Bounders (19 page)

I fall in line behind Marco.

“Nice of you to join us, J-Bird,” he says.

We follow Waters through the exit at the end of the pod hallway and into another corridor. “J-Bird?” I ask Marco.

“Yeah, you know,
J
for
Jasper
and
Bird
because of your sick fly skills.” Marco thinks he's hysterical. I'm pretty sure Cole chuckles, too. Is it ever gonna end?

“Give it a rest, Marco,” I say.

“What? You want me to stick with Ace?”

“Just shut up. Really.” J-Bird? I guess it's kind of funny. Why is Marco okay with his teasing, but Regis is such a monster? I guess it's because Marco has my back, and Regis wants to break me.

“All right,” Waters says. “Here we are.” He stops in front of a door armed with all kinds of security. “Where are the girls?”

I spin around. I swear Lucy and Mira were right behind me. My pulse quickens. Has something happened to them? Did they run into Regis and his pack?

A few seconds later the girls emerge at the end of the hall.

“Lucy, Mira, you need to stay with me when we're going to the training room,” Waters says. “This area is highly restricted.”

“Sorry, Mr. Waters,” Lucy says. “We had to take care of some girl stuff.”

I look at Marco, and he shrugs. I don't even bother looking at Cole. Then I realize what's different. Mira's hair is swept back in an intricate braid and tied with an emerald ribbon.

“You fixed her hair,” I whisper to Lucy.

“I couldn't just let her go around looking like that, now, could I?” Lucy spouts. But she can't fool me. Lucy's finally coming around. She considers Mira part of our team.

“Okay, now step up one after the next,” Waters says. “The computer's been preprogrammed with your lens signatures, and everyone entering this room needs to be approved.”

After Marco and Lucy are scanned, I step up to the door and lean in with my right eye open wide. It creeps me out knowing the computer is accessing all my data based on an eye scan. I sigh in relief when the scanner buzzes. I passed its test.

After we're all scanned, Waters holds the door open so we can enter.

As soon as I set foot in the room, I lose my bearings. The room is black—black floors, black walls, black ceiling—but it isn't completely dark. I can't figure out where the light is coming from. I can see, but all I can see is blackness. Once Waters closes the door behind us, I can't tell if I'm standing on the floor or on the ceiling. I try to walk and nearly trip, sure I'll go tumbling through space.

“Good, good, not a second to waste.” Gedney emerges from somewhere. Another door? A screen? Suddenly he's just there. Air prickles my skin. Something is blowing, brushing against my clothes, raising the hair on my arms. I can't tell its source.

“Welcome to the Entanglement Zone, or Ezone,” Waters says. “You're lucky. You're the first pod to come here, the first to post results for the rankings.” And then under his breath he adds, “Although luck had very little to do with it.”

“LET ME TURN IT OVER TO
your guide, Gedney,” Waters says.

Gedney hobbles to the center of the Ezone. His arms swing heavily by his side. Sure enough, he wears the gloves.

When he reaches the center, he turns to face us. “Yes, we should get going. No reason to delay.”

He raises his hands into the air. Pulsing currents of light race to his fingertips. In the blackness, the brilliant light blinds me. And just as the room is black, devoid of color, so is the light. It has no color—just brightness.

The pulsing continues. I fixate on the light until my heart aligns with the pulsing of the gloves, and my blood pumps to the same rhythm. I float, fall, reel in space. What on earth is this place? I'm afraid but filled with awe.

“Ezone Bounding Training Protocol, initiate,” Gedney says.

As soon as Gedney utters the command, a billion pinpricks of light, each as bright as the pulsing light on Gedney's hands, fill the room. And they're everywhere. Above, below, behind. The light fills me, too. I glow from the inside.

It's just too much. Every ounce of awareness I have sparks to life. I gasp for breath, and my right leg buckles. I throw my hands out in front to brace my fall, and tangle with someone already on the ground.

“Jasper?” Lucy whispers. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it's me.” As I stare at a shimmering outline of Lucy, I'm sure it's her only from her voice.

“What is this?” she asks.

“I have no idea.”

She gropes in the darkness until she finds my hand. She clutches me like she'll be lost in space if she lets go.

“Okay, that's a start,” Gedney says. “Don't fret; you'll adjust.”

That's
it
? Don't
fret
?

“Look, Einstein,” Marco calls out, “you've got to tell us what's going on here.”

Yeah, no kidding.

“Very well, Marco. Can you make it to me? You'll be first.”

A glowing blob that must be Marco creeps toward Gedney. He waves his hands in front, trying to swat a path through the light.

“Walk right through, son. Nothing's going to hurt you,” Gedney says.

Gedney pulls a second pair of gloves from somewhere and helps Marco ease them onto his hands.

“Good, a perfect fit,” Gedney says.

Lines of light race from Marco's fingers.

“Whoa!” Marco yells. “Oh man. I don't know about this, Geds.” Marco's voice vibrates with fear and exhilaration. His body jerks around like a giant bug has landed on him and he's trying to shake it off.

“Now, now, give it a second,” Gedney says. “The gloves are just binding with you. It's a strange experience the first time.”

Lucy leans over and whispers in my ear. “I can't do this.”

I'm thinking the same thing. I squeeze her hand, hoping she'll think I'm trying to boost her confidence rather than hang on for dear life.

Marco's body finally quiets. He holds his hands in front of him and examines his palms. “What the heck happened?”

“The gloves have established a direct cerebral link via your neural system,” Gedney says.

“English, please, Geds,” Marco says.

“The gloves are synced with your brain.”

“Oh, of course,” Marco says, laughing nervously.

“Try this,” Gedney says. He reaches forward and gathers all the light in front of him. He packs it together like a snowball. Where the light just was, there is blackness.

“How?” Marco asks.

“Just try,” Gedney says.

Marco reaches out. He drags his hands through the air, but nothing happens.

“Think about what you want to do, Marco. Focus on the outcome. Find the connection between the gloves and the brain.”

Marco pulls his gloves through the light more slowly this time. At first nothing happens. Then a small pocket of blackness appears. He corralled some of the light with his left hand.

Marco laughs again. “Oh wow. I can't believe it. This is unreal.” His ball of brightness grows bigger, and the pocket of blackness surrounding him expands. “You guys gotta try this.”

“And they will,” Gedney says. “Step over here, kids. I'll get you set up with the gloves. We'll run through a few exercises and then bound right in. Ha! I love that pun.”

My sight is starting to adjust. I can tell who's who, and I have a general sense of direction. Marco seems okay, and there's no real way to avoid it anyhow.

I push to a squat and lean toward Lucy. “We've got this. Let me help you up.” I pull her to her feet, and we make our way to Gedney.

“Lucy, right, here you go,” Gedney says, handing her a pair of gloves. “And these are yours, Jasper.”

The gloves are surprisingly thin. I expected to find wires or sensors to account for the light, but the material is gauzy. I push my hand into one glove and remember me and Addy playing with Mom's stockings when we were little. The material stretches against my fingers and molds into place like a second skin.

With both gloves on, I wait. At first I feel nothing. I ball my fingers into a fist then flex them out in a fan, waiting for them to ignite. I'm completely focused on my hands, so when my brain jolts, I jump.

“What is that?” I shout. Another jolt, like Dad is turning the ignition key on the hovercraft we rented for our family vacation in the scorch zone. Something almost catches but doesn't.

Then the third time—jolt and
jolt
. A live wire races out of my brain, around the curve of my neck, through my shoulders, and down my arms, all the way to the gloves. When the current crosses the glove line, my hands glow even brighter, and the current runs right out my fingertips.

“This is awesome!” I yell.

I turn in a circle, arms outstretched, watching my hands stream through the glow-pricked blackness. I've never felt more alive.

“Good, good. Gather around. No time to delay,” Gedney says.

We line up in front of Gedney. Even Mira. She looks different. Taller, maybe, although I have no idea why.

Cole waves a lighted hand in my face. “Isn't this technology amazing?”

“Yep, it's super cool,” I say.

“That's an understatement,” Marco says.

“Okay, listen,” Gedney starts. “This first game I'll call Catch. Grab a partner and stand two meters apart. Gather the light together like I showed Marco and then toss it to your partner. Every time you make a pair of catches, take a step back.”

Cole and I head to a corner, or at least what I think is a corner. The Ezone is still ridiculously disorienting.

“Do you know what you're doing?” Cole asks.

“I haven't tried yet.” Gedney said to focus on the outcome. I close my eyes and visualize the connection between my hands and my brain. Yep, the current is definitely still there. I picture my body as a pinball machine, and my brain as the release bar. I envision what I want to do and—
bam!
—shoot the message into the current. It races down my arms and into my hands, which feel like magnets or machines or something totally unlike the mere appendages they were a few minutes ago.

I focus on the light field in front of me and nudge a few of the glowing orbs. Sure enough, as long as I cling to the connection with my brain, they move at my will. I cluster together a couple hundred sparklers and wad them into a ball.

“Ready?” I call to Cole. He has a similar sphere of light he's kneading with his hands, but mine is definitely bigger.

“Almost,” he replies.

“Think fast!” I yell, and hurl my ball of light at him.

“Hey!” Cole ducks as my light-ball whizzes by his head. “Not fair!” The ball sails beyond Cole and then breaks apart. The light scatters outward from the core in a hundred different directions.

I crack up. “What did you think it was going to do to you? They're just a bunch of silly lights, remember?”

“Yeah?” Cole says. “Well, then, catch this!” He chucks his ball at me. And, okay, I'll admit it's a little unnerving to have a huge ball of light barreling at me, but I'm not about to lose face. I brace for impact and hold up my gloves, focusing on catching. When the ball is about a foot in front of me, I somehow stop it. The glowing mass hovers in the air between my gloves.

“Nice catch,” Cole says. His voice sparks with excitement. My smile reaches from cheek to cheek. Hands down, playing with the gloves is the coolest thing I've ever done.

Focusing on the ball, I bend my arms into my chest and push. “Catch!”

By the time Gedney stops us, Cole and I are on opposite sides of the Ezone. Our ball is the size of a small boulder, but it weighs nothing. I toss it into the air and bop it to Cole, just like the giant beach balls the crowd keeps aloft at the futbol games Dad takes me to each spring.

“This next exercise doesn't require a partner,” Gedney says. “It's basic practice for the assessments and rankings. Please gather around in a circle.”

As I make my way to Gedney, I gather up a handful of light. I sneak up behind Lucy and dangle my fingers above her, letting the twinkles rain down onto her head.

Lucy jumps and spins around. “Jasper! Cut it out! You scared me.”

“That was the goal.”

Lucy grabs at the light around her and hurls it at me.

Just as I'm about to get Lucy back, I'm doused from behind by a downpour of light as big as the boulder Cole and I built.

What on earth? I whirl around. The only one behind me is Mira. Mira did that? My face must gloss over in shock, because that's definitely how I feel.

Mira doesn't say anything—she certainly doesn't own up to it—but I could swear her mouth turns up on one side. A smile? A smirk? An involuntary lip twitch? I'm not sure.

“Okay, kids,” Gedney says. “Focus here. Fun is fun, but we've no time to waste. Spread out. You need at least three meters on either side of you. Good. Now, close your eyes. Relax. Picture yourself as made of light. Connect with the light. Try to tap into your composition.”

I close my eyes, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Picture myself as the light? What is this? Some weird spirituality? Can't we go back to tossing light-balls?

“Excuse me, Gedney,” Lucy says. “I don't get it. What do you mean ‘connect with the light'? What does that have to do with the gloves?”

“It has everything to do with the gloves,” Gedney says. “Sense your own light. Tap into the source.”

Lucy looks at me. I shrug. That seems to happen a lot when Gedney's talking. I close my eyes again and think about the light. The connection between the gloves and my brain is intense; it courses through me. Is that what he means by tapping into my source? I really don't have a clue.

Cole exhales sharply. “Can you at least give us the objective?”