6

Kai stepped onto the roof into the sunshine. It warmed him through to his bones. He led his small troupe to the middle of the rooftop, and they settled against the sunny side of a square, brick structure jutting up from the floor. Kai could only think it was part of the ventilation system. Right now, it formed a wind break, and that served his purpose.

The five were subdued. Where to begin? “Hey guys, I’m Kai.”

The shortest girl blurted, “We know who you are. You turned the green tubes amber.” A shy smile broke through on her pimply face. “I liked the amber much better.” She probably wasn’t much older than thirteen, swimming in the middle of puberty-induced hormone soup.

One of the two guys in the group slouched against the bricks as if his spine had melted. His black hair ran amok on his head, and his eyes were dark enough to be mistaken for black in the wrong light. He stared down Kai with his hands tucked into his armpits. “Yeah, we know you. You wrecked our training.”

Kai blinked, taken aback. He’d known that some of them may not be happy about being rescued, but staring it in the grumpy face was different. He carefully levelled his voice. “That’s true. What did you like most about getting trained?”

“Power.”

“Do you know what your gift is?”

The black-eyed boy squirmed as if sitting on an ant nest. Kai thought he might be torn between the desire to talk about his gift and the desire to remain the mysterious enigmatic figure that he obviously worked hard to be.

“They identified a few things.” He shrugged and sat quiet.

Kai chose not to play his bluff. “Anyone else?”

The other guy of the group hid behind his mousy brown fringe. He flicked it to the side and Kai saw both his eyes for the first time. “They told me I’m a Breaker, but I was never much good at it. I kept trying to put things back together after I’d broken them. They said that my gifting was flawed, and I had to work on resisting temptation to undo the work I’d completed. I don’t think I’m very gifted. In fact, I think my gift is broken.”

A sharp zing of Affinity sped through Kai, and the guy behind the fringe suddenly flashed a green light that pulsed. He’d been lied to many times, and he’d believed every one. “Wait a moment, you aren’t broken and you aren’t weak. Your gift is like mine. Do things glow green for you when they’re broken?”

Brown-hair nodded, a frown creasing his forehead. “How do you know?”

“It’s the same for me.” He grinned at the guy and left him to process what that meant as he turned to a girl in the middle. Her golden hair was cut short into a tousled cap of messy curls. “How about you?”

She pointed at his guitar. “I like playing. I wasn’t allowed to do that though. They were teaching me to pick pockets instead.”

The black-eyed boy snorted an acid laugh. “They taught us all how to do that. How else would they fund this whole op?”

The golden-haired girl rolled her eyes and shifted her attention back to Kai. “They told me that I would get my guitar back when I was proficient. They even gave me a target that I had to reach. Five-hundred dollars would get me my guitar back.”

Kai reached for his guitar and then held it out. “Do you want to play something?”

She blinked like an owl, not comprehending what he was saying.

“Take it! Play something for us.”

The girl didn’t move.

“What’s the matter? I want you to play.” He smiled as he offered her the guitar again.

She shook her head. “No, I know this trick. I’ve fallen for it before.”

Kai laid the guitar at her feet and backed away with his hands up. “No tricks.”

The girl looked sad as she tucked her hands into her armpits. He thought he saw moisture glisten in the corner of her eye. She wouldn’t budge. Tau, what do I do? A wave of compassion washed through him, so strong it took his breath away.

 

~*~

“The bridge is about an hour away.” Elden checked his watch as he climbed in behind the wheel. The van was a beaten-up, old brown thing, with spots of rust growing at the corners of the windows.

The door rattled as Evazee pulled it shut, and she moved to the opposite side of the seat in case it decided to fall off half-way to the bridge.

Bree rode shotgun, sitting cross-legged on the front seat and peering out the window as buildings and trees whizzed past.

As they pulled out of sight from the OS, Evazee's belly flipped. She didn’t like going against the rules at the best of times, to be blatantly leaving without telling Kai sat wrong between her shoulders. But then she didn’t particularly want to be at the OS either. She also wasn’t used to feeling this confused. It was all thoroughly exhausting.

Elden drove fast, weaving in and around the slower cars. The rhythm of it lulled Evazee, and she propped her head up between the safety belt and the headrest, her thoughts slowly grew fuzzy and blurred.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. We’re here.” Elden prodded her knee and she shoved his hand, wanting the sweet oblivion back, but he just kept on poking her.

“Go away. I’m up.” She slid from the van and hung on to the side of it to stop herself swaying. A cold breeze blew off the river and smacked into her. In an instant, she was properly awake. “Where are we?”

Elden shut her door and locked the van, pocketing the keys. “Not the safest part of town. I have a feeling I know where the lab is. Our old school is just around the corner. The view of the bridge would line up with what Bree saw out the window.”

Bree had her hood pulled up over her mop of hair. The tip of her nose that stuck out was red from cold. “I don’t remember much about a school, Elden. Did we go there?”

Elden had his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “Maybe seeing it will remind you. Come on, let’s go.” He positioned himself between the two girls and slid an arm around each of them as if to protect them.

Evazee felt the heat from his fingertips and shivered. The pavement they walked on was chipped and broken. They picked their way forward carefully, stepped gingerly in between sharp bits of glass bottles. They made their way past a wall covered in crude graffiti. The school gate hung on one hinge, the other had rusted through. The school itself was a burnt-out shell of what was left standing after a raging fire had torn through the place. A sign on the outside wall declared that the school was in the process of being rebuilt, but judging from the rusted sign, it was a project that had been long abandoned.

“I guess this isn’t it.” Evazee felt silly for stating the obvious.

“Either that, or the pendant wasn’t accurate.” A crease marked Elden’s forehead. “Remind me again why we thought that thing would show us something real?”

Bree focussed on the tuft of grass beneath her sneakers. She kicked at it repeatedly, looking small and alone.

Evazee studied her for a moment, wishing for some glowing words. C’mon, Jesus. Anything.

Nothing.

She slipped her arm around Bree’s shoulders. “Should we go look around anyway? Maybe we’ll find a clue or something.”

Bree sniffed and rubbed her sleeve across her nose. “Yeah.”

Elden hung back for a moment as if waiting for someone to ask his opinion.

Evazee waved to him to join them. “We came all this way. We might as well have a quick look.”

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea.” Elden’s forehead was creased.

“It’s your old school. I know it will feel weird, but aren’t you curious? I want to know what caused this fire.” Contrary to what was coming out of her mouth, Evazee had no real desire to go near the charred structure. It was an all-too-real reminder of just how harsh life could be. But her heart ached for Bree, and it was enough to make her pump some enthusiasm into her voice and to steer her feet towards the building.

Elden held the gate for the girls to pass through and followed after. He whistled low. “Look at the gardens.”

“What gardens?” asked Evazee.

“Exactly.” Elden waved to a tangled, overgrown mess. “This here. It used to be a riot of colour, and now it’s all weeds. I don’t even think weeds are thriving. Nobody has been here in a long time.”

Bree sniffed, “I disagree. There’s a smouldering cigarette butt.”

Evazee stared at the smoking object and her belly twisted as her pulse quickened. “What if they’re still here?”

Elden held his finger to his lips and slipped into stealth mode. He melted into the shadows with his back against the wall, tiptoeing sideways, making no sound even on the dry grass.

Evazee caught Bree’s eye and they both stifled giggles. Elden glared at them, motioning for them to join him. Evazee felt like a prize twit as she sidled into the shadows next to him. Bree rolled her eyes and shuffled in next to Evazee.

No sooner were they hidden, when two men strode out of the passageway to the school entrance. Evazee bit her lip to keep from gasping. The men wore white lab coats and spoke in low, urgent voices. One held a device between them that they studied as they walked.

Evazee’s heart pounded so loudly in her ears, she could hardly hear over the thump. She forced herself to breathe slower and tried to shut her eyes. The feeling of imminent discovery overwhelmed her. She had to see where the men were, and if they were coming closer. Sweet aftershave drifted on the breeze, and Evazee blocked her nose to stop from sneezing.

The men were so engrossed in their discussion that they passed by the three without spotting them.

Once they were safely out of earshot, Evazee grabbed Elden’s and Bree’s arms and whispered, “Was that your dad?”

Elden looked at her as if she’d crawled out from under a rock. “Do you need glasses? Those guys were our age.”

“I was too scared to look that closely in case they felt me looking and saw us. I focussed on the thing they were staring at.” Evazee sniffed.

“Girls make no sense. Honestly.” Elden pulled away from her hand and froze.

“Elden? Is that you?” The voice was deep and male. One of the lab coat guys was back. Tension radiated off him in tangible waves. “Where have you been? We thought you’d been taken to the Crux.”

Elden cleared his throat, “Girls, give me a moment. Stay right here, I just need to have a word with this guy.” Elden and the lab coat took themselves around the corner, out of sight and earshot.

“Well that’s not half suspicious.” Evazee tried to read the expression on Bree’s face. It was a curious combination of relief and disgust.

Bree shrugged, her mouth in a tight line. She peeped around the corner. “They aren’t close by. I think we grab the gap and go look around inside.”

“I don’t know, Bree. What if there are more of them?”

“Then we hide or run. Simple.”

~*~

Kai shut the door to Torn’s office and set his guitar down on the stand in the corner. He’d have to stop thinking about it as Torn’s office, but for now the name stuck. He’d been so sure he could help these kids, but he was hitting blank walls trying to get through to them.

Runt’s necklace—now there was an interesting artefact. Perhaps if he could fix it, it might be able to show them something useful. He reached into his pocket to pull it out, but his pocket was empty. Odd. He patted the other side and dug in deep. Also empty. There were no holes, it couldn’t have slipped out the bottom and the pockets were too deep for anything to have fallen out easily. Maybe he’d lost it when he tossed his jacket to help the cleaning girl.

He traced his steps back to the stairs and was bent over double, searching the floor behind the staircase when Zap and Ruaan found him.

Zap tapped Kai on the shoulder and as he stood up, slapped a hand on his forehead. “Are you sick or something? You’re being weird.”

Zap bounced from one foot to the other in the way he did when he was nervous, but it was Ruaan who spoke. “We have to talk to you.” Ruaan’s face was a few degrees more serious than before a meal.

Should he lie about what he was looking for? His mind spun through options.

Zap paled a fraction. “You lost the thing.”

Kai sighed. Apparently, his friend’s ability to hear thoughts was working just fine.

Ruaan blinked like an owl. “What thing? What are you both talking about?”

Kai looked for a distraction. “You wanted to ask me something?”

Zap rubbed his chin and stared upwards as if the words were written on ceiling. “Not ask. Tell. This teaching thing you want us to do. I don’t know how to put this...”

Ruaan shoved his shoulder and blurted, “It’s not working. It’s just not. I don’t know what you were expecting, but we wasted a few hours today and left with nothing to show for it but some irritated kids. It was a dumb idea.”

Kai dismissed his statement with a wave. “It’s still early days.” He saw a muscle twitch in Zap’s jaw and knew Zap was about to talk. Kai scrambled for something to ask before Zap could get back on the subject of the pendant. “Have either of you seen Evazee? I haven’t seen her since early this morning.”

Ruaan scratched his head, “But you sent her on a mission, didn’t you? Evazee, Bree, and Elden were getting into the OS bus as I came back with my group. I asked where they were going, and Evazee said they were going to check something out. She told me you’d asked them to go.”

Kai’s forehead crumpled, and he searched his memory for anything he’d said that could have given such a wrong impression. “I’m drawing blanks here. I didn’t even know the OS had a van. Where could the three of them have gone?”

Ruaan leaned forward, whispering in such a loud hiss that it probably could be heard across the building. “I think they are trying to find the place they saw in the pendant vision.”

Kai paled. Maybe his empty pockets weren’t empty by accident. “But that’s daft. It is damaged. Obviously, whatever it shows isn’t accurate. Even I know that.”

“How do you know it’s damaged?” Zap had a hand on his hip in his best challenge-authority pose.

“You’re forgetting what I do."

Zap’s eyes widened, “Of course. This is the microwave all over again. I didn’t doubt your skills for a moment. Why don’t we have a look? Maybe with the right clue, we can find them.”

Kai smacked his forehead. “They took it.” Kai flinched as the memory of the awkward conversation came back to him.

“What? The pendant?” Ruaan’s eyebrow lifted, pulling his face askew.

Zap spoke at the same time. “Bree and Evazee?”

“Bree and Evazee. I thought it was odd. They’ve never been friends, but they came to me together and chatted about nothing, then left.” Kai grimaced. “It was at the exact time I’d taken my jacket off. One of them kept me so busy, I didn’t keep an eye on the other. And now they’ve drawn Elden in too. We’ve got enough on our hands with this lot.” He waved vaguely, motioning towards all the kids upstairs. “And now to have to babysit our own? That’s a bit much.”