The Sky Climbers

8- Infiltrating the Underground

Word count- 7710

Aurora and I had planned to leave the following evening at dusk. I had given her the Corebeast blood for safekeeping, afraid that another member or Advisor would see it and confiscate it.

I spent most of the day with Pax once he recovered. He was bouncing around as usual. I tried to apologize, but he just waved it off as no big deal. We had played around in one of the game rooms that the base had. Some of the board games I'd never seen before. It was much more relaxed than yesterday's fiasco.

I didn't see Canyon or Whirlwind the whole day. Zero must have told them to stop babysitting me. I had seen Brooke, one of the Advisors I had met on the first day, in the hall after lunch.

She was much more pleasant this time. "How's your stay been? Zero told me a little more of what's going on" she asked, running her fingers through her curly hair.

We talked for a couple of minutes, Pax had joined the conversation for a bit before he got bored and ran off to not miss extra playtime. I told her about all the things I had seen during my stay, both the good and bad.

"It's strange that you and that bird of Zeros can tell if someone is lying" I mentioned while we were chatting.

"Zero's bird? You're joking right?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "I can read and manipulate people's emotions. The bird has a good sense of whether or not someone is a good person" she said, starting to laugh to herself.

"Oh, that's embarrassing. I fully believed her, haha" I chuckled back, now that I think about it, it is pretty funny. It's not like the bird had a core. It would be physically impossible for any animal to have one. "Can you show me your ability? I'm always curious to learn about different kinds of cores"

"I usually don't, but you made me laugh so why not?" She said with a smile. "I can make you feel that you've just experienced the happiest moment of your life, then seconds later feel like you're at a soothing spa, and then snap to feeling like you saw the nasty little critter you've ever seen," She said, her dark eyes shifted to a powder blue. As she was talking I could feel everything that was talked about involuntarily. Overwhelming happiness to a halting calm, snapping to a revolting feeling of disgust.

"Wow, that is weird. It's almost like I have a second brain that's going through all of these things while my brain is struggling to resist" I said excitedly. "You're a psychic core type, right?"

"Bingo. I can make you feel exactly what I feel. It's taken years of practice, but I can now change my emotion at the drop of a hat" She smiled again and then did a curtsy as if she had just performed in a play. I congratulated her on her efforts.

We talked a bit more before Pax came running back.

"Jasper! Jasper! They said you're leaving!" He shouted down the hall. He skidded to a halt right in front of us. "You're staying, right? You're going to be an apprentice like me, right?"

My heart sank. Delta and Gleam both rounded the corner, trailing behind with a few of the others. "Yeah, you can't just leave us like that? You tried to help Pax out when he couldn't control his core and you made sure we had a safe hiding spot yesterday during the capture the banner game. We even won thanks to you! We've never won that game before" Sandstorm called out as she and her relative caught up with the group.

"You defended us even though you're not a part of our Clan. In this day and age that takes some serious guts to do" Quake added.

They all began to plead with me to stay. Within seconds the noise died out. The hallway was completely calm. I looked at the cause of it. Brooke's eyes were powder blue once again.