"And the new, superhero armband?" he winked.
"Neat, huh."
"Completely," he chuckled.
"Is that really a sledgehammer?" I relished. He flipped it along his broad shoulders, with a smile.
"I found it. Thank G.o.d for Automotive cla.s.s," he smiled, bigger. I stared at him in awe.
"You really are Thor!"
"Enough, you two," Olivia interrupted. "How did you get away? How did you find us?"
"I"ve been looking for you two since the power cut out earlier. I snuck out of the auditorium during the commotion."
"Is everyone else okay?" Worry filled my voice.
"Yes, and no."
"Have you seen my little sister?" Olivia pushed. "She was wearing jeans and a striped top."
Taylor leaned in, "Yes."
"Where?" she demanded.
"We need to go, now," Taylor insisted. He turned to leave, but Olivia grabbed his arm.
"Wait! Where is she? Where"s Sophia?"
Taylor looked down at her, gently squeezing the handle on the hammer. "With him."
"With who?" she begged.
"Van Gogh," he smirked, then pulled both of us out the cla.s.sroom door and into the hall.
"Who?" she asked, bewildered.
"The tall, bald guy dressed in black military fatigues and missing an ear...like the famous artist." He ran forward, motioning for us to follow.
"General Love," I corrected. Taylor only stared at us, waiting.
"Where"s my sister? I have to get her back," Olivia fought back her tears. Taylor frowned and then nodded to me.
"I think we can get her back. I think we can get them all back," he fumed. "But we don"t have much time. We need to go, now. Please Olivia, you have to trust me."
Taylor turned and ran down the hallway. Olivia and I followed, in a hurry. We used the inner corridors of the school. Most of General Love"s men were concentrating on the exits still. I figured we only had a few more minutes before he noticed three of his men hadn"t checked in. The thought made me push on even faster.
"Where are we going?" Olivia asked, impatiently. Taylor looked at me, over his shoulder, with a wry smile. Right then, I knew exactly where he was taking us. Our secret place, our hideaway in the school. Destination darkness.
"The meditation room," he nodded to me. Olivia did not enjoy our secrecy. Her face fell hard with a pout.
Taylor tried his best to comfort her. "We"re almost there."
Two minutes later we found ourselves slinking into the large Music room. Home to all the school"s music programs; choir, voice, jazz band, concert band, etc. They used this giant room as a staging area and cla.s.sroom. You could easily fit six regular sized cla.s.srooms in this s.p.a.ce. The whole room was mildly soundproofed and gave easy access to the backstage area of the auditorium. The room was open and filled with empty chairs and musical equipment. Half the walls were painted blue, the other half, white. At the very back corner of the room was a large walk-in closet that housed many of the more expensive instruments. It was almost as large as a normal cla.s.sroom, when not filled with the many different musical toys.
"What are we doing in the Music room?" Olivia asked, tired and upset.
"We can hide here," Taylor said.
"Why here?"
"There doesn"t seem to be any guards patrolling through here. Also, the meditation room..." he pointed to the large door in the corner.
"It"s got soundproof walls and we can lock the door from the inside," I added.
"So!" Olivia snapped.
"We can come up with a plan on what to do next," I searched her face. "A plan to save the other students. A plan to save..."
"Sophia," she sulked.
Taylor knocked on the door in a complicated rap of his knuckles. We anxiously waited for an answer. Taylor and I used this room as our own, secret sanctuary of solitude. A quiet place to unwind during certain exams. A spot to work on my many side projects that the school seemed to frown upon. Taylor however, used this secret spot for one reason, and one reason only...to read. He loved to read, especially all things paranormal. Sparkly vampires, lovie-dovie werewolves, star-crossed aliens, you name it, he was hooked.
The door unlocked from inside and opened slowly. As we stepped inside, I wasn"t ready for who was waiting for us.
"Olivia!" Dax shouted, and ran up to her. Olivia"s grumpy and bossy ex-boyfriend jerked her into an awkward embrace. She seemed to resist his affection, but not as strongly as I would have hoped. Standing shocked, clutching my backpack with jealousy, I sulked like a toddler. Olivia looked back at me unhappy.
"Luc!" Roland said, too loud. He jumped in front of me, trying to pull my attention away from Dax and Olivia. It kind of worked.
"Thank goodness you"re okay, Lucas," Roland smiled. Morgan ran up from behind him, excited to see me and ecstatic to see Taylor.
"Tay, you did it! You found Lucas," Morgan said, blushing. Taylor blushed at her nervous excitement, which I found interesting. She hugged me quickly before leaning into Taylor and hugging him softly. The hug lasted longer than it should have, but he didn"t seem to mind.
"How did you two get away?" I asked the twins, trying my hardest to ignore Dax in the corner of my eye.
Morgan smiled, "Tay got us out. He saved us."
"I haven"t saved anyone. We aren"t out of this ridiculous nightmare yet," Taylor said.
"How about you...how"d you get here?" I grumbled toward Dax, cutting off Taylor in the process. Dax crinkled his nose in disgust and began flexing his arms at his sides. I stepped forward with a new arrogance. Dax Reynolds, former student, current high school dropout. We were destined to not get along.
Taylor stepped between us. "Yeah, you weren"t here when I left earlier..."
Morgan placed a calming hand on Taylor"s shoulder, "It"s okay, he found us."
"He stumbled upon the Music room after a run in with one of those armed goons," Roland added. He pointed to the bloodied and bruised temple just above Dax"s eye.
"Stupid military Black Ops! That freakin" idiot almost killed me...would have killed me, if the room hadn"t started turning upside down. Windows breaking, wind spinning. I know it sounds crazy but..." Dax said, angrily. I wasn"t impressed.
"Pfft!" I spit.
"You sayin" I"m a liar?" he taunted me. I knew he was telling the truth. He was caught in the crazy aftereffects of the explosion earlier. Olivia turned from both of us, upset.
Morgan stepped in, again, "He was hurt, Luc." She glanced up at Taylor, who was still gripping his sledgehammer. "He needed help."
Morgan finished her scolding of us and I huffed, completely annoyed. Taylor eased his stance and held out his hand to shake. Dax slowly obliged. I turned away, ready to leave.
"I"m Taylor."
"Dax."
"Gangs all here!" I pouted.
Quickly, I pushed my way to the back of the room. My head hurt with a weird, building pressure. When I looked up from my mini tantrum, I found that things were much worse than I first thought.
"Greetings," Felicity said, in a small voice.
"Are you kidding me?" First Olivia"s psycho ex and now, my nemesis. I squeezed my backpack to my chest and leaned against the wall. Slowly, I let the gravity of the situation pull me down to the floor. Roland and Morgan watched me, worried. Taylor walked over and slid down the wall, right next to me. He let out a heavy sigh as his hammer hit the ground.
"No fear, brother. We"ll get through this," he said, confidently.
My bag began to hum loudly, with multicolored rays of light. They pierced every tiny seam of the fabric, like bright pin needles. Reaching into my backpack with shaking hands, my face washed over in painted waves of light. I looked up at everyone, embarra.s.sed. They all took a step away from me.
I smiled uneasy, "No fear."
LEVEL 14: Believe.
The faces all around me, they don"t smile, they just crack with scared realization. Their eyes spinning with fear of the unknown. In my hands was my secret. The mysterious stone I had hidden away in my locker. I had s.n.a.t.c.hed it up as the explosion ripped open the top of my locker. Stunned and silent, everyone remained absolutely still. The multicolored pulsing of light slowed to nothing, revealing its true surface. Metallic black, with lines of yellow and orange light rippling beneath its shiny skin.
"Don"t freak out," I warned, with a new smile and confidence. I felt better now. Maybe it was the relief of finally sharing my secret. Maybe it was the stone itself, filling me with positive energy. My wristband gauntlet came alive, filling with warm heat and sparkling purple lightning. It crawled down my arm, tickling me as it did.
"What...is...that?" Felicity asked, breaking the silence. Her voice still completely annoying. I shrugged, barely making eye contact with her.
"I don"t know," I laughed. Last time I had seen the stone it was just a little bigger than a deck of playing cards. Now, it was the size of a large book, like our American History textbooks, or an old fashioned Bible. The edges were rounded and smooth. I shouldn"t have been able to pick it up and hold it, but it was as light as a feather now. I propped it up onto my index finger and spun it like a basketball. It had been impossibly heavy before, but not now.
"This is what General Love is looking for," I said, still spinning the alien device.
"Who?" Morgan asked.
"The one in charge. The man missing one of his ears."
"Van Gogh," Taylor corrected. We all half heartedly laughed.
"I found it on the office floor this morning. It was only the size of a matchbook." I looked around the room and watched as each person had their own reaction to it. Felicity clung to the opposite side of the room, with doubt plastered across her face. Taylor watched it cautiously, never moving from his spot on the floor. Morgan stepped closer, as if she wanted to hold it too. Her eyes alive with wonder. Roland just stood there, as if he had seen a ghost. I knew that face all too well. It"s the same look he gets when we watch the latest Alien Mysteries television show. That worried me. Dax looked angry. Not at the artifact as it was twirling on my fingertip, but at the fact that Olivia had pulled from his grasp, and walked up to me. She slowly knelt down, studying the spinning stone.
"I thought it exploded..." she whispered. She reached out a hand to touch it, and I held my breath. Just before her fingertip reached its surface, it stopped itself from spinning and pulled toward her. I tried to hold onto it, with no luck. Her hand slid along the stone with little resistance. The yellow waves of energy turned to a deep crimson red, under its black skin. It was beautiful and tiger-like.
"Tell her," I barely whispered, but hadn"t realized I did it aloud. Olivia"s eyes flickered up to mine. I tried not to let go of the stone as it absorbed her touch. She smiled and pressed her palm onto its surface, quickly changing the color of the whole thing to red. Blood red.
Both our hands locked into place on it. It felt the same as when my hand had been stuck to it before, in my locker. I tensed up. Olivia never panicked though. Instead, she closed her eyes and concentrated.
* Tell me what? * she asked, in my head.
I could hear her thoughts. I stared at her hard, overwhelmed by this new magic trick. Was this thing some kind of telepathy device? I have been holding conversations with the thing for twenty-four hours now. Hearing Olivia inside my brain was wonderful. This was too crazy.
* This is crazy! * she agreed.
My mouth fell open. She smiled with her eyes, proud of herself.
So, you can hear my thoughts? I asked, with my thoughts.
* Yup, every word. *
Uh oh.
* Tell me what, Lucas? *
Huh? I played dumb.
* You said, tell her...well, tell me what? *
The truth.
She tilted her head and smiled, * So, tell me. *
I"m scared. I whimpered, in thought.
* Me too, but doesn"t this feel...amazing... *
Maybe. I tried to lie to her, and myself.
* Liar... * she teased, and I let out a small laugh.
"Olivia!" Dax moaned. He had seen enough and pushed his way over to us. He reached for her shoulder, slapping his meaty hand onto it with force. Immediately, he flew backwards against the wall in a flash of purple lightning. He was knocked out, cold. The commotion caused the stone to fall away from our grasps. It covered itself in a dark black hue as it fell toward the carpeted ground. It landed with a dull thud. When it hit, it embedded itself more than a six inches into the floor. Everyone in the room jumped to attention.
"Dax!" Olivia called to him. He didn"t respond. He laid unconscious in a heap of smoke and karma. She rushed over to him.
"This isn"t real!" Morgan started to freak out. Her hands shook uncontrollably. Roland tried to hold his sister and calm her. He never took his eyes off the black stone though. Taylor stood up and walked over to the stone. He stared at it for a moment, upset by Morgan"s reaction. He noticed that there was no more electricity around it.
Taylor"s brow furrowed as he leaned down to pick up the stone. His large hands wrapped themselves around its gla.s.sy dark surface. He took a moment to gather his strength and pulled at the embedded mystery. It wouldn"t budge, not even an inch.
"Come on..." Taylor grunted, and dug his feet into the floor, steadying his weight. He yanked at the foreign object with all his might. Still nothing. The stone was as light as a balloon just a moment ago, but now, it was heavier than gravity. It angered Taylor something awful.
"I can"t move it...at all..." Taylor huffed, brushing his golden locks from his face.