The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (17 page)

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.

“
So, what’s in
there
?” asked Haven
warily.

Corva and Elena exchanged a quick
look.

Another scream ripped through the
complex, and Haven’s blood went cold.

22

C
olton sat in a large conference room on the eleventh floor.
Several rows of chairs faced a polished black podium, behind which
stood Bernam. He wore a thin suit and sipped water from a faceted
glass. His private jet had landed on the pavement outside the
building earlier that morning and was being refueled during his
long speech.

Shelly sat next to Colton, leaning in
and resting her shoulder against his. Reece sat on the other side
of Shelly with his arms crossed, leaning away from her.

Bernam set down his glass of water and
repositioned the podium microphone directly in front of his
mouth.

“
As I was saying,” he
said, “it doesn’t matter where you came from. It doesn’t matter
what you were before you got here. What matters is the future.
You’re all here, now, because you want something more—more from
life, more from each other—”

Shelly reached over and quickly
squeezed Colton’s leg. Reece saw her do it and leaned farther away
from both of them.

“—
more from
yourselves.”

Colton looked around the
room.

He, Shelly, and Reece sat in the last
of three rows of chairs. Alistair sat in the front row, relaxing
comfortably in his seat while he listened to Bernam’s speech. In
the second row, two identical twins that Colton did not know sat
side by side—young men with tan skin and short, spiky blond hair.
They both wore identical jeans, t-shirts, and black leather
jackets. They sat low in their seats and seemed bored with the
speech.

“
As you know,” continued
Bernam, “this morning I returned from Japan. Dane and Lee—the only
ones among us who have achieved Unity—were there for several weeks
taking care of some personal business for me.” He gestured to the
twins, who grinned broadly. One of them turned around and winked at
Shelly. She stuck her tongue out.

“
You’ve all been training
very intensely during my absence,” said Bernam. “I’m very happy to
hear that the newest member of our group is doing far better than
we originally expected.” He smiled sharply at Colton. “No offense
meant.”

“
None taken,” said
Colton.

The truth was that the past week had
been unbelievable. He had spent several hours every day in the
training room, testing out his capacity for containing different
forms of energy. He could keep himself fully charged for just over
two minutes before being forced to release, and that time was
slowly climbing every day. According to Alistair, most Cons peaked
between a minute-thirty and two minutes.

The time not spent in the training
room was divided between the gymnasium and Shelly. She barely let
him have a moment alone after his rigorous daily routine. Colton
couldn’t find anything to complain about—she was beautiful, smart,
and had a great sense of humor.

She was teaching him things that
Alistair hadn’t bothered to mention, like how to use sunlight to
nourish his skin and how to manipulate objects with small bursts of
stored energy. Colton was especially fond of not making contact
with doors when he closed them. With a wave of his hand he could
push the door from several feet away. He was getting good enough so
that he didn’t slam them shut as he always did when he first
started.

The only thing bothering Colton about
the entire experience was Reece. He had been growing quieter and
more withdrawn over the past week, spending all of his time in his
living quarters and rarely showing up when everyone got together to
relax. During the last two days he had barely said a word, and
every time he saw Shelly giving Colton the smallest form of
affection, he scowled with disgust.

Bernam took a sip of water before
continuing his speech.

“
I think we can all agree
that this is the strongest team we’ve ever had—”

Reece stood up quickly and pushed his
chair back until it fell over. He stepped over it and stomped out
of the room, slamming the door closed behind him.

Bernam looked after him for a moment,
then tightened the knot in his tie. “Well, as I was saying: I’m
very proud of your hard work. It looks like it’s finally going to
pay off. Everything I have promised you is just over the
horizon.”

Colton leaned over to Shelly. “What
did he promise you?” he whispered.

“
Shh,” she said gently.
“Tell you later.”

Bernam walked around to the front of
the podium.

“
There is only one more
step to complete. Before we can start our heavy recruiting phase,
there is one last mission—a very
important
mission—to find the final
piece of the equation.”

“
What equation?” whispered
Colton.

Shelly didn’t answer him.

Bernam smiled. “And I’m going to be
with you every step of the way.”

Alistair sat up in his seat and the
twins clapped loudly. Colton had only been with the group a short
time, but from what he knew, Bernam never accompanied them when
they went out into the world.

Bernam glanced at his expensive
watch.

“
The plane leaves in five
hours, at nightfall. I’ll see you all on-board.” He walked past the
chairs and left the room.

The twins turned around in their seats
to face Shelly and Colton.

“
I’m Lee,” said the one on
the left.

“
I’m Dane,” said the
other.

They had matching Australian accents.
Colton shook each of their hands in turn. “Colton.”

“
We know,” said
Lee.

“
That’s Shelly,” said
Dane, pointing at her and smiling.

“
I think she likes you,”
Lee said to Colton.

“
Who wouldn’t?” said Dane.
“Just look at how his skin glows.”

“
Did she show you how to
do that?” said Lee. “I bet she did. Shelly’s got a thing for all
the new arrivals.”

“
Grow up,” she
said.

“
Wish we could,” said
Lee.

“
But we’re stuck this
way,” said Dane.

He snapped his fingers and a red flame
sprouted from his fingertips. Lee quickly grabbed it as if he were
snatching a fly from the air and brought his closed fist to his
mouth, then pretended to swallow the flame. He wiggled his eyebrows
and the flames shot from both of his ears.

“
Ugh,” said Shelly. She
stood and left the room.

Colton leaned in toward the twins.
“What do you mean you’re stuck that way?”

“
Perpetual youth,” said
Lee.

“
Ageless,” said Dane. He
shrugged. “Twenty years old forever. It happens.”

“
At least it wasn’t at
sixty,” said Lee.

Colton looked between them, confused.
“But how does that happen?”

Lee sighed. “Didn’t Alistair tell you
all of this?”

Colton shook his head.

Lee sighed even harder. “Fine.
Sometimes when a Source and Con are linked, it halts the aging
process. It’s a side effect of the shared connection. It puts them
in a sort of stasis. No one knows why.”

“
But that hasn’t stopped
them from trying to figure it out,” said Dane.

Lee nodded. “Billion-dollar question,
that one.”

“
So it doesn’t always
happen?” asked Colton.

“
Weren’t you listening? I
already said it didn’t. It’s exceedingly rare.”

“
We’re just lucky, I
guess.”

“
So how old are you
guys?”

They both grinned
mischievously.

“
We’ll never tell, mate,”
said Lee.

“
Adds to our aura of
mystery.”

“
I hear it’s what girls go
for these days, anyway,” said Lee.

“
That and
money.”

Dane looked at Colton. “Speaking of
girls, how are you and Shelly getting along?”

“
What’s it to you?” said
Colton. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rising.

“
Easy, mate,” said Lee.
“We just want to make sure she’s happy, that’s all. Shelly’s a good
girl.”

Colton relaxed. “I barely know her,”
he said, realizing his words were true.

“
Give it time,” said Lee.
He stood and slapped Colton on the shoulder.

Dane stood and slapped the other one.
“Yeah, give it time.”

After the twins left the room, Colton
stood and walked to the window. Bernam’s plane was parked next to
the building on the pavement below. Two men in blue coveralls stood
on the wings, inspecting the jet engines on either side of the
plane’s body.

The yellow-orange desert stretched out
from the building in every direction. The landscape was dotted with
dead cacti and small, branchy bushes. Ruddy mountains lined the
horizon.

Colton thought about
leaving.

He had considered it more and more as
the days passed, and there were only two things keeping him around:
Shelly, and the promise of doing something useful with his ability.
Bernam had told him that they were going to help people who had
been taken and held captive—people like Colton who, until recently,
had just wanted to be left alone to lead a normal life.