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  Shelly reached over and quickly squeezed Colton’s leg. Reece saw her do it and leaned farther away from both of them.

  “—more from yourselves.”

  Colton looked around the room.

  He, Shelly, and Reece sat in the last of three rows of chairs. Alistair sat in the front row, relaxing comfortably in his seat while he listened to Bernam’s speech. In the second row, two identical twins that Colton did not know sat side by side—young men with tan skin and short, spiky blond hair. They both wore identical jeans, t-shirts, and black leather jackets. They sat low in their seats and seemed bored with the speech.

  “As you know,” continued Bernam, “this morning I returned from Japan. Dane and Lee—the only ones among us who have achieved Unity—were there for several weeks taking care of some personal business for me.” He gestured to the twins, who grinned broadly. One of them turned around and winked at Shelly. She stuck her tongue out.

  “You’ve all been training very intensely during my absence,” said Bernam. “I’m very happy to hear that the newest member of our group is doing far better than we originally expected.” He smiled sharply at Colton. “No offense meant.”

  “None taken,” said Colton.

  The truth was that the past week had been unbelievable. He had spent several hours every day in the training room, testing out his capacity for containing different forms of energy. He could keep himself fully charged for just over two minutes before being forced to release, and that time was slowly climbing every day. According to Alistair, most Cons peaked between a minute-thirty and two minutes.

  The time not spent in the training room was divided between the gymnasium and Shelly. She barely let him have a moment alone after his rigorous daily routine. Colton couldn’t find anything to complain about—she was beautiful, smart, and had a great sense of humor.

  She was teaching him things that Alistair hadn’t bothered to mention, like how to use sunlight to nourish his skin and how to manipulate objects with small bursts of stored energy. Colton was especially fond of not making contact with doors when he closed them. With a wave of his hand he could push the door from several feet away. He was getting good enough so that he didn’t slam them shut as he always did when he first started.

  The only thing bothering Colton about the entire experience was Reece. He had been growing quieter and more withdrawn over the past week, spending all of his time in his living quarters and rarely showing up when everyone got together to relax. During the last two days he had barely said a word, and every time he saw Shelly giving Colton the smallest form of affection, he scowled with disgust.

  Bernam took a sip of water before continuing his speech.

  “I think we can all agree that this is the strongest team we’ve ever had—”

  Reece stood up quickly and pushed his chair back until it fell over. He stepped over it and stomped out of the room, slamming the door closed behind him.

  Bernam looked after him for a moment, then tightened the knot in his tie. “Well, as I was saying: I’m very proud of your hard work. It looks like it’s finally going to pay off. Everything I have promised you is just over the horizon.”

  Colton leaned over to Shelly. “What did he promise you?” he whispered.

  “Shh,” she said gently. “Tell you later.”

  Bernam walked around to the front of the podium.

  “There is only one more step to complete. Before we can start our heavy recruiting phase, there is one last mission—a very important mission—to find the final piece of the equation.”

  “What equation?” whispered Colton.

  Shelly didn’t answer him.

  Bernam smiled. “And I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”

  Alistair sat up in his seat and the twins clapped loudly. Colton had only been with the group a short time, but from what he knew, Bernam never accompanied them when they went out into the world.

  Bernam glanced at his expensive watch.

  “The plane leaves in five hours, at nightfall. I’ll see you all on-board.” He walked past the chairs and left the room.

  The twins turned around in their seats to face Shelly and Colton.

  “I’m Lee,” said the one on the left.

  “I’m Dane,” said the other.

  They had matching Australian accents. Colton shook each of their hands in turn. “Colton.”

  “We know,” said Lee.

  “That’s Shelly,” said Dane, pointing at her and smiling.

  “I think she likes you,” Lee said to Colton.

  “Who wouldn’t?” said Dane. “Just look at how his skin glows.”

  “Did she show you how to do that?” said Lee. “I bet she did. Shelly’s got a thing for all the new arrivals.”

  “Grow up,” she said.

  “Wish we could,” said Lee.

  “But we’re stuck this way,” said Dane.

  He snapped his fingers and a red flame sprouted from his fingertips. Lee quickly grabbed it as if he were snatching a fly from the air and brought his closed fist to his mouth, then pretended to swallow the flame. He wiggled his eyebrows and the flames shot from both of his ears.

  “Ugh,” said Shelly. She stood and left the room.

  Colton leaned in toward the twins. “What do you mean you’re stuck that way?”

  “Perpetual youth,” said Lee.

  “Ageless,” said Dane. He shrugged. “Twenty years old forever. It happens.”

  “At least it wasn’t at sixty,” said Lee.

  Colton looked between them, confused. “But how does that happen?”

  Lee sighed. “Didn’t Alistair tell you all of this?”

  Colton shook his head.

  Lee sighed even harder. “Fine. Sometimes when a Source and Con are linked, it halts the aging process. It’s a side effect of the shared connection. It puts them in a sort of stasis. No one knows why.”

  “But that hasn’t stopped them from trying to figure it out,” said Dane.

  Lee nodded. “Billion-dollar question, that one.”

  “So it doesn’t always happen?” asked Colton.

  “Weren’t you listening? I already said it didn’t. It’s exceedingly rare.”

  “We’re just lucky, I guess.”

  “So how old are you guys?”

  They both grinned mischievously.

  “We’ll never tell, mate,” said Lee.

  “Adds to our aura of mystery.”

  “I hear it’s what girls go for these days, anyway,” said Lee.

  “That and money.”

  Dane looked at Colton. “Speaking of girls, how are you and Shelly getting along?”

  “What’s it to you?” said Colton. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rising.

  “Easy, mate,” said Lee. “We just want to make sure she’s happy, that’s all. Shelly’s a good girl.”

  Colton relaxed. “I barely know her,” he said, realizing his words were true.

  “Give it time,” said Lee. He stood and slapped Colton on the shoulder.

  Dane stood and slapped the other one. “Yeah, give it time.”

  After the twins left the room, Colton stood and walked to the window. Bernam’s plane was parked next to the building on the pavement below. Two men in blue coveralls stood on the wings, inspecting the jet engines on either side of the plane’s body.

  The yellow-orange desert stretched out from the building in every direction. The landscape was dotted with dead cacti and small, branchy bushes. Ruddy mountains lined the horizon.

  Colton thought about leaving.

  He had considered it more and more as the days passed, and there were only two things keeping him around: Shelly, and the promise of doing something useful with his ability. Bernam had told him that they were going to help people who had been taken and held captive—people like Colton who, until recently, had just wanted to be left alone to lead a normal life.

  As if it were a voice in his own head, someone spoke behind him.
/>   “You’re hesitant about tonight.”

  Colton turned to find Bernam standing next to the podium. He had entered and crossed the room silently and stood inspecting Colton with a steady gaze.

  “I am, yes.”

  Bernam studied him a moment longer and then walked to the window to look down at his plane. “That’s understandable. You have only just begun the process of defining yourself through your abilities. Ideally I would never ask anyone so—pardon the term—fresh to accompany me on such a dangerous mission. But I can see in your eyes that you want to be tested—that you long to know the true depths of your power.”

  “I’m worried about Reece. He’s acting really strange.”

  Bernam nodded. “Jealousy toward our kind is a very real problem. It is the reason we usually do not tolerate outsiders. They invariably feel confusion and eventually rage at their lack of abilities. They wonder why someone else was chosen instead of them. It is a futile line of thought that can sometimes have deadly consequences.”

  “So why is he still here?”

  “We all have a part to play, Colton. Even those without abilities can be useful.”

  “What should I do about him?”

  “I have already spoken to Reece. I assured him that he is welcome to stay even if you do not. He seemed much relieved.”

  Colton frowned as he thought about the situation. He watched one of the workers on the plane jump down off the wing and walk into the building.

  Bernam sighed. “You are still not convinced. Alright, then. I will give you another reason to go with us tonight.” He paused until Colton looked at him. “They have your mother.”

  The world sank away around Colton and he was suddenly a small boy in his childhood home on the morning his mother abandoned him. His father stood in the kitchen, clutching her note in his hand until his chewed fingernails pierced his palm and blood dripped over the paper and splatted onto the tile floor.

  His father had never let him read the note.

  “Colton?” said Bernam.

  Reality snapped back and Colton was standing in the conference room on the eleventh floor of a building in the middle of the Montana desert.

  “My mother?” he said weakly.

  “She was taken years ago, when you were a boy. They promised her a cure for her ability—an ability she was hoping that you did not inherit. They ran tests on her, Colton. Painful tests. She is still alive, but she is locked away deep within their secret facility under heavy guard.”

  “Why won’t they let her go?”

  “Because that’s what they do, Colton. They take what they want and hurt whoever stands in their way. We must draw them out into the open and follow them back to their headquarters. Only then can we save your mother and whoever else they are holding prisoner.”

  Colton looked at Bernam. “Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”

  23

  Haven watched as the man named Dormer dropped a wrench he had been holding and ran to the large door as yet another scream echoed through the dome.

  Next to the door was a metal box as big as a refrigerator. Dormer pushed down a handle on the front of the box and the side panels slid down to reveal a compact block of machinery. He flipped a switch on the box and it fired up like a car engine, shaking quickly on its base. Dormer put his hands into the machinery and grabbed onto a thick metal pipe. The machine’s loud rumbling turned to a slow, intermittent chugging until finally the engine died and the box went silent. Dormer let go of the pipe and walked over to the large door. He pressed a sequence of buttons on a black wall panel and the door unlocked with a loud, pneumatic phoomp and swung open.

  “I’m going to check on them,” said Corva.

  Elena nodded and rested her hand on Haven’s shoulder. She gently guided her toward the opposite side of the dome.

  “Not all of us are lucky enough to have full control of our abilities,” she said.

  Haven looked behind her as Corva went through the doorway.

  Elena sighed. “Sometimes we have to take extra care of some of our own. It’s very sad.”

  “Are we really underground?” asked Haven.

  “Oh, yes. We built this facility decades ago as a safe-house for our kind. We saved a bundle by not renting any equipment to dig the hole. It helps when your friends work better than dynamite!” She giggled at her own joke and her clear eyes twinkled as she relived an old memory. “We have been safe here for a long time.”

  She guided Haven around tables, chairs, piles of machine parts, and stacks of paper, and steadily toward a set of swinging double-doors that were cut into the wall of the dome. As they walked, Elena explained the existence of Sources and Conduits. She told Haven how one needs the other if they are to fully realize their own potential—Unity—and how rarely that synergy is achieved.

  Elena pushed open the doors and led Haven into the Grove.

  It was like stepping out of a warehouse and into a forest. Lush, green grass rolled over small hills to the distant corners of the room. Haven vaguely remembered it from when she had first arrived at the facility. A grid of trees had been planted in the middle of the vast space, half of them dead, half still blooming with green leaves and small, colorful flowers. Blue pinpoints of light floated lazily amongst the branches.

  “Do you play football?” asked Elena.

  “I’m an all-star quarterback,” said Haven, smiling weakly. Something about the trees and the grass made her feel lighter and happier than she had felt in a long time.

  Elena laughed. “Very good. You still have a sense of humor. Sometimes we lose that.” She pointed to the far side of the room. “This space is roughly the size of a football field, give or take a few yards. We come here to relax, to think, and to heal.” She walked over to the nearest dead tree and rested her hand on the blackened trunk. “This was mine,” she said. “Not long after I first moved here, I was injured quite badly in a car accident. A car accident, of all things! I thought I was going to die—and I would have, if not for this tree.”

  Haven stepped closer to the trunk and looked up at the bare branches above.

  “A Conduit can take life from the tree and give it to someone else,” she said.

  Elena nodded. “Not all Conduits—some are more gifted than others.”

  “Like Dormer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why trees?”

  “There is an enormous amount of energy in living things,” said Elena. “This life essence can be tapped and redirected to heal injuries. A Conduit can absorb and redirect any kind of energy—but for healing, they must use something that is, or was very recently, alive. Ancient trees harbor vast amounts of this life energy, and it is why we use them to cure the most severe injuries.”

  “But when you brought me here I wasn’t dying.”

  “Oh, but you were. The men at the medical center don’t like to operate on living specimens. They keep a certain amount of prisoners alive for long-term studies, but they much prefer a subject that won’t wake up in the middle of the procedure and cause trouble. The drugs they injected into your system would have killed you shortly after you arrived here.”

  “What did they want from me?”

  “To find out what makes you the way you are. They believe that if they can uncover the root of our abilities, they can dig it out and alter it to fit their dark needs.”

  Haven flipped over a fallen leaf with the toe of her shoe. “In that case, thank you.”

  Elena smiled. “You are very welcome.” She walked past Haven and slowly sat in the grass at the top of a small hill. The bones in her knees popped loudly as she stretched out her legs in front of her. A small blue light floated to her, touched the top of her head, then floated away.

  Haven walked over and sat in the grass beside her.

  “Do you like the lights?” asked Elena. “I made them myself.”

  A cluster of blue lights formed directly over Haven’s head. They swarmed together and spun in the air like a pinwheel before f
lying off in every direction. “They’re beautiful,” she said. “What are they?”

  “Just a distraction. They make me happy.”

  Elena raised her arm and extended her pointer finger toward the ceiling. A small ball of blue light formed between the first two knuckles of her finger—exactly like the blue light that Haven had seen on her own hand in her kitchen—and slowly moved to the tip of her fingernail.

  Elena watched the light, turning her finger to the side as it hovered at the edge of her fingernail. With a gentle blow from her mouth, the light floated up into the air and joined the others in the trees.

  “Is my brother still alive?” asked Haven.

  Elena’s smile faded and her arm slowly lowered to her lap. “Yes. He is at the medical center where we found you.”

  Haven felt the threat of tears well behind her eyes, but forced them back with anger. “Why didn’t you save him? Why did you take me?”

  “We thought you were your brother. We lack the resources to save everyone that is taken by Bernam and his followers, so we must bide our time and strike when it is most important.” She sighed. “Our numbers have been decreasing over the past months. Some go out into the world and never return. I believe they were either killed or captured by Bernam and taken to his medical facility for testing. He’s searching for something—something that he thinks he can only find in us.”

  “Why take Noah? He’s just a little boy.”

  Elena hesitated for a moment. “Your brother—” she said, then stopped. She seemed to be searching for the right words. “I explained to you that there are Sources and Conduits, and that some are more powerful than others. On each side, there is one who is the most powerful. Others may be more capable than these two individuals in only one area, such as storage capacity for a Conduit or burst capabilities for a Source, but the most powerful individuals on both sides more than make up for these shortcomings by being masters of their remaining abilities. More than any other of his or her kind, this person wields a power so profoundly versatile, yet so completely dangerous, that it eclipses all others in existence. If this person is a Source, they are known as a Phoenix. The strongest Conduit is called a Void.”