Project Aquarius (The Sensitives Series Book 1) (5 page)

Catching his breath for a moment, he said softly, “Ms. Harding?”

She didn’t respond. Darnell reached up to flip the freezer light back on. There was a click, but no response.

“Damn. They musta forgot to pay the electric bill… Ms. Harding?”

She was making moaning noises and clutching her ears, but she wasn’t responding to his voice. There was a thick stream of blood making its way from her nose to her chin. Things were weird.

Darnell knelt down and softly placed his hand on her shoulder. “Ms. Harding, you a’ight? You overdose or somethin’?”

Suddenly, she opened her eyes and blinked seven or eight times. She reached out to Darnell and said, “Thank God!” pulling him close to her chest.

“Whoa, chill.” Darnell wiggled out of her grasp. He was not a touchy-feely kind of person.

“What happened?” Ms. Harding slurred.

Darnell didn’t know what to say. His teacher looked real busted, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

“I was hidin’ in the freezer.” He hung his head in shame and added, “I’m sorry,” just to be sure.

“I knew you were hiding… I came looking for you… But what happened after that?”

“I made you have a heart attack or somethin’.”

“You made me?” She tried feebly to stand and slumped back to the ground, grabbing at her forehead and temples. “My head hurts.”

“You ain’t going to send me to the principal… are you?” The weight of all the punishments in his lifetime sat on his shoulders. “Please,” he added working the polite angle.

Secretly, Darnell kind of liked his new foster home. It was better than average anyway. He didn’t feel like being kicked out tonight. The older lady was real motherly and she made off-the-hook rice and beans. And there was only one other kid there, a newborn baby girl. She had been born addicted to something, so she cried a lot. Darnell felt bad for her, she was this really tiny person with no parents. He could relate. Maybe if he stayed he could be the big brother he wished had been around for him…

Besides, he had turned over a new leaf with all those promises he had made to God. He just needed Ms. Harding to give him a second chance too.

“Are you gonna call my social worker? ‘Cuz this was my last chance before gettin’ sent away to The Children’s Home. I don’t wanna go there, Miss. They make you eat hot dogs like everyday. And you gotta sleep with the lights on.”

That was the unfortunate truth. Darnell had worked his way through most foster placements in Middlesex and Suffolk counties. Next stop was a state run group home. There was nowhere else to put him. The older lady he was with now only took special cases. When Darnell’s social worker had dropped him off on the curb in front of the apartment building, holding a trash bag full of clothes, she’d told him it was the last drop off he’d get before The Home. That’s how screwed up he was. Even his social worker had given up on him.

“Ms. Harding, am I in trouble Miss?”

His teacher said nothing except, “Help me up,” while extending her hand. Then she adjusted her askew clothing and took a big deep breath.

“So… you gonna call my social worker?” he asked expectantly.

Darnell hadn’t meant to mess up again. He had just wanted to play a joke, run away for a bit, and get some attention. But the ‘last stop’ talk from his social worker had Darnell terrified that he would have to live in a state group home for the next nine years until his 18
th
birthday. He didn’t want to live in a place where everyone had the same bedtime and shoelaces were considered a weapon. He wanted another chance. One more.

He stared at his teacher with wide eyes while she gawked at the wall with a strange glazed over look. She looked stoned out of her mind.

Everything was riding on her response.

Darnell apologized, “Wishing people dead wasn’t in the plan, it just kinda happened, Miss. I’m sorry.”

He really, really was this time.

Ms. Harding remained frozen, half-awake like someone startled from a deep slumber.

Darnell’s anxiety skyrocketed. The silence was killing him. The teacher was taking way too long to respond. And in Darnell’s experience, bad things happened after long silences.

“Forget it. I’m outta here,” he said decidedly.

And without another thought Darnell Powell took off.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Cyril

7:15 a.m.
Cyril was in the auditorium lobby on B7, undercover amongst GenetiCorp staff, eating cheese. It had been the Master’s idea to station him there as part of the crowd, so as not to raise any suspicion. To blend in, Cyril wore the requisite blue business blazer, white button up, and the forced smile of a dedicated employee.

     The speakers in the lobby crackled on and a strained voice made an announcement: “Attention GenetiCorp staff, the meeting will soon be underway, there will be a slight delay.”

    Cyril didn’t recognize the peon who had made the announcement, probably some entry-level HR person.

    He loitered in the corner by the bathrooms, under the recessed lighting, munching on a stack of multigrain crackers. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched his friend, the noetics lab supervisor James Cornish, pace back and forth with increased agitation. Dr. Cornish was engulfed in a furtive conversation with a pretty dark-haired woman from his lab, Sheila or Sherry something or other.

Cyril liked James the best out of everyone at GenetiCorp. They had been friends at their previous company in the early millennium. James was one of the few people Cyril had convinced the Master to bring on board for the start up of GenetiCorp. And Cyril was glad the lab supervisor was here with him at Zero Hour. It was nice to think he would have a friend on the other side of it all. Someone worthy of the new world.

7:30 a.m.
Cyril stuffed a strawberry pastry in his mouth, the goo oozing onto his tongue. He hoped the starch would calm his stomach, which was flip-flopping like a pre-pubescent gymnast at the Olympics.

The last fifteen minutes had not been kind to Cyril’s friend James. He was now stooped in a paranoid hunch, looking over his shoulder every few seconds. He spoke just above a whisper, and gestured with passion to the dark-haired woman. But judging by the pile of salmon on her plate, she seemed more interested in eating than talking. Good.

Food and coffee pacified the masses. The Master was smart to pay for the extra large breakfast spread, thought Cyril as he piled goat Gouda on a cracked pepper cracker.

8:00 a.m.
Cyril watched as a few employees attempted to go back to the garage levels. A novice mistake. The elevator was a one-way ticket this morning. They stared confusedly at the stainless doors blocking their exit, repeatedly hitting the elevator call button, which refused to light up.

The speakers came to life and announced, “The garage levels are temporarily closed for maintenance. Please remain where you are on B7.”

“Maintenance?” yelled a man with a bushy mustache from the marketing department. “I need a cigarette!” He waved his unlit smoke at the nearest speaker in protest.

Within moments, the mustached man had gathered a gang of irate smokers. They banged on the auditorium doors, lighters in hand. “Let us out!” they shouted. Poor nicotine-addicted souls.

Cyril slinked further into the alcove by the bathrooms. He wanted to be well out of the way before the pitchforks came out. He had expected some employees to be a bit on edge, but the rapid escalation was shocking. These people were supposed to be the best of the best in their respective departments. What an embarrassment.

James and the dark-haired woman crouched behind the buffet, also away from the angry mob. They used the white catering table skirts to hide themselves from view, like children in a blanket fort. Cyril craned his neck over the blueberry muffin tower and saw his friend was visibly shaking. Crap.

It made Cyril second-guess his decision to send James that extra text. It was meant to be a heads up, let him in on just enough details so he would have less regrets and more creature comforts in the new world. Cyril knew sending the text was against the protocol, but he couldn’t help himself. He had been so excited; he had wanted his only friend in the world to become a Believer, to prepare for everything to change. But it looked like the message had had the opposite effect and unhinged James.

8:30 a.m.
“Stand back,” the voice on the speaker instructed, as the doors to the auditorium hissed open with hydraulics.

The crowd in the antechamber collectively cheered and shuffled in. James hoisted himself out of his hiding spot, his face weary, his hair ruffled from fingers plucking wildly at his temples.

A screen had been set up in the stuffy auditorium, as was customary for GenetiCorp meetings— the blank blue glow fueling the anticipation in the room. The masses eagerly took their seats. Cyril positioned himself in the row behind James and the woman so he could eavesdrop.

9:40 a.m.
The crowd had grown restless and Cyril with them. The claustrophobic auditorium was at capacity and the air was sticky with agitation, though Cyril’s panic differed from his co-workers. It had been more than an hour since they had been seated inside the auditorium and still no word from the Master. What was he waiting for? Zero Hour had come and gone. The lack of contact made Cyril unbearably nervous.

He tugged at the collar of his shirt and undid the topmost button. He was starting to worry that the Master had put someone incompetent in charge of the final moments. Cyril took a deep breath and tried to remind himself that cell towers didn’t penetrate this deep into the concrete bunker and that the auditorium on B7 didn’t have access to the GenetiCorp walkie-talkie frequency. There were only the loudspeakers, which remained nerve-rackingly silent.

“I swear to God, I’m going to report this company for human rights violations. It must be ninety degrees in here!” James said to his lady friend. Several other staff members murmured in agreement.

A mutiny was brewing.

Cyril found that kind of anti-company sentiment maddening, especially from James. He ought to be grateful.

9:50 a.m.
The Master’s voice boomed through the PA, “Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My apologies.”

The room quieted and all eyes faced forward. The Master’s stark white lab coat gleamed against the computer blue backdrop.

“You are probably wondering why I asked you all here this morning and more importantly why I kept you waiting for such a time.”

People in Cyril’s row whispered in consensus.

“I assure you today is a very exciting day for all of humankind and you shall have your answers shortly. Please direct your full attention to the front screen. All will become clear in a matter of minutes. I appreciate your patience and your dedication to GenetiCorp. After the presentation, please remain seated. You will likely have many questions and I will be available to answer them. Please keep order. What you are about to see may be frightening to some, but I assure you it is an exciting future that you have been chosen for. Presenting Project Aquarius.”

CHAPTER NINE

Sammy

Sammy didn’t have a good sense of time. Time was confusing. Clocks were even more confusing. But Sammy had a gut feeling that he had been in the seclusion room for longer than ten minutes.

     He got up off the floor and tried to peer through the reinforced window near the top of the door. He stood on his tiptoes, but all he could see was the far wall adorned with student artwork. He wanted to try the doorknob, but that was against the rules. So he waited.

He counted to six hundred, slowly. Counting solved everything. Ten sets of sixty seconds equals ten minutes.

When he finished, he was certain he had been in the seclusion room for a really long time. Slowly, he reached for the door handle. Please don’t be locked. Sammy knew it was against the rule for adults to lock children in seclusion rooms. His Mom had said so.

Sammy pulled downward on the handle and heard a dull click. As the door opened outward, he felt a sweet relief wash over him. But halfway through its swing, the door bumped into something and refused to open any further. Sammy slammed the door into the blockage. One. Two. Three times. He was trapped. A lump formed in his throat.

He had to get out. He pushed on the door with lots of force, but it bumped up against the obstruction and refused to give way. Push. Bump. Push. Bump.

Finally, in a panicked fury, Sammy threw all of his body weight at the door and it moved enough to create a small opening for his frame. He shimmied through the hole into the hallway and drank a deep breath of peace.

Sammy’s aide, Mr. B, was napping on the floor next to the seclusion room. His legs had blocked the door’s swing.

Calmly, Sammy stepped around Mr. B’s limp body and started the walk back to his classroom. He knew it took 74 steps on the waxed tile floor to get back to safety.

22. 23. 24. Thankfully, the hallway was quiet except for a kid and a teacher playing tag.

“Come back here!” the teacher yelled.

When Sammy stepped on the blue diamond carpet inside his classroom, he found everyone else napping too.

Must be in their schedule.

Schedule!

The thought of completing his visual schedule excited him. Sammy went back to his study cubby and gathered the smooth plastic cards backed with Velcro. They were cool and crisp in his hand. He put all the icons in their right places on the schedule board that hung on the inside right wall of his cubby. Putting his day in order put his brain in order. Sammy cleaned up all the extra cards and scooped them back into the zippered pouch. Relief. Finally, everything was nice and quiet and orderly. Time to move on with his day.

Based on the chair arrangement Sammy knew Circle Time was over. And based on the position of the sun through the window, he knew music, writing, and first recess had already passed.

Sammy waited as his desk for a few minutes. His stomach rumbled. Must be lunchtime. He went to the coat closet and retrieved his lunch from his bag.

Sitting at his desk, eating mushrooms out of plastic ware was part of his routine. So that’s what he did. When he was done, he cleaned up, went and used the bathroom, and returned to his study cubby.

Sammy referred to his visual schedule. On Mondays, math came after lunch. He took out his multiplication manipulatives and began to work on the six times table. He had been working hard lately with the little yellow plastic cubes. Each cube was a number, a physical number that he could hold. That’s how he knew sixty times ten was six hundred. Holding sixty little plastic cubes in his hands felt like an accomplishment. Sixty sets of ten. Ten sets of sixty. Sammy worked his number facts over and over again. The repetitive nature of math was soothing.

He did three worksheets from his math binder, like he did every day. Sammy liked the satisfying click of the metal rings as they snapped closed. He put the finished papers in the correct basket on the teacher’s desk and looked at his schedule once more. Recess.

Sammy loved to go outside for recess. Now that the weather was getting nice again, the class was going out every day. He walked to the coatroom, put on his coat and zipped it up. Everyone else was still napping, but Sammy decided to go out anyway. Sometimes they were allowed to nap through recess if they needed to. 

He walked to the end of the long beige hall and took a right. He stood in front of the glass door to the playground and stared at the bright plastic play structure: blue monkey bars, yellow slide, purple climbing wall. He waited at the door for a few moments. Usually the teachers opened it.

He waited and waited, but no teachers came.

It was against the rules to open the door because it was not part of his routine. But it was also against the rules to skip recess and mess up the schedule.

He waited and waited some more.

Ultimately, the schedule disruption was more upsetting to Sammy, so he pushed. The door was very heavy.

Sammy took a seat on a black plastic swing. He liked the back and forth motion. He sat on the swing for a long time. Back and forth. Back and forth he pumped. Eventually, he tired and decided to go down the yellow slide. He went down the yellow slide six times to celebrate his math lesson. Yellow slide, yellow cubes. Six times one slide rides. Six slide rides.

When he was done, Sammy went back inside and put his coat in the coatroom.

After recess, it was time for science. He took out his book on mushrooms and buried his nose in it. When Sammy looked up, he could tell the afternoon light was fading to a deeper yellow. He had completed his schedule and it was time to go home. All his classmates were still fast asleep.

Sammy put his green coat back on, slipped his backpack over his shoulders and began his Walking Home Routine. Three blocks south and five blocks west. He started at the classroom threshold.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

CHAPTER TEN

Drea

“
What the hell is wrong with you?” Matt’s voice was echoless in the foam-walled room. “Drea?”

What was wrong with her? She was on the ground, head pounding, heart leaping from her body. Something was definitely wrong.

“Are you okay?” Matt asked as he reached through the darkness and gently squeezed her arm.

His touch made Drea flush warm. She was physically okay, she supposed. But she felt different inside. Heavier. The room felt different too, as though something had died in it.

“I don’t know. Something was coming— I had such a strong urge… I…” she stammered.

“No offense, but you sound like you’ve lost it. Where’s the light?”

Matt felt around for the switch and clicked it.

Nothing happened.

“I could feel it coming… the wave.” Drea’s voice drifted slowly to a halt, her words exposed. There was nowhere for sound to hide in the recording studio.

“The light’s busted. Where’s the door knob?” Matt resumed his search in the dark, thumping around the padded walls.

The door opened and a sudden flood of light drowned Drea’s pupils.

At first glance, the classroom looked okay. The furniture was in place. There was no observable water damage. But the electricity was off and all the students sat motionless at their desks.

Drea pushed herself to her feet despite her pounding headache. Then the horrible truth surged through her eyeballs. Matt had opened the door back into a world that would never be the same.

Mr. Conte was face up in front of the classroom doorway, blood trickling out of his nose and ears. He looked like a discarded doll or a haunted house prop.

Fake plastic. Not human. Unmoving.

Actually, everyone was frozen in time like Mr. Conte. All of Drea’s classmates were propped upright as though someone had powered them down in their seats. There was no visible destruction. Very little blood.

The clock was stopped at 9:09.

Drea floated in the moment, detached, before reality sunk in. It was eerily quiet with the electricity shut off. No hum of the fluorescent lights, no screech of the intercom. In a way, it was bizarrely serene.

Matt mustered up courage to ask the obvious. “What the hell… Are they dead?”

Drea was staring at the prophetic scene from her dream, bodies strewn like pulpy paper. There were no words.

“This is really messed up. We have to go get help,” Matt urged. He grabbed Drea’s arm forcefully. His grasp was full of anger.

Drea felt a bruise appear over the sweet spot where he had touched her gently in the recording studio. That tender moment was a lifetime ago… before he opened the door.

Matt dragged Drea two steps into the hall and stopped in front of a freshman girl who had collapsed by the water fountain. The girl was petite and retained the awkwardness of late childhood. She looked innocent and…. dead.

Drea felt bile bubble up in her throat.

She shrugged out of Matt’s grasp, forcing her gelatinous legs to walk past the body so she could peer in the window of the nearest classroom.

Bodies everywhere.

Minutes before, the room had been filled with students and teachers. Now, they were just empty shells.

Matt kicked the bank of yellow metal lockers that lined the hallway, the sound echoing for days.

“What the hell is going on? Hello? Anyone? What the hell happened?” His voice reverberated, but brought no response. “Oh, God,” he said softly, grabbing his face in his hands.

“I’m dreaming… I’m still asleep...” Drea whispered as she sank to her knees. The floor was disturbingly cold.

“You’re not asleep, Drea. I’m here, too. I’m awake and my morning has been more than freaking real!” spat Matt.

In a distant and airy voice Drea said, “You’re just part of my dream… Sierra says I can control it… I’m a Dreamwalker.”

She lay supine on the frigid floor and closed her eyes; chanting to herself, “Wake up. Wake up. This isn’t real. Wake up.”

Matt rocked her torso with his foot. “Get up,” he urged pressing harder than was necessary. “I said get up!”

Drea ignored him and remained on the floor with her eyes closed. She was back in the black and white water-filled hallway… floating along toward the exit sign. There were no people.

“In my dream there was a tidal wave. It must mean something,” she said trying to conjure up a rational explanation.

“Drea seriously, stop,” Matt implored.

Eyes closed, she continued to hum and mutter, searching through the dream images in her head. She had to find some clue, some logical reason for the destruction.

“Get off the floor you psycho.” Matt’s volume escalated. “People are dead and… you knew this was going to happen!”

Drea eyes flicked open. “I didn’t,” she said defensively.

Matt’s gaze bulged with rage, his pupils dark and dancing. He looked rabid.

“You did! You were acting like a nutcase when you dragged me into the recording studio muttering about something coming! What thing?!? What was coming?!?”

“I have no idea,” Drea admitted. It certainly wasn’t the tidal wave she was expecting. But the sound had washed over her and then receded. At least, it gave her the impression of noise… “Did you hear something?”

“No! I was rocking out one minute and then suddenly I was listening to your crazy talk in a dark closet… What did you do?” Matt asked with irrational hostility.

“What did I do? I wasn’t anywhere near this room,” Drea said as she opened the classroom door in front of her with dramatic effect, revealing nothing out of place. Everyone was frozen in time with small drops of blood trickling down from their ears.

“I didn’t do anything… but I dreamed this last night. Sort of. It was strangely quiet and a wave came. Filled the school with water. Everyone died.”

“That doesn’t make any sense… This isn’t real. This can’t be real. What the hell happened here? HELLO?! HELLO!?” Matt ran down the hallway, his screams ricocheting off lockers.

Describing her dream out loud had clicked something into place. Drea sped away from Matt, toward the history wing, where she knew she would find some answers.

“Sierra! Sierra!” Drea hollered. Her best friend had had the same dream too. She would have survived. She would have saved herself.

Drea was out of breath when she got to the start of Orange Hall. She saw her almost immediately, halfway down the hall–– bent over, hands clasped over her ears, neat ebony braids spilling onto the floor. The door to an adjacent classroom hung open. Sierra had left history class in a hurry only to end up dead on the floor a few feet away. She looked so helpless and small, her black hair wild around her mouth, agape in agony.