Page 60 of (Sur)real
Those boys are his family. He wouldn’t like to hear you thinking otherwise.
“So if Thomas holds me when I touch Michelle, I’ll be fine?” Charlene asked, unaware of our conversation.
“I believe so. The Lady’s not exactly clear with all of her answers,” Olivia said.
That didn’t help my nerves.
Charlene glanced at me then the bed.
“Thomas, you should sit behind me. Michelle, why don’t you sit next to me?”
The four of us got into position with Emmitt sitting behind me. Charlene took a deep breath then held out her hand.
“Promise you’ll pull away when it gets to be too much,” I said.
“I promise.”
With that, I clasped her hand.
The black void swallowed me. The feel of Emmitt’s arms wrapped around me or Charlene’s reassuring hold no longer existed. Turning slowly, I watched for the pinprick of white light. It came from the right, zooming toward me like the last time, until I stood within its blinding brightness.
I blinked, trying to force my eyes to adjust. After a few moments, they did, and what I saw shocked me. I floated, suspended in the center of the vacant space surrounded by images of the future. Before, there had been layers upon layers. Images stacked so thickly I had no hope of going through them all. Now, there were less than a quarter of what there had been before. Why? What had changed?
I focused on one at random. The reflection of Gabby and Clay resting on a hotel bed came toward me. While she slept with her head on his shoulder, he lay beside her, very much awake. His facial hair made it hard to tell his expression, but a glisten in his eyes hinted at tears. Uncomfortable with the private moment, I focused on a different scene to the right of it. The image of Clay and Gabby flew behind me to the other side of the room.
This one showed Isabelle and Carlos mid-spar. Bruises covered her arms and calves. Her capris probably hid more. I began to wonder how far into the future these images portrayed. They all seemed like something that could be happening now.
I flipped through more images, trying to hurry and study them at the same time. Many of them were of different members of the group together. Bethi sleeping while Luke lay beside her, eating chips. Olivia and Jim lying in separate beds, facing each other like they were talking. Another of Isabelle and Carlos sparring in an exercise room. Her bruises looked darker in this one, though. Clay and Gabby under the covers together, which I flipped past really quickly. Olivia and Jim in a restaurant, seated near a window. The way he looked at her, the intensity of his gaze a blend of anger and devotion, gave me pause. Her hand lay on a cell phone on the surface of the table. The paleness of her face and worried shock of her expression hinted at something wrong. Something important. As much as I wanted to study the image to figure out what, I knew I needed to hurry.
Between the images of our group, several desertscape scenes left me worried. While the images clearly displayed the towering pillars of brown-red rocks and barren expanses of long-dry valleys, the main part of the scene remained blurred. Almost as if someone had taken a picture with the camera out of focus.
An array of varying colors made up the center. Only after staring for several moments did I place what I was seeing. A large-scale fight. Why were the people in the image blurred, though?
I shuffled through the images until I reached the bottom layer. On the final screen, swirls of grey covered the pastels of what seemed to be a sunset or sunrise. That was it. There’d been nothing helpful. Nothing that would give me a clue about what we needed to do to make the Judgement. I had to have missed something.
Frowning, I started back through the images again, slower this time. Most of them were of us here at the hotel or in our vehicles. The rest were unfocused stills of a lot of people in a desert setting. Was that it, then? Did that mean we would go from this hotel to the final fight? That we only had a few days, or maybe hours, until the Judgement?
I reached the last image once more. My stomach twisted with fear as I studied the grey swirls. Olivia and Bethi’s warnings rang in my ears. The world would burn, and I was seeing the smoke.
CHARLENE…
It hurt to breathe. To think. I blinked slowly but refused to let go. We needed answers.
Beside me, Michelle leaned back against Emmitt. She seemed to be looking at Jim, but I knew better. Though her body remained in this room, her mind had fled to her white room, searching for the answer to end Blake’s desperate reach for control. And each minute she stayed in there, I could feel my life draining further, just like I could feel Thomas’s concern, his energy, pulsing through our connection. I could feel them all.
My gaze drifted to Olivia. She hadn’t said anything since we’d started. Had she known what I would need to do? What she was asking me to risk? No, she wasn’t asking me to risk anything. I had a choice.
As soon as Michelle had touched her hand to mine, I’d understood why Thomas needed to hold me. Through him, I could pull the energy I needed to sustain the connection with Michelle. Not just his energy, but the energy of every man, woman, and child connected to the Elders through Thomas. A network of power. Of control.
My heart gave a fluttering thump, and I knew I needed to choose now. Take the energy I needed and risk exposing what I could do, or release Michelle and lose the chance for answers about the Judgement we needed to pass? The Judgement that would save the world. There was no real choice.
I opened myself to Thomas and let his energy flow into me. He exhaled suddenly, like I’d punched him, and I opened myself further to those energies that waited just beyond him. In two heartbeats, the ache and exhaustion vanished. I felt ready to run twenty miles and quickly closed myself off.
Thomas’s fingers twitched on my arms, and I waited for the hate and the fear. Instead, love and warmth wrapped around me.
They’ll think it was Isabelle again,he sent me.
I fought not to cry. He understood what I’d done and didn’t care.
