Skyborn The Divine

7: Farm

Maryanne stared at the black device pulsing with yellow light on her kitchen table. Alice had seen her mother angry before, but it was rare to see her truly furious. She could see muscles tensing and throbbing beneath the side of her mother's head, veins standing on her clenched hands. She had a look in her eyes that Alice would have been afraid to have pointed in her direction, superhuman powers or no.

"Where's the button," Maryanne said in a cold, sharp voice.

Alice was beginning to regret saying anything about the holographic message. She had her doubts of what she should say about it. She had huddled alone in her apartment after Gregory Clawson's face had disappeared, alone with her worries and her fears, and with her desires too. She'd been looking for a way to use her potential, to learn how to use her powers to help people, and here she was being offered a way to help. By the same people behind the heroes she'd seen saving people in a hurricane, no less. It was frightening to have a secretive organization suddenly requesting to see her in person but thrilling too. And she'd not known what to do about it, so she'd just tried carrying on with her day as though nothing unusual had happened.

"Alice," her mom's voice rumbled again, "press the button."

After her encounter with the glowing head, Alice had gone to work visibly shaken, and Christine had known immediately that Alice was not feeling right. She'd placed her hand on Alice's forehead, checked the color of her tongue, and even checked Alice's pulse before declaring with absolute certainty that Alice had something called "la gripe" and sent her home to rest, promising to come by soon with her family's best remedies.

But Alice wasn't happy to be back in her apartment once again alone with the holographic device. It felt a lot like stranger danger. She didn't like the way it slowly flashed its yellow button on top, the button that would summon the man named Clawson again to accept his offer to meet, so she'd covered it with a blanket and did her best to ignore it.

But that became impossible once her mother had come home from her nursing shift. Overwhelmed by her terrible secret, Alice disclosed everything as soon as Maryanne asked Alice about her day.

Impatient to wait on her daughter, Maryanne tried pressing the button herself, but nothing happened.

Clawson did say he wanted to speak to me alone, Alice thought. Maybe the device is designed to only respond to my touch.

Maryanne seemed to come to the same conclusion after trying again and failing to get more than just the steady pulse of yellow light.

"Alice, would you be so kind as to press the button for me?" she seethed. When she saw her daughter hesitate to come closer, Maryanne forced a smile onto her face. "Not to worry, my girl. I'm not upset at you. I just want to have a conversation with the man who spoke to you."

There was something about the way she said the word "conversation" that made Alice think she could have said "knife fight" instead without changing the overall meaning.

"Sorry," she surrendered, walking towards the device and reaching out an unsteady hand. "I'm sorry," she repeated. Why did she feel the need to keep apologizing? Maybe it was because she felt she'd dragged her mother into all this by allowing herself to be seen in public. Then again, maybe it was because she could feel what was coming for Clawson if he dared to appear.

Please let this not end badly.

She pressed the button.

The device once again sprouted the crab-like stalk-eyes that scanned the room. Did they seem to stop on Maryanne for a moment? Was Clawson on the other end of this, considering whether to appear in the presence of Alice's mother?