Justice Keepers Saga--Books 10-12, page 102
Gripping the railing so hard her knuckles whitened, Anna trembled. “One major flaw in your brilliant plan,” she spat. “They’re gonna kill you too.”
Shindraso tapped a button on his belt, and his body seemed to shimmer, growing more and more transparent until he was gone. Ragnosian cloaking tech. How did he get his hands on that? “Bye, bye now.”
She sensed him as he ran to the front entrance.
Anna leaped over the railing, heedless of the possibility that he might reactivate that device, and used the lightest flicker of Bent Gravity to slow her descent. She landed in a crouch, turned and scrambled for the back door.
That door burst open before she reached the short hallway, revealing two soldiers standing side by side and a whole lot more behind them. Every single one of them had an assault rifle.
Anna spun out of the way, throwing her shoulder against the wall. Bullets rushed out of the hallway and sped across the open factory floor. Her frantic mind kept searching for a way out of this. There’s got to be something! Think!
Wedge-shaped flyers came in through the upper-level windows, reorienting themselves to train weapons on her.
In less than half a second, Anna had her hand up, a Bending forming at the tips of her fingers. The air seemed to pulsate, distorting the flyers into blurry lumps of gray. But no bullets came her way. She maintained the Bending for a few seconds, the tingle in her skin becoming a painful sting.
“Hold your fire!” Telixa Ethran bellowed. “I want her alive!”
Well, that explained the flyers.
Anna let the Bending dissipate, but no one came out of the hallway, and the drones just floated there, waiting for a kill order. Smart. They must have known that she would pounce on the first idiot to step out into the open. And then she would have a hostage.
“You’re surrounded, Anna,” Telixa called out. “Yes, I know who you are, and I’m well aware of your talent for improvising your way out of seemingly hopeless situations. You could try it, and some of these people could die. Myself included. But there are fifty soldiers right outside, not to mention a plethora of drones. And more shuttles on the way. I don’t think you’ll survive that.
“So, you can take your chances against impossible odds, or we can sit down and have a nice, friendly chat. It’s up to you. I’ll accept the surrender of your sidearm as a show of good faith.”
Removing her pistol from its holster, Anna crouched down to set it on the floor. She stood up again, then kicked it.
“Excellent!”
“What do you want with me?” Anna demanded.
The admiral sauntered out of the hallway with a smile on her face, chuckling softly. “To congratulate you, for starters,” she replied. “It’s not often that I would expend such effort to capture a single individual.”
“You should probably just kill me.”
“Perhaps,” Telixa said. “But I’m disinclined to waste the opportunity to interrogate a brilliant tactician. Take her up to the ship. She’s ours now.”
The End of Part 1:
INTERLUDE
DAY 7
“I think Andrew likes you.”
Claire looked up to find Monica sitting at her desk. A light drizzle splashed against the bedroom window with a soft, pattering sound. It was only six-thirty, but the sky outside was already dark. Claire sighed. She hated fall.
A short girl with dark, olive skin and brown hair that she wore in a braid, Monica made a face as she looked over Claire’s notes from science class. They were learning that kingdom, phylum stuff, and most of the kids had trouble remembering the order. Claire was pretty sure she messed it up on the assignment she had turned in last week. She liked science, but couldn’t they do more astronomy? That was fun.
“I’m serious,” Monica said. “I think he likes you.”
Stretched out on the bed with her elbows on the mattress, her chin resting on the heels of her hands, Claire sighed again. “I know he likes me,” she muttered. “That’s why I stay away from him.”
Monica looked up from the notebook with confusion in her big, dark eyes. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
Claire had talked to her mom about it before the school year started, and they both agreed that keeping her telepathy a secret was a good idea. But she hadn’t realized how hard that would be. Not that she wanted to go blabbing it to everybody, but it did leave her feeling lonely. And having to watch what she said all the time sucked. What was the point of having superpowers if you couldn’t tell anyone?
“You don’t like him back?” Monica mumbled.
Claire grimaced, then rolled onto her back. “Do you remember a few weeks ago,” she began. “When Andrew dumped that plate of spaghetti over Danny Goldman?”
Monica had a hand over her chest as she trembled with laughter. “Oh yeah,” she said, hunching over. “And Danny was all, ‘But my mom’s gonna kill me.’ And then he started crying!”
Letting her head dangle over the foot of her bed, Claire studied at her friend. “Do you have any idea how painful that was for Danny?” she asked. “How scared he was of what would happen when he got home?”
Danny’s mom never hit him. There were no scars or bruises for the teachers to report to Child Protective Services. But she said things that no parent should ever say to a kid. She made it a point not to read anyone’s mind without permission – or a really good reason – but some people were just so loud it was like trying not to eavesdrop on a shouting match. Danny was practically screaming for all the world to hear. But no one did hear.
No one but Claire.
She wanted to say something. She went over it at least once a week. Maybe she could tell the principal. But then she would have to explain how she knew. Maybe she could reach out to Danny, encourage him to say something. But again, she would have to explain how she knew. Sometimes, she tried to be his friend, but he was very shy, and he didn’t seem to want that.
“How do you know?” Monica demanded.
“Look, just-”
Claire froze.
Something moved through her room. It walked through the wall, passed by the foot of her bed and turned its head to look at her. She tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed. She wasn’t sure if she succeeded.
It wasn’t something that she saw with her eyes; it was something that she felt with her mind. Nevertheless, she could trace the shape of it. It had spindly legs and arms that bent at odd angles. A bulbous head on a neck that was much too thin. It shouldn’t have been able to walk at all. Maybe on the moon where the gravity was much weaker, but not here.
But then it wasn’t really here.
It was somewhere else, somewhere adjacent to here. She couldn’t be more specific than that. She had performed an experiment where she put herself in front of one of those things as it was passing by. It went right through her without breaking stride. The Justice Keepers wouldn’t be able to sense it. They could only detect solid things.
If she didn’t know better, she would have said that it was a ghost. But she did know better. She felt cold resolve radiating from the apparition, a calculating, uncompromising presence that she had only felt once before.
On the Overseer ship.
“Claire?” Monica said.
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Let’s go over the homework again.”
Day 8
“I’m telling you, they’re watching me,” Claire said.
Her mother’s kitchen was a place where she should have felt safe. Bright lights in the ceiling shone down on white floor tiles and white cupboards. French doors looked out on a fountain bubbling in the backyard. It was dark, but she could hear the spray of the water. She should have felt safe, but she didn’t.
Della sat at the kitchen table, peering into a cup of tea that she cradled in both hands. “I know you believe that, honey, but isn’t it possible…”
Claire leaned against the stainless-steel fridge, tossed her head back and rolled her eyes. “Mom, I’m not crazy,” she insisted. “We live in a world with space ships. Dad took me to another planet and gave me the ability to read minds. Is it so hard to believe that the aliens are watching us? They’re called the Overseers! It’s in the name!”
“Okay,” Della relented. “Let’s assume you’re right.”
“Thank you.”
“Why would they be watching us?”
Squinting at the ceiling, Claire shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Dad made some kind of deal with the Overseers when they saved me. Maybe they’re trying to make sure he holds up his side of it.”
A soft sigh escaped Della, and she rested her chin on the back of her hand, gazing thoughtfully out the window. “Maybe we should call your father.”
Claire folded her arms, a frown twisting her mouth. “He won’t tell us anything,” she said. “I tried for weeks to get the truth out of him. I even scanned his mind! Him not telling me is the reason I came here.”
“What did you see?”
“Hmm?”
“When you scanned his mind.”
“Nothing.” She picked up on her father’s thoughts sometimes, but when she tried to see what he had experienced on that ship, she came up against a wall of fog. Fog so thick she almost thought she could scoop it up. “The Overseers shielded him somehow.”
Della stood up with a sigh and marched over to the living room. Claire followed and found her mother bent over the coffee table, retrieving a SmartGlass tablet. “What are you doing?”
“Calling your father,” Della answered.
“Good evening, Mrs. Carlson,” the tablet’s AI said. “What can I do for you?”
“I need to place a call to my ex-husband on Leyria.”
“Requesting access to the SlipGate network.”
Hopping onto the couch, Claire waited as patiently as she could. She was pretty sure that this wasn’t going to work. If her father wasn’t willing to tell her the truth, then she couldn’t see why he would tell her mother.
“I am sorry, Mrs. Carlson,” the tablet said after about thirty seconds. “All off-world communication channels are currently in use.”
Grumbling under her breath, Della gave the tablet her Karen stare: the one she used on retail workers who weren’t doing their jobs fast enough. Sadly, it didn’t work on a machine. “There must be over a thousand SlipGates on this planet,” she said. “Are you telling me that every single one of them is in use?”
“All off-world communication channels are in use.”
“I don’t accept that!” Della exclaimed. “Why is it that, in the last few months, every time I try to call my ex-husband, I get told that all the comm channels are busy?”
“Something’s going on out there,” Claire whispered. “Something they’re not telling us about.”
Day 9
Lauren Hunter answered the door with a smile. Jack’s sister was a tall and willowy young woman who wore her brown hair up in a ponytail. She had the same sharp, blue eyes as her brother. “Claire!” she exclaimed. “My goodness, you’ve grown.”
In blue jeans and a light windbreaker, Della stood on the porch with her hands in her pockets. Her sheepish grin made it clear that she was embarrassed to be here. As if Claire couldn’t feel the emotion radiating off her. “Thanks for speaking with us, Lauren. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Oh, not at all! Come in!”
The inside of Lauren’s house looked like something you might find in one of those home décor magazines. A narrow hallway with pale-green walls connected the foyer to the kitchen. Claire saw a table made of some dark wood with a mirror hung up on the wall above it.
She passed the door to the living room, where Steve – Lauren’s husband – looked up and greeted her with a smile. He was a tall man with olive skin and more than a little gray in his short, black hair. “Been a while, kid,” he said. “What have you been up to?”
“Nothing much,” Claire replied. “Toured the galaxy. Got superpowers. You know, the usual.”
The kitchen had wooden cupboards and a round, white table next to a door that looked out on the backyard. Lauren already had a pitcher of pink lemonade waiting for them. “So, what brings you by?” she asked as she poured a glass.
“How long has it been since you talked to Jack?” Claire asked.
“Claire…” Della muttered.
Seating herself with her back to the patio door, Lauren frowned as she considered the question. The fact that she had to think about it wasn’t a good sign. “Not since he visited about three months ago. I tried calling a couple times, but I couldn’t get through.”
Claire chose the chair across from her, heaving out a sigh as she sat down. “We had the same bad luck trying to call my dad,” she said. “Something’s up.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s just heavy comm traffic,” Lauren said.
“It’s not.”
Claire recognized the skeptical look that Lauren gave her. It must run in the Hunter family or something. “How can you be sure? I mean if something was wrong, we would have heard about it on the news, right?”
Standing next to the fridge with her arms folded, Della nodded in agreement. “That was what I said, but…Claire’s been seeing things.”
“Seeing things?”
“Overseers,” Claire said.
“I see. Claire, have you talked to a therapist about-”
Raising a hand to her temple, Claire shut her eyes and focused. Opening her mind brought with it a storm of awareness. The Senators had lost another game, and Steve was not happy about it. One of Lauren’s neighbours was talking on the phone with her sister. Something about pay raises. The man next door was worried about a spot on his big toe. It was probably nothing. I’m not crazy, Lauren, she projected. My dad made me into a telepath. I can sense things.
When she opened her eyes, Lauren was deathly pale. The woman took a sip of her lemonade and then shuddered. “I see…”
“Claire,” Della said in that menacing voice that moms used when they were about to tell you that you were grounded. “What did you do?”
“I proved my point.”
“Sweetie,” Lauren began. “Are you telling me that you can sense some kind of deception from the Justice Keepers or the politicians?”
“There’s a change in the psychic energy,” Claire explained. “I know that sounds like some new-age crap, but it’s true. It happened months ago after Jack and the others left to go back to Leyria. The Overseers are watching us more closely. They’re eager. Excited. Like they’re about to get something they’ve wanted for a long time.”
“What are they about to get?”
Leaning forward with her hands on the table, Claire shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But we need to talk to Jack and Anna and my dad. They’ll know what to do.”
Lauren sat back with one hand clasping her chin, tapping her lips as she thought it over. “We could try my mom,” she suggested. “She might have had better luck getting a call through.”
“I don’t want to bother Crystal,” Della said.
“Mom,” Claire muttered. “This is kind of a ‘fate of the universe’ thing.”
Lauren was already rummaging through her purse, grimacing as she searched for something. “It’s no bother,” she said, pulling out her phone. “She’s at work right now, but I can call her tomorrow.”
“No,” Claire said.
“No?” They were both looking at her as if she had started speaking gibberish, and she didn’t have to use her talent to know what they were thinking. Hadn’t she just asked for Lauren’s help? Now, she was changing her mind?
“Haven’t you guys ever seen a spy movie?” Claire exclaimed. “The Leyrians overhauled our cellphone networks so they could use their multi-tools. They probably record every call we make. If they’re hiding something from us, then we don’t want them to know we’re onto them. No phones. We do this in person.”
Della hit her with a glare that made her wish she hadn’t said anything. “Claire,” she muttered. “You’re being unreasonable.”
“It’s all right,” Lauren said. “My mom usually takes a break every night at seven. I’m sure she’d love it if we paid her a visit.”
“But it’s seven now,” Claire protested.
“Yes, but Winnipeg is an hour behind us. That gives us just enough time to get to a SlipGate terminal.”
The lobby at the Shady Pines long-term care facility had purple walls and a curved reception desk. A woman in green scrubs sat behind it, furiously typing at her computer. She flinched when she noticed them. “Can I help you?”
Standing before the desk with the strap of her purse slung over one shoulder, Lauren greeted the receptionist with a smile. “Hello there,” she said. “I was hoping to talk with Crystal Hunter. I’m her daughter.”
“Hold on, one sec.”
The receptionist picked up one of those old phones with actual cords and dialed a few numbers to call the break room. “Hey, Crys,” she said, holding the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “Yeah, your kid’s here.”
Claire breathed a sigh of relief when Jack’s mother came through the door a few minutes later. Crystal was a short woman in blue scrubs, tiny and a little plump with wavy, blonde hair that was turning gray. The last time Claire had seen her was at a big picnic, lunch thing right after Jack was officially instated as the first Justice Keeper from Earth. She couldn’t remember much of that day. She had only been six years old at the time.
After the initial pleasantries – lots of hugs and fond hellos – Crystal led them to the break lounge, a room with white cupboards, a sink and a fridge along one of its pale-blue walls. The rest of the space was taken up by round, plastic tables. There was no one else here, but it still smelled like day-old pizza that someone had reheated.
They chose a small table in the corner, and Claire took Crystal through much of the same conversation that she had had with Lauren. Jack’s mother was a little more willing to believe. There was no need for a telepathic demonstration. And thank God for that. Claire wasn’t sure that she wanted to open her mind in the presence of people who knew they would be dying soon.
