The Violet Awakening (The Elementum Trinity Book 2) (6 page)

“We have to go back!” I shouted, hurrying out of the hallway.

Al grabbed my arm before I could reach the front door.

“We can’t do that,” he said calmly, his eyes steadily locked on my own.

“Why the hell not? Nobody told me my grandfather was right in front of me, and now you’re saying I have to leave him there to rot?”

“Angie, chances are…” he began.

“Chances are what? He’s already dead? You knowingly left him there to die?”

“It’s not like that.”

“It is exactly like that!” I screamed, glaring at him with hateful eyes.

“Hey,” Lakin stared at the picture, having snuck past us unnoticed, “isn’t that that Helmsworth guy?”

My shoulders dropped at the realization that my anger with Al was uncalled for. He had done what he needed to do to ensure my safety—he had done so much—but why couldn’t he have done more? I walked over to Lakin, leaning my head against his chest as I glanced back at the picture of my grandfather, who I’d apparently known my entire life.

‘Why can’t we go back? Why can’t we save him?’
I questioned inside my head.

I waited for Al’s voice to respond, but was only met by silence. I furrowed my brows, turning to him for an answer. The color had drained from his face, and his eyes blank eyes were fixed somewhere on the path ahead. He was in someone else’s mind, and he was terrified by whatever was in there with him.

He rushed out the door, leaving me with nothing but confusion, before Lakin and I followed after him. Cora and Nixon ran down the path toward us, breathless and covered in black smudges. Al turned to us, face twisted with concern.

“Al?” I whispered.

“That quake we felt… there was an explosion,” he began, rubbing his forehead. “The store on top of the hill… They’re saying there was a gas leak.”

My throat felt like I had gargled with liquid-sandpaper. My cheeks flushed, and sweat beaded in my palms.

“My boss, is he—” Lakin asked.

“They haven’t found any bodies, but,” Al said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“The Facility?” I questioned.

“I don’t know… I… can’t focus in on anyone to hear.”

I wanted to drop to my knees and sob for the people I loved. Jenny and Emmy and Paula… gone. Something kept me on my feet—it felt a little like hope, but it was probably just rage. My hands balled into clammy fists and my eyes narrowed in on Al.

‘I’m going back,’
I thought, knowing he could hear me.

Al nodded and turned, walking straight through Cora and Nixon, and toward his house. I grabbed Lakin’s hand and tugged him along, ignoring his slightly-worried inquiries of ‘What are we doing?’ and ‘Angie, what’s going on?’ and ‘Ow, my hand!’

We walked with intent, which caught the attention of curious on-lookers. Word of the explosion seemed to have already reached the entire Eden, as random people joined Lakin’s trend of questioning what we were going to do. By the time we reached Al’s door, Lily was waiting on the front step. Al grasped her face and planted a massive, emotional kiss on her lips. I wondered if Lakin and I would ever reconcile like that after a fight. I hoped so.

“You’ll take Mattie and Jason,” Lily whispered, seemingly not wanting to let go of Al.

“They’re too young, too inexperienced” he responded, holding her just as tightly.

“You need them. It has been decided.”

Al nodded, closing his eyes as he leaned his forehead against Lily’s for a moment longer… saying goodbye.

“Nixon, get Mattie and Jason, please? Cora, see if Curtis is done with Angie’s stone,” Al ordered to the couple, who I hadn’t realized were following us.

It felt like only seconds before Nixon returned with two children trailing behind him. They looked to be about thirteen years old. Then a quick bit of math told me they were thirteen years old, as the generations were spaced five years apart. The girl was very petite, but sharp features kept her from looking any sort of fragile—she probably could have taken me if we’d gotten into a fight. The boy, however, was quite pudgy and slightly trembly. Al dropped to his knees and placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders. I had no idea what he was saying inside the kid’s head, but it seemed to do the trick. The boy nodded with a smile, and bravely pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Angie,” Lily said, trying desperately to cover her anxiety with a calming grin, “this is Mattie and Jason, from Patrick’s generation. They have a very special gift.”

I crinkled my eyebrows as Al gave the kids a nod. I didn’t know what I was expecting—for them to transform into lemurs, perhaps—but without warning, the children I had been staring at just moments before completely disappeared. No, they hadn’t disappeared… I was just incapable of seeing them. I tried to focus my eyes on the spot I knew they had been standing in, but it seemed my attention only wanted to go anywhere else. I felt like I was going to bust a vein in my eyeballs if I tried to focus any harder. I simply couldn’t force myself to look in their direction. If I hadn’t already known they were there, I would have thought we were alone.

“What the—”

“Optical Diversion,” Al said proudly, smiling as the children returned to sight in the exact same place they had been before.

‘I see,’ was what I’d meant to say, but it only came out as an incredulous ‘Hot damn…’

“So you’re the ones nobody’s been able to shut up about for the last couple days,” Mattie remarked, eyeing me over. She instantly reminded me of Lyla.

“Matilda, do not start,” Lily warned, taking on the same tone Emmy had always used with Eric and me when we were being obnoxious. I was surprised to see the girl look down at her feet and mutter a quiet apology.

“Hey,” I chirped, getting Mattie’s attention, “I like your hair.”

It was a very attractive chestnut-brown, and fell in tight ringlets down to her shoulders, and I really couldn’t have cared less about it. But I’d had enough experience with the younger girls in The Facility to know how to get along with them; flattery usually worked pretty well. I wouldn’t have typically cared about getting on a thirteen-year-old’s good side, but seeing as how her gift would be very useful on our mission, I figured it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to have her not want me dead. As she looked up at me, the little glint in her eyes suggested that I was all right in her book.

I was confused as Mattie reached out to take my hand. Perhaps I had misjudged her, and she was about to freeze me over or turn me into a frog—I had no idea what the other Elementums were capable of; it seemed totally logical. She grinned and tilted her head, motioning for me to turn around.

“No way,” Lakin said from behind me, eyes wandering wildly in every direction but my own.

“You can’t see me?” I shrieked, waving my free hand directly in front of his face. He jumped as I booped the tip of his nose with my finger.

Lakin’s eyes widened, focusing on me immediately after Mattie had let go of my hand. My heart fluttered at the sight of his crooked smile. I wondered if we would ever grow so used to each other that I wouldn’t have that reaction. I hoped not.

“Do you both understand what we’re doing?” Al asked.

The kids nodded, and suddenly seemed much older than their age. I realized why Al had told Lily they were too young. We could’ve possibly been marching the children to their deaths, and they weren’t questioning a thing.

“Mattie, you’ll be with Angie. Jason, you’re with Al,” Lily explained, still trying to mask the concern in her voice.

“What about Lakin?” I questioned, protectively weaving my arm through his. Al seemed hesitant to meet my eyes.

“He needs to stay here.”

“What?” I exclaimed, my voice harsh and angry.

“He doesn’t have enough experience using his abilities.” Al tried to be as gentle as possible, but it did little to calm the fire that was building up inside of me.
‘He’ll only put us all in more danger… including himself.’

Even though I knew Al was right, I hated the idea of leaving Lakin behind. He’d be safer in the Eden, but we had s
pent so much of our lives apart, I was consumed by the concern that we might never see each other again. The thought pulled at my innards like a pack of hungry honey badgers fighting over the last bit of defeated cobra.

Before I could turn to Lakin, Cora came trotting back to us, face hard as she stretched her hand out toward me. In the brief moment that her skin touched mine, my vision fogged over. I discreetly closed my eyes, ensuring nobody could see that I was looking into her past.
Through Cora’s view, I saw the burning ruins of the store, and people hurriedly carrying buckets of water to the destructive flames. In the midst of all the neighborly love—townsfolk selflessly helping each other to extinguish the devastation—there was one body frozen behind the smoke. I was not in control of my movements, as Cora’s hands helped bring water to the fire, but I was able to identify the image of the man in my peripheral vision. In his pristine gray suit, he stood out amongst the ash-covered civilians. And he was staring right at me.

My vision cleared as Cora dropped a stunning necklace into my hands. Curtis had managed to craft my one stone into two tiny, intertwined loops—
shackles
. They looked like a miniature version of my shackles, connected to each other. He had no way of knowing what my Electro-Cuffs had looked like, and I suddenly understood what he’d meant when he said our stones would become whatever we needed them to become. My cuffs had been a part of me for so long, I felt incomplete without them. And now that I had them back, without the restrictions of those little green lights, I felt… invincible.

At first, I thought Al was only watching me gawk at my gem in awe. After feeling him inside my mind, I realized he must have been aware of my vision. He knew I saw William standing in the crowd watching Cora.

‘Say nothing,’
his voice ordered. And that was exactly what I did.

“You need to go. There may be survivors, and they will need your help,” Lily said, giving Al a final hug.

“What if—” I began.

“If… if there is no one to save, then you return,” she answered quickly, keeping her eyes on the ground.

I felt the heat start to grow inside of me again. All of those bodies—those people—and we were just supposed to leave them there to be forgotten? To decay into nothingness?

‘There were hundreds of people there, Angie. There is nothing we can do for them.’
This time, it was Lily’s voice ringing in my head.

I sighed out my exasperation and turned to Lakin, taking both his hands in mine. He seemed surprised that I was not fighting harder to take him with us. I picked up on his slight feeling of betrayal, and it filled my chest cavity with acid. I leaned my forehead against his, as I’d seen Al do earlier with Lily, and I closed my eyes. I moved my palms to his face, and forced his vision to cloud over. I replayed the moment when we’d first seen each other—really seen each other. The overwhelming feeling of oneness and infinity as the blue and orange light surrounded us. I had not expected to open my eyes to see his brimming with tears. He nodded and kissed me more passionately than he ever had before. It felt a bit awkward sharing that moment in front of other people, but I didn’t care, and nobody dared to try and stop us.

“No,” I said, just loud enough for Lakin to hear, “this feels too much like goodbye.”

“It’s not goodbye. It’ll never be goodbye.”

I couldn’t bring myself to look back at Lakin before the darkness of the stone-tunnel blocked out all light of the Eden behind us. I knew I would only find sadness in his face, and I didn’t want to remember him like that—just in case that would be the last time I’d ever set eyes on him.

The flames in Al’s palms cast shadows against the walls as we travelled down the passageway. They told the story of my first true mission as an Elementum, even though the adventure only led me back to the place I had spent my entire life trying to distance myself from. I wondered if the shadows would also tell the story of our return, or if the pages would end within the walls of The Facility.

‘Stop thinking so much. It’s distracting,’
Al’s voice bounced inside my skull.

‘You could try staying out of my mind. That might help,’
I thought, glaring at him through the dancing flames.

‘I meant that it’s distracting for you. You need to focus on what we’re doing.’

‘I need to focus on walking down a tunnel?’
I asked in an attempt to be snarky.

Just as I finished my thought, my foot caught on a stray rock and presented me with the wonderful opportunity of introducing my face to the ground. It was quickly decided that my face and the ground had far too many differences to hold any sort of stable relationship, and they would simply have to settle for being distant acquaintances.

“You okay?” Mattie asked, chuckling as she helped me up.

“Fine,” I muttered, aggressively brushing dirt from my knees. “Just a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull.”

Al nearly choked on his own saliva as he emitted an unexpected snort of laughter. We carried on, until we eventually reached a solid stone wall. I could hear the waterfall on the other side, and was more than a little excited to be back out in the open. Not that the Eden wasn’t wonderful in nearly every way, but I had only been able to spend a few hours of my life without being contained in some sort of shelter. I wanted to see the sun without it being distorted through water, or projected from a computer screen. Then a terrifying thought crossed my mind.

‘What if he’
s waiting on the other side?’

Al dragged his hand across the wall, leaving a mesh-like trail of light behind it. As I stared through the translucent stone in awe, I wondered if our powers would ever cease to amaze me. I didn’t need an explanation to know that we could see through the stone from our side, but others would not be able to see in. And this was one ability I wished I had known about while in The Fa
cility—it really could have come in handy.

Al dragged his hand across the wall once more, this time creating the same white spider web of light that had allowed us into the tunnel before. Within moments, the stone was gone, and the waterfall parted over our heads as he held up his ring. The wall closed itself behind us, as we trudged through the stream to the soggy greenery on one side of the water. The sounds of squishy mud took me back to childhood, when Eddie would run the sprinkler for hours just so Eric and I could have the experience of puddle-hopping. I wished he was one of the people we were returning to save. But he wasn’t.

Al’s hand shot into the air, signaling for us to stop. Cracking twigs suggested we were not alone in the woods, and ‘not alone’ was a very bad thing to be. Al and I took hold of Jason and Mattie’s hands, just in time for a couple of teenagers to hike into view. They walked right past us, fishing rods in tow, without so much as a glance in our direction. Releasing the breath I realized I had been holding in, I eyed Al with worry.

‘We are silent and unseen from here on out.
’ The newly-added echo of Al’s voice gave me the odd feeling that I was not the only one he was talking to.

We all nodded and continued our path through the woods, avoiding twigs and noisy things as much as possible. It was difficult to see the sky through the dense foliage, and everything seemed to be tinted a mystical shade of green. My nostrils tingled with the strong scent of pine, which I hadn’t noticed on our trip to the Eden. It probably had something to do with the whole ‘broken nose’ thing.

The forest was abruptly severed by a paved road, which didn’t take much caution to cross. It seemed as though heavy traffic wouldn’t be a concern in the small town of Freedom. As we carried on, the uncanny, bitter smell of burnt stuff permeated the air, and a dwindling smoke clouded the sky.

The sight of the torched store
had an unexpected effect on me; my heart raced and my feet felt weighted as I imagined the same amount of destruction within the walls of The Facility. I pictured my tiny apartment in ruins, a new alarm clock torn to pieces by something other than myself for once. The vase full of blue flowers strewn across the floor, wilted and crispy. Emmy’s trash can toppled over in her kitchen, Eddie’s damp shoes spilling out of it.

The fire had mostly been extinguished, but a few straggling townsfolk prodded around the site with shovels and sticks, looking for who-knows-what. I caught sight of a familiar face, very animatedly talking to a police officer. The
face belonged to Lakin’s adoptive father, and he looked mostly angry, with just a hint of despair.

‘They thought Lakin was in the store…’
Al explained after reading the hefty man’s mind.

I was surprised that it mattered at all to him. He had all but kicked Lakin out, and had never shown any amount of care for him. By the look on the police officer’s face, I was not the only person who knew of the man’s neglect.

‘How do we get in?’
Mattie’s voice streamed through our little network of soundless communication, reminding me that I was not alone inside my head.

Al focused on the officer for a moment, before giving us his response.
‘We won’t have a problem.’

Though the flames had diminished, heat radiated against us from the remaining embers as we stumbled across ash and scorched cans of sodium-ridden stuff that was considered to be food. We made sure not to cross paths with those who poked around the disturbing sight, and found ourselves at what obviously used to be the men’s restroom, a single blackened urinal still protruding from the ground. Al did his best to shuffle the debris as discreetly as possible, until we could see the thinnest outline of a door in the floor. He ordered that we all keep a close eye on those around us as he lifted the door just enough for each of us to shimmy through, but the order quickly became unnecessary.

“All right, folks,” the officer spoke up from the edge of the ruin, “I’m going to need you all to clear the scene.”

As the stragglers turned their backs to us, I thought I saw the officer’s gaze linger in our direction. But I knew it couldn’t be so.