Gather the Sentient (8 page)

CHAPTER

13

MIA

Tuesday, September 6

Baltimore

On Tuesdays, after her shift was over, Mia picked up Thomas at Towson University, where he was enrolled as an undergrad in their education program with a concentration in instrumental music.  She’d convinced him to apply for admission in February, after his brush with death during the search for Kate’s sisters - reminding him life was too short not to follow his dreams.  By spring however, most traditional incoming freshmen had already applied and were being accepted, so because of the timing, Thomas had been waitlisted.  Luckily, a spot opened up for him in July, along with a sizable financial-need scholarship.

In the end, the only real challenge had been persuading him to go.

As Thomas tossed his messenger bag into the back and slid into the passenger seat of Mia’s sedan, she leaned across the center console to give him a kiss.

“Aren’t you glad I convinced you college was a good idea?”

“Are you gonna ask me that every time you pick me up?” he countered, rolling his eyes.

Mia turned over the engine and eased the car out of the parking lot beside the Center for the Arts.  “Maybe,” she said.  “I’m just glad you got over being so nervous about going back to school.  I knew you were going to be amazing.”

“I’m not amazing,” he told her.  “I’m above average at best.  But yes, I will concede, college was a good idea.  In fact, I met with my advisor this morning, and she thinks I’ll be able to pick up enough credits during the summers to finish in three years.”

She mentally calculated how old that would make him at graduation.  “So you could have your own classroom by 28?”

“And be running my own studio by 30,” he added.  “As long as we can figure out the finances.”

Money was only part of the reason she’d agreed to move in with Thomas and Mildred when her lease was up.  Every hour he was in class or working on assignments was an hour he wasn’t earning a paycheck, so since Mia had been the driving force behind his return to academia, she felt obligated to make sure they all kept a roof over their heads.

And, of course, she was looking forward to waking up beside him every day.

“We’ll figure out the money,” she assured him.  “Besides, I think I’m going to be put up for a promotion before the end of the year.”

He spun around to look at her.  “Really?”

She’d been holding on to this bit of information as a way of easing him into a discussion about the prophecy.  She figured there was nothing like good news to distract someone from an uncomfortable conversation.

“Yeah.  Really.  My dad mentioned my name was on a memo circulating around the brass, so we’ll see.”  She paused, considering the best way to broach the subject and finally decided to throw out some bait.  “Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see all this stuff pan out.”

Thomas jumped right on it.  “Why wouldn’t we?  I thought you said everything was under control?”

She shrugged, acting abstruse.  “I dunno.  It’s just the world is a crazy place, and you never know when things could get weird.”

“Weirder than you’re being right now?”

If there was one thing she’d learned about Thomas in the months since he’d quite literally stepped into the lineup that was her life, it was that he would eventually come around.  Getting him on her side wasn’t always easy, but he always got there in the end.  And that’s why she decided the best thing to do now was to just come clean.

“I think we need to start being proactive about the whole prophecy thing.”  She called to mind Dawson’s warning and her intuition about his link to the prophecy.  “Because I think, assuming this prophecy thing is real, the dark psychics’ influence and power may be far more wide-spread than I’d initially imagined.  And if we’re part of it, then I don’t want to stand back waiting for the bad guys to get their act together before we do.”  She paused, carrying her train of thought all the way to its inevitable conclusion.  “If they haven’t begun finding each other already.”

Thomas studied her from the passenger’s seat.  “We’re doing this now?”

“You wanna get out?” she asked, nodding out the window toward the guardrail speeding by.

He shook his head in annoyance, but she couldn’t help but notice the way the corner of his lip curled into a crooked smile.

“So that’s your MO now?  You trap me in your car, luring me in under the pretense of a free ride, and this is what I get?”

She could tell he was only partially serious.  And she was trying not to get aggravated.

“Yes.  This is what you get.  I know you think I’ve lost my mind, but this is something I need to do.  It’s like a spiritual calling.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Stop doing that!  I can’t explain what’s happening.  I dream about it at night.  I worry about it all day.  It’s consuming me from every angle, and I think the only way it’s gonna get any better is if I just give into it and start searching for the others.”

“The other what?”

Instead of snipping at Thomas, she took out her frustration on the car in front of her, laying on her horn after being cut off.

“The other people,” she explained, as calmly as she could.  “The other good guys.  If we are one and two, we need to find three through seven.  And this feeling in my gut tells me we have to find them soon.”

He was silent for a moment, fiddling with the angle of the air conditioning vent.  “I reread the prophecy online,” he said finally.  “And I’ve been doing a little digging of my own.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  Thomas willingly participating was almost the last thing she would have expected.  “You have?”

“Of course I have.  If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.  That’s how relationships work, right?  We help each other out?”

If she hadn’t been driving 60 miles per hour on the beltway, she would have leaned over to kiss him right then.  Instead, she reached over to touch his cheek, brushing the coarseness of his day-old stubble under her thumb.

“So what do you think?  About the prophecy?  How do you think we should go about finding the other people?”

“Do we need to actively search them out?  I mean, the prophecy itself says powerful forces will bring everyone together.  It already brought us together, right?  And Kate too?”

Mia blanched at the mention of her name.  Although months had passed since her death, calling her to mind still tore at the thinly scabbed wound which remained.  As she walked across the thin tightrope of her life, thinking of Kate now stirred the breeze around her, causing her to falter.

“You’re still convinced she’s one of the seven light psychics?  We’re not even positive she had a power,” Mia scoffed, trying to persuade herself more than Thomas there was still a possibility she wasn’t.

He nodded.  “I was there, Mia.  I watched her will a random stranger, who just happened to be walking by, to open the door of that police car for her.  She didn’t say a word, and I don’t know how she did it, but there’s no doubt in my mind she made him open that door with the power of her mind.”

Mia considered his assessment of Kate’s abilities and reflected for the hundredth time on her own observations during their time together in the basement.  All the times she spoke cryptically about making things happen.  There was no denying the verity of his theory.

“She was born on our birthday, wasn’t she?”  This came out as more of a confession than a rhetorical question.

“Yeah,” replied Thomas.  “She was number three, Mia.  That’s why she was brought here.  The prophecy.”

A wave of nausea overtook her and she merged into the far right lane and onto the exit ramp toward Mildred’s house.  As soon as she was off the beltway, instead of taking a left, she pulled into the first parking lot past the light.

“Wendy’s?  I thought we were eating at home?”

She shook her head and thrust her foot heavily against the brake, bringing the car to a rapid stop.  “I need you to drive,” she told him breathlessly, unfastening her seatbelt before wresting open the door.  By the time she made her way to the other side of the car, Thomas was already climbing out of the passenger side.  He stood before her, gathering her into his arms.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, resting his chin on the top of her head.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and melted into his chest.  Subconsciously, she’d known all along Kate was one of the seven light psychics.  From the moment she began putting the pieces of the puzzle together in the hospital with Thomas – the birthdays, the abilities, the prophecy.  If only she had taken the proper precautions to assure Kate’s safety after they were rescued.  If only she’d been more focused on guarding the innocent people she vowed to protect instead of being so hell-bent on getting to Dalton instead.  Kate would be there now, with them, to help usher in the light.  But instead, she was gone, and Mia was left to face the stark reality that she’d failed.  Failed Kate and failed the entire world.  The dark was going to prevail.

Eventually, she pulled back, straightening her tank top over the top of her shorts.

“It’s just that if Kate was number three, then there’s no sense in going on.  Since she’s already gone, the fate of the world is sealed, and no matter what else happens, the dark seven will gather first because the light can’t gather at all.”

Thomas gazed at her, but not with the look of concerned desperation she was expecting.  In fact, he was smiling.

“I thought the same thing.  At least initially.  And then I realized, the fate is only decided once they’re all together.”  He kissed her gently, and she allowed the warmth of his touch to soothe her.  He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and turned toward the open driver’s side door.  Then he called back to her over his shoulder.  “That just means we need to keep them apart.  So let’s find them before they find each other.”

CHAPTER
14

JOSE

Tuesday, September 6

Phoenix

“Jose?’ Andrea said as he entered the room.

“Hey.”  The hallway was empty and although he was visiting the ICU outside of his working hours as a friend and not an orderly, he was still nervous.  Old habits die hard.

He was relieved to see her awake and immediately inquired about her condition as he sat in the visitor’s chair beside her bed.

“Everything hurts so much.  They’ve got me on IV pain meds, and it’s making my head all fuzzy.  I guess they were expecting me to be in the coma for a lot longer so I could heal without feeling the pain, but I woke up,” she explained, her voice raspy from the recently removed intubation tube.  “The doctor said I’m pretty messed up.”

He felt an immediate pang of guilt for causing her to experience undue suffering, but he consoled himself with the knowledge it would be short lived.  “You got hit by a car, Andrea.  You’re lucky to be alive.”

She lowered her eyes, obviously not wanting to speak about the accident.

“It’s not your fault.”  He reached out to touch her hand.  Her fingers were like ice.

She shifted uncomfortably beneath the sheet, but he refused to let her pull away.  “It was actually all my fault,” she said at last.  And then she met his gaze.  Her lids drooped under the weight of the medication.  “I told him I was done.”

Jose couldn’t hide his anger, crying out far louder then he’d intended.  “So he hit you with a car?!”

She yanked her hand away then, the beeps from the heartrate monitor on the wall increasing in speed.

“I knew how he’d react, and I still took your misguided advice to leave.  I’m not at all surprised this is where I landed.”  She looked down the length of the bed at her mangled body.  “It would probably be better if I was dead.”

He didn’t like listening to her speaking so matter-of-factly about her own demise and knew he needed to intervene.  “What if I could take away the pain?  What if I could make you better?”

She scoffed.  “Last time I checked you weren’t wearing a white coat, Jose.”

He’d never shared his secret with anyone else.  Not his parents.  Not his sister.  Not his best friend.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to share it now, but he couldn’t think of any other way to save Andrea’s life.  And although she probably wouldn’t believe him initially, she would realize he was telling the truth once she was cured.

“When I was nine, I found a bird and unintentionally saved its life by simply holding it in my hands.  Then there was this hurt dog I completely cured just by touching it.  After that, I healed everything I could find – animals hit by cars, my family’s cuts and bruises while they slept, homeless people in the park.  I don’t know how it works, and I don’t know why I can do what I do, but when I say I can heal you, believe me that I can.”

She studied his face, as if to distinguish whether he could be trusted.  “Bullshit,” she said.

He shrugged, not the slightest bit offended by her disbelief.  “Why do you think you came out of the coma?  It’s because I needed to talk to you.”

“Oh, fabulous.  Thank you.  I’m so much better now that I’m not blissfully unaware of how much pain I’m actually in.  You’re a terrific doctor.”  It was obvious by the sarcasm in her voice that she didn’t believe a single word he’d said.

He scooted his chair a few inches closer to the bed and took her hand again.  She surprised him by not pulling it away.  “I’m sorry you’re in pain and I can make it go away, but only if you promise me you’re going to let me help you get out of the abusive situation that keeps landing you in the hospital.”

She squeezed his hand condescendingly, the way an overbearing adult might do to a naïve child.  “Listen, Jose, I don’t know why you’re even here.  Is it because I confided in you the other day and now you think you’re going to swoop in and rescue me?  Because let me be the first to tell you, I don’t need another knight in shining armor.  I already had one of those, and he ran me over with a car.”

He was starting to lose confidence.  Maybe convincing her to take his help was going to be harder than he thought.  Maybe there wasn’t anything he could do to change her mind.  He would continue to see her month after month in the ER.  Until she showed up one last time in a body bag.

And that wasn’t an option.

“I don’t want to save you.  I don’t think you need a man to ride in on a white horse and rescue you.  I just want to offer you a way out.  An alternative to where you are.  That’s it.  No strings attached.”

She turned her face away.  “There are always strings attached.”

“Not with me.”

She considered him then, for a moment, and it occurred to him that she was having trouble staying awake.  She needed to rest and he needed to make his point, but before he could continue, she spoke.

“Why?”

“Why what?” he asked.

“Why would you do this for me?  What makes me so special?”

He thought about making something up.  Something about being drawn to her by some cosmic connection or about Fate bringing them together.  Something about seeing himself in her.  Something about how he was secretly in love with her.  Or that he was secretly Batman.  And then he decided to tell her the truth.

“There’s nothing that makes you any more special than any of the other people I’ve been able to help with this thing I can do.”  She looked crestfallen and he knew immediately he’d chosen his words poorly.  He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and tried to explain it to her another way.  “It’s not that you’re not special, it’s just that I think everyone’s pretty special, in their own way.  So if everyone’s life is valuable, I should try to help out when I can.  So I can cure your body without any problem, but it would be a waste for me to do it if you’re just going to allow yourself to get hurt again.  I need you to work with me on this.  Promise you won’t continue to put yourself at risk and will agree to the second part of my gift.”

“Which is?”

“Going to Baltimore to stay with my aunt while I try to get things figured out back here with your knight in shining armor.  The one with the dented front end.”

She was hanging on his every word now.  “What do you mean by ‘figuring things out?’”

As was typical of every abuse victim he’d ever known, Andrea cared more about her boyfriend than herself.  She moved right past the part about moving across the country to the part about what was going to happen to her abuser. 

“I’m going to have him arrested.  I’m going to send him to prison.  I’m going to make sure he’s locked up so he can’t keep hurting people.  And you are going to help me, but from far away where he can’t find you.”  He stood up then to indicate he was done talking.  It was time for Andrea to make up her mind.  “I’m sorry I’m forcing this decision on you, especially in your condition, but there are others who could use my help up and down this hall.  If I choose you, then I can’t choose them.  I have to know you’ll go.”

“To Baltimore?  With your aunt?”

“Yes.”

“Until it’s safe to come back?”

“Exactly.”

The corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly, forming tiny dimples in her cheeks which were peppered with cuts and scratches from broken glass.  “That’s all well and good,” she said.  “But what will I do after that?”