The Search for Artemis

Chapter SEVEN

LATE NIGHT

WANDERINGS


It was late in the night in mid-October. Everyone in the Gymnasium had retired to their rooms for the evening except Landon, who sat awake under the amber light of a reading lamp in a deep alcove of the Library. Polishing off the last few pages of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, he read comfortably in an oversized, tufted, leather chair. While reading it, he could hear the amusing voices his mother would use for each of the fantastical characters when she read it to him aloud. Alice in Wonderland had been her favorite book. He always seemed to select books that reminded him of her. He started with Treasure Island and in the weeks since, had moved to The Jungle Book, Call of the Wild, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Hobbit, and now the Lewis Carroll classic.

Almost two months had passed since he came to the Gymnasium, and he spent nearly every night in the same alcove on the fifth floor of the Library, working his way through one novel after another. It was the only way he could escape the nightmares. Every night the same horrifying scene played in his head moments after drifting to sleep.

He’s walking through a dimly lit hallway. The walls are barren and painted in a sickly beige color. With every step the space grows brighter from a light emanating through the cracks around a single black door. As he approaches, the door creaks open on its own. Passing through, Landon emerges into a large, empty stone chamber with only a massive white flame burning under a glass dome in the center.

He starts to hear a faint cry echoing off the cold walls. With every step, the cry morphs and changes until it settles into the painful wails of his mother. The screams grow to a deafening volume as he approaches the flame. Hoping to get a better look at the inferno under the glass, he presses his body against the dome. The bright white flames dance up from an unknown source, blazing out of invisible embers, and flickering in and out of focus. His mother’s face appears, screaming in agony and fear. Tears stream from her bloodshot eyes.

Landon reaches to help her, to pull her from the infernal flames, but his hand is hindered by the hemisphere of glass. He pounds his fists on it, hoping to shatter the clear barrier, but with every stroke of his fists, the glass holds, yet his mother’s wails escalate and become more blood curdling. He then fights to lift the dome off the ground, release the flame and save his pained mother, but it is sealed shut, secured to the stone floor with a heavy chain and lock. Now crying himself, he fights with the chain, but to no avail; he’s powerless to save her. Standing outside of the dome, he can only watch as his mother screams in agony.

Suddenly, Landon sees a reflection of something in the glass. When he turns and looks, he finds an ax resting perfectly on a stone pedestal; its sharp blade gleams in the firelight. He quickly grabs it, and with a single swipe, the lock on the dome is undone. After tossing the ax aside, he begins to wrestle with the heavy chain, working to unravel it from the base of the dome. All the while, his mother’s cries continue to ring in his ears.

Once the final link is pulled free, Landon presses against the glass, hoping to slide it aside, but rather than move, the dome cracks under the weight of his fingers. The tiny fissures snake and split, covering the massive dome in a network of rigid lines until the entire thing shatters. Thousands of pieces of broken glass fall into the fire and disappear.

The fire is unbelievably intense, and now unrestricted, it begins to grow into a raging inferno, hell-bent on destroying anything in its path. Landon reaches in to try and find his mother, but only finds searing pain as the fire touches his skin. He tries again and again, reaching in only to be doused in painful flames. The heat pushes him back until he’s up against the stone wall, with no escape and no hope of rescuing his tortured mother.

Landon’s body is consumed by the flames; its scorching tendrils burn his body and devour him. As the last ounce of his body is consumed, his vision is overcome by a blazing white light and he hears one final, piercing scream. . . .

. . . Then he wakes up, drenched in sweat and out of breath.

He found the Library as a sanctuary. The book-lined walls reminded him of the forts he and his mother would make when he was a kid, piling up her collections like bricks until they constructed sturdy walls strong enough to keep out the invading forces of evil. The books were safe, and he’d read them until his eyelids wouldn’t allow him to concentrate any longer.

Some nights, however, he’d take a break from the detailed stories and spend his time attempting to hone his skills, working to stack books and file them on the shelves with his powers. Since his first day of training, Landon’s abilities hadn’t progressed to what was expected of a new recruit. Unlike most, who experienced issues turning off their gifts after their apocratusis, Landon appeared to have more difficulty in accessing his. Fortunately for him, it made the blocking side of Thought Reception easy, but unfortunately, his work in all other aspects of his training was riddled with embarrassing accidents or the nonexistent use of his abilities. It started with the marbles on the first day of Telekinetics training but had progressed to getting knocked unconscious by a flying disc he “summoned” and one unfortunate incident in the Library where he forced every bookshelf on the entire fifth floor to fall over. The admiration and high praise he received when he first arrived at the Gymnasium quickly turned to laughter and avoidance as stories of his training mishaps spread through the student body.

His lack of progress also resulted in numerous meetings with different faculty members, and as time passed into autumn, these meetings seemed to become more agonizing and frequent. Each one attempted to help him through his problems with none truly being able to do so. But even if it was ever so slight, he had improved.

• • • • •

Back in mid-September, the blistering heat of August transitioned to day after day of showers and thunderstorms. He had just finished lunch and was passing through the Atrium on the way to his tutoring session in the Administrative Tower. As another storm rolled in over the mountains, dark clouds covered the sky, and the sound of large raindrops colliding with the massive dome overhead reverberated through the open rotunda.

Landon stared up at the massive tree growing out of the Atrium’s floor, wondering how it managed to grow so large in its confined space when its brothers grew freely outside the facility in the open valley. When he looked down, Peregrine stood in front of him.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you were there.”

“No need to apologize. I came to you, Landon Wicker,” Peregrine replied. As Landon looked at her, he felt that there was something strange about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“How’d you know it was me?” Landon asked, perplexed. How was she able to find me in her condition? Where’s her walking cane, guide dog or person to bring her around? Landon had yet to officially meet Peregrine; they neither shared a single training session nor lived on the same floor of the Student Tower. He occasionally noticed her in the cafeteria. She typically ate alone.

“It’s not very hard,” she returned. “Anyways, I think I can help you.”

“Help me? With what?” Landon couldn’t help but stare at her vibrant violet eyes as they pointed blankly at his left shoulder. They shone like amethysts, even in the muted, gloomy light of the storm.

“I’m blind, not deaf. Everyone’s been talking about you and your . . . problems,” she said. “I think I can help you. Meet me back here at two a.m. tonight. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t stare.”

Landon looked away, embarrassed at the chance that he’d inadvertently offended her, but when he looked back, she was gone. He spun around. She was nowhere in sight.

• • • • •

“I think you should go,” Katie Leigh suggested at dinner after hearing the story of Landon’s odd encounter.

“Are you crazy?” Riley added. “Peregrine is the worst lifter in the Gymnasium! What on Earth would she help Landon with?”

“It has been four weeks since he came here, and he still can’t make anything happen on purpose, right?” Katie Leigh turned to Landon. “Haven’t you said that every time you’ve used your powers, that you didn’t actually mean to?”

Landon embarrassingly replied, “Yeah.”

“He doesn’t need her help,” Riley scoffed. “He’ll be lifting buses again in no time. He just has to find his footing.”

Katie Leigh looked back at Riley, disgusted. “Riley, you’ve been saying that since ‘The Marble Incident.’ Landon has tried everything: my sage advice, your useless tips. Even the professors can’t seem to get him going. If she says she can help, I think he should try it. Granted, it’s a bit strange she wants to meet you in the middle of the night, but what can it hurt?”

“What can it hurt?” Riley exclaimed, seeming shocked by Katie Leigh’s stance on the matter. “If anyone finds them together, it can destroy what little bit of status he still has.”

Katie Leigh huffed loudly as she rolled her eyes. “When will you face it that you’re never going to be sitting with the likes of Brock Holbrooke and his gang.”

“You saw the photo. If Landon can figure himself out, he could own this place.”

“But right now, nothing is working, which is exactly why he needs to go and meet with Peregrine tonight.”

Riley and Katie Leigh continued as if Landon wasn’t even at the table. They bickered and fought over a decision that wasn’t even theirs to make. Landon eventually realized he would need to make up his own mind alone, so as they continued to bicker, he got up to leave the cafeteria.

“Wait! You’re leaving?” Katie Leigh asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” Landon answered.

“Well,” Riley interjected. “What’re you gonna do about tonight?”

“I have no idea,” Landon said as he turned and walked away.

The hours after dinner went by slowly. Landon heard the other students socializing in the hallway as they went into their respective rooms for the night while he lay on his bed looking up at the ceiling. Around midnight, Brock entered the room and went to bed without exchanging a single word. Landon paid him no mind and remained laying atop his sheets deep in thought.

It wasn’t until five minutes before two that he decided to at least head toward the Atrium and listen to what Peregrine wanted to say. Her offer to help him was kind. It was the proposed time of their meeting that he found strange, but Landon’s brief encounter with her that afternoon had piqued his interest.

From the dormitories, Landon proceeded down the foreboding hallway that led to the Atrium. Its massive stone pillars disappeared into the darkness above with only their bases scarcely lit by a pale midnight glow. The silence was palpable, and the sound of his steps echoed ominously through the abandoned halls.

He turned down the hallway that lead straight into the Atrium, but once he saw the massive oak tree in the distance, he stopped. With every step, Riley’s voice crept into his mind, making him wonder if this late night rendezvous would warrant another tirade of attention he didn’t want. He stood there for a few minutes having the same argument with himself he’d been having since he left dinner. Could she really help? What did she know that no one else did? He didn’t want to cause another situation like before, but he also was running out of options.

“Landon, what are you waiting for?” Peregrine’s voice echoed through the hallway, surrounding Landon and startling him. There was no turning back now. She knew he’d come. He would just have to see if she could help.

Peregrine stood stoically under the tree. The clouds of the afternoon storm had dispersed and given rise to a clear night sky with only the stars and a large luminous moon hanging overhead. Beams of moonlight streamed through the glass dome, sheathing the marble of the Atrium in a porcelain sheen and making Peregrine’s figure gleam like it was covered in polished silver.

“Please, come here,” she beckoned, raising both arms toward him. Her voice was ethereal and calm.

Landon plodded over to her and stopped a few feet outside of her reach.

“Please, come,” she repeated. “Take my hands and sit with me.”

Landon cautiously placed his hands in hers, but his worries were needless. She delicately closed her hands around his and pulled him closer. Her hands felt soft and smooth, like alabaster. She guided him to a spot under a large branch and descended to the floor, sitting with her legs crossed. Landon joined her, mimicking her position, and stared wonderingly at her.

“I can feel how nervous you are. Your entire body is tense,” she said. “I know you don’t really know me, but I wasn’t lying before. I think I can help you. Your problem is your sense of touch—it’s blocked.”

“My sense of touch?” Landon asked.

“Yes. It’s how we use our gifts,” she continued. “We reach out and touch the area around us. I was born blind, but what no one realizes is that I can see more clearly than anyone else in this place. I’m not strong—my lifting is nearly nonexistent—but my abilities, they are my sight. That’s how I knew it was you standing in the hallway just now, and how I knew exactly where to find you this afternoon to tell you I could help. I can feel you. I can feel everyone in this place. And that feeling—that’s your issue. You can’t figure out how to touch.”

“I’ve tried,” Landon said.

“But I believe you are going about it the wrong way.” A beam of light streamed through the branches casting a shadow across her compassionate face. “Please, all I ask is that you try something with me tonight. If it doesn’t work, you can continue doing what you were doing.”

“Why do you want to help me? We don’t even know each other.” Landon searched to understand the enigmatic stranger sitting before him. He knew she was only a year older than him, but her impaired eyes appeared to run deep with wisdom.

“Because I know what it’s like to be alone. I know what it’s like to be trapped in a place where everyone around you can do something you can’t, something that seems so basic to them yet impossible for you. I know what it’s like to be lost.”

“You think I’m lost?”

“I know you’ve spent almost every night since you’ve gotten here on the fifth floor of the Library poring through books, trying to understand who you are and what you’re becoming . . . searching for answers but finding none.”

“How do you know that?” Landon asked defensively as he rose to his feet.

“I told you, I can sense it,” she explained. “Now, please, sit back down and let’s see if you can at least solve one of your problems.”

It took a few moments before his curiosity grabbed hold of him, and he returned to the floor.

“Good. . . . Now let’s start with this,” she proceeded as she slipped a simple silver band off her finger and placed it in her palm. “Lift this. You don’t have to move it or place it back on my finger or anything. Just lift it off my palm and let it hover there.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. . . . Lift the ring.”

Landon exhaled deeply, thinking her request ridiculous, but he decided to at least humor her. He focused his attention on the tiny circle of metal resting in the palm of her hand. He then tensed every muscle in his body, willing the ring to rise into the air.

“That’s never going to work. Can you even feel the ring?” Peregrine asked while knowing the answer. “If you can’t feel it, you aren’t going to be able to move it. Tell me, what’s in this room?”

Landon looked puzzled, unsure if she was asking a trick question. He cautiously replied, “Umm, the oak, some pillars, you, your ring and I.”

“Wrong,” she said. “You’re relying too much on your other senses. When I asked you that question, you looked around and told me what you saw. It’s expected. You seeing people were taught to rely on your sight to identify something, but vision is limited. You’ve only touched the surface of what’s in this place. Now close your eyes and relax. You’re way too tense. And clear your mind. Don’t try to think.”

As she continued, Landon complied with her instructions. He was lost to her intentions with her seemingly random commands, but he was starting to feel comfortable in her knowledge and hopeful that he might get something out of it.

“So tell me again, what’s in this room? Don’t tell me what you already know is here, what else?”

Landon racked his brain for an answer. He didn’t know what she wanted. After a length of awkward silence, Landon began to crack his eyelids hoping to see something else that could provide some insight, only to be scolded the second his eyelids opened.

“I don’t know,” Landon replied, frustrated.

“Stop trying to find some trick to this. You’re thinking about ‘how’ too much and not just doing it.”

Raising his voice, Landon said, “That’s because I don’t know how to just do it. This was such a mistake. You obviously can’t help me.”

Landon started to lean over on his arm to get up and leave, but stopped when Peregrine’s hand pressed on his knee.

“Landon, please don’t leave.” Her voice sounded empathetic and gentle. Landon settled back on the floor and listened to Peregrine’s words. “Close your eyes again; clear your mind of all your thoughts; forget everything else and focus on your body. Concentrate on your breath and feel your heart beating in your chest. Now follow that beat as it courses through you. Feel it pulse at your fingertips and in your toes.”

Landon reluctantly followed her directions. He slowed his breathing and worked to center himself. He began to feel his heart beating in his chest. Thump thump, thump thump. It was strong and steady. It felt so powerful, he wasn’t sure how he wasn’t aware of it all the time. He continued to feel his heart beating and began to sense every inch of his body as his blood coursed through him.

“Now, keep following that beat. Follow it as it moves outside of your body.”

Suddenly, Landon became aware of everything around him as the wave moved through the room. It was like radar in a submarine. He felt things around him but couldn’t identify them. He could sense their weight and their presence but nothing was clear. They were just blurry blips in his mind.

With every heartbeat he gained a broader sense of his surroundings. He figured the large object he felt was the massive oak, but in that he began to sense the thousands of leaves on its branches and perceived, albeit faintly, the motion of hundreds of little things moving over the bark. He noticed objects varying in size around the roots of the tree that he imagined were stones and rocks. He could feel the pillars around him, and the dome overhead. He could feel Peregrine sitting in front of him, and lightly resting in her palm, he felt the ring.

“I feel it! I can feel it!” Landon was elated, feeling the weeks of failure and disappointment washed over with optimism and excitement.

He opened his eyes, his beaming stare fixed on the wondrous girl before him who had an exuberant smile stretched across her face.

“So what’s in the room?” she asked through her smile.

“So much more than I thought, but I can’t really tell you.”

“I should’ve expected that. I’ve been doing this for so long I forgot how it starts,” she said. “As you get better, you should be able to actually see everything for what it is. Instead of giant fuzzy blobs, the things should come into focus and you’ll actually see that it’s a tree or a rock or a bug. It’ll also become instinctual. You won’t have to shut your eyes and concentrate like you just did; you’ll just know what’s there.”

• • • • •

Closing the copy of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Landon sat up in the large chair and closed his eyes. Peregrine’s words from weeks ago replayed in his head, and he became aware of everything around him as he accessed his powers. Since that night, Landon steadily gained more control over his abilities and learned more and more about himself. In Tactometry, which he could now actually participate in, he discovered that his extensity was somewhere in the range of twenty-five meters, creating his tactometric sphere. It was relatively large compared to most, but his recent lessons in Telekinetics taught him that sensing was not even half the battle. He had feeling, but no finesse.

That morning, case in point, Landon had accidentally given Riley a black eye after his training ball zoomed across the room, ricocheted off the wall and connected with his friend’s unsuspecting face. It happened in seconds and ended with Riley laying unconscious on the tile floor. It took ten minutes to wake him up, and Landon had to wait after the session ended to talk privately with Dr. Brighton.

The conversation went the same way it always did. Dr. Brighton told Landon that he couldn’t keep endangering students with his presence in the training sessions. Landon apologized, but had no real answer to explain his failure, and the doctor eventually consoled him and said that he needed to try harder. But this time, the doctor decided conversations weren’t enough and assigned Landon mandatory private training sessions with him on the weekends.

“I’m going to personally make sure you figure this out. For your benefit, as well as for the safety of everyone else in this place,” he told Landon as he leaned against his desk. Starting the next Saturday, Landon would have to meet his instructor at seven in the morning at the forest line on the north side of the facility, and he would be required to do so every Saturday until Dr. Brighton was satisfied with his progress.

As Landon wondered what kind of training required him to venture into the woods at the crack of dawn, he thought about Peregrine and contemplated whether she might have some other techniques to miraculously save him from these painfully early weekend sessions.

Following their meeting in the Atrium, he only saw Peregrine on a few occasions, mostly in passing. He wouldn’t admit it, but Landon was avoiding her. Her intimate knowledge of his feelings and late night wanderings to the Library unnerved him. What else did she know? Did she know what happened in the apartment?

So far, he had managed to keep the true nature of his apocratusis a secret. He didn’t want the student body to know they were standing alongside a murderer, and the photo of the bus incident was powerful enough to squelch any questions concerning his past. People’s blind assumptions were the best way to disguise the truth.

A few times, however, Landon seriously contemplated telling Riley everything. Over the months they’d grown to be close friends. Landon thought he could trust him with anything, but the way Riley went on excitedly about his mischievous adventures with his brother and sister back in Colorado made him wonder if he would understand. Riley appeared to have a great relationship with everyone in his family, so Landon couldn’t understand how Riley would be able to handle a friendship with a parent killer.

Like any good friend, Riley seemed to want to know. On many occasions, he asked Landon about his family and his life before the Gymnasium, but Landon diverted the question, changed the subject or just remained silent.

Landon opened his eyes and looked down at the worn cover of the imaginative tale he had finished, choking back a lump that formed in his throat as he thought about his mother. He didn’t go a day without thinking about her, and he thanked the Gymnasium for keeping him busy to the point that he didn’t have enough time to break down.

Intent on using telekinesis to file away the large book on the shelf facing him, Landon re-entered his meditative state. He sensed the pulse of his powers as they traveled around the room. He felt the book in his lap, the chair, the reading lamp, the tables and the bookshelves around him. As he concentrated harder, he could even feel the spiral ramp that ran up the Library’s center and the floors above and below him. Once he’d calibrated himself to his surroundings, Landon reopened his eyes and stared at the book, but before he could raise it, his body sensed something new. It was moving quickly in the hall. It had to be a person, and they were sprinting down the ramp.

Wondering who else was up at this hour, Landon got out of the chair and placed Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass on the table. He briskly moved through the maze of bookshelves and stepped out onto the large rotunda, but the person was nowhere to be seen.

Shutting his eyes and concentrating, Landon sensed the person as they neared the bottom of the ramp; he moved over to the thick wooden railing and looked down only to see a figure bolt across the floor, heading toward the southern entrance to the Gymnasium.

“Wait!” he yelled down at them.

The mysterious figure froze in the middle of the ground level and looked up at him.

The person wore all black, carried a black messenger bag, and, to Landon’s surprise, was a girl. Her body and face were silhouetted in shadow, but Landon could see her tight ponytail and feminine shape. He knew she was staring directly into his eyes.

As if realizing she could be caught, the girl continued on her path, losing some of her stealth on the way. Landon heard her footsteps loudly on the hardwood and curiously pursued, darting down the ramp as fast as he could in hope of catching up.

“Wait! Where are you going? What are you doing?” Landon exclaimed as he reached the first floor of the Library and headed down the South Hall, but he received no response from the girl he pursued.

Landon fought to stay focused, relying on his abilities to guide him through the dark. He never tried using them while so actively engaging in something else.

When he reached the south entrance, Landon saw the gold door ajar and got a glimpse of his ninja friend as she disappeared behind it. He sprinted toward it and hurried out into the valley. Upon reaching the end of the portico, Landon found the girl standing with her back to him in the middle of the gravel path. She was looking up into the dark, moonless sky. What was she looking for?

“Who are you?” Landon asked.

“They didn’t tell me I’d have to deal with things like this.” A stern voice resounded in Landon’s head. Her voice was familiar, but Landon couldn’t place it. It was like hearing a friend speak over the telephone for the first time.

A bit surprised by her telepathic response, he replied, “Deal with what?”

She suddenly turned her head down from the sky and tensed her shoulders.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, still keeping her back turned to him.

“Why not?”

“Ugh, I don’t have time for this.” Her words echoed through Landon’s mind again, and then he felt his body jerk backwards, slide across the marble floor, and collide with the door.

Shocked, he stared down at his body. He was pinned to the golden entryway, unable to move.

“Hey! Let me go!”

She didn’t reply.

Landon deduced that this mystery girl was not just a fellow student of the Gymnasium, and he had inadvertently stumbled into a precarious situation. Thinking on all the movies and television shows he’d watched and books he’d read, he realized she must be a thief who’d just stolen something from his home. At once frightened and aware of the gravity of his lonely situation, he knew he needed to stop her.

He tried to concentrate, but couldn’t focus enough to access his abilities. He only managed to stare at her as she stood stoically on the gravel path.

“Come on!” Landon yelled, and unexpectedly, she turned and looked at him. Landon squinted to see her face, but the moonless night made it impossible to see anything save her figure against the mountainous backdrop.

Then her voice reentered Landon’s mind, “If only you knew what was going on here, you wouldn’t want to stop me.”

In the distance, Landon started to hear a whop-whop sound growing louder and louder overhead.

“What do you mean?” Landon pleaded. “Come on, let me go!”

“Haven’t you wondered what they’re training you for? Or what they’re hiding in the Restricted Tower?” she telepathically returned. Before Landon responded, the sound above grew to a deafening volume.

He watched the girl rise into the air, and a moment later, a helicopter came into view. As it flew toward the southern barrier of the valley, Landon’s body released from the door. He stood on the marble portico floor for a while, staring in amazement as the vehicle disappeared into the darkness of the night.