Glimmer (15 page)

"Thank you. I was hoping you'd be here. I need some help."

"Anything for you, Nobleman."

"Tell me, do you know a young Vessel by the name of Hana, I mean, Grace? She would have just arrived a few days ago ... maybe nine years old, dark hair?"

Vessel Care studies me, but appears hesitant to answer.

Trying to warm her to speak, I continue, "I only ask because she used to be my new Noblelady's helper, and she wanted me to check on her, you know to see if she transitioned easily." I exaggerate the truth, not wanting to send any red flags to the Council.

"Hmmm ... let me look though my files. It's so difficult to keep the comings and goings in check. Grace, you say? From Refuge Three, I presume?"

I nod my head, hopeful to see Grace, to let her know Timid and Lucy are okay. To give her a hug, even though I never hug Vessels, but because it will make me feel closer to Lucy. Lucy, the one I feel so far from right now.

She walks behind a small desk and digs through a file cabinet, eventually producing a manila folder, worn on the edges from years of use. "Here we go, I have a file on a ‘Grace from Refuge Three.’ Let me see...." She opens it up and begins to peer over the contents. She squints her eyes, and seems to have difficulty reading.

"Are you having trouble with your vision?" I ask, hating to see members of our fold suffer with their vision. It's something we cannot correct, and is a reason many people end up at the Rehabilitation Center. We've isolated ourselves here without the ability to scavenge the empty cities for correctional glasses.

"Oh, just my old eyes, Nobleman. Nothing to complain to you about." She speaks gently, not wanting me to show concern.

But I do feel concern. Maybe because I feel powerless. Maybe because I feel unable to control anything or anyone around me. I want to help Care.

"Let me see if my light can help."

She pulls back slightly, hesitating again, and looks over at Vessel Sanctify seated at the desk next to hers. But then she closes her eyes, and smiles, waiting to absorb my waves of light.

I focus on Lucy. On her healing power, her ability to take away pain and restore health. Her gift. Her ability, one different than mine. But I focus on her and sense a charge overwhelm me, as though Lucy is able to transcend space and meet me right here. In this office, in this room.

I press my hands over Care's eyelids, wanting her to feel the restorative rays I offer. I lift my hands, and several moments pass before Care opens her creased lids, and her face wrinkle as she smiles widely.

"Oh, Nobleman, what did you do?"

"Is it better?"

"It was as though tiny lights danced under my eyes, as though your light poured into me." She shakes her head, incredulous.

"And your vision?" I can't help but smile, thinking that Lucy truly was able to help me from so far away. In the same way I know that I've sent my light to her.

Care lifts up her file, "My eyesight is perfect. I feel like I'm twenty years old again," she whispers in disbelief. She covers her mouth as a small laugh escapes.

Sighing, she pats my hands. "Enough of me, let's see what this says." Care begins to read it out loud to me, clearly without stumbling over the print, "Grace, age nine, member of the fold as of September 4, 2032, was transferred October 29, 2032, for disorderly conduct." Care glances at me, then to Sanctify, who I see gives her a slightly disapproving nod.

"Keep going."

"After attempting to dismantle the dark rooms she was sent to the Sanitation Center on Refuge Two and then--" Care stops.

"Then what? Where is she?"

Care speaks quietly, and I lean closer to hear her words, "I know Grace, your Nobleman."

"Take her to me then."

"It isn't that easy. She ... she was taken to...."

"Tell me where. I can find her."

"Things aren't what they once were." She lowers her voice again. "Integrity says you can be trusted. Can you?" She looks at me straight in the eyes, and I'm taken aback by her mentioning Integrity's name.

"Of course." My light grows as my nerves increase.

"The Original Light is working, for you." She lifts the file to block the Vessel working next to her, "You must understand it's complicated, and even if it doesn't feel like it, you have our support."

"What does this have to do with Grace?"

"After she arrived she was angry and refused to cooperate. She wasn't interested in abiding by any of the rules."

"So?" My irritation grows, anxiety stretching tight over my shoulders.

"Due to her behavior she was sent to the Rehabilitation Center soon after she arrived here."

"What aren't you telling me?"

She draws in a deep breath, with eyes full of sadness, of grief. Eyes filled with a longing I understand all too well.

"Grace is gone, Your Nobleman."

Now it's my turn to have that deep intake of breath, to fill my eyes with the same sadness, to shake my head, refusing to hear her.

"And Integrity, he knew?"

"He ordered it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lucy

"You need to take me to the laboratory."

"I understand that's where you want to go for answers, Lucy, but first we need to discuss Lukas," Ernie says emphatically. "When did he plan on escaping?"

Layla and Charlie look at me with the same intense green eyes Lukas has. I know my answer will be their relief, they're so anxious to see their boy, their brother. But before I can answer, my body swells inside, like the rolling waves I saw last night with Charlie. My stomach drops and my whole body shudders.

I close my eyes, to steady myself, and the lights under my eyelids that are usually flickering in a quiet dance become blindingly bright.

"Are you okay?" Charlie asks, putting his hand on my arm. I pull back, and force my eyes to open.

"What were we talking about?" I ask, dazed.

"Lukas. We were talking about when Lukas was leaving The Light," Charlie says, concern written across his furrowed brows. 

I can sense, at the core of who I am, that Lukas was drawing healing energy from me. Our connection is so deep that my eyes brim with tears in fear that he's okay that he received what he needed. Pulling in a hopeful breath, I send all my love toward him.

A few seconds pass before the spinning sensation passes, and when it does, I continue, more grounded this time. "That's the thing, we didn't really talk about it, when he would come. Everything happened so fast when Timid and I decided to leave. Best case scenario, the night I left he would have started working on the plan ... so maybe a day to leave the Refuge ... and a few days more to get to Refuge Two where we think the girls are ... I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm not helping anything. I'm just compounding the problem." I nervously unwind my braid, then begin twisting it back together again.

"I could go," Charlie offers. "I could go with a crew and wait for him at the dock. Take the radios, those will pick him up for sure."

"What radios?" I ask.

Charlie walks over to a cabinet. "These are my mother's pride and joy." He holds up the radio Layla carried yesterday when I arrived, it had been beeping in her hands as she greeted us. "This picks up energy signals. Like Lukas's energy. It's designed to beep when the energy is close. That's why I was out on that mission when I ran into you and your mom. A few days before we met I had been out looking for an energy field Mom was sure she had picked up. It turned out to be nothing."

My cheeks flush, as if the untold truth of remembering Charlie when he showed up at the compound is written all over my face. As soon as he explains the radios, and his mission with them, I know. I'm the reason he was out on that mission. Layla had picked up my light, when it had flickered for me in the underground bunker when I found those baked beans.

The same way the radios recognized my energy when I walked onto Headquarters and they started to beep. Ernie had distracted her yesterday, and so had I, by telling her I knew her son. They assumed the beeping was a fluke, a malfunction.

But it wasn't.

It was me.

"And once you have that energy you need ... what then?" I ask.

"Then we can tap into it. We just haven't solved that piece yet. We know it is a natural energy, but one that didn't exist before the end. We think that the energy that disappeared the night the lights went out, was somehow placed in different ... vessels."
              I smile, knowing why Layla hesitated on that word.

"So vessels of light, like Lukas is?" I ask, even though I already know the answer.

"Exactly. But we haven't met anyone else who has it like Lukas does. We have to believe it exists in another form. Somewhere in the world."

Her theory doesn't add up, it would be absurd to travel the globe in search of a natural rock or mass that contains this energy. 

"But this source may never be found. I mean, it might not even be in this part of the world, or the world at all!" I say, shaking my head. "All this effort, time apart from Lukas, for a fairy-tale-pipe-dream. This is absurd!"

The room goes quiet. Layla and Ernie look at one another, angry at me, for what I said. As though I said the
unsaid
thing. Like they know this truth but are pretending that there is another, different way. That their life work isn't a colossal waste.

Because that is how it feels. Like all of this, all of their research, all of their effort, is nothing more than Forest's futile attempts at the compound. Striving for answers impossible to find. Desperate for solutions that are maybe not meant to be found.

"That's exactly why the
Safe House
isn't cooperating anymore. They kicked me out, because I was defending you, and the work here." Charlie runs his hand through his hair, like he's unloading the thing that has been pent up inside of him. "That's what I've been trying to tell you both, but you won't listen. Everyone is getting restless, tired of working towards a goal that isn't attainable."

I think back to Junie and Colton, of how they told me that they're tired of this runaround, being a slave to someone else's plans and ideas. I can tell Charlie feels the same way. Only it's worse for him, because it's his parents.

His eyes flash over mine, then towards the backdoor.

"Charlie, I can't just stop. I can't give up. I have to keep trying." Layla starts crying into her hands, she's desperate, but in her desperation she's lost sight of the point.

Ernie doesn't say a word, but his glassy eyes that look straight ahead tell me he's done talking for now.

Charlie stands, opening the back door. I follow, knowing lines may have been crossed in the kitchen, but knowing time heals those divides better than anything else.

Charlie walks away from the house, and I trail him to a bench tucked behind a wood shed. It's a little hide-away, concealed from the rest of the property. It reminds me of Lukas and I's ledge. Away from everyone, everything.

I hesitate, but then sit next to him. We're so close, nearly touching. Sitting close to him, I think of the sunset ride the night before, how his breath was so close to mine, how he held himself tight against me.

I bite my lip.

"Lucy, what are you thinking?" His hand reaches over and tucks a loose red tendril of hair behind my ear. His touch doesn't send shivers throughout my body, instead it calms me. Charlie's touch steadies me. His hand lingers, cupping the side of my face, and I know he wants more than he's willing to say. Being close to me isn't just about keeping his brother's girl safe, it's because he knows that something was exchanged between the two of us when we met, when we spoke under the moonlight on my trek to The Light. 

It's wrong to entertain these thoughts. I hate myself for doing so. I've pledged myself to Lukas, he's my everything. Just minutes ago in the kitchen, Lukas drew healing light from me. He isn't some distant idea. He is my here and now -- if not in body, surely in spirit.

I pull away, letting Charlie's hand drop.

We don't speak about what he wants with me or what I want with him, instead we just look at one another, in each other's eyes. Holding steady. I know he knows why I can't have him. I belong to someone else.

"So Lukas...." Charlie starts, then stops. It's as though starting this conversation enforces everything that silently passed between us. It's as though he doesn't want to reinforce my choice. Lukas. Not him.

"What do you think we should do? Your parents...."

"My parents are good people. They've helped so many people here, given them a home, a purpose, helped my grandfather ... but things have been at a standstill for too long. Everyone's tired of waiting and not acting."

"What do they want to act on?"

"Some want to go demolish The Light, start a war.  They want their resources and power. And I get that. Guys like Reagan are trying to drum up support. But then there are others who just want to get the hell away, start a life, quietly."

"Like Junie. That's what she wants."

"Yeah, exactly. I know you've had a hard go, but some of the people out in the trailers here, they have had it so much worse then you and I. Teenagers who've grown up left to fend for themselves in a pretty dangerous world. Adults who've lost everyone and everything."

"What do you want?"

"I want...." he looks at me and I know who he wants. Me. I softly shake my head, resisting him. "Then I want freedom. I want to leave and wander the country, the world, with Lucky. Disappear."

"But what about Lukas?"

"What do you think holds me back? What do you think wracks me with guilt every night of my life? It's all about Lukas. Everything I do or don't do is about Lukas." He gets angry when he says it, like any of this is Lukas's fault.

I want to see things from Charlie's perspective, but Lukas has not had it easy. He's a prisoner.

"He didn't ask for it, you know. He didn't choose to be born this way."

"I know. And I love him. That's why I've stuck around, trying to help my parents." He holds up the radio, still in his hands from the kitchen, "It's why I go on pointless missions looking for their legendary energy." He messes with the knobs on the radio, "It's why I do everything."

I see him twist a knob, the one labeled: ON.

              "Charlie, don't!" I grab his hand, not wanting him to know. Not wanting him to discover me.

I'm not ready.

But I don't have a choice. I never have a choice.

And the crackling noise startles us both, because even though I knew it was coming, Charlie didn't.

Lukas

I storm out of the office.

I don't know why I expected everything to be easy, but I did. I expected to find Basil and Hana and leave. Just walk away. But nothing is that simple.

"Nobleman, stop, wait." Care runs out of the office, toward me. I turn, wanting her to say something -- anything -- something that will change everything.

But she stops.

"What?" I call out.

"The Light believes in you."

I hear her words as I turn back, and head towards my chamber room. I'm so frustrated and confused. I can't let the words Care said be true.

Hana is dead.

I open the door to my chamber, relieved Perfection hasn't yet returned, but disappointed in myself for returning so quickly. I have nothing good to show for my efforts. Care's words are too cryptic to understand, and she hesitated saying even those. I don't understand, any of it.

I pull the chamber door shut, and take the journal from Integrity out of my pocket. I have to understand who he is, what his intentions are, because right now nothing is making sense. I flip to the next entry,

Lucy was in the Haven this evening for her mother's Binding and Naming Ceremony. I watched her the entire time, trying to understand this girl who has shown up and mystified me so.

She sat stoically for the service, and at times I felt as tough there was a light aura rising from her, but I had to focus to see it, otherwise it would vanish in thin air. It was another clue, the first being her holy responses to the test.

I don't really know what an aura is, but I do know about Lucy's light. I suppose if aura is some sort of light, it would be hard to tell hers from mine. Or Integrity has a gift to see it in people.

After the service she began arguing with her mother. They fought and then Lucy sat alone on the steps leading to the altar. I was drawn to her, and couldn't walk way even if I wanted to. I waited for the Haven to empty, and then I found myself sitting next to her. When I touched her shoulder her body produced an electric shock, one I have only ever experienced with Lukas. It was just like mine, the energy inside her. I knew then, the truth.

Integrity has the Light? How is this possible if he believes I'm the prophet? I think back to my times with him, how he always appeared tuned into The Light in ways others aren't. How he looks at things through a different lens.

I tried to comfort her, she was upset about Basil. I told her, "Girls like Basil are different. They need to see The Light more than girls like you. So, we help them see when they can't. We do that through partners or binding ceremonies. Sometimes, for certain ones it's through confinement in the dark, to remind them how much they need The Light." I hope my conversation with her keeps her remembering the reason The Light is important, because I need her to believe, if we want to survive.

If this is what Integrity truly believes, no wonder he sent Hana to die. He didn't think she had any chance of changing, of turning towards The Light.  That must be why he still holds power in the Council. He's the one pushing for the dark rooms, even if it's for different reasons then the other Councilmen. They want the dark rooms for power and control over the Vessels, he wants them because he believes it makes Vessels holy.

I close the journal, more confused then I was before. Lucy trusts Integrity, and I trust Lucy. But
I
can't trust Integrity, not now.