A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 57 The Hunt 1

Chapter 57 The Hunt 1

"My bone armor is gone." Callin said. The words, once he said them, really drove that reality home. A piece of him was missing. A core element.

How could his armor move on its own? Without him in control? Was it alive somehow? He searched back through his memories, looking for clues. And he realized how little he really knew about his powers. He remembered the chamber they had put him in, an accelerated genetic modification system. Designed to enhance natural telepathic ability.

He remembered feeling like his entire skeleton was turning into molten steel, unbearable agony searing his very core. He remembered that pain rising higher and higher, threatening to end him forever. He remembered bargaining with the pain, a desperate bid. A linking of his entire psychic self to his own skeleton. Forcing it to obey him, forcing control on its wild lashing, tied to his healing power and the direct link inside to that electric fury that ran just underneath the walls of his control.

"What do you mean, it's gone?" Jacob asked.

Callin met his eyes, feeling like he was seeing the world through a distant window. Feeling like giant strips of his inner self were beginning to unwind even against that tightly coupled bond the twins were holding within him.

"It's gone. It...it ripped its way out of me when Ahleena was trying to tie me to the twins. And it walked away. I saw the bloody footprints in the hall."

Jacob didn't move for a long moment, trying to process what Callin was saying.

"Are you saying it acted on its own?" He finally asked, slowly and carefully. As if the answer held such great importance that he needed to be completely sure Callin understood the question thoroughly.

"I certainly didn't tell it to go wander around!" Callin said with a scowl, barely able to repress a shudder at the remembered agony of it ripping its way out of him without his healing power there to shield and repair the damage.

Jacob looked very tense, deadly serious, and Callin could catch just the slightest scent of fear in the air.

"What does it mean? What's happening to me?"

Jacob looked away, a tell-tale sign to Callin that something truly deadly was happening. Then he noticed the storm gray aura of power surrounding Jacob rising higher. Rising up to cover everyone in the room. Except him.

"You have a complete link with him?" Jacob asked the twins, taking a careful step back away from Callin. As if he were putting distance between himself and a rabid, unpredictable dog.

"Yes. He is in control at the moment." Jen said. She didn't sound entirely sure, though.

Callin closed his eyes, looking inside. Looking at the link between him and twins. Looking at what they were doing to keep his power under control. And he understood that it was truly only through their minds within his that he was in control at all. Without his bone armor, without the walls tied to it, his power was a wild thing, savagely throwing itself about, trying to destroy anything it could.

And yet, he could still slightly feel that link between his armor and his power. Like it was a silhouette of his power, sinuously swaying about against the backdrop of his mind. No detail, but there nonetheless.

Without thinking of what he was doing, he reached for it, sending his thoughts toward it. Turning his mind away from the reality around him, in him, and sending himself towards that dark, twisting silhouette. And it suddenly snapped forward, as if his consciousness had darted into it completely.