A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 47 Shifting 1

       

Chapter 47 Shifting 1
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This time Callin's memories came in a torrent of imagery, emotion, and sensation. Neither Raina nor Carmen were prepared for it. They were swept into it like cotton tufts before a monsoon.

"You know what this is?" Tassen asked, his mild tone somehow sounding like an evil hiss.

He was pointing at a machine on a bench. It was a cold, brutal looking thing, all stainless steel and harsh lines. Callin thought its heartless design fit the underground surgery torture room perfectly.

The machine had hundreds of tubes and wires snaking about, like a still art mechanical representation of a tornado. It also had a clear glass cylinder, about two feet in diameter and three feet tall. That glass cylinder was strangely elegant, all flowing lines and gentle curves. It looked all the more sinister for it.

The cylinder was filled with a pale green fluid, and suspended in the center of the liquid by the tubes and wires was a blood red mass. It moved rhythmically, a steady contraction and expansion, the movement smooth and rippling.

"That is a human heart." Callin said.

Although he was only 11 years old, he knew a human heart when he saw one. The labs believed in education, reflected by the extensive training on every field of study, every day. The children in the labs were even permitted to download any music or audio books they wanted. They were allowed a few hours of free time every evening before bed.

Many of them put on headphones and drifted to sleep by music, the sounds transporting them away from their living nightmare.

"Yes. Although normal human hearts don't have those...interesting black bands woven throughout them." Tassen pointed out, motioning Callin closer.

Because he knew Tassen wanted him to, and because he was genuinely curious, Callin walked closer to the machine, peering into the murky, green liquid. Once he was almost pressed up against the glass he sensed Tassen's power at work.

After a moment's study, he realized what was happening. Tassen was using his control over sound to generate rhythmic pressure waves that were keeping the heart beating. After another moment of study, he sensed something else. The heart wanted to stop beating. It was resisting Tassen's power, although not very effectively. How could a heart wish to stop beating?

This connection, and this realization, unnerved him. He could feel the fine hairs on the back on his neck rising. The connection between him and the heart seemed to grow stronger as he stared at it. He suddenly realized he had pressed his face to the glass, that he was splaying his fingers against the cylinder, trying to reach inside. Then he finally noticed the black bands woven throughout the heart that Tassen had mentioned.

The impact with the floor made his teeth click together as he stumbled back, falling to land on his butt, panic making bright points of light swirl across his vision.

"Those bands...! They...They're torturing that heart!" Callin yelled.

He couldn't find words to describe the absolute wrongness of those bands, of how they seemed to be trying to consume the flesh of the heart. He scrambled to his feet and faced Tassen, his chest heaving and sweat beginning to slither down the back of his neck.

"Take them off! Take them away!" He said, his horror making his voice harsh, raspy.

"How do you know this?" Tassen said, leaning forward with intense interest.