(1.3) Empty Building
Decrepit broken things, that was all this building held. That was why she had chosen to come here tonight. Kael pushed open the stairwell door. It stuck on an empty box that someone had discarded, probably when they'd been moving whatever had been stored in these empty storage lockers. Her hands were shaking at her sides, no matter how hard so tried to stop them.
“Fuck it!” Her voice echoed through the underground space.
With one hand, she grasped her elbow, pulling it violently to her side. Her fingers still twitched of their own accord, and she crashed into the wall, her shoulder and cheek pressed against the metal. She let out a sob, and a single tear made its way down her cheek.
Stupid. Stupid.
She slammed her fist against the wall.
This was not a sad occasion, more inevitable, necessary. She kept her composer, the single tear beginning to dry. Every so slowly, she moved forwards through the pitch black—like an animal searching for a place to curl up and die. Her shin hit something sharp and she swore again, biting down hard on her bottom lip. The offending object was hurled down the hallway, colliding with one of the metal doors with enough force to make a dent. Kael's hands shook by her sides, the psychic reaction accidental, hard to control when her emotions were as raw as they were. That was how easy it could be for her to hurt someone. All it took was a slip of concentration. And that was why the government needed to take her into custody. They were only trying to protect the general public.
From her.
She slid to the ground. In her pocket was the bottle of pills. They'd told her she'd feel high first, like she was on the cloud. Then she'd just go to sleep, on this cold floor, in the basement of this condemned building. It was three o'clock in the morning and she wanted to die. If everything were to go as planned, they would not find her for a long, long time. If she was going out, she was going to make as much trouble as possible. In the minds of the few friends she had Kael would much rather be powerful, dangerous, and missing, than the coward she truly was.
“If I could do what you could do...” Their word echoed.
“Is she classified as human? I mean, where do you draw the line?”
She let her cheek rest against the concrete, and for the first time in a long time Kael truly felt peaceful. The bottle was in her hand. She felt every groove, every seam.
The light above her flickered. For a fraction of a second the hallway had been illuminated with cold florescent light. Kael hadn't seen a thing. It had blinded her, and she had squeezed her eyes shut out of instinct. It was dark now, as black of before, and she slowly sat up. Just an electrical glitch. It was a miracle the bulbs were still working.
Again they flickered, sparks raining down from something faulty halfway down the hall. This time Kael saw the dirty hall in which she currently sat. There was garbage and graffiti, broken bottles. It was a dump, which made sense, because she was nothing more than trash. Satisfied with her final resting place, she popped the top off the pills. With the next flicker she saw their rich purple colour against the white of her palm.
One of them hovered, she spun it like a planet above the others. The lights just kept flickering. Why couldn't God just let her die in darkness? Suddenly a terrifying thought overtook her, and the hanging pill dropped to the ground. The intervals of light were getting longer, the dark shorter, like they were warming up. What if someone was here, someone who had turned on the light? Almost as if her thoughts had created them, footsteps echoed down the passage.
“Shit.”
She clenched her fist around her ticket to the afterlife. Whoever this was, they would not interfere. She placed the bottle on the ground, preparing the power that always lurked within her. When her finger made contact with the cement, a shock shot up her entire arm. All of a sudden, the air was charged with static electricity.
The footsteps stopped—close. No one spoke, though she could feel the eyes on her, and ever so slowly she raised her head to look up at whoever it was that had intruded in this most sacred of times. It was a boy, no older than her. He looked at her quizzically, and Kael relaxed automatically. He was not here to find her. Judging by the disregarded beer cans, she guessed he was down here doing something less than legal. If he didn't see the pills he'd just keep on walking, leave her alone, and she wouldn't have to hurt anyone.
“What do you want?” Her throat was dry, and she did not meet his eyes.
He was attractive, with black hair, and contrasting blue eyes. There was nothing intimidating about his size or stance, but there was just something off about him.
“Kael, I-” His voice was soft, but his speech cut off suddenly like he'd forgotten what he was going to say.
She jumped into a crouch, shoving the handful of pills into her sweater pocket. “Who the hell are you? How do you know my name?”
He didn't answer. He just kept staring at her, eery blue eyes unmoving.
“I asked you a question!” Kael straightened to her full height.
There was something frightening about how he'd just frozen there, as if he was nothing more than a hauntingly realistic statue. Why did he look sad, staring at her? Could he see through her sweater, to the pills? Had he noticed the discarded bottle on the floor? Still not a word passed his lips.
Anger bubbled and Kael slammed her hand forwards. The boy flew through the air, making contact with the wall at the far end of the hall. She kept him pinned, teeth grinding together. She could hold him there, take the pills and let her death set him free. But she was a cat, and that boy was very curious. If it killed her in the end, perusing this mystery, then she would have achieved what she set out to do.
“How do you know who I am?” Kael squeezed as she approached, watched as he gasped helplessly for air. “If you don't talk I can break you in half. Don't think I'm lying.”
He looked at her, just looking. She applies more pressure, and his face contorted in pain. She felt bad right away. They had given her a self fulfilling prophecy. They wanted her to be a monster, that was exactly what she was becoming.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
It was obvious now, what she was doing. Some selfish part of her wanted to live, grasping at any distraction that presented itself.
“My name is Idan. I came here because-” He stopped speaking again and Kael began to worry she'd squeezed him too hard.
Reluctantly, she lowered him to the ground, still keeping him pinned in place, where he stood.
“I came here because you can't kill yourself.”
So he knew.
“Can't I?” She turned her back on him, brown ponytail slashing the air. “Listen Idan, I have no idea who you are, or what you think you know about me, but I've made up my mind.”
“Just listen for a second, Kael, please.” There was desperation in his voice. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but I need your help. I need you, please. You can't kill yourself, not yet.”
Kael couldn't help but smile, at the little addition to the end of his speech. It rang true in a way that nothing else this boy had said could have. The pills were in her pocket, under her control. At any second she chose she could snuff her life from existence. Just like that, control was regained, and her hands finally stopped shaking.
“I don't even know you.”
“Not yet.”
This boy was smooth, she would give him that, but she also had no idea what he wanted, and that unnerved her. She couldn't get a read on him. All the same, she released the psychic hold she had on him.
He flickered—like one of the florescent lights. The air had crackled with static electricity and for a moment his body had seemed to be fading away. In panic, Kael grabbed a hold of him. He gasped in pain, as it was not uncommon for her to misjudge the amount of mental force she placed on something.
“I'm sorry.” Her hands were shaking again. “What just happened? Idan?”
She felt as if she was going insane. In front of her now, it seemed impossible that he could be anything but solid.
Idan sucked in air greedily, when Kael released her stranglehold. “We don't have much time.” The light flickered. “Come on!”
He grabbed her hand, and before she had time to even process, they were running, racing through the underground labyrinth.
“What's going on?”
“I've got a mutation.” Idan's answer was matter of fact. “Like you.”
She really shouldn't have been as surprised as she was. Flickering from existence, miraculously knowing her name; Kael had seen plenty of different powers, none exactly the same as another. She'd never searched them out, but that hadn't mattered. They'd come to her. Because in the words of the government agent who'd confronted her outside her school last week, 'she had juice,' straight up telekinesis. She was the perfect candidate for some experiment, and they wanted her, bad. She'd found that out the hard way.
She knew what Idan wanted now. She'd seen his type before. These lost kids heard some twisted myth of what she could do, they tracked her down, looking for a comrade.
“They after you?” Kael asked.
Idan shook his head, as the two of them skidded to a stop in front of the stairwell. “Not right now.”
So cryptic. The boy couldn't answer a straight question, but he didn't look like he was lying, and she could not thing of a reason that he would, not that that really meant anything.
The door had just clicked shut behind them when the lights flickered, plunging them into darkness permanently. She was having a real hard time deducing his power. Something with electricity, if she had to guess from the lights and the static.
Out in the cold, Kael slid to a stop abruptly, the adrenaline beginning to drain from her system. The street was as empty as she predicted death would be. After three o'clock it seemed that even Valuit was lifeless. Someone had nailed a 'sold' sign across the 'for sale' which had graced the front of the building for as long as she could remember. She hadn't noticed, before going down. It looked like it was going to be apartments.
“Where are you taking me?” she rounded on Idan, suspicion back, and in full force. “I still have no idea who the fuck you are, or why you think I'm any of your business.”
There was a long pause and Kael began to worry that the blue eyed boy had reverted to silence again.
“This is very hard to explain.” His breath crystallized as he spoke, and Kael noticed how thin his sweater was. “But you understand how different the genetic mutations can be. So that might help a little.”
Idan shivered, his hands thrust into the pockets of his thin hoodie. Kael, at least, had worn a jacket.
“Let's go back inside.” She headed back towards the unlocked side door. “Then you're going to talk. And you're going to answer my questions straight. And if I don't like what you say you're going to leave and never speak to me again.”
He didn't say anything. Across the road, a street lamp flickered.
“You have to trust me.” He spoke before the door could even close fully behind them.
“I don't have to do anything.”
Kael's excitement was fading, annoyance beginning to rise, annoyance at how effectively he'd pushed her previous plans from her mind. Would she even have gone through with it? Had she just been looking for an excuse?
“Because I'd thought I'd have more time, but I don't.” Idan snapped into focus, like someone had turned up the sharpness, and Kael became aware that he'd been fading again. “But you have to believe me. The fate of the world depends on you.”
Kael laughed. She couldn't help herself, but there was something about his eyes. They looked at her—blue and hard with intensity—and the laugh tasted wrong in her mouth.
“The entire world?” she asked. “Really?”
A nod, and his face was coloured with panic. Kael prepared herself to grab hold of him again, though she was unsure if her powers would do anything against whatever it was dragging him away from her.
“What do you want me to do?” She was humouring him, out of curiosity and fascination. Or maybe it was something to do with how the electrically charged air felt against her skin.
“Be somewhere a day from now. You just have to be there.”
“And do what? Where?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders. His hands shook, trembling from some invisible strain.
“The Inposterum Science building. Central zone.”
There was a note of finality in his voice, and Kael began to panic. “I can't. I was going to- How can you expect- You need to give me more than that!”
The light above their head came to life only to shatter into a shower of glass.
“Please.” Only a single word passed his lips.
Then he kissed her, before snapping from existence, like a television screen going dead. And she was left standing there, in utter shock.