The Nexus

Chapter 35

This time Emma came to on a bed. Her wrists and ankles were cuffed to all four corners, but she had enough slack to sit up on the bed and see that the cuffs were made up of some sort of mesh. With her new sixth sense she sat still and mentally probed the cuffs. She could feel some sort of energy pulsing through them. It wasn't electricity and when she tried her ethereal trick of coming apart at the atomic level, it seems as if the nuclear force holding her atoms together would not respond to her physical command.

She was trapped.

Minutes later, Alexis walked in with Thomas in the same position that she had seen him before. Thomas came up to Alexis' waist and she could see how the tips of Alexis' finger peeked out from the left side of Thomas' neck and his thumb made an indent on Thomas' right.

"How do you like your restraints?" Alexis asked.

Emma just continued to stare at Thomas. His hair was a little dirty and he could use a clean shave. He looked okay other than the fact that he was in handcuffs of his own. His button-down white shirt was smeared with a bit of dirt and had stains at the pits. His jeans also looked like they had been a few days without being wash. Emma looked at his rugged, kind face and smiled at him. She could tell he couldn't help but smile back. That feeling of full happiness filled her again, like it had when she had last seen Josephine.

When she was back at the Abbey in Canada, she had heard a Zen story about a monk who was walking through the woods. A tiger had chased the monk up a tree, where he had climbed out onto a vine. While he was hanging on the vine two mice, one black and one white, came out and started chewing on the vine. The tiger paced below and the mice chewed above, and the monk noticed a ripe strawberry growing in the moss of the tree. He reached for the strawberry and enjoyed the sweet bursting of flavors in his mouth.

She understood that story just then and enjoyed the sweet burst of happy emotions in her.

Aranda laughed, "Oh, isn't this disgusting?" He shook Thomas while he laughed.

He bent down close to Emma, but just out of her reach, "Every force has an opposite Emma and I am yours."

He let go of Thomas and pushed him off to the side against the wall. Then he balled his fist and punched Emma in the stomach. The punch felt like getting hit with a sledgehammer. All of the wind left Emma immediately and she felt things inside of her break apart. The pain shocked through her entire body.

She crumpled into a fetal position on the bed and gasped for air. Thomas' distraught face charged at her as he pulled himself off the floor. Alexis allowed him to get up next to her and put his hand on her cheek. Tears welled up in Thomas' eyes.

Emma's mind was blank with the pain. She squeezed her eyes shut and summoned all her strength within. This time, instead of focusing on her hands and ankles she pulled energy from the air around her. She pulled all of the nuclear power from every source in the room and the light above her sparked.

Aranda looked up in shock as Thomas watched on.

Electrical currents pushed the door to the small room open and streaked directly to the cuffs on Emma's wrists and ankles, burning them to ashes. She used the energy from the building to repair the damage to her internal organs as Alexis lifted his hand to strike her again.

Again, she was able to slow the world around her to minimum speed. She reached up and put her hand on Aranda's chest and felt his makeup. The electrons that floated around his nuclei were tightly bonded together, but not so she couldn't unravel them. And that is what she spent this moment doing.

She harnessed all of the energy in the building and the surrounding woods. With her mind she separated all of the atoms that made up every piece of Alexis. As each bond was broken she returned energy to herself and to the air. It was like and atomic bomb going off with her focusing all of the heat and energy back into the world. She re-made Alexis into air, electrical pulses, solar energy, water vapor, etc.

The process took what felt like hours, but to Thomas' eyes it was over in a few minutes. He watched his captor evaporate into nothingness while Emma held her hand up. When it was over she looked at him breathing heavy.

"Shall we get out of here?" she asked.

He smiled, "Oh, God yes."

She squatted down and wrapped her arms around him. "I'm going to try something," she said.

He was a little nervous, but put his arms around her. He had held her once before this and the feeling was beyond magnificent. There was a rushing in his ears and his body started to tingle. It was like he could feel his whole body from the inside out and he squeezed his eyes shut.

Emma willed all of her atoms and his away. Far away from here.