the blueshifters, parts 1 + 2 (Complete!)

Lodestone (episode 10)

Lodestone

While the others were off doing their own investigations, Trillion's own comings and goings about as mysterious to them as their new found powers, Dan and Mary decided to investigate his findings on the map.

Their investigation took them into the desolate and lonely North Industrial District, a place full of abandoned boxcars, long, low gray stone and metal buildings built before the 1930's, potholes, wide tracts of littered land and train tracks everywhere. In fact, half of it was basically a railyard. Feral cats and dogs sometimes haunted the place, and the occasional warren of wild rabbits.

With the exception of a few trailer trucks rolling in from the single main road into the yard it seemed quiet for miles on end.

"So, what are we looking for again?" Asked Mary fumbling with her phone.

"Something. . .something big. You know like what we may have located on the map, remember? A place emanating with a lot of power. Try to feel your way around here if you can. I know that sounds all woo-woo and everything but-"

"I know what you mean," she smiled.

"Good."

'When are we going to meet with Trillion again?" She asked.

"I don't know. Soon, I hope." We still need guidance, he thought.

They spread out across on of the old unused traintracks half-buried under concrete. New working tracks had been layed down beside them. Mary seemed especially jumpy, hopping at every shadow and kicked up pebble.

"What?" Asked Dan.

"I just want to make sure no one is following us. Remember that dark red car I told you guys about? Sometimes I would catch the car following me down the street coming home from work."

"Oh yeah. Jack said he'd seen it before too."

"Well, I call who ever drives it The Watcher." Dan recalled his encounter with the hoodlums that threw him in the river. Were they all connected with this Watcher? Did they work together or for different, disparate parts of an organizational whole? No matter how, they all worked against humankind. Dan and Mary walked for some ways, sometimes investigating old train cars, abandoned truck trailers and such. Besides finding a few holes and vagrants sleeping in them, there was nothing else really they'd found.  But the district was very large, stretching all the way toward Swan Island to the Broadway Bridge. A train was approaching from far off, a freight train. They could hear the whistle wailing in the far distance.

"My legs are tired. I haven't done this much walking in years," said Mary after about an hour. The slipping whirl of the Max light rail train sounded just outside the industrial district to the right. From there were exits off to the highways.

"Let's rest a bit." Dan was getting tired as well. So far they had no luck. The dull roar of the light rail, cars going off the highway to the freeway and just the general noise was tiring and taxing on the sensitve mind. He went and sat on a large piece of log. Mary plopped down beside him, catching her breath. Between that and the noise coming from the road before them and the general noises of the rail yard, he'd nearly missed it. But something was coming to him. He could feel it like a low heart beat. At first Dan thought it was his imagination.

"Listen to yourself carefully. Do not dismiss a single feeling until you have examined it to the full and know it is mere minutiae." Came the voice of Trillion from a previous lesson. He closed his eyes and stroved to block out all mental noise. Then the layer of physcal noise receded until he could focus on the slow thrum. It was there, scattered seeming around this particular spot. Thud. Thud-thud. Thud. Thud-thud. It was low but it was there, and constant. He opened his eyes finally to see Mary with a look of pure concentration on her face and her hands to the ground as if feeling the power flowing from the ground. Now that's an intersting way to examine it. he thought appreciatively.