Chapter Two

 

 

Addy woke with a gasp, sitting up and finding herself on a neatly arranged bed in a small room.

“Relax, Addy. You are fine. Everything is fine. They just needed to find a safe place to wake you up.”

“Kelly?”

Addy swung her legs to the side of the bed and stood up. Her limbs were wobbly, but she could hold her weight. The weird thing was that the cuts, marks, and other bruises were gone. Her skin was whole again.

“You guessed it. Now, I need to warn you that you have been asleep for a while.”

Addy blinked. “How long is a while?”

“More than a day, less than a hundred years. Now, there is a food system in front of you, go and get something to eat.”

Addy looked at the machine, and the alien symbols translated themselves in her mind. She picked some soup and bread.

“Good choice.”

“Where are you?”

Kelly sighed. “I am close by, but it was thought that I give you the briefing before I showed up in person.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Well, you have had some walls built in your mind by specialists. They have managed to put your new talent aside and keep it from touching your conscious mind. If things go well, you can reach through it to use the power that woke.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Eat your meal and watch the monitor.”

The monitor in question descended from the ceiling, and a video began to play. Addy ate her meal and paused when she realized that the woman being hauled into the room was herself. It was that day.

“I am going to fast forward a bit of it, but pay attention.”

The first few hours of torture were a blur, and then. Addy’s video body began to fight the restraints.

The sadists high-fived each other and then turned back to her, but she was still arched against her bonds. She was locked and still, and then, the world around them quivered.

The men trying to ignore the results was obvious, but when the shaking became more violent, they put their attention to her. Addy’s eyes were wide, and she was screaming, but there was no sound. A wave of something came from her. It looked like the sonic interference from a speaker, but it moved out and then down into the floor beneath her.

Addy pushed her bowl aside and watched as her body on the exam table was isolated by fissures while the idiots died or ran. It was a familiar sight, and she did remember what happened next.

A figure arrived at the edge of the monitor’s view and spoke to her. She spoke back, and the man with wings moved into full view as he sedated and then unbuckled her.

“Great, Kelly. That was yesterday, so what happened next?”

“You were stored at the Alliance Archive and that is where you remained for thirty years.”

The soup roiled in her stomach. “What?”

“You were in stasis for thirty years. I visited you when I could, but I had to earn my keep out in the great unknown.”

The ground under Addy’s feet began to move.

“Calm down, Addy. Take a deep breath and calm down. They could only block so much. Your talent is definitely wired into your lizard brain. If you panic, feel anger or pain, you are going to destroy the world under your feet.”

“My feet? Where are you?” Addy snarked it while she tried to breathe slowly and deeply. The quivering under her slowed and stopped.

“I am in an orbital station, watching the seismograph and hoping that you can get yourself under control.”

“Why can’t I see you?” Addy was suspicious. Kelly couldn’t be watching anything. She was blind.

“Because I am thirty years older and you are still the little psycho that I met and that kept me sane all those years ago. It hurts every time I see you.”

“I want to see you.”

The display flickered, and a woman in her fifties was sitting, wearing a weird set of robes, and her eyes were still the midnight black that Addy remembered from the open files in the lab.

“You said you could see.”

Kelly waved her hand from side to side. “It is more like sense, but the seismograph has an audible readout. When I say I see you, I see an imprint of you. It is like you made an impression on my mind, and I compare that to the new image every time I am near you.”

“Why did it take so long to get me awake?”

“The Citadel only just got a healer who could slow their mind to match yours in the stasis chamber while building fast enough to create a usable barrier.” Kelly clicked her tongue. “It was not easy.”

“Why bother to wake me at all?”

Kelly grinned. “Terrans are all the rage. We are in the Sector Guard, the Alliance worlds, the Nyal Imperium, and a few hundred have joined the Citadel. You have to pay for your upkeep, but you get to travel and do things you never imagined.”

“So, we have turned into collector’s items?” Addy snorted.

“Something like that. We are a trendy accessory. Now, you are in a small complex on Iratho. Iratho is a sentient world, and he will stop you from doing too much damage.”

“Sentient, so there are other folks here?”

“Sentient, as in the ground under your feet is awake and aware. He has an Avatar that can speak for him, and you will meet him once you are settled.”

“So, I am on a world with just one other person?”

“Yes. Iratho is trying to decide on his environments, so the world is relatively empty with all the water beneath the surface. If you go outside, wear a suit.”

“What?”

“A suit. An environmental suit.” Kelly smiled, “You will need it to keep the wind from scrubbing at your skin like the exfoliant from hell.”

“This just gets better and better.” She paused and gave the digital Kelly a look. “Why can I read this language?”

“The healer who built the scaffolding in your brain added standard languages, so that you could survive on your own.”

“I thought you said it was barriers.”

Kelly raised her hands in surrender. “Fine. I have no idea what they did in there. I know that the facility stopped shaking when he finished what he was doing in there.”

“Was it the guy on this world?”

“No, it was a strong teaching telepath who has worked with wild talents before. He knew where to put everything; you just have to learn how to use it.”

A chirp sounded on Kelly’s end of the connection. “I am losing the signal. We haven’t gotten the relay satellites in place yet. I will be back in a few hours. Suit up, take a walk, enjoy yourself. The instructions for everything are on... well... everything.”

Kelly waved, and the screen went dark.

Addy flexed her fingers and looked around. She knew it wasn’t a dream. Dreams were far more fun.

She went on a quick examination of her quarters, and to her surprise, the door opened and let her out into a huge facility. The ceiling was a bright and unclouded dome through which she could see clouds scudding far above.

She was alone in some kind of observation station, and if Kelly was to be believed, she was only the second person on the land itself.

Not one to just stand around, Addy went looking for her exo suit.

“There is not a lot of suit to this suit.” She held up the heavy panel of fabric and flapped the arms and legs so they did a little dance.

The loose shirt and trousers were interesting pajamas, but they wouldn’t go under this suit. It was going to be skin or nothing.

She shrugged. “Well, if no one is watching, what the hell.”

She shucked her clothing and then slid her foot into one let of the suit. She guessed that the closure was in front, so that is how she got dressed.

The suit was warm, hugged her curves, and contained everything when she completed the closure. She twisted and bent in the suit and had to admit that it felt great.

The helmet was a band that attached to the suit. She didn’t know how it was going to work, but a few mouthfuls of dry air wouldn’t kill her.

When the band settled on the suit, a hum came from her neckline. If that was good, then there was no reason that she couldn’t see where she was living.

Part of her mind whispered that this could all be a dream, but the bulk of her thoughts slapped the crap out of that idea. The kidnapping and months of torture were not something she could have imagined, so the lack of pain and relative feeling of health was a reality she wanted to immerse herself in.

She tried to poke her nose and a light crackling of energy stopped her finger. “Okay, so that is working. Right. Now to find the door.”

The panels at the end of the hall indicated some kind of exterior access, but it wasn’t until she palmed the lock and the inner barrier sealed to keep grime out of the main base that the exterior door opened.

The first curl of wind pushed lightly against her, so Addy squealed and charged out into the alien landscape.

The world around her shook, and lights flared on the building she had just left.

“Okay. So, there is an alarm. Great.” She stopped and closed her eyes, breathing deeply and wondering what the air actually tasted like. The screen was filtering it for her.

The ground under her feet was a fine silt. She crouched and touched it, sifting the fine stuff through her fingers. The colour was odd. There was a bit of red, orange and purple overlaid by smoky grey. A glint of light sparked off something in the handful, and she smiled slightly as she let it drop.

She brushed her hand off on her suit, and she walked to the edge of what seemed to be her base site. A mountain range in the distance was a black onyx wall that gleamed in the orangey light of the larger of the two suns.

In the distance, a dark shadow started toward her, moving across the ground at a wildly accelerated pace.

“Okay, back in my box. Here we go.”

She turned and sprinted for the base, but Addy wasn’t fast enough.

The first wall of wind struck her, and she turned into it, kneeling on one knee with her opposite fist to the ground. As the whirling, howling wind pulled at her, she started screaming. The sound coming out of her contained all of her fury at the hope that had turned to agony, the time she had lost, her family and friends probably notified of her death, and even her best friend in space had aged and moved on. There was nothing like losing your timeline to cause despair.

As she screamed, the wind moved around her. She could feel it pushing and twisting the way you could stand near a window and feel someone tapping on the glass. The wind howled, and her voice sang with it until her throat was raw.

She kept her broken thoughts and grief around her while she got up and walked across the gale and back to the base. She palmed the lock, and it shattered. With what was left of her voice, she screamed, “Fuck!”

Addy pounded her fist against the door, and it cracked outward from the impact point.

She tumbled inside, hit the emergency seal that she spotted earlier, and got to her feet.

The rage went with the storm. It was gone, she was safe, and she was calm. Her heart beat a steady pace, and she made it through the interior seal.

Humming to herself, she removed the helmet and got the suit off and hanging back in its cupboard. She heard humming and watched as light cascaded over the suit, looking for tears.

Her clothing was waiting for her, and she was more than eager to get something less ready-for-bed.

Now that she was awake, she had no intent to return to bed unless she was exhausted.

With determination to get dressed and explore, she returned to her living space and looked around for proper clothing. She always felt better when she was properly dressed.