Sneak Peek at The Elementals (Book 6 of The Elemental Origins Series)
Sneak Peek at The Elementals, PETRA’S POV (unedited and subject to changes):
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Like the Van Allen belt.
Radioactive electrons.
Impenetrable barrier.
Plasmapause.
My mind was spinning with the strange terms and vocabulary which had issued from Hiroki’s mouth in the past several days. Drawings and animations of radiation belts, particle movement, and…
“You’re doing it.”
Hiroki’s whispered words broke through my reverie and I opened my eyes. My palms were down and out, each hand tingling with a different frequency. Power spun in the centre of my being, like a vortex, connecting my tailbone with the top of my head. Energy poured through me and from me.
Hiroki was barely visible behind a protective barrier, like a dentist hides before they zap you with radiation for an x-ray. Only his head was visible behind the dark glass, and if I wasn’t mistaken, his face was alight with surprise and pleasure. His features were obscured not only by the dark glass but by the waves of the forcefield now encircling my form as I stood in the centre of the lab.
The field was visible as a thick wall of shimmering air, like heat baking off desert sand at the height of midday. Hiroki had explained to me that it was invisible to him, but visible to me due to the proteins in my body called cryptochromes which helped me detect magnetic fields. Whatever they were, learning to use them had been like trying to pin pudding to the wall. Now that I was finally getting used to my powers, the control I had was increasing exponentially, getting easier and more natural to wield. It had dawned on me slowly, like the first of the sun’s rays on a crisp spring morning, that my powers increased as my understanding of them deepened. It had been like reaching into what I thought was a shallow pool for a sparkling gem, only to realize that the gem was far away, and it was not a pool but a well of unfathomable depth. I was learning that my powers were unleashed and controlled not by my body, but by my thoughts and my will. Still, old habits die hard, and it was difficult not to use my hands and arms to make gestures while I executed the tasks Hiroki challenged me with. Hiroki had likened these hand-movements to a baby’s soother; explaining that I needed them while I was learning, but that I would cast them off as I gained confidence.
Hiroki moved and my eyes followed him. He came out from behind the protective barrier, making my heart skitter up my throat and crouch in my mouth like a frightened bird. The old fear was loosening, but it was still there, and reared its head with ferocity. What if I hurt him?
“Hiroki, wait. Are you sure it’s safe?”
“You’ll just have to make sure it is,” Hiroki answered. “I trust you, Petra.”
“I hate it when you say that,” I grumped, not relaxing my hands. I narrowed my eyes.
Hiroki reached toward the nearly invisible bubble I had created around myself.
“Don’t!” I cried out, closing my fists. He’d never tried to touch my forcefield before. I had no idea what would happen if he did. The bubble vanished. I felt the tension dissipate and the spinning vortex inside me stop immediately.
“It’s alright, Petra,” Hiroki said softly. “If it wasn’t safe, this,” he held up the small Geiger-counter which had practically become part of him, “would have gone crazy. But the needle wasn’t jumping like the times before. You did it! I’m proud of you. Now let’s try making one that stays intact, the same way you can set materials into indefinite orbit.”
“Are you going to tell me what we’re going to be using these forcefields for at some point?” I asked slyly. I’d been looking for chinks in Hiroki’s armor ever since he’d started prepping me for a mysterious project he wouldn’t give me any details about.
Hiroki gave me a wearying look which was not entirely devoid of humor. “You never give up. You know I can’t tell you anything yet. Jody says by the end of the summer, and you’ll just have to wait until then.”
I let out a long sigh.
“Ah,” Hiroki held up both his index fingers in a comical display of ‘eureka’. “How about this time we use the guns? How do you feel about that?”
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire?” I chewed my lower lip. “It’s not too soon?”
“Nonsense.” He rubbed his hands together with no small amount of glee. “Aren’t you curious to see what happens? Besides, the primary missiles are basically nerf-balls. They’re not going to hurt you if they do penetrate.”
“Yeah, until you turn on the live ammunition.”
“I already told you about that, did I?”
I nodded slowly, eyebrows raised. “Sometimes you do let things slip.” During the time I had spent working with Hiroki to develop my skills, I had discovered that inside the consummate professional lived a young boy who loved video games, laser tag and obstacle courses. This young boy version of Hiroki made his appearance during breakthroughs and just before trying some dangerous new drill.
One of the index fingers returned. “I won’t turn it on until you give me the go-ahead, alright? How’s that?”
“I can’t ask for better.” I waited for Hiroki to disappear inside the booth and flick the switch which would turn the red light to green. Six panels in the gleaming black metal walls of the circular lab slid open revealing the discomfiting barrels of guns with stacked vertical mouths in varying sizes. The technology of this lab––Hiroki had explained––had been licensed for millions to a high-tech gaming and virtual reality park in Japan. It was another of the fringe-businesses that TNC operated. I wondered what other tech the company had invented and sold and to whom. Governments? Private intelligence agencies? Foreign military? How did they decide who to partner with? It was a world that had become as fascinating to me as archaeology, but I had quickly learned that prying was not going to get me anywhere. It was when I kept my questions to myself that Hiroki would let slip some engrossing and revelatory piece of the TNC story. Just when I thought I was beginning to assemble some idea around the identity of the corporation I was contracted to for a year, I would learn some other startling fact which would change my perception entirely.
At the blinking of the emerald colored light, the spinning vortex inside me hummed to life. With an unnecessary flick of my fingers, the field fused into existence around me. My forcefield surrounded me perfectly, passing through the floor of the lab. It arched below and above me in equal distance. It had always moved with me, like a shadow, as I shifted side to side a few feet, because I was its nexus. But was this essential to the forcefields existence? I instinctively felt it wasn’t.
Not without effort, I slowly relaxed my hands.
“Who needs a soother now?” I murmured. With nothing more than intention, commanding the forcefield to stay put, I shifted side to side and saw with pleasure that it did not follow me. I smiled and glanced at the dark glass between myself and Hiroki.
He grinned and gave me a thumbs up, then clapped three times over his head.
I did a grapevine to the right and to the left before canting over one knee and shooting Hiroki a campy open-mouthed grin accompanied by jazz-hands.
He laughed silently and waved me off with a gesture of oh you, so silly.
Next, I approached the wall of the bubble and put my hand up to touch it. Nothing. No sensation. No, wait. There was, but it mere warmth and a delicate tingle. I passed my hand through the bubble and then stepped through to follow with the rest of my body. Stepping out the other side, I turned to observe my forcefield from the outside. It looked the same as it did from the inside––a thin-walled sphere of seething air.
I turned and caught Hiroki’s eye. He looked faintly awed. He shook his head slowly at me in wonderment, amazed at my new trick.
I stepped back inside and felt a click as I took my place at its nexus. It once more moved as my shadow.
There was a popping sound as a yellow ball fired from one of the guns. It bounced off my forcefield and ricocheted harmlessly against the wall. I cocked my head at the information the contact sent to the vortex spinning through my centre––the frequency of the nerf ball. Interesting. Now I had data. The ball rolled a couple of feet before dropping into some unseen channel beneath the floor, on its way to get cued up for another discharge.
“Fire another.” I spoke normally. Hiroki had had to remind me a few times that even though he was in a protective booth, he could hear me as well as if I were standing right next to him.
The popping sound originated behind me and I spun to watch the next ball explode in a poof of green plastic dust. It shimmered and drifted slowly to the floor, making a pile of green dirt.
“How did you do that?” Hiroki’s artificially amplified voice asked through the sound-system.
“Same way I shattered the glass in the cave in Libya,” I explained. “I changed the frequency of the forcefield to match that of the ball.
“Huh. I wouldn’t have thought something made of soft plastic could be destroyed that way. Frequency should be too slow.”
I shrugged, feeling a little smug. “You’re the scientist. There has to be an explanation.”
“Not necessarily,” came Hiroki’s surprising answer. “We’re dealing with a supernatural ability, here. There’s a line where science becomes irrelevant and the ‘super’ part takes over. At that point, all of my education is pretty much useless. Your abilities are the way they are, scientifically quantifiable or not. And not only that…”
I knew what he was going to say. “I’m one of a kind.”
Hiroki nodded. “Exactly. As far as we know, there is only one Euroklydon, and can only ever be one Euroklydon.”
This statement brought a host of confused emotions to the surface. My thoughts inevitably went back to my recurring dream––the one of the man (father) who looked like me, who seemed to be trapped in a world that moved in slow-motion, whose warning was never explicit enough and never came fast enough for me to understand what he wanted me to do.
Run.
It was all he’d ever said, more like mouthed to me, and the message was getting old. Run from what? From whom?
More popping sounds pulled me from my musings. Three multi-colored explosions of plastic fluff appeared against the walls of my forecefield. A fourth popping sound with a higher pitch sent a tennis ball bouncing off the forcefield, and the information about that ball passed through my core. When a second tennis balled followed less than half a second later, it too exploded into shreds of rubber.
“That the best you got?” I laughed and crooked my fingers at the booth in a gesture of challenge.
A loud bang followed my invitation and a metal ball the size of my fist bounced off the forcefield and cracked against the nearly indestructible lab wall. When a second ball of the same nature fired milliseconds behind the first, I was ready for it. There was another loud crack, and the ball exploded into a million metal fragments.
“This could get expensive,” I muttered.
“TNC has deep pockets,” answered Hiroki, and his voice had a smile in it. “What happens if I fire two different projectiles at the same time?”
Before I could answer, he did just that.
The popping sound of a nerf ball firing to my right, accompanied by the much louder bang of the metal ball at the same time resulted in both projectiles bursting into fragments simultaneously.
“Whoa,” said Hiroki. “Cool. Did the forcefield do that automatically, or did you have to change something?”
“I heard the sounds and knew what was coming. It all happens so fast that it’s not really conscious.”
“Remarkable.”
The hard glimmer of confidence was steadily growing in me. “You want to try live ammunition, now?” I laughed. “Not that a metal ball wouldn’t be considered ‘live’. That thing could have taken my head off.”
“Can we?” Hiroki sounded disbelieving and ignored my comment about being beheaded.
“Sure.”
There was a sound like some quiet engine powering down and Hiroki stepped out from behind the booth glass.
“Aren’t you going to fire something deadly at me?”
“Not here. This lab isn’t equipped for it. We’ll have to go outside.” Hiroki unhooked a radio from his belt. At the same time, he flicked a switch on a small blue panel in the wall and the door to the lab slid open, letting in natural light.
I followed Hiroki from the lab and stepped onto a metal staircase leading up to ground level. Hiroki spoke into the radio and received an answer from a gruff masculine voice.
“How fast can we get cued up for live ammo test with the Euroklydon?”
“Really?” The voice sounded like a kid’s on Christmas morning just told it was time to open presents. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Really.” Hiroki looked over his shoulder and winked at me as we emerged from the underground lab and stepped into the hallway which led to one of the canteens.
“The team has been waiting for this ever since she signed the contract,” the voice answered. “Give us twenty to set up?”
“Perfect. We’ll grab a coffee and meet you in clearing twelve?”
“Clearing seven has already been pre-approved. I’ll send a rover round to pick you up.”
“Copy that.” Hiroki clipped his radio back into place as we entered the canteen. A low murmur of voices from a few groups of people at a table dimmed further. I felt several sets of eyes on me and made an attempt to smile at one of the women in a fatigue-colored skirt. The corners of her mouth twitched up but she looked quickly away again.
“The Euroklydon?” I asked as we grabbed coffee at the machine on the counter. “Is that how I’m referred to around here?”
Hiroki nodded, nonplussed. “Nothing against you. It’s just easier in this line of work not to get too personal.”
“Why would that be, I wonder?” I took my hot cup out from under the nozzle and opened a packet of brown sugar. This was a sarcastic question. I had already been warned not to foster friendships with the other employees of the TNC field-station. Relationships were professional, conversations with anyone save Hiroki were curt and short.
In one way, I didn’t mind, given that after a year of working for TNC I planned to study at Cambridge and build a world-class career in archaeology. In another, the cold and constant distant professionalism grated on me. I never knew, when encountering a TNC employee, whether I was dealing with a human or a supernatural. So far, the only other confirmed supernatural I knew worked for TNC was Ibukun, an Inconquo, a metal elemental. But she was in London, presumably back at work for the TNC offices there.
“Shit happens,” Hiroki said, casually.
My brows shot up. It was the first time I’d ever heard Hiroki curse and a rare glimpse at his humanity. Though he was a professional most of the time and had even seemed robotic at first, I had always seen him as a human being.
It seemed that the favor was not being returned.
(end sneak peek)
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