Awakened: Book One of the Mind Agents series

Awakened: Book One of the Mind Agents series, Chapter 18

Sabine sits on a chair that's too big for her. Her feet dangle a few inches off the ground. A nurse moves a stethoscope around her back and asks her to cough.

Chris paces impatiently in front of her.

"An accident, huh?" he says, accusingly.

"Obviously," Jack offers, knowing instantly that this was not a helpful comment.

The ambulance idling outside the conference room's propped-open emergency exit blares part of its siren before driving away. The sound makes Sabine jump.

"I mean besides the explosion and the roof coming down," Chris says.

"I felt it, too," Maya offers. She sits in a chair next to Sabine. A blanket is slung over her back. It tucks in the ends of her bushy hair.

"We have to figure out what that was," Chris says. "Sabine, what do you remember?"

Sabine looks up at him like she's going to cry.

"Hey," Jack says, laying his hand gently on Chris's shoulder. "Let's give her a moment, huh?"

Chris resumes his pacing. "I don't know," he says. "What if we're still in danger? I do not have a good feeling about this. About any of this."

Jack isn't used to seeing Chris lose his cocksure attitude. He's come to understand it isn't just posturing. Chris is naturally confident, a take-charge guy. He hasn't faced a lot of hardships in his life, and is clearly accustomed to things going his way, which Jack believes accounts for a lot of his natural confidence.

With a hollow squeak, the glass door to the conference room opens. The doctor, Jewel, and a few other officials come in.

The doctor looks at the four kids. "We were so all relieved to hear that no one had been seriously hurt."

"No one was hurt at all, not even not-seriously," Maya responds, flatly.

The doctor nods to Jewel, who steps forward and puts his foot up on the arm of an empty chair.

"I need you kids to tell me exactly what happened," he says, looking directly at Jack. He then scans the other kids' faces, finding either reluctance or reticence. Jack scans them, too, and decides to speak for them.

"We already told the on-duty guard team everything," he says.

"We spoke to them for, like, twenty hours," Maya chimes in. In fact, it was only an hour or two.

"Can't you just read their report or something?" Jack offers. He motions to Sabine, who still seems to be on the verge of crying. "Come on."

"I'm not talking about what you told them. We know the facts of the incident, based on all of your accounts," Jewel says in a measured voice. "I'm asking about what you didn't tell them."

"What do you mean, what we didn't tell them?" Chris says. "Are you saying we held something back, or lied to them?"

Jack senses that Chris could explode, and give Jewel a shove. The thought springs from his impression of Chris as someone with a driving need to always be in the right. The picture amuses him. Jewel is at least twice Chris's size, and probably has hand-to-hand combat training that would make Chris's weekend Tae Kwan Do classes in middle school seem like old-lady purse-slapping.

Jewel holds up his hand. "Nobody's accusing anybody of anything. We're trying to figure out some inconsistencies in the information we have."

"What do you mean. We were almost killed and our stories aren't completely straight? Big deal." Jack says, hoping to lighten the mood in the room before Chris has a chance to respond reflexively. "I'm sure we all told you exactly what happened the way we saw it."