Page 15 of The Lost Soldier
By the time Savanah pulled onto the dirt road leading to the cabin, he’d given up trying.
For now.
“I need to do a security check before we go inside.”
“Doing it now,” she glanced in his direction.
Her eyes glazed over with a milky white film.
He jerked his head back. “My eyes do that?”
“So far, no, but I just learned to do it myself while being held captive. It kept the Koreans away from me.”
“Fucking freaky.”
“I know.” She smiled. “The cabin is clear.”
Once inside, he made a beeline for the kitchen and some coffee. A shot of caffeine would do him a world of good. He pulled down a tin can of fruit, holding it up.
“Yeah, I’ll have one,” Savanah said.
He tossed it to her, taking down another one for himself.
Savanah sat down at the folding table, opening the laptop. Her ability to adjust to her surroundings, as a civilian, astounded him. He’d always admired her strength and God, was she smart. Smarter than anyone he knew.
She also had this light breeziness about her that made most people at ease.
“There’s a message from the General,” she said.
“That was fast,” he said, pouring water into the pot. “Go ahead. Open it and start reading.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. I’m going to read some of that book.”
“I can tell you most of what is in there,” she said, twisting her hair with her fingers, before tossing it over her shoulders.
“Divide and conquer.”
She nodded, taking the laptop off the table and making her way to the bedroom.
While he waited for the water to boil, he snagged the book off the table and started reading where he’d left off.
There are a few variations of what the Collective Order was back then, and what it will be in the future. Folklore has a tendency to take on a mind of its own, creating an exaggeration for the sake of a good yarn. In this book, I’m focusing on the one that seems the least far-fetched, though even I, a psychic who has the gift of sight, meaning I can see the future, understand why so many are skeptical.
Because many believed psychics to be witches and back then, some psychics practiced witchcraft, it became important for psychics to blend in, hiding their gifts in fear of being burned at the stake. Families separated. Communities folded, as everyone scattered, trying not to stand out.
In a small town on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, a group of psychics called themselves the Collective Order.Psychics from all over the land would travel day and night to meet with them, to learn more about their history and gifts. It became a movement, and that terrified those who didn’t understand. Psychics were being murdered daily, and the Collective order feared for their lives. They, too, separated.
Demitri, the founding father, sent his family to different places, based on his daughter, Helena’s premonition. He wrote a letter about the Collective Order and buried it deep in the ground. This letter was unearthed five decades ago, though much of it was too damaged to read. That said, many scholars have tried to translate based on their knowledge of the language the Collective order used at the time. Here is one such translation:
My daughter told me of a vision she had today of a mass slaughtering of our kind. They call us witches. There is no such creature. We are flesh and blood like everyone else, only we have a sensitivity to the world around us.
My daughter saw my murder and that of my wife and two youngest sons. When I asked her what her fate had been, she told me she was to run away, changing her name to Claire Wellington. That she would give birth to a baby girl and name her Claire. This would go on throughout time until one of her descendants gives birth to four boys. She told me she saw the boys gathering at a table with four sisters, reuniting this small community and enhancing gifts so powerful, people will seek them out not to harm them, but to help them.
This is a world I want to be a part of.
But I cannot let my wife and boys die.
