Winter's Storm: Retribution (Winter's Saga #2) (32 page)

She looked radiant. The whole household sat expectantly. There was an air about her and everyone in the room could feel it. Meg had changed.

58 I Have Evolved

“
Thank you all for meeting me in here,” I began, but noticed my youngest brother wasn’t present. “Where is Evan?”

“
I’m right here, Meg,” a voice came from the hallway with the sound of a few quickened steps. Evan was grinning as he sat next to me with papers in his hands.

Everyone was staring at me expectantly so I began. “I need to ask for your patience while I try something. I’ve been out of it for the last week, and I can only imagine at this point all that you have gone through in your efforts to help me get better. Rather than you explain from the beginning what part each of you played in the events as they unfolded, I would like to try something, so please bear with me.” I stood and carefully draped my wet towel over the back of my chair.

“
May I start with you, mom?” I asked.

“
Of course, but what do you need me…”

“
Nothing. You don’t have to do anything. Just let me hold your hand.” I smiled reassuringly and reached to take my mother’s hand in mine. I closed my eyes and felt the same rush of images as I did when I touched the dart, and again when I held Creed’s hand just a while before. But it was different with my mother. I already have such a strong bond with her, that instead of flashing images and corresponding emotions witnessed in my mind, I actually felt her fear and anger. When I opened my eyes and looked up at my mother, finished reading her, I was crying her tears. “Oh mom! I love you so much! Thank you for doing everything you could to take care of me and the family.” Without hesitation, I pulled my mom into a tight hug. She was smiling at me as though we had a secret we were about to share with the rest of the room.

I knew she would already understand what I was doing. Our connection was so tight she probably received some of my own emotions and didn’t just feed me hers. She knew me and she loved me.

With a reassuring nod, she handed me a tissue and let me proceed. And so it went for the next thirty minutes. I held the hands of each of my family one by one and let their memories become part of me. When it came time to hold my youngest brother’s hand, he smiled at me widely.

“
Meg, we all knew you were going to be able to focus your empath abilities with practice, but that isn’t your newest gift, is it?” Evan kept smiling smugly at me.

“
What do you mean, Evan? This is amazing! I’ve never been able to read people like this; to just touch their hand and know what they have felt. Not like this. The memory images are so crisp and precise. The emotions attached to the images are exact!” I was feeling frustrated with my brother, but I forced myself to swallow it down and give him a chance.

Instead of reaching his hand out to me he folded his arms across his chest.

“
Why won’t you let her ‘read’ you, Evan?” Margo began.

“
I will, mom; just not the way she ‘read’ you,” Evan winked at his mother and returned his gaze to me. “I know she can do this, but she needs to know it.”

“
Here,” he said and handed me the thin stack of papers he was holding face-down. I went to flip the papers over to read them, but he stopped me. “No, Meg. Don’t read the words on the paper. Hold the paper and ‘read’ it like you ‘read’ their hands.”

“
Evan, what are you talking about?” I asked feeling what little patience I had waning.

“
Meg, think about it. When you first woke this evening, mom was trying to explain what happened to you; why you were so sick for the last week. But did she tell you everything you wanted to know?”

“
She didn’t have to.” I said stubbornly. I was starting to feel tired. The excitement of being with my family again was wearing off and now, the fatigue this body felt still from the effects of the illness was undeniable.

“
Why not?” Evan asked.

“
Because, I already knew.”

“
When?”

“
When I held the dart,” I said exasperated.

“
So you were able to ‘read’ the dart? That doesn’t make sense, Meg.” Evan was egging me on, and I was not happy about it. I was just sleepy.

He didn’t let up. “A dart is just a thing. It’s an object. It doesn’t have feelings for you to read. How is it that you already knew what happened to you after only touching the dart?”

“
I don’t know how, Evan,” I said raising my voice a little. “All I know is that when I touched it, I felt everything—everything the others who had touched it felt—at least the way they felt right when they were holding it.”

Evan nodded his approval.

“
Now, ‘read’ those papers and tell me what I have been feeling,” he encouraged.

I sighed deeply and squeezed my eyes shut concentrating on the papers in my hands and feeling a little stupid about it.

After a moment of blackness, there it was…my brother Evan feeling pride and excitement as he held the papers and hurried to meet us in the living room. Several images flashed including snapshot-like images of the words on the pages. These images were obviously captured by Evan’s memory. The emotions and the snippets of phrases I caught from my mental image of the document made me gasp happily.

“
Evan! Oh my goodness! Is it true?” I beamed.

“
I think you’re living proof of it!” He smiled back at his sister and finally allowed her to give him a big hug.

All the other faces in the room were looking confused.

“
You two wanna tell us the good news?” Cole asked.

Evan grinned at me and said, “Why don’t you tell them, Meggie.”

“
It’s not a countdown to our death. The calculations made you all think it was a deterioration of our human cells at an advanced rate which you initially believed meant that we were headed toward a fatal end.” I paused, not for dramatic effect, but because I felt so choked up—so happy to have been given the chance to do all the things I knew I was still meant to do.

“
It is a countdown, but not to death. It’s a countdown to an evolution; a metamorphosis, of sorts.” I watched the faces of my mother and brother change from confused to excited and relieved.

“
Ev, you explain the rest,” I said, so happy and tired, I was afraid I was going to pass out from it all.

“
Well, first of all. Meg, you did it! You ‘read’ using only the papers—objects that themselves have no emotional abilities. I’m so proud of you!” He gently slugged me on my shoulder in his affectionate atta-girl kind of way.

“
Wait, you all told us we had some time before anything was going to happen.” Alik was sitting at the edge of his seat, literally.

“
I believe Meg’s illness triggered an early onset of her evolution. It’s not unheard of in human physiology for such a thing to happen. For example, a severe trauma such as cancer has been known to compel early onset menopause in women,” Evan concluded logically.

“
So, you’re saying that Meg’s empath ability evolved sooner than it would have because of the malaria and now she’s…?” Cole stopped, looking for the right word.

“
Evolved,” Evan answered simply.

“
How do you do it Meg?” Paulie asked trying to understand. “I mean, I can understand you all having a heightened intelligence and strength. Alik’s memory and Evan’s problem solving skills are all explainable. Even your ability to be ‘in tune’ with people’s emotions, Meg, isn’t beyond belief even from a scientific standpoint. But this ‘evolved’ ability—” the doctor waved his hand toward me, “I don’t understand.”

Even through the fog of exhaustion hovering around my mind, I felt a surge of frustration and even a little defensiveness. “I don’t understand it either, Paulie. It’s all new to me, too.”

“
Can you show us, again?” Creed’s steady voice asked. He was sitting farthest away from the group in a chair against the wall to my right. He nodded reassuringly.

I breathed deeply, closed my eyes. “Okay, but please be patient with me. I’m awfully sleepy and this is a little overwhelming,” I began with a disclaimer.

“
Maybe we should start with something entirely different.” I glanced around the room and stopped to look intently at Dr. Andrews.

“
Are those new glasses, Dr. Andrews?” I asked him. I had noticed he was wearing a pair of glasses with very thick, black rims. At the time, I just giggled to myself thinking how similar my mother and this man were in their taste in eyewear and thought how perfectly matched they were for each other.

Theo looked a little surprised and answered, “Well, yes, actually. I’ve misplaced my old pair, so I had to order these.”

“
May I hold them?” I asked simply.

“
Sure.” Theo removed his glasses and handed them to me.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to concentrate on the plastic in my hands.

“
These were made in a factory where the Asian worker who assembled them was worried about her bothersome mother-in-law,” I said.

The room let out a nervous chuckle.

“
You put them on for the first time when you were heading toward Paulie’s lab. Mom was there. She looked excited about something, but you were thinking about…,” I paused not wanting to embarrass the doctor by elaborating too much on his thoughts of marriage. “…how pretty mom looked. She waved you over to a microscope and had you look at…what is that? A blood sample? Mom is talking fast and holding paper in front of you as if she’s trying to explain something.” I stopped relaying my mental images because I felt Dr. Andrew’s surprise at what he just learned.

My eyes flew open, and I stood abruptly, nearly dropping the doctor’s new glasses. I looked back and forth between my mother and Theo—then to Alik and Creed.

“
Go ahead, honey. You can say it. Theo and I haven’t been able to find the right time to bring it up, so you may as well put it out there for everyone,” Margo shrugged.

I reached down and pulled Alik to a standing position. “What’s going on?” he asked worried.

Then I walked us over to Creed and took his hand encouraging him to stand.

“
Put what out there?” Creed asked, completely confused with the turn of events that brought him into the spotlight.

I couldn’t help but smile—this was so amazing. “While Mom was studying your blood samples she stumbled across something. She determined through your Y-chromosomes—that you are brothers.”

“
What?”

“
Brothers?”

The boys looked at each other as though they had never seen one another before.

“
Of all the—you’re kidding, right?” Cole blurted.

“
Are you sure?” Alik’s crisp, light blue eyes flashed with emotion.

“
Is this a trick?” Creed looked around the room as though waiting for the punch line.

“
How in the heck are we brothers?” Alik looked over to his mom, pointedly.

“
You’re my brother?” Creed’s dark-blue eyes were beginning to tear up.

Margo spoke over the room, “Now, we have no idea how this happened. All we can tell for sure is that Alik and Creed have the same biological father.”

Evan’s eyes were wide with surprise. “This is one heck of a way to prove your ability, Meggie!”

59 Perficio Res

Something was going on.

Though silence had been ordered across the Facility, every meta knew something was wrong.

Even the veteran metas—the instructors—had never known the entire campus to be on lock down before. Sure, they’d all had drills in the past. They practiced fire and disaster drills. They had even practiced how to assemble in case of immediate mobilization. But they had never been ordered to lock down “until further notice.”

Being creatures of habit, the cadets were anxious to get back to their routine—whatever it was they were doing when the first announcement was made over the campus-wide intercom.

The voice identified itself as Dr. Williams, though it didn’t sound at all like the doctor. Everyone listening to the bizarre announcement just assumed the voice was distorted because of the intercom system. The entire campus was ordered back to their barracks, immediately and without exception until further notice.

The cadets obeyed, of course, and dropped what they were doing. That was three hours, seven minutes ago. Now they looked out the windows of their barracks in restless hopes of seeing something that would explain what was going on. They murmured to each other possible scenarios that may have brought this on. Some metas couldn’t hold still and found ways to entertain themselves by doing as much physical exercise as possible within the confines of their crowded quarters. Others just sat at the edge of their bunks sharpening or cleaning their weapons of choice.

The crackle of the intercom broke the anxious silence across the campus. The voice that began speaking again identified itself as Dr. Williams, but this time everyone knew something was very different. And it wasn’t just his deeper, raspier voice; his behavior and word choice was different, too. But they were soldiers taught to obey their superior officers without question, so they stood at attention and listened.