Bloom (14 page)

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 bolted to the walls of the dome. 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 4
^th
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.

Corva and Elena exchanged a quick look.

The man named Dormer dropped a wrench he had been holding and ran to the large door. 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.

“What…” said Haven,” …was that?”

“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.”