Читать книгу Bright Star - Grayson Reyes-Cole - Страница 5

Chapter 2

The Precocial

On the morning before Jackson Rush met Bright Star, the two occupants of the small apartment on Kolter Avenue found themselves in the same room. That was a rare occurrence. Unsurprisingly, the silence between the brothers was at once intimate and awkward. Jackson, the always-favored son, leaned on one arm against the counter watching his brother Jacob eat and grunt messages. “Ronald called five million times last night.”

“Randall?” Jackson corrected his brother, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, Ronald. I was surprised you didn’t answer. Oh, and once this morning.”

“Huh,” was all Jackson said. He pressed a button on his cell phone. He’d had it on silent all night.

His brother glanced up at him, then back down. “Glad you can be so nonchalant about it. I didn’t get you up this morning because I heard you up and walking around all night. I know you didn’t sleep.”

“No.” Jackson sighed. He closed his eyes and subtly shook his head.

Rush pushed back in his seat. “What the hell is it, Jacks?”

For a moment, there was silence. Jackson smiled. Or grimaced. Either way, he was biting the inside of his lips and flexing his hands into fists.

“What do you think?” Jackson asked into the quiet.

Jacob Rush, called Rush by all who knew him, didn’t answer. Instead, he continued to eat. His shoulders were hunched over a bowl at the kitchen table. His fist was wrapped around a large spoon. He shoveled cereal into his mouth. His jaws seemed to snap, his teeth clicking on the metal spoon. Milk dribbled down his chin. Jackson watched the play in the skinny forearms protecting the bowl. His brother looked like a starved animal.

Jackson grabbed a peach from a basket on the table and flexed his fingers around it. He looked at his brother again. Rush’s forearms circled the bowl as if he were guarding it. “Rush, can I ask you something?”

Rush, the brother who had a different father, the brother with dark skin and dark haunting eyes turned his attention to the golden one. He sat back, pushing the bowl away. He waited as if patience was a gift rarely granted.

“If you could… you know… do what I do, would you feel compelled to go into the Service? Or maybe not go in to the Service,” he amended quickly, “but at least do something to help other people. You know, to save them.”

The dark eyes that blinked at Jackson were flat, the expression blank. His brother went completely still. His chest didn’t even rise and fall with breath. Jackson faltered. What had he said? Jackson swallowed. His brother frightened him. There was no explanation for it, but there was no avoiding it. When Jackson was younger, he told himself that he had just been intimidated by Rush’s silence. But no, he’d gotten older, a little wiser, and now knew the only truth. Rush scared him shitless.

Physically, it made little sense. They were night and day, to Jackson’s favor. Jackson knew he was handsome with his golden skin, dark blond hair, and light brown eyes. But beyond good looks, he was physically impressive, to say the least. Just shy of six feet tall and thickly muscled, he was built like the athlete and current Serviceman he was. It was part of his regimen to keep in rigorous shape through an aggressive cardio and weight-training schedule. He’d won the endurance trial each year for the past three at the Service. His body possessed an obvious strength.

Rush, on the other hand, was a sallow, sickly caramel with dark, kinky hair. That same dark hair perpetually accented his jaw, neck, forearms and legs. Even though he wore layer upon layer of clothing, Rush’s tall frame appeared almost slight. Any muscle he possessed seemed to be of the lean, naturally occurring kind. Shirtless, his skin was pale and jaundiced with smudges defining each of his ribs. Similar smudges were found beneath his cheekbones. Jackson found himself urging his brother to eat more all the time, but it didn’t matter. Rush ate voraciously, relentlessly, rapaciously but never seemed to gain weight. Still, instead of appearing frail or weak, Rush was like a starved leopard. Gaunt yet dangerous. Somehow, someway he gave one the impression that he was waiting to pounce, waiting to make a kill. Where Jackson eyes were soft and brown, Rush’s almond-shaped eyes appeared black and absorbing. They were only made more so by the darker-tinted skin beneath them.

But even their physical differences—which were strong enough to warrant no one believing that they were even half-brothers—were the least significant reasons why Jackson should not have feared his older sibling. There was also the fact that Rush truly cared about his little brother more than anything else in the world. Jackson knew it. Rush admitted it freely and without shame. Before their parents died, Rush had still been closest to Jackson. After Janie and Everett Rush died, he had made it part and parcel of his brotherly duty to care for Jackson as a parent would, and to support him as a best friend.

The other—perhaps most important—reason Jackson’s fear of Rush should have been groundless was this: Jackson was nearly impervious to physical harm.

Jackson Anthony Rush had been the only Precocial Shifter born… ever. Since the beginning of time, they had been born one in one hundred million. Called Shifters for their ability to bend known physics laws and known reality, they had only been discovered, secreted away, categorized, honed and marshaled for a couple of centuries. The Service had come to be their destiny. But never in all recorded history had there been a Precocial, a person who possessed and could command his paranormal Talents from birth. It was taught as fact that Shifters had limitations to their powers and that Shifting could only be accomplished after the onset of puberty, making human beings completely altricial, not precocial. Shifting Talent then improved by age with no apparent peak. These were the Parameters of Shift. They governed the gifted the same way the laws of physics governed the “normal” world.

A Precocial child had been nothing more than a supposition, a complex and improbable equation endlessly disproved. It was a point to be debated amongst geniuses. It was fodder for confidential government tracts and PhD candidate theses alike. Over many years, the Precocial was—finally—a myth. Few had truly believed in a Precocial as more than a fairy tale until Jackson’s birth.

Even though they tried every method known to man, Janie and Everett were unable to conceive for four years after she gave birth to her first son Jacob. Everett Rush had married her during that pregnancy. They met shortly after Janie had been deserted in her second trimester. Everett had been a customer at the market she worked. He’d been awed by her wholesome and ethereal beauty, even in her condition. He’d loved her instantaneously and planned to raise her child as his own. At least until Jacob had come along with his dark and exotic looks, and his persistently plaintive wail. Rush came with eyes the color of tar that followed Everett around the room. Rush nearly killed his mother when he pushed his way out of her womb.

Janie started trying to give Everett the baby he wanted as soon as she was healthy again. In the second year, she became pregnant, yet was devastated when the baby was lost in her third month. Janie was hospitalized for months after that tragically terminated pregnancy. Everett was forever at her side, but she knew it was only duty that kept him there. Though he tried valiantly, Everett couldn’t help feeling that she was to blame. It didn’t matter that she had already had one healthy son. She had not been able to have a son for him. And he needed that, needed it more than anything else. He needed a son that did not stare intently at him from the corner of the hospital room with those unseeing, black eyes. A son who needed a father, because it was clear that Jacob Rush—most ironically called “Rush” for short—did not. Jackson’s mother had told him many times before she died how much she’d wanted him and his father had wanted him. Many times she had told him this. A year after that miscarriage, miraculously, she conceived again.

Janie and Everett struggled desperately trying not to put too much hope in this child because the pregnancy was plagued from the start with complications. She suffered gestational diabetes and hypertension, immobilizing sciatica, and bouts of severe, debilitating depression. When the time came, they’d believed this baby to be dead. But he’d breathed and cried, and as he cried, he’d called down rain that fell only on that hospital for thirteen days in a row. Immediately the phenomenon had been recorded and baby Jackson had been tested and put into a classification of his own. Precocial. Talented from birth. His power had been significant. His entire life had been spent breaking and setting Shift records. He was the most powerful Shifter on record.

Jackson fumbled for words and remembered his question. “I mean… maybe that’s not the right question. If you were me, would you feel like you had to go into the Service?” Still, his older brother Rush merely peered at him. Rush said nothing. “You know… Well, I mean, I know you would have to go into the Service, really, but…”

Jackson did not press. Rush would answer in his own time as he considered the question.

But as it were, the phone was ringing and Jackson leaned over to answer it. “Hello?”

“Jackson, damn man, glad you answered.”

“What is it?”

“We need you down here, like pronto. man.”

We need you down here. They always needed him. That was the burden of being the Precocial.

Then he heard a voice from the table.

* * * *

“Yes.” It was a lie that Rush tested on his tongue, then slipped out into the cosmos. Smaller than atoms, they floated undetectable out of his mouth. The words were of him, yet somehow did not belong to him. Rush had learned long ago how to lie and experience the serenity of removal. There was a science or art to the lack of culpability. He had perfected this science and art in the last ten years of his life as he watched the skills of his younger brother develop, as he watched his mother’s love shift to Jackson the Extraordinary, while Rush longed for and achieved obscurity. “Yeah, sure.” He nodded briefly. “I would help people if I could. What you’re able to do is amazing, Jacks. And I totally recognize your need to put it to good use. Guess that’s why you got all the power.”

“Yeah.” Jackson slightly furrowed his eyebrows. Then, as Rush expected, the lines smoothed, and Jackson was again at peace. “It is the right thing to do. Civil… social responsibility and everything.”

Rush nodded. He watched as Jackson went into the living room. Then he pushed from the table and walked into the bathroom. He smiled into the mirror, stretching his lips as wide as he could, baring his teeth and straining muscles until even his neck tensed with the effort. He held the smile and wondered what others would feel if they were to see him smile. A smile on that face was an unnatural occurrence. He continued to hold the expression, wondering how long he could stand there that way. He had done the right thing, too. Now, Jackson wouldn’t worry that he had made the wrong decisions or that he, somehow, had a monster for a brother.

* * * *

Rush fully expected his brother to leave the house then. Jackson took his responsibilities to the Service very seriously. And Rush had seen firsthand the way they revered Jackson there, the way they watched his brother in awe and with a respect that one gave to a prophet… or a rock star. That near-worship unsettled Rush.

Even though he expected his brother to go, Rush knew he was still in the apartment. For that reason, he chose safeguards. Rush traced the word despair into the dust on the back of his closed bedroom door. The word glowed shiny black, then vanished. He thought of testing it with his palm, but he knew the Energy was still there. He sighed heavily and faced the unremarkable room. It was green and dark gray. There was a desk and a chair. There was a TV, a game console hooked up to it on the floor, a stereo, a computer, and a long unused chess set. There was his bed, two mattresses on the floor with a blanket over them. His brother had complained about it half-heartedly. The walls were blank and white.

A mirror leaning over his dresser showed him his unremarkable reflection. He glanced down at his body and sighed again.

Then he changed.

His skin warmed visibly to a healthy toffee glow. His hair, dry and kinky, waved softly over his eyes. His narrow shoulders widened, his slender body strengthened, packets of flesh filled in the hollows of his bones. With a brush of his hand over his face, his strong jaw was wiped clean of stubble and his dull black eyes changed to a sherry brown. His nose was a perfect line with flared nostrils over broad lips. Rush was sure he wasn’t a handsome fellow anyway. Still, people stared at him when he went around in his natural skin. Even without his unusual Talents, he could tell they were watching him. They still did, though less so with his diminished appearance. Rush would never be comfortable with that. People were smarter than even they knew. Most of them could sense there was something different within him, even if they couldn’t pinpoint what.

He waved a hand and it was as if a shallow wave of dim rippled across the room. Wherever the ripple touched seemed to bend, shatter, and reshape. The white walls stretched and darkened into a shadowed slate gray. The floor shifted and opened until the carpet melted away to reveal smooth rock. The bed lowered, curved, shimmered in a cerulean blue. Eggplant and emerald colored pillows and coverlets covered the soft rise invitingly. A depression in the center of the slate deepened until it became a hot pool of scented water bubbling over dark blue tile. In the center of the pool was a long burning flame that seemed to touch the water and yet continue to burn. Similar flames attached themselves to the ceiling and walls to give the room a warm aura. Deep blue, iridescent boxes spilled soft music into the air. The ceiling dripped low and bowed into the worn stone of a subterranean cavern. This was his luxury, his heaven. A palace buried in caverns. He smiled wryly to himself: his dream home. All he needed was a dream girl. But he knew, even as she made her way to him, that Elizabeth was already dead.

Effortlessly, he snapped his fingers and a banquet appeared before him. Damn, he was always hungry, especially when he thought of her.

“How did you do that?” The voice, surprising like a beam of sunlight in dilated pupils, sliced through Rush’s chest. The bones in his shoulders ached, then his collarbone and sternum. His ribs squeezed around his heart. His throat closed over and he began gulping for air and clutching at his windpipe. The muscles convulsed on the left side of his face, closing his eye then straining him so that his head began to shake. His body continued to collapse around his organs. He felt the seizing in his bladder as he struggled. He fell hard on his back.

Jackson’s eyes, driven wide by the sight of his brother’s act, grew tight as he went over to Rush and placed a hand over his chest. A cool charge went through to Rush’s heart. For a moment, his body seemed to expand again, enough so that he could concentrate on the words flowing from Jackson’s mouth.

“First you focus on your heart and lungs. Think of them being transparent, thin, so much so that air and light can pass through them.” Rush followed the instruction and felt the constriction inside him begin to subside.

“Now,” Jackson continued, “breathe and do the same for your mind. Imagine it empty, clear, porous. It may sound strange but try to picture fruit. A series of all the fruits you know, one after the other.”

Again, Rush followed Jackson’s queues. Strawberries. Apples. Grapes. Bananas. Easy. Oranges. He found the discomfort had almost completely subsided. Mangos. Tangerines. Peaches. Almost. Pineapples. Raspberries.

“All better?” Jackson inquired with a quizzical brow.

Rush nodded and looked away. That is when he remembered the Shift. The faint scent of musk on the air enhanced the exotic nature of his creation and served to remind him that this atmosphere was quite man-made, and probably beyond anything his brother had seen created so easily. He was caught—again—and his heart constricted—again. He was now going to have to convince Jackson that what he was witnessing was not real… again. Wearily, Rush sank down onto the side of the very normal and non-Shifted bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and waited.

“How did you do it?” Jackson asked without attempting to hide his awe. He tapped Rush excitedly on the shoulder to gain his attention.

“How did you know what was happening to me just then?” Rush countered instead of answering. He needed time to think.

“It happens.” Jackson offered with a quick shrug. “Permanent Shift. Usually when you expend too much energy on any one specific Shift. You know, Parameters of Shift 101. What you’ve done here is amazing, record-breaking in the time that you accomplished it. It would have taken me days to do it. And, after I was done, I never would have been able to put it back.” Jackson swept his arm toward the room that had subtly returned to its original condition.

“No,” Rush mumbled absently. “This is an easy Shift.” Then, as he considered Jackson’s words, he asked, “Why fruit?”

“Fruit is mundane. It’s the first and easiest way to train children on how to manage Perma-Shift. Something about the listing that focuses your cognitive skills and forces your Energy to center there instead of in manifestation, if that makes any sense to you. And…” Jackson paused. He measured his next words very carefully. “And they’re healthy.”

“Healthy?” Rush was empirically incredulous.

“Yes, healthy,” Jackson assured him. “It’s one of the weird phenomena of Shift. Thinking about healthy things has a significantly healthy impact on your body, including when you are in the throes of Perma-Shift.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why doesn’t it work for heart attacks?”

“Sometimes it does,” was Jackson’s bashful answer.

Rush merely considered the information then nodded. He was still unsure, but chose to pursue another topic. “How did you get in?” He looked back at the door that still bore a trace of the glossy black word that should have planted the suggestion in Jackson’s head that he did not want to enter the room. He should have been plagued with sadness, loneliness, insecurity, disconsolate grief. He should have been inured with the feelings of despair just by nearing the door. The further away from it he stood, the less he would feel the suggestion. Jackson had braved it anyway.

* * * *

Jackson walked over to the dusty chess set and began to study the pieces. He picked up the queen, still impressed with her heaviness. The pieces were made of solid pewter. The queen was the heaviest, the most ornate. He put her down gingerly but didn’t take his eyes off her. “I would like to say that I was able to identify the suggestion from my years of training, but I didn’t. In fact, the suggestion was so strong I was shaking even while I reached for the door, but I needed to talk to you.”

Jackson turned to see Rush raise his eyebrows. Jackson assumed this was an indication of shock and incredulity. Though his brother looked slightly different, his lack of expression was the same. “You wanted to talk to me enough to plow through a very, very, very nasty suggestion?”

Jackson shrugged again, remembering a feeling of intense misery descending on him at the thought of going to his brother for advice. He’d started to sweat and felt bile pooling in his mouth. He also remembered the feeling that Rush was the only one in the world who could help him. When he weighed both emotions, his need to seek Rush out overrode the suggestion, the High Energy Shift used to create it. Jackson knew his brother would tell him the right thing to do.

The fact that he sought guidance from his brother more than anyone else probably had a lot to do with the fact that Rush was older by nearly five years. Boys usually looked up to their older brothers and wanted to emulate them, didn’t they?

When they were little, Rush had always steered Jackson away from trouble. He taught him from an early age not to lord his extraordinary abilities over others. It was Rush who had urged Jackson to protect smaller kids, to cooperate with the incessant battery of tests to which the Service subjected Jackson. It was Rush who told Jackson constantly that their parents loved him, and that they understood and respected his unique gifts, though Jackson had never, even as a boy, completely believed it.

Rush warned him that he needed to comprehend the difference between asserting and aggressing. In all things, Rush had never failed him. He had been an unwavering and unmoving guiding star for Jackson through subtlety and nuance when necessary or relentless, persistent emotionally dealt discipline when necessary. Even despite his Talent. Amazing to Jackson, he didn’t know why, but his Talent had never had an impact on Rush. He had always considered Rush to be his teacher, and Jackson had never, not once in his life, considered using his power on him. Deep down, Jackson had known in the way only a soul can know, that his Energy could not affect… could never conquer Rush. It was only at this moment, this very moment that he knew why. Rush had power of his own.

“Well,” Rush prompted.

“Well what?”

“What did you want?” Rush asked patiently.

“I don’t remember,” Jackson admitted, sure that before Rush asked him the question, he had known. He ran a hand over his bristly dark blond hair and changed the subject. “You should be trained.”

“I’m an adult. They don’t train adults.”

“They don’t train adults because they get everybody when they’re kids. We live in the nation’s capital, not because our parents loved it here, but because they’ve been studying and training me since before I could walk. It’s amazing you have this kind of Talent and have managed to fly under the radar. Energy has a way of making itself known to the Service. They have satellites, Rush, that pick up traces of High Energy. They can identify Talent from outer space. You have to be tested. You have to be protected. You have to be trained, Rush.”

“No, Jackson, I don’t have to be, and I won’t be.” His words were final. Jackson wouldn’t argue. At least not then. “I can tell this isn’t going to work. You and your desire to do what you think is the right thing to do… No, you won’t be able to leave well enough alone. For that reason, I have to do something I don’t want to do.” Rush ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, Jackson.”

* * * *

“Hey, man, I must have just zoned out. I didn’t realize what time it was. You mind if I cut out early and we play some tomorrow? I gotta figure out what’s going on at the center.” Jackson pulled off the wireless virtual reality gloves. He briefly checked his score on the gaming console and handed the gloves to Rush.

“No problem, Jack.” Rush, now transformed back into the sullen introvert, answered with a nearly believable smile. “Tell Ronald I said hi.” The gloves were warm to the touch. The Shift had been precise, instantaneous, and perfect. He slid them into the console drawer.

When Jackson walked out of his room, Rush sighed and closed his eyes. That was the seventh time in as many months he had removed the knowledge of his unique Talent from his brother’s memory. Seven Shifts in seven months, Rush tried to cheat destiny. Too frequently, this Talent he had been careful to hide since adolescence, seemed to want to bare itself to his brother… maybe to more than just his brother.

He did it even though he knew it was useless. Rush had always known that he could not cheat destiny.

* * * *

When Jackson Rush swiped his badge at the west lobby of the Service, he waved at the older woman in uniform behind the desk. The pleasant looking woman graced him with a huge smile. Her smooth skin was the color of fresh garlic and her eyes looked like half moons as she grinned. Her salt and pepper hair was very short and bristly. She was tall, definitely taller than he was, and plump. She wore starched navy pants and a button-down with yellow chevrons on the sleeve that looked like it could have represented any security company in the country, but of course, her uniform was not only bulletproof but also psychic-proof. All of Melita’s Talent was based in self preservation. She couldn’t do anything to anyone else, but they couldn’t do anything to her either, including get past her. Great for security in the only place on the planet where everyone commanded High Energy of a sort.

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.”