0 HOURS TO EXTRACTION
I heard a crash and woke up from the nightmare. Bolting up, I scanned the room. Through bleary, sleep-worn vision, I saw two large shapes heading toward me. My post-sleep haze delayed my instinct to scream, so I kicked my legs and scooted back against the wall. When my vision cleared, a brown-haired man in a black suit was crawling onto my bed and reaching for me.
"What the hell?" I yelled. "Get away from me! Who are you? What do you want?" He grabbed me and yanked me off the bed, spilling me onto the floor as I kicked and screamed. "Get off me!" Nearby, a second man in a black suit with bright blue eyes waited, ready to back up his friend.
"Dad!" I cried, praying he'd hear my pleas, "Dad! Dad!" He didn't come. Writhing on the floor, I struggled against the brown- haired man's heavy hands. "Let go of me, shit bag!"
He crossed my arms over my chest and drove his fingers into my wrists, pressing down so hard it left bruises. I kicked and kicked, so he put a knee over top one of mine and pushed down. Searing pain shot up and down my leg. Everything hurt so bad that I screamed and screamed.
The picture frames on my floating shelves rumbled in place, then launched themselves at my attackers, their glass frames shattering on impact. Books flew off my shelves, my desk drawers popped open and notebooks and pencils jumped out; everything in my room sprang to life and attacked the two men. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to stop them. They merely swatted the flying junk away. The blue-eyed man joined the other in pinning me down, scooting down to hold my legs.
"Help! Somebody, help me!" Tears filling my eyes, I wriggled helplessly under their hands. Again, my voice cracked, "Help me, Dad!" I couldn't free myself. Nobody was coming to help me. "What're you doing? Get off me!" With one hand, the man pinning my arms reached into his jacket and drew out a metal canister. After giving the can a quick shake, he sprayed me in the face with some- thing that smelled like rotten raspberries. I sneezed.
My eyes burned, throat went dry, limbs went dead. My body was paralyzed but my mind was racing. The men got off of me, and I tried hurling curses at them, but I couldn't speak. My frightened eyes darted around, finally settling on my fingertips. Homing in on them, I focused hard, tried wriggling them. Nothing. I fought to move my toes. Nothing.
The brown-haired man scooped me up, flung my body over his shoulder, and marched out of my room. As he carried me down- stairs, I hovered in and out of consciousness, my arms swinging side to side like dangling cables. When we passed the living room, I saw Dad sitting in his recliner, eyes fixed to his laptop, perfectly still— frozen. My dad had always defended me, but now, he couldn't do anything. We were both powerless.
After lugging me outside, the brown-haired man headed for a black van. It was daylight. They were kidnapping me in broad daylight. Mrs. Areson, our next-door neighbor, was standing behind her garden fence, frozen as she watered her begonias. Even the shimmering water droplets spraying out of the hose hung in the air like someone had paused life.
When the brown-haired man tossed me into the van, everything went black.
•
The van ground to a halt. Getting up off the bench, I trained my eyes on the doors, forgetting the pain in my throat, the fear in my heart. Once those doors were opened, I would run until I couldn't run anymore. It didn't matter where I went, so long as I got the hell away. Swwwwfffffffffff!
A hiss filled the air. Rotten raspberries. They were pumping gas into the van. My vision grew blurry, my knees wobbly. I fell to the floor. Then the dark sea of unconsciousness carried me away in its undertow.
•
I was falling—no, not quite falling. Floating. Like a feather. I was floating down a well with walls made of ticking clocks—cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, alarm clocks, mantel clocks, too many clocks to name—all stuck together in big ticking clumps. I tried to swim over to inspect them, but no matter how hard I stroked through the air, I didn't move any closer. Before I could reach the bottom of the shaft, I woke up.
My eyes fluttered open. My head lurched from side to side, but everything was shrouded in a milky fog. My quick movements sent shards of pain hurtling through my body. I stopped mov- ing. Focused on my breathing. Waited for the white haze to clear. Eventually, blurry forms took shape all around me.
I was sitting in a cold metal chair in a plain white room, rows of glaring lights humming over me. A white door marked one end of the room, and an observation window spanned the length of the opposite wall. Springing off the chair, I charged for the door, slamming against it with a clang. I wrapped my hands around the door handle and tugged, tugged, tugged—but it wouldn't move, so I rammed my shoulder against it, but still it didn't budge. Defeated, I battered the door with my skinned knuckles.
"Let me out of here! Let me out of here!" I screamed until my throat felt like sandpaper.
"That's enough," said a man's voice behind me. I spun around. Standing behind the observation window was a man in a gray lab coat, with tan skin and long white hair. He folded his hands behind his back.
"What's going on? Who are you? What do you want from me?" Without answering, the man straightened his back, his piercing gray eyes sharp as an owl's. "Please, let me out! What'd you do to my dad?" I said.
"Unfortunately, we can't let you go. I have a lot to explain, so you'll need to calm down, Juan." He spoke in a slow, measured tone, his every word precise and deliberate, as if read from a script.
My stomach was twisted like a conch shell, and my heart was pounding in my throat. I wanted to vomit, but I held it down. I took a deep breath. Maybe if I complied, he'd let me go. "Everyone calls me Johnny."
"Very well, Johnny. What I'm about to tell you is going to sound rather fantastic at first. You may not be able to accept it now, but in time, you will come to embrace it. My name is Melchior, and this is the Marduk Institute, a top-secret facility developed almost one hundred years ago. Its sole purpose? To cultivate and train those known as wizards."
Wizards? What was he talking about? Any minute now, a white-faced doll with red spirals on its cheeks was going to roll out on a tricycle, ask me if I wanted to play a game, and then lock my head in a death cage. I inched closer to the window, studying Melchior's pristine skin. He was probably in his early thirties, but something about his well-preserved, almost angelic looks made him look even younger.
"What is a wizard?" he continued rhetorically. "All humans are born with latent psychic potential. But few ever develop this potential into abilities such as clairvoyance, telekinesis, psychometry, and so forth. Even fewer ever cultivate these abilities into what we call 'magic.' Less than one percent of the total human population, to be exact. Wizards.
"For those who have newly manifested their powers, the world is fraught with danger. It is also riddled with temptation to use those powers in ways that could harm the natural order of things. For these reasons, we built the Marduk Institute."
"It's a . . . prison for wizards?"
"An elite training facility. You have been given great power, but your new abilities need to be focused, and you need protection during this volatile time. The Institute will help you learn your place in the world."
I didn't know whether my skin was clammy because I was covered in a cold sweat, or because of all the baffling things he was saying. "What about my dad? My mom? My friend Alison?"
"Alison is here."
"And everyone else?"
"To you? Gone. Forever. Any record of your existence will be terminated, and you will be assigned a new identity. Everyone you once knew will forget about you. Any contradictions in memory will be dismissed as irreconcilable cognitive dissonance."
"Irreconcilable what?"
"They'll dismiss it as complete impossibility. Our agents will thoroughly scrub any proof of your existence from the mundane world. Your room in your father's house, your locker at school, your birth records."
The lump in my throat turned into a big, heavy rock. Mom. Dad. My whole life had been ripped away like a Band-Aid. Even more frightening, this was happening because I was a wizard. I had a flood of harrowing realizations: the floating feather, how quickly my wounds had healed after that fight with Todd and his goons, all that stuff floating around my room and hitting my kidnappers. Had that all been magic? Had it been . . . my magic?
"Why are you doing this?"
"I've already explained, Johnny. You're special. More special than you fully realize. And that puts not only you at risk, but also those around you." I looked back at the door, considered trying to force it open.
"It won't open," Melchior said, like he'd read my mind. "It would be best for you to ask your questions now. I can provide you with the most clarity during this orientation."
"What happens to me now?"
His razor-sharp features were unmoving, like a statue. Just as cold too. "The Marduk Institute is a fully realized micro-community equipped with housing units and various educational buildings. Once you become a legal adult, you'll be thoroughly evaluated, then released on your own recognizance. However, should you choose to take advantage—and we strongly advise that you do—the Institute offers adults a special training program and continued housing."
"So you kidnap people and don't let them go until they're eighteen?"
"Your extraction may have seemed severe, but nascent wizards can be quite unpredictable."
"What happens if I try to escape?" "You are welcome to try, but the Institute is surrounded by miles of wilderness, and the nearest town, Misthaven, is under our control. Furthermore, your miniscule chance of escape would be cur- tailed by the fact that we could simply follow your aura."
"My aura?"
"Consider it your magical signature, the imprint you leave on the living world. Every wizard has one. All around you is the machinery of the vivit apparatus, the magical clockwork that governs the laws of this reality. People such as yourself can freely move the machinery, bending the world to your whims. But you leave behind traces of your presence, like fingerprints at a crime scene."
"Vivit apparatus?"
"Close your eyes." Suspiciously, I narrowed my eyes. He raised his hand, his movements fluid, easy. "What I'm about to show you will tap into just a fraction of your true power. Now, close your eyes."
I hesitated. His unflinching gaze was trained on me, so I slowly lowered my eyelids, shutting out Melchior behind the blackness of my closed eyes.
"Imagine the world around you as the inside of a ticking clock, every constituent piece operating in tandem. You can see the pieces that make the clock run. For you, they are as real as the room you are sitting in. When you've visualized the world as it truly is, with the pieces in your mind's eye, open your worldly eyes and look."
I remembered an old cuckoo clock Alison's grandma had hung near the door leading to the basement. We'd accidentally knocked it down one day and found it lying busted at the top of the stairs, its springs spilled everywhere. After gathering up the pieces, we tried hiding it, so her grandma wouldn't find out. But it was impossible to hide anything from her. Once she'd found it, she tore into us for hours.
A golden-orange radiance slipped in through the slits of my eyes. My eyelids slid open, then popped wide. Shock and awe overcame me. With my back against the door, I slid down and hit the ground. All around me, ghostly cogs and wheels danced like the inner workings of a phantasmal clock. The glowing machinery shimmered like chiffon spun from late-noon sunlight. Runes swirled around the pieces, occasionally pulsing a deeper orange.
I worked my way back up to my feet and propped myself against the door so my shaky knees wouldn't give way. As I reached out to touch one of the parts, Melchior said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
I stopped my hand. "Why?"
"Because there's no telling what you might change by moving that one piece. You see how everything around you has its own machinery? The floors, the ceiling, the lights? Once you move it, you might change that thing forever."
"You're going to . . . teach me how to use this?"
"No. It's far too dangerous. I am showing you this to make you understand the enormity of your situation."
Pulling back my hand, I dragged a smudge of golden light through the air like paint. Then the light smear broke into flecks, wafted up into the air, and disappeared, so I swished my hand in front of my eyes, dragging the glowing paint everywhere. My every move left streaks in the air that cracked away and disappeared moments later. "What is this stuff?"
"The visual traces of your aura. Everywhere you go, it follows. When you interact with the machinery, your aura leaves behind its stain. The auras of non-magic-users do not leave behind the same markings. When you wish to stop seeing the vivit apparatus, merely blink, and all shall be as it was."
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, all the glowing machinery was gone. "Can I do that any time?"
"Yes. Your resident assistant in Veles Hall will give you a more well-rounded introduction. Now, if you don't mind, one of our agents will re-enter the room. Please do not fight him. I think you know our recourse will be swift."
The door opened behind me, and one of my kidnappers entered the room. I wanted to lunge at him, gouge out his eyes, and make a run for it, but Melchior's threat kept me from taking any drastic action.
"Come on, Mr. Juan 149," the agent said.
"My name's Johnny Diaz."
"Not anymore, snowflake. You're now officially the 149th Juan we've had at the Institute."
"Call me Johnny."
"Whatever, kid." He stood at the door, waiting for me to exit.
Melchior was already gone; a metal shutter was sliding down soundlessly behind the observation window. I stepped through the door into a white hallway. The agent closed the door behind us. "Stay close, kid. You don't want to get lost down here. Trust me on that one."