Estranged [Completed]

Dancing with the Past

Kalei didn't remember what happened after that. A week later, she woke up in what Erit called a "Recovery Room." This, of course, was just a fancy name for the demolished rooms of the hotel, like the first one she had visited with the broken glass. This room was a sibling to the first Recovery Room she'd stayed in. The metal nightstand was dented and had two legs missing, a pile of grey plastic, frayed wires, and chunks of sanded pinewood sat where a TV should have been. Kalei sat in the bloodstained remains of a shredded feather bed. The smell wasn't great. Her first instinct was to check her feet for glass. She was both relieved and disappointed when she found none.

What do I do now? 

Cold, late fall air poured in through the shattered window, drawing Kalei's attention to the overcast sky. She watched the swollen, low-hanging clouds roll silently past the enormous Terondac Mountain, its slate peak reaching for the grey clouds without quite touching them. But the clouds and the mountain only reminded her of how bleak and desolate the world had become.

Kalei took a deep breath and remembered something her mother had taught her before she died. Whenever Kalei had a problem, her mother had insisted, "Start by listing what you know." It was a silly exercise, but doing it always made Kalei feel closer to those days at the kitchen table, talking to her mom about everything from life to homework.

So Kalei leaned back against the wooden headboard of the bed and started gathering facts. It was hard to do with the darkness pounding at the back of her skull, but she tried anyway.

I know the names of five people within SWORDE now, and I know the name of my parents' killers. And I know that one of them is the Director of SWORDE. Kalei took another deep breath. I know that SWORDE will train me to be a Warden, and I know where they keep their central computer. Good. Now when Tusic is ready with the device, I can take it straight there, after I get my hands on a key. But how am I going to manage that? 

Kalei's eyes scoured the cracked plaster on the ceiling. One piece looked dangerously close to falling on her foot. She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts. Walker and Terin are the only ones with keys, and getting close enough to either of them to steal a key without notice doesn't seem likely. When the time comes, I'll just have to take it by force... I hope Terin wasn't lying about them teaching me to kill. I don't care what he says, he's going to be the first person I execute. In the meantime... looks like the only thing for me to do is join this damn recruit program.

Kalei pulled herself out of the bed, went downstairs, and returned to training. The whole gang was there: Erit at the head of the table, Shenaia at the opposite end, and Mar still sitting to Erit's left. Shenaia tried to say something when Kalei stepped in, but whatever it was, Kalei ignored her as she walked past Shenaia and sat down in her seat across from Mar. Shenaia got the message and didn't say anything further.

While Shenaia sat in what was essentially time out, Mar grunted at her blank wall, and Erit taught Kalei how to pull back her darkness. In their earlier lesson, when he had pushed Kalei's darkness back, it turned out he had done it using his own darkness. Now Kalei had to learn how to pull back it back on her own. It was tricky at first. Grabbing the darkness was like trying to grip the smooth exterior of a skyscraper as she plunged to her death. There were no handholds, only the havoc-inducing darkness spinning through her mind the whole way down. This made it impossible to concentrate. But eventually, she got it. Break one of the windows and you'll find a bloody handhold. And once she did, she yanked hard and shoved all of the darkness into a small knot within her chest.

The pressure immediately built within the mass of darkness, and before she could push the last shred into the knot, her entire body screamed as a sensation like a thousand suns exploding ripped through her. The next thing she remembered, Erit was standing over her, explaining how the darkness was like an agitated, carbonated beverage: it should never be bottled.