CHAPTER THREE

Cold. Quiet.

He found himself walking down an empty street. Empty and silent, except for the chatter he heard from a distance, and as he went further there was a certain feeling of reminiscence and familiarity. He had been here before.

Suddenly, he noticed bright lights piercing through the dark of night. He could hear vehicles too, and the chatter grew louder. Instinctively, he hurried toward the lights, hoping to find someone or something that held any clue as to where and what this was, but he, almost at his destination, stopped abruptly and ducked behind a car. There appeared to be some kind of intense conflict ongoing inside the building.

"Ma'am, your son is a danger to the colony, and that includes you." Someone said from inside

   "Get your hands off him." A man countered.

   "Step back, ma'am." He noticed the moving silhouettes through the windows now.

   "Let him go, you animal!" A woman this time.

He could see the outline of a man–he was the closest to the front door–and two other men who stood on the opposite side of the room. From what he could see, they were armed. The man near the door had a significantly smaller figure close to him. A little too close.

A boy. It was a boy. There was also a man and woman in the middle of the room.

He was trying to deduce the situation when something from outside the house caught his attention. Another figure. This one clear, unlike the silhouettes inside the house. He watched the male figure peer into the house from an obscure place, just like he was doing, and then quietly move to the garage. A few moments later he emerged from the garage and stormed into the house.

"Let them go." The boy from the garage spoke, and he could see him lift what looked like a gun. "You let them go and you get the hell out of here."

"Roger, put the gun down," the woman said.

   "Put the gun down, son," Someone else said, "Before you do something you'll regret."

   "Drop the gun, Roger."

   "Roger!"

Roger. As he scanned from the bushes, the name kept going on and on in his head.

Roger!

The loud blast of a gunshot was what pulled him out of his imagination and knocked him almost out of reality. His heart was thumping hard and he had shut his eyes in shock. But when he opened them, he was right there–Not in the bushes on the street–in the middle of the room, and it was his name they were calling out now.

The room was all up in flames. But how?

"Isaac!"

   "Isaac, stop it!"

   "Isaac! I—"

"Isaac." He felt someone grip his arm, and immediately he jerked up out of the debris of his dream.

   "Are you okay?" Hussein asked, a look of concern on his face.

   "Yeah, why?"

   "You're doing it again," Erin said..

He followed Hussein's eyes to his hands. They were sizzling and flashing a reddish glow. Letting out a disappointed sigh, he turned around to look at Erin, but it was me who disconcerted him. There was a frown on my face that held both confusion and fear, much like that first night when he showed up in my room. I could tell that the silence and tension was starting to make him uneasy.

"Why did you stop?" He was trying to change the subject, get rid of the attention. "Let's go."

If I didn't know any better I would say that it was just a bad dream. But I saw. Saw as he balled his hands into fists and his chest heaved with intensity.

And she said 'again'. He was doing it again, which meant this had happened a number of times before.

I could see him trying to avoid my puzzled stare but I didn't care. All I could do was wonder what could make a person so capricious.

************

The empty room, save for the chair and table that both sat in the middle, was filled with an uncosy grey lighting and an overwhelming silence that was interrupted by the sound of the Colonel's voice from outside.

"Wait out here," Ritter said, and then the steel door swung open.

"I see you you made yourself comfortable," he said in is usual low register and the professor lifted his head, picking his glasses up from the table and putting them on so he could see better.

   "Did you find her yet?" Rhys asked.

   "I could ask you the same thing."

   "I already told you I don't know where she is or where she could have gone." Rhys tried to steady his voice. "She has never been outside the walls before, I don't—"

   "My men tell me she wasn't alone." Ritter eased himself on to the table in front of the professor. "There was someone else with her. A boy."

   "A boy?" Rhys was beyond surprised now. "One of ours?"

   "One of them." The Colonel's stare was hard.

But how could he have gotten in? Surely, someone must have noticed him.

"A pyro. Could have burnt a dozen guards to a crisp." He smirked.

   "But that's not possible. All pyrokinetics have been neutralized."

   "Well, tell that to the people cleaning up the mess he made at the gate."

Years. They had hunted newborns for years and had neutralized or, if he wanted to be factual, killed off every single one of the fire wielding humans. And he helped them do it. All of it. But now there was word of another one of them, this time inside the Steelgarde. He honestly had no idea what to make of that.

"I don't know anything about this boy or where he might have taken Xaia, but we have to find her."

Ritter flashed a small and calm yet intimidating smile. "You better not be lying to me, old friend." He leaned in. "Maybe I can't kill you…yet. But I can do things to you that'll make you wish you never existed."

And at these words, Rhys gulped, feeling as Ritter tapped his shoulder before exiting the room. Questions filled his mind now. Who was this boy? How did he get in? Undetected too. And where had he taken Xaia?

************

"Hey, sleeping beauty. Wake up." Erin's voice was the first one I heard. "She can hear me right?"

   "Erin!"

   "What? I mean, it's not like I can go over there and shake her out of her fairytale dream," Erin countered. "After all, Isaac did say not to touch her."

   "Yes, that reminds me," Hussein spoke, "Why can't we touch her?"

   "I'll just get her up." Isaac said resignedly.

It was first the chilly wind as he opened the door that brought me fully awake, and then his hand prodding my arm gently.

"Hey," he said calmly as I opened my eyes. I could hear Erin whispering to Hussein behind Isaac.

"Am I the only one who was hoping she would get all scared and jumpy and grab him or something?" she asked, and Hussein gave her a disapproving glare. "Aw, come on, you know you want to know what happens."

"You okay?" Isaac's voice distracted me. I nodded. "Good," he said. "We'll go on foot from here. Hussein will cover our tracks."

On foot? I wondered.

Okay, but where to?

I got out of the truck, jammed my hands into my jacket and moved to join the others. For a desert, this place was freezing in the mornings. I guessed the walk would help after all.

"Alright, we've done this before so you know how it all goes." Hussein's voice was filled with excitement. "You uh, you might want to step back though," he said to me. Startled, I immediately took a couple of steps backwards. You never knew what to expect with these people.

"Show-off." Erin scoffed, and I started to wonder what she meant. Then, almost immediately, like a blur, he was gone. And then almost immediately, he was back again. I could barely see him as he dashed left and right in front of us, causing the desert sand to go up in a storm.

"Come on," Isaac said before we started to run away from Hussein and whatever it was he was doing. Erin was up in the air, again, in the form of a bird, and Isaac and I were moving as fast as we could, the sand and dust shielding everything behind us from view. It would seem that this was merely a taste of the wild and crazy revelations to come