” she murmured. She lay down, ignoring the spilled water, and closed her eyes trying to summon the feeling again, but she was suddenly too tired, too weak to concentrate, and she tumbled quickly into sleep.
The dream came almost immediately, as though it had been waiting for her to drop off so it could pounce. It wasn’t made of images, just feelings. Cold, unbearable feelings, pitch-black and deep. The dream was evil intent, all the things she was afraid of reaching in to stroke her soul, and then just as she felt she would succumb to it and never wake up, a slimy voice infiltrated and spoke her name, its syllables drawn out and slithering. “Lissa.”
She sat up in the dark screaming and fumbled for the light she knew she had not turned off. She lay there until morning, curled up against the wall, terrified and aware that suddenly she was no longer just a girl.
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