“Instructor Nemilin, can you give me the readout from the ship?”
Dravi reached into his robes and removed the small data chip. The healer took it and Dravi helped Erinii onto the exam table.
She sat quietly with her legs dangling over the edge and her head spinning. Now that she had used her talent, she was becoming aware that the power had drained her completely. She was barely conscious as the healer returned to her side.
“Lay back, Zakkata. When you wake up, everything will be clear.” The woman smoothed her hands over Erinii’s forehead and smiled, but there was a worried crease between her brows.
Dravi’s quiet nod was what let Erinii dissolve into unconsciousness. Hopefully, her dreams would change when she came out of this one. This dream was far from fun, though the change in venue was refreshing.
The Instructor was at her side when she woke. “Huh, I thought that the backdrop would have changed, as well as the characters. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad you are not a squid face, but this is getting old.”
Dravi gave her a tense smile. “Glad to have you back with us. They did quite a number on you with the toxins.”
“Well, they needed to keep me alive to hold me up as a threat to the population. Frankly, I have already done my civic duty. I united the population and the government with fear and panic.” She was always grumpy when she first woke, but usually, she had a few seconds of lucidity before the gasses took her to parts unknown. It was more of a tease than anything, letting her see herself before she was lost to the madness.
She sat up and a healer scuttled toward her. “Ms. Zakkata, you need to rest. Your heart stopped twice during the extraction and it took all of us to get you breathing again.”
Aches and pains that Erinii didn’t recall earning were suddenly clear. “So, it stopped twice. That would explain a lot.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and flushed bright pink. She was naked and facing Instructor Nemilin. He politely closed his eyes, but she had been lying nude on a bed and he had been sitting next to her for an undisclosed period of time.
“Healer, can I get something to wear?”
The healer looked at her and blushed. “Of course. I am so sorry. We just removed your clothing to have the gas residue analyzed. Your body broke down the enzymes into an addictive toxin and it started to put you through withdrawal when you landed. It was ingenious really, the perfect way of keeping you insane and dependant.”
Erinii pulled two hanks of hair forward to cover her breasts. “Clothing, please?”
The healer scuttled to a storage bin and returned to hand a folded article over. “Sorry, Ms. Zakkata.”
Erinii opened the scarlet wrap and slid her arms into the sleeves, closing the front before she hopped to her feet and tied the sash with the wrap, decently covering her to her knees.
The floor was pleasantly cool under her feet and she wriggled her toes at the sensation.
It was something that she had not felt in years, the facility demanded that shoes be worn at all times. Even the showers were designed to accommodate the footwear.
Instructor Nemilin came up beside her. “You have an intake interview scheduled. Will you go you as you are?”
She looked down and wiggled her toes, again happy with the minute freedom she had gained. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Having tea with a Dhemon was a new experience and did nothing to firm her opinion of her reality.
Facility Coordinator Turnari had shiny horns that flashed as he inclined his head. His features were tired, but his smile was kind. “So, Erinii Zakkata, what do you want to do with your life?”
She paused with her cup just in front of her lips. “I thought you were going to tell me that.”
Dravi chuckled silently, his shoulders moving with amusement. He kept his mouth shut and she suspected that it was an unusual thing for him.
Turnari grinned. “With your power level, you have a number of options available.”
“What power level?”
Turnari blinked, surprise evident on his face.
Dravi spoke, “The Bassinor are hostile toward talents, Turnari. They don’t allow training or conversations in regard to using talents.”
“Right. I had forgotten about that.” He rubbed at his chin and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “When a person has a talent, it radiates out of their mind at a variety of frequencies and each person has their own level of ability to control those frequencies. Those are what we refer to as power levels.
“You have what is called catastrophic telekinesis.”
The term he used made her choke on her tea. “Catastrophic?”
“It is a reference used for a telekinetic who can move more than one hundred times their own body weight.”
She blinked and put her cup down. “I don’t think I can do that.”
He nodded to Dravi and her pale companion went to the desk and opened a projector, dimming the lights.
Dravi spoke. “This is what Davio sent to us and what earned you our intervention.”
The images flickered and Erinii was confronted with the security footage of her initial exposure to the public. She held her breath as the small woman in the display sprinted down the street, light posts, mailboxes and cars sliding in to block the approach of the military visible on the bottom of the recording.
Erinii ran her hands through her hair, feeling the small ridges and lumps of scars. She knew what was coming next but couldn’t look away.
She got to her siblings and warned them, arguing with them for a moment before the first warning shot rang out. Her blazing red hair swung wide as she whirled to confront the incoming soldiers. It was so surreal to watch her arm rise and the guns rise with them.
Watching the next portion of the images showed the crowd of protestors turning on her, feet flying toward her body in an endless round of kicks. Her siblings were pushed back, held and the crowd surged to attack them as well, the madness of the riot taking over.
Erinii’s eyes widened as she saw the bleeding and broken body reach out to throw the rioters away from her siblings. She didn’t remember getting to her feet and ploughing a path for her family to run to safety. She held three thousand writhing bodies back with the power of her mind and when the military brought an aircraft weapon into position, she held up a wall of energy until the gun was empty.
There were those around her who were wounded by the flying shards of metal and when the gun stopped firing, she dropped to the ground, one of hundreds of injured and dying. A troupe of soldiers lifted her from the ground, stepping over the protestors and marching away with her.
Erinii sat back, wiping tears from her face. “I didn’t know about that.”
Turnari smiled. “You have highly protective instincts. It was a definite draw for our intervention.”
“So, if I had simply attacked the army, I would still be at the facility?” She twisted her lips.
“Yes. You would have been a danger and your sentence would have been earned.” Turnari raised his hand, “However, that was not the case, your siblings got away and they were able to work behind the scenes to get you off the catalyst and from there, you were capable of communicating with Dravi.”
“What will happen to Davio? I mean, they will know that he helped me.”
Dravi grinned. “Will they? I have wiped the memories of everyone at the facility. They will never know you were there.”
She blinked in surprise. “You did what?”
Turnari poured her another cup of tea. “Dravi Nemilin is a Minder. He has been trained to rummage around in the thoughts of others to remove and help them cope with trauma. He pinpointed thoughts of you and he removed them. Your stepbrother took care of the paperwork before he left and he should now be safely on his way to meet with his family. They were extracted last year before we began working toward your release.”
She blew on her new cup of tea to cool it. “This has been in the works for a year?”
Turnari grimaced and sat back. “Since you were technically arrested for an illegal offense on your world, it was necessary to try and gain your freedom through political channels. When it became obvious that they would not part with you willingly, we had to circumvent your regulations and we are very good at circumventing.”
A grin on a Dhemon was frightening at the best of times, but when there was grimness in his eyes, it was even creepier.
Erinii heard the clattering of her teacup on its saucer and she quickly put it down on the table before her shaking hands dropped it. “No one remembers me?”
Dravi smiled and flicked the lights on. “They remember you, but I planted a meme that you died in the facility.”
“You did what?”
He gracefully took a seat next to her on the short couch. “I planted a meme. It is an idea that continues onward without any direct propulsion. It passes from person to person until everyone knows it. While the folks at the facility have a more detailed description of your death, the general public will only know that you are dead.”
She blinked as images of her half-sister and niece ran through her mind. “Even my family?”
“Your brother left the surface and I was able to exclude him from the field that I generated when I first landed. Those inside the facility had the benefit of its shielding, so I had to wait until I was waiting for you to begin to work the thought through the walls.
“When you blasted the hole in the wall, you broke the dampening field and made my work much easier.” Dravi grinned, his pale skin glowing in the afternoon light.
“So, you are a talent as well?”
Turnari smiled again. “All of the people of the Citadel are talents. Like your own people’s lockup, the Citadel was once a restraint facility, but when their world was attacked, the people let them out and they stood between the normal population and harm.”
“This has happened before? It isn’t just the way my world treats its citizens?” Her voice was desperate.
Turnari inclined his head and Dravi took her hand, sending slow warmth through her body.
Dravi murmured, “My mother was a Kozue who got pregnant by a Vimpyr and she was forced to leave her family ship behind to make a life for herself on the surface of a strange world. There was no chance that I would be able to grow up on the ship of my ancestors. Breeding with foreign races was not something that the Kozue do. Ever.”
Turnari showed his teeth. “Nemilin is the Kozue word for unknowable.”
“It is an order to any other Kozue, isn’t it.” She made the statement while enjoying the grip he had on her hand.
Dravi smiled, showing pointed canines. “It is. It gives them the option to kill me on site if they can.”
Turnari waved their conversation away. “We need to circle back to the original question. Erinii, what do you want to do with your life?”
Dravi whispered, “Answer from your heart.”
Erinii dragged in a deep breath and cleared her thoughts. “I want to help people like me. I want to protect those who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I want to use what is inside me to do good and I want to use it often.”
Turnari leaned back and Dravi squeezed her hand. With a soft whisper, he told her, “We can help.”
She looked into his eyes and smiled at the surety that he radiated through his dark eyes with the powder blue circles around his irises. As she met his dark gaze with her bright green one, she felt something click into place within her mind. She was locked into this reality now, because leaving him was not an option.
Chapter Six
The robes of an apprentice were a startling white. They flowed around her with every step and occasionally exposed the tips of her toes. She had been given shoes, but they were the last things she wanted to wear. If it wasn’t required by uniform, she wasn’t going to put them on. Her feet were having far too much fun with the variety of textures of the Citadel.
“So, Erinii, we want you to shove these weights along the floor or lift them as you see fit.” Dravi had a data pad in his hand and he was making notes absently while she watched.
Idly, she took a seat on a stacked pile of weights and stared at the large silver objects at the other end of the run. She lifted them and made them dance slowly in a circle.
Dravi paused and looked at her with a startled grin that showed his sharp teeth. “Not much of a challenge for you, is it?”
She started to stack them horizontally, changed it to vertical and then arranged them by weight. “Not particularly. Is it supposed to be?”
He sighed and shook his head. “It was supposed to be, but apparently your mind has expanded while you were at the facility.”
“So, what was this exercise supposed to prove?”
“It was supposed to test you, but I have something else in mind now. Will you come with me?”
She smiled. “Of course. Where do you want me to put this stuff?”
He turned and watched the tons of metal that she had arranged in a happy face near the ceiling. “I would like you to put it down very carefully where it was initially, please.”
Chuckling, she set the weights down in the same formation she had lifted them from. “There. They are all down.”
He looked at her and smiled. “You may want to lower yourself to the ground before we go for the walk. The floating might not be a good idea if you run into a low ceiling.”
Surprised, she thudded back onto the pile of weights she had been sitting on and winced as the impact created a distinctly bruised sensation in her butt. “Ow.”
“You didn’t know you were floating?”
She stood and rubbed at her damaged posterior. “No. I had no idea.”
Her robes had insulated the sudden drop, but it was still a bit of a shock for her. “I need to walk this off.”
He offered her his arm and inclined his head. “Then, come this way. I have just the place.”
They walked through the halls, his darker robes contrasting with her glowing white. The sound of construction grew louder in her ears as they walked until finally they were outside and staring at the walls and buildings still under construction.
“Wait here a moment.” Dravi left her to watch as he glided across the courtyard to speak with the Tival foreman organizing the heavy equipment. The Tival lifted his head in surprise as Dravi spoke, looked over at her and then kept listening as her handler continued his explanation.