Bloom Page 11

  “Right,” said Alistair.

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened.

  “Holy geez!” said Reece.

  “This is the fifth floor,” said Alistair. “The gymnasium.”

  Colton followed Alistair out of the elevator and into a big room filled with nothing but exercise equipment. Weight benches, treadmills, bench presses, free weights—there was even a rock-climbing wall in the middle of the room and a one-lane swimming pool running next to the far wall. Thick flat panels that doubled as structural supports separated the various types of equipment, visually segmenting the entire floor into smaller rooms without physically crowding the space. The panels were placed far apart and each was about twenty feet long, giving the room an open quality that Colton found very inviting. He could see outside through the windows on all four sides of the building.

  “No wonder Shelly’s in such good shape,” said Reece as he lifted a small dumbbell from a nearby bench and strained to curl it up to his chin.

  “That’s mostly due to her genetics,” said Alistair. “I haven’t seen her in here once since she arrived. She spends most of her free time in the recreation room, playing games with whoever is interested.”

  “I’m interested,” said Reece.

  Colton shook his head.

  “This room is open to you—to both of you—twenty-four hours a day. Exercise is heavily encouraged around here, and you will find that only a few of us do not make use of this facility regularly.”

  Alistair led them back to the elevator and brought them to another room a few levels higher.

  “A word of warning,” he said, stopping Colton and Reece before they stepped out of the elevator. “Consider any floor that I am not showing you to be strictly off-limits. Is that understood?”

  “Absolutely,” said Colton.

  “One-hundred percent,” said Reece.

  Alistair nodded. “Very good. Reece, you probably won’t be too interested in this part of the building, but it is where you, Colton, will be spending most of your time. Welcome to level nine—the training room.”

  There were no windows on that level. The walls of the room were gridded with steel bars which crossed over steel plates that had been secured in place with massive bolts.

  Alistair pressed one of the many buttons in a black wall panel as soon as they stepped out of the elevator. With a soft mechanical hum, a large metal sphere lowered slowly from the ceiling and hung suspended over the floor in the middle of the room.

  Colton stepped forward hesitantly.

  Alistair waited behind him. “Think of it as breathing,” he said. “Except that you are the lung and the energy around you is air. The goal is to see how long you can hold it in before releasing it. Your ability is a muscle, in a sense, and exercise will only make it stronger.”

  “Hey Colton, you’re a lung!” said Reece. He leaned against the wall near the elevator and crossed his arms. “How long are you guys going to be doing this stuff?”

  “As long as it takes,” said Alistair.

  Reece clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “In that case, you kids have fun. I’m gonna go find Shelly.” He gave Colton a thumbs-up as the elevator doors closed.

  “Your friend is a little…different,” said Alistair.

  Colton frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t really argue with that.”

  He turned back to the sphere.

  Alistair explained that the sphere he chose was one of many, each one designed to produce a different kind of energy. The one he lowered from the ceiling emitted what Alistair called one of the simpler energies: heat.

  Colton wiped sweat from his forehead as he stepped closer to the sphere. It was about ten feet in diameter and the surface was brushed instead of polished. His reflection appeared as if he were looking at himself through a dirty window and was distorted from the heat fog being generated from within.

  A large pipe made from the same material as the sphere ran out of its top and into the panel in the ceiling from which the sphere had lowered.

  “Concentrate,” said Alistair. “Let’s keep it simple and try something you already know. When you feel like you can’t hold in the energy, release it as you did when you fell from the plane.”

  “When I was pushed, you mean?”

  Alistair smiled. “Exactly.”

  Colton closed his eyes and imagined the battery inside his chest. It filled quickly, shaking with the energy he was absorbing. The warmth surged through his body until it filled him completely. He could feel it putting pressure on the inside of his skin, searching for a way to escape. He clenched his fists tightly and tried to force the energy back toward his core.

  It was too much.

  Colton released the energy as a pressure blast, just as he did right before he hit the ground in the desert. Alistair was pushed back a step from the force of the impact and the sphere rocked gently in the air.

  “Not bad,” said Alistair. “A little shorter than I was expecting, but you’re still new.”

  “Will I get better?” Colton was disappointed—he had been able to contain the life energy of an apple for half an hour.

  “Oh, yes,” said Alistair. “You can already contain more energy than most of the other people here. If we can get you to hold that energy, you will be very powerful.”

  “But I still need a Source, right? The other half of the equation.”

  Alistair sighed. “Yes. But Colton, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Most of us never find our Source.”

  “Do you have one?” asked Colton.

  Alistair nodded. “Long ago.” He looked over to the wall as he remembered. “The power we felt together…indescribable. This…” he said, waving at the sphere and the building, “…all of this pales in comparison.”

  Colton saw regret and anger in his eyes.

  The anger faded as Alistair looked at him and smiled. “If you are ever so lucky, Colton, don’t squander your time together. If your Source is anywhere near as strong as you, the two of you could flatten mountains and drain oceans.”

  He turned around and walked toward the elevator.

  “What now?” asked Colton.

  “Practice!” said Alistair without looking back. He stepped into the elevator. “It makes perfect, after all.”

  The doors closed and Colton turned back to the sphere.

  “Alright,” he said. “Here we go.”

  21

  Haven awoke to the sound of a loud metal CLANG. Her eyelids snapped open and she sat up quickly. She was on an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room.

  CLANG.

  The noise came from the other side of the only door in her small room. The bed she had been sleeping on was more of a flimsy cot; springs creaked loudly as Haven slowly stood from the stained, inch-thick mattress. As soon as she was on her feet, her stomach growled with hunger.

  She looked down.

  Her clothes were not her own, yet they fit just as well—if not better—than many of the pieces in her own wardrobe. She plucked at the soft fabric of her faded black t-shirt and brushed a piece of fuzz from her white-washed jeans. She looked down over her back and raised her eyebrows appreciatively at how she looked. Someone had even put socks and shoes on her feet—low-rise canvas kicks with white soles that barely made a noise when she tapped them against the floor. The image of a hospital flashed through her memory and she thought she had been wearing loose blue clothing, as if she were about to have an operation. The thought of someone changing her while she slept made her shudder.

  Haven suddenly remembered the glow-in-the-dark star she had pulled from the ruins of her home. She checked both of her pockets—it was gone. She had carried that star with her every day since she found it in the ashes. It must have been left behind with her clothes at the medical facility. Deep sadness poured over her when she realized that all she had left of Noah was the hope that she would see him again.

  From somewhere in the room came the sound of dripping water.

  A
bowl of dirty water and a folded cloth sat atop a small table next to the cot. On the floor near the table was a heavy woolen blanket. Haven picked up the blanket and held it for a moment as she tried to remember what had happened to her.

  Another memory—she had been taken from a medical center by a man with a thick Russian accent. No, not taken—rescued. She remembered the row of vicious tools on a tray next to her at the center and the way the men in the masks seemed to regard her with a cruel sense of detachment, as if she were no more than an animal they were preparing to euthanize.

  Wherever she was—wherever she had been taken after the medical center—she had the distinct feeling she was safe.

  CLANG.

  Haven dropped the blanket on the cot and walked to the closed door. The floor of the room was gritty concrete and several old water stains spread in moldy green half-circles from the base of the walls. The walls themselves were rusted red metal—Haven felt as if she were in a big metal lung.

  Hanging on the wall next to the door was a cracked mirror. Haven knew she shouldn’t look but couldn’t help herself.

  She shouldn’t have looked.

  Her hair was frizzy in some places and stuck out wildly everywhere else, as if she had put her finger in a light socket. She grimaced and tried to pat down some of the more unruly clumps. Her skin was streaked with something that she hoped was dirt. Dark circles below her eyes made her look ten years older than her actual age.

  Her eyes were clear, though, as was her mind.

  With a little bit of makeup and a hair straightener, she would be as good as new. Well, almost as good.

  CLANG.

  Haven twisted the rusty metal handle and pulled open the heavy door. After she started it swinging, it moved smoothly on big hinges and bumped into the wall, sending a hollow metal GONG reverberating throughout the room.

  She stepped over the small lip at the bottom of the doorway and walked down a narrow hallway. The hallway brought her out into a huge, domed room. The walls were grey concrete cut into curved sections that gently sloped inward as the ceiling rose higher to the apex far above. A fan turned slowly at the peak. There were no windows—just large, square mirrors attached to the walls of the dome. A series of metal rungs had been bolted to the concrete on one side of the curved wall and formed a ladder that led up to the fan. Haven shuddered to think about someone climbing up the inside of the wall. The room was dark except for several bright work lamps that were aimed at a black car nearby. The car was parked between two long tool benches lined with greasy equipment and dirty rags.

  A tall, thin man in dirty clothes picked up a small fastener from one of the benches and held it to a thin metal plate that covered a small portion of a hole in the side paneling of the car. He swung a long hammer over his head and down onto the fastener.

  CLANG.

  He reached over to the bench and grabbed another fastener.

  “I woke you,” he said to Haven without turning.

  She took a few steps toward the car. “It’s alright,” she said. His face looked vaguely familiar.

  “I wasn’t apologizing.”

  She remembered that his name was Dormer. He swung the hammer down.

  CLANG.

  “Corva wants to talk to you,” he said with a slight nod of his head toward the other side of the room. He dropped the hammer on the nearest bench and brushed his hands against his dirty pants as he walked away.

  Haven hugged herself, suddenly cold in the big, open room. She squinted into the shadows on the other side of the vast dome and saw the dim, green glow of a computer screen. The screen barely lit the face of a woman as she typed rapidly on a keyboard.

  Haven walked past table after table full of mechanical parts and electrical components. Reams of paper sat piled haphazardly on the floor, some as tall as her. When Haven was still a good distance away, the woman at the computer turned and smiled. Haven walked closer and stood next to the computer. It was an old model—the screen was large and boxy, and the wire running out of the keyboard was thick and spiraled.

  “Don’t mind him,” she said, nodding toward Dormer. “He’s always grumpy.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “His brother was taken by Bernam’s thugs a few months ago. He was a Conduit as well.”

  “A what?”

  The woman smiled. She had shoulder-length, bright white hair and soft features. Even without makeup, Haven thought she was really pretty.

  “All in good time,” said the woman. “My name’s Corva. Do you remember me?”

  “Sort of,” said Haven. “Everything is still a little fuzzy.”

  “That would be the narcotics you were given.”

  “You drugged me?”

  Corva laughed easily and Haven had a hard time not smiling as soon as she realized it was a stupid thing to say. “No, of course not. The doctors at the center were preparing to operate on you when Marius barged in.”

  “I remember Marius.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s kind of hard to forget.”

  “Where was I? What is this place?”

  “I know you have questions, Haven, but they’re not for me to answer. You’ll get them soon, I promise. For now we need to make sure that you’re doing okay.”

  Haven was about to ask what Corva meant by “doing okay” when the events of the past few weeks flooded her mind and the knife that was the memory of her deceased parents slammed into her chest. She lost the strength in her legs and sat down heavily in an empty chair next to the computer.

  “Easy there,” said Corva. She leaned over and put her hands on Haven’s shoulders to steady her in the chair.

  “I’m sorry,” said Haven. “I just—my parents—”

  She could feel the pressure of tears behind her eyes.

  “It’s alright,” said Corva. “A lot has happened in the past few weeks.” She pushed aside a strand of frizzy hair from Haven’s face and smiled.

  Haven took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. “Where am I?” she said at last.

  Corva clapped her hands together. “Well!” she said. “That’s a question I can answer. How about a tour? Might help you take your mind off things for a while.”

  Haven brushed away the one tear she hadn’t been able to stop from rolling down her cheek and nodded. “That sounds great.”

  She stood up and followed Corva toward the center of the room. Ambient light from the distant work lamps next to the car provided just enough illumination by which to navigate the cluttered space.

  “We call this entire facility The Dome,” said Corva, “for obvious reasons. When it’s a little lighter you’ll be able to see that it’s sort of divided into sections. Dormer has his repair station, and there’s also a sorry excuse for a dining room, along with a meeting area where we can all get together and either relax or prepare for an excursion. You can’t tell right now because it’s almost midnight, but this whole complex is actually underground. Besides the exit and that vent up there,” she said, pointing up to the big fan at the top of the dome, “everything else is buried.”

  “I remember trees,” said Haven.

  “That would be the Grove. We’ll get to that in a bit. There are also some smaller rooms we use for living quarters—like the one you were resting in.”

  “These aren’t my clothes,” said Haven, suddenly remembering that someone else must have changed her while she slept.

  Corva smiled. “That was Elena, the elderly woman you may remember from before you slipped into your coma.”

  Haven looked up. “Coma?”

  “You were out for eight days. Stone cold unconscious.”

  “From the drugs?”

  “Nope. You fought those pretty well.”

  “Then why?”

  Corva shifted on her feet uncomfortably. “Has no one told you?”

  “Told me what?” said Haven, a faint sound of fear creeping into her voice.

  “Have you noticed anything recently? About yourself,
I mean. Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I lit up my school cafeteria like a 4th of July celebration.”

  Corva laughed—at ease once again. “You’re changing. It happens to all of us when we’re close to your age. Our bodies and minds undergo radical internal shifts so we can handle our new abilities. Most of the time it knocks us out for days or even weeks.”

  Haven looked down at the palms of her hands. She remembered the blue fire that consumed her vision when she was in the cafeteria at her school.

  “What am I?” she asked.

  Corva opened her mouth to speak but another voice cut in from the shadows behind her.

  “What indeed?”

  The old woman—Elena—stepped out of the darkness and into the dim light surrounding Haven and Corva. Her long grey hair was pulled back tightly and secured in a bun on the back of her head. The tension elongated the weathered lines on her face. She smiled at Haven as she slowly approached—her back slightly bent and her legs wobbling.

  “It’s a question we all ask,” said Elena, “at one time or another. Even when we think we know the answer, we never stop asking.”

  A muffled scream echoed throughout the dome.

  Haven turned to the source of the sound and saw a large door set deep into the concrete wall on one side of the huge room.

  “So, what’s in there?” asked Haven warily.

  Corva and Elena exchanged a quick look.

  Another scream ripped through the complex, and Haven’s blood went cold.

  22

  Colton sat in a large conference room on the eleventh floor. Several rows of chairs faced a polished black podium, behind which stood Bernam. He wore a thin suit and sipped water from a faceted glass. His private jet had landed on the pavement outside the building earlier that morning and was being refueled during his long speech.

  Shelly sat next to Colton, leaning in and resting her shoulder against his. Reece sat on the other side of Shelly with his arms crossed, leaning away from her.

  Bernam set down his glass of water and repositioned the podium microphone directly in front of his mouth.

  “As I was saying,” he said, “it doesn’t matter where you came from. It doesn’t matter what you were before you got here. What matters is the future. You’re all here, now, because you want something more—more from life, more from each other—”