CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

A hand on my shoulder, pulling me from sleep. Bright eyes pleading in a sea of darkness. And a face, half cast in a flickering source-less light.

"Five more minutes," I say tiredly, rolling over.

"There's no time," the face says, "you must hurry."

Another hand on my shoulder, pulling me onto my back. I swat at it. "Stop, mum. It's still dark out – let me sleep."

Mum.

"Your time is running out," she says, and I focus on the icy eyes that are so much like my own. "You must hurry before it's too late."

Brown shoulder-length hair growing a shade lighter. Light blue eyes morphing into brown. Pale skin turning tanned. Prominent cheek bones rising from a fleshy valley. In front of my eyes, my fake mother transforms into my real mother, but her message remains the same.

"You must go. Now."

"Go where?"

But the flickering light has winked out of existence and suddenly I'm falling. Down, down, down, time and space collapsing away on either side until there's only the darkness and a steady, slow whoosh...whoosh...whoosh.

Then there's an orb of light shooting through the darkness light a falling star. The sound of something sharp imbedding itself in something soft. And Lauren standing before me, crimson blood dribbling down the side of her mouth.

"It's over," she says, blood bubbling on her tongue as she spits out the words. She falls to her knees, her head crashing into oblivion mere inches from my feet as I scramble backwards.

Then I glimpse the large chunk of metal in her back, still glowing red-hot from where it's been burnt, and the world fades, the glow turning into a red smudge, my friend vanishing from sight, and the darkness thickening and solidifying before everything dissolves.

I'm sweating when I wake, the panic of my dream following me into reality. My heart is beating rapidly in my chest and my breaths are short and loud, screaming in the silent house.

No matter how hard I try, I can't get the images of Lauren's angry bleeding face out of my mind. I can deny it all I want, but the truth remains the same: I feel guilty. Guilty that I came here and allowed her to get close to me. Guilty that I ripped her life out of her hands, even if it wasn't really my doing. That's why she was in my dream. That's why, even as I wake, she continues to haunt my mind.

I roll over and look out the window, fixing my gaze on the dull white world outside, forcing thoughts of my dream and of yesterday into the depths of my mind. Somehow, watching the snow fall helps to calm the panic and erase the nightmarish images, and I let my body sink into the mattress like a dead-weight, feeling as though I'm drifting. Drifting like the soft and quiet snowflakes out my window. Like the breeze fluttering through the trees.

Everything is silent, and the Earth suddenly feels horribly voice of humanity. Not a single sound comes from the house or the world beyond – no car engines, no whistling birds, no hungry cries from a baby woken by the light of day. The world is still. The world is drifting.

And I join the Earth in it's drift.

I don't know what time it is when someone knocks on my door and I don't particularly care. The wind has picked up outside and the faint hum of car engines seeps into the room, reminding me that I'm not alone, even though sometimes it feels like I am.

"Melissa," Caden says through the door. Like a question. Like he's not sure I still exist.

When I don't reply, he continues. "Melissa, please. Can we talk for a minute?"

But I don't want to talk – especially not to him, and especially not now. Time passes, each minute flowing into the next without distinction, until eventually I hear muffled footsteps fading into the distance and I know he has left.

After a while of lying there, not moving or speaking or thinking, my dream returns once again to trouble my mind, coming to me in twisted fragments: a flash of pale skin turning tanned; the glint of burnt silver; Lauren's bloodied face, mouth twisted into an angry snarl; my mum, dead, but brought alive; and her words echoing in my head, ricocheting off the walls like bullets.

You must hurry.

There's no time.

Go. Now.

For some reason, I get the feeling that my dream's telling me something – that my subconscious knows something I don't. And for the most part, it's easily decoded. It's telling me to swap back before it's too late – that I don't have much longer left.

But 'go'? Go where?

Dreams aren't meant to make sense, but this one feels like it should. Everything else she said had meaning, so why wouldn't this? And if my dream is trying to tell me something, than how do I figure out what?

And then the second half of the nightmare explodes in my mind, a recount of darkness and blood and fire, and among it all, the words that Lauren said: it's over.

It's over.

But how can it? One moment my subconscious is telling me to hurry and the next it's telling me I'm out of time. A faint voice in the back of my mind reminds me that this is what happens when you over-analyse your dreams. I sigh, and let all thoughts of the nightmare flutter into the pits of my brain like paper tumbling in the wind. There's no point in thinking about it.

But my mind just won't leave me be and soon I lose control of body, knowing that once again I'm being sucked into a vision. It feels a lot like being pulled from the world by a black hole – one moment there's light and noise and substance and the next there's nothing. I lose all concept of reality and time, my body changing from something physical to a mere shadow in a flimsy world.

And then from the blackness: a burst of colour – of light; muted noises, increasing in clarity; and the feeling of the wind on my skin – an unfamiliar brush of freezing cold. My ghostly self is standing in the middle of a road, cars whipping past both in front and behind. And before my eyes lies a squat office-like building, half cast in late afternoon shadow.

Behind me is a large expanse of residential streets, lonely shops and parklands. Strangers – some dressed in suits, some wearing only sports gear, and some looking as casual as anything – stroll past, checking their phones, eyeing the pavement, robotically turning their heads to take in what I assume for them must be a familiar sight. But none of it is familiar to me.

I look back at the building, confused. Why has my vision brought me here? What is so important about an office block in a random suburb of Sydney?

But that's when my eye glimpses the man walking casually down the street towards the towering building – or at least trying to walk casually. Because everything about him reads different. His walk is uneven, slightly favouring his left leg, and his eyes seem more awake, as if trying to watch everything at once. He keeps throwing glances at the opposite side of the road, and his hand nervously fiddles with anything and everything: the hem of his dark jacket; the chunky watch strapped around one wrist; and the phone in his back pocket, which he pulls out almost ceremoniously. His jittery manner draws my attention immediately, standing out amongst the collection of everyday-ers.

Then he reaches the building that lies directly before me and I find myself walking – well, floating – closer, coming to a stop a metre beside him. He jabs a code into a keypad and, without telling it to, my mind commits the numbers to memory: 2 3 7 1 6 6. Then a mechanical voice dribbles out of the wall and I just manage to hear the man whisper, tomorrow. There's a faint click and the man pushes the door open, disappearing inside.

Frowning, I move closer to the keypad, wishing suddenly that my ghostly form came equipped with physical fingers so I could type in a code. I turn away from the keypad in time to see another man step up to it. He studies it for a moment before keying something in, but it beeps harshly in response and he slams his fist on the grey wall, cursing under his breath. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he dials a number and holds it up to his ear.

"I lost him," he says, and then everything starts to fade. I'm travelling backwards. The world is losing its colour, the sounds are dropping out, and the icy chill of the wind is no more. I'm travelling back through the all-encompassing darkness and the timeless void. Back into the real world where I once again have a physical body and an accurate concept of space. Back onto the bed in my temporary room, the faint sounds of the world filtering in through the window.

And then the last hints of the vision vanish and I'm left in a quiet room, staring up at the all too familiar ceiling and wondering what the hell that was all about.

But I don't get the chance to think about it, because Caden returns to my door a minute or so after, knocking softly. "Melissa?"

"What?" I say in return, my tone bordering on angry.

"Please, we need to talk."

I sigh, feeling exhausted from my vision even after my long night sleep and despite having not moved all day. I sit up, slipping out of the rumpled sheets and adjusting the pillow behind me so I can lean comfortably against the wall. "The door's open," I say.

Our eyes meet the moment he opens the door. I don't recognise the emotion on his face, but its unmistakably there, and I find that I'm unable to draw my gaze away, even as he walks in, his movements slow and careful, as if by stepping on the wrong spot he could upset me.

He sits on the end of the bed, obviously making sure to keep distance between us, and then the words spill out of my mouth: "Why didn't you tell me?"

I'm staring him down, the hurt and anger simmering in my eyes. He looks away first, his eyes drifting down to his hands resting on his knees.

"I had my reasons," he says. "And one of them was to protect you."

"Protect me from what?"

 "It's complicated."

"Tell me."

He sighs, and then maybe a minute later, the words fall from his tongue, each one like an icy coil snaking down my back, causing me to shiver. "It's called Asterokinesis – my ability. Basically it gives me the power to create, shape and manipulate all forms of cosmic energy, meaning I can do things like reconstruct matter, and create force fields and vortexes that lead to other dimensions." He shrugs, as if creating portals to alternate universes isn't absolutely mind-bending. "Telekinesis actually stems from Asterokinesis, so I can do that too, as well as create cosmic beams – which is what I did last night. But the power has...limitations. It uses up more energy than other abilities – if I use it too much and for too long, I could pass out or worse. And sometimes it comes as an involuntarily reaction and I create cosmic beams without intending to."

He pauses, thinking. "Do you remember a couple weeks back when Rand and I told you everything and you fainted?"

I barely nod.

"Yeah, well, when you awoke, I was preoccupied. I can't remember what Rand and I told you had happened, but the truth is that I had accidently created a cosmic beam. Rand had just kind of appeared in my doorway and it made me jump and it kind of just...happened. I was upstairs cleaning up the mess I'd made when you woke up."

I recall the day in my mind, reliving the moments after I woke up. Out of all things, the clearest memory is of my glass of untouched water sitting in Rand's hand as my eyelids drifted open. Then I remember the empty spot on the couch and my voice: Where's Caden?

He's, uh...

Caden appearing in the room. His voice floating over to me on an invisible current: I was just getting something to eat.

Now that I think about it, I remember him looking quite dishevelled. I hadn't thought anything much of it at the time, but my subconscious obviously had. After all, I shouldn't be able to recall this many details, but I can, as if some deeper part of me has stored it away, marking it as important. And why did I even ask where Caden was in the first place? I knew he lived there; is it really so strange that he not be in the room when I wake up? It's almost as if my subconscious mind was aware that something had happened while I was unconscious.

My thoughts fade away as Caden continues speaking. "Another thing about the ability is that it requires a lot of training and control to prevent its side effects."

"What side effects?" I interrupt.

He hesitates. "It doesn't really matter. I've got it mostly under control now."

"Mostly?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, mostly. Roughly ninety seven percent, if you're looking for a statistic – and the other three precent isn't a concern."

"Whatever you say," I reply, and for some baffling reason, he smiles. It's small and quick, but it happens nevertheless, and it still manages to make my stomach swarm with butterflies. I have to remind myself that I'm angry at him to keep from smiling back.

"Anyway," he continues, "I spent a lot of my time growing up learning how to control it. I was home-schooled up until sixth grade because my father didn't think I could contain it in a stressful, surprise-prone environment. I think he also wanted to ensure I didn't grow up a freak if I did accidently use it.

"But see, the thing was, my father had no idea how to teach me to contain it – didn't even really understand what it was – and so we had to find help elsewhere. I was young back when he first found me a teacher – probably only six or seven – so I don't remember how exactly my father found him – just that one day a man turned up on our doorstep with a frown on his face."

"Who was he?" I interrupt.

He shrugs. "He went by Keon. I don't know if that was his real name or not, but that's what he told me and that's what I used. To be honest, I didn't really know anything about him. It wasn't until many years later when I had practically finished my training that I realised he wasn't to be trusted. My father had just started inviting him to the council meetings when an unknown group of people started interfering with the assignments in our local area. I had suspected it was him but I didn't have any evidence, and my father didn't believe me.

"Then a week or so later, I saw him headed somewhere and I decided to follow, watching from behind a tree as he interacted with a man dressed in a dark coat. They didn't really do anything apart from talk, so it didn't really prove anything, but when Keon started heading back, he spotted me behind the tree and, well..."

"Well...?" I prompt.

He looks down at his hands again. "He got angry – although I think that was mainly just to cover up his fear at getting caught out. When he asked me what I was doing, I didn't know what to say and so he just slapped me in the face. He hit with so much force that I fell backwards and hit my head on the ground. The impact knocked me out, and when I woke up a couple hours later, I went straight home to tell my father what happened. He believed me this time around – I had the bruise on my face to prove it – and he said he'd talk to Keon, but we never saw him again."

He shrugs. "I'm pretty sure he's the one who set the ghost after me. He doesn't want whatever he's hiding to get out and he obviously thinks I know what his secret is. But I never heard what he was saying and so I don't actually know what it is. It couldn't just be that he works for the nameless group, because if he actually is with them, then it doesn't matter whether people know who he is, especially if he's already gone back to their hideout or whatever. So it has to be something else, and that makes me nervous."

He shakes his head, as if shaking off thoughts from the past. "Anyway, Keon told me once that I couldn't tell anyone about my power. He said that there were people out there who could kind of like extract people's abilities from their bodies and that Asterokinesis was an extremely sought after power. He warned me that if people found out, I could be in danger – that I was in danger regardless. Looking back on it now, it seems pretty probable that he knew the people who wanted – and still want – my ability."

I shiver, the word extract echoing in my mind.

"He had also warned me that anyone I told would be in danger as well, as people would try to get to me through my friends, and that's why I kept it all a secret – so that you couldn't be used against me."

He stops and I stare into his eyes, frowning slightly. "Caden, no one's going to steal you're power. No one even knows about it. "

He stares back. "They've tried before."

"What?" My frown deepens.

"Half a year after Keon disappeared, my mum was driving me home from school when a woman stepped out in front of the car. It was so casual, and so similar to what that man did the other day – the one you stabbed in the back with a piece of my car. My mum swerved and we hit something and the car flipped and... I must have gotten knocked out at some point, because all I remember is sharp edges and tumbling and then blackness. When I woke up, I was still in the car. I remember I turned my head to the side and saw her boots, right in front of the window. She was bending down, but then I heard sirens and she must have too, because she disappeared."

I have a terrible feeling swelling in my stomach – a feeling that tells me I already know what happened next.

"The ambulance crew pulled me out of the car and got me onto a stretcher. I kept asking about my mum, whether she was okay, but they wouldn't tell me anything. In the end, they didn't have to. I was being loaded into the ambulance when I saw her on the ground, a black bag zipped hallway up her body."

I faintly recall asking him about his mother before – how he hadn't wanted to talk about it – and suddenly I feel bad. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's okay. It was a while ago now."

"But it doesn't get easier, does it?"

His sorrow-filled eyes meet mine. "No, it doesn't."

I can't be angry with him anymore, not after this. All I can manage to feel is a deep sympathy – for him and for me. Because we've both lost a mother, and that fact will haunt us for the rest of our lives.