It's hard to describe the feeling of being teleported into words, because I doubt anyone had ever felt it before and it could be an entirely new experience that defines another new feeling. And perhaps my judgement of it was off because I was hurt. However, it felt like one minute you were aware of your surroundings, flesh and blood against the world and the next moment, you were reduced to nothingness into a void. It wasn't particularly painful in the physical sense, more like you were dissolved; what was really uncomfortable was the nothingness. You couldn't feel anything, see anything, hear anything and it was suffocating.
I didn't know how long we were in that void like state for, but when I finally regained senses, I was leaning against Tom and the two of us stumbled a little, but somehow managed not to fall over. Glancing around us, I saw that everyone was in various stages of righting themselves, then realized that someone was missing.
"Where's Viktor?" Diego and Lorenzo were staring at the empty space in between them, their hands grasping air. Horrified, I looked towards Tom and Charmain next to him, the latter's face was a ghastly shade of white.
"I...I will go and get him." Stammering, Charmain squeezed her eyes shut and with a light puffing sound, she was gone again. My jaw dropped open and my brain finally came back to me; Viktor's powers must had prevented him from being taken along. Gosh, how come I didn't think of that? Now he would be alone in London Citybase, well, not anymore since Charmain went to look for him.
"Would she be alright?" I asked Tom, worried about this girl whom I had only met for half an hour. Tom's face was impassive, but the way he bit down on his lips told me that he wasn't sure either.
"This is an unexpected surprise." Saralisa's soft voice called out, she had her arms crossed in front of her chest and were eyeing us all with amusement in her eyes. Her eyes flickered to me and a look of concerned took over and she headed my way.
"She's hurt. Where?" She asked, as though she could sense my injuries and Tom quickly pointed to the back of my head. Grabbing my right arm, she touched me tentatively on the wound, causing me to wince.
"I can heal this." Saralisa said, pulling me towards some sofas that's pushed against the wall. I wasn't sure where we were yet, but the fresh wave of pain that came from the contact with Saralisa's hand was all that occupied my mind for now.
"It might feel weird, but try not to move." Saralisa instructed and I squeezed my hands out of instinct, which happened to be latched onto Tom's forearms. Giving me a reassuring smile that sent my heart racing, he patted my arms with his free hand.
Before I could respond with a smile, a tingling sensation that wasn't unlike someone pouring a bucket of ice cold water onto my head spread from my wound, causing me to gasp; I understood why Saralisa had warned me, because my first instinct was to shy away from her. Keeping my body rigid, I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on keeping my breathing even as the tingling sensation intensified and spread across the back of my head.
Then it started to itch, a lot. It was like the feeling you get when a scab is almost healed and about the peel off, except magnified by a hundred. I clamped down tighter on Tom's arm and felt him tense a little, but he didn't say anything or move away.
After what felt like way too long, the uncomfortable sensations had stopped and I released the breath that I didn't realise I was holding. Letting go of Tom's arm, I was a little guilty to see my fingers had created red marks all over his forearm, but he didn't seem to mind.
"Are you feeling better?" Saralisa asked, and my head reached out to touch the back of my head, which had previously been bloody and sore but not back to normal. Even that dizzy feeling was gone. "Yeah." I smiled at her, finally understanding why she was so revered.
"You need to eat something; being healed takes a large amount of your energy away." Saralisa said, producing a handkerchief out of nowhere and started wiping her hands. Taking this opportunity to finally look around the room, and more specifically, out of the window, I could see that we were back in a tropical climate, which meant that we were likely to be in Pax.
"Where are we?" I asked, and the set of double door on the other side of the room was pushed open, with Nirmal and Casey walking in. Thrilled at seeing my friends (finally, some girls!), I leaped up and just as they spotted me, along with the rest of the group!
"We are at my apartment in Pax." Saralisa said, looking at the group that was still staring at her. "Hello Mr. and Mrs. Beckett."
I turned and saw my parent's startled expression, though my Mum should have guessed who Saralisa was, or at least have an inkling. But to my Dad and Dan, she was supposed to be the teacher that picked me up and took me to study at the SMS.
"So I am assuming that you never got into the SMS?" Dad asked, the quiver in his voice betrayed his nerves as he looked from Saralisa to me. I smiled meekly.
"I did visit their school." I answered and my Dad, who opened his mouth to argue. But Mum quickly put a hand on his arm and that caused him to stop. That and realizing that everyone was staring at us.
"We should talk." I looked towards Lorenzo, who hasn't forgotten. He was looking at Saralisa with great interest, and the latter didn't seemat all fazed by the intensity of his gaze.
"Let's go to another room." Lorenzo said, his eyes darting towards my family and I had to agree with him. "And I will only talk to you and her." He pointed at Saralisa.
"We will need the SMS's help." I said to Lorenzo, gesturing towards Eleanor and Tristan, the latter looked like he wanted to hide under a rock when I pointed at them. "
"Only the one who's in charge." Lorenzo said, giving Tristan a pointed look. His snotty attitude was getting a little annoying, though I couldn't sense any negative meaning from it; he was just being practical and factual. Although that could be even worst at times.
Looking towards Tom, I felt a pang of guilt as he looked down at me; once again, I had to let him go, even if it was just for a while because of this so called responsibility and the bigger picture. We both understood the necessity, or at least I hoped he did, however, it was getting to the point where it was starting to get between us.
"It's okay." As though he could sense my thought, Tom pulled me close and planted a kiss on my forehead. Once again, I could feel everyone staring at us and my face must be turning scarlet by now. But his gesture helped ease some of the worries in my heart.
"I will look out for them." He added, eyes flickering towards my family and I gave him a tight-lipped smile. It's almost comical how quickly I got reunited with my family and Tom in one go, it's almost like fate.
Turning around, Lorenzo had his arms crossed over his chest as he watched Saralisa converse with a staff a little distance away from him. I still hadn't decided whether or not I like this Bugatti man, however, I could sense that he had been telling the truth the whole time. That or he was a master liar.
When she finished talking to the staff, Saralisa gestured for us to follow her out of the set of wooden double doors behind her and out to a long corridor with impossibly high ceiling. I haven't even known buildings like this existed in Pax, where everything seemed ultra-modern. This, however, had an old charm and colour tiles that definitely dated back to the Old Age.
Leading us to one of the doors that's open to the right, I peeked in to see that it was sort of empty, with only a round table, a noticeboard and several mismatched chairs.
"Gail, would you like to tell me what's going on?" Saralisa asked; I still found it amazing how none of the Originals were fazed by anything anymore, saved for the time the Eel attacked me. I was only with Saralisa a day or so ago, and it was only natural that she felt a bit confused as to what was happening.
"We found Akram's secret lair, which somehow happened to be in my house..." I started filling Saralisa in on everything that happened, and the Original nodded as she took in all my news. When I finished with Charmain going back to rescue Viktor, she turned to Lorenzo.
"If you are from the Bugatti family, then where is Stefan from?" She asked, her eyes silently accessing him. However, 300 years had passed and unless there was some kind of genetic freak accident (e.g. me), it's highly unlikely for the descendants to bare un-revocable resemblance to their founding Original.
"Brescia." Lorenzo answered, and Saralisa relaxed. There definitely wasn't a Citybase named Brescia, which was a little surprising as I would assume most of the hometowns of the Original would have been guaranteed to become one.
"Your power." Saralisa asked, more out of formality. Lorenzo looked around the room and settled on the lone metal chair at one corner. Lifting his hand, the chair flew up and back down again.
"Metal manipulation." I said, remembering the power of Stefan Bugatti. I had almost encountered every Original and their descendent save for James Smith and Carlos Alverez-Carilo, who were both based in America. I occasionally wondered how did they and Katerina managed to get themselves over the Afro-Asia across the vast ocean. Because even now, trans-Atlantic flights were not frequent and often dangerous.
"How did you end up in the Apocalypse?" I wasted no time and asked the biggest question on my mind. "And how do we know you can be trusted."
Giving out a humourless laugh, Lorenzo had the audacity to shrug. "There isn't much I can do to convince you, you just have to trust me."
Gritting my teeth, I mentally told myself not to let this idiot get to me. There are ways that I could be sure he was telling the truth, but if he was part of the Apocalypse, then they would have shielded his mind.
"Can we trust you?" I asked again, lowering so that I was at eye level with him. Lorenzo's brown eyes stared back at me and I saw his pupil dilated, and for a second I could sense his thoughts.
This girl is crazy persistent. I could let her read my mind to prove that I am innocent, but I would rather not let her poke around in my head...
My face started to turn bright red as I caught the end trail of his thoughts, this guy was way too inappropriate.
"You can trust that I am on your side." Lorenzo said, winking at Saralisa, who was like three hundred years his senior. "I won't vouch for anything else."
Coughing, I resisted the urge to kick him for his creepiness and moved next to Saralisa's side. That was exactly the reason why I didn't want to read other people's mind anymore. Gross.
"Let's get back on track." Saralisa said, and I could detect an edge to her voice that wasn't there before. Stifling my smile, I reached into my inner jacket pockets and took out the map that I placed in there; I had long since gave up on holding a bag – you lose them very quickly.
"What do you know about the Apocalypse?" I asked Lorenzo, who had finally donned a non-flirty face and was addressing the conversations with suitable amount of solemnity.
"I had been infiltrating them for the past ten years." He began, "And I can definitely say that they are very, very careful about how much information they reveal to you and even more about what you are allowed to say."
"What do you mean?" Saralisa's brows furrowed together and it dawned on me that maybe the reason why Deigo hadn't reveal the location of the Apocalypse's base wasn't because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't.
"There is this man who works for them and he can put a mind block on certain memories." Lorenzo said, shuddering a little as he recounted the tale. "Whenever we are told something significant, he will be present to make sure that our mind is safe from being read, whether by POE or by machine. And no matter how many ways we had tried, there was no way to get the information out."
"Do you know if it's by POE or is it a scientific thing?" I asked just to be sure, but Lorenzo shook his head.
"It's something else. Something that's neither science nor POE." He answered, sending a shiver down my spine. "It's almost... mystical."
There was that word again. Another chill ran through me and I saw Sarailsa's expression stilled as she processed this information. I grew up believing in science, and even with the uncovering of the POE side of the world it's still within the scientific gasp. But this, this unknown thing that's neither meant that there were something more in this world, and it was something that I would rather not contemplate. There was still so much that we didn't know about the Old Age, that perhaps, these mystical incidents really were real and true. However, even entertaining their possibilities in a world that was dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse seemed absurd. If such mystical ways existed, where were they when we were all left for dead by the World Enders? They didn't save us, the Originals did. Which meant that whatever they were, we can beat them.
Satisfied with the outcome of my internal debate, I turned my attention back to Saralisa and Lorenzo, the former had her hand on top of Lorenzo's head and attempting to heal his brain to see if it would make a difference.
While Saralisa was still trying to heal whatever possible damage that could relate to that, I spread out the map that I got. I scanned the content, which thankfully was in English, but couldn't see the world Apocalypse anywhere. Confused, I flipped the map over and checked its back, which was filled with scribbles and notes. But again, none of them were about the Apocalypse, instead Akram was tracking what he thought was a particularly nasty group of government remnants.
Doubling back and checking all the details, it seemed that this apparent group of government remnants was operating in a way that's similar to the Apocalypse today. They were extremely discrete and hard to trace, and the only reason why Akram was onto them was because they were abducting a lot of Anomalies (POE) from all over the world. He found most of his information when he stumbled across a secret lab they had in London a long time ago, by a branch that worked for them. But everything I was getting at seemed conjuncture as it was mostly scribblings.
Turning back to the map, all the lines were converging to Egypt, which had a pretty big red circle around it. It looked like Akram was pretty sure that their base was in Egypt, however, since the information was three hundred years old, I wasn't sure how accurate it was. The fact that he didn't act on it was a nagging question on my mind too.
"It's not working." He said, shaking Saralisa's hand off and wiping his face with his hand. "I still can't say it."
"Is Egypt, isn't it." I asked, looking up from the map to see the frozen expression on Lorenzo face, and suddenly he was clutching his head and screaming.
"Help him!" I stumbled forward and Saralisa immediately took hold of his head again. He quietened down as soon as Saralisa touched him, but I could still see the tension in his face.
"You are right." He said through gritted teeth, a vein in his forehead prominent and throbbing. I cringed at the thought of how much pain he must be in but realized that he was finally able to speak the truth.
"There seems to be some kind of aneurysm in his head." Saralisa said, her face beginning to whiten. I cast my eyes around, trying to find something or someone that might be able to help.
"Gail, I am going to need your help." She said, sweat started to bead down her forehead. Rushing over to her side, she freed up her right hand and held it out towards me.
"I need to borrow some of your power." She said, "Don't worry, it will only be gone for a few hours, I don't have enough energy to heal him by myself."
Remembering what Charmain had said about her power, I nodded and place my hand in Saralisa's. Her hand was cold and clammy, and at first I didn't feel any different, but then it was like something was tickling out from my body. It was very uncomfortable, almost like something was sucking at me and I felt nauseated.
"I am good now, I am good." Lorenzo said and Saralisa dropped her hands on the both of us immediately. Feeling better, but still weaker than before, I leaned on the table and waited for my breath to become even again.
"Thanks... I think you just saved my life." Lorenzo said; he definitely looked worse for wear. "It's in Egypt." He started saying, then repeated the words again and again like a chant.
"The block, it's broken!" He said, looking at his hands and then up to the ceiling, screaming and then jumping up and thrusting his fist in the air.
"I can't believe that's how it's broken." Lorenzo said, slumping into a chair. "I almost died."
"And I take it that you were supposed to. If I hadn't guessed it, you wouldn't be able to say anything, and you would have died before you could confirm anything anyway.
"So, tell us everything you know." I said, settling down on a chair myself.
With eyes sparkling and a grin that resembled a mad man, Lorenzo grabbed a corner of the map and pulled it towards him. "I was never taken to the center of the base, but it is definitely in Egypt."
Excited by the breakthrough, I felt a little more awake and edged closer to get a look at the map together. Lorenzo studied Akram's scribbling, and I wondered if I could get a read of his mind now...
...amazing, it's funny that his recon them so well, but still didn't know that it's the Apocalypse! Wait till father hears about this...
And suddenly, everything was in Italian. Argh.
"Wow." Lorenzo said after a while, me and Saralisa had been giving him some time to read the material and take everything in. My heart was beating fast and I could almost taste the breakthrough – not only do we have the location, albeit a bit vague, of their base, we also had an insider.
"I guess it's time we put the name on the man who is behind this." Lorenzo said, clasping his hands together. "I had waited too long for this moment. His name is Vit and they have been building an army of brainwashed POE."
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Early update! So I don't remember whether I said this already, but I have finally got most of the rest of the plot ready.
Anyway, how do we feel about Lorenzo, and Saralisa and Charmain's powers? There is a price to pay and maybe we will get around to revealing it here, or maybe not. But it'll be addressed in the Dark Ages eventually.
I do realise that the POE chronicles isn't as action packed as most of the other post-apocalypse genre stories out there, but I think that's the point of it. It's not just about the powers, it's about the history and secrecy too.
On any other note, would you guys prefer me to upload as I am done, or stick to the maybe Monday and definite Thursday schedule?
As always - comment and vote my friends :)