Original Souls (A World Apart #1) (53 page)

The other woman nodded. "True," she said with ease. She must have heard the same.

"Well, she said that the mixed boy was her grandchild. She didn't even refer to him by name half the conversation. She just kept on saying; my only grand-baby. She just cried and said how sorry she felt for him."

The listening lady looked to her coworker like she was crazy. "Sena. Hendrix ... tears. You've got to be making this up." Corinth agreed much more with her than her loudmouth friend.

"Now I know it sounds strange, bu
t
—” she hastily halted her blathering
,“
wait, you won't tell anyone I've said all this, right?"

The other lady appeared hurt. "How many times have we swopped stories. I just hope you're not making this one up, 'cause it can come back to you through karma, sweetie. And that's if you're lucky, 'cause if someone did find out, we'd both be on the first train zipping out of here."

“
I know, and that's not even the best part. She indicted Sena. Lilith in the missing uncle thing. She said Lilith had gotten to the guy. All for someone named Sebastian. Now here's where I got a little concerned myself. She said that The Well Read Walker librarian guy is the reason why the boy's in here. Why he's in the hospital. I was coming there to give her the final tests. They were conclusive on food poisoning. Tha
t’
s what got the little bugger so worked up at the auditorium. But more than likely, h
e’
s fighting a common cold too, so he's probably just feeling weak all together.
I’
m sure tha
t’
s why he passed out yesterday."

Corinth couldn't believe she was saying all this. Then he thought about the way the fruit that Walker gave him tasted. And the way he stared at it like it was alive or something. He couldn't take any more bad news, but he needed to know now, so listened in even more intently.

"Before I even got the chance to tell her any of this food poisoning business, she said over the phone that the boy visited the librarian before the assembly. That he ate with him. He ate the only thing he'd eaten all that day."

"Oh my!" the other woman gasped and covered her mouth. She too knew that this kind of food poisoning was fast acting. He had to have eaten it within hours of his reaction. "Are you sure, Cynthia?" the startled woman asked her eavesdropping coworker.

Cynthia gave her a telling look as she tucked in the white sheets of the unoccupied bed. "I'm only sure of what the Grand Ministrant said. I don't know if she's right. But if the boy ate with the librarian the
n—
"

"Then she's right," the woman finished her sentence as they both closed the curtain, coming back into the aisles between the beds.

To hear them sound so certain put Corinth on edge. He didn't want them to know he was awake and heard everything. But more so, he wanted to be sure what he heard them say was true. At least from their perspectives.

"What else you hear about the Lilith thing? Why would a girl like her do something like that?"

Cynthia responded quickly. "How? That's a better question. He's a cop. A Squadron cop. He's no sissy. But h
e’
s a looker so..."

"Yeah, but so is Lilith. She certainly don't need to go round kidnapping law officers to get a hot date!" The other lady seemed convinced that it was all just trash talk. No matter how the chips fell, there just were
n’
t any hard facts to support Cynthi
a’
s gossip.

"I wasn't too sure about that one anyway
,
” she said dismissively
,“
but Sena Hendrix sure did seem so!" Cynthia giggled as she and her work friend pulled back Corinth's curtain. When they di
d—
they received a very rude welcoming gift.

Corinth tapped into the power he'd been desperately trying to ignore these past weeks. The same power that ended the disaster at the Pavilion. He reached deep into himself and found it. What he pulled out from the depths of his soul was more than he could control.

The blast of energy radiating from his deft perception surfaced all at once. The windows behind each bed in the hospital burst out. The energy that cycled through the room warped its structure. The walls moved like waves of water. The glass shot out quickly, then stopped abruptly and pulled back into the hospital room slowly. Sending a series of broken shards covering the beds and ripping the velvety curtains closing them in. The two women before him dropped to their knees with eyes the same turquoise shade as Corinth's. He was inside their minds probing deep for a solid surface for which these allegations could stand on. He found i
t—
and a lot more.

Cynthia's mind yielding many more revelations than the other woman's. She was not lying about what she heard. When he watched her, watching Sena. Hendrix from a cracked office door, he felt like he was living the moment out with her. This deep immersion in her thoughts pulled him in, like the ocea
n’
s current. Before he knew it, he'd connected to another mind. His subconscious knew the truest of truths laid with Sena. Hendrix. He didn't want to consume her mind, but it had already happened before he thought to stop himself. And he saw, everything!

<*>

From the twelfth floor of the very same building, Hendrix gripped her frien
d’
s hand much tighter than she had been holding it.

"What's wrong, Silvia?"

"No, nothing. I'm sorry for that," she paused, eyes darting around. "I don't know exactly what that was. I just felt a sharp surge of awareness." She flagged her hand toward him casually. "It's probably nothing. Just rest yourself, Alastair."

<*>

Corinth sat up in his hospital bed with teary, brightly glowing eyes. He looked like a very petite, but absolutely absurd madman. The two nurses lay unconscious on the checkered tiled floors in front of the bed. He was inundated with information that was long kept from him. And from this new knowledge, he mostly felt anger. An intense anger toward his dad and mom. He couldn't believe they'd do such a thing, even if the woman was as vile as Hendrix. She's changed a lot, he thought. Not enough, but sh
e’
s his grandmother for heaven's sake. Twelve years is just too long to shut someone so close to you out. He felt her pain over missing his childhood. It was the biggest regret of her life. Her hateful affectations that pushed her own son away to the point that Criston no longer viewed Silvia Hendrix as family.

Corinth wanted to sit there forever, but he figured someone would have heard the wreckage. He hopped out of the bed and started covering his tracks. He didn't want any of it to be traceable to him. He tried focusing the power this time around. He used it to alter records, so that they reflected him being discharged late last night. He rearranged wording on sheets of paper without tainting the integrity of ink. He lifted letter after letter, number after number from the pages, and they floated through the air to where he preferred them to be on the papers. On some sheets, he erased entire sections of information with the flick of his mind. He wiped the ladies memories of the past few hours up to when the forms now stated his release. He didn't know if he did any of it right, but it was all he had.

He walked urgently out of the room, utterly forgetting he was in a hospital robe. He ducked back in and looked around for his clothes. They were folded up right next to the bed in a lone chair oddly close to where his head would have been laying all night. His school uniform neatly stacked layer by layer on this black chair with stainless steel legs. He faced the shattered windows while putting them on, and then looked to his right. He noticed a computer behind a Plexiglas window. H
e’
d just walked over there, the entrance being adjacent to the Plexiglas, but he was blinded by his rush. Now that he slowed down, forcing his little feet to slip into his loafers, he could think more clearly.

He made his way over to the office. Walking out the hospital into the hallway, where the swinging office door was just one door down from the hospital section entrance they placed him in. Corinth figured the glass window was there so the nurses could check on patients without leaving the office. Unless, of course, patients actually needed help of some kind. Then those gossiping hags would be forced to their calloused toes to do their jobs, instead of lollygagging the day away about little mixed boys and their abstractly warped lives.

An annoyed Corinth noticed several computers instead of one once he passed through the doorway. He knew that's where the information was actually stored. Those papers he erased and altered were just printouts from these computers. He tried focusing his power again, but was tapped out already. Completely overdosed by the initial surge when he read too many minds to count. He pushed anyhow, attempting to rid the school of any record that he was here during this crazy, freak-out event.

Without warning, the first computer exploded, like fireworks and gunfire at the Pavilion, setting off the sprinkler systems. The alarm sounded as the red and white sirens mounted high on the walls lit up. Water poured down from the ceilings. And Corinth could definitely hear people coming now. He couldn't imagine what took them so long, but he was hyper-aware after using all that mental strength, so he knew it would
n’
t matter, because this fire and subsequent drenching of the touch screen computers ought to do the job of erasing things for him.

He quickly ducked out of the room, running from wall to wall down the hall. His back up against each, as he shimmied his way down the narrow corridor that led farthest away from the hospital sector. The late responding rescue team was now in, and Corinth, far out of the hospital and its nurs
e’
s office.

He then embarked on the lonely journey back to his dorm. The elevator was empty, because ministrants and students alike had class. It was a good thing though. There was no one around to question why a soaking wet, weeping boy -sat curled up in the corner, looking like h
e’
d been to hel
l—
and never came back.

May 22, 1002
~
Midday

Corinth sat on his bed alone for several hours, pondering all that he just learned. He threw Oliveto's green ball across the room and up against the big wooden door. He caught it like a pro every time it bounced back. He'd be a star on the Spheres team, if only he'd go to practice, but Walker was right about it being quite a
dull game. He thought and thought some more. While thinking, he donned a grimace so grave that he could feel the muscles in his face growing stiff. The
y’
d be stuck that way if something did
n’
t give. And just like that, his thinking boy time was prematurely interrupted without proper notice. Anvard and the usual suspects opened the door without knocking, and then shuffled their way inside.

"So, we just heard that you were discharged -
last night
. Of course, before all the commotion this morning in the hospital. And yet, you didn't come see any of us?" Anvard smiled brightly and folded his arms across his broad chest like a lecturing father.

Corinth swiftly got up from his bed and started pacing in front of it. Displacing Claudia and the twins in the process. "I'm not in the mood for jokes!" he said it quickly, like his life depended on them understanding the point straight away.

Once again, Anvard felt Corinth pushing him away. They hadn't made any progress in their relationship since the day they met. "Cor
y—
"

"Don't call me that. My mom and dad call me that. I don't like it, but they're my parents. And you're just you. So just stop it already!"

Anvard was the king of forgiveness. No matter what someone said or did, he always tried to look at it from their perspective. "So, it's that bad?" he said, while slowly sitting down on the edge of Corinth's bed.

Corinth stopped pacing and looked at him. "Yeah, it kind of is."

"Good thing you have friends then!" He smiled with genuine delight and Corinth sat down next to him with a sigh of relief steaming through his narrow nostrils.