Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter (25 page)

She smiled faintly, and then looked back at the cargo ramp as it sealed shut.

“You’re not thinking about Breeze, are you?” he asked earnestly.

“No, of course not,” she said.

He closed his eyes as his head sunk into the headrest. “Good. Real good. It’s going to be nice to be rid of him and get back home. Things will be so much better.” He reached over and squeezed her hand.

They felt cold to her. “Of course.” She forced another smile as she settled back into her seat and looked out the window.

The transport lifted off and drifted across the tarmac for a moment, when a sudden surge from the engines sent the ship hurtling into the sky and through the red stained clouds colored by the rising sun.

BREEZE BROUGHT THE HOVER
to a stop and turned to watch the transport carrying Ray and Sally lift off into the morning sky, keeping his eyes on it until it disappeared into the red tinted clouds. Far off to the west, he could see a thick line of thunderstorms brewing over the ocean.

He settled back into his seat, threw the gear lever into drive and sped off. He grinned as he thought about the role reversal he was experiencing. When he arrived first at Perihelion, it was Excort doing the driving as he fearfully sat in the passenger seat as they sped through the palm forest. Now, he was calmly piloting a hover without a care in the world after helping fellow students leave without permission.
I’m a bad guy now, I suppose.

He whisked through the palm forest and never once did he flinch as the trees bent themselves to make way. He burst out of the forest and onto the main boulevard, gliding the vehicle to a stop in front of the dormitories.

He leapt out and bounded up the steps and into the building. He walked past the coral pool in the rotunda and headed straight down the breezeway to his room where Kera and Oslo, along with Excort, were standing outside his door.

“Breeze!” Oslo strode over with gigantic steps and loomed over him. “Explain yourself young man, what has transpired?”

“We’re leaving,” he said as he sidestepped him and reached for the door handle.

“Wait!” Oslo called out.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and he whipped around to confront the tall man. “I’m not really sure what sort of plans you had for us. We’ve been here for weeks and nothing has happened. Sally just said something to me earlier about you that got me thinking. She said that you’re keeping us in storage. For what, I don’t know, but ever since we arrived here, we’ve had nothing but strange experience after strange experience. Toss in the fact that one of us almost got killed. Twice.” He flung open his door and stepped inside where he grabbed his backpack and began stuffing it with his meager possessions.

Kera stood outside with Excort as Oslo stepped in.

“A little privacy please?” Breeze said.

Oslo ignored him. “Excort came rushing into my office, and told me that the fog has been lowered, and that a transport departed soon after. I became alarmed and immediately searched the grounds for all of you. Now, Kera tells me she watched as you helped your fellow students abscond with a ship. Is this true?”

Breeze pointed at Kera out in the hallway. “Well, ask her yourself. If she saw it, why didn’t she try to stop us?”

Kera glided into the room with her white dress swirling around her.

Breeze stepped back as she came to a stop before him.

“It was for the best. This charade must come to an end before any more harm befalls us,” Kera said as she stared at Breeze for a moment, then turned to Oslo.

Oslo gently took her hands, which made her body crackle with energy for a brief second. “My dear lady, what are you trying to say?”

“Let them fly away, Ole Auken, it is for the best.” She place a hand over his heart. “You know this to be true.”

“No!” he roared as he threw her hands off and the room trembled.

Breeze inched back toward his backpack, and then continued packing with great haste.

“It was not supposed to be this way.” Oslo said. “I made a promise to their parents to guarantee their safety, and that I would not let them be taken by the Elephim like they did in the past. Not again.”

“My dear man, wake up. This is a fight you must walk away from. Take your daughter—” she shook her head, ”—take Nina with you and go to Raza. Be whole again. Let the inevitable take place.”

Breeze stopped packing. “Is Nina that girl I saw when I first came here?”

Oslo and Kera both turned to face him.

He immediately regretted speaking up. “Forget it, I could care less. I have enough problems at home and I don’t need any more.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder. “I don’t know what this place is supposed to be about. I just know I’m going home. I shouldn’t have let my father talk me into this.”

He brushed past the two instructors and out into the breezeway.

Excort was standing by the door and glared at him as he stepped out of his room. “How did you manage to drop the fog?”

Breeze shrugged. “I didn’t. Go ask Ray, he figured it out. Oh, wait, he’s gone. Guess you can’t.”

He marched away, only stopping when Oslo called out to him.

“Breeze, just a moment. Give me chance to clarify.”

Breeze pivoted around and strode up to him. “What is there to say? This isn’t a school and you are no instructor. That Kera lady over there? Don’t have a clue as to what she’s supposed to be about. And that?” He pointed at Excort. “Never saw a dwarf before. Let alone one that looks like that even in a storybook.”

Excort snarled at him.

Oslo held up a hand. “Please, there has been enough backbiting and dissent already,
ja?
I shall take the blame for everything, just allow me to explain.” There was a sense of desperation in his voice as he spoke.

Breeze shrugged. “There’s not much more to say. You falsely told our parents that we were going to spend a summer session here to learn more about our powers. Instead, you had us fixing up this old and crappy place and doing training exercises that led to nothing. And the question that has been bothering us all? Where are the other students?”

Oslo nodded. “Yes, yes. All good questions, and reasonable concerns that I have been remiss in addressing.”

“Okay, now you got my attention,” Breeze said sarcastically as he folded his arms across his chest.

“My recruiters—” Oslo began.

“Vermillion and Horton? Yeah, whatever happened to those clowns?”

Oslo ignored his comment. “My recruiters seem to have been...out of contact for quite some time and I have not been able to reach them. Though, I do believe I will be hearing from them soon.”

“Right, the same way we couldn’t reach our parents over the comms because of this fog thing you have over the island. Well, now that Ray seems to have figured out a way to drop it, I suppose you can talk to them again.”

Oslo’s face turned red, and when he spoke, it was in a soft, but earnest voice. “How exactly did all of this come about?”

“Well, since you have no control around here, Ray seems to have been wandering about and poking his nose inside every building here. Maybe you thought we were too dumb to go around and explore this place, but we have. I’ve spent a lot of time around the hangars looking at the aerocraft and robot mechanics you call the RF. Robot mechanics! We don’t have anything like that back home, and I don’t think there is any place like this in the world even though everything looks so old. As for Ray? Well, I guess he got what he wanted. He’s been trying to reach his father ever since he got here and found a way to do that. That Science and Engineering Building by the way? Loaded with all kinds of machines. Oh, and there’s some guy named Bram living inside a tube in the basement. Can you explain that away?”

Oslo and Kera became visibly agitated at the mention of the name. Kera glided up to Oslo’s side and hovered next to him.

“Tell me young man, what did you see?” Oslo’s voice was like a whisper.

Breeze told him of his encounter with Bram.

Oslo turned to Kera. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? You were down there with them? You were observing the whole time? You only told me you saw them departing Perihelion, and no more.”

“I did not wish to alarm you further.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and drew him closer. “We have spoken about his before, my dear man. I have always been an unwilling participant in all of this. I told you from the very beginning not to bring them here, and to keep this forsaken island closed and hidden from prying eyes. I have also been encouraging you since they arrived to send them back home, that no good would come from this. There are things on this island that were placed here for a reason because most could not handle the truth if they discovered the true nature of it all.”

Oslo grabbed her by the shoulders. “I brought them here for a good reason, so do not try undermine my decisions, woman. I went out of my way to retrieve Sally for you as I thought that would at least make you happy.”

She resonated as her body became translucent and she broke free from his grip, and then hovered before him as ghostly mirage. “I do not need to be close to her in order to observe her. Wherever she may be, I merely have to close my eyes and she is there. Bringing her here has caused greater calamity and increased the risks of being discovered.
By
them
.” She finished her words with a hiss as she pointed at the sky.

Oslo groaned. “How many times must I say this? They are dormant. They no longer rule the skies like they once did—”

“Then explain your urgency in scouring the world for them.” She pointed at Breeze. “If you no longer live in fear of those above, then why the mad rush to recruit, no,” she said with a sick smile, “to save and shelter as many of these paranormal children as possible? Don’t bother to answer, I will. Because they are back, sweeping this planet from one continent to the next and taking those they deem valuable and eliminating the rest. You and I both know this.”

Oslo put a hand up to her. “Rest your tongue, woman.”

Kera materialized to swat his hand away. “I will even say their name. The Elephim.”

Oslo took a step towards her, and she shrunk back.

“Yes, Oslo, that very name. The one you dread to hear. They are back. They are burning cities again, are they not? Just like in the past.”

“I thought I was helping by bringing them here to give us a chance to reclaim the world again for ourselves,” Oslo said as he loomed over her. “I also thought I was doing you a favor bringing her to you and creating an opportunity to secure a legacy.”

“Sally and I may be alike, but as I told you, I can guide her no matter where she is.”

“No!” he roared. “Foolish woman, do you think they do not have ways to block your access to her?”

“I am prepared for whatever they may throw my way and willing to accept the consequences. Are you?” She shimmered brightly and floated closer to him. “You should have let sleeping dogs lie. But no, you had to stir the hornets’ nest. We all could have faded quietly into the night, but you just can’t give up the past, can you, my dear Ole?”

“When you call me by that name, I know it’s just your way of getting under my skin.”

“I’m reminding you that even in the past, you were never really accepted here, no matter what you did with Raza and Bram. Even now, you are still an outsider on this empty relic of an island. Go back to Scandinavia. Better yet, take Nina with you to Appalachia. You will find safety there, or at least closure and peace of mind. Keep your promise you made to Raza and make her whole again.”

Breeze heard enough. “Can’t say I understand anything you two are talking about. But I’m smart enough to realize that it’s pretty serious. I’m going now,” he said and turned his back to them.

Oslo stood before him. “Breeze, wait. Just hear me out,
ja?
” Oslo said as placed his hands on Breeze’s shoulders.

Breeze was too stunned by how quickly Oslo moved to resist.

“I have kept much from you and from the others as well, but for good reason. I now realize the error of my ways. If only I had conveyed to all of you the sense of urgency in my mission, then perhaps things would not have turned out this way. But you are all that I have left. I beg you young man, listen to me now.”

Breeze nodded.

“Long ago,” he sighed, “very long ago, I too, arrived here much like you, a fish out of water. This place, as I imagine you have surmised for yourself, is no school. It was an outpost. A military outpost. The last of its kind in a world that was dwindling into mediocrity and eventually, destruction. I came here as a raw recruit with gifts I did not quite understand, much like yourself. I would rise up through the ranks and into the Military Science Battalion. It was there that I would meet Raza, who became my wife, and Bram, the man who became my best friend.”

He relaxed his grip on Breeze. “It was in that very building the three of us began to unravel the mystery of the hidden forces that were sowing the seeds of dissent and destruction throughout the planet, and across to her far flung colonies on other worlds.”

Breeze spoke up. “When you talk about colonies, you mean space travel?”

Oslo smiled broadly. “Yes, son. Yes. It was a magnificent time. An age of heroes!”

Breeze laughed. “Space travel isn’t possible. It’s a myth. The best we can do today is just fly through the atmosphere. Nothing else.”

“It is there you are wrong, young man. It was a gilded age, where anything was possible. I should know. I lived it. You must believe me.”

“You lost me with the space travel thing. That’s how I know you’re insane. It’s not possible.” He brushed Oslo aside and resumed his march to the stairs.

“Did you not see anything here at all that piqued your curiosity? Or are you truly the lowly son of a scrap metal hoarder?”

Breeze came to a sudden stop upon hearing those words. He was tempted to turn around and say something, then continued on his way.

“March away, young man, off to obscurity and insignificance, much like the rest of the world. No hope. No future. No dreams. Just emptiness.”

Breeze whipped around. “What do you want from me, old man? Why do you keep saying these things?”

“After all you have witnessed, are you still asleep?” Oslo said. He was framed against the encroaching morning light with Kera in her flowing white dress beside him. Excort stood off to the side.

The three of them were not that strange to him. Seeing the dregs of the desert come to his father’s scrap yard allowed him to witness the sad and dark underbelly of the world with its maddening poverty, the hopelessness, and the wasted lives. A world where Nomadic people aimlessly wandered the desert searching for scraps to sell to his father so they could feed their children.

It dawned on him that the three individuals he was staring at came from a different time. They had lived longer than most men ever have. Far longer. He didn’t know how he realized this, it just came to him. Like a thread that unravels from a sweater and reveals the flesh that it was trying to hide.