Bright Star (5 page)

Jackson walked through a sensor that looked strikingly like an airport security pass-through, then started down a hall. The floor was old terrazzo but gleaming clean. The walls were a governmental off-white and only interrupted by doors and windows with metal blinds blocking the view inside. He took an elevator then, down sixteen floors. Stepping out, he passed through another security booth nodding at a young, skinny man he’d never met before.

“You’re new?” he asked with a smile, putting his hand out.

“Yes, Mr. Rush, sir.”

“Jackson.”

“Oh I don’t know—”

“Nahh, it’s cool. I give you permission to call me Jackson. What’s your name?”

“Banks.”

“Nice to meet you, Banks. You had to have done really well to be on this detail.”

“Yes, sir, um… Jackson.”

“And what’s your…”

The young man put his hands out waist high with his palms facing downward. A bronze light, a dark brown flame almost, seemed to leap out of his palms and form a wall in front of his body. He raised his hands higher, and up the force field went. Jackson stepped closer and put a finger into the High Energy barrier. A faint buzz let him know how strong the Energy was.

“That hurts,” he said with a slow smile.

“Well,” Banks toed the tile at his feet, “It does for other people, y’understand. I wouldn’t expect…”

“And you shouldn’t. Really, I could feel how strong and controlled the field was.”

The younger man beamed at that. “I have to tell you, sir. It’s amazing meeting you. Amazing. We had like a whole chapter on you.”

Jackson gave a faint nod of his head. He’d heard this before and was glad that no such course had existed when he was in training. Jackson proceeded through the double doors behind Banks. He took a right then entered the room to his immediate left.

There was a tall, almost sickly slim man in a white lab coat, a pale blue button-down and khakis in the room. “What is it, Ronald?” Jackson skipped a greeting.

The other man with pale yellow hair narrowed his light green eyes. “Tell your brother I said hi.”

“Damn, Randall, sorry.” If Jackson didn’t know any better, he’d figure that a suggestion was causing him to call his co-worker by the wrong name. “What’s—” Jackson didn’t finish the question. For the first time he realized that the metal blinds covering the giant window dividing this room from the next were pulled up. He took a step back as a pair of huge, hot black eyes stared at him intently.

“Why is he in holding?” Jackson snapped at Randall.

“He got the rock and went ape shit.”

“Nice,” Jackson scowled. “Leave it to you to put it in clinical terms.” He turned back to the window and looked in at the man who seemed to be staring directly at him, venom glazing his eyes. It was a man he had considered a friend, Thaddeus Okwenuba.

“Well, I could get into the details, but as I recall, you’re not much interested in those.”

“Sometimes,” Jackson conceded with a shrug as he continued to watch Thad, who seemed to be watching him back. He shouldn’t have been able to see Jackson through the glass. Jackson was quite sure that he could, though. High Energy sight was just one of Thaddeus’ Talents.

“We need you to get the rock.” There was almost a play of a smile across Randall’s thin lips.

Of course they needed Jackson to get the rock. Thad wasn’t even dangerous without it. He wasn’t typically dangerous with it either, but that was only after an initial release of stored High Energy. An astonishingly violent release.

“Wasn’t it in containment?”

“Yeah,” Randall answered. “It’s not now.”

Jackson gritted his teeth then demanded, “Did you ask him for it?”

“Um, no.” Randall responded with derision.

“You can reason with him, you know.”

“Um, no.” Randall repeated. “What I know is that you can’t reason with him, at least not yet.” Before Jackson could interject, he went on to explain, “Sure you can reason with him and everything’s fine once he releases that initial bout of aggression. He hasn’t done that yet. He was about to do that. Don’t know how he even made it all the way here.”

That was indeed a feat.

What amazed everyone at the Service was that Thaddeus couldn’t seem to access his High Energy at all without the pebble. There had been no other cases, truly, where High Energy could only be tapped by use of an inanimate object. There had been plenty of cases where Shifters used inanimate objects—prisms, pools of water, seeds, even other people—as a focal point to enhance their Talents. Some naturally occurring objects had been found to have special properties that helped in that aspect. Yet hematite had not been established as one of those materials. There was absolutely nothing special about it. Nothing at all. That’s why it and its owner had been transferred into Dr. Sandoval’s care. The lab had tested it with every method they could and found nothing out of the ordinary. Heat, cold, elemental interactions, impact testing, microscopes and particle beams. Later in life, Thad, a Doctor of Physics in his own right, had even recommended half the tests. He had been as eager as anyone to discover the power the rock held over him. They’d even given it the ultimate test. They’d given it to the Precocial—Jackson had stopped just short of sleeping with the damn thing under his pillow—but nothing happened. The rock was nothing more than a piece of hematite that fit easily into the palm. Not even a subsonic hum. Still, without it, Thad—an untried teenager at the time—professed to be unable to use his Talent. So they tested him.

Mental and physical stress trials represented the mission for the R&D division of the Service. They were structured to test all of the known types of Talent manifestations. Pyrokinesis, telekinesis, clairvoyance, regeneration, replication, the list went on and on.
Parameters of Shift 101
. They had a thousand tests to evaluate the 223 categorized Talents. These tests had shown no High Energy in the man without it. It didn’t make any sense, because the one thing they all knew for sure was that Thad was a dangerous man with the object and he was not even 50% assured to be able to control the strength of the Energy.

“How’d he get it back?” Jackson asked, taking off his jacket. He pulled his shirt out of his pants and loosened his belt. He breathed deeply, letting his muscles relax, his arms went limp at his sides and his legs were parted. His head rolled around clockwise then counterclockwise on his neck. He took the stance of a fighter as he faced the man standing in a similar fashion on the other side of the glass. “I thought we decided he didn’t get the rock back until we figured out how to help him control it.”

Randall Sandoval shook his head. “That’s the thing. We aren’t exactly sure how he got it back. It would be easy to think he reached out for it in a Shift, but we both know he has never in all these years exhibited any High Energy without the thing.”

“Hmm,” Jackson frowned. He turned to leave the room but noticed two other doctors had come in. Medical doctors. He smiled ruefully. They were there not to treat him for the injuries he was bound to sustain. They were there to study how he healed from them. So many things yet to learn about the Precocial. He walked over to where they stood and waited patiently as they gave him a series of injections. Into his arms, his hands, his feet, his legs, four in his chest (heart, liver, lungs), one for each kidney, seven on different vertebrae, two at the base of his skull. Sensors. In less than half an hour, Jackson’s body would expel the foreign objects, but until then, readings would be taken and transmitted.

He walked out of the room and turned left. The next door was locked in triplicate: mechanics, electronics, and Shift. A small atrium was on the other side, and another door with another series of locks. Even some of the older Servicemen would have trouble opening it while keeping the occupant inside. This task was not difficult for Jackson. What was difficult was preparing himself to go into this room remembering that Thad would kill him if he could.
God
, he was so happy-go-lucky under normal circumstances. He was an intelligent man, a funny man, a good man. A best friend.

Thaddeus was very dark skinned, he wore dark clothes, and the room was dimly lit. He lurked in a corner and Jackson could barely see him, even though he could sense black eyes peering at him. Thad’s loose limbs swayed a little, almost as if brushed by a breeze. High Energy buzzed and crackled in the air. Thaddeus lunged at him with preternatural speed and furor. Jackson barely had enough time to see that the rock was in Thad’s mouth. That way he could use both hands to rip Jackson open.

Jackson had trouble describing it. He could see the skin on his arms being shredded, feel the blood drip down. The grating sensation of nails and teeth scraping his bones was visceral, intense, but no more painful than a baby’s scratch. When he fought on, the popping noise sounded in his ears as both arms were pulled, one then the other, out of the joints. Distended, disconnected shoulders snapped back in place, jarring, but Jackson didn’t even wince. Like a fly lighting on his flesh.

Even the mental push meant to liquefy his organs, the push that ate at his insides like acid. He was completely cognizant of what was happening to him yet totally removed from it. Jackson should have been in pain. He should have fainted with it. Instead, his wounds felt more like someone touching a foot that had gone to sleep. And besides, every rip, every tear, every melting organ, regenerated nearly at the same rate that it was destroyed. Each bit of blood or flesh that left his body reversed its path, returning to him. Vials of blood somewhere deep in the bowels of the Services yearned to return to him even then.

“Get it out of your system already!” Jackson shouted, feeling annoyed that Thad, even in this state, would be foolish enough to think he could hurt him.
No one could hurt him
. He had just lunged at Jackson, wildly slashing again and hurling so much High Energy that it pulsed in almost imperceptible violet waves from his body. Anyone else, it might have killed, but his resilience was another strange attribute to Thad’s Talent.

Jackson could make this stop, but he didn’t want to hurt a man who had become his friend. He also knew that in only a few moments, Thad wouldn’t be able to expend any more Energy. Perma-Shift would finally set in. He would need the doctors and Jackson to keep him alive through it. And, as soon as he thought it, Thad started to scream. His body doubled over and he crumpled to the ground. The convulsions started, Thad cracked his head on the cement floor with a sickening thud and vomit bubbled out of his lips.

Jackson rushed to kneel beside him and swept his finger into Thad’s mouth to clear out both vomit and the rock. He checked the pulse and when he realized that it was strong and that Thad was breathing, he rolled the unconscious man over onto his side in case he vomited again. He dried the rock with a handkerchief pulled from his pocket. He pressed a hand to Thad’s forehead and checked quickly. All residual Energy. Nothing that could hurt anybody. He gave the thumbs up to the window and the three doctors joined him shortly.

After checking to see that Jackson had no damage to examine, they all started to work on Thad, including Sandoval. Jackson just stood and watched. He was exhausted and Perma-Shift—the only thing that brought him pain—made his brain feel like it was splitting in two. Catching a glimpse at his watch told him he had only been at work for 20 minutes. Sandoval looked up at him then. Always the empath. “Go ahead, Jackson. You may want to lie down for a few minutes in the dormitory.”

Jackson turned to go, but hesitated even as the sensors made pinging noises when they dropped to the floor around him. He needed to give Randall the rock.

“For God’s sake, Jackson,” Randall said, reading his intent. “Take the rock with you. Put it somewhere only you can find it for now.”