Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (59 page)

“I’ve already told you what I think of this.” Aurora frowned at him.

“Oh, I’m sure we can bring the little wild thing back to society.” Pixie reached to pat her on the head.

Althea looked at her and growled.

“Feral food aggression?” asked Aurora.

Pixie’s gaze softened. “Aww.”

“She’s manipulating you.” Archon pinched the bridge of his nose again.

Another handful of rice crumbled over her face and Pixie reached for the spoon.

“Don’t.” Archon waved his hand. “She’ll get all mopey about that mongrel
sister
of hers, and it will set us back a month.”

Althea grabbed the spoon defiantly, and shoveled at the rice.

He smiled. “Now then, Althea.” He lowered his hands to the table.

“Altheeeea,” she said in a petulant tone. “You’re saying it bad. Not all-thay-a.”

He again pinched the bridge of his nose, shivering, trying to hide his indignant anger. After a moment, calm.

“You must have a great many questions for us. First, let me begin by welcoming you to our little group. You have met Annabelle. She has a talent with electricity. This is Lauren. Her talent allows her to find people for us, and she is quite the clairvoyant.”

“Am I then?” The ivory woman made a sarcastic face, scratching in the air with a claw-like gesture. “Then why don’t you believe me?”

Althea glanced at Pixie, Aurora, and Archon one after the next. “What is your talent? Being an asshole?”

Two men at the distant terminals gasped in shock, while a teenaged girl among them burst into giggles. Aurora smiled, and Pixie laughed.

He forced a saccharin smile, but could not hide his displeasure from her telempathy. “I am a telepath, mostly. Your abilities over the body are almost as impressive as what I can do to the mind.”

One of the empty wooden sticks leapt from her plate, spun over and lanced down through Pixie’s hand, sending a spritz of blood across the silver beneath it.

“I dabble with telekinetics as well.” He brushed a finger at his lip.

Pixie screamed, removing the lance from her palm. “Bloody ‘ell! What was that for?”

“Because you laughed at him.” Althea gave him a dire look before mending the tiny hole. “He wanted me to show you what I do.”

“As I stated before, you are one of us. You are of the Awakened.” Archon held his arms out to the sides to accentuate the magnitude of the statement.

“Thank you for the food and the dress, but I don’t want to live here.
Please take me home to Querq
.” Her eyes flickered.

He smiled. Brushing off her suggestion, he produced one of those stimpak things from his pocket. “In the Badlands, you’re a goddess. While it comes in handy, and you are quite powerful, it also makes everyone want to take you away. Here, you can be free of that. Your abilities are impressive, but they are not the only way to stave off death. Here, with me, you can have a normal life.” He twirled the red cylinder in his fingers, staring through it at her. Elbow upon the table, his voice half a whisper. “Technology is… wonderful.”

Another skewer flew, another scream from Pixie. Telekinetic force held Althea tight to her chair as the stimpak glided across the table. Annabelle stuck herself in the arm with it, and the small wound closed.

Pixie scowled at him, wiping the blood from her hand. “You can be a right bastard sometimes, James.”

Archon shook his head. “As great and powerful as you are, child, you have much to learn. What you tried to do there, most call psionic suggestion. An idea, sent into the mind that echoes louder and louder until it sounds and feels like something you want to do anyway. Unfortunately, I know that little trick as well, and I’ve had a bit more practice at it than you. Would you care to be upon the table on all fours, scampering about and barking like the animal you were raised to be?”

“Careful, James.” Aurora winked. Her voice saturated the room though her mouth remained closed. “She’ll honk in your loafers.”

“No, please.” Althea looked down.

“Then you’ll not try it again. Not that it will work. You see, when you try to use an ability on someone who also knows the trick, you had best be better than them, or it will accomplish bugger all.”

“You don’t need to humiliate her.” Pixie smirked, still rubbing her hand.

He stood and paced around the table. “She humiliates herself, refusing to rise above her primitivism, wanting to return to that wretched husk of civilization running about in leather scraps with spears. No, she is destined for far more. This girl is quite powerful, pretty, and young… if not a bit peevish.”

Althea looked at Aurora, sensing a touch of annoyance. “He keeps telling me I’m pretty, but it won’t make me like him.”

“Child, when you have come to accept the life you knew is little more than a pale remnant dwelling in the shadow of the real world, we will teach you to grow your power. The place you think of as home has been forgotten by mankind. There is nothing for you there but obscurity and death.”

“I don’t care if I have an obscurity. I want my family.” Sadness held a subtle undertone in her otherwise calm words.

Archon froze with his mouth open, making a face as if he had been struck with a raw salmon. “Look, you little dust flea, obscurity isn’t a thing you can hold. It’s a state of existing where―” He fumed.

“You want to own me like everyone else. You want to own me and use me to do bad things for you.”

“She has changed, Archon.” Aurora smiled. “Not the docile little pet you hoped for?”

He swiveled, stalled in a pained expression of frustration.

“There are things at play here you do not see. This city in which we hide holds people that think they run the world, think they order this society. Society is terrified of us. They want to control us, cage us, or eliminate us.” Condescension wrapped his voice like syrup. “The so-called police are no better than your Badland raiders. In fact, they are worse. They’ll stick in you a tank and poke you with needles to see why you are what you are. Governments are all the same. They don’t see a little girl. They see something they could use as a weapon or a threat they need to destroy.”

Althea folded her hands in her lap. Fear, desperation, and greed swarmed around him as he ranted. She could not separate the lies out of what he said; regardless of its truth, he believed them.

“If you don’t accept your destiny with us, they will find you, and they will keep you away from everyone you could ever love.”

She glowered at the floor. “Why do you want me so much? What can I do? I know your feelings. You don’t want to protect me. You want me to do something.”

Archon chuckled, an exasperated titter, as he forced a smile and waved toward Pixie as if to say, ‘this is what I have to put up with?’

“Well, you see, Althea…” He circled back to his chair. “I have spent many years gathering psionic individuals who share my particular distrust of the government and trying to help them build a better life. I have been searching for a way to help them know
true
power.”

“Awakened?” Distrust painted her face.

“Exactly.” He thrust an arm at Aurora. “See, she does understand. Because of your special gift, the way you can
help
people”―his excitement dropped to normal conversational volume―“you are in the unique position to help all of us. It’s a bit like what you did for that Flatline chap.”

“How do you―”

“Know about him? Oh, just a little thing I like to call
being the most powerful telepath in the world.
”

Aurora rolled her eyes; at least, Althea felt an emotion that would go along with that sort of gesture. The solid jet orbs could not really roll in a way anyone would notice.

“Now, if you’re able to stitch back together a brain in such condition, you are so powerful you can facilitate the awakening of all of our brothers and sisters.” Archon whirled about, seeming a bit like the street preacher, as his voice gained volume. “We can be free of the tyranny of those who do not understand, live in a place they cannot touch us.” His fists balled, held with triumph before eyes wild with anticipation.

The emotion he let off was nothing short of terrifying.

“You really think she can just zap people awakened?” Pixie blinked at him.

The victorious smile broke into a disdainful frown as his stare bathed her with derision. “No, of course not. It may take months or years, but between my research and her ability to manipulate living tissue, I will find the answer.”

Aurora made cat-scratching gestures at him. For a reason Althea could not determine, it sent him into a storm of internal rage.

Althea nudged herself forward, transferring weight onto her feet. Pixie gawked at Archon, emanating a mood as if she was about to get into an argument. Aurora winked at her with an amused half smile. Archon’s back was turned, his mind lost in a ramble about DNA sequencing and throwing about words as big as Shepherd. He vented to the wall, ruminating about both the brain and how the government would destroy them all.

Sensing opportunity, she bolted from the chair and sprinted through the door. She got one foot into the hallway before she floated off the ground and hung there.

“Well, you are certainly a determined little scamp.” He frowned. “I’ll give you that much.”

His boots echoed up behind her and she glided along, kicking and screaming, to a small room with a glowing orange bed, a plain metal desk, and a chair. The pulse of rage she let off as the door slammed and locked started a screaming match in the hallway between Pixie and Archon that fizzled out in seconds. After pounding her fists numb against the door, she dove headfirst into the pillow.

With thoughts of her family flooding her mind, her anger faded and she bawled herself to sleep.

or a fleeting dream moment, Althea curled up in her own bed, arms wrapped around Karina. The glow of the sunrise in the bedroom window changed to an even orange, flooding her senses with light as well as heat. She opened her eyes, but everything remained blinding orange. Comforting warmth embraced the entire front of her body. When she propped herself up, her hands sank into a gelatinous mass encased in thick, clear plastic. The luminous slab spread out below her in the approximate shape of a mattress.

Althea rolled on her side, and wiped her face clear of crumbs. The third time her fingers came away from her eyes, a trio of bizarre plump creatures a few inches away from her toes blurred into focus, staring at her. They were not there when she had drifted off to sleep. Screaming, she fell backwards off the squishy pad onto the floor.

With a tentative grasp at the edge, she lifted herself to her knees and peeked over the orange thing at the little green and blue monsters. Six black eyes stared at her impassively; not one of them moved.

Sensing no life within them, she crawled onto the bed and poked at one, making it fall to the side. Feeling foolish, she took a deep breath and sat cross-legged on the pad. Stuffed animals were new to her, but similar enough to rag dolls for her to understand. One of the strange people must have left them there trying to make her feel better.

She found herself in a small room upon a bed attached to a slab that folded down from the wall. A rusty-wheeled chair lay askew by a green painted metal desk with two flat objects upon it. A finger-width thick, with the rectangular size of a book, they were made of shiny black glass backed with silver plastic.