Mana Pool Snippets - Keystone

Part 6

The bobcat turned. “This is for your sake and Morgan’s. I can’t stand staying in that house without a clear conscious. Let’s get this done, and then we can go home.”

Beth shook from the totem’s outburst. Must be her totem.

“Okay,” Katie started. “Scott. They want to apologize for what they did.”

“Oh I bet,” Scott said. “You do know Jonathan and Brenda can’t come out because of what you said.”

Morgan gulped. “I know. We heard. But here me out,” he said. “I was conflicted to come here. But Andrea wanted too. As far as the transformation, we look like hypocrites without telling the truth.”

Arana’s head tilted. “The truth?” Everybody looked up. “You insulted my host—your daughter’s best friend—and her family. You kicked your own daughter out of your home, forced to survive on her own without using magic. And on top of that, you were enthralled and nearly killed us with your bare hands.”

Morgan was about to talk, then paused as the bird mentioned the zombie bit. Beth looked away. Scott seen it before: people being told they were enthralled were scared, confused, even vulnerable. Nobody ever forgets that night, when Scott had to nearly die to save Katie, Jaruka, and most of Nova Company, but not sure of the hundred thousand quickly dying from nearly killing Griffon the Reaper-in-disguise.

Scott shook his head. “Can you just tell us what happened? You guys were never this predudice before the Wave.”

“And we never were,” Morgan said, “but ever since that event… we had blackouts. A lot of them. I don’t suppose Andrea told you she had them too?”

Katie’s mouth opened and her and Scott shook their heads. Andrea looked down.

Blackouts were common in the news, the free-from-corruption web blogs mostly, associating with Reaper enthrallment from overseas during the Area 51 incident. Once General Griffon was nearly killed by Scott’s mana and all enthralled zombies controlled by Griffon in the United States died, other countries had zombies too, except they turned back to normal. Nobody had any memory of being a zombie, and certainly none of them had memories that the Wave ever occurred.

But blackouts were something to note.

“When did they happen?” Scott asked.

Beth took a breath. “Two weeks before the Wave. I thought it was stress from the news. They certainly didn’t bite us if that helps. But they became more frequent that we noticed hours, even days, we passed. We kept track, and more it more time was lost to us. We wanted to call you guys, go to the hospital, anything to stop it, but every time we had a thought, we black out and it never happened. It became like… like we were prisoners. We shopped and do business with others, but couldn’t tell the truth. Believe us, if we didn’t come here to apologize, we would have a very good reason not to.”

“God,” Katie said.

“Sometimes we wondered why our friends started hating us. Then when Andrea disappeared, we did not know what happened until we saw her transformation circle. Then it got worse,” Morgan said, pausing. “The day you guys came, we didn’t know about that. The fight, the attack; nothing was our doing. Not even remembering what that alien said to us. Everything for the last few days up to our transformation was black. And once we woke up and saw the tattoos and Andrea, God we hugged her so tight she screamed of being crushed.”

“True,” Andrea said.

“Wait a minute,” Scott said. “Are you saying that you had no memory of meeting us? Not even what you did to Andrea?”