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  “Which one is my brother?”

  “Neither,” said Elena.

  Haven looked up as a blue light floated over her head. It glowed brighter and split into two lights, which swirled around each other as they quickly rose higher in the air.

  “You’re a Phoenix,” she said suddenly.

  Elena nodded. She looked as if admitting it caused her great pain.

  “I have never been able to sense the existence of any of our kind,” she said, “until very recently. It was an aspect of my ability that I was told would manifest itself when the time came. I must admit that I had my doubts. Now I know that those doubts were wrong.” She looked over at Haven hesitantly. “Your brother is a hybrid. He possesses—or rather, he will possess—the characteristics of both a Source and a Conduit. He will be able to create his own energy and also to unleash it without the need for a counterpart. This hybridization of our abilities has only happened once before, and that person died because they did not know how to control their unlimited potential. It is the holy grail for Bernam, and it is why he has taken your brother. If I, as a Phoenix, could sense the existence and location of your brother, then it stands to reason that Bernam, as a Void, could sense it as well. He wants to be a hybrid, and he will stop at nothing until he achieves his goal.”

  “Oh, Noah,” whispered Haven. A warm tear rolled down her cheek.

  Elena reached over and wiped away the tear. “There is still time,” she said. “Now that you are awake, you can come with us to the medical center and help us rescue your brother.”

  Haven shook her head slowly in defeat. “I don’t even know what’s happening to me.”

  “You will,” said Elena. “In time.”

  “How much time is there?” said Haven hotly. “What if he’s already dead?”

  “They still need him, Haven, and as long as they still need him, he is safe. You must hold on to that hope for as long as possible.”

  Haven sniffed and rubbed her nose. “Were my parents like me?”

  “You mean did they have their own abilities?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Haven closed her eyes as the sharp pain of a migraine suddenly flared behind her eyes. It hit her much faster than it ever had before, driving deep into her skull.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Elena.

  “Just a headache,” she said with a groan. “I get them occasionally.” Haven rubbed her temples to try and dull the pain.

  “Those will pass. They are quite common for Sources before they fully adjust to their new abilities.”

  Haven opened her eyes as the pain slowly faded. She thought about everything Elena had said. “I thought everyone’s fire was supposed to be a different color. Every Source, I mean.”

  “Their energy, yes.”

  “But my fire is blue, like yours.”

  “I noticed. Not quite the same, but close enough.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Elena smiled. “I’m not sure. But I bet we’re going to find out.”

  24

  The engines were already warming up when Colton stepped into the plane, their high-pitched whine slowly building to a loud roar. The twins were seated in the very back, their heads leaning in opposite directions as they slept.

  Alistair sat in the chair closest to the door and nodded at Colton when he entered. He settled back into his seat and closed his eyes. Shelly was halfway down the plane, sitting in one of the oversized leather chairs that lined both sides of the cabin. She smiled at Colton and motioned for him to join her. He smiled back and walked down the aisle, then stopped when he passed Reece, who was slouched down in his seat with his face close to the window.

  “Hey,” said Colton.

  Reece shifted in his seat to twist farther away from the aisle.

  “Come on, Reece.” Colton didn’t like the tension between the two of them and he wanted to clear the air so things could go back to the way they were before they left New York.

  “Go sit with your girlfriend,” said Reece without looking over.

  “Don’t be like this, man. What’s going on with you?”

  “Pffff,” Reece sneered.

  “Fine,” said Colton, shaking his head. He walked down the aisle and sat next to Shelly, sighing in frustration as the leather chair formed around his back.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “He’s being stupid, that’s what’s wrong.”

  Shelly looked at Reece, who had propped one of his feet on the seat in front of him and still sat staring out the window.

  “It’s a lot to get used to,” she said. “Especially if he feels like he isn’t, you know, one of us.”

  “Why doesn’t he just leave, then? Bernam said he could stay, but why stick around if he’s miserable?”

  “He’s your friend, Colton. Maybe he wants to stay here with you.”

  Colton sighed again. “He should get over it. I’m doing just fine.”

  “Well,” said Shelly with a smile, “you’re special, aren’t you?”

  She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  Colton blushed.

  The door to the cabin closed loudly, sealing them inside. Bernam stepped from behind a partition at the front of the plane and looked around.

  “Everyone here? Excellent. We should be at our destination in a little less than an hour. If you need to rest, I suggest you start now.” He paused when he saw Alistair and the twins. “Ah, good. I see some of you beat me to it. Very well, then.” He turned and went back through the partition.

  The jet engines whirred to full power and the small plane rolled across the hot pavement next to the black-windowed building.

  Shelly rested her hand on Colton’s leg as the plane picked up speed and the wheels lifted off the ground.

  “You don’t like flying?” asked Colton.

  “I love it, actually. Why do you ask?”

  Colton looked down at her hand on his leg, then into her eyes. She looked back, her gaze steady and inviting.

  “No reason,” he said. “Do you want to tell me now, or later?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “The thing you wouldn’t tell me in the meeting. What did Bernam promise everyone?”

  “Oh, that,” she said. She pulled her hand off his leg and leaned back in her seat. “He said he could turn all of us into hybrids.”

  “Hybrids,” repeated Colton. “Those exist?”

  “One that we know about, but he died a long time ago. There’s a rumor that Bernam has found another one who is willing to help him figure out how to replicate the ability.”

  “Why is it so hard to replicate?”

  “Because someone born with only one ability—either Source or Con—can’t hold the opposite energy within their bodies for very long. A lot of people have tried. If they get the foreign energy out in time, they only go insane. If they hold on to it…well, let’s just say it isn’t pretty.”

  “So Bernam thinks he can turn everyone into hybrids,” said Colton.

  “Yeah,” said Shelly. “Pretty rad, huh?”

  “But why? What’s the point?”

  Shelly laughed and her short auburn hair bounced across her face. She tucked it back behind her ears and turned in her seat to face Colton. “Look what we can do now, with just one half of the equation. Imagine what it would be like if we didn’t spend our lives searching for the missing key—that one other person that holds the potential to unlock all of our power. Most of us never find that person. We spend our whole lives searching. I’m tired of waiting for it to happen on its own.”

  “I don’t get why any Source isn’t compatible with just any Conduit.”

  “I don’t get it either, but that’s just the way it is. A Source can burn themselves up trying to make it work, and they usually take the Con with them. It’s called feedback, and it’s a nasty thing to watch.”

  “How do you know when you’ve found the right person?” asked C
olton.

  Shelly shrugged. “According to those that are lucky enough to find their counterpart, they just know.”

  Colton sat silently for a long time, then said, “I thought we were going to be helping people.”

  “We are! But just think how much more we can do once we’re hybrids! It’s the first step in the process.” She stuck her legs out and rested them across Colton’s lap. “After that,” she said, “we can save all the people you want, Mr. Boy Scout.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him playfully. “You know, there’s a special term for a hybrid. If a person has both abilities, they don’t call them a Source or a Conduit any more. I always hated that term, ‘Conduit’. Bleh! Like a piece of tubing or something.”

  “What do they call them?”

  “A Nova. As in supernova. As in the power of an exploding star.” Shelly spun in her seat and looked up at the ceiling. Strands of her hair fell out from behind her ears and bobbed over her face as she turned. “Shelly isn’t my real name,” she said.

  “What?”

  “My full name is Michelle. My parents named me after my Aunt.”

  “It’s very pretty,” said Colton.

  Sadness filled her eyes as she looked at him.

  “Do you know what they did when I told them about my ability?”

  Colton shook his head.

  “They kicked me out. They wouldn’t even let me take a suitcase. That’s the kind of ignorance that being different reveals in people. Nothing about me had changed. I was still their daughter—still the same little girl I had always been. They were scared of me.”

  She turned in her seat to look out the window, lost in her own thoughts.

  Colton wanted to say he was sorry but thought she had probably heard it too many times before.

  He looked over her shoulder and out through the small, circular window. The sky gradated dark to light as it dropped toward the horizon. The first colors of evening streaked across the sky; deep orange mixed with faint purple. Soon the sun would dip below the mountains and the temperature would plummet.

  The ground below was a brown desert that stretched out in all directions. As the plane banked slightly in the air, Colton saw the distant lights of a city. Small pinpoints of white, yellow, and red shined like small stars in the desert.

  He thought of what Shelly had said about becoming a hybrid. Colton didn’t know if he wanted more power than he already had. After he found his mother, he wanted to take her as far away from the people that hurt her as he could. He didn’t care what happened after that. If Bernam was serious about helping people who couldn’t help themselves, then maybe Colton would stick around a little while longer. Shelly was enough of a reason to stay, but he needed to get his mother to safety before he started thinking about himself.

  Colton remembered the daydreams he had as a child—fantasies where he was a superhero with incredible powers that saved children from burning buildings. He watched all the cartoons and read all the comic books. He played with stiff-armed action figures that wore brightly-colored costumes and promised justice with their square jaws and obscene muscles.

  Is that what I am now? he wondered. Is this what being a hero feels like?

  Colton hadn’t saved anybody. He was no hero. Maybe he could be, later, but right then he could not ignore the foolish hope to bring his mother back home to his father, to put her hand in his and say, “There. Everything’s all better. Now we’re a family again.”

  25

  Marius sat in front of Haven, squinting at her. They were in a large rectangular room that extended away from the dome like a big shoebox. The walls and floor were bare except for a few exercise mats and a wooden rack bolted to the wall that held a few broken broomsticks.

  “Hmm,” said Marius. “Hmmmm.”

  Haven’s shoulders dropped and she raised her eyebrows. “Well?!”

  “I’m thinking,” he said. He scratched at the black and grey stubble on his chin, then his hand drifted up to the top of his head and he scratched his closely-shaven scalp. “Hmmmmm. You know martial arts?”

  “No!” she said.

  “Hand-to-hand? Disarming methods?

  “Nope.”

  “How to use gun?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why ‘of course not’? In Russia I knew by age of seven.”

  “We’re not in Russia.”

  He chuckled. “Yes, I know this. Maybe we start with what you know, okay?” He looked at her, waiting. “So…what do you know?”

  “About what?!”

  He sighed, then stood. “Okay, we start small. I teach you defense, yes? Come.” He motioned for Haven to follow him as he stepped back from the door toward the center of the room. He glanced up at the ceiling twenty feet above their heads. “This will work,” he said.

  “Work for what?” asked Haven. She stepped forward hesitantly, looking around as if she expected an attacker to materialize out of thin air.

  Marius had been adamant about training her as much as possible before the group left for the medical center early the next morning. Haven said that she would have been useless if she tried to save her brother and Marius had immediately insisted that she follow him to what he called the “exercise room”.

  “Okay,” he said, holding up his palms for her to stop walking. “Put hands up, like this.” He pulled his right hand close to his face and held it a few inches in front of his mouth, his palm open but his fingers firmly together as if he was about to slap someone. He moved his left arm away from him until his hand hovered about a foot in front of his face. Haven thought that if Marius closed his fists it would look like he was holding an invisible blowgun.

  She imitated his motions as best she could.

  “Good,” he said. “Now.” He stepped toward her and brought his left hand down to her face in slow motion. She stepped away and swatted his hand to the side. “Okay, good,” he said. “Except opponent moves much faster in real life, yes? You want to keep one arm close to your body, always, in case they get near you with knife or something else. Always push away from your body, like this…”

  Marius swung at her again in slow motion, a wide swing that Haven easily deflected away from her body. She turned as his arm swept past her.

  “Ah-ah,” he scolded.

  She looked down to see the fingers of his other hand barely touching the side of her ribcage.

  “Bye-bye lung,” he said, grinning.

  Haven pushed his hand away and replanted her feet. Marius looked down at them and frowned.

  “Wider stance,” he said.

  She spread her feet farther apart.

  “No pigeon-toe,” he said. “Line them up the same way. Good. Now move that one back a few inches. Very good. This way you don’t lose balance when I do this.”

  He kicked out his leg and hooked his foot behind one of her ankles. He yanked back, taking her leg with him, but Haven hopped forward on her other foot and managed to stay standing.

  Marius laughed. “Very good! Still much to learn, but I think you will be good student, yes? It will be many weeks before you are ready to fight a real opponent, but a few hours a day and you will be better than Marius, I think.”

  She sighed and crossed her arms.

  “Oh, don’t look so sad,” he said. “Tomorrow, we get back your brother and everything is okay again.”

  “It won’t ever be okay again,” she said with more venom than she had intended. “My parents are dead. They’re not ever coming back!”

  Haven turned and wiped away the tears running down her cheeks—tears that had fallen more often as the hours wore on.

  “Oh, my,” said Marius. He walked over and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I did not mean that you should forget them. I did not mean that at all.”

  She sniffed. “My home is gone. Burned to the ground. Even if I get Noah back, there’s nowhere to go.”

  “You stay here!” he said quickly. “You both stay here. We have food, water, gymnasium.” He gesture
d grandly to the empty room in which they stood and Haven smiled. “All the things growing girl and boy need. Okay?”

  Haven could think of a hundred other places she would rather stay than a damp underground shelter, but until she knew that Noah was one-hundred percent safe, she didn’t see any other option.

  She nodded and Marius clapped his hands together loudly.

  “Excellent!” he said. “But training not over yet. Best to teach you something you will definitely use tomorrow. Now is time for the fun stuff.”

  He twirled his finger to indicate that she should turn to face him. She did so and moved one foot in front of the other as he had shown her.

  “More of that later,” said Marius. “For now, relax. Hands by side. Good. Close your eyes.”

  She raised one eyebrow and looked at him.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  She closed her eyes and waited for his instructions.

  “Listen carefully,” he said. “There is a light inside of you. It burns brighter than anything else in this world.” He spoke softly and his voice circled around her. “It is your soul—it is everything you are and also much more. It is life, it is energy, and you feel it growing stronger within you.”

  In her mind’s eye, Haven saw a vast nothingness. A dim blue light sparked to life in the distance and grew stronger as it approached.

  “You can hold this energy inside of you,” said Marius, “but not forever. You must guide it as it grows. You must shape it for its true purpose. Otherwise it will fade, and you will lose it forever. Control it, keep it close. Once it is strong enough, release it slowly…carefully.”

  The blue light in the darkness expanded until it was a small star in Haven’s imagination. It turned slowly and its surface shifted like blue lava—swirling and bubbling with immense power. Strands like solar flares arced from the expanding ball and snapped in half, sending strings of blue plasma spinning into the blackness.