The Energy Crusades (13 page)

"Swing to your right," he told me, grasping my hands tighter. The heat from them sent warm energy up my arms.

"Go get the bag," I said it again so he wouldn
'
t be foolish and follow me over the side. His forehead creased with worry, but he let go of my hands and struggled to his feet while the ground moved beneath him.

"Sway to your right," he repeated. I took another look down, quickly, to try and judge the distance, then I swung my body to create a little momentum, as much as I could with the tenuous hold I had on the concrete, and pushed myself away, letting go and allowing myself to fall, all the while keeping in my mind the picture of where I wanted to land.

I made my target, but the landing shot
p
ain through my knees
.
I fell, ungracefully, onto my behind. A guard leaped at me immediately and I had to scramble to my feet. I fought to free myself and get to Caden and Balor, but the guard was ferocious.

"Hang in there, Kaia!" Caden called to me. The Virtual beat at me and swung its staff at a maddening pace. I deflected the blows and tried to get the upper hand, to reach in and paralyze it, but it was quick. Sweat poured into my eyes, an annoyance my opponent did not have to face.

"Over here, Kaia," Balor jumped on the landing adjacent to mine and held his hand out toward me. I glanced at him, and the slight distraction was my downfall. The guard was able to get in close and grab hold of my neck. It lifted me off the floor until my legs dangled beneath me. In my left hand, I kept a firm grasp on my staff, while my right clawed at the guard
'
s fingers around my neck. While I gasped for air, I tried to swing my staff at its legs, but with limited oxygen, I couldn
'
t think clearly, and my blows were ineffectual.

"Ask for the escape," the non-human voice rasped at me. I wouldn
'
t do it, I wouldn
'
t let the guard win. Where was Balor?
I couldn't turn my head to find out.
Unable to breathe, I couldn
'
t scream for help.

Ajax! I screamed without words instead because no sound could escape my lips. Either Ajax could hear me or he couldn
'
t, but this would be no time for him to pretend. I was in trouble. Whether he responded to my plea or had simply witnessed my distress I didn
'
t know, but only a few seco
nds passed before he crashed onto the landing much as I had. The guard didn
'
t wait for Ajax to come after it, he simply flung me over the side as if I was an empty energy suit. Rather than finish him off, Ajax leaped after me, his hands reaching toward me as we fell, the myriad of staircases disappearing around us, leaving nothing to grasp.

Slow! Ajax yelled the command into my head, confirming he had been ignoring me after all, but I couldn
'
t afford to waste any energy on the thought. I used every ounce of willpower I had to command the air around me to slow my fall. With my hands in front of me, I forced my body to slow down. The stairways and classrooms, and everything else in the building faded away and somehow we were outside, falling through the dull g
ray sky like we
'
d been flung out over a cliff. Below us, the wet, rocky shore came rushing up and we crashed into it violently, despite our efforts to slow down.

Falling onto the stairwell was nothing compared to hitting those rocks. The impact jarred my whole body and my left arm twisted painfully as I hit. I tasted blood in my mouth, and the earth started to spin. All sound was lost as I struggled not to pass out. It felt like I was in a long tunnel and I couldn
'
t catch my breath.

Ajax crawled over to me and gently turned me over. He pulled my energy suit back to look at my neck, then fumbled in his pack for the healing balm.

"Are you okay?" His hands shook as he applied it, massaging it tenderly into my skin. "You
'
re all bruised up." His voice shook too.

I lay there, stunned by it all, my arm throbbing, my neck sore, everything sore and hurting. Ajax had to be hurt too, but he seemed more concerned for me at the moment.

"How did we end up here?" I asked him, my own voice shaking a bit. I
'
d just been tossed from a stairwell while inside, only to find myself crash landed outside, several meters below the building. From this vantage point, we could see the building sat atop a cliff, its back teetering over the rocks that spilled down into the ocean below.

"I don
'
t know," he answered truthfully, "but we need to find the others, or maybe they
'
ll find us."

"What happened to the bag? Wasn
'
t it in the classroom?"

"Yes, I think so. I tried to get in, but the doors were locked."

I sat up, feeling a bit better as the healing balm eased some of my pain. Without thinking, I reached out and straightened Ajax
'
s necklace, letting my fingers momentarily trace the words embedded in the stone. Electric current shot through my arm as the stone came in contact with my skin and images quickly flashed through my head: cliffs, the white haired lady, caves. All of the images similar to what I
'
d seen when I touched Professor Baal
'
s bracelet. I met Ajax
'
s eyes, but his feelings were guarded, as always. My heart pounded in my chest and I had a strong desire to take the necklace off of him and place it around my own throat, as if it could protect me from harm, like the boy who wore it.

"Are you hurt?" I asked, letting it go and pulling away from him before the desire became too much to resist. I wanted his necklace around my own neck and my reasons weren
'
t altogether clear.

"Just a little shaken up, like you," he answered, getting to his feet and reaching out a hand to help me up. There were many questions I wanted to ask, but I held my tongue. It wasn
'
t the time to demand answers for things he probably didn
'
t want to answer for anyway. He took out his mailbox and began sending our coordinates to the others. Professor Baal hadn
'
t returned the mailboxes she confiscated, but Ajax and Malik still had theirs.

As he fiddled with the device, I took a closer look at our surroundings. The mouth of a cave opened in the rocks just a few meters from where we stood. I walked toward it, noting the cave seemed naturally made, not altered by humans the way many of the other openings were. There was no forced symmetry, just a ragged hole in the rocks, the opening stretching back farther than my eye could see.

It was dark in the cave, and wet. No sunlight penetrated the gray sky outside, and little light could pierce the darkness inside. Water pooled on the floor and dripped slowly from the ceiling.

There were people in the cave, men so pale they looked to be glowing. Their skin was translucent and provided the only light in the dimness of the cave. They crawled all over the walls and ceiling, crawling and climbing, but going nowhere.

I stepped a bit closer, into the cave itself. On the ground, not more than a meter in front of me, sat the black bag in a pool of water halfway between each side. To get to it, I would have to go farther in while those human creatures crawled all around me. With a few more steps, I wondered if I could just call the bag to me. The cave dwellers seemed to take no notice of my presence.

Ajax stepped up silently by my side. Without thinking, I reached for his hand just as I would have when we were children running around and exploring caves such as these back in our own Grid. His hand felt as familiar as it had when we were younger and I held on tight, forgetting myself for the moment, forgetting the way he ignored me, forgetting the way he denied our friendship, forgetting everything, as I stared mesmerized by the creatures in the cave.

Footsteps behind us, and then Malik
'
s voice pulled me back to reality and I dropped Ajax
'
s hand immediately, feeling the color rise in my cheeks. The rest of our team had found their way to us and stood as mesmerized by the cave dwellers as we were. Curiosity and fear emanated from their bodies. I reached out my hand to call the bag to me, hoping I had the will to lift it from the water and into my hands. It rose up shakily, but when it did so, one of the cave dwellers stopped his climbing and turned his face
t
oward mine. His eyes were colorless, like a piece of sea glass washed ashore after many years, and his direct gaze startled me into dropping the bag with a splash. He disconnected from the cave wall and landed nimbly on the ground. His companions did the same, filling in the space behind him.

"Who are they?" Malik asked, his voice a whisper behind me.

Their hair, what little there was atop their heads, was colorless too, not gray, not white, but somewhere in between the two. They were small for men, but all lean muscle, their veins showing through their skin like faint purple tributaries upon a pale landscape. Each of them wore only a pair of shorts, possibly made of cotton, tied at the waist with a simple drawstring and colorless like everything else about them.

The leader, the one who dropped first, picked up the bag and took a step toward us.

"If you want this, you
'
ll have to come into the caves to get it," he said aloud. In my head he said,
Are
you
the
one
?

My heartbeat roared inside my ears. Ajax picked up my hand and held it tight. Did he do it out of habit too, or was he trying to hold me in place? I took another step.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"He said we need to go into the cave to get the bag," Balor answered, stepping up on the other side of me, "so let
'
s go." As usual, he was ready to charge. But I was looking for a different answer.

What
di
d
you
say
? I asked again, silently. The cave dwellers were retreating. One by one they eased back into the darkness, where my eyes could not follow, until only the leader remained.

"If you want your answer, you have to come into the caves," he said, and then he retreated as well, taking the bag with him and leaving us gaping after them.

Caves

Balor immediately started to follow, but Caden stopped him.

"Hold up, Balor," he said. "Let
'
s talk this out for a second. How did the two of you get out here?"

"I don
'
t know," I shrugged. "The Virtual threw me and Ajax jumped after me. The building disappeared and when we landed, we ended up out there." I pointed in the general direction of where we
'
d crashed on the ground.

"I watched him throw you and then the two of you vanished." Caden was troubled. I could feel his confusion all around him.

"I fell. I fell a few times and I never landed outside," Balor pointed out.

"The two of you should be smashed to bits. How far did you fall?" Caden continued with his questions.

"Far," Ajax answered tersely. "We had to make our bodies slow down."

There was a long silence as the others looked at us curiously. Only Malik seemed unfettered by the admission.

"How did you do that?" Tory asked, curious.

"It takes concentration," Ajax answered. "You have to will the energy around you to slow the fall. We can work on it sometime."

"Do you think you can teach us?" she asked, excited by the prospect.

"I
'
ll try," he smiled at her, transforming his face from gloomy to handsome for just a few seconds.

"Are we a team, Kaia? All of us? Or just you and Ajax?" Caden asked, not at all charmed by Ajax
'
s smile.

"We
'
re a team," I answered without hesitation. "All of us. What are you so upset about?"

"What did the cave dweller say to you?" he wanted to know.

"You heard him," Balor jumped to my defense. "We all heard him. He said we had to go into the caves to get the bag."

"No," Caden shook his head, "there was something else. I saw your face, he upset you."

I looked at Ajax, out of habit perhaps, unsure what to do. It didn
'
t make sense, what the cave dweller said, and I didn
'
t want to share it since I didn
'
t understand it myself and didn
'
t need another thing to set me apart.

"What did the cave dweller say to you?" Caden persisted. "Are you going to tell all of us, or wait until later and just tell Ajax?"

I didn
'
t like the way he questioned me, it made me angry, but I understood where Caden was coming from and I pushed down the unwelcome emotion. No one said anything for several moments, and the silence stretched out until only the drip- drip of water could be heard as I thought about how to answer him. It wasn
'
t my intention to say anything about what the cave dweller said to me, but I would have told Ajax at some point, maybe silently. Did I trust all of them? I had to decide.

"He asked if I was
'
the one
'
," I finally answered, truthfully.

"The one what?" Balor asked, his face scrunched in confusion.

"I don
'
t know; that
'
s why I was asking."

"When did he ask you?" Caden didn
'
t want to let it go.

"When he told us we had to go into the cave," I admitted.

"I didn
'
t hear him, did anyone else?" Caden looked around, but nobody else had heard, of course.

"He said it in my head." I felt defiant then. He wanted answers? Fine. I wasn
'
t the only one keeping secrets.

"I thought so. Why didn
'
t you tell us you could speak and hear without words?"

"I don
'
t know, Caden. I guess I didn
'
t want to advertise I was a freak, you know?" I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my head away from him.

"I can do it, too," Malik spoke up. He moved to my side. I looked at him and he gave me an apologetic smile. "I should have told you all as well. It
'
s not an easy thing to share."

"I can do it, too," Ajax admitted, but he didn
'
t meet my eyes.

"I can sense animals," Tory chimed in, in her little voice. "I can communicate with them in a way." She took my hand and squeezed it, relief showing on her features at having it in the open.

"How about you, Caden? Why don
'
t you share your secrets?" Ajax challenged him.

"I don
'
t know," Caden shrugged, "I have a way with solar cells and the like. I know when there
'
s an alarm present and I can find any path. You
'
ve all seen me in the mazes. I
'
ll always find the way out."

"So was the door an alarm?" Ajax questioned him further.

"Yes," he admitted, and this time he was the one looking sheepish. "But he kicked it in before I could say anything. I didn
'
t expect him to do that."

"I
'
m just strong," Balor spoke up, grinning as usual, "And good in a fight. Plus I
'
m funny. And good looking. And, I don
'
t have a girlfriend in case you girls were wondering." He winked at me and Tory, and I couldn
'
t help but laugh. Balor had a way of lightening the mood whenever things got too tense.

"All right, let
'
s decide what we
'
re going to do here. Enough of this, we need to get a move on." Ajax was our leader once again.

"Do you think this was part of the exercise? For us to end up out here and go into the caves?" Malik asked.

"I don
'
t think so," Ajax answered. "I
'
m not sure how this happened, but since we
'
re being honest, I
'
ll tell you I think the exercise was tampered with. Both Kaia and I saw the bag in one of those classrooms, so how did it end up here? Is it even the same bag? Do we go into the caves or back to the building?"

We were divided on how to proceed. Caden and Balor thought we should go back to the building. Malik said we should go into the caves. The rest of us weren
'
t sure. None of us relished the idea of heading into the dark caves. Who knew what we would find? Also, if it wasn
'
t part of the exercise, would there still be an escape? Could the Teachers still monitor us?

"Should we ask Professor Baal?" I questioned Ajax. He thought about it, unsure. We weren
'
t supposed to contact the Teachers. We were supposed to get through the exercise without assistance.

"No," he decided. "We make our own decision. What should we do?"

"If we go on the assumption that this isn
'
t part of the intended exercise, why go into the caves?" Caden asked, making a good point.

"This is a chance for us!" Malik insisted. "This is bigger than the bag. Let
'
s go see what they want. Let
'
s see what
'
s in there. I don
'
t think any other team has this opportunity. Forget the building. I don
'
t want to go back there." Actually, I didn
'
t want to go back there either.

"I
'
ll go into the caves." I sided with Malik. I
'
d take the cave dwellers over the Virtual fighters. The others reluctantly agreed and we began to walk into the darkness.

We walked silently for a time, setting our orbs to float beside us. They provided some light in the dimness of the caves. The tunnel twisted and turned, but did not branch off so we didn
'
t have to guess at our path. Caden would have known the way in any case, and could lead if the path forked in more than one direction. He spoke truthfully when he said he could find his way out of anything. I
'
d seen him do it. After a few minutes of walking, he stepped beside me and put a hand on my arm to hold me back while the others walked ahead.

"I don
'
t think you
'
re a freak," he said softly. He was remorseful, I could tell. Still, I felt hurt he had questioned me and forced me to admit what I would have rather kept to myself. When I let the silence lapse even longer he nudged me with his shoulder.

"I just want you to trust me like you trust him," he whispered. "And I don
'
t understand why you go to him when he is awful to you back at the University." He might have been whispering, but Ajax turned his head and looked back at us as if he
'
d heard Caden
'
s words. Caden ignored him and continued, "If your brother was here, he wouldn
'
t let him treat you poorly and he wouldn
'
t like it if he caught you holding his hand." It was true, Ajax was awful to me when we weren
'
t training and I wasn
'
t even sure how much I trusted him. After all, he
'
d been lying to me since I got to the University, but I didn
'
t think my brother would have any influence on him. He hadn
'
t so far. Ajax blew him off the same way he blew me off. I shouldn
'
t have held his hand though; Caden was right, but I couldn
'
t take it back. As frustrating as it all was, I had to let it go for the time being. I had to trust Ajax while we trained. I had to trust them all.

"I do trust you," was all I answered, and I nudged his shoulder amicably. I didn
'
t want to say anything else, lest Ajax could hear. Caden liked to take the role of Tiergan; he was my surrogate big brother, and in much the same way, he was often overprotective.

After some time, we came to a place where we had to make a choice. The tunnel branched off in several places and one of the passageways was narrower than the rest and had a stream of water flowing on its floor. We all paused, considering our options. If we had to choose the passage with water, we would definitely be getting wet.

"Do not tell us we have to go down this passage," Balor insisted to Caden. "Don
'
t even say it!"

"We have to go down this passage," Caden answered without hesitating. He was sure of it. Of course we did; it was the only one whose sides rose up steeply from the water allowing no room to walk along the edges. To stay out of the water, we would need to cling to the walls like the cave dwellers.

Caden took a few steps into the tunnel and threw his orb, watching as it disappeared from view. It took a good ten minutes for it to return.

"It
'
s a long way," Caden seemed hesitant about the distance. "It
'
s a long way and the water is pretty deep. It
'
s only shallow for about a meter." Nobody said a word as the realization we would actually have to swim through the caves sunk in. If we had to get in the water, our energy suits would have to come off. They were designed to function no matter what the weather, but could not be submerged in water for any length of time.

I took the pack off my back and let it fall to the floor. "It looks like we need to get undressed," I said. There was no avoiding it and I just wanted to get on with it already.

"Yeah ladies, time to take off your clothes," Balor flashed a wicked smile.

"Knock it off, Bay," Ajax spoke up, his voice full of authority. "Everybody strip to their underclothes and we
'
ll get in the water. Malik, check the packs for a water proof bag. Let
'
s go."

Tory and I put a little space between ourselves and undressed quickly. After what had happened with Ajax on the footpath, I had warned Tory about wearing substantial underclothes during training exercises, and I could see she was glad for the advice now.

"What happened to your back, Kaia?" she asked, her eyes wide with concern. "And your legs?" I took a look behind me to see what made her knit her brows with worry. Faded staff marks slashed across my thighs and calves and I was sure my back looked the same. The Virtuals had hit me over and over again, but the marks didn
'
t look fresh. The welts were faint, as if from an old injury that hadn
'
t been healed properly. They were healing on their own.

"I got hit," I shrugged, willing her to drop it. Thankfully Balor caused a diversion and her attention was drawn away.

"Help!" he shouted playfully, "It
'
s a cave dweller!" He pretended to be alarmed as he pointed at Caden whose skin was so pale it also seemed to glow in the gloom of the cave. I stifled a laugh and avoided meeting anyone
'
s eyes in case we burst into laughter.

"Shut up, Bay," Caden punched him in the arm but laughed affably, unruffled by the jest. His skin was pale enough to brighten the space around him, but unlike the cave dwellers, his body was covered with hair in the same red hue that topped his head. It blanketed his chest, arms and legs, giving him a manly look. Without his shirt, he looked very grown up. I smiled in his direction, knowing full well how it felt to undress and feel vulnerable about it.

What was striking about standing there half naked together was how different we all were from each other. Tory was small and petite, with skin the color of pale sand. She was curvy and soft where I was lean and long legged. I was much taller and my sun burnished skin proved a sharp contrast to hers. Balor bulged with muscles, while Ajax was slender, his body like ropes of muscle rather than boulders. And where Caden was pale as milk, stocky and broad, Malik
'
s skin was a rich, dark mahogany and he was tall and sleek.