The Seven (2 page)

"You got it, Doc," said Indigo. She scrunched up her face and gave the big red block on the table an evil-eye stare. She even reached out one of her own hands and made dramatic sweeping gestures with it, imitating the old wizard she'd seen a few nights before in the late movie on television. "Rise! Rise, I command thee! Rise!"

Nothing happened.

From the bank of computers in the corner, Sebbins said, "Okay, that's good, Indigo. Now I want you to
actually
try. This time without the theatrics, please."

"How do you know I wasn't
actually
trying then?"

"I'm reading your brainwave patterns over here," said Sebbins. She tapped the computer monitor in front of her with the end of her pen. "When you
actually
try, other parts of your brain light up. When you pretend, it looks different."

Indigo sighed. "Fine. I'll
actually
try."

"That's all I ask."

"What are you testing me for, anyhow?"

"I'm measuring activity levels in your hypothalamus. Now stop talking and concentrate."

Indigo sighed and flopped into the comfy wing chair in the testing room. She looked at the table where the red block lay on a plain, single-mold, white plastic card table. Indigo had been used to this sort of test. She'd figured out years ago they were training her to be some sort of psychic or clairvoyant or telekinetic or something. That's why they kept testing her brain. Ten years of pointless tests and still she hadn't been able to move so much as a mote of dust in a sunbeam or see two seconds into the future. She was beginning to think the doctors were wasting their time.

Indigo bit her lip, concentrated, and stared at the red block until it felt like it was burned into her brain. She closed her eyes and concentrated, forming the red block on the table in her mind. She concentrated on the block, fixing it in her mind's eye. She imagined an invisible arm extending from her head; she could feel the fingers closing around the block. She could feel the block's resistance. It was solid in her mind. Indigo paused. It had never been like this before. She could feel something! She began to feel elated; her heart began to race.

Using the invisible arm, she willed the fingers to grip the block and she pulled back. In her mind, she could feel the actual weight of the block as it lifted off the table. There was a tug, a pulling sensation as the weight of the block actually registered with her imaginary arm. Butterflies jumped in her stomach. She was doing it! It had never felt more real. Indigo opened her eyes, nervously, excited, fully expecting to see the block hovering before her, gripped in the invisible, telekinetic hand.

It hadn't moved an inch. It hadn't shifted. It was still on the table, stubborn and defiant.

"Damn it!" Indigo swung out with her heavy-soled Doc Martens' and kicked the leg of the table. The leg bent inward and the table collapsed, the block bounced away into a corner.

"It's okay, Indigo," said Sebbins. "Come here and look at your brain activity. This is a huge step forward. Honest. Your hypothalamus lit up like a Christmas tree just then. That's exactly the type of activity we've been waiting to see!"

"No. No, it's not. It's the same junk that has happened since I was brought here. I'm so tired of this, Seb! I thought something was supposed to be happening by now!" She ripped the cap off her head and flung it into a large, glass tank in the corner.

"Frustration is a natural reaction, Indigo. Don't let it get to you. Take a moment and then come try again."

"No! Maybe you don't let it get to you, but I let it get to me! This is useless and you know it! What are we doing? Most people stop beating their head against the wall the first time it hurts. I've been slamming my head into spikes for years and there hasn't been one iota of progress!"

"Indigo---come look!" Sebbins turned a computer monitor toward Indigo. A pattern of red spikes jutted wildly across the screen. "Look at the activity!"

"No! Screw this. I'm going to go take a nap." Indigo spun on her heel and made a perfect, huffy drama-queen power-stride out the door, as any good teenager throwing a tantrum should.

Indigo raced out of the lab, down a corridor, and into the elevator. The elevator let her out in the kitchen. She walked through the kitchen and into the entryway of the Home. She turned left at the large, spiral staircase that lead upstairs to the residence hall. At the top of the stairs, she turned right and walked down the hall to her room. She kicked the door open leaving a dent in the wood. She slammed the door behind her and threw herself onto her bed, fuming. Tears pricked at corners of her eyes. She had
felt
it this time. It had been real! For ten years, she had jumped through the hoops and been a good little trained puppy. She had done all the tests, no matter how ridiculous she felt they were. She had dealt with the pain of the poking, prodding, and needles and scans. Beneath her hair, her scalp was a weave of scars. She had put up with the constant invasion of privacy. She had buried the pain of being sent away by her parents.

But why?

What hurt the most was that deep down Indigo really wanted these alleged abilities to work. She wanted to have the abilities that Cormair hinted she might have. She wanted to be psychic, or telekinetic, or clairvoyant, or whatever the hell it was she could do with her supposedly "special" brain. To be truly unique---not just in the way she dressed or the books she read or the music she listened to---to be unique among the unique was what kept her in the Home. It kept her from running away. It kept her submitting willingly to the tests. And now she felt it was all for nothing, a pointless exercise in futility.

A fire of rage burned in her gut. Indigo didn't want to give into the tears. She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to push away the years of failure. A scream welled up in her chest and she let it pour forth, pushing her face into the pillows on her bed so that she could scream as loudly as she wanted without alerting Nurse Hathcock or the housekeeper, Ms. Miller. She wanted to feel aggression. She wanted some sort of emotion to counteract the failure and sadness.

Her stereo suddenly blared. The Ramones CD she had been listening to the night before blasted out of the speakers at maximum volume. Indigo jerked her head up, ready to punch a new hole through whoever dared invade her sanctuary, but the room was empty. Joey Ramone wanted to be sedated, and Dee Dee supplied raucous riffs, but no one had been in her room to turn on the stereo. The stereo remote was across the room on top of a stack of books on her desk. She hadn't nudged it by accident in the midst of her tantrum.

Indigo slowly stood up and turned the volume down on her stereo. She sat back on the bed and looked at the stereo receiver.

Had she done that?

Indigo walked back across the room and closed her eyes. She visualized every inch of her room, mapping it in her head. She focused on the stereo on the wire shelf across the room. Concentrating, she imagined the invisible arm again; she extended a finger from the hand at the end of the arm and pressed the power button on the stereo. The music didn't stop, but she began to get a headache, a dull throb in her temples.

Indigo slouched back against the wall and slid to the floor, dejected. Maybe one of the others had turned on their stereo and the signal from their remote turned on her stereo. Maybe she hadn't depressed the power button all the way and vibrations of her heavy boots on the old, wooden floor made it slip back to the on position.

Indigo put her fingers on her temples and rubbed in slow circles until the headache receded. She stared at her stereo. Why hadn't it ever powered on by itself before?

"Do you remember your last name, Holly?" Posey asked.

Holly's freckled nose wrinkled in thought. She picked a daisy from the flower garden and absently plucked petals, letting them flutter from her fingers. Her mousy brown hair blew into her eyes and made her scratch her forehead. "I think it was Braun. Holly Marie Braun. I haven't thought about that in years, though."

"Posey White. That was my last name." Posey stretched, arching her back. She was Holly's physical opposite: tall and slender, with sharp, dark features and an aquiline nose.

"So?"

"Don't you think it's weird that none of us even use our last names anymore?"

"Not really. I mean, our families pretty much gave us up. Who would want to retain the name of someone who didn't want to fight for you? I think Sarah's parents kept up correspondence the longest and even that dwindled out after our third year here. I haven't heard from my parents in eight years. So what? I don't even like my name. Holly Marie. It's so plain."

Posey nodded. "Do you remember the last names of the others?"

"No."

"I do."

"Why?"

"Because it struck me as funny when I first came here."

"Why?"

"Didn't you notice we were all named after colors?"

"No. I didn't pay attention, though."

"Posey White, Holly Braun, Andy Greenberg, Indigo Maru, Kenny Schwartz, Sarah Blusendorf, and John Redmond. White, brown, green, indigo, black, blue, and red. Like a rainbow. You never noticed that?"

"Never saw a rainbow with black and brown stripes. Are you sure Schwartz means 'black?'"

"Yeah. The actor Michael Ian Black's real name was Michael Schwartz. He changed it when he started acting. It means black in Yiddish. I looked it up a while back."

Holly threw the daisy stem over her shoulder and looked at Posey. "Are you thinking there's some big coincidence in the fact that we all have a color in our name?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I was just saying. How many of the others do you think remember their last names?"

"None, if they're lucky," said Holly

They walked in silence for another fifty yards. They crested the small rise of the hill in front of the Home. John was coming toward them in a slow, graceful lope. He was holding his shirt in one hand and every well-defined muscle on his bare torso shone with sweat.

"Oh. My. God. Catch me. I think I'm going to faint," said Posey.

"Grow up," said Holly. "He's like our brother."

"Our brother from another mother," said Posey. "Doesn't change the fact that he's gorgeous and we never get to leave this place to go find real guys to date."

"Are you really that boy-crazy?" Holly sighed. "I swear you want life to be like those stupid romance novels you read all the time."

"A little romance never hurt anyone," said Posey. "To be swept away by love, to be loved like that, it's the greatest thing in the world, Holly."

"Maybe to you," said Holly.

John jogged up to their side and stretched his arms above his head to help him catch his breath. He got control over his breathing almost immediately. His short dreadlocks hung down into his face. "I feel good," he said. "I just ran almost twenty miles on the track out back. I think those treatments they did to increase our stamina are finally kicking in."

"Or, maybe it's the fact that you've run almost twenty miles a day for the last five years," said Holly, ever the pragmatist.

"Spoil-sport," said John. He playfully tugged the ponytail that hung down the middle of Holly's back. "You guys seen Kenny?"

Posey sighed. "He's probably locked in his room, pouring over some dumb novel about orcs and trolls or something. Either that or he's chatting online again. If they catch him doing that one more time, he's going to get solitary for a month."

"The only way they'll catch him is if they walk in on him. Kenny's practically reprogrammed the whole computer system of the Home," said John.

A long, low horn sounded from the front porch of the Home.

"Supper time," said Posey. "We have to head back."

"I wonder if Sarah found Andy yet."

John shook his head. "I have a feeling they're still on the property or else Cormair would go mental and call in a S.W.A.T. team or something."

"Well, we have about two thousand acres of land to hide on. That's a long way to roam while still being 'on the property,'" said Holly. "Andy doesn't miss meals, though. They'll be back."

"You guys have any testing tonight?" asked John. Posey cringed a bit. Every time he said 'guys' was a reminder that he didn't see her as a woman.

"I don't," said Holly. "You figure out what they're testing you for yet?"

"I think I'm supposed to be some sort of soldier," said John.

"Soldier? Like G.I. Joe or something?"

"No---a real soldier...with guns and tanks and stuff. Lately, that's been what all my testing has been about. Shooting and throwing knives and running and such. They've been making me run the obstacle course out back every night."

"Well, you have the running down," said Posey.

"You ever figure out what you're supposed to be?" asked John.

Posey shrugged. "I don't know. My tests are all bizarre. They keep showing me pictures of birds and skyscrapers and asking if I feel anything. They made me climb the old silo out back one day. They look at my brain patterns and stuff. They put me in the virtual reality goggles the other night and it showed aerial pictures of the Home from really high up. I think that maybe I'm supposed to fly."

"That would be so cool," said Holly. "I'd love to fly."

"Me too," said John. "First thing I would do: Get out of this place. I'd go fly to some city where I could get lost and they'd never find me again.

The trio walked up the front steps of the Home. The wooden boards of the stairs creaked under their feet. Sarah and Andy came out of the woods at the far edge of the yard of the Home and jogged down the hill to join the trio on the steps. "Did we miss dinner?" said Andy.

"No. Just in time."

"Good," said Andy. "I don't need the demerits."

"And you have never missed a meal since you got here," said John patting Andy's stomach.

"Got to keep my girlish figure, don't I?" said Andy.

Kenny was in the dining hall when the group walked into the Home. Indigo was missing from dinner, but that wasn't unusual. She only ate with everyone else once or twice a week.