He had already been walking towards me before stopping at the sight. The others surrounding us pointed their rifles at me, but hesitantly lowered them at the wave of a hand. I didn't know who he was or what he had been trying to do, but he was in charge. He was my target. He slowly took a step up to me, the arm holding an umbrella over his head to follow, and my hand began to shake.
I could feel my fingers vibrate uncontrollably around the cold, wet metal as the mysterious man stopped just in front of me. I had never pointed a gun at anyone before. I had only wanted to have someone to blame, and now that he was in front of me, I had no clue of what to do anymore. I couldn't shoot, though my finger never fully came off the trigger.
The man looked down at me and I could just start to make out his face from underneath the umbrella—sleek, pale, and hairless. Another beckoned to take me away, but he only shook his head.
I kept the gun up towards his chest. My mind was frayed and short circuiting from all that I had just seen. I couldn't get the thought out of my head. “That's my sister...” The words were choked up into oblivion. The streams came down my eyes, only to be washed away by the storm that continued to lay in on us.
The man brought a pair of bony fingers around my chin like a pair of tweezers and tilted my face to the side.
I stared into his sharp, amber eyes with black slits in the center that grew in width as they bored into me and glowed on their own accord. I couldn't move.
Even as a sly smirk left the corner of his face, I had no idea what to make of it. “Leave her.” The voice was harsh and brittle. The fingers slipped away from my chin and he turned to walk away, the armed men following with complete obedience.
I gazed at my hand while it stayed up in the air. The sights were still poised on the man's back, but I couldn't pull the trigger. I was too scared of what might happen. I merely watched the unknown group pile into a series of trucks and drive off, leaving me alone to drop my hand into the mud and join the rain in washing the dirt onto the road.
A hand grabbed my shoulder soon after and I turned around to bring the revolver up to meet a familiar face.
Zach slowly lowered his gun and gingerly pulled my own away before dropping down onto his knees. “Are you okay?”
I grabbed onto him and shook my head, the only sign I could make before throwing myself into his chest and letting myself go again. I had seen Sarah taken away from me in front of my own eyes. I had felt her with the pads of my fingers, but it had not been enough. I was sure my parents were with her. My family was gone and I couldn't understand why. I had not been strong enough to save them. I had been a coward when they had needed me most. I didn't know anything about the world around me except for what I had seen. None of it mattered. I only knew of my life. My world was ending. My existence was over.
Zach pulled me up onto my feet and we began the long walk through the mud and rain back towards his truck. The houses and small buildings on either side of us were as dark as the sky, and I felt as hollow as the scene in front of me. Nobody was left except for us. Whoever had taken the population left no sign that they had been there except for the tracks on the ground, but even those were destined to fade away as well.
Whatever sadness Zach had feigned for me, if any at all, quickly become genuine as soon as we crossed back onto the road that we had originally come from. The truck was gone. Oliver was gone. There was no beam of the headlights nor subtle rumble of its engine amidst the patter of the pouring rain. The tracks had been all but washed off. It seemed as if every shred of hope had been wiped clean from our shitty stretch of the Earth and the world had been in on it the whole time.
I stood in the middle of it all and crossed my arms in an effort to stave off the water that sapped the warmth from my body. I started to shiver and I could feel my muscles spasm and tighten knots underneath my jaw. I watched as Zach continued to shout out for his father for what had to have been too long. I had given up way before he had, but it didn't hurt any less to see the pain in his eyes as he finally ended the search in vain and pulled himself back towards me.
“I don't get it,” he said, his voice rasp from competing with the storm. “It doesn't make any sense...”
I couldn't help but only shake at that and he seemed to finally notice my existence since the disappearance of his own family.
“Hey...” He pulled me close and ran his hands across my back in a failed attempt to warm me up. It only made me feel like a baby. “Come on, we gotta get outta this.”
I agreed, and he held me in his arms the whole way back to the town. If the circumstances had been completely different, a hidden bystander could have easily mistaken us for a pair of prom dates as we walked the road and leaned in close to each other in the rain, but it was more than simply huddling for warmth or affection. I needed Zach to keep my body alive while my mind slowly came back from the dead, and I was pretty sure he needed someone to protect. He was a fighter. He couldn't shoot at what wasn't there. He could only help me, and it just so happened to be that together we stood a chance at making it out intact.
A few teeth-chattering minutes later, I joined him inside of a worn down sedan that had been left unlocked and parked just beyond where the large trucks had been, the keys still in the ignition. It seemed eerie to view our new tiny bit of luck as someone else's hurried, mass misfortune. Maybe with that logic, by losing my family some poor girl in the world would soon get hers back; I hoped it would be me.
Zach turned the keys and the engine sprung to life along with the sight of a half-full gas tank, but the energy on his face quickly faded away as soon as he took a look at me. For some reason we both felt inclined to glance towards the back seat at the same time to see an empty safety-seat for a toddler and the real pain suddenly hit home. Seeing the aftermath of someone else's absence vetted my own.
They're gone...
I stared out into the storm and gave up, but instead of shutting down like me, Zach fought on.
“Alright...” He turned a knob to make it smell like mildew again before leaning over my legs and reaching into the glove-box to pull out a map, his mouth already moving faster than he could react to his own words. “Come on, Tess. We can still catch up to them. My dad has gotta be with your folks. He wouldn't just leave us behind. Which means if those assholes know what's good for 'em, then they took everybody off site. If we can find the nearest highway or interstate...”
I let myself wander among the thoughts, not even paying attention to Zach's rambling anymore. Those
assholes
, as he had described them, had not been military, law enforcement, or anything else that I knew of. Or if they were, then they did a damn good job of hiding it. They had not worn badges. They had not bared name tags. They had only held weapons, organization, and a complete obedience to whomever—or whatever—the fuck had laid his pale, bony fingers on me and was ultimately responsible for taking my family and countless others from their homes in the middle of the night. I wasn't sure if I shuddered because I was still sopping wet or because of the thought of the cat-eyed man touching my sister.
The insurmountable weight of all the questions in my head threatened to tear me open until Zach grabbed my hand. I didn't notice he had stopped talking until then. I looked down to see the Sarah's blue ribbon still clenched tightly in my palm, my nails white from the pressure of keeping it closed.
“It's okay, Tess.”
I watched him slowly bend my fingers up, one after another, until he was able to carefully pull the ribbon away and out of sight as if it were a deadly snake.
“We're gonna find them. I promise.”
Don't...
I would rest against the window with my eyes closed and a musty blanket tucked up to my chin as Zach would drive us across the country. I would feel the clouds clear and the sun peek up above the horizon to color my eyelids with its warmth. I would hear Zach flip through every single radio station available only to hear static, and I would pretend to be asleep every time he would take a moment to glance at me. I would fall into a daze surrounded by the thoughts of being able to feel Sarah, only to lose her to the mysterious, cat-eyed man again and again. We would fall off the beaten path, find Camp Maxwell on a private map and eventually run out of gas. We would lose each other, and some part of me would die along with his absence.
But before any of that would happen, I would sit in the darkness of the sedan and peer into Zach's eyes while I squeezed his hand back, fully realizing the failed familiarity of his words and trying to fight back the tears that would betray the mask on my face underneath the sound of the rain.
“We'll be okay,” he said.
I nodded, a single fresh stream falling down my cheek. It was slipping already. “I know.”
“Hey.”
I woke from a tap against my hand and opened my eyes. The feeling of riding in a vehicle for hours on end was still fresh in mind when I realized that was exactly what I had been doing. I peeled my head off the side of the truck and immediately cursed myself for having fallen asleep and bruising my temple from the bumpy ride.
Isabel pulled back from in front of me, an obvious smirk on her face that she was horrible at hiding. “You okay?”
I involuntary stretched and moaned like a baby dinosaur having sex with a seal before I turned to see three men in the back of the truck stare at me with a twinkle of amusement in their eyes. I forgot I wasn't alone. Already embarrassed for dozing off, I tried to cover it up by sitting normally again and readjusting the position of the rifle between my legs. I cleared my throat. “Where are we?”
“Almost there,” said Nick. “Why? We weren't bothering you, were we?”
I could feel my cheeks flush red but pretended not to hear it, instead glancing around to see the surroundings as we sped down another dirt road. The Kansas flats that I had grown accustomed to were still there, yet something was off. It took me a moment to realize that it was the color. Every piece of vegetation: the grass, weeds, flower beds, lonely trees, the spent and broken down fields of crops—everything was a lighter shade of its former self, as if all the life that surrounded us had been slowly fading away in anticipation of what lay ahead.
I wrinkled my noise. “What is that?” The smell reminded of the earthy, wooden scent of a campfire until Nick nodded at something behind me and I turned around. The thin bar of red against the horizon that I had seen only a few hours earlier had somehow magically been dragged closer like a blanket that had meant to be pulled over my eyes. Above the glowing coals that dotted the ground miles off, a thick billowing cloud of smoke angled to lengthen and wrap itself over our heads as a crest of an inconceivably large tidal wave. The sun glared through in a harsh, red intensity, and I easily put two and two together. We were being painted like a mosaic through a pair of rose-tinted glasses. We were running out of time.
As if to answer my next question, the truck began to slow down and pulled itself off the road to come to an eventual stop behind a dying hedgerow. We all jumped out to stretch our legs except for Badger and his men, who easily held the discipline to stay tense and scan the horizon for anything that could hurt us.
Olivia joined them as she fit a small, black ring around and into her ear. “Radio check.”
Badger pressed a button on his belt. “Read you loud 'n clear, cap.”
She addressed them directly. “Get me eyes on the town and scope out the best way in. If someone's taking a shit behind their shed, I wanna know about it.”
“Roger that.” Badger motioned his men forward and they quickly disappeared behind the tall brush in front of the car.
I dared myself to take a peak around the corner to see the rather close outline of Maryville before coming back to Olivia. It was interesting to see her change gears and take command so quickly and efficiently. Any experience she had giving orders had easily manifested itself in her tone and even in the way she held herself. I bet there was a story behind everything.
Jeremy nodded at her earpiece. “I thought radios didn't work?”
“Short-wave is fine,” she said. “As long as it's close. Better not to count on it if you don't have to.” She reached into the back of the truck to pull out her own rifle, something I had not seen before. It was long, sleek, and slender, and I couldn't help but feel like I was holding on to something third-rate at the sight of it. She caught my gaze. “I need to talk to you.”
“Sure.” I followed her along the hedgerow until she stopped just out of earshot from everyone else. I glanced back at the rest of the group to see them huddled around the back of the truck and murmur soundlessly.
Olivia put a hand on a branch to her side for a moment before breaking the peace. “I've been thinking about it...” She took the pause to peer at me, and I could make out the sunburst pattern of her eyes. “After we're done here... after we meet back up with Hayes, we're gonna need all the help we can get. I think you should come back with me to the Order.”
I gave that a face. I assumed I had already agreed to follow her. “Yeah, to give my testimony—”
“No.” She cut me off and still hesitated. “As my apprentice.”
Oh.
I could feel her study my reaction, every twitch of a muscle a sign, every breath an effort to stall for an answer. I had absolutely no idea how a Knight came to be, but it made sense to think that they would be paired with someone much more experienced in light of everything they had to learn. But me? An apprentice?
A Knight?
The thought may have crossed my mind when I was a kid just as much as anyone else, yet as soon as I had discovered it could become a real possibility, the fear had set in. I had been afraid it would only distance me from the rest of my family. I never would have touched that side of my life if it hadn't been for Emma. It had all worked up to Knox's protests and the condemnation of Seds. It had all been bad timing.
I eventually realized my mouth was still open and nothing had come out. I shut it down and closed my eyes, slowly shaking my head in an effort to spin some thoughts out into existence. I forced myself to keep looking and stared at Olivia, but still nothing. Now I really was stalling. “Umm... when, exactly?”
“As soon as possible.” The muscles around her jaw were flexed. She gave herself some space when I didn't say anything else and continued. “Look, Tess, you're strong. Probably stronger than you realize. There's a reason you've been able to get this far. It's not just luck.”
I wasn't exactly sure if I would call anything that had happened to me
luck
, but I saw her point.
“You're determined. You wanna help people. The fact that you're here now when I told you not to be speaks volumes about your character. It takes a certain kind of idiot to run towards the problem when everyone else runs away from it, especially after you've already been given an out. It's a thin line, but if you’re smart, you know how to work the odds. You take risks, not for yourself, but for the people that need someone to stand up for them. Those are the kinds of values that the Order looks for in potential prospects. It's not enough that you're a Paranormal and you can put on a show. You
have
to be the right person for the job. Or you're gone.”
The way she handled the alternative had broken a taut string in my gut. She had made it seem so simple. It wouldn't matter if I could give everything my body had to offer. If I wouldn't be a good fit, I simply wouldn't make it. There would be no leeway. As much as I didn't know the specifics, I understood their affects. Of course it had to be that way. Just like with Chris' team, you wouldn't be able to call yourself the best of the best and still allow yourself a margin of error. Perfection was the
minimum.
Anything else could lead to someone's death.
I gave myself a few seconds to ignore how hard the transition would be and tested the idea. An apprentice.
Jessica Carter—Knight.
What the hell did they even call themselves? The block of missing information led me to a new question. “You'd be the one to teach me, right?” I thought the answer was pretty obvious, but I wanted to make sure. If I was to seriously consider going through with the process, I couldn't think of anyone else in the world that I'd want to pair up with except for Olivia.
For some reason she frowned, and the warm, feel-good sensation inside of my chest froze itself up like a leaky faucet in outer space. “It's not that simple. It's pretty rare to even consider anyone after their teens. The Order's had a long time to refine the process. They're almost unbelievably strict, but for good reason. It takes an entire team to nominate a kid after they've already been keeping their eyes on 'em for years, and even then there's the hassle of finding the right mentor...”
She sighed a lengthy bit of air. For a split second, I thought I could see her real age, the real trepidations that she kept tightly hidden underneath her own baggage, and she seemed incredibly human. There was no aura or mystique to her that all the Knights had earned. She was Olivia. She was my friend.
“Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't know the first thing about being a Paranormal.”
Wow. What a friend.
“The point is...” she started again. “If I taught you on the road, I'd be breaking a lot of rules,
a lot
of
good
rules. You wouldn't get the training you deserve, the training you
need.
It would be even harder than it has to be. And once we hit the coast, there's a good chance that we'd both cause a lot of trouble. You could somehow be the best apprentice in existence and there would still be a good chance that the Order would disavow the both of us. They might not let you finish. They might turn you back all together. You'd seriously be nailing yourself against the wall for who knows what. You need to consider that.”
“What about you?” I tilted my head up a bit as the thought rose to the top of my skull. There Olivia was, looking out for me again, but what about her? Why even bring up the idea then, if it wouldn't be worth all the trouble? And why had she seemed so worried? Unless the idea of my apprenticeship was just a tangent from something bigger. She wasn't worried about herself. She was worried about something else. “You think breaking the rules won't be the real problem...”
“No.” She eased into it, looking down at the ground first. “If I'm right about what I've been able to make out so far, then none of it's gonna matter. I don't think anyone will even have enough time to bitch us out about breaking protocol. They're gonna be too busy. We're gonna need all the help we can get with everything that's been going on. If Knox really is involved with any of this, then we're gonna need more people like you.”
And there it was. The sudden strain in her voice. The slight bend in her eyes that curved to tug the subtle lines within her skin. The shape of her mouth. Her change in posture. The way she had introduced the whole concept, less professional and more opinionated, a slight drawl that betrayed the real roots of her diction.
I took her in, everything, subtly aware of what it might mean to be an Empath as the nervousness from her own body began to leech into my own. I recognized it completely—the great fear of the unknown—the biggest motivator, and it was speaking right to me as if she wasn't even there. It almost felt like I was reading her mind through the movements of her heart. All I had to do was uncover the matching words to describe the way she felt. Incredulously, they found their way off my lips. “Something's wrong...”
She eyed that and I couldn't help but keep going. Olivia must have had a good reason to clutter my mind with the very notion of an apprenticeship when there really wasn't any time for it. We were in more imminent danger together than ever before, so why even bring it up? The fleeting emotion scarcely broke through. It wasn't just fear.
It was hope.
Olivia had wanted to give me hope. She wanted to give me something to look forward to. All the events leading up to that moment, from Arrino to Knox and Hayes to Maryville,
something
was off. I could feel it just as well as Olivia could. She couldn't shake the sense of being thrust into a trap. Something was wrong and she couldn't hold on to the hope of figuring it out in time, so she was giving it to me instead. She wanted to give me something to look forward to. Until a new feeling bubbled up to the surface.
She felt vulnerable.
“Tess,” she muttered underneath her breath.
My eyes had been on her the whole time, yet I had been looking at something else entirely until then. I hadn't even realized my open palm had been facing her as if my fingers could feel her through the permutations of the air.
She squinted at me in dubious surprise. I might as well have stabbed her in the back. “You're reading me... aren't you?”
Shit.
I shook my head in disbelief. “No, I—” I hadn't meant to. “I'm sorry—”
“Stop.”
Right on cue, the evidence of our seemingly unfounded worries came to life.
A gunshot rang out from where Badger had gone and rolled out over the fields. We both turned to look in the direction only to see a hedgerow in front of our faces. The sound had been succinct, almost low energy. I had spent enough time firing guns with Chris to recognize it as something smaller, maybe a pistol. It must have come from within the town.
Olivia and I came back to each other and I tried to apologize again, but she refused. “We'll talk about this later.” She brought a finger up to her earpiece and focused on the immediate threat. “Badger, sit-rep.”
Nick and Jeremy ran up to us with guns at the ready.
Olivia held a finger up and we held our breath as she listened to whatever came in over the radio. Then: “They're fine. It came from inside. The outskirts are clear.”
“You sure about that?” Nick protested. “It kinda sounded like someone was having a bad day. Or someone else was having a
really
bad day.”
One shot...
Olivia pressed her rifle against his chest without asking him to carry it and marched towards the truck. We followed her back with Jeremy hot on her heels. “What are you doing?”