7

“We should go back. There’s nothing here.” Evazee peered back down the tunnel to see if Elden was back.

Bree bent over, searching the ground for any sign of anything other than the charred remains of the school. “I think I see something. Come on.” Bree scuttled down a hallway through patches of sunlight and shade caused by missing portions of the roof that had been destroyed. She ran like a nimble rock rabbit. Or a bloodhound on a scent.

Evazee cast a wistful glance where they’d come from, shook her head, and followed Bree. Her belly twisted as she moved past burnt classrooms, hollowed shells peppered with the debris of all it took to massage knowledge into the heads of children. A sick thought, were the children still in school when the fire hit? Evazee swallowed hard and hurried after Bree.

Evazee found her down the passage, on the other side of a hall big enough to seat the entire school for assembly. The walls were sooty, but mostly intact, though the ceiling was broken in patches. Bree grinned smugly, her hands on her hips.

“I told you. There’s more.”

Evazee scuttled across the wide-open space, running on her tiptoes, hunched over as if she could make herself smaller and lighter. She hissed at Bree, “All the more reason to get out of here.”

Bree waved her over. “Look.” She turned and disappeared down a few steps.

Evazee followed, hoping her compliance would be enough to persuade the redhead to leave. Surely Elden would be back by now. Hopefully Kai was so busy at the OS that he wouldn’t have noticed their absence.

The stairs that led under the stage were standard for those that led to an orchestra pit. The door at the end of them, however, was most unusual. Surrounded by scorched wood and bricks, the shiny stainless-steel surface reflected the damage without being touched by it. A small panel glowed softly in the centre of a door without a handle.

“You can’t tell me this is a regular under-a-school-stage type of door. There are some secret things happening behind here.” Bree’s eyes were sparkling.

Evazee longed for golden words that carried enough urgency to convince this girl it was time to leave. None appeared, so she put on her best furious face, even flaring her nostrils a little. “We have to go. Now.”

Bree frowned at her, focussed on her nostrils and backed off. “What is up with your nose?”

“Now.”

“Fine. I just want to see if—” She reached for the glowing panel.

“Don’t touch that! What if you set off an alarm or something?”

“She’s right. Don’t touch that.” The voice was male and not Elden’s. “It’s fingerprint coded. You would have got a nasty surprise.”

Cold shot through Evazee. A man came down the stairs two at a time and pulled Bree away from the door. He was one of the two who had recognised Elden. Under his lab coat he wore a heavy metal T-shirt and jeans. Without hesitation, he reached for the glowing panel and pressed his thumb against the smooth surface. A trail of lights circled the button, and the door swung open with a slow hiss.

Elden and the other one joined them.

Evazee tried to read his face, but she got nothing. His jaw was clenched hard enough to make the muscles in his cheek twitch.

They stepped through the doorway and left the burnt devastation behind. Stainless steel gleamed from the walls, floor, and ceiling. Brightly lit passages led off in three directions, and there were no windows that Evazee could see. The whole set up was underground.

“Take the girls to Marking. Elden, come with me. They’re waiting for you in the boardroom.”

Heavy metal T-shirt grinned. “Sure. I’d far rather spend time with these two pretties anyway.” He shuffled in between the two of them and hooked their arms to lead them down the passage to the left.

Evazee panicked. “Elden!”

Elden mouthed a few quick words to his captor and jogged back to Evazee. He leaned in close and whispered, “Just go with it. They know you’re with me. You won’t come to any harm.”

“Elden, we can’t keep them waiting.” Lab coat’s foot tapped the floor.

“I will find you.”

There was an edge to Elden’s voice that raised the hair down Evazee’s arms.

~*~

Fresh air washed over Kai as he stepped out onto the roof. He took a moment to breathe. Moonlight had a way of softening reality that he needed, and he drank it in. The harsh lines blended and glowed in a soothing shade of blue. He made his way to the centre of the roof and stretched out on his back with his guitar across his chest.

“Tau, I need you. None of this works without you. I’m not moving from here until you show up.” Cold seeped into his back through his sweater, but he welcomed the sensation. His fingers found strings, and he plucked out a gentle tune. He shut his eyes and let the music take him. Soaring riffs, tingling harmonics danced from the union of fingers and strings, blowing helium and lifting the weight he’d been living under. He laughed.

Tau.

His skin felt it first. The warm glow more intimate than sun rays. His fingers slowed, but he kept playing, scared to do anything that would chase this moment. His awareness deepened. Blood rushed through his veins, through his heart, tingled down his back, and flooded warmth where there’d been ice.

And then a shift. Tau was on the roof. Kai knew it even though his eyes were tightly shut. His self-consciousness, his failings, short-comings and grief rose up as a wall between him and Tau, but Tau slipped right through.

“You can open your eyes. I’m not going anywhere.”

Kai peeped and sat up in shock. His friend sat on the rooftop, grinning at him. Tau was here, and he’d brought daylight. The rooftop beneath Kai’s fingers was silky smooth, no longer cement, but obsidian. Lava Rock. The first time he’d seen the OS in the spiritual, it had been an oppressive, dark square that brooded over the area. Now, the obsidian seemed lit from inside and glowed in colours that took Kai’s breath away.

“Is this the same place as before?”

Tau tipped his head to the side, “What do you think?”

“It is the same, yet completely different. I can hardly breathe.”

Tau stood up and stretched as if he’d been sitting next to Kai for a long time. “You haven’t seen the best part yet. Come check this out.” Tau took Kai to the edge of the building. Kai steeled himself, expecting the slums.

Tau sat down on the edge with his legs swinging. He leaned back and breathed deeply. “What do you think?”

Kai crept towards the edge and gingerly swung his legs over. An expanse rolled out before them, not shacks and squalor, but sparkling lawn in an exquisite shade of turquoise dotted with patches of deep colour. The light from the OS cast a warm glow on the area, no longer brooding over it in malevolence, but rather transforming.

Kai laughed, though it was tinged with sadness. “This is not real. This is just because you’re here. When you go, it’s all as dark and messed up as it was before. I haven’t been able to fix anyone. I don’t understand it.” He shot a sideways glance at Tau, who leaned back on his arms next to Kai with his eyes closed. “Are you even listening to me?”

“You are trying to vacuum the floor without plugging in the vacuum cleaner. How’s that working out for you?”

“What are you talking about?”

A smile lit up Tau’s face. It was nearly enough to shift Kai’s frown. He heard movement behind. It was the little Chinese girl with paintbrush ponytails.

“What is this place? I’m dreaming, right?”

Tau swung his legs back onto the roof, turned to face the girl, and crossed them, contemplating her without saying a word. Love rolled off him.

It hit Kai as a delicious heat wave.

Paintbrush girl skipped to Tau and sat close enough that her knees touched his. She examined him through narrowed eyes. “Do I know you?”

The green pulsed around her heart. It seemed to pull tighter with each breath she took. Kai felt his own heart constrict in sympathy. Help her, Tau.

“Not yet. Would you like to?” Tau wasn’t smiling, yet it didn’t seem to bother Paintbrush.

“Do you know me?”

“I know you like three sugars in your tea, but you only take one because three feels wasteful. You don’t want a puppy or a kitten, but you do want a chameleon. You’d like to learn how to paint the sea, but you feel you can’t because you’ve never seen it for yourself. When you’re sleeping you either dream of drowning in waves bigger than buildings, or you dream that you’re flying over the top of the waves. You don’t want to wake up when you have the flying dreams because you feel free.”

Paintbrush’s eyes stretched so wide, Kai thought she might faint.

Tau held out his hand, and Paintbrush slipped hers into his without hesitation. Her eyes locked on his.

Kai held his breath and wondered if he should be sitting in on this moment, but to move away would be more disruptive, so he stayed put.

A slow smile tugged at Tau’s mouth. Paintbrush grinned back, and Kai watched the green lines criss-crossing her heart snap back a strand at a time. Paintbrush shuffled across, crawled onto Tau’s lap, took his arms, and wrapped them around her. She snuggled into his chest with her head tucked under his chin.

For a split second, Kai saw her hollow. He watched as light trickled in, absorbing the darkness, dispelling it until the small girl pulsed with a radiant glow. He blinked, and she was normal again. With a deep, contented sigh, she fell asleep.

“I’ve never seen that before. She is whole. How?”

“She believes. In me, in everything that I’ve done for her. Here, take her.”

Before Kai could protest, Tau bundled the little glowing, sleeping girl onto his lap. “Right, I’m done here. Remember, what you see in the real world is not always accurate. Yes?”

“But what about the others? I can’t do what you just did.”

Tau laughed. “Think about the vacuum cleaner. You’ll do just fine.”

“But...”

Tau breathed on him and leaned in close. Kai prepared himself for a download of wisdom and direction.

All Tau said was, “Think vacuum cleaner.” With a wink, he was gone.

~*~

“Have a seat, girls. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Evazee and Bree huddled together on the couch he’d shown them to.

Bree spoke through clenched teeth as a ventriloquist would. “I say we make a run for it.”

Their escort stuck his head around the corner. “And don’t think of leaving. We lock the doors in case people get cold feet. We help them to stay strong.” He flashed a thumbs-up and left with a distinct click of a door lock sliding into place.

Evazee waited until she couldn’t hear footsteps in the passage. “You know the storage room we walked past? What do you think was in the canisters?”

Bree rubbed her arms against the chill in the room. “More like a warehouse than a room, really. I know those canisters. I would bet my good arm that those are full of serum.”

“Affinity serum? That much? They were stacked floor to ceiling. That room must be five times the size of a normal school hall. Why so much?”

“They must have big plans.”

“That makes me feel a bit sick.” Evazee hung forward with her head between her hands. She studied the room they were in, looking for anything that could help them.

Bree sat next to her, muttering under her breath.

“I don’t want to be marked. Do you?” Evazee focussed on slowing her thoughts, slowing her lungs.

Bree shook her head. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“The gurneys have restraints. Arms and legs. I don’t like the look of that either. There’s also a gas bottle on the floor between them. Entonox.”

Bree was on her feet, pacing along the edges of the room, scanning for a way out. The room was sealed shut, a box with no windows and only one locked door. “Gas? What the heck? Are they going to poison us?”

“It’s not poisonous. It’s for pain relief.” Pain. It was only a small gas bottle, but Evazee paled as the blood left her face and her nose and feet grew cold. First her imprint removed and now this...marking? She wanted to pray but no words came. She was so out of touch, Jesus probably wouldn’t listen anyway. She stayed in the chair as hope drained out of her.

Bree checked to make sure the gas was turned off, picked up the bottle, unhooked the tubes and lugged it over to the side of the door. “Pain? I’ll show them pain.” She hoisted the bottle up and propped it up between the wall and her shoulder.

“Bree, no!”

The lock clicked again, and the door swung open. Bree launched the bottle with as much force as she could. Too heavy to go over the top, it swung sideways and rammed into a stomach. Elden’s stomach. With a deep oomph, he doubled over. Bree dropped the gas bottle and fell to her knees next to him.

Evazee leapt up, squeezed her hands, and sat down again.

“Don’t panic, I’ll live.” Elden eased onto his rear, grunting with effort.

Bree glared at him, “You twit! How can you just waltz in here without warning? I could have hurt you.”

Elden bit out words through clenched teeth, “I came to get you girls out.”

The two lab coats stepped into the room, and one whistled. “Quite a wildcat we have here.” He grinned at Elden on the floor. “Glad to see you’ve got them under control. We’ll take it from here.” He shook his head as he crossed the floor to retrieve the gas bottle and set it back in place between the two gurneys. “There isn’t time to hook up the gas now. We’ll just have to go on without it.”

The other grunted, which seemed to mean that he agreed. He took Evazee’s arm and led her to the closest gurney. Each had a padded hole at one end for breathing. A red mark on an arm restraint caught Evazee’s eye. Dried blood. Her chest squeezed tight. Adrenalin pumped through her veins, and she dug in her heels.

There were more muscles to her captor than what the lab coat showed. He kicked behind her knees and caught her as she fell. A hard thwack to the back of her head and stars spun across her vision. Pins and needles claimed her arms and the fight left her. Face-down on the gurney, cold radiated through her as the cuffs clamped down on her arms and ankles.

She fought rising panic that crawled under her skin like spiders. Her hair was caught up on top of her head, her pony tail swung over the end of the gurney.

“This one is already marked.” The voice came from across the room where Bree struggled against her restraints, muttering under her breath.

Evazee’s lab coat grunted in response. His fingers felt like cold snakes on her skin, and she ground her teeth not to scream.

“This one isn’t. Wheel the machine this way.” A thin whine filled the air, which nearly drowned out the rattle of wheels on the tiled floors. “Get the lights.”

A sharp click plunged the room into darkness. Before Evazee could think of screaming, burning hot pain seared the base of her skull. Her mind turned somersaults. A swoosh of icy cold washed over the back of her head and gave her an instant headache. At least the fire in her head had been damped.

“That’s a bit skew, don’t you think? Honestly. You need to practice.”

“Oh, please. Nobody cares. Anyway, if the general has his way, I’ll be getting more than enough practice soon enough.”

“True. True. Let’s get these two to recovery.”

“Not that yours has anything to recover from.” The two chuckled as if they’d made the funniest joke ever, and Evazee wanted to scream.

Her brain swam, and she fought to stay conscious. How could Elden have let this happen?