SPOILER ALERT: Sample may contain spoilers if you have not read the Born of Air
1
PETRA
The Van Allen belt.
Radioactive electrons.
Impenetrable barrier.
Plasmapause.
My mind was spinning with the strange terms and vocabulary that had come from Hiroki's mouth over the past two days. He’d also been showing me 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.
“A complete field,” he went on, “and no emission of other radiation.”
Holding my palms down and out, the tingling sensation of frequencies ran up my arms. A hot energy spun in the center of my being, connecting my tailbone with the top of my head. Power flowed through me.
Hiroki was barely visible behind a protective barrier, a booth similar to the kind the technician hides in just before they zap you with radiation for a CAT scan. Only Hiroki’s head was visible behind the dark glass, and if I wasn't mistaken, his face was alight with surprise. His features were obscured not only by the dark glass, but by the waves of the force-field now encircling my form as I stood in the center of the lab.
The field was visible as a thick wall of shimmering air, the way heat bakes off desert sand at the height of a torrid midday. Hiroki had explained to me that the field 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. But as I got used to my powers, the control I had over them was increasing exponentially. They were 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 in a pool but a deep well. 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 assigned. Hiroki had likened these hand-movements to a baby's pacifier, 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. My heart skittered up my throat and crouched in my mouth like a frightened bird. The old fear was diminishing but it was still there and at times reared its head with ferocity. What if I hurt him? What if it was the kind of hurt that didn't reveal itself right away, but years later showed up in the form of some horrible cancer?
"Hiroki, wait. Are you sure it’s safe?"
"You'll just have to make sure it is." Hiroki's voice was cavalier as he closed the booth's door behind him and faced me. He was mere feet from the borders of my force-field. "I trust you, Petra."
He took a few steps closer.
"I hate it when you say that," I grumped, not relaxing my hands. I narrowed my eyes at his approach.
Hiroki reached a hand out.
"Don't!" I closed my fists.
He'd never left the safety of his booth and I had no idea what would happen if he did. The bubble vanished. I felt the energy dissipate. The spinning vortex running through my core stopped immediately.
"It's all right, Petra," Hiroki said softly. "If it wasn't safe, this would have gone crazy." He held up the small Geiger-counter which he'd held so often this past week that it had practically become part of him.
I frowned.
He continued, "But the needle wasn't jumping like before. You did it! I'm proud of you. Now let's try making one that stays intact, the same way you can orbit material and walk away from it, leaving it to rotate indefinitely."
"Are you going to tell me what we’ll be using this force-field for at some point?" I tried to deliver my question casually, but it came across as sly. I'd been looking for chinks in Hiroki's armor ever since he'd started prepping me for a project mysteriously labeled Project Expansion.
He gave me a withering look which was not entirely devoid of humor. "You never give up, do you?"
I shrugged but didn’t answer, because it wasn't a question. Shaking his head, he said, "You know I can't tell you anything yet. Jody says you'll just have to wait until we have the Elemental girls. You'll learn the parameters of the project at the same time as them and not a moment before."
I let out a long sigh. It was futile to ask why. I'd tried that already. No dice.
"Ah." Hiroki held up both his index fingers in a comical display of 'Eureka.' "Shall we throw some projectiles? How do you feel about that?"
"At my barrier?"
He nodded and rubbed his hands together with no small amount of glee. "Aren't you curious to see what happens? Besides, the primary missiles are basically foam balls. They're not going to hurt you if they do penetrate."
"Yeah, we start with foam and we graduate to live ammunition."
"I already told you about that, did I?"
I nodded slowly, eyebrows raised. "Sometimes, you do let things slip." In the short time I had been developing and measuring my skills and abilities with Hiroki, 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 his index fingers returned. "I won't use anything harder than foam until you give me the go-ahead, all right? How's that?"
"I can't ask for better." I waited for Hiroki to disappear inside the booth. Six panels in the gleaming black metal walls of the lab slid open, revealing the stacked barrels of cartoonish-looking guns.
The technology of this lab—Hiroki had explained—had been licensed for millions of dollars to a high-tech gaming and virtual reality park in Japan. It was another of the fringe-businesses that TNC operated under another company name. 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 nearly 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. It was like a multi- limbed creature with each limb operating independently of the others.
At the blinking of the amber light above Hiroki’s booth, the spinning vortex inside me hummed to life. With an unnecessary flick of my fingers, the bubble of wavy air fused into existence around me. My force-field naturally put me at the nexus of itself. Its walls passed through the floor of the lab equidistant to its arch over my head. It had always moved with me, like a shadow. If I shifted side to side, the force-field always kept me at its middle. But was this essential to the force-fields existence? I instinctively felt it wasn't.
“I want to test something before we start.” 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.
“Sure, let me know when you’re ready,” Hiroki's artificially amplified voice said through the sound-system.
Not without effort, I relaxed my hands. With nothing more than intention, giving a mental command that the force-field should stay put, I shifted side to side and saw with pleasure but no surprise that it did not follow me.
I approached the wall of the bubble and put my hand up to touch it. Nothing. No sensation. No, wait. There was a sensation, but it was mere warmth and a delicate tingle. I passed my hand through the wall and then stepped through to follow with the rest of my body. Once on the other side, I turned to observe my force-field from the outside. It looked the same as it did from the inside—just a faint circle, more mirage than anything else. If I hadn't known to look for it, it would be completely invisible, even to my eye.
I turned and caught Hiroki's eye. He looked faintly confused.
“It’s there.” I made a curving gesture with my hands to show him where the dome was. “I’m outside it!”
He shook his head slowly at me in wonderment.
Stepping back inside my force-field, I felt the tic inside me as it reconnected and once more moved as my shadow.
“Okay, fire when ready,” I said.
There was a popping sound as a yellow ball fired from one of the guns. It bounced off my bubble and ricocheted harmlessly against the wall. I cocked my head at the information the force-field sent to the vortex spinning through my center—the frequency of the foam ball. Interesting. Now I had data. The ball rolled a couple of feet before dropping into some unseen channel beneath the floor to get cued up for another discharge.
"Fire another."
A 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 asked.
"Same way I shattered the glass in the cave in Libya," I explained. "I changed the frequency of the force-field 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, material too pliable."
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. At some point, science becomes irrelevant and the 'super' part takes over. This is when all of my education and knowledge become useless. Your abilities are the way they are, scientifically explainable 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 there can only ever be one Euroklydon at a time."
This statement caught me in a thicket of emotions. My mind took me to my recurring dream—the one of the man who looked like me. The man who seemed to be trapped in a world that moved in slow-motion, whose warning was never explicit enough and never came fast enough. The dream was always frustrating. Always confusion. Always disconcerting.
Run.
It was all he ever said—no, mouthed—and my dismay at these dreams was getting old.
Popping sounds pulled me from my musings. Three multi-colored explosions of plastic fluff appeared against the walls of my bubble. A fourth popping sound with a higher pitch sent a tennis ball bouncing off; the information about that ball passed through my core like a radio signal. When a second tennis ball followed less than half a second later, it too exploded into shreds of rubber.
I smiled, a little surprised to find that I was enjoying this. "That the best you got?" I crooked my fingers at the booth in a gesture of challenge. "Bring it on, 'Roki."
A loud bang followed my invitation and a metal ball the size of my fist bounced off the force-field to hit the lab wall with a loud crack. When a second identical metal ball fired milliseconds after 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 said with a grin.
"TNC has deep pockets," answered Hiroki, and his voice also 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 force-field do that automatically, or did you have to change something?"
"I heard the sound and knew what was coming. It all happens so fast that it’s not really conscious."
"Remarkable."
The shining heat 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 faraway engine powering down. A moment later, Hiroki stepped out of the booth. "Aren't you going to fire something deadly at me?” I asked. “Arrows? Bullets? Bombs?"
"Not here. This lab isn't equipped for it. We'll have to go outside." Hiroki unhooked the small hand-held radio from his belt. At the same time, he flicked a switch on a 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 the metal staircase leading up to ground level.
Hiroki spoke into the radio as we ascended the stairs. "How fast can we get cued up for a live ammo test with the Euroklydon?"
The voice that responded sounded mildly boyish. "Really?"
"Really." Hiroki looked over his shoulder and winked at me as we 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 number twelve?"
"Clearing seven has already been pre-approved. I'll send a rover to pick you up."
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